Throughout life a variety of forces, such as our parents, spouses, the education we receive, cultural norms and societal expectations, move us away from our true selves. We gradually lose touch with our instincts, intuition, spontaneity, and natural self-expression. Often we end up trading our authenticity for what we perceive as survival.
When I die and am laid to rest, I don’t want the epitaph on my tombstone to say “I Survived.” Too often, 
the goal of many people is to get through each day, each week, each month and each year by simply surviving, not living. Surviving in the sense of mitigating the disappointments and setbacks life may yield to the point they are tolerable or manageable and seemingly unavoidable.
We are all given a specific amount of time on this earth. Once our time expires, there is no clock to rewind or reset. Game over. I choose to play the game by my rules and conditions and to live my life to its logical conclusion. To accomplish this, I must be a person of choice and choose to ignore, and not internalize, what I think others expect of me or want from me. To live the life I want to live, I must come into my own.
Like everything else that is worthwhile and valuable, living a life of choice is not always easy and there is process to understand and follow. Over the next several days, the topic of The Next 45 Years will be how each of us can make the choice to come into our own. You will be able to read more about my personal story and the story of others who have offered to share their experiences and advice. My hope is you will find sage advice and inspiration to help you on your journey of finding true happiness and fulfillment.
I hope this series, “Coming Into Your Own,” gives you the confidence to either start or sustain your desire to find your true self and to live the life you are more than capable and worthy of living.
Next: Awaken to Who You Are
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September 2nd, 2007 at 6:12 am
The first step is to make choices. Steven Covey in his 7 habits of highly successful people says that successful people always make choices to do, or not do, something. The first step in enabling oneself is to take responsibility for the choices you make, but choose.