Three Things I have learned

We are our choices
We are our choices.  What makes us who we are is the choices we have made since we entered this world.  The effect of our choices on our personalities and temperaments make up our character.  Repeated choices become habits and habits become a character. Each time we choose to do something new and better we make it easier to make that choice again.  Building new pathways in our minds enabling the new habit to come more easily each time we choose and do our new thing.
This is also how to rid ourselves of bad or useless habits.  Every time the inclination surfaces to choose to do our useless or bad habits we deliberately choose to do something else.  Consistently choosing to do a better thing until it is the natural inclination, what you do without thinking.  You have created a new habit, become a different person.
As a friend told me years ago “You fake it till you make it.” “Put on the woman you want to be no matter our fake it feels until she is who you truly are.”
Three time in my life I have “put on the woman”, persona I wanted to become.  Each time I felt like a fraud in the beginning.  Acting in a way that felt foreign and uncomfortable.  After a time I realized this was who I truly was all along.  I was being unwrapped and revealed, becoming the woman God always intended I would be.
Trials are gifts & teachers
Life’s trials and tribulations provide us a chance to grow.  No matter how much I would like to think otherwise I accept that everything touching my life is drawn to me by who I am, my attitudes and choices are a magnet for both the positive and negative events that affect my life.
I have learned to Embrace the hard times, so I can grow beyond these lessons.  It is my goal to draw every bit of learning and growth from life’s trials.
It is human nature to want to blame others for the hard times, and take complete credit for the good.  Truth is, the credit for both is mine.  My choices, attitudes and actions effect circumstances around me creating all the events that make up my life.
I choose to look at my life through the eyes of a victor not a victim.  The trials and tribulations that nipped at my heels throughout my growing years and young adult life needed to be owned and embraced.  They bring with them the lessons I missed or had no opportunity to learn.  It is all good, the Father allows only what I need to into my life so I can become the woman he always intended me to be.
Only life worth living is the other focused life. 
The Christ centered life or Other focused life is often spoken of but until recently I had no idea what it really was.  How it looked in action.  At the heart level what is other focused living.  Dose this mean you do not take care of yourself, allow everyone to take advantage of you.  No, allowing others to treat you badly is failing to respect them or yourself.  Living an other focused life is truly caring for those in your spear of influence.  Understanding that unless you are in the best health, emotionally, mentally and physically you will not be able to do your best for those who rely on your care.  Becoming a burden to those around you through neglect or laziness is selfishness in action.  Forcing those who care for you to accept responsibility for your life.  Other focused living is accepting responsibility for yourself, living in a way that allows others to be blessed by your influence.  Passing through the world you leave it a bit better than it was before you entered.
There is much satisfaction and joy in knowing you have been a blessing to someone else.  Holding all you have in an open hand to the Father so he is able to use you to be a blessing in the lives of others.

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