Mindful Living

The below post by Anne Peterson discusses the process of letting go of grand dreams – the ones often found in glossy magazines – of our young lives to embrace the lives we actually have.

We live in a world where our sense of self-worth has become so intertwined with the idea of youth and high levels of financial success, that not being pretty, young and rich has become a sentence all of us “normal” people have to endure till the end of our lives.

Being young is just a matter of time – all of us will grow old someday.    Being pretty or beautiful is a matter of in whose eyes plus genes.  Becoming amazingly successful is probably 1% talent and 99% great luck combined with a type of personality that can put everything aside in order to succeed.

The reality is most of us will never achieve what is glorified and promoted in magazines, TV shows and films.  So how do we get over not being one of the successful ones and just being regular people? How do we cultivate our sense of self-worth?

The most basic desire of all humans is to be loved, to belong and to find content.  The truth is we don’t need to be known by millions of people or to fly in private jets to achieve that.  All we need is to be open to see others, to be seen and to appreciate our surroundings.

Finding contentment also has nothing to do with success.  It really has more to do with being able to appreciate the small things in life.  If a beautiful day, a kind word, or the touch of a loved one is appreciated, contentment follows.

Lastly, so many people who dedicate their lives to helping others seldom are recognized in our media obsessed world.  Are they less worthy than a movie star? Are they more?

Think about it.

By Anne Peterson

Learning To Love A Life Unextraordinary

For the past year I’ve been grappling with dreams I’ve watched die out like an insignificant ember in a campfire of despair. I fantasized of being a worldly professor, but not before I made my debut as a feature filmmaker, which naturally I would achieve by my 30th birthday. My vision was directing a magnificent opus that would cause the world to strew gilded rose petals at my feet. By the age of 29, being a professor happened, but my opus didn’t…Continued