live your life. i'll live mine.

i have had a lot of time on my hands lately with the Baby being in Louisiana this month, so i've had a lot of time to think & just get lost in my own thoughts. in the past, this has proven to be toxic for me, but i have been focusing on the power of the mind & the power behind positive thinking patterns. and i like how i feel.

i went thru a notebook for the class i took thru the local community college a few months ago (Women Acheiving New Directions) & i found a poem i really needed to read at the particular moment i found it.

The Woman in the Glass -Author unknown

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you Queen for a day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself
And see what THAT woman has to say.

For it isn't your father or mother or husband
Whose judgement upon you must pass;
The person whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

She's the one to please, never mind all the rest,
For she's with you clear up to the end.
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the woman in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the one in the glass.

my thoughts started in this direction this past sunday & have kept evolving in these little tangents. i felt the need to write in my journal. i think about this many more times than the times i actually pick up a pen & write so any time i pick up any of my many journals i have started, i always have to go back and read whatever my last entry was. my immediate response is to shrink. and i'm reminded again that i mostly hate looking back. i'm always disappointed because it seems like the wrong response to have when you are striving to lead a good life. i've been told many times of the connection between writing in a journal & the beginning of loving my self. i tuned it out tho. until recently. Merit, the intuitive healer who i was introduced to a few weeks ago put it into perspective for me when she told me to keep a 'gratitude journal.' this breathed new life into keeping a journal for me. she told the initimate circle of women that i was apart of, that the beginning of positive thinking starts with focusing on the simple, beautiful things in our lives. essentially we have to untwist years of negative thinking patterns that is blocking the fullest potential of beauty in our lives.

then a few days later someone touched a "hot-spot" of mine. i think it's been gradually building within me, but it reared it's ugly face when this person told me about someone telling my little brother that he needed to get out of lake havasu to go to college, because it wasn't big enough. i still feel super fired up over it. i just really can't stand it when people get caught up in status. so then i started to thinking of all the things that we use to define a person: our level of education & where we received it, the cars we drive, the size of our house, the size of the diamond i wear (or don't wear) on my finger, the level of the totem pole we're on at our jobs, blah blah blah. all just traps for negative thoughts. i want to refuse to be defined by anything you can measure on this earth. i want to be ok with me, with my tiny place in this world. i want to be ok with you not liking me or my status. i want to aim to be my best self in ways that are healthy for me, not necessarily the ways you think are the best. the truth is i might have a nicer car, a nicer house, a more prominent job someday. but i might not. and that is more than ok, because the truth of the matter is simple. i have everything i could ever need right now in this very moment.

just a weird collection of thoughts i'm having, all connected in a way that may only make sense to me, but it feels good to have them out of my head. i feel a sense of release.

my last words today: live your life. i ain't got time for no haters. -live your life, T.I. ft. Rihanna