Inspiration
Melody Beattie - Don't Be Afraid of Making Mistakes
Don't be so afraid of making a mistake. That energy can create more mistakes.
It can stop us from enjoying what we're doing. It can block us from creating freely and making something beautiful. Sometimes it's necessary and important to make mistakes,
to fumble around and do something poorly so we can learn to do it better next time.
No matter what we're doing or what we're learning, we have to start somewhere.
Look back at the past. We learned by trying, stumbling, falling, getting back up, and trying again. But we wouldn't be where we're at if we hadn't begun where we were.
Jump in, begin, and do the task as best as you can. Stop worrying about mistakes, and let yourself do it as well as you can right now. If you do it wrong or poorly, you can do it over again. And when you do it in an attitude of love, you won't fail. You'll learn something new about yourself, life, and the task. Love yourself enough to try. Let yourself make mistakes.
Tell yourself you don't have to do it perfectly. Let yourself have fun while you're learning.
Start where you are, and do what you can. Learning and getting better will happen from there. You may not always know the best way in the beginning, but if you keep trying,
you'll quickly learn to tell when you're on track.
Melody Beattie - Open Up to Who You Are
Stop criticizing yourself. Stop telling yourself everything you think, feel, want, and do is wrong. Or at least not quite right. You've been holding back, censoring yourself for too long. Your creativity, your intuition, the voice of your soul is the very voice you've been silencing.
For many reasons, we learn to criticize and censor ourselves. We may have grown up with people who stifled our inner voice, our wisdom, our knowledge or truth. Our sense of the truth may have caused them to feel uneasy. So they told us to hush. It met their needs to keep us quiet.
So we learned to hush ourselves. It was how we survived.
No longer do we need to meet other people's needs, not that way.
We don't have to be afraid of ourselves or what we will find if we look inside.
We don't need to run from ourselves. We don't need to hide or hush ourselves.
We are creative, loving, purposeful beings.
It's time to open up to yourself, to your grandest dreams and aspirations, your real inclinations and desires, your wisdom and knowledge about what is true and what is real.
Open up to who you are. Listen to yourself. Express yourself.
Enjoy who you are, and you will find others enjoying you too.
Melody Beattie - Trust Your Heart
For so long, you relied on your head.
Now it's time to make the shift-the great leap into your heart.
Are you beginning to see how your head gets in the way?
How it creates so much noise?
The chatter, the limited vision, the fear?
Are you beginning to see how what you've relied on-
your intellect, your assessments, and sometimes your logic
has complicated your life?
It isn't the head that sees clearly, nor does the head always see with love.
Often, it sees with eyes of fear. The heart sees clearly.
It balances the mind and emotions.
It takes what's real and processes it into truth, then into action.
It takes into account all that needs to be done,
then draws a map, an itinerary, for how to accomplish that.
Yes, you say, but my head does that too. And then I don't need to feel.....
Your heart can do it better because it maps the way in love.
Learn to listen to your inner voice.
Listen to your heart.
It's your connection to God, to people, to the universe,
and to yourself.
Quote from the movie "Phoebe in Wonderland"
At a certain point in your life,
probably when too much of it has gone by,
you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are.
Especially for everything that made you so different
from all the awful normals,
and you will say to yourself
"but I am this person",
and in that statement, there will be a kind of love!
Melody Beattie
Seek Peace
I drove down the winding road into King's Canyon, in California, not knowing what to expect. The road took me past lavender hills and ended alongside a rushing, roaring river spilling over with white-water froth. "Beware of Turbulent Water," the sign warned. I parked the car and stepped outside, taking in the scenery. Soon, I knew-I felt-where this road had led.
It led to peace.
Cultivate peace. Commit to peace. Insist on it. Don't settle for peace based on outward circumstances or a particular arrangement in your life. Drive down the winding road and find the peace that prevails amidst the mountains, now purple in the setting sun. Find the peace that prevails even when the turbulent waters of the river roar through your life.
This is the peace the universe offers.
Settle for nothing less.
Lao-tzu
Nothing in the world is softer and weaker than water.
However, when attacking that which is hard and strong,
nothing can surpass it and no one can equal it.
Weakness may overcome strength,
softness may overcome hardness,
everyone knows it
but no one puts this knowledge into practice.
Melody Beattie - Let Love Be
You can't control love. It's impossible.
It's like screaming and screeching and begging a rose to unfold faster, better or differently.
Love is an energy-an active, living force that runs its threads through all of life,
through all of the universe. But we can't control love. It is not its nature to be controlled.
It's futile to stand with our hands in our pockets and heels dug into the ground saying,
I shall control the coarse of love, or I shall allow another to control me
because I'm afraid love will go away.
We can open our hearts and let love run through us. We can open our hearts and receive love. We an open our eyes and see universal love all around us, in places we never saw it before.
We can awaken our souls and see that all these experiences have been lessons of love.
Learning courage, faith, patience. Learning to love ourselves,
when it looked and felt as if no one else did. Learning to express our creativity,
express our emotions, and experience joy.
Each one has been a lesson of love.
We have learned to let love be
and be open to what that is and the new direction it may lead us in.
Love is a powerful living force that permeates the universe and funnels through us.
We don't lead it; it leads and guides us.
Honor the guidance of your heart, and you will be honoring the guidance of love.