“If you live every day, with the capacity to stretch yourself past limitation…you will find boundless opportunity is all the places that once scared you.”
― Nikki Rowe
Tag: change
Guest Feature – Change
From: http://www.keepinspiring.me/.
Great Advice. Short but fulfilling. I especially love the last sentence. It is in my opinion the most important part of the entire post:
“Change can come in many forms in our lives. It might come forcefully like a tidal wave, or creep along incrementally like a glacier. It might come in the form of devastating tragedy, difficult choices, broken relationships, or even new opportunities.
But even though change is often difficult, many times it’s also for the best. Accomplishing anything great in life requires significant change that pushes us beyond our comfort zones. Many times, the only way to improve our lives is to force ourselves to undergo difficult change. That might mean breaking up and leaving a stale – but comfortable – relationship, leaving a mediocre – but stable – job, moving away from a nice – but uninspiring – location, or anything else that’s holding us back from accomplishing our dreams.
Of course, dealing with uninvited change in our lives is often difficult and painful. In many cases, instigating major, but necessary, change in our life can be just as painful. But whatever change you’re dealing with, know that how you cope with that change will have an impact on your future.”
Dear Writers, A Quote Worth Remembering
“By writing and publishing your book, you have the potential to touch many readers. The possibilities are endless of how your story can positively affect others, whether it’s an entire town or just one person. It’s through stories that we connect to others. So keep writing, you never know how your message could change someone’s life.” – Nicola Gibbs
The Coming of Change
“Sometimes the slightest things change the direction of our lives, the merest breath of circumstance, a random moment …lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.”
– Bryce Courtney
Writing changes lives.
Welcome
I picked up your scent going out the door this morning. I should have known that the impulse of a summer dress, short sleeved and cool, and the sliding of my foot into sneakers meant you were not far away. Instead, I would let my sweater drape over my arm and sniff the moisture you left hanging in the air. It wasn’t very bright out, but budding flowers and children laughing was enough. Did not need to see the sun lean its body dramatically over the clouds to feel the heat of spring on my skin. Bright colored birds sang a joyful tune on into the sky, and the curtains moved against the window sill just as seductively as the tree branches swayed leaves to and fro. And as my husband presents me with a pot of African violet, with petals all soft and blooming, and my neighbors resurrect house chairs for a spot on the porch, I know that spring has arrived. Welcome.
Responsibilities
I know I know it’s been a scarce week (or two) here on The PBS Blog. Truth is I began a number of projects years ago that are starting to show signs of fruit. I am completing my first short story series. In fact, Stella Book #1 Releases Next Week which will be promptly followed by additional parts taking me well into the summer and just in time to begin work on Pearls Before Swine Vol. #2 in the fall. Needless to say I expect to have a busy year (yaaasss). But the biggest project, the one I am super siked to be on the finishing end of is the audio for my Third Poetry Book Collection “Womanhood Don’t Begin in Menstrual Cycles”, which releases next month (March). But while I set out to organize my life offline, it led me to today’s post: Responsibilities.
This has nothing to do with projects or books, but life. As we go about our daily routines and the accomplishments of our goals there is a lot missing from the accountability end of this whirlwind of events and circumstances. We must keep in mind that we are responsible for everything we say, everything we do and everything that we write. There’s a quote that says ” We are what we write”, and what a profound truth. I speak and you listen and as a result of my speaking you in turn perceive. You may either accept or reject and that’s your business. I cannot be responsible for the way in which your eyes see, but I can be responsible for influencing what you see. In other words, our personal lives would be so much better if as individuals we took responsibility for who we are and what we are and those things that we influence, good or bad.
A young man dies on the street corner. He is 17 years old. By age 5 he can quote the rap lyric to every rap song known to man. His routine consists of school, TV, food and back again. Homework has been lost in-between. At age 10 he came into the house at whatever hour his youthful activities would warrant. By age 13 he was buying his own clothing and paying his mothers bills. By the age of 16 he was paying her rent altogether. At 17 years old a young man is gunned down on the street corner. The aftermath presents a distraught mother who cannot fathom the animal who would gun down her son. “He was a good boy”, she says. And while I would not doubt he just may have been a nice guy, what was he doing on the corner in the first place? What kind of activities led him there? And at what point does this mother take responsibility for the kind of behavior she approved the moment she accepted what she knew to be drug money? Or perhaps I trip over a rock and scar my face in the process. Oh and I was texting by the way so I wasn’t exactly looking up. I was not paying attention and as such I could not see what was in front of me. This is the kind of accountability in which I speak.
Healing can only come from personal accountability. I can never fix what is wrong with me if I cannot acknowledge my own imperfections. It is important to ask ourselves: “What is it about me that led to this? What is it about my heart that chose this?” Because only until we come fully into the understanding of our personal selves can we begin to make changes. Until then we will never progress in our lives. But once the process of personal accountability has begun, then we will begin to improve on those struggles we once thought were immovable. A bad situation is always a bad situation, but growth is optional. We choose to accept who we are and who we have become. We decide what aspects of our lives will change and which will remain based on our level of responsibility. When we are at fault we choose to accept or deny that fault. And when we have made a mistake we choose how that mistake will change us.
Advice for Moving on: Leave Quickly & Don’t Look Back
“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.” ― Beryl Markham, West with the Night
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