Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Reevaluation

This is a post about change and about making myself a better person.

A strong memory of my childhood was once when I was about 7 years old. My family was living in my parents "Dream House" in West Seattle. I literally was so naive to everything in this world. I was completely unaware of swear words, money, trials, and I had no idea how to act in social situations yet all I craved was acceptance so much so that I would stay up late waiting on the stairs and listening in on my parents and their friends talking. At this young age of 7 I did know that I didn't fit in with my brothers. Once in our bonus room (pretty much our play room) my siblings (in normal kid fashion) informed me that I wasn't as "cool" as my younger sister and that I wasn't as fun to play with.

As sad as that sounds, this is not the point of my story. The point of my story is how I reacted. I wasn't sad and I didn't go tattle on my siblings (which is a shocker because I was very well known as the tattletale). I took what they said and decided to love them. I clearly remember thinking well if they don't want to play with me then I am going to do nice things for them and then for sure they will want to play with me! As dumb as these things sound now I decided that I was going to help clean up their rooms, try and make them laugh, leave them notes, draw pictures of them, or let them choose what VHS we watch or game we play.

This is a slightly dumb example but this is how I use to react to situations that were hard for me. I took them in and usually cried, but then came up with how I was going to be nice or helpful to make them and myself happier.

Somewhere along my life journey how I reacted to situations changed for the worse. I no longer did nicer things for others (especially those closest to me), I didn't try my hardest to make people feel comfortable and want to be around me. This is just one thing that I want to change in my life.

I have reevaluated my life by asking myself simple questions. What makes me unhappy? What am I impatient about? Who do I want to be? How do I want to be perceived? How do I want to be remembered? When asking these questions to myself I wasn't looking for easy answers.

Well here it is...these last 12 hours of my life have been huge for me. I have come to terms with myself, which means that I am completely aware of the hard changes I need to make in my life so that I can be a better, positive person. I don't want to only fill my life with positivity, optimism, and joy but adding more of it to the lives of people around me too. I want to be a person that people will choose to be around.

// Note to the 6 people who actually read my blog: I am sure many of you are thinking well where the heck have you been for almost a year? This is something else that I need to change in my life. I need to make time for blogging because this is not only my journal that helps me to remember everything in my life but it is also a very therapeutic place for me (I dislike the word therapeutic so much so that I just tried to look in the thesaurus for other words that would get what I want across to you but in a different word and I failed to find one so therapeutic it is).

1 comment:

  1. Yay- I'm one of the 6! Erica- you are awesome. I love this post and it's a good reminder to me too. We all just need to keep trying to do our best, right? LOVE you!

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