Childhood is over Dear One. You are no longer a little person living within an environment that you have seemingly no control over. You are an adult and you now get to choose, without fear or concern of being disobedient to anyone else but yourself.

When faced with a trial that requires you to face your past, remember that whatever it is, it is no longer your currently reality. You don’t have to bring it back into the present moment with you if you choose not to. Others might approach you on the subject with energy, impressions or patters that used to exist back then. It may still be their reality.  That doesn’t mean that it has to continue to be yours.  Remember, at those moments, that you can choose not to dive right back into old patterns with them. You can choose to stay right where you are, in the present moment and deal with the situation from where you now stand. Just because they are choosing to engage in old patterns, does not mean that you have to join them in this practice.

When facing the past Dear One, anchor yourself in the present first, for that is the only place from where you can impact change.   KNOW that what you have learned and accomplished for yourself since that time, no one can take away from you, ever.

In the present, you get to decide what your past means to you. You can assign a lot of meaning to it or no meaning at all. That is completely up to you and only you.

You are the creator of your world Dear One. What you give out is what comes back to you. It is a universal law. Give out insecurity and you will attract insecurity. Give out caution, fear and distrust and you will attract caution, fear and distrust in the people, events and circumstances that surround you. Give out joy, creativity, inspiration, generosity, compassion, confidence and love and guess what you’ll get back?

What you put out there is what you get back. Pay attention and you’ll see.

You are much more in control than you think you are.  

It is understandable that you are wanting to continually explore new avenues and seek out new adventures and experiences Dear One. That is, after all, why you are here. But there is something to be said for finishing the food that is already on your plate before going back for more. When you have so many wonderful choices in front of you, it is not always for your greatest good to continue to pile up more up on top.

Think of it like covering a gourmet meal with chocolate. Chocolate can be a good thing- but not necessarily on top of everything. Some things are much better enjoyed on their own. Sometimes adding more to the top of what you already have is just — more. And as you know from experience, sometimes more can just make you sick.

You don’t have to be in such a hurry to take everything in all at once. Life is a journey that is meant to be savored, with an unlimited menu of experiences available to you – sweet, savory, crunchy, smooth, hot, warm, cool, cold.   Allow yourself to fully experience, digest, enjoy each one of them, one at a time. There is something wonderfully delicious available to you in each.  And if you are not paying attention, if you are focused more on “what else” or “what’s next” as opposed to what is, so many wonderful details will be overlooked or lost to you.

Don’t miss out, in your enthusiasm to experience it all.  Slow down, take your time and savor every bite.  There is no need to hurry.  There is no need to rush.  You do, after all, have an eternity – remember?

If you want to start feeling better about the decisions that you are making in your life Dear One, stop asking other people for their opinions about them.

You are here to have a personal experience of you, not a duplicate experience of someone else. There is no one that can ever know what is best for you better than you can.

Trust yourself a little bit more, your gut, your instincts and act accordingly. Make conscious decisions that make sense to you and soon you will find yourself living in a reality that is much more you then ever before.

What do you see/feel when you look around you Dear One? Do you see the life that you want for yourself unfolding before your eyes, or do you see someone else’s version of the perfect reality?

Give yourself some time to adjust to the fact that you are the creator of your own reality if you need to. But start trusting yourself and making decisions based on your desires, your experiences and your instincts right away.  There is no reason at all for you to wait.  Note how each decision makes you feel so that you can learn more about yourself and your preferences with each one that you make.

Fear is an illusion that can be transcended, just like any other illusion Dear One.  It is only as real as you choose to believe it is.

As you have learned from a lifetime of experience, nothing is ever as bad as you think it is going to be.  Even those things that are really, really bad.  You always expect that they are going to be worse.  Your fear is that you will encounter something that you are not going to be able to handle.  But in your lifetime, have you ever had an experience that you truly could not handle?

Knowing this, when facing a fearful situation, why not choose confidence instead?

Tomorrow will always be there Dear One.  But today will come and go.

It would be a real shame to waste it.

So don’t.

Expel, release, let go of that which you do not need Dear One – that which makes you feel ill or uneasy – the excesses in your life that are weighing you down, that are pulling you under. Keep those things that challenge you, enlighten you, brighten your mood, change your perspective, inspire, motivate and propel you forward. You will know the difference between them by how they make you feel.

You opened up to receive and in the process took in a big gulp of salt water into your lungs.  It happens.  Don’t respond by closing down. Instead, practice opening up to the experience of swimming and not the experience of the water. Do you see the different? One will cause you to float and the other to drown.

Be kind to yourself as you learn, and forgiving. Don’t beat yourself up about what you should or could have done differently and continue to drown. Allow yourself to move forward from wherever you are with trust, confidence and faith, and float.

Where would you be without challenges Dear One? Challenges push you, pull you, bend you, throw you, turn you inside out. And when you choose to take them on, motivate you like nothing else.

When you are challenged, when you choose to take on a challenge, in the process you push yourself beyond your own comfort level, you generate new energy, you discover creative solutions, you seek out help and make new connections and sometimes sever old ones. You generate passion and courage for yourself to do something that you have never done before, to face something that frightens you, to create something new.

Can you think of any other way to propel yourself forward like this besides a challenge?

It can be done. We know it’s possible. We know you can do it.  But do you? If there was no urgent need that threatened your comfort, your security, your pride, your sense of self, would you push yourself beyond your edges to grow?

If you decide that the answer is yes, then you will no longer need challenges to be a catalyst for growth in your life Dear One. You will instead let love, curiosity, passion, a desire to experience change and motion be your motivator and propel you to identify and confront your fears head on, to push you to grow, to show you what your limits are and catapult you past them.

Challenges are just a tool Dear One. And an effective one at that.  Try to see them as such.  Let them serve you, not unnerve you.  And if you want to embrace change without the accustomed aches, pains, turmoil and tumult of a challenge, make a conscious decision to push yourself forward when you are not challenged. Demonstrate to the universe that you are ready to learn another way, and you will be shown one.

When you find yourself on the receiving end of something so amazingly wonderful, so fantastically terrific, so unexpectedly delicious that you can hardly believe your luck, do you think to yourself, this is a once in a lifetime experience that will surely never come my way again? We’ll, if you do, you’d be right!

However, if you instead see these “once in a lifetime” experiences as gifts, as reminders, as demonstrations of the potential for greatness, joy, abundance and happiness that exists in every single day, hour and moment of your life, then you just might find them becoming not be so far and not so few between.

Your expectations have an enormous impact on your reality Dear One. You see what you expect to see. You see what you are looking for. If at your moments of greatest joy, you think that things could never be this good again – they might not be. BUT, if you instead use those moments to allow yourself to get over the moon excited because you now know just how good things can get, you will be opening yourself up to receive more of the same….and then some.

Change your expectations and you can change your reality Dear One.

Your life is not a story To be continued… Dear One.  Your life is a story of firsts, fresh starts, new beginnings.   With the dawn of each new day you get to start again, start over, start fresh…..from the beginning.  That is what is so great about it.

Don’t, Don’t, Don’t carry the events, feelings and choices of yesterday with you into tomorrow if you don’t want them there.  It is just as easy not to do this as it is to do this.  All that is required is a little bit of consciousness.  There is no rule that requires you to continue to carry all of your baggage with you from one day to the next.  What you carry with you is a choice.  And since you are the one doing the choosing, why not choose to carry over only your very favorite things?