I’ve been a bit reflective lately, surprising I know. *snort* I’m seeing with more and more clarity how we create our own realities, frame our own expectations and then our very lives based on those thoughts and feelings.

This sounds supremely simple, yet every day the energies and resources spent refuting the truth are insurmountable. For what I hear everyday around me are phrases like: “Well, they’re just a jerk”, “The economy is in the tank so things are bad right now”, “I have no control over that”, “I guess this is just the trial I’m suppose to be going through right now”, “It’s not my fault”, on and on and on. The words shift but the meaning is always there, responsibility is always to be found elsewhere and there’s an excuse for everything, especially when it involves work.

Can you imagine how different things would be if instead of sowing seeds of negativity, victimization and redirects we spent more energy sowing seeds of positivity, empowerment and responsibility?

Yesterday I spent a few minutes reading some of the book “All I Really Needed To Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum. I’ve always enjoyed his writings and find re-reading them gives my spirits a little boost. Specific to the thoughts I’m sharing today, the concept of “Clean up your own mess” as one of his lessons fits perfectly. The seeds that are being sown too often and the fruits they bear are those of irresponsibility. Not only do we not recognize that the pickle we’re in is most often direct result of our own making, we expend valuable energy and resources justifying why it’s not our mess to clean up instead of just digging in and getting the job done.

Another common thread I’ve observed is how easy it seems to be to find and see this truth in the lives of others while dismissing ourselves. It’s usually more subtle but it’s still there. I see it manifest in discussions where I hear someone describe a specific problem and then turn it into a spiritual matter saying that faith and prayer will solve it for them. Of course, it’s not said that directly but that’s what I hear. Sadly, people with this attitude will never understand the concept of an answered prayer. For they will not recognize any answer that doesn’t suit them just as my 5 year old fights against every “no” he receives. Hopefully he’ll learn the lesson and carry it with him, hopefully he won’t forget that just because the answer isn’t what you wanted or expected doesn’t mean the answer wasn’t given or isn’t there.

For the past 5 years my husband and I have been implementing, to the best of our ability, a life of personal responsibility, positive affirmations and hard work. We stopped finding fault with circumstances and praying for a rescue from the financial storm we steered our ship into. We stopped using the crutch of uncontrollable health issues and September 11th aftermath as the reasons for our being in the eye of the storm. It didn’t matter because we were in the storm and while these things may have hastened our arrival, our course was set before they hit. Besides that, focusing our energies there sure wouldn’t help us get out of the storm. Not surprising, the journey out of the storm was proportionate in time to our getting into it the first place. There was no single miracle that pulled us out and dropped us on a sunny beach. However, there were daily miracles and daily progress. In fact, things have been beyond good for us, especially within the past couple years and they are growing every day. It’s not free, it’s not easy, it’s not luck. We just started sowing different seeds and now we’re enjoying a very different garden full of variety and sweetness.

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