Currently I am exploring the theme of strength in my life and I find the whole subject really powerful. The mind is amazing when we learn to use it correctly but dangerous when it uses us.

One aspect of strength is the choice to face whatever is using our minds destructively.
Defeat accepted within the mind is destructive. Defeat is squashed by strength but we have to believe in goodness.

Life never took us to a tree to hang us, it took us to show us how to climb. Every obstacle is an opportunity. Life wants to give us the best but we must accept this version while strength requires the belief in accepting this. If life took you to a tree what is it asking you to do?

If you get to the top of the tree, what are you going to see? Think about it.

Life isn’t there to stop you; it just wants to show you another way that you’re presently not considering. It’s the reason why you’re not getting where you want to be. (You don’t always have the answers from your limited human perspective).

Many people in life will have you believe that the rope attached to the tree is there to hang you but it could be there to assist you? Will you ignore the rest and approach the tree without fear but instead faith, or will you reach the finishing point in life that so many succumb to.

Few people choose to accept the positive role of life in helping us to become the best and most powerful we can. It is safer to believe the rest and accept life is bad and nothing but bad happens. Be like the rest and see what happens.

If you want to change you are going to require strength. To use strength requires an acceptance in not always knowing what’s best for you but acquiring a belief that if you show up without fear, life will show you the ropes.

Below are some personal quotes I would like to share on the subject of strength:-

If you don’t know your strength how will you find it? You find strength by using it.

Strength happens when we least expect it. It is “that moment” that demonstrates strength. No amount of planning, conversation or reading can amount to the same level of experience. To know strength is to experience it.

Strength gives us what we need at exactly the right moment; it is our choice to take it.

When we accept the weakness of who we are, can we truly accept our strength.

Sometimes strength is coming out of the person who you are, into the person you were afraid to become.

The strength that I see is the weakness I am. That weakness is my strength to see.

Strength calls for us to take it and move on.

Strength is courage.
Courage is willingness.
Willingness is surrender.
Surrender is strength.

I once went and saw a fortune teller only to come away feeling a lack of self-worth and disenchantment about my life. Why?
I didn’t get the answer I was seeking.

Revelling in this sorry state for a while I realised that during this brief lapse of time my mood had changed from one of optimism to now – deflation.
This caused concern.

A conversation with Norma Leigh of the 5th generation of medium psychics and it would seem my supposed average life was up for the trash pile? (Funny how Norma could fix it with a small fee for the special imported candles from Africa that would help mend the apparent malady)

However ridiculous this situation was – it taught me something I would have paid for anyway. (I guess I did get the answer I was seeking)

It taught me that if I can pay someone to tell me supposed hypothetical nonsense and feel bad – then I could save my money, tell myself some hypothetical nonsense but adjust it so that it makes me feel good. The hypothetical nonsense bit would be easy (and entertaining); the difficult part would be whether or not I chose to believe it.

Why do I listen to fools more than myself? What was it that made me pay a stranger who obviously hasn’t the faintest notion about me or my life yet I was still there paying for the privilege? More worryingly what had happened to my common-sense (and self-esteem)?

We choose to believe others when emotional content gets in the way. We take the bypass through the unknown because we wish to avoid the known, normally hoping to hear a better version than the one we’re telling ourselves.

There are plenty of people who will take your cash and tell you what you want to hear but why not save your own cash and tell yourself.

We want to believe something is right but we’re not willing to accept it, instead we validate the story by seeking out fools who tell us for a fee.

Trust yourself. I am learning. I do not necessarily like the truth but now I’m starting to realise and understand that I have the power to change it.

Truth is dependent on what we believe. If I believe something to be true, so be it.
If I purchase a crystal ball, read my own fortune and feel good then great, however, if the reverse happens and I feel bad – where does that leave me?

Truth is subjective, there is no crystal ball. There is only what we choose to believe and allow into our experience; if we choose to pay someone to provide that information – best we get their credentials first before we offer our souls as payment.

Everything is a direct response of the self. Until we commit, nothing else commits. Our own uncertainties are reflected and proportionate in the things that present themselves to us.

We replicate what we find. Commitment is of the mind. Commitment forms the basis of the path we stick to. We cannot commit whilst considering other options.

If I walk down a street I have to walk a given path. I cannot walk five paths at the same time, it won’t work; the closest will be to walk one after the other.

My personal fear is of decision making; what if I’ve chosen the wrong path? (What if I’ve chosen the right path?) There will always be a better route when you commit to “one thing” – it’s like the other options knew you made a decision and start calling you with better offers.

The best decision making process acknowledges commitment to one path makes the others more readily attractive.

To continually wander round streets wondering at the other (perhaps better?) routes is futile. Know why you took the route you did and do with doubt what you do with rubbish, bin it. Physically and mentally you’re better reaching your destination (even if don’t get what you’d planned), knowing you made a decision, took action and stuck to it than you ever could be sitting by the sidelines gazing at the infinite possibilities yet never knowing existentially what the potential outcomes could bring. Destinations can be reached both physically and mentally but we live in a physical universe.

There will always be potential in every choice of what we could have done in hindsight but hindsight means ‘after the event has occurred’. A decision not taken is a decision not known. If I can’t decide on a path I will never know the outcome.

Commitment is the ultimate trust of a process, allowing it to unfold naturally and taking appropriate action where necessary while all the time knowing why and what made you take that decision and having the confidence and trust in acknowledging and accepting the consequences that follow.