“If you want to fly you must let go of all that weighs you down.  You are nowhere near the end of your story-your story has just begun to write itself.  Let go of perfection—it doesn’t exist.  Let go of your demons—they are not welcome here.  Let go of your trauma—you can live with it but you need not live in it.  Let go of wanting to go back—there is no going back, there is only going forward and forward is more extraordinary than you could ever imagine.  There is even something beyond the horizon,” Aija Mayrock. 

What weighs us down often appears so innocuous we don’t realize the impact it has on us for some time.  Not until it becomes so heavy a burden that we’ve lost something truly important to us because we were carrying it.  We let ourselves believe we no longer know how to fly because we are indoctrinated with things designed to cut our wings and we are never told any different.  But this isn’t another discussion about a broken society. No, this is all about you.

Deciding you want more means making a conscious decision to let go of the bullshit we tell ourselves. It means reattaching those wings and testing them out.  Being who we are.  Learning to love who we are and making no apologies for it.  It’s true that we are social animals but we are not designed to get all of our emotional support from others.  We have too much of our own emotional baggage to take on other people’s issues.  We need people to help us sort and organize and to develop systems of support for each other—that can never come from one person. 

Learning to trust ourselves and our ability to let go of the self-imposed crap we carry is a fundamental step toward becoming whole.  It is learning to set a boundary with ourselves as well as disciplining our minds to see the truth of the situations, not what we think they are.  As Aija Mayrock says, “There is only going forward and forward is more extraordinary than you could ever imagine.”  We can’t move forward if we are holding pieces of everything that was and pieces of what we hoped it would be. 

There are plenty of times we don’t feel strong or we don’t believe in ourselves.  Times we have to dig into the reserves we don’t even think we have.  And there are times, even when we dig that deep, that we will fall.  It doesn’t matter.  All that matters is that we continue moving, learning, and accepting ourselves.  Failures are not an indicator of character—they’re an indicator we care enough to try.  Being told “No” isn’t always a closed door—sometimes it’s a redirection to where we need to be.  So embrace the beauty of being.