Michaela Riley

Life brings us many challenges some nearly destroy us and may bring us to a screeching halt. Hope you have that seat belt on, you may need it. It is in those moments of our life that we must change. We have to keep moving to our destination and achieve those goals we set during our teenage and young adult years. If you are like me survival guided many decisions made in those young impressionable years. Education and setting goals were a mere fantasy for someone else. Working several dead end jobs to make ends meet was really all that I knew. Maybe there are many people out there like me. Divorced, single parent, uneducated with really no idea what it would take to have a better life. Except of course more work, long hours as a waitress or bartender or something else that would provide benefits. Maybe it was fear of the disconnect notice for the utilities or the repossessed car that really instilled in me the importance of responsibility. Whatever it was, joining the military was the first step in the right direction. Of course there have been many wrong turns, dead end roads, driving in the middle of the night with out a clue of my destination.

We must realize there is a purpose in those life lessons. Each time we learn something new it helps us with the next step of our journey. We grow and we learn, it’s a natural process. An important part of the journey is to learn to live life without the limitations we put on ourselves by self-imposed rules and regulations. I don’t know about you but if destiny or reincarnation is about us asking to come back and learn yet another lesson please stop the insanity. Those karmic flashes of past lives are scary. We have enough to worry about in this life time, illness, poverty, suffering, spiritual distress, over-population, gas prices. Please the list can go on for an entire book.

Today is the day we have to face whatever those fears are. Maybe you look in the mirror and you see a person you don’t recognize. Are you over critical of those fabulous lines on your face? You earned every one of them! In a society where wrinkles can be erased in an hour this should be the last of your worries. Okay, okay let’s move on. What about anything you dislike about your appearance. We all have insecurities about something. If it’s your teeth you can get those whitened or straightened or how about porcelain veneers? Come on look deeper than those exterior minor imperfections that you are completely and utterly overly critical of?

Look at yourself completely. I want you to look in the mirror at your reflection. Now see yourself in the way that someone who loves you sees you. Notice how the thought of that person loving you makes you smile and you begin to see something else. Remember how you felt when you fell in love with someone else. Every imperfection melts away as your love for that person grows. Isn’t that amazing?

Why then can’t you see yourself in that way? What are you afraid of? We are so critical of ourselves we set out on this mission to be something better, thinner, healthier or what ever it is we think we need. Somewhere in all of this self-improvement you forgot the one thing that could change everything.

Love is the greatest gift of all. Why then can’t you love yourself that much?