Find your own road. Do your own thing. If it doesn’t fit, don’t force it. Be who YOU want to be.

Sometimes we lose our drive, our mojo, and our motivation. We can lose our purpose and our reason to do the things that we love to do; those things that make us who we are. Life can run us so far into the ground that sunlight seems like only a dream. And when that happens, progress inevitably stalls.

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But the spirit inside us remains. The spirit of survival. The drive to overcome, to thrive, and to be who it is we want to be. To do what it is we were created to do. You may lose your voice for a while, but deep down, the passion is there, just waiting. Let’s dig deep and reclaim that voice. Its words matter.

Real stuff. I spent years bashing my past, and not surprisingly, that self bashing affected the present. How we perceive our past selves completely affects how we see the one that looks back at us in the mirror every day. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Two very critical words that I’ve become familiar with on my journey…they both lead to love. Love who you were…heal who you are. Become who you were meant to be.

I saw a picture this morning of an actor placing his hands in wet cement outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. The photo was 20 years old, but to the actor, I’m sure it was a pinnacle moment of his career. That moment has long since passed, but the memory of it is sealed in time.

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Every day is wet cement. Some of what we do will drift away on the wind. Other things, achievements or memories, good or bad, will be locked and sealed in our own little personal histories.

Like the saying goes, death is one of those few guarantees that we all have in common. There are a ton of analogies out there regarding life as a book, and for the most part, it really is a solid one. We’re all going to have a last page one of these days. Figure out what you can today. If not, don’t worry. Do what you can. Live. Enjoy. Breathe. Appreciate.

Some dreams are killed in the infant stages. In the dark they sit patiently, waiting for the day that we will breathe just a bit of life into them. And for whatever reason, fear most likely, we kill them off before they’ve had a chance to grow. So there they sit, quietly under the soil, and there they’ll die…unless we give them life. Don’t let your dreams stay buried. Give them a bit of sun and see what happens next.

That self appreciation is real. Knowledge of self = true strength. Clarity is a beautiful thing.