Either Way You Have a Choice

It is week thirty in our fifty week calligraphy challenge and the prompt was “Chart Your Course”. The first thing I thought about was a treasure map, or a map of my journeys through life. I actually spent time trying to make a map and it ended up in the bin, a no go all the way. That idea poo pooed, now what? I saw this statement on a bill board and thought it was brilliant. Instead of focusing on the map idea I chose this as a word of encouragement and reminder to us all. (FYI, this was done on a piece of recycled paper, so there is a random flourish mark in the top right…whoops!) I added tiny lessons learned into the large blue letters, the video below shows a close up all along that text.

We each have a past, the good, bad and ugly years. No one gets anywhere in life living a perfect life. Too many of us think our past holds us back or prevents us from being able to do or be someone better. The voices in our heads keep reminding us of the bad and the ugly making us think that is all we are capable of living within. We are only victims of our past of we choose to be. This means we have to choose to learn the lessons, change our lives AND kill the voices! Like this quote readS, our past does not define us it PREPARES us. This is only true if we learn, apply and move forward.

We all know that person who says, “When I was growing up…“ and the story gets told again as an excuse for why they are unworthy, unchanging, unable to grow. I understand that bad, ugly, awful experiences have the power to shape us, now is the time to take back the power and move on. Stop giving these stories the ability to sideline or minimize life today. They happened, indeed…now what? By retelling and reusing and resting in these stories we are minimizing our current progress and thwarting any future opportunities. Instead let’s learn, grow and move forward towards better days, habits, language and OWN our power to be better than our past allowed us to be. Can I get an AMEN!

I hope this text reminds us all that we do have a choice in how we live our lives. We can be a victim of our past of we can be victorious over it. Either way you have a choice, so choose wisely!