Personal Growth

Personal growth....it's something that I try to work on daily. In a society that judges people on appearances, I try to look past that, I try to see the soul behind the face. When someone does something negative I try to figure out why they chose to, what is the factor on why they chose negative instead of positive.

Some people react to situations by associating it with something they can relate too, if they were judged growing up on how they looked, that is how they are going to judge people, if they were judged on how smart they are, intellect is how they will judge other people, ect. In parenting my children, I try to get them to look at people on how they treat other people, I know it's a form of judging but you can learn a lot about someone's character on how they treat people around them. I do not judge people on race, creed, religion or sexual preference, I judge them on their humanity.

We do in life as we are taught to do, so if as a child you were not taught to be kind or compassionate to others you will not know how to do it as an adult, same thing with love, if you are not shown love as a child, how are you to know what it is as an adult? I was not taught patience as a child (I am the baby in the family, what I wanted I was given) and it is something I am trying to learn on my own, old habits die hard so this one is a tough one for me.

I am also trying to learn how to walk that fine line of doing for my family because that is my responsibility as a parent and keep my own head above water...I lost myself once in this and it was a long journey back to me....this new way is teaching my children patience in a way......they now know if Mom is doing something important to her, they are going to have to wait their turn unless its an emergency. I was taught as a child that it wasn't polite to be selfish, but somehow I took that as "do nothing for yourself" so breaking that habit was hard to do too.

I love those "Ah hah!" moments in life where you learn something about yourself or someone else and it opens up a new way of thinking about things. The older one gets it seems those moments occur much more frequent. I think that saying about "Life begins at 40" should be changed to the "Meaning of life begins at 40!"

Personal growth.........its a beautiful thing!