My own journey of self discovery

  In  my own journey of self-discovery, I have come across many limiting beliefs. They have prevented me in the past from living the life that I loved. These beliefs were put into place as a young child, and initially I found fault with my parents because of them. I remember as a young teenager, listening to a conversation amongst my older sisters. They were picking apart our mother and her parenting style. It bothered me the way they criticized my mom so I went to my source of comfort, mom. My loving mother didn’t get offended or berate them, she simply understood. She taught me that my sisters were getting ready to leave home, they were looking at life through a critical eye and deciding what practices they wanted to keep and what they wanted to leave behind. As much as this made sense I think it’s easy to get stuck in that stage, criticizing or blaming our parents. When in reality our parents are one of our closest mirrors. Everything in our reality is a mirror to us of what we believe and think about the world. Our parents mirror back to us all of our wonderful attributes even the ones we see as shortcomings. My sisters were criticizing themselves instead of my mother, which also didn’t serve either of them very well. I feel more peace when I honour my parents and through that simple action- honour myself This morning I had an interesting experience. The old Becky would have handled very differently. It is the season of Holiday concerts. My kindergartner has never liked performing. When he is in front of a crowd he immediately shuts down and can’t look at anyone. Knowing this I wondered how this morning would go. He woke up and explained how he didn’t want to feel bad so he didn’t want to go to the concert. An older version of me would have cajoled and bribed him to “face his fears” and “Be Brave.” Knowing what I know now about how each of us are designed, I put all those thoughts aside and asked him what he wanted to do. We agreed to go to school after the concert. Derek’s designed personality is such that he has to take a step into his decision and then he feels for sure what he wants. So his older brother went off to school and he played with his younger brother for half an hour. As we talked about the day he changed his mind. “No, I’ll go to the concert, just pick me up early.” This was acceptable to me because I was picking up his brother an hour early from school for a dentist appointment anyway. So off we went to the concert, just in time. Derek stood up with his class, did not sing or do any of the actions. But still he was part of the class and in front of a crowd. Honoring his feelings and allowing him to make the circumstances at his comfort level(including the outfit he chose to wear) made all the difference in a peaceful morning and a stressed out defensive battle. The more I honor my own needs and desires and see how things work out, the more I am able to honor the needs and wants of my children. Bringing us to win-win solutions.