Speaking About Coffee...

I had a great day today.

I reconnected with an old friend who I haven't seen for about 6 years. What a great conversation. We spoke about many things, but the topic that we talked about the most was our limiting belief systems and how they affect the outcome of the manifestation of our dreams.

I've been struggling for a while with my limiting belief systems and I think I've got a great handle on squashing them. Honestly, if the only purpose they serve me is to keep me from attaining greatness and success then why on God's green earth would I want to keep a hold of them?? So, I've made a decision that I will, whenever possible (I am only human, after all), choose to not put limiting beliefs on how successful I can be, how much money I can bring into my energy field or how blissfully happy I can be, I am doing myself a HUGE disservice.

Yes, today was a great day for a cuppa'joe with an old friend. Today was a great day for reaffirming my own desires and beliefs.

I will be all I can be. I deserve all the success that comes my way. I will completely enjoy the sweet taste of abundance flooding into my life.

I can't wait till we get together again.

Love to you all,

Alison

Well, I hope they can find their way...

Theft.

Good God.

I hate it when it happens to me. Well, let's be honest, who does?

Got in my car this morning and went to turn on my radio. Gone. Looked up to also find among other things, my GPS missing. I will get these things back and not because I'm going to hunt the little buggers who did this down and ring their bloody necks. I have a zero dollar deductable with my insurance policy with TD Home and Auto. Good move on my part - getting that deductable.

I digress...

Like anything else, I need to find the lesson and the gift in all of this. The surface lesson is easy. No matter if you lock your doors, there will always be someone who's willing to risk their eternal karma to get your stuff, so make *sure* your stuff is locked up as tight as you can manage it.

The deeper lesson I believe is one of dealing with loss. I've been shown a lot of examples of loss lately as I've discussed in other recent blog entries. This is just one more example of loss. This one was a gentle one... zero deductable... didn't take my whole car... left personal (meaningful to me) items in tact... no vandalism.

The gift, I believe, is that it was a gentle lesson. I've got that zero deductable and replacement value rather than actual value insurance.

I hope that the person (people) who stole my GPS uses it to find themselves. I'm sure it's something that they dearly need to do.

Dear Angels: thanks for a day filled with gentle lessons and good friends.

I do have a blessed life.

And the tests keep coming...

I've disappointed a friend today and I feel like crap. I just want to cry. I hate disappointing people and letting them down. I'm the person who always wants everyone to be happy with me. I hate it when people have bad feelings toward me - especially when I can't do anything about it.

Months ago, I had promised to do something and things have changed for me since that promise was made. I don't want to go into the gory details, but suffice it to say I'm in a real friendship pickle. I'm virtually up to my neck in the salty brine.

What do you do when the circumstances you find yourself in, despite your best efforts to the contrary, don't match the promise you made? What happens when the sincerest of apologies aren't enough? Where does a friendship go from there? I have no idea. I'm at a loss.

I certainly don't want to lose my friend over this. She did an amazingly wonderful thing for me and I will be forever in debt to her for it. My inability to follow through on my promise has put her in a very bad situation and I can't even begin to tell you how badly I feel about that.

Do I want to follow through? YES!! YES!! A MILLION TIMES YES!!!

Am I able to? Unfortunatelty, not right now. I will eventually be able to, but time isn't on my side.

I hate this. :(

Hey, Angels.... I really need your help: Where's the lesson? Where's the gift?.........

What would you do in a situation like this?

Walkin' on Sunshine!

Finally, we had a nice, summer day here in Ottawa.

For the last month, it's been raining almost every day. In fact, we had the wettest July EVER apparantly so a nice, sunny day here is not only a rarity, it's absolutely welcome.

Doug (my husband) was hillarious the other morning. He was in the bathroom getting ready for work and through the closed door he says, "I don't want to alarm you hon, but there's a big shiny object in the sky." "Really? Where?!" I ask. "In the sky" he says.

I hadn't had my first cup of coffee yet so I was a bit of a spaz; I didn't clue in at all. "It's the SUN" he said, laughing at me through the door. Man, I felt like an idiot, but laughed at my own gullability.

Getting back to the sun...

Doug, Caitlyn and I went to Dow's Lake today (http://www.dowslake.com/) to go for a walk in the sunshine, along the historic Rideau Canal. This is something that wouldn't have even entered into my thought process at 260lbs, but now it not only sounded "do-able", it sounded appealing! We parked in the lot across from the pavillion and walked along the edge of the canal, taking in all the great sunshine and scenery. The three of us walked and talked about all kinds of things including how incredibly blessed we all are living in such a beautiful city.

I was amazed.

Before I knew it, I had actually walked all the way to Lansdowne Park and back again without breaking a sweat. I nearly cried, right there on the spot. If there weren't so many people around, I'd have probably jumped up and down in celebration. That's something I have to work on... not caring about what people think. I should have jumped up and down, run up to everyone and tell them about my accomplishment. I should have done it.

Living in the moment - that's what I need to practice doing. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow isn't promised to me and I have to remember:

• Today, I live for me
• Today, I make sure I'm happy
• Today, I find the joy in everything
• Today, I appreciate everything that comes into my life
  
• Today, I take care of me
  

Like starting this blog. I've always wanted to jot down my musings. I tend to have a lot of them and never thought them worthy of documenting. Does that say something about my perception of my self-worth? Methinks it does. Why should I not write them down? I'm just as worthy of note as the next person. Right?

Yes.

Today I walked. It might not seem like a huge thing to those who do that on a regular basis. But it was a HUGE deal to me. I appreciated the sunshine today. I found joy in spending time with the people I love the most. I was so happy when I saw Lansdowne Park and I was even happier when I saw Dow's Lake Pavillion again because I knew I had accomplished something that only a few short months ago was completely impossible for me to do.

Thank you for a beautiful day. Thank you for the joy in my life. Thank you for every breath I take.

Blessings,
Ali

Embracing Change - it's what you make of it

Change.

You know, it’s finally starting to sink in.

After countless examples of it through my lifetime, I’m finally accepting that the whole point of change, whether gentle or radical, is sent to see what you’re made of. It’s meant to test you; to challenge the very fiber of you. It keeps your spirit on its toes.

The more change that comes into your life you don’t embrace, you are not only bound to repeat it, you will be destined to learn harder more devastating lessons in the future.

In January, 2009 I had gastric bypass (RNY) surgery. Since then I've lost approximately 80lbs. Yes, that's not a typo - 80lbs. Physically, I'm feeling so much better. I can walk, I can run, I sleep much better and I've gone from wearing a size 24/26 to currently wearing a size 14/16. I can shop at regular sized clothing stores instead of having to shop in the "Big Girl's" stores. On the surface, it's an amazingly wonderful thing in my life. It has not been without challenges though.

I look back over the course of these last 6 or 7 months in particular and upon examination, realize that in shedding the physical, I have also energetically shed almost every single aspect of what I’m choosing to call my “old life” that no longer serves me.

I believe the choice that I made this time last year to have surgery in January to shed my physical protection against the hurt in the world has opened up a Pandora’s Box that I have been avoiding dealing with for the last 30 years. Like peeling layers off an onion, it's opened a veritable flood-gate of issues aching to be dealt with.

All of my neglected inner children are screaming for my attention all at once, like a kindergarten class run amok. At times I feel so overwhelmed by it all that I just want to crawl into bed and give in. I just want to scream – “One at a time, for God’s sake!”

With all of this going on, it’s way too easy to slip back into the stance of victim – cry “poor me” and retreat back into the depths of depression, wallow in the old familiar feeling of being a victim and just give up.

Each time it comes it wraps itself around my shoulders like a warm, fuzzy blanket pulled straight from the dryer – like the comforting arms of a treasured old friend. I feel it hold me close, whispering softly in my ear telling me that it’s all over - that I should lie down and give up – that there are no more options for me. And, without warning, it attempts to choke the life out of me one more time.

This time however, I thankfully recognized it before it could really take hold – before it squeezed the fight out of me – before I gave up completely.

I have taken some roads of late by choice, others have been chosen for me. Some were comforting things that had been in my life for a very long time and some I had come to love in recent years and months. Some of them had come to define who I am in my own mind and were very hard to let go of. Grief, sadness, and loss became all too familiar feelings held in my heart as thing after thing, person after person left my life in a steady stream like water pouring out of a bucket full of holes. I mourn their losses. Profoundly.

If I’m honest with myself, I have to ask, have they truly been forced on me? I remind myself that do believe that you do call everything into your life; good, bad or otherwise to learn the lessons we’ve come here to learn. So, I amend my previous thought to read: I have indeed chosen everything in my life, the good and the bad – I have called in every single event in order that I might learn lessons, and find the gifts in each and every one of them.

So, if this is all meant to test me; to find out what I’m really made of, I figure that after all this time, I’m 10 feet tall and bullet proof.

{start self pep-talk}

I am a resilient champion who defies the hounds of hell that are sent to me on a regular basis, laughing at them as they try again and again to stop me. I must be quite a threat to them for them to test me so often and with such harsh circumstances. I must scare the hell out of them.

I am the best of the best and nothing can truly defeat me.

{/pep-talk}

My life is one to be proud of and hopefully will be an example to my child and her children to follow. I want to be living my life so that when my feet hit the floor in the morning, the Devil shudders and says "Oh Sh*t, she's AWAKE!"

Blessings,
Ali