You are Not Your Family, You are YOU
While experiencing a pretty intense emotional reaction, I remembered a powerful truth: I AM NOT MY FAMILY. Their thoughts, behaviors, and actions do not belong to me, do not define me, and do not limit me.
While experiencing a pretty intense emotional reaction, I remembered a powerful truth: I AM NOT MY FAMILY. Their thoughts, behaviors, and actions do not belong to me, do not define me, and do not limit me.
I've learned that when I take the time to identify what I need and share it with my spouse, for example, our presence and connection are enhanced.
Emotions and feelings that you’ve never experienced before can overwhelm you. That’s okay. Let them run their course. Feel your feels. But on the other side, there is always going to be a way to get the help you need.
Limits don’t negate choices. Limits aren’t consequences or punishment. Instead, limits help young people understand boundaries-- their own and other people’s.
The truth is, dreams come from one’s internal compass, not from external sources, pressures, or societal norms and expectations. Furthermore, teenagers need space to explore, reflect, experience, and process and come to their own truths, their own path.
Spiritual practice can be a loaded topic. For some, it refers to cherished and meaningful beliefs and practices, while for others, it’s at best an empty cliché, and at worst it represents the oppression of religious extremism.
The fourth agreement is an invitation to keep going and keep growing. Each of the previous agreements requires significant awareness, effort, and unlearning of old patterns, and the fourth agreement, the commitment to doing our best, is the glue that helps us stick to these new beliefs.
The third agreement offers an invitation to interrupt assumptions, which come from a wounded, hurt place, rather than from truth.
The second agreement invites us to acknowledge that we are all working through the perspective of our own unique experiences.
The first agreement invites us to speak with love and kindness to and about ourselves and others; in other words, we are called to align our words with the ultimate truth-- love.