J..."I believe this 'choice' is the one thing we all have in common..."

V. Choice...this is always our starting point, how we choose to think, what we choose to do.

Living in North America is a gift. It is a place where we have the 'privilege' of choice.

You hear so many people complain about 'having no choice', when in fact the opposite is true. We make certain choices, and in order to keep what we have chosen we then can fall into a pattern of thinking we have no choices. Every day is a new day. You get to start again every day.The most precious part of every new day is the choice we have to change about how we think about ourselves. And then its flows to how J. so beautifully states "This is how I will (choose) feel about my life (myself) today".

We can be so very hard on ourselves, and when this happens patterns in our daily living begin to develop, we become critical of ourselves, then critical of our lives, then critical of our work, our families so on and so on.

We begin to compare and judge, which leads to making choices that are not congruent with who we truly are, our authentic self gets pushed deep down inside us where we cannot hear it.

So my sister has been thinking about 'choices' this weekend while I have been thinking about 'changes', there is a connection here.

I have been through so many changes in my life, some good, some not so good and what I have come to believe is this...through every change that we experience the gift that lies within each and every one of them is there for us to receive...and the only way to receive the gift is by feeling the depth of the experience.

This depth is the 'beauty' in the ordinary. So when, as J. says, we are on our knees scrubbing that floor, fill the bucket of water with slices of oranges, smell the uplifting sweet aroma of this fruit and hum the tune that sings..."As I clean this floor I wash away everything that is preventing me from living a life of beauty and abundance."

and know that you are not alone...I'm

right there with you!.