stumbling blocks


True confession: I spent the better part of December super anxious and strung out wondering if I was pregnant or not. Long story short, I'm not pregnant and that's totally ok. We have plenty of time to make babies.

This experience caused me to reflect on the stumbling blocks that keep us from being totally present in our everyday lives. By recently identifying past and present stumbling blocks in my life, I came to the conclusion that I want to make conscience decisions to help me embrace my present rather than focusing too much on my desires for the future.

I realized that I don't want getting pregnant to become a new stumbling block for me. I spent most of my twenties wondering when I was going to find the right guy and get married. I tried not to fixate on it but that wasn't always easy. Reflecting back I see that having those anxious feelings and worried thoughts were natural (I even had a piece about my experience published on The Everygirl). However, I also think that if I had applied a different perspective to my situation I probably could have been a little more content with who I was and where my life was going in that particular moment.

Throughout my life I've often fixated on how I was going to get from point A to B--the big picture--instead of living in the present and focusing on taking small steps towards my desired outcome. I'm learning that by taking small steps forward I get less overwhelmed and bogged down by trying to figure out the entire puzzle all at once. It's important to have goals and to understand the big picture, but if that's always your main focus you lose out on opportunities to truly embrace the journey of getting there.

We all have decisions we wish we would have made differently but I don't like to assign those decisions the label of "regret". That doesn't help you move forward or deal with your reality. To thrive we have to learn from our choices--wrong and right---and continually strive to improve ourselves. 

This year I will leave my twenties behind and enter my thirties. As I approach this new year and decade of my life, I want to focus more on figuring how to take small steps towards worthy goals rather than worrying so much about the big picture. I'm a wife, stepmom, pet mom, youth leader, employee, daughter, sister, and friend. I think each of these roles will benefit from my attempts to live in the present and find value and growth in each new day.

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