This is a friendly reminder that you are not your past. You are not your upbringing. You are not how you were parented and raised. You are not the mistakes you think you made. You are not what anyone has said you were over your life span.

You are made in the image of Christ. You have his breath in your lungs. You are made of light, love, harmony, grace, mercy, and peace.

Now knowing that, you are responsible for living that way. And you, at any moment, can change the trajectory of your life. 

Something I observed about myself long ago when I started this personal development journey was that I talked too much. I talked so much but I wasn’t saying a whole lot. And that was a big aha moment.

I started noticing this when I read a quote that said; “Talk less, say more.” And right then I asked myself, “What am I actually saying?”

This is a VERY powerful practice. 

We are responsible for our stuff. Our thoughts are our stuff. When the thought pops in your head that you have so much to do today, look at it, acknowledge it, write the things down if you want to do that real quick, and then keep focused on the present.

When the thoughts come in that you are not looking forward to going to work, that everyone at work is hard to deal with, watch those thoughts, let them pass, and then when you are back to YOU — the one made in the imago Dei — ask yourself why you are not ok at your work. What about it doesn’t make you feel safe? Does it trigger something from childhood? Ok, then we can get somewhere. It may not be the people. The people may represent something that you need to deal with, something that you need to let go of.

Take that first step in quieting down your brain, letting go of the resistance you feel, and in the present dealing with what is at the core of this issue that comes up. Do what YOU can to take care of your stuff. Don’t worry about if anyone else is. You do what you can do.

To piggy back off of last week’s Monday Fire episode, we don’t get a do over but we do get a chance to share our wisdom and knowledge with the generations after us. And I believe this is our responsibility.

If we were looking at how the world should work, I think we could all agree that each generation should learn from the last and try to do it better. This is what we are doing when we decide that the suffering our parents did and the suffering that we are putting ourselves through up until this point is madness! We learn, we grow, and we take ownership. You know what we should do next? Model it for the people coming after us. We should show them what didn’t work and teach them what is working.

How do we change the world? We change ourselves. And when we change ourselves we teach the next generation by our behavior and modeling that this is how life should be.

Regrets will steal your beautiful existence. And this might sting but I have to say it: if you stay in regret, you are choosing the suffering. Crazy, right? Why would we do that?

Life is a series of events that work off of the last thing. The last decision, the last word, the last action taken. Those actions, decisions, words happened because of what we perceived the situation to be about. They are done. You are here right now. Nothing you can do or say will allow you to go back. So…start from here and uncover all of the beauty that comes from learning those lessons and growing from them.

Today I wanted to remind you that in this journey of boundaries and of life, certain people’s importance in your life will become less, and some people will simply fall away. You may look at your life right now and think, “Wow I couldn’t imagine in what scenario that would happen,” because until now these folks have been such a staple, but that is how it unfolds.

When we decide we are ready to move more towards our true nature, close to the imago Dei (in the image of God), these things must take place. When we work on ourselves and work to get back to the original soul, you will start noticing that certain people and things that were in your life on the regular do not align with your true nature. You may notice that when you are with them you tend to want to gossip more, brag about your life so you are elevated, or downplay what’s got you excited about life because they are not seeing the same successes.

It doesn’t mean that person is bad or worse than you (and if you are starting to think those thoughts, check your EGO, because we are not here to judge anyone), it doesn’t mean that they won’t figure these things out later and join you on your path again, it just means that for now this relationship does not serve the greater need to be back to our source. Christ. 

Boundaries is not about shutting people or things out. Boundaries is about recognizing what you have the bandwidth to do. One is a negative and one very much is a positive.

If you keep saying yes to things but only do them half way because you can’t really commit, say NO! If you do say yes but aren’t able to bring your best, then that will be your responsibility.

We honor people when we are honest with them. If we can’t do another thing, be honest with the person asking something of you.

I think we need to be careful about boundaries and time with kids.

I swore, SWORE, I would never have my kids in more than one activity. But I didn’t follow that rule as they got older. Why? Because I, like every other mom, want my child to have the best opportunities to advance in an activity they are good at.

And it wasn’t like I went out of my way to enroll them in more than one activity. It just kind of creeped in.

After I was that mom that was in the car from 3:30 until dinner time almost every single night, after a few months I was like woah. What is happening? What did I do? And I started re-evaluating everything we were doing. I started looking at the time commitments and the nights we were doing things and seeing what I could knock off the list and what we could do differently. I took stock of what they really loved and what they were just “meh” about.

We want them to do the things they love, but we don’t want everyone stressing out in the process. It is ALL a work in progress and we are all helping each other be accountable.

I was having lunch with a friend who has recently gone through a divorce. She was telling me all she had learned and was learning about life, about herself, and about the grieving process. In every aspect of what she was dealing with there was a common thread. Time.

She had put in the time to date this man, she had put in the time to plan her wedding and to enjoy all of what comes with newly being married, but once married, with the nagging feeling something was not right and that their relationship was starting to get very unbalanced, she didn’t take the time to explore that. Whether or not she was scared about the realization she would have come to, I don’t know, but she didn’t take the time needed to fence around her stuff and just reflect.

Had she stopped the hurry, the hustle, the flow of life as it was, committed to seeing something tough or having tough conversations, maybe it would have made a difference. But she didn’t know. She had this idea of what her life was supposed to look like and she didn’t want to face the fact that it was damaged.

When we set out on our personal development journey and learn about boundaries when we have never really done so before, we will start to uncover things that we never knew about ourselves. We need to be willing to do that in order to peel the layers back and be open to putting the boundaries in place that we need to put in place.

When my boundaries student says she had a planned sit down with her mother-in-law, it did not end like she hoped…but she did it!

You want to honor her because in your heart you want to be a happy family that has great times together and loves well. Not in unhealthy ways.

You do it knowing boundaries can take years to take root but you are willing to put your ego aside and go the distance.