January 6, 2011 (Late Post)

"LEARN TO OVERCOME THE LIMITATIONS THAT YOU CREATE FOR YOURSELF WITHIN YOUR OWN MIND!"

Have you ever found yourself talking yourself out of a goal that you would like to accomplish? I did it several days ago concerning this blog. Something negative occurred in my life, and I started to tell myself how doing this blog was a stupid idea. I told myself that it didn't matter if I posted everyday, because nobody reads my posts. Starting this blog was something I felt the Spirit had asked me to do, but I was trying to convince myself that I need not do it just because of a negative event.

Some of us have a difficult time carrying through with our goals, because we were never encouraged to complete our goals when we were younger. For instance, when I was very young probably first grade, all I ever talked about was becoming a teacher. It's the only thing I spoke about morning, noon, and night. I told everyone I met that I was going to be the first member of my family to attend college. I was excited, and I wanted everyone I encountered to feel my excitement. However, my mother did not share my enthusiasm about attending college. My parents were not wealthy, and I suppose the idea of having to pay for a college education for one of her children frightened my mother. She sat me down at the kitchen table one day, and she told me that she wanted me to stop talking about going to college. She told me that she and my father could not afford to send me to college, and I would get married just like she and my sisters had done. She told me she never wanted to hear me speak about college ever again. So, I never did. I am sure this devastated my father, because he was researching different ways I could attend to college for free. He tried to tell me how if I got good grades I could receive a scholarship which would pay for my entire education. However, after having this discussion with my mother, I did not want to talk about college with my father. I simply told him I had changed my mind, and that I was not going to college.  As the years passed, my mother would shoot down any career choice that I decided upon insisting that I should be a secretary or restaurant worker.

From negative experiences like the one I spoke of above, we learn to create our own limitations within our own minds. Since we were never encouraged as children to go for those goals, we just talk ourselves out of accomplishing what we want in life. Learn to stop limiting yourself because of things that occurred in the past. Look to today and tomorrow and forget yesterday. Learn that you can become who you were meant to be.

Today, I possess an Associates Degree in Business Management. It might not be the degree I had initially wanted as a child, but it is still a college degree. I made up my mind as an adult that I wanted a college education, and I paid for it myself (or am still paying for it myself). One day I may return to school for my Bachelors Degree; however, right now I am more focused on my family.