I woke this morning filled with gratitude and thanks for all that is my life. I am thankful for for everything and everybody in my life. I am most thankful for the work I've been accomplishing on my SELF. I have been working for years on my SELF. I was lost. I was lost in what I thought I should be doing - the grown up stuff of responsibility and serious application of oneself to important things. I was not happy. I could not understand why I was unable to reconcile my life and my dreams and find a way for them to blend as one. I know I am not alone in my need and desire to be my authentic self.
We have all gone on the diet, started the gym, signed up for the French class, all for the purpose of creating the positive changes in our life we want to embrace. But it was hard. Friends, family, work, and our own attachment to Self-defeating habits, something always pulled us off purpose.
When I started keeping a journal about 25 years ago, I would periodically go back and read entries from the same date, but years before. I realized I was stuck in a parttern of wanting, but not realizing, the change I so desired in my life.
There was a positive side to these visits back in time as well. Finding those entries where I promised myself I would change and I did. Things that were hard like relocating to San Francisco, leaving Chicago for the first time in my life to venture into the unknown. I go back and read how afraid and excited I was then. Now 25 years later my life in San Francisco is authentic.
That's what authentic change is about. Making a change, living through the difficult first moments of experiencing a new habit, city, job....until it is familiar, natural, comfortable. That is what we look for when we work to change ourSELVES. Moving from the fear to the familiar. Moving from unknown possibilities to a life of accomplishments. This is a life process. We are constantly evolving, growing and transforming. Sometimes we make the process difficult by refusing to let go of the small behaviors that affect the bigger goal. The process of authentic change forces us to look at all the pieces of our SELF. Our attitudes, relationships with others and ourselves, our belief system, likes and dislikes every emotion we have falls under the microscope of change.
Authentic change requires us to dig deep and fully examine our lives and ourselves. You can't paint a room without washing the walls, scrapping off the old paint and preparing it for the new. You can't change your life with a blanket declaration to make a change without washing away the old believes, scrapping away hard to relinquish habits and preparing ourself for the change.
I am in the process of achieving authentic change and transforming my life. The last years have been difficult for me. I thought my dreams have been deferred by the economic crisis, but I have learned a valuable lesson. My dreams have been deferred by my belief that an economic crisis could stop them.
It's important for all of us to stop and take stock of where we are and what we what in our lives. Work, family and other obligations can pull us from our dreams. Time slips away and we gain weight, waking one morning to the realization that we are destroying our health. OR, like I recently did, taking a job you HATE because is will help relieve some but not all of the financial pressure you're under. We get so busy chasing a means to survive, we stop chasing the dream. We are so business trying to live the way society thinks we should AND pursue our dream we wonder how the dream got lost. Six in one hand, Half dozen in the other. If either way you still have to figure out how to pay the rent, buy food and survive, then why not do it on the path to your dream?
I am always encouraged by people who have successfully achieved authentic change. The one trait they all have is the ability to focus on the goal. They act as if they have already achieved the goal until its no longer acting but authentic.
I decided to start this blog when it is exactly 100 days to my 56th birthday. Fast forward 2 years years and its now 89 days until by 58th birthday. I'm learned a lot, but the one thing I learned the most is I was trying to live my dream beside my life instead of as my life. I felt that first I must establish an income and security then I can dream. I have learned that my dream is my life as as long I as push it aside in pursuit of other things I will never be truly happy or fulfilled. In the past two months I have been on the path of my dream. I wake everyday and dedicated my life to my writing and my SELF then take on whatever work fits that schedule. I've streamlined my material world and feel much freer living simply.
I invite you to join me on this new "Journey of 100 days" to Authentic Change and Transformation. Today we ACT and commit to the change we desire in our lives. For the next 100 days we will focus on our goals. Write down what you want to accomplish by March 16, 2013 and lets work together on our dreams. I'm looking foward to hearing from you. I'm looking forward to sharing with you.
Happy Transformation!
"Things do not change, we change" Henry David Thoreau
