Just Behind the Door

If I asked you to take a few minutes to list your five most important attributes , what would they be? Many of us may struggle with this task. It just seems rather off-putting somehow to write on paper. So often we can see the goodness in others but rush, embarrassingly, to dismiss any compliments or comments about our own strengths when we hear them . We don’t want to appear ‘full of ourselves’ thinking humility is next to perfection – or Godliness – as the nuns repeated many times to us in school.

I bought that decades ago but now realize that we really don’t have to work at being humble. I think the world just has a way of reminding us of our humanness as we face the challenges and opportunities in our tomorrows. Just when we think we have all the answers, somehow, life changes and we are no longer even sure of the questions. Reality and humility combine into a powerful force that causes us to draw from that inner reserve of our authentic self to move through the latest challenge we are facing.

What I do think important and life sustaining is to actually name our strengths and realize how fortunate we are to be able to recognize and be grateful for them. It adds to our inner reserve as we decide what to do, become or develop next in ourselves. Change comes in all forms, self improvement frequently seems the most difficult.

Show me the person who does not do a little self evaluation for the purpose of clarity and improvement, from time to time, and I will show you a person that has little joy and even less excitement in their life. I actually met a person, once, who said she did not have anything she wanted to improve. I thought she was joking, then realized she was serious. Wow! Rather than thinking this was a person with a super dose of self confidence, I simply felt sad because I realized what a tremendous burden it must be to carry around that amount of fear. Fear (false expectations about future reality) can paralyze us and cause us to build a ‘protective wall’ around us to keep keep others out and ourselves chained to our yesterdays. This ‘wall’ is made up of the negative energy in fear and people, do indeed, run from it.

The challenge, it seems, is to refuse to be cowered by fear and to be authentically honest with yourself. Seeing your strengths as building blocks for a better tomorrow.

You are the one and only you in the Universe. The genuine article! At the cell level you are a part of the Universal Energy. The same energy that we know cannot be created nor destroyed only changed in form. When you are the same inside and out you can see yourself as others see you and a greater depth in the fabric of your being begins to emerge. Being authentic allows us to be grateful for our strengths and also willing to see new ways that we can become even more peaceful, loving, accepting and confident. We become happy in our own skin and draw others to us because of our positive energy.

Free will, the gift from the Universe allows us choice and the choice we make today will be the life we live out tomorrow! Make it a great one!