A lesson in Courage This past year I had made a drastic change in my life. It has been something that I have wanted for quite some time and I finally made the leap. I was working the corporate scene for over 13 years and the rapid growth that I helped to foster became very overwhelming and one-sided by the owners of the companies. I was putting in 12 hour days consistently and working weekends either at home or going into the office. I had reached the highest level possible for someone that was not a relative and the advancement opportunities were non-existent except for a yearly raise. The workload was more than one person could handle and they were loathed to add extra bodies I quote" to keep a lean department." I presented on several occasions that I am overwhelmed and made the comment that deadlines for projects and reports cannot be met due to taking care of customers first as has always been their motto. I was tired a lot and missed so many family functions that I am embarrassed now as I look back and ask why? My immunity was low from the lack of self-care or lack of balance and I caught every cold or infection that came into my office which made an already hard situation worse. I stopped doing things that I love doing like this blog or other hobbies due to exhaustion for the most part. I had a revelation on a quote that I had seen that I cannot credit the author but it stated thus: "In a battle of egos the loser always wins!" That rang close to home for me because I realized that it was my ego that kept me going for years and the main owners ego was what drove him, a lot of times correctly, however when it came to his eldest and most loyal employees it produced a very toxic environment for the last couple of years. I feel that he wanted to retire and the truth was his son and son in law enjoyed the customer side of sales and did not step up to take on more corporate duties making him feel that he could not pull back on being at the office full time, he is 79 years old. I understand that but I felt instead of yelling and belittling them all the time it was his management staff that he took his feelings out on. His mood swings got to be uncontrollable and after the acquisition, I completed for him for his 4th business in the same exact month that we were implementing a new accounting software program with no added bodies I had reached the limit of my will. I plugged along from June 1st of this year until the end of October when I provided notice of resignation. I presented a graceful smile and stood upright and confident as I laid my post office box keys and the key to the building on his desk as I handed him the letter of resignation. I felt a burden release from me that was immediate relief. I made sure to quickly say this is for me and has nothing to do with money and please do not present counteroffers I am not that type of a person. I made the decision and it was done in my mind and no going back. Well for 3 days I had to endure the owners and Vice Presidents and wives of each wanting to meet with me to talk and ask me to stay or help them thru this project or that extending my notice at one point thru until year-end closings. I finally just said look that only benefits you and not me. The Vice President looked at me and said I understand and yes you are right. After 3 days of silence, they finally let us announce it to my staff. The owners and staff were all teary-eyed and I was smiling at each one and wishing everyone the best and telling them I will miss them, I hugged the owner and did the best I could to train and close out some personal business that I did on the side for the owners and family at the same time. The last day I worked was November 13th, 2018 and I feel like I have had the weight of the world lifted off of my shoulders. I am appreciative of all I have learned and glad that It has opened me up to other opportunities that I can't wait to pursue. I feel like I finally understand what is more important now. Balance is the key. If courage is needed for you in your life also, it is my hopes that you are able to summon the worth that you deserve.

Yesterday I decided to bake so many bread as our meal for whole day. Baking is not an easy things to do, because once you miss something, you can´t do anything to fix it or redo the process. During I made the dough, suddenly some insights came to my mind. Of course I had to decide how may table spoons of salt, sugar, how many cups of flour, should I put so that I could make a good and tasty bread. My decision actually was depended on my taste, but I realize it´s me the one who had to make a decision. I have failed so many times in making bread, sometimes the dough was not raise so well, sometimes it tasted plain, the other time my bread was burnt because I made a mistake in setting the heat of my oven, sometimes my bread was as hard as stone, so we couldn´t even barely chew it. Sometimes i chose not to follow the recipe and created something new, but not all of the time I succeed, but i learnt from my failure. All of my mistakes made me learn something important, so I know better now how to make a good n tasty bread. In our life, we have to make a decision every day. It starts as we open our eyes, we should decide whether we want to stay in bed or wake up. Then we have to choose our breakfast, our clothes to wear, and so on. It will be over till we close our eyes again. We face so many choices everyday to choose. Some people are afraid to make a decision, especially for the biggest, influencing, important decision in their life, because they are afraid to make a mistake, or they are afraid of the consequences of their decision. A bad result from our decision is just like a punishment that should be avoid in our life. It´s a natural instinct actually to avoid something harmful or dangerous that may happen in our life. Of course we can avoid to make some important decisions, but unluckily, we can´t avoid it all the time. Some condition may force us to decide. We can´t run away every time we have to decide something. Sometime we have to deal with failure and it´s okay. For me personally, my failure is the greatest teacher in my life. I will learn to be more cautious in choosing something and also deciding. The most important lesson that i get is I learn to think before I decide, I learn to know my capability to deal with the consequences. So, i believe that making mistake is not the end of our life. What the best things of making mistake or having failure in our life is we can learn something important from it. I believe we learn more from something bad because it makes us alert of our mistakes. Our experience will warn us about our mistake and we will try to avoid making the same mistake because we don´t want to experience the same negative consequences of our decision later. Mistakes also teach us how to be wiser if we learn from it and if we choose to be wiser. This learning process will always happen in our life, either we learn something from good things or bad things. We can choose a good choice and make a good decision because we already learn how to choose wisely. From a mistake, we can learn more also about our selves, especially our weaknesses and how to overcome it. Now the problem is, how to know which one is a good choice and which one is not, so that we are able to make a good decision. If we are dealing with a bad choice and a good one, it´s surely easy to make a decision, we all will choose a good one. But what if we are dealing with all of good choices or all of it, it´s a bad one? If I may suggest, before making a decision or choosing, explore all of the possible consequences that we may deal with, then know our selves, I mean our capability of dealing with those consequences, then choose a choice that we are ready or we feel that we can bare with the consequences. The most important is choose something that makes us grow, that develop ourselves to be a better person and don´t choose or decide something when we are angry or not in a good state of mind because we won´t aware what the consequences will be. How do we also know if we already makes a good decision. A good decision won´t always brings happiness or success, but it will bring peace, it will develop ourselves to be a better person, or it will bring goodness for other people. What we need to be able to decide something is a clear mind and also courage, so that we are conscious of our decision and we won´t blame others for the result.

I believe every journey has its destination, including our life's journey. We seek something to achieve as our life´s goal i call it as our life´s destination. Some of us will see popularity, wealth, and power, as a destination, meanwhile some others are trying to reach happiness, family, or even passion as the end line of their journey. Our destination could be something that makes us feel safe, satisfied, and just like finding a home to stay. There are nothing wrong or right in setting the destination of our journey, but there will be a right or wrong way to reach it. As times goes by, when we realize what important in our journey is, it could affect our destination too so that we will change our destination from one point to somewhere else. I would like to share a bit of my journey to reach my life's destination. I always think about how I can help others. That was a reason behind why i took Psychology as my major in university. I reached my destination as a Psycholog, but things didn't run as my will. Actually it was so hard to work as a young clinical Psycholog without any relations and also experiences in my country. Some conditions also changed, i had to move to another country with new language that i haven't known before and with a totally different culture too. I really don't have any talents in language, but i keep trying to learn it. Unfortunately and honestly, because of other barriers also, i lost my passion to have a carrier as a Psycholog, i feel like i am facing a high wall that blocked my way and i don't have any energy more to climb or even to destroy it. After a while, it makes me think a lot what i want to do and where i should go. Then i realize now what i really want to do in my life. I change my destination. I love writing since I was teenager and it makes me feel alive and excited everyday. I thought before writing was just a hobby for me. I love to think what kind of writing that could inspire people.. So I set my final destination as a writer from now on. Every destination has its own distance. For some people, perhaps their destinations are only few steps from them, but for some people, included me, our destinations are like a million miles away, so it might need years to reach it and it might also seem impossible, but i believe nothing is impossible if we want to try. What we need to do is just taking a single step day by day. There will be no journey started without any single step. Just like building a house, it starts by putting brick by brick on the ground. It may take months or even years to finish it, but if we keep walking, we will reach our destination. We might lose our hope or even spirit to reach it because of the distance seems so unreachable. I remember something that makes me stronger and encourage me. Have you ever heard a story about "Footprints in the Sand"? It tells about two people walking on a beach, one was the writer and the other was God. At the first time, the writer saw two pairs of footprints in the sand, the writer´s footprints and God´s. But then, after a while, especially, the most hopeless moment in the writer´s life, she saw only a set of footprints. Then the writer asked to God, why was there only be a set of footprints in the most troublesome and saddest moments in the writer´s life, as if God left the writer walk alone while, but God already promised to walk with the writer when the writer decided to follow Him. Then God answered that it was because He carried her during that hard moment. This story reminds me that I am not alone in reaching my destination. There will be hard times, but I will keep remembering that I never walk alone. It´s not only God who always carries me, but also some people who support me, they are my family. The other important things that i learnt from the story is they keep moving forward, no matter how hard the moments were. I believe that there will be those moments in our life, that we we lose our hope in reaching our destination. It´s okay to take a rest for a while, collect our energy by trying to find something interesting in our journey and remembering the feeling when we decided to start our first step and also the feeling that we will feel when we reach our destination. It´s also important to find a travel companion who will always support and encourage us. After that, we should keep moving forward. At the end, I believe that my journey is quite far, but I will keep moving forward. That´s why I keep writing, even though none reads it. I believe that one day people will see it and those people will lead me to reach my destination. I know that there is a possibility also about failing to reach it, but what important is I do my best to reach it so I will never regret the result. I will leave my footprints everywhere as a sign of my journey so that people will notice my journey and my effort to reach it.