With Age YOU Get Wiser Because You Learn Patience with Boundaries

When I was a child everyone was in a hurry. Hurry up and get dressed, hurry up and get in the car we have to go somewhere, let me dress you, I'm in a hurry, you're taking too long, get out of my way let me do that, you are too slow, hurry up and go outside get out from under my feet, I have work to do and so I learned as a child I was not fast enough, I was in the way.  Being sent outside often with no choice, I became fascinated watching insects, snakes, squirrels and birds. I watched these creatures live as they built their homes and gathered their food with no stress it seemed.  Nature was so comforting to observe to this stressed little girl. I fell in love with life outside the house, it was peaceful there.

Years go by and I did not learn how to do much of anything by myself because I had no patient teacher.  I became a co-dependent because I was conditioned through lack of patient 'hands on' teachers to give me time to learn by doing it myself. Of course it would be slowly at first to learn, because I was a baby.  Fast meant I could not do anything for myself.  A child needs time to learn a thing the first time. I learned nothing in childhood that would serve me in the adult world except strict self denial of joy and I became very afraid of the world.

By the age of 12 I had an arsenal of failures to think about because I was constantly scolded for not doing anything fast and what I did was never right and had to be redone. The message I was taught "I was not good enough." I could not pass the test of impatient adults.  I was stressed, I began to have stomachaches, bite my nails into the quick until they bled, have migraines from early childhood.  The pain of this stress made me jump ship by age fourteen and I almost drowned in the ocean of self -doubt and while floundering to tread water in a world I was NOT prepared to live, but I discovered 'I was enough!'

The greatest surprise? I loved being in world where I could make mistakes and fix these myself. There was no one out here scolding me, telling me I could not make right decisions. The world was not as scary as I had been taught.  Swimming around in this ocean was great freedom and I fell in love with the peace of living free of negative self-talk.

Now I would need to reinvent me, decide for the first time what I wanted to become and how to get there.  I was free. Now there is no one to blame and no reason  to be stressed as long as I knew i had my back and I did.  No one was coming to rescue me, I learned that at 10 years old.  That's ok, I'm happy and I can figure this life out. I slowed down. I enjoyed nature. I sat in the sunshine and thought of nothing but the warm feeling on my skin.  I did not know it at the time but I was learning how to meditate and be patient with me.

It would be years before the migraines subsided, it would be years before I learned to make good decisions one after another but I learned.  It would take me years to uncover the real me, what I liked and did not like, and then set healthy boundaries to not get caught in another web of lies. Lies that were told me about me, I could change my life by changing my self talk. No one would influence my mind with negative self-talk about me, not even me.

To do this I had to SLOW DOWN. Get off the phone, turn off the TV, stop needing to be an rush to exercise, eat, go without sleep to keep moving fast and do the next scheduled event.  When the mental fast pace of stress was relieved I was able to accomplish more in less time and take care of me.  My advice to you now, take care of you, slow down, focus on self care, eat without an iphone on to entertain you, sleep without a TV on, exercise with time to enjoy the scenery, do not listen to sports reports while running for exercise, let your mind spend time doing daily tasks without thinking about anything but the present moment. Let your precious mind rest from the pressures of the world.

You and I are not here long on earth, let's enjoy what we have for a little while or we will miss it. The pure child like joy of being here. I will give you my code word to use next time you are getting anxious, say, "Adagios" and slow down. All is well and all will be well. Take a deep breath, say thank you for your life.  If you live to be old, you will learn this because you have to slow down to find your reading glasses again and again to read directions and not become angry for growing older. If you can learn this now while you are young, you will live a much happier life while you are young. Adagios.