Taking good care of yourself does not mean pushing yourself to extremes Dear One, to do all that you want to do, and be all that you want you to be.  And it also does not mean sheltering yourself from challenges, protecting yourself from your fears, giving up, quitting, or walking away when things get tough either.

Taking good care of yourself means always remembering to love yourself enough to choose balance, to choose joy, to choose patience and compassion in every moment, knowing that doing so will not inhibit your progress along your path but will actually hasten it.

Why struggle, when you can allow Dear One?

Why pretend when you can be truthful?

Why fight when you can accomplish so much more by connecting?

Why be hard on yourself, when you can choose to be loving, caring, nurturing, and supportive of yourself instead?

You can’t stop all hurts from ever reaching you Dear One, but you can stop making them worse for yourself when they do.

The next time that you find yourself feeling angry, frustrated, fearful, anxious or lost Dear One, when things don’t go according to plan, we want you to ask yourself, which you are more committed to, the experience of the journey or the path?

As hard as it might be to believe Dear One, pain is not a punishment.  It is a teacher, a guide, a friend to you.  Its purpose in your life is not to hurt you, harm you, discourage you, frighten you, or weaken you. Quite the contrary actually.

Pain Dear One, is a call for love, is a call for attention, it is a call for healing, growth, and expansion.  Pain is a teacher with a valuable message for you and it is not something to be avoided.  It is something to be acknowledged and embraced.

Run from pain and you will spend an eternity pressed up against an all too familiar wall that you are quite capable of walking around, climbing over, or breaking through.

What can you do for someone who is leaving you Dear One, for someone who is in the process of leaving your physical world and transitioning to spirit?

You can do the only thing for them that you can ever do for anyone else in your life, regardless of what stage of living or dying they are in.

You can love them.

Loving them is not pitying them. And loving them is not fearing for them.  And loving them it is not fixing them, healing them, or deceiving them either.

The very best thing that we can tell you to do for your love today Dear One, for all of your friends and loved ones  for that matter is this – just keep right on loving them.

Remember to be kind today Dear One, in every situation, under any circumstance.

Why?

Because being unkind will never serve you in any useful or positive way.

And this holds true for how you treat others as well as for how you treat yourself.

There is nothing wrong with feeling badly Dear One.

And there is nothing wrong with feeling sad.

There is nothing wrong with feeling angry, jealous, mad, frustrated, judgmental, insecure or uncertain either.

If that is where you are at, if that is what you are genuinely feeling in your heart, then yes, by all means, you should honor those feelings and allow yourself to experience them fully, to learn from them, and understand what they are trying to teach you.

BUT, we want you to know that it is also honorable for you to choose not to.  It is also honorable for you to choose to prioritize your desire to feel better over whatever bad feeling you may be experiencing in the moment.  It is honorable Dear One, for you to decide to not give your attention to things that don’t feel good to you and choose instead, to give it only to things that do.

Do you understand what we are saying?

You should forgive yourself Dear One, quickly, completely, and as often as you possibly can, for everything that you’ve ever done. Especially those things that you just can’t seem to forgive yourself for.

Why?

Because it is the only way that you will ever be able to learn from it, grow from it, or do something valuable with the experience of it, and move forward in a better direction.

That does not mean that we are encouraging you to disregard, overlook, belittle, ignore, or dismiss any negative, hurtful, harmful, thoughtless or destructive behavior you may have engaged in or contributed to.

It means that we want you to recognize that the fact that you are aware that you have not forgiven yourself, that you are in need of forgiveness, is an acknowledgement of a wrongdoing, an acknowledgement that you could have done better, that a better choice, a more preferred choice was available to you.

If you did not see a need to forgive at all, that would mean that you did not, could not or most likely would not choose to differently next time.

But if you did see a need to forgive yourself Dear One, and acknowledged that recognition as a confirmation that you now know better than you did before, that you could now do better, choose better, but still decided not to…

Well, what a waste that would be.

We are not going to try and stop you from making self-destructive choices Dear One, repeating self-destructive patterns, or engaging in self-destructive relationships.

This is your life and you are free to choose to live it any way that you please.

But what we are going to do is try and help you to become more aware of the fact that you are doing so.

We want you to think about and be conscious of every single choice that you make.  We want you to choose purposefully, deliberately, and with intention.

If you are making choices that are harming you, we would like for you to be fully aware of the fact that you are doing so.

This is your life Dear One, and you are free to make any choice that pleases you.

If, however, the choices that you are making are not pleasing to you, then we are going to do all that we can to encourage you to start making different ones.