Daily experience makes it easy to sometimes forget what is important.

More than anything else in this last several months, what I’ve learned about is being given perspective. Perspective changes how you feel, it changes your experience.

For example: let’s say one is feeling lonely or left out. Perhaps she may feel judged by her friends, due to recent risky decisions she’s made. Or, on another perspective, perhaps her friends are busy with their own new relationships and life in general and still love her just the same, wishing she would stop by sometime. No one picks up the phone because they are all viewing the experience from their own perspective.

“There is no spoon,” he whispered as he shook a spoon at me.

I recall knowing some people…. I must’ve been twenty years old or younger. There was a friend of a friend… who insisted that he could manifest a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from thin air. It was the PBJ theory… that if you wanted something enough, if you believed it enough, that you could think it hard enough, and *poof* there would eventually be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right there, in his hand.

I’ve noticed that sometimes I will repeat maladaptive behaviors out of habit. Not because these are the things I wish to do, but because they come so naturally to me. I don’t have to think about them– and that’s probably the root of the problem. I don’t think of them. If I were consciously thinking of them, I would repeat behaviors that were healthy and “good for me.”

While I was going through the motions of getting my degree, I frequently suffered many a night where I would just lie there. Not sleeping. Not thinking. Just waiting for the alarm to ring so that I might get up and do it all over again. Exhausted.

Along my progression of mindful living, I have discovered a few things that have in the last several months, led me to sleep soundly and deeply.

It takes courage and maturity to recognize when something isn’t right for you.

Change is frightening, and sometimes we take comfort in just keeping the status quo. However, as much as it’s frightening, stagnation can require much more energy from you than putting forth the effort to not only DECIDE what you want, but then to ACT and GET what you want.

I am a completely flawed human being. I boldly and frequently make mistakes. I have outgrown the attitude of perfectionism as an ideal. I have in turn resorted to bravely standing out, doing the best I can with what I’ve got. When I do not make the best decisions, I graciously encourage the people I’ve surrounded myself with the opportunity to teach me a better way. The fact is that I don’t know everything. However, as a human race, collectively, I believe that we have retained everything that we have learned throughout “time.” If I can tap into the resources which define all human knowledge, then I’ll be a great deal smarter than before I started.

Sometimes the only way to reach your goal is to have faith.

This applies to relationships, careers, living situations, and more. Got to have faith that what you’re throwing out there is a line that will catch your meal– even if no fish are in sight, and line is somewhat fragile.

You have to take risks. Have faith. Trust that you know what you’re doing.

A series of days in which my mind has been filled with the fog of worry and anxiety… a battle of my internal wits throwing out euphemisms and cliches and proverbs in an attempt to guide my thoughts… Thoughts become things… Physical reality or spiritual reality or mentality or psychology or…??

These last several years have provided a myriad of opportunities for me to become more emotionally healthy. I have learned confidence and enough about my own psychology to understand my moods, to recognize my cycles, and to become more in tune with my body. I have a remedial knowledge of health and wellness, and a connection with the entire consciousness that allows me to pull from the correct directions when I need to know more.

Dearest Ash,
My kids are so rotten.  They’re totally hyper and like to break whatever rules I give.  Here’s an example:  I told them to pick up their rooms, and instead of picking it up, they go in there and play with their stuff.  They’re in first and third grade. I yell, and I threaten to [...]