So… It’s now 2013.

Now what???

Most people are into New Year’s Resolutions. Not me. Resolutions tend to be a setup to failure. I’m looking at it as a renewal this year. A time to reflect on my life thus far and a time to figure out what the hell I want to do when I grow up.

The problem with this???

I’m almost 50.

Wow.

Actually, I’ll be 48 this week but it’s close enough. It’s time to step into my true self and quit standing on the sidelines. I’ve tried this before but always ended up with a severe case of the what ifs with a heaping helping of the monkey mind questioning my every thought.

So, this year, instead of resolutions, I’m going with reasons for change. Resolutions are made to be broken and figuring out the reasons you’re ready for change is coming at it from a different place…from the heart.

When you know why you want to make a change, you’ll find it much easier to make that change. And for me, I’ve got lots of reasons for change. 48 in fact. One for each year on earth. Time to reassess where I’ve been, the role it’s had in who I have become and where I go from here.

First step… Starting to write again. That starts today. So much to write about and so many blessings I’ve kept to myself. I saw a quote recently about our desires not being of our own choosing and it’s our responsibility to live out our dreams instead of suppressing them.

And so all of these things I’ve held inside for fear of whatever and whomever are coming out. I’m stepping into me. Warts and all. I am who I am and you know, it’s not too bad! I have an uncanny knack for seeing things that others don’t see until I bring it to their attention. And that’s a blessing. Or a curse. It’s all in the way you look at it.

So, instead of once again setting myself up for failure with doing what I want to do, I am doing SOMETHING today. And that’s good enough for me.

And for anyone who happens to still be reading, thank you for being interested. I know I’m rusty with the writing but I’m easing up on myself this year and not going for perfect…I’m just going.

Hey, folks. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s been a while. I really ought to go through the archives and see how many posts I’ve written that started with, “I’ll bet you’re wondering what I’ve been up to” or “It’s been a while,” etc… I could probably write a book just with them!

Over the years, I’ve changed tremendously. Since I originally started Motivational Stuff (the old website with all the motivational stuff on it before people really seemed to WANT motivational stuff,) my life has changed so dramatically in some ways, and in other ways, has remained at a stand still. Until recently, that is…

So many times I would write something and not post it for fear of offending someone or possible confrontation. I would try to hide from who I am and just spew what I thought people wanted to hear. I found excuses not to write. I let the Shiny Object Syndrome take over, followed with a bout of Excusitis.

I closed the Motivational Stuff site years ago because it was too much work and expense to keep up with when I wasn’t getting any return from it. I totaled up my expenses for a year from all of the domain names I purchased here and there, hosting, etc… and then beat myself up for not taking action with any of them.

Ideas I’ve got… Initiative and follow through, not so much. It’s always been a self-worth issue. Just never feeling like enough or as good as. It’s plagued me since my early years in school. I have done so much clearing work lately that has allowed me to find the roots of those issues and finally start to release them. I may write about it here, or save it for a book. Who knows what I’ll do next!

I feel the need to release lately. Release the gunk in my life. Release the old, negative stuff that I’ve allowed to hold me back from being the truly amazing gift I can be to this world. Just as everyone is.

Releasing the “shoulds” and replacing them with the “I AMs” losing the judgment about who I am and what I should do and how thing should be and just embracing the true self that I am.

And it’s about f’ing time.

Weird’s the new normal. And I’m embracing my weirdness. My uniqueness. My quirkiness. My “me-ness.” How about you embrace your “you-ness” and step into your true self?

Question your thoughts. Those voices in your head that tell you that you can’t or you shouldn’t or you aren’t. Are those REALLY your thoughts? Or are they someone else’s thoughts that you’ve accepted as your own personal truth?

Shouldn’t do something? Says who?

Is that thought REALLY something that belongs to you? If you ask yourself, “Why?” and the best answer you can come up with is, “Just because,” then it’s probably not YOUR thought. (I find these especially around money – which seems to have been the bane of my adult existence.) I would hear my parents’ voice coming out of my mouth around money issues. I couldn’t seem to get rid of those pesky limiting thoughts.

I’ve found that questioning if a thought is truly mine, and if not, choosing to release it as my own truth (through some clearing energy work,) to be an effective way of getting to what I truly believe and want for my life. It’s an ongoing process, as I’m finally stepping into the me I know I can be. Being a better version of myself. Growing daily so I can be a better contribution to this world around me.

Sometimes I don’t feel like blogging. Honestly, I’m sick of the layout of the blog. I have found other themes I like and then get caught up in the minutia of working on trying to get it changed without having to invest further (because my money’s better spent on things like, oh, let’s say, keeping the utilities on and food) so I use that as another barrier to moving forward. So, I uncover another issue, and then I work on it. It has kept me very busy lately, along with work. So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Reinventing myself as the true me I’m meant to be. I could have blogged about my adventure but I didn’t. It would have been interesting reading, I’m tellin’ ya!

Just suffice it to say, I’m shakin’ things up. More to come…………………….

First off, let me say I am quite aware what a sucky picture of a light bulb that is. And by posting it, what a step I’m taking in just doing it and not worrying about perfection. The former me would have held off posting for lack of the perfect photo. Yay, me! lol

There are so many things I see now that either I thought of or are similar to something I could have started. I bought the domain motivationalstuff.com years ago because I always had motivational stuff around the house, especially around my keyboard.

There are so many things I could have done with it. So many directions I could have taken it…but I didn’t. I wasn’t ready. I was too scared. Too insecure. I called it a business but it wasn’t a business at all. I really wanted it to be a business, but alas, it was more of an expensive hobby. Technically, it still is. I’ve been trying (first mistake – trying by nature sets your mind up for failure by accepting the possibility of it) to move it in a direction that brings in income instead of drains my bank account.

It’s been like a slow leak in a bucket. A domain name here and there add up, oops, they need renewal, don’t want to lose that one because I could do so many things with it. I’ve got 20 now? Damn, what am I doing with them? Nothing aside from paying for them.

Mistake Learning Opportunity #1 – Act when you get an idea. Don’t sit on it. If you think something’s good, then go for it. If it sucks, you’ll figure it out. And you’ll learn what doesn’t work.

I love inspiring others, sharing what I have learned over the years but to be brutally honest, I didn’t have the confidence to really do anything more with it than what I have done up to now.

And:

I’ve written so much but never shared it. It was therapeutic. I was always worried about putting my best foot forward and not being judged. I had that so ingrained in me from childhood that it’s taken half a lifetime to just start to overcome it.

So what if someone judges me?

It’s none of my business.

If they don’t like me, then that’s their problem, not mine. It’s not my job to control what someone else thinks. It’s my job to control how I react to it. If they don’t like me or what I do, then it’s not really about me anyway… It’s about what I represent to them. And that’s okay. I’m not for everybody. But I am for some. And that’s okay as well.

It’s taken me almost 50 years (I’m actually 47 and one of the people who doesn’t care who knows my real age) to finally figure that out. And it feels great.

Yesterday I met my new neighbor and her friend. They saw my book and notebooks on my porch swing and asked if I was in school. I said, “No, I just love learning. Some people call me a motivational writer. I’ve had a blog for years and I help women find their inner confidence so they can better move forward with their lives.”

That was a first because I really never knew what to say when someone asked besides, “I run a motivational website.” (But in my mind, right afterward, I would think, “When I feel like it. It’s a hobby more than a business. No one really reads it. But the name is good. I wonder how much someone would pay for it?” and on and on the mind chatter would rattle.)

Oh, yeah, back to the story… I get distracted easily if you haven’t figured that out yet.

My new neighbor’s friend looked at her and said, “See, God works in mysterious ways.” (Leading me to believe I’ve got a future client moving in.) Some call it God working in mysterious ways, others call it the Law of Attraction (The book I was reading is a book about creating your ideal life and visualizing myself being surrounded by my ideal clients prior to them showing up.)

Some may call it coincidence, serendipity or fate. Others may call it bullshit. And the ones who believe it’s all bullshit are the ones I was referring to earlier that are just not for me. And that’s okay. They don’t understand how it works, so they resist. It’s working for them, just not in the way they would like it to. They’re getting what they expect and believe is possible.

Just like I’m starting to believe what is possible for me. And finally getting that I deserve it. Even with the “bad things” I’ve done in the past. I know now that I did the best I could with who I was at the time. And that, too, is okay.

I’ve spent many years punishing myself over stupid things I did over the years. For the longest time, I loathed myself. Not just mere hatred, mind you… Pure, unadulterated loathing. I felt I could do nothing right. I picked out the few negatives out of hundreds of positives and let those play on repeat in my head over the years. I now understand where it came from, and that’s for another time, when it’s not so raw, but believe me… I had my reasons.

And looking back, with the mistakes (here I go again… learning opportunities) I made over the years, I’ve learned to accept them as part of my lesson. I sometimes have a hard head (as Mom used to tell me repeatedly…lol) and learn things the hard way (which she too told me on a regular basis) and I’ve grown to accept that as my truth. And over the years, I learned that’s who I was. Someone who screwed things up and then learned from them.

My repeated lessons were just sinking in. Sometimes I didn’t see them. Sometimes I ignored them. Sometimes I flat out denied they existed. But in the end, I had to face them. And that’s hard. But doable.

Oh, I played the victim. I even married the ultimate victim. I thought he just had a bad rap. He played the martyr quite well in the beginning, and I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. But I quickly found out what deadly venom he spat. I seriously thought if he were around me, Ms. Positivity, it would help him see his blessings and give up the victim role. What a load of malarchy! I went to hell and back and all I got was an extra 50 pounds of stress weight, health going down the tubes, estranged from my son for months, feeling like I was losing my mind, lost my self-worth, and what money I did have. (and not even the lousy t-shirt!)

But, all in all, it was my own lack of self-worth that drew me to him in the first place. I now can accept that reality. I had to see someone who had an even worse self-worth and be able to see all of the good in him, and just couldn’t fathom why he couldn’t see it, to start to see it in myself. Sometimes it takes seeing that in another person to open your eyes to it in yourself.

Same thing with money. I was drawn to someone who couldn’t handle money to save his life. He, too, was the eternal victim. Just in a different area that ex-hubby.

I saw the ways he was irresponsible with money and pushed it away. I could see it as plain as the nose on my face with him but was blind to my own. But once I saw him pissing away money and shirking his responsibilities, I could then realize the ways I was doing the same thing, just on a much smaller scale. And then I could do something about it. Just as I learned what I needed to from my short marriage to Mr. Energy Vampire, I too learned from Mr. Irresponsible. See a pattern here? I drew into my life people who represented things in myself that I needed to change.

So, as I move forward with an idea (I’m learning to pick it and stick it) I will experiment with what works and what doesn’t. I will implement and change. I’ve got so many ideas I’ve not taken action upon, and then see someone else do something very successfully that is either just like I envisioned, or similar. (For example, several years ago, I had the idea to create online vision boards but my boyfriend at the time…a fellow programmer, said it would never work and it was a waste of time…so I did nothing with it. I’d say that they’ve done pretty well for themselves with that idea.) And that’s just one example. There are several others that I kick myself for not implementing. More learning experiences.

I’m on a journey. We’re all on a journey. I’m learning day by day. I’ve finally learned to be open to the lessons. I’m healing my childhood pain. I’m moving forward, committed to helping others find the light in themselves so they can brighten up this world. We all have gifts. We all were brought onto this earth to learn, grow, and share those gifts with the world. If we all shared our God-given gifts, instead of hoarding them, for fear of being judged or laughed at, wouldn’t this world be a much better place?

Just sayin………

As I watched this amazing sunset unfold, I wondered how many people were driving by and not even noticing the miraculous beauty unfold in front of them. And then I thought of how many times I have ignored what’s right in front of my face, too wrapped up in myself to see that most of the time the answer I sought was right in front of me, had I only taken the time to open my eyes.

–Angie Buckner

The cool breeze blowing, the distant church bells chiming a familiar tune from childhood, much needed rain falling, nourishing my barren yard. I can just FEEL the renewal taking place. I feel the stress just falling away, replaced by deep gratitude and knowing that today is a new day.

All is forgiven, yesterday has been replaced with a new day, a new chance to start becoming the me I’m meant to be. To shine my light on the world. To be the type of person I want to meet. To be the best mother, friend and person I can be. To leave behind the insecurity, the less-than, the scared-to, the not-good-enough, the guilt, the shame and shoulda-coulda-woulda.

They are yesterday. They brought lessons. They strengthened me. They served their purpose. And for that…I’m grateful.

Today I start anew. Today I allow. I allow my inner self to emerge. I allow my vulnerability to be shared with the world. I allow myself to be a channel for which my higher self (God, Source, etc…) to work through me.

Amazingly enough, when I wrote that last line, it started pouring down rain, instead of the steady light rain that was previously falling. A sign from Above? Maybe.

I feel like playing in the rain. I step out into the rain and feel nature’s nectar falling on my skin, assuring me that renewal is not only possible, it comes at the most unexpected times and in the most unique ways.

I’m sure my neighbors think I’m mad, and you know, for once, I don’t care what anyone thinks. I couldn’t quite bring myself to DANCE in the rain, but getting in front of the camera in pajamas with bedhead and no makeup, feeling the wonder of life’s renewal on my skin, was a HUGE step for me. I give myself permission to be different and refuse to hide anymore.

(Unfortunately, I’m unable to upload the video for some strange reason… Sucks because I was finally ready to just say screw it, don’t care what I look like!)

Amazingly enough, I’m learning to shine during a downpour. I now refuse to be less-than. I’m a unique, special person, born to light the world in some way, be it in a small way or something larger. Just as YOU are.

It’s time to put away your insecurities and let go. I’ve tried it the other way and I’m ready to let go and show who I really am.

The past served my previous self. The one who was afraid. The one trained to hide. The one trained to fear life itself. Life is here for the taking. It’s time to wake up and come alive.

Now’s the time…