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.

Just the same way that helping others affords you the opportunity to feel good about yourself, Dear One, to feel useful, to feel as if you are serving your life’s purpose, you allowing them to help you when you are in need, does the same for them.

Let them help you when you are in need, Dear One.

It really is the only fair thing to do.

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.

It is better to do nothing, Dear One, then it is to move forward in distress, frustration, anger, resentment, insecurity, hatred, or greed.

It is better to create nothing, then it is to create more of that which is unwanted.

^

Bad things happen, Dear One.

Tough, frightening, painful, undesirable things are going to happen.

THAT it happened is what is significant to us today. Much more so than WHY it happened.

We understand that when unwanted things happen you want to know why so you can do all that you can to avoid it from happening again.

But the truth is, Dear One, that you can’t.

You can’t stop/prevent/avoid all unwanted things from reaching you. No matter how diligent you are, no matter how consciously you live. Imbalance will always find you. It will always be able to reach you. It is a consequence of being alive.

Prevention and avoidance are not where your efforts and attention will be best spent. But rather resilience, realignment, and recovery are the skills you want to master for relief and longevity.

That is what the wise do.

And the wise have become wise, Dear One, not by knowing/having all of the answers, and by avoiding all unwanted things, but by remaining open to insight and learning how to ask the right questions at the right time.

So, when bad things happen, instead of asking ‘Why me?’, the wise would ask;  What is my quickest path to recovery? What do I need to do to get back into alignment as quickly as I can from where i am now?

Your victories are YOUR victories, Dear One.
Celebrate them, each and every one, no matter how big or small.

Don’t compare them to someone else’s first; before you decide if they are worthy of celebration.

Especially not to those who don’t share your values; to those who may not find valuable those things that YOUR heart values most.

^

You are feeling a strong desire for change, Dear One; how you look, how you feel, what you do, how you live, what you have, who you love, who loves you, and so on.

And you are uncomfortable with it. You are unsure of how exactly you want to change, and what exactly you want to change into, and how you are going to make all of this change happen. And you want to make the discomfort stop.

But to relieve the stress, the unease that accompanies not knowing, the frustration that comes with not having, the self-loathing that comes with feeling unworthy or undeserving or unprepared, the answer is not to stop wanting, to stop trying, to stop moving forward in an effort to avoid confronting the distress.

The answer is in fact, to do the exact opposite of that.  The answer is to embrace the change, and embrace the lack of clarity, discomfort, uncertainty, and insecurity that comes with it.

Because stopping, turning back, giving up, or running away is never going to get you to where you want to go.  But moving forward just might.

And the truth is that both directions, forwards and back, hold the potential for discomfort, equally.  It is unavoidable, nearly impossible to escape the feeling all together.

So the question that you really want to be asking, when it comes to dealing with the discomfort of change, Dear One, is not, How can you avoid it or make it stop, but….  Do you want to confront, deal with, and work through the discomfort while you are moving forwards, backwards, or standing still?

^

Don’t make NOW the moment that you gave up, ear One. Don’t make it the moment that you failed, or the moment that it didn’t work either. Don’t make it the moment that you didn’t get it done, that you didn’t measure up, that you couldn’t make it work, or that you realized that you were just too far off course to ever get yourself over to the place where you really want to be.

Make NOW an empowered moment, an powerful moment, a triumphant moment.

Make NOW the moment that you made up your mind to turn it all around instead.

A prayer is a peaceful promise to yourself, Dear One – a promise to allow that which you are needing, wanting, asking for, into your life.

A prayer is a preparation.  It is a ritual to help get you ready to receive, to help you shift into a mindset of receiving.

That is why prayers of gratitude are the most powerful.

You can choose to trust, Dear One, or you can choose to try.

• When you trust you are making a decision to open yourself up and allow the unlimited potential of the universe to bring to you or bring you to that which is for your greatest good.

• When you try without trusting, you are making a decision to rely on yourself and the limited capacity of your physical reality to do what needs to be done.

Both will work. Both will serve you.  Both will move you in the direction that you want to go.

The biggest difference between the two, Dear One, is the amount of energy that you will have to exert to get there, and the amount of time it will take.