Health Over Wealth.

Health is the greatest gift,

Contentment the greatest wealth,

Faithfulness the best relationship

Budda

I use to believe that success was measured in how much you had and how much you were able to do in a short mount of time. However, lately I have been taking my head out of the stand and I noticed something. Better yet I realized something, you don’t always have to be first out of the blocks first or fastest to win the race. I use to think, because I was taught this, that all you had to do was make it early, then success for a lifetime was guaranteed. Also, with my heads in the clouds, I thought that all you had to do, was do the “right thing”, be a “good person” and things were guaranteed to work in your favor. Now for me this mindset has led to many disappointing dead ends. I had to learn the hard way that life does not take place in a vacuum.

Bad things happen to everyone, and no one can ever be perfect.

There was one idea of success that I was told about when I was younger and only one that mattered. It was the success based on working hard, not ruffling any feathers and being a team player. Now maybe nothing is wrong with each item on its own, however, for me, what happened was that I interpreted it in such a way that it affected me badly, not only physically but mentally as well. So I spent my 20’s trying to fit into where I thought I should be and now it feels as if I first have to unlearn all the things I told myself I needed to learn even if it killed me, literally. I need find out what works for me, in a world that can and will happily leave me to be me.

Being mindful of what you do is more important than, running with it. When things happen that you never expected, stop and think what you want to do with this sudden twist. I made mistakes in how I handled sudden changes, impending changes or sudden windfalls, and I have many regrets; regret, it is a bitter, brittle pill to swallow. It doesn’t matter what it is, before you react, especially to something unexpected, good or bad, stop and take the time to think things through. Pray about it and take the time to check in with yourself before you react. Once you have come to a decision don’t change your mind or you could waste time trying to do damage control.

It was always important to be the best at everything. So I tried to be perfect. Perfect daughter, niece, friend and worker. However, this is impossible. Also, perfection takes too much work and second guessing your choices, until it makes the thinker crazy and lonely with bad choices. Plus, I don’t think anyone was measuring my level of perfection.

When you try to be perfect, people always expect you to be a certain way and when you can’t maintain it but try to, the only one to suffer is the person working around the clock to keep that perfect phantom perfect alive.

So, I have decided to stop.

To stop and take a break, and procrastinate from procrastinating from being real.

Being real is much harder than faking it. When you are real you have to be honest. I now confess that many times I did stuff, not so important stuff because I wanted to be on the “right side”. I said a lot of stuff, really unimportant stuff because I wanted to, “be good”.

So It’s health over wealth. No more trying to be the success that I think I should be, but, the one I can be. The world I occupy is too small for me, so out the door I shall go and see what peace lies behind it.

Wish me luck…