HONOR YOUR ROLE TO YOURSELF

Are you feeling overwhelmed by life and all the roles you have to play? Oh my if you are like most people, you have to play the role of a mother, father, sibling, caretaker, guardian, aunt, Step-parent, colleague, Manager, grandchild, and many many other roles. These obligations can sometimes make you feel like you are going to drown, and then you forget the most important person, your role to yourself.

Your first role is to yourself. Take a moment to realize and know that you are doing your best with the tools that you have on hand right now. Your best might not be solving all your problems and meeting the outcomes you desire, but it is your best effort and there is room for improvement, always. As you watch my video, I want you to imagine you are looking in the mirror, or if you have one available, go and look into it. Who do you see looking back? You. You are your first responsibility. Your duty and role to be at your best, expect your best, and give yourself the best chance comes first. You can not effectively and consistently be so much for other people, forgetting to replenish the giver of time, emotions, finances, and much more, if you do not take time out to take care of you.

Know when you need to step back, whether mentally, emotionally, spiritually or other, in order to recharge, regroup, feed your spirit, your heart and mind. Take that time unapologetically but not recklessly, do it for your sanity, you deserve it, you have earned it if you truly have been trying your best. Remember that we are all on a journey towards the end, do not rush yourself into a mental breakdown just because you got too busy, felt too important in the lives of those you love and take care of, that you didn’t pause to honor your role to yourself. If you breakdown, the people you are doing all this for, will end up lacking what you are killing yourself trying to provide. So, if you want to still be there, doing these things, honor yourself, recharge, be your number one champion.

Let me read and hear from you, practice this and tell me what your experience was. Have you learned to take time out for yourself, is it hard, and what are your obstacles?

Remember to subscribe to my Facebook page Mah Mekolle, tweet me @mahmekolle and join me on LinkedIn for more discussions. Thank you for reading and share my work with you friends!

Mah Mekolle

04/30/2015 2

Monday Night Recap

So,after a long day at work, and slowly but
surely those things that make you wonder,
where did my can-do attitude go? The same
traffic slowing your arrival, some nice faces
and some regular characters. Soon enough
the warmth of the weekend turns to familiar
tasks.

This is not an excuse to settle in to the regular
routine and excuse of the mundane & predictable.
Remember the new zeal to go out & conquer 2015,
don’t let other people’s lackluster approach to life be a
stronger voice in your life. Be the force that draws
their inner strength, rather than the one whose
light is turned out by theirs. You have purpose,
remember, be the LIGHT!

MAH MEKOLLE

Image from Shaneshcak.com

01/05/2015 0

PEOPLE MAKE TIME FOR WHAT’S IMPORTANT

I know that there are many important things in ones life, so the topic of our postitive enrichment today, that people make time for what’s important, is not meant to say imperatively that the things we haven’t done aren’t important. It is a simple nudge to say, for those things that have not been worked on yet, or are not getting the attention they need, are the reasons explainable to you and do they make sense in your world. If not, then this is a valuable tool to say, look more closely and make a different choice

If something is as important as you say, then find time to give it some equal level importance. If you examine your activities, your life, then know that the things that consistently come up top in your energy expense level are things you have unconciously placed a high importance on. If you didn’t know that for example, you spent more time on facebook idly checking news and profiles at the expense of more high level important things like work, family, and other activities, then you need to examine that pattern more.

For my video-game playing folks, gulf, hobbies, even social activities like spending time with family, anything done in excess can be a source of distraction if it interferes with other equally important things. Examine and create the balance

MAH MEKOLLE

01/02/2015 0

PEARL #82: ACCESS OR NO ACCESS? SET LIMITS

How many people have access to us on a daily basis? We might not think many do, especially when you look at the number of phone calls a day, or how many people you call on a personal level. However, in the new era of social media, changing work environment, and daily routines, there is a huge number of people with access to us.

We can’t control the number of people we get to bypass at work, in the subway, grocery store, school, or bus stop. We sometimes can’t control the friends of friends who view our social profiles, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ etc. We can however limit the access people who don’t need to be in our lives have to our personal space. Friends, relatives, acquaintances and neighbors can be and should be evaluated before we grant whatever kind of access to us, as well as how much of us we give.

We all are different and have different values, wants and needs. The one indication for me limiting one’s access to me is the positive or negative effect that person has in my life. Negativity, that is a good place to start. However, if this negativity is also coming from us, we must acknowledge that. Bearing a grudge is never the best answer. We can get closure and resolution in order to be at a quiet distant space

Life is precious, peace is key, even within a storm, peace is possible. The people around us are part of this process. Protect your space and that of the vulnerable ones in our care, those who can’t protect their world, like our kids, minors and seniors

MAH MEKOLLE

(Image from balboapark.org, mnn.com, gopixpic.com, freepik.com, delta.edu)

11/15/2014 0

How often do you think about why you exist? Too complicated a thought or too simplistic a view? Truth is, whether we think about it consciously or unconsciously, we are in one way or another striving to make sense of our existence. It is hard to experience total peace until we feel a sense of oneness and purpose, familiarity with our core. For everyone, that peace and sense of center is different, no two are the same.

Find your core, the inner essence from which our greatest strength comes, and then use it to fuel this great journey called life.

(Images from stateimpact.npr.com)

MAH MEKOLLE

10/30/2014 0

PEARL # 79: GO FOR IT

GO FOR IT

The truth is, by the time you finish wondering, pacing around, and thinking about working the courage to do something good for yourself, it will still be the same time on the clock if you had moved. If it is 10 o’clock now where you are, in one hour the clock will strike 11 o’clock, whether you are sleeping, working, daydreaming, or afraid, it will still strike 11 o’clock in that hour. Make your choice, to move or not to move, go for it!

MAH MEKOLLE

image from wired.co.uk, titletrakk.com

10/21/2014 0

THE PERILS OF “UNFORGIVENESS”

FORGIVENESS

Forgiving seems like the hardest thing that we can do sometimes, however it’s one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves.

Lack of forgiveness is an emotional state of mind that keeps us bound and chained to memories of the pain, hurt, anger, disappointment, hatred, and other negative emotions caused by someone. We can also have these feelings towards people, an institution, a whole race of people and much more.

When we hang on to the pain, anger, hurt, disappointment of things or people for days, months, years, decades, what are we really hanging on to? Is it that somehow we feel a strange sweetness knowing that at least we feel something? Do we derive pleasure after a while from knowing or telling ourselves that someone, something, people deserve to suffer and somehow we project this energy hoping they really do? Or are we actually hoping that these feelings will one day magically go away?

When we look within ourselves, and realize our difficulty to let go, even when we say we want to forgive, the truth is a lot of times, we are afraid. We are afraid that if we let go, what will we find, what will be left, the vulnerability of facing life without the familiar comfort of blaming someone of our problems, pain, misery or disappointments in life. We will be forced to face ourselves.

Maybe once we decide to look in the mirror, we see that the whole time it was ourself we had not forgiven. Not because we caused the pain, but sometimes we are angry that we allowed the hurt to happen, we were vulnerable. In some instances the people we hate, or hold grudges against don’t even know it, they are unaware that they have done something that did not match the reality of what we expected of them. Even further, sometimes these people don’t even know of these expectations! On the other hand, yes, people do hurt us deliberately and sometimes not deliberately, but as human beings we will fail at some point, and we will disappoint someone, no matter how hard we try not to.

The interesting aspect of lack of forgiveness I have seen, apart from the obvious instances where a true grievance or hurt exists, I have seen where a grudge is held by one group of people against another group for crimes commited decades or centuries before they were born. An inherited hatred, a learned feeling fed to us by stories, pictures, literature and continuous reminders of these events. These seeds are hard to erase, because we don’t even realize that’s what is going on.

How do we forgive? For me, the answer is simple. We decide to forgive, we make the decision and daily we try to manage that decision. Managing the decision to forgive is the challenging part based on how much we need to forgive, the degree of the hurt and the length of time we have held on to that grudge, or the reasons for hanging on to it. But no matter how hard, we should still recommit and keep deciding to forgive. Forgetting comes with time, don’t sweat it. Changing your perception through the desire to let something go, makes it easier that when we remember the hurt, it slowly looses its power to wound, then one day you realize, the power of the memories isn’t there anymore.

I have come to conclude for myself and dealing with instances of forgiving and not forgiving, that I erroneously interpreted “forgive and forget” to mean literally waiting on the moment I delete the memory or event. How frustrating when that is your expectation, and then when you realize you haven’t forgotten, the assumption is you havent forgiven right? So you judge yourself as unforgiving. Hm, no. One day I told myself, I am not unforgiving in this thing I needed to let go. Maybe I am expecting wrong. I truly had made the decision to let it go, or the various instances I have encountered in life, needing to let go stuff. Daily I recommited to forgive, each time the memory came with hurt. Then I realized, the forgetting happens when over time the memory loses its power to hurt, then soon, we truly forget.

The unforgiving heart resides in a prison, bound by chains and locks that no one can break but the decision to let it go. Holding on in expectation that the other person or people somehow will suffer is a magic trick that is yet to be accomplished, it is futile and only hurts us.

Forgiveness is for us, ourself, our peace of mind, our healing, our progress, and our growth. It doesn’t mean that the hurt is diminished, we don’t have to pay homage to our pain by holding on to a grudge that no one is giving awards for. Make the decision to unlock your own chains, break the locks on your heart, feelings, emotions, and mind. It doesn’t change the quality of anyone’s life to forgive, but yours.

MAH MEKOLLE

( Images copied from: iconarchive.com, psychologytoday.com, skyranch.org, barbarajpeters.com)

10/07/2014 3

PEARL # 76: AM I WORTHY

YES YES YES!

Our worth lies not in the things we accumulate that trim and dress us up on the outside. It is not in the bling, the glitz and the glamour. It is not in the places we dine whether four stars or five stars, neither is it in the people we are seen associating with. Our measure of worth just is, because we exist, we are human, and we occupy space in the earth. Nobody can determine our worth but us, therefore nobody can take it away unless we let them. You’re worthy of love, peace, joy, forgiveness, kindness and life!

MAH MEKOLLE