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The way you view life is vital, it is the key to the method, the way you understand and experience life. There are those who find life to be wonderful, breathtaking, magnificent, amazing, joyful, miraculous, adventurous, and there are those who don't.

I find it to be quite amazing how some people truly do live life out of the thoughts or feelings of lack. I hear them complain and be negative in most areas of their living, and don't realize that they are their own worst enemy!

I know a woman who grew up with polio and had eighteen surgeries growing up. She was in a brace or a cast all the way up to her hips, limiting her movement for much of her life. She could not do the things other children and young adults could do! I never knew her as a child with this disease. I've only know her as an adult and knowing her now, and I know of her magnificence! She says and believes that her polio was a gift! There are many who may have taken these very circumstances and taken on the opposite view. She could have ended up a very bitter woman, and we as a society would have thought she had the right to be because of her polio.

We have been given the freedom of thought, the freedom of choice, the freedom to believe, the capacity to be thinking, feeling human beings! Wow! What freedoms we have! What a beautiful thing this freedom of thought is and how powerful it is!

What are you doing with your mind? What way are you choosing to live your life? What thoughts, what disposition to you want or do you long for?

This journey of life is exactly that, a journey. Much of this journey is made up of our thoughts. Thoughts about ourselves and about others and thoughts about what others think of us! It can get very heavy or it can be beautiful thoughts of others!

When someone thinks highly of you, you know it! When someone thinks poorly of you, you know it! You feel great around those that think well of you, and you feel awkward and unsure, less confident around those that don't. It's amazing what thoughts do and how they can be felt! You can feel them in your body!

In my journey I have always tried to see everyone in a positive light, and be a positive light to those I encounter. It's my choice to see and experience beauty fully. It is my choice to enjoy each and every human being I encounter, no matter how different they might be. I am able to discover and uncover the beauty within them. This is my choice to do so and I find it to serve me well. I find it to bring much beauty and joy to my life.

There have been times when people have surfaced in my life for one reason or another that I did not want there. There is a particular woman who seemed to be always there, I didn't like her hardness. Her viewpoint on life was very different from mine. We were complete opposites in our thinking. Yet, both of us were deep thinkers, both of us held deep convictions within our very souls. Both of us took God very seriously and yet very differently! She was brought into my life to strengthen my faith at a time when my faith was faltering. She was the only one who saw that my faith was faltering because she knew exactly what it was to have faltering faith! When my dearest friends didn't see it, she did! She knew life on a different level than I. She brought life to me on a different level. She expanded my mind, and I became one of compassion for her! It is amazing this life! When I finally made the choice to allow her into my life, I believe God used her to strengthen my faith at a time when I needed it!

Choices are amazing. We have to make so many every day! With every choice there is a consequence. With good choices we experience good or great consequences. With bad choices we experience bad or horrible consequences. We become attuned to these outcomes, or we don't.

I would encourage you to begin really thinking, examining the choices you make and why you make them. They form these amazing patterns in your life!

I have always taught my daughters this and used the dating scenarios with them. I felt that it was tremendously important for them to view the young men they were allowing into their young lives in total truth. (Think about viewing one in total truth, for that matter think about viewing yourself in total truth). I would remind the girls that certain behaviors, if they allowed them, or merely accepted them, that they were in the process of allowing certain types of behavior become acceptable. Letting them know that patterns were being formed in their young lives. Making them aware if they were living unconsciously (sleep walking through life), or consciously (awakening) in their relationships was HUGE! I never wanted them to be living their lives unconsciously!

So many of us can sleep walk through life allowing unbecoming behaviors to become a part of our lives! This therefore sets the patterns up and sets the stage of your life!

Think about the patterns you have in your life, what are you compromising on? What are you settling for? Why?

Raise your echelon of accepted wisdom! What kind of role model are you being for your children, for your co-workers, your employees? What leadership role are you in? Where to you want to change? What is working for you? What isn't? How to you want to experience this life!?

The thing I love about life it that we can always choose! We can choose to break free of thoughts and behaviors that no longer serve the right purpose for us! We can allow ourselves to be transformed and awakened! We can recognize this life is a journey with many paths and can choose to stay on the road we are on or we can take the fork in the road that will lead us to places known and unknown making good and right choices along the way!

Here's to living fully and being fully awakened!

Kathryn

Copyright 2006 Awakenings Life Coaching by Kathryn Bonner