Author: davidmastersadmin

Fear is the Doorway

When you feel the fear of something your first instinct is to find safety and security from that which you fear or turn and run in the opposite direction of it. This instinctual reaction has allowed the human race to survive amidst predators and calamity over time. For those who are on a path of personal growth and expansion, fear is the doorway to all the best things in life.

We fear so many things, mostly those things unknown to us, and our instincts try to keep us safe from what we fear. Your inner voice will try to talk you out of anything because it’s scared that something bad might happen as the result of something you have little or no experience with.

It is far worse if you have had experience with a particular thing, circumstance, or situation which did not work out well in the past. You will pretty much do just about anything to avoid finding yourself in that situation again, and there’s nothing wrong with that. For most people safety and security is the best policy.

For those who dare to accept the challenge, they have come to realize that fear is the doorway which leads to all the best things in life. Fear is a signal and a sign that something amazing is waiting for you on the other side of fear.

Experience will educate you of the benefits of pushing through the fear to see what’s on the other side, and you will come to know that which awaits you may not be what you originally thought was on the other side of fear.

You may have had an originally idea about what pushing through the fear may yield you, only to find something far greater than you could have imagined was waiting for you as your reward for facing your fear and overcoming the very thing that frightened you.

It takes courage to face your fears and much more to actually take the action(s) necessary to overcome the fear which has overtaken you. You will need to rustle up some personal strength just to look your fear in the eye, feel good enough about yourself to put yourself at risk, with the determination and commitment to see this episode through to see what happens once you have conquered your fear.

Sometimes God or your guardian angel will be so frustrated with your hesitance to face your fear and enjoy what is waiting for you on the other side of fear, that they will conspire to set up circumstances and situations which you will not be able to avoid. Thereby forcing you to face your fears, as if to drag you through this transformative process kicking and screaming, in a devil-may-care let go or be dragged method of metamorphosis.

Always, when you find yourself the victor of overcoming your fear, you are blessed with the benefits of having not only surviving the process, but thriving in a new, more empowered version of life and yourself.
As you overcome fear, you inspire others who are also restrained by fear’s shackles. Your inspiration can be the fuel which enables others to reach out and dare to face their fears, just as hearing about or seeing someone face their fears may have been an inspiration for you to consider overcoming your fear(s).

This is part of the new evolution of human potential in a world which is manipulated and controlled by fear. Every day more of us are awakening to the lies we’ve been presented with and those which we’ve let keep us down.

Overcoming fear moves you into a higher vibration of power affecting not only your life, but the lives around you, your community, the community at large, affecting the entire planet.

Facing your fears, those things which are frightening, and doing what it takes to push through to the other side is the currency of living a better life, your best life, and making the world a better place.

Shocked By Your Partner

What do you do when someone you entrusted your heart with turns out to be a different person than he or she represented himself or herself as when you trusted him or her with your heart?

This is a tender and sometimes shocking moment of truth, when you realize that your partner is not the person you thought he or she was.

First of all, do not discount your feelings. You feel the way you’re feeling about this realization, and you, or anyone else, has no right to disrespect what you are feeling. Even when you’re processing ill feelings about this current stage of your life, try to keep your wits about you.

Try to avoid striking out at your partner with an emotional outburst. If you can’t help it, no one would blame you. Resist the urge to blow up in rage, and hurling negative projections, which you may feel obligated to apologize for later, and begin your review process, as soon as you are able to find the space to think as possible.

Remember, this is someone you love. Unless you’re dealing with a psychopath, this person with whom you have trusted your heart, would not do anything to hurt you, because he or she does love you. It’s just that in this moment, his or her love for you looks differently than what you expected.

You build a vast array of expectations which represent what you expect your lover’s love for you to look like. When you see expressions of love which are contrary to what you expected to see, you feel like you’ve been assaulted, and the emotional impact is tragic.

Nothing wrong with having expectations and being deeply attached to them, this is completely normal and natural, but realize,

Your partner wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.

Up to now, your life has been full of experiences which have culminated in the person that you are in this moment. You’ve faced certain situations and circumstances throughout your journey and you’ve dealt with them in the best way that you could have in the moment.

Every one of those experience has left a residual energy inside of you, whether the experience resolved graciously or tragically. No matter how you’ve managed your life in the past, the truth is, you did the best you could have in that moment, with what you had to work with at the time.

This is your journey.

Just as you are on a journey, so your partner is on his or her own journey, and is a collection of his or her experiences up to this moment in time.

When your partner surprises you with his or her doing the best he or she can with what he or she has, it can sometimes be disturbing and shocking. No one would blame you for being taken aback by this unexpected reveal.

In your attempt to rationalize and figure out why he or she would have done this thing which has captured your attention, consider that while your partner loves you deeply, he or she is just doing the best that he or she can with what he or she has moment to moment.

Sometimes, a person does something that has nothing to do with you, but it feels as though it is a personal affront, or outright attack, focused at you. Even though, in real life, any thought of you was not present when this event happened.

You’re upset because you feel like every moment of your partner’s life should be viewed through your consciousness. You think this is a fair expectation because it feels like everything that you think, say, or do, is run through your partner’s consciousness, even though you know that to do so would be impossible.

Sometimes you will react to life circumstance and in the moment of impact you respond intuitively or instinctively without first considering how your reaction will affect your partner.

If you’ve reacted to something life has presented you with, and your action or reaction triggered your partner or caused him or her to be shocked by your response, how would you like him or her to respond?

You would feel bad for hurting your partner’s feelings and you would be apologetic because you wouldn’t have done anything intentionally to cause your partner pain. You were only doing the best you could do with what you had in the moment.

Consider why your partner might have felt like he or she had to respond in the manner which has surprised you and captured your attention. After all, he or she has lived a whole life which has led him or her to this moment.

Try to imagine what it might be like to be your partner, living his or her life up to this point, and ask yourself what he or she may have experienced in the past which has cause him or her to have such a reaction today?

Often when these situations and circumstances who up in life, it is grounded in a hidden set of programming which has built up from the past. Sometime very early in life, early childhood, and in many cases, the person who is reacting has no idea the reaction is energy recoiling off a childhood memory.

Find a place of compassion and empathy for your partner when you are surprised or shocked, even if you’re the victim of his or her abuse. But if you’ve been abused, take action to stop the abuse, because you never have to submit to being abused by anyone.

Love your partner but look after yourself.

After all, we’re all doing the best we can with what we have.

Seven Seconds to Change the World

When I change my world the world changes
Seven seconds at a time.

When you look around the world, it’s easy to get distracted by all the things in the world you don’t want or like. You focus on the things that upset you, the things you wish you could change but are not within your reach. When you focus on things that you cannot change, you add energy to those things, and they proliferate, gaining energetic advantage.

Your attentive disapproval causes those things you don’t like, which are outside of your circle of influence, to grow and become even more problematic.

What about the things in your life that you can change?

If you focus on the intimate details of your life, and those situations and circumstances within your circle of influence that you can change, you have the ability to change your own life, which in effect changes the world.

When I change my world the world changes

The key is the ability to affect change. If you simply observe and turn your attention to something you add to the energetic power of it. If you observe something that you can impact or change, and you take the action necessary to change a thing, it changes.

The result of changing anything you have the ability to influence in your life has a ripple effect which changes the lives of those within arm’s reach, rippling out to the local community, the community at large, and the world.

That little ripple from your change which may seem to have little significance to you picks up momentum as it ripples throughout the world, picking up energy, inspiring others to make these little changes.

In this way, one little change you make inspires someone else to make a change, which inspires someone else to make a change. On and on it goes, when one day you look back and see the whole world changes and this greater change had the ability to come to fruition thanks to your being a part of the change.

When something captures your attention, you can focus your attention on it making it more powerful, or if it appears to be negative and beyond your influence or control, change your attention to something you can affect, or something delightful.

Seven Second Delay

By focusing your attention for more than seven seconds adds energy to what is capturing your attention. If you can refocus from something negative to a positive thought within seven seconds, the negative energy is unsupported by your energy, and the new more positive thought is promoted for every moment which exceeds the seven-second delay.

When you change your attention to something that makes you happy or fills your heart with love, it increases. The more you focus your attention on the things that you like, the more powerful they become.

Adding energy to the things you love has a ripple effect which spreads throughout the community and the world, filling the energetic field with positivity making the world a better place.

Warriors who fight against what they abhor add energy to the very thing they are fighting against. They would yield greater results for their efforts by supporting the solution rather than focusing on the problem.

You can do it any way you want.

One person may not be able to change the world by making one small change, but if millions or billions of people made one small change, the world changes.

Let today be the time for change.

 

 

What Is Your Love Language?

When you express your affection to someone, you possess a certain style and method for communicating how you feel. Likewise, your partner has a particular method of expressing him- or her-self. Both of you also have certain expressions which you are particularly fond of that make you feel as though you are deeply loved. This method of giving and receiving love is a form of communication referred to as your “love language” as coined by author Gary Chapman.

What Is your love language?

Gary Chapman

In Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages, he delineates five different communication methods or styles of communicating love. By reducing these into five basic categories, you can easily determine which love language(s) you and your partner are most aligned with.

According to the author, everyone has a primary and secondary love language. Most people tend to express their love for their partner using their own love language. If getting a gift from someone make you feel loved and cherished, then it is highly likely that you will express your love to your partner by giving him or her a gift because Receiving Gifts is your primary love language.

What if your partner’s heart speaks a different love language?

Here is the rub: You buy your partner gifts because this is meaningful for you but your partner’s heart speaks an entirely different love language. No matter how many gifts you give your partner to express your affection for him or her, while appreciated, your partner is not receptive to the sincerity and tenderness of your love’s message.

Learning what love language your partner’s heart speaks is a highly regarded tool for effective love communication.

Let’s take a brief look at Chapman’s five love languages. They are:

1. Words of Affirmation

If your partner’s love language is Words of Affirmation, his or her heart responds to certain spoken and/or written words which make him or her feel loved and appreciated, such as, “I love you,” “You are amazing,” “You look sexy in that outfit,” or, “I am so proud of you.”

Different words of affirmation work best for different people. What might be seen as a compliment to one person might be seen as offensive to the next. Taking your time to do a little research to find out which words and phrases your Words of Affirmation partner responds best to is effort well spent.

2. Quality Time

If your partner’s heart responds to Quality Time, he or she will revel in spending private and focused one-on-one time with you.

Could be anything from a quaint dinner out at a restaurant with enough privacy to talk and gaze into each other’s eyes to sitting on the sofa with the TV turned down and phones silenced, having one-on-one time. Attentive listening to your partner and giving him or her the uninterrupted space to express him-or her-self wile you look into his of her eyes and listen attentively could be done anywhere, anytime, if he or she is receptive to this type of loving communication.

3. Receiving Gifts

If your partner’s heart responds to gifts, keep in mind that they not all be expensive gifts. Simple gifts are just as meaningful, if not more so. A handmade card, presenting a freshly picked flower while taking a stroll with your partner, or giving your partner a monetary gift that he or she can contribute to his or her favorite charity.

Those who are prone to receiving gifts as a sign of being loved and cherished will desire a little something-something in between holidays to feel deeply loved. Fortunately for you, they don’t have to be expensive, only meaningful to your partner.

4. Acts of Service

Acts of service are those things that you do which make your partner feel loved and adored. Like all love languages, you will need to find out which specific acts speak to your partner’s heart.

Simple acts of service could include volunteering to perform a chore which your partner normally accepts as his or her responsibility, detailing his or her car, or joining in an activity your partner is engaged in to show love and supportiveness. Pretty much any assistance you can offer to “lighten the load” of any responsibility he or she might have would be particularly endearing to the Act of Service lover.

5. Physical Touch

People either like being touched or they don’t but if your partner’s heart longs for physical tough, then by all means, reach out and touch him or her, even if you are one who doesn’t like to touch or be touched.

Simple touching can be just holding hands in public, a little foot-play under the table at dinner, putting your hand on his or her arm or leg while deeply connecting in conversation or listening will go a long way with someone whose love language is Physical Touch.

Of course, sexual intimacy is assumed in the language of Physical Touch, but it need not be the primary form of communication to express sincere love.

For more information, check out The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.

What is your love language?

Shock Absorbers

Victims of abuse are the superheroes who have come to this planet to experience and absorb the impact of abuse for the benefit of the world at large. Your experience exposes, educates and changes the world, and you are the conduit of the transformative change.

Shock absorbers - victims of abuse
Shock absorbers – victims of abuse

I am so grateful for the victims of the most abhorrent abuses in our modern society. While I would never wish any of the atrocities which have been suffered by these individuals, they have often (if not always and unbeknownst to them) pledged their service to the greater good, and their participation in this special calling is nothing less than heroic.

Sometimes, the act of submitting yourself to suffer abuse on the behalf of others is conscious, like in a hostage situation and the captor(s) are going to torture or kill one of the hostages, and you volunteer to be the first victim. How courageous is that? To sacrifice yourself for the sake of sparing the others. Even if you end up paying the price of your benevolent act of service requires paying the ultimate sacrifice and you give your life for the benefit of others.

In that hostage scenario, you absorbed the shock which faced the entire world in that moment. It was the worst of circumstances which involved and affected the whole world, not just you and the other hostages. It is also a tragic event for the captors, negotiators, law enforcement, reporters, witnesses, healthcare and mental health professionals. Not to mention friends and relatives of active and passive participants, and anyone else who may become aware of the abusive event.

An abusive event ripples through the local community and the world at large.

What about silent victims of abuse?

Placing yourself in harm’s way to absorb any abuse that might otherwise visit someone less equipped to take the abuse is also heroic, even if it takes place in secret and no one ever knows that you’re taking the abuse spared anyone else from having to suffer.

Until the world shifts from barbarianism to enlightenment there will be abuse and someone will have to suffer. And there are those who being a sufferer of abuse is a part of their journey. They actually decided or knew before they were born, that their journey would include this suffering to help make a difference, to change the world, and play an integral part in stopping the patterns of abuse our society turns a blind eye to or tolerates.

Sometimes, someone who has suffered abuse becomes a key component in exposing, reducing, or eliminating that particular type of abuse, while others take it upon themselves to reach out in support of other victims.

Often, a victim of abuse cannot imagine that anyone else could have suffered a similar type of abuse, so a survivor of abuse can be priceless in the rehabilitation process of any abuse victim.

Then, there are others who insist on silently hiding the abuse(s) they’ve suffered never letting anyone know and doing their very best to deal with it without saying a word to anyone or doing anything about it.

I would never advise anyone to subject themselves to abuse. If you have been a victim of abuse, you should see to the cessation of the abuse as soon and effectively as possible.

If you are one of those who has decided to take the abuse and remain in silence, you must do whatever you need to do any way you need to do it. There is no judgment for you here. You are a blessed shock absorber, any way you decide to do it, and you are a blessing.

We feel bad, because we want to help you. We don’t want to see you suffering, like this. Some of us are empathetic and can feel some of the feelings that you are going through or know how we would feel if what you were going through was happening to us, and we would do anything we could to help you.

There are others who know your pain. They have walked in your shoes. They have remained in silence while they were being abused, and they did find a way out. They are here, too, hoping you will reach out to someone. We are all here to support your choice, whether you choose to reach out or not.

No one is doing it wrong.

After all, we’re all doing the best we can with what we have.

May the shock absorbers of the world be blessed for all that you do and endure.

You are loved, the shock absorbers of the world, today.

You Are Always Right

Everything you believe to be true is true until that moment that you decide to believe something else to be true. You are truth, and truth is always changing and evolving, as you are exposed to new, or emerging information, which causes the truth continuum to shift and adapt to new paradigms. No matter where you are in the truth continuum, you are always in the continuum of truth, therefore you are always right.

Everything is truth which exists in the matrix of truth, so no matter what you think or believe, you are always right. You have nothing to defend. You never have to apologize for being in a different subsection of the truth continuum from anyone else. You are never believing in a non-truth, only in a truth location that is differentiated from another in the truth matrix possibly quite different than a previous truth coordinate where your attention may have been focused previously.

The truth continuum is always evolving and infinitely ever-expanding. It is not a stagnant, definitive, or limited set of data, as much as we would love it to be. There’s a comfort in having the fantasy that you can understand all there is about any given thing. This is impossible in the continuum of truth because every time you discover a new truth, a hundred thousand other truths are born in the expansion.

It can be somewhat confusing when you realize that other people, every other person, is at a different location inside the continuum of truth, and no two people can be at the same location in the truth continuum at the same time.

Truths represent specific coordinates inside the truth continuum. The truth continuum is not limited to 2D coordinates, such as longitude and latitude. Each truth includes a specific address with at least a 4D, WXYZ coordinate.

When you become aware of the truth continuum, it doesn’t make any sense to wrap your head around the concept of having any need to demand that anyone have a similar collection of truth addresses compiled to match yours.

Yet, there are the societal designers who exert a great deal of energy to keep us from understanding the vastness of the truth continuum and seek to use specific truths to keep us separated from each other.

You have been programmed from birth to believe in specific truths and defend them with a high degree of enthusiasm. You have been taught to challenge the beliefs or truths highly held by others and exert a great deal of emotional effort to persuade those who are not in agreement with you to change their truth to match yours.

The psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists seem to dominate the positions of the persuaders who are the most effective converters of others by lording over or bullying others to subject themselves to their particular ideas, beliefs, or limited collection of truths. The idea of letting you think for yourself will send a persuader into a rage, and he or she might even be willing to exert berating, shame, disrespect, intimidation, restraint, or force, even lethal force, to punish others for not adhering to their set of truths.

It’s as if the designers of our social matrix would do anything to keep us as oppositely polarized as possible. Why might they want to keep us divided in any, and as many, way(s) possible? Because we are easier to manage either individually or in groups. These groups are often separated by specific compilations of truths or beliefs.

Easy to manage (control). Not so easy to control: seven-and-a-half-billion enlightened, empowered individuals.

The barbarian tactics of the predatory persuaders are unsustainable amidst the expansive light of growing evolutionary consciousness.

Everything you believe in the continuum of truth is truth and you are always right. Just as you have the right to resonate with the truth you’ve discovered, so should any other person have the right to hold their own truths they have discovered elsewhere in the continuum.

Nothing is more-or-less true, except in your own compilation of truth as you recognize and sort your discoveries for yourself, and your allowance and honoring of anyone else to discover their truth for themselves without judgment is the essence of true love.

Nonetheless, more and more of us are awakening every second of every day, and fewer and fewer of us are falling for the magic tricks of the social designers.

People, just like you and me, are beginning to ask questions, find their own answers, and explore the continuum of truth.

Who Do You Think You Are?

As you traverse your life’s journey, who do you think you are? You start asking questions about your identity, “Who am I?” Who are you? “Am I just an animated biological form helplessly trying to make my way through the rat’s maze of life?” If you are, “What’s the point of my being here at all?” So, you look for meaning in life, and I ask you,

“Who do you think you are?”

I present to you an exercise which might help you find clarity about who you are. You might be surprised that you are far more than you’ve ever given yourself credit for because most people think you are who you are, when nothing could be further from the truth.

When you come to this life, you are given a body and a name. This is who you think you are because that is how the whole world outside of you refers to you, so it’s no surprise that this is who you think you are.

You look in the mirror and you see the reflection of the person you think you are. You can see your body which is recognizable by the name you’ve been given. But this is not who you are.

This is your body which has been given a name which is associated with your body.

You can look at your hand and think that this is your hand, but it is not your hand, it’s your body’s hand. If you cut your hand and see blood dripping from it, you might express something, like “I am bleeding.” Only you are not bleeding. Your body’s hand is bleeding.

If you could take your hand off and put it on the opposite side of the room, and look at it, you can see that you are not your hand. You are still here. You can see your hand over there, yet you are still complete, so you are not the hand.

Continuing this exercise with all the parts of the body will help you to realize that you are not this body which has been labeled with the name which has been assigned to you.

You are something more.

Then you think, “Oh, I am thinking, therefore I am my mind.”

Yet, if you would dare to do it, you could consider continuing the exercise by removing everything that you think you are, all your experiences, thoughts, and beliefs, every thought, and you are still there.

You are something more.

When you’ve completed this phase of the exercise, you realize that you are not the mind. What you are is the conscious source of all life. You can put any label on this which suits your personal paradigm. For me, I refer to this as God because that resonates with me.

If this conscious source of all life were removed from the body with your name associated with it, your lifeless body would collapse to the floor.

Once you understand this, you can see that you are this divine consciousness which is present in all life on this planet, our galaxy, all the galaxies in the universe, and whatever is beyond.

In this manner, you realize that you are one with everything, but you are experiencing this life as a journey witnessed from the vantage point of your identity in your body, so enjoy this life’s journey for what it is.

You might not be able to identify with this exercise and that is perfectly fine. There is no judgment here, and you are perfectly correct in whatever you think about who you are.

Who do you think you are?

Toxic Relationship Much?

Unless you’re called to live the single life (as some people are), you are genetically designed and physically manifested as an individual who thrives as one-half of a romantic coupling with another. The benefits of this coupling are enhanced by joining together in the sacred bond of marriage.

Notably, there is a huge difference between the benefits of taking wedding vows for a good marriage between two people and the tragic toxicity of trying to manage a bad marriage.

In the best relationships, marriage is good medicine. There are at least 12 health benefits you can enjoy from being in a healthy love relationship with your spouse. It doesn’t have to be perfect by any means, just moderately meaningful, manageable, and positive for the most part.

On the other hand, even though you may enter a relationship with the best intentions, and pledged to be bonded for life, marriage can be very toxic, and thank God, if it is abusive or unmanageable, there is a way out.

If you’re in a toxic or abusive relationship this is a call to arms. You should look for insights within yourself, seek refuge, get out and be safe. No marriage or commitment to a relationship requires your being abused, ever. It only signifies your need to leave, learn, and move on.

For those of you who predisposed to looking for red flags in relationships, some early warning signs of relationships which could potentially go sideways on you might include keeping secrets or withholding (which is tantamount to lying).

Being dishonest, deceptive, sneaking around, and hiding things are signs of something deeper and darker which will show its hidden identity one day.

As you enter into a relationship, if you’re witnessing assertions of “this is yours” and “this is mine” attitude about a variety of things, be aware that this kind of division is counter-intuitive for genuine coupling where the focus should be on the “sharing” of most things.

While the yours-and-mine attitude is generally accepted as a healthy perspective, often supported by relationship professionals and the legal community, it fosters separateness and can be extremely problematic when fighting over what rightly belongs to whom in the process of dissolution which can be extremely traumatic and expensive.

If your mate is likely to spend time pointing out all your faults (or often accusing you of possessing his or her faults) it is highly unlikely that you will ever be good enough for this person, expect it only to get worse.

Conflict in a good relationship leads to resolution, while conflict in an unhealthy relationship demands compliance or sacrifice and often leads to chaos and abuse.

A mate who is unsupportive and selfish will not put forth the effort to put the work into making the relationship better, unless he or she is able to manipulate a relationship therapist or coach to support his or her agendas, as a method to manipulate and mold you for his or her benefit.

If you’re not the most important person in your partner’s life, his or her priorities are not in alignment with the goals of a healthy and happy relationship between two people. This is not to say that your partner should have a healthy independence and positive friends and social connections, only that you should be the most highly regarded person in their circle of influence.

A toxic partner will emphasize your missteps and hold grudges against you ad infinitum when forgiveness and creating a new normal is the order of the day in dealing with relationship shortfalls, loving through our imperfections, leading to a better healing day, moving positively into the future together.

Marriage is a celebration of the life of two people. It is a joining of two people co-creating a positive future together and upholds the sacred potential which surpasses the potential of either party without the other.

Toxic or abusive relationships indicate your need to look within to find why you might have attracted this life circumstance. Please look inside and find what lurks in the dark recesses of your soul because if you don’t, your next relationship will present you with the same problematic circumstances.

Only you have the power to stop this negative relationship cycle by doing the deep inner work and embracing all the love which resides inside of you. Only then, will you be able to move on in unconditional love, which is desperately waiting for you,

Parental Regret

Life is full of regrets, and in general mother and father, the parents in our modern society, espouse the most regrets of all having sacrificed all for the family. This is parental regret.

It’s that point in life when the father looks back at his life and the way he’s defined it, “I loved my family so much that I put them first. I worked so hard to give them what they wanted I was rarely home and when I was, I was exhausted.

I was in an almost constant state of panic, scurrying around trying to make the best life possible for my children. They meant that much to me that I sacrificed my all for them, my precious children, the light(s) of my life, whom I would sacrifice anything for, I love them so much.”

Working hard, spending countless hours commuting, working, educating yourself and volunteering so that you might be able to get a better job or move up the corporate ladder to better provide for your family which presents you with increasing financial challenges every year.

Then there is that moment when the children have left the nest and the mother lays back on the sofa in the empty home and thinks, “I loved my family so much that I put them first. I worked so hard to give them what they wanted, I never had any time for myself. Even if I could have, I wouldn’t have had the energy. I was exhausted.”

I was almost in a constant state of panic as I scurried around looking after everyone else without any thought of myself. They meant so much to me I sacrificed my all for them. Now that I have time to be myself, I don’t even know who I am without them.”

Mother and father express similar regrets with one marked difference.

In general, the stay-at-home parent/mother wins the adoration of the children because she “was there,” for them, when on the other hand, the father (or working mother) “was never there,” for them and they resent the father’s not “being there” for them.

In terms of the overall effect of parenting, the mother wins the love of the children while the offspring resent the father for his (or in the case of the working mother, “her”) lack of attention and constant absenteeism.

And if that wasn’t enough…

When the children grow up, no matter how hard you did the best that you could to give them the best life possible, they spend the rest of their lives in therapy because of you.

(In the best-case scenarios, the parents are left in the dark about the thousands of hours and dollars spent on their offspring’s therapy due to their genuinely inspired attempts at child rearing.)

… more parental regret.

So, what’s the answer?

As much as you might desire a do-over, the only hope we have is to look at the past and from this moment forward navigate toward a better future.

Fathers and mothers who are working hard away from the home to support the children better make it a priority to find and/or make time to spend with those precious children if you want them to value you and your sacrifice.

Also, if you’re a parent, it is important to take some time out to do a little something-something for yourself occasionally. You need this to re-charge your batteries and to better serve your family without resentment or regret.

Parents should also make time for private time spent celebrating each other. Without this, you will drift apart and lose that precious love-connection.

For the parents whose children have already left home to live their lives and consider the possibilities of starting their own families and careers:

Embrace the regret and reject the guilt of your past parenting shortfalls.

Regret allows inspiration to do better from this point forward, while guilt relentlessly punishes you repeatedly for something that cannot be changed.

The fact remains, you did the best you could with what you had.

If you recognize you could have done better, accept the fact that what is done is done, and from this point forward you can make a better life for you and your children, no matter how old they might be, by celebrating their lives with them in the now.

Even if you weren’t “there for them” in the past, you can be there for them now.

Starting now.

Want a Do Over?

Ever look back on your life and think, “I could have done that better,” and wished you could go back in time and have a do-over, kind’a like Groundhog Day? What? You say you want a do-over?

Who doesn’t want a do-over?

I can certainly think of things I’ve done in the past, that had I known then what I know now, I would certainly have done things differently.

I’ll bet you have some things you could have done better, and you’d like a chance for a do-over, too.

Unfortunately, you can’t wake up every morning to the alarm clock’s warning to start the day over, over and over again, until you get it right.

Even though, in a very real way, every day is another chance for a do-over.

Every day, you have the chance to tweak something in your attitude, the way you experience or interface with life, or change your life in some way for the better so that you can live your best life and have the potential to make the world a better place.

Since you can’t go back in time, you can always go back to the future. Every day is a new chance of changing the future by trying something a little differently than you might have done before.

If something has gone particularly poorly in the past, you can’t change it. There’s no use in stressing out of beating yourself up for something that’s already taken place, It is what it is, but you can make the future better and change the future in the now, one moment at a time.

You can wait around for the end of the world as you know it, or create a new, more exciting, and a better world every day. It’s all up to you.

Don’t be shy about trying something differently. When you do something different than you normally would, whether it be at home, at work, taking an alternate route, or changing up your routine a little bit, you change the whole timeline which affects not only your life but the life of others all around you.

Whenever you’re feeling like your life is beginning to fall into a rut, or each day is looking pretty much like the day before, this is time to shake it up and try something different, possibly even something for the first time. Trying something completely different can really change the future.

Do something good. Anytime you perform a benevolent act or engage in spreading love via random acts of kindness, you rack up credit in the universal bank of goodwill. What you give comes back around to you and those who you love.

Life moves and changes faster than the speed of light and every thought that you think, every move you make and action you take changes the world in an instant. And so, it is for every other person, thing, natural or unnatural occurrence.

Get used to the idea that people and things are just the way they are. Do not try to extend any extra effort in trying to change people or things. Accepting and celebrating things as they are, allows you to act and maneuver in the flow of life that is progressive and non-resistant.

Make sure that the people in your life who bless you and increase the quality of your life are appreciated by letting them know. If you don’t tell them or acknowledge them in some way, you could be better because you just never know when the last time you have to recognize or express gratitude to them might be.

If you’re looking for love, find the source of true love which resides within you and love yourself with everything you’ve got. By being the love that you want, you will attract the love you desire.

Finally, understand that you are the author of your story, and as such, you can change the story at ay particular point in time. Any time you do something different you change your story, the story of others, and the future of the whole world.

So, if you want a do-over, today is the day. Right now. This moment. Do something different and change the world.

If the world is a game, fine. Let you be the game changer.