Chapter 10 - Rome Wasn’t Built In a Day

It is so hard to not be hard on yourself for not staying positive. I look back at my posts and read about all the beautiful things I said I would change about my thinking and how I am as a person. I have yet to hold up to the new standards I set for myself. Not every day have I been positive, not every day have I been kind to others, not every day have I put others before myself, and not every day have I pat myself on the back for going through a double mastectomy with reconstruction. It is hard to keep your own promises, even if they are to yourself. Thankfully, Grant will call me out and bring me back to center, but he is not by my side every second of the day. It reminds me a bit of meditating...I've meditated, or at least tried. The whole purpose is not to allow outside thoughts to pop into your mind. You are supposed to acknowledge them and then let them float away. You can't beat yourself up if your mind begins to wander..just like anything else, it takes practice. And I do not believe that practice makes perfect. Nobody is perfect. I am thinking of a song with the chorus: "If at first, you don't succeed, dust yourself off and try again, dust yourself off and try again, try again." I have to work at that every day and not give up and say..."well, I'm just not going to try and change myself for the better..it is just so much easier to remain complacent." Practice doesn't make perfect, but it certainly makes you much better than you were when you started off. And ya know what too? Not everybody is going to like the new outlook you have...not everyone will agree with your positivity or your decisions, or they may not like your newly found voice and non-tolerance for crap that doesn't need to be in your life. If you keep practicing what you believe to be your true authentic self and your true happiness, then the people that are meant to be in your life will be with you on that ride. The others simply cannot ride your coattails...and that is ok. That is the path they have chosen. Either way, I am continually reminding myself to try again, dust myself off and remember that not everyone will love the new you. I can have a bad week where I forget everything I set out to be like in my new chapter of life, and I can make mistakes...but the actual result is if I can jump back on that wagon, and keep trying. I am a work in progress; YOU are a work in progress. Michelangelo didn't finish the Sistine Chapel in a day or even a month...it took him four years! Even though people had to wait four years for him to reveal his masterpiece, we still admire it today, reading about it in history books and studying it in Fine Arts. I bet he erased lines, made changes, and redrew his masterpiece many times. Hundreds of years later, there was a restoration process...and in a few hundred years, there will be another...it is a masterpiece, just like you and me, but always a work in progress.

​

A Thought…

It is not what happens to you that counts as much as how you perceive it. You can either be a victim of your history or a master of your destiny just by changing your perspective. One of the greatest discoveries in human nature is that you change your life by changing your perspectives and attitudes of mind.
​-John Demartini

​