Define Yourself

I recently had a dream about meeting R and B singer Tank.  In my dream he asked me what I did for a living and instinctly my first response was that I was a mother of 3.  Wow the chance meeting of a lifetime, and of all the wonderful accomplishments I have made and accolades I have achieved, at that very moment all I could come up with is that I am a mother of 3.  Its crazy but even in this dream I have discovered, how you define yourself is how you are viewed by the world.
I failed to tell him that I was a Life coach, Mentor, Business owner, and Licensed Insurance Agent.  I almost forgot that I graduated with a bachelors degree from Norfolk State University.  I told him simply that I was a mom.  I say this not to downgrade my duties as a mom. I know this is an extrodinary position.  Children are truly a blessing.  I am blessed and ever so grateful for the ability to conceive and give birth to such glorious and wonderful beings.  I honestly cannot and do not want to picture my life without them. Trust me it is a hard task making sure they are well mannered and respectful, they maintain good grades in school and perform well sports.  Thank you, Thank you no need for all the applause.  Just doing my job.  As you see this is a roll I take very serious.
I still can't help but wonder if this is the total sum of what I have become.  I know this is not all I have accomplished.  Let's be clear I am not bringing this up to down grade or make stay at home parents seem not important.  I say this because as a parent, mom especially we allow that title to take over our lives.  We simply cannot see ourselves as anything but that.  We lose ourselves.  We stop living our lives and start caring simply about theirs.  I know this may not seem to be a problem on the surface but long term it can be. 
Personally speaking I have been trying to find Passious in all this mothering. I am working on living my life and making sure I help them define and live theirs.  The question becomes how can you help someone find and define themselves when you can't find or define yourself? As a mom we want to feel as though we have it all under control.  We have the answers to everything.  Yeah right.  Together we can figure out how we can define ourselves, be ourselves, love ourselves and make time for ourselves and be a mom also.  I have for years lived under the cloak of being just a mom for a long time and it truly hasn't made me feel complete.  Life is too short for us to continue on this path.  We have to define ourselves.  If we don't what examples are we setting for our daughters.  We are just training them to follow in our footsteps.

I challenge you to define yourself today.  Figure out how you want the world to see you.  Speak that into existance.  Introduce yourself to people as such.  If Tank were to ask me now what I do I would say I am a Life Coach, Mentor, and Business owner.

Allow me to reintroduce myself....

No need for all the applause save it until the end of my performance.  Sorry for the hiatus, I have had to do a whole lot of soul searching, mommy'ing (if that's a word), and working.  I've been working to re-invent myself so I can really start using this blog to my advantage.  Lately, I have been feeling like the self discoveries I have made and conversations with friends that I have been having are topics that need to be discussed by all. 
We all need to understand that we are not on this journey alone.  When we share and build on the Life Lessons we encounter on a day to day basis doors began to open for us.  Just think this one action can help us to kick off the healing process but this is only in fact if the lesson we are set to learn requires us to heal.  Even if healing is not the ultimate goal here we can always use the situation to learn more about ourselves during the process.  Whether we learn how strong we are or the lesson could be how to manage your time so you can incorporate some me time.  Sometime we just need to learn how to put on our heels and fake the funk to get through our day.  The lessons that we learn are placed there by our creator to help us grow into the people we were destined to be.  It truly is our civil duty to share and talk about these lessons with others.  What good are we doing to the world and/or ourselves by keep this knowledge a secret.
Part of my goal with this blog is to help people to not only be bystanders but willing and I stress willing participintants in their lives.
In hopes that this will help us all to Live, Life, Pashunately.

This coming year...

Its that time again to sit back and reflect on the past years accomplishments, disappointments, life lessons, and joyful moments.  As we move onto the next phase of our journey we need to know that the challenges that we have faced within the last year and through out our lives in general are just The Divine Spirits way of letting us know that we have made it too and through another phase of life. We have graduated and elevated ourselves to the next level.  Ok,  I know that was a tough pill to swallow so I am going to give you a second to digest that thought..... Now I am giving you permission to take this moment to toot your own horn.  Go you its your birthday.  Let me be one of the first people this year to tell you congratulations and that I am proud of you.  Now know that with every lesson learned we are going to be challenged to see what we information or life lesson we gathered from that lesson.  We are also going to be challenged to apply that knowledge to the next phase of our lives.

With that said, in some cases it may seem that our celebrations are cut short because we are now faced with newer and seemingly tougher challenges.  Sometimes we have yet to finish the first obstacle/challenge and another one seems to be knocking on the door.  Just know that this too shall pass.  Take each challenge just like life, one day/one challenge at a time.  Don't overwhelm yourself.  Take time to reflect on the sense of accomplishment that comes from conquering those challenges.  Reflect and breathe in how you felt when you took that moment to toot your own horn.  Use these moments to serve as the fuel to keep you moving forward.  We cannot allow anything or anyone to stop us from Living our Life Pashunately.

Months Challenge:  Take out a sheet of paper, fold it in half and title one side obstacles/challenges and title the second half lesson learned/accomplishments.  Now take a moment and write down all the challenges you have been through under the obstacles/challenges column and under the lesson learned/accomplishment column write down how you conquered the obstacle/challenge.  Revisit this list whenever you are down and need a "YEAH ME" moment.