Personal, Metamorphic Change

https://ehhsdean.com/2016/02/01/beyond-the-syllabus/butterfly/

Since a child, I have always been amazed with the process of metamorphosis. I mean, you start with a caterpillar and end up with a butterfly. How an amazing change! I must say, as I have gong through the years and evaluated how much this process resembles life I have come to have a greeter appreciation for how nature can teach us. Along the way of my life I have noticed that change is unpreventable. You mentality, body, and surroundings are constantly changing. Change can be a scary, stressful, and daunting thing, but it can also yield wonderful, beautiful results. Looking into oneself, evaluating, and providing feedback can lead you to make and carry out goals for positive changes and become your best self.

I do not know how much a caterpillar even knows exactly what will happen in the metamorphic process, or even if it has the smallest idea that it will become something completely different. But, I know that from the beginning of his life as a crawling creature it takes time to prepare and ensure that it is ready for what is ahead for him. I am not sure who said this, but I love their quote: "If you don't stand for something, you fall for anything." The same principal stands for us when making change, if you don't have a something that you are working toward, then you will simply go with whatever is going on around you and fall for anything that comes along your path. Along the way there will be good things, but having a focus can lead to having and being not only good, but your best.

At times, I have wondered if the process to get from a caterpillar to a butterfly is painful, and if so, how painful? I don't have a complete idea, maybe some day I'll look it up and be amazed at scientific findings, but for now I imagine that there is some sort of pain in having a change in skeleton structure and whatever else goes inside a cocoon. In our lives, realistically looking into oneself and evaluating where you we are can be difficult. We can be our worst critics as we can harshly evaluate ourselves or be too soft because of fear. We can harshly look at every thing that we believe we are doing wrong and beat ourselves up. For example you can say, this week I (a) did not work out (b) have a healthy diet (c) did not finish everything I wanted to (d) was not promoted to the position I wanted (e) did not get my relationship to where I want it to be. But, we can also be very soft and make up excuses to cover up for why we did not achieve or get to where we want to be. We can say that we (a) have too much going on (b) time was limited, or  (c) something cam up unexpectedly. Excusing ourselves can limit our ability to progress, but finding a balance in evaluating can lead to better results. When evaluating yourself, seek to be honest. Honesty might make you hurt as you realize that you are not making an effort to get to where you want, or know you can be. Honesty can stretch you as you will have to take action in ways that are not within your comfort zone. Honesty can make you want to stop looking into yourself because you don't want to face reality. But, honesty can take you to really achieve your potential, and truly become a beautiful butterfly.

Once you have determined what you want to work on, set goals and take action. You will have created your chrysalis building experience and with continuous work and evaluation, you will be ready to break the chrysalis and go out into the world and achieve greater things, and explore more surroundings.

If you want ideas on what you can do to become who you can be, here is a video by Sheri L. Dew called "Are You the Woman I Think You Are?" from a talk she gave in 1997 in a general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is a little bit older, but I hope you enjoy it.

I hope that as we continuously analyze our progress throughout our lives we can continue to grow and become our very best selves.


Please comment with any thoughts that you had while reading, or would like to share with others.

Gratitude

During the last several months, I have either heard stories of or seen videos of ungrateful people.  Some of them,  particularly the video stories seem cliche. They start with someone, usually a child, not seeing how someone else, usually a parent, sacrifices basically everything for them. The child, however, does not notice because the it is blinded with pride and almost everything they get is not good enough for them. Sadly, it is not until something terrible happens to their beloved parent that reality hits them and then they begin to appreciate what has been done for them.
I share this because recently I have been thinking about how much I show my gratitude, not that I am ungrateful, but I just want to be better at showing it. I have also started to analyze if somehow I am in one of those entraped stories where I have yet to notice someone sacrificing for me, but because I am blinded by other things I do not notice. I have not come to any specific conclussion yet, but I do want to share about some people that I am grateful for and why.

Family
My family is by far my cheer team. Since before I was born Mom and Dad already loved me, I can tell by the way they talk about my Moms months of pregnancy. These two are always supportive of my smart decisions, but are ready to let me know if I am not being too smart about something. They are willing to sacrifice for me, and all my siblings. They go the extra mile to make sure I am happy. My sisters are also encouraging in the things that I do. They tell me when I am not achieving what I capable of and are always ready to give me fashion advice. My brother, in deed is one of the sweetest people I know. He is always ready to hear me talk his ear off about anythign that is going on in my life and then tries to give me advice from a man's perspective.  All together, they make sure that I am where I am suppose to be and with who I should be. They have helped me become who I am. They are great. I love them so much

Church Leaders
My Church leaders, especially those during my youth years, have taught me through their example what it means to be a true disciple of Christ. Although working with teenagers was challenging, I got to see it a little further up on my life when I got to work with some of my  own leaders, they were still very loving and willing to go the extra mile to ensure spiritual and temporal growth for each individual. My heart goes out to all who have sacrificed family or personal enjoyjment time to go out to young women summer and sports camps or weekday activities. Your examples have helped me realize the power of genuine service.

Teachers
Teachers have influenced my life in many more ways then teaching me whatever subject they specialized in. I remember more clearly those that would worry about their students enough to stop and take sometime to share life experiences and how their subject connected with life. As they shared, even at times personal experiences, it allowed me to truly value what they did. My love and appreciation grows even more when I see how much more time they input in their preparation to make sure that everything is ready for the next day, or stay many more hours after school to help the struggling students. I am very grateful for them choosing to be a teacher, especially in the schools where I attended, and am still currently attending.

Jesus Christ
Although all the previous peole have invested a lot time and probably some amount of money in me, I am at awe with what Jesus Christ has done and continues to do for me daily. Isahia describes it so well in Isaiah 53: 4-5, "Surely he hath borne our griefs, carried our sorroes: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God , and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." I know with all sureaty that he came to earth to offer himself as a perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God, to help us overcome sin and even loose the bands of death. Because of him, I know I can repent each time I need to and I can live again and be with my family forever. I know that it is because of his great love that he sacrificed everything for each one of us, and if it had only been one person in need of his great sacrifice he would have still come for the sake of that very soul. I do not completely comprehend how he made it all happen, but I know that he did and because of that I am completely grateful to him.

As I have written a little about all these wonderful people in my life, I have come to realize the power of each person. At times, we may immediately recognize how much of an impact someone has had in our lives, directly or indirectly, until much time has passed, but I hope that in one way or another we can express our gratitude for their time and dedciation towards us or what they have done to cause such an impact.

Education: A Future Worth Looking Forward to

At the age of 6, I moved with my family from my home country to the United States. Although children tend to adapt faster than adults, the change was still challenging for me, specially in school. I did not know the language so I was not able to communicate effectively and that did not help my academic progress. However, as the time went by, I developed my language skills and began to progress in my studies. Taking time to study and learning the value of an education got me motivated to look forward to and get more involved with where I wanted my education path to go. As I look back to where I came from and am today, I realized that dedication is a valuable part of my life.

Personally, I did not have a great understanding of what process I should follow to get higer education, but through different resources I was able to make my dreams start to come to life. Althoug I did not have a clear vision at first of how I was to do it, I knew that I would be going to school. I believe that God put me in the place I needed to be one Sunday afternoon where we had a guest speaker at my church. She was a young woman who had been in a very similiar situation to mine, but then shared how she had made it to college and she was now teacher. I took everything she said to heart and applied it during my remaining years of middle school and then all my highschool years. That knowledge and other research activities helped me get the necssary information to get to the school I wanted.

I feel like in the area where I grew up  many of the kids were in the same situation where they did not know how to get higher education. Although my school became more active in promoting higher education, the kids had other worries about what going though a higher education was like. Before graduation some of them dropped-out, while others began families and decided to stop their education. Each person's situation is different, so in no way is my intention to judge, but it made me sad to see how such a valuable opportunity was not taken advantage of. I understant that at times we face hardships in our lives, but we can still make choices that can help us deal with and overcome such challenges. The process might not be easy or very fast, but with time and dedication challenges can be overcome.

I am really grateful that early on I found people that shared their experiences of going to school and how they accomplished it. Their stories and knowledge that they shared changed the way I saw the world and where I could go. Although I am just starting my second year of school, I look forward to more years of learning. I'll also look forward to help inspire more people along the way to get higher education. Education can be a way to progress and I hope that as many people as possible can find a way to continue on that path to get more.

When?

Sundays are always the day to remember as I think back to quality family time. I can recall being a little too loud as my siblings and I made caves in the living room. We would bring our pillows and blankets out so that we could cover as much area as possible. We would go underneath and tell stories and talk about pretty much anything and laugh about anything. But, even laugh after laugh, we became impatieent as we waited for my parents to wake up so that we could play with them. Having all the family together was extremely fun, but having to wait was not. Patience was a virtue that we were slowly developing, and that has particularly helped me realize that waiting until it is the best time do act or allow things to happen. 

As I grew older and faced situations that were not under my control, having this skill was a way for me to find a little peace. I knew that things would follow their course and if I was faithful, they would come out in my favor. At times, wasn't about how long it takes for something to happen, but more about taking the time to complete it. Although we may not have control over the situatins we can have contro on how we endure them. 

I found the following video that I believe shows how having patience can bring blessings. 

Although we might find ourvelves in situations that can be tempting to stop our wait and give up, in the long run it can brings feelings of doubt and insecurity as one can get caught on the idea of what would have happened if I would have waited a little longer. Developing the willpower and mainting a vision of what can be can help us have more control and really continue in patience as advised by Dieter F. Uchtdorf.  I also agree with him that if we find ourselves in a situation where we might be losing hope, that we can seek a higher power-even Jesus Christ. He can help us if we have faith. 

As for Sunday quality time in my home, I have come to learn to be even more patient on when we get to spend time together. Because of different reasons, everyone isn't always at my parents home, but I know that as we all wait for the times that we are we have the best of times. 

If you would like to read more from the talk the video was created from, you can follow the link here. 

What we Make of it

Recently, I found myself in a situation that I had been in before. I went dancing with some of my friends, but of course we did not have an equal number of guys to girls, so we simply ended up doing a lot of group dancing. Although there were a lot of other guys at the dance, the number of times that we were asked to dance were very few. During our drive home we talked about our experience and came to the conclusion that in life, things are really what we make of them.  

As we had entered the dance, earlier that nigh, there was a decent size group of people. Most people were dancing, but a few were sitting. Not being too familiar with the location and the people there, a couple of us decided to observe for a little while. As we observed, we did not find too much success with getting to know many new people, so we jumped right into the dance floor. We started having a lot of fun! After a while, with sweat running down our faces, we decided to take a break. We took a seat and waited to see if anyone would ask us to dance. A guy after another passed and nothing happened, so we decided to go back dancing. After a while a couple of guys approached us and we danced with them for a while. Although you would have expected it to go really well, it wasn't all that great. It felt unfamiliar and uneasy. After that, although we were not closed to the option to dance with others, we simply stayed together as a group of friends.  

By the end we were exhausted because of how much we had danced. We had had a lot of fun! We all went home satisfied that we had gotten to see how we were doing and got a good work out. Altogether, we realized that the circumstances that we are in could only affect our personal enjoyment as much if we allowed it to.We are the ones that ultimately decide how we will react. 

Not too long ago, I came across this quote by Thomas S. Monson, "History swings on small hinges--and so will your life." In any situation that we might find ourselves, we can make make choices-even the smallest of choices, that will not only lead to temporary enjoyment, but to long, lasting happiness. The choice is really ours, because life is what we make of it. 

Sweet Motherly Love

You don't know what you have until you loose it! Well, I didn't have to. But, I must say, I do have the most wonderful mother in the world and I would not like to be too far from her. 

Most recently, my sister and I were going to embark on a lengthy road-trip to go back to school. I had made specific plans on how far we would go each day, where we would stop for gas, and where we were to rest. Our first road-trip and everything seemed to be perfect--I was pretty excited!

A day before, my Mother started acting concerned. She started looking down. We went to do our final shopping before heading out and her concern seemed to escalate. She began to point out that my Father wasn't making an effort to go on the trip with us, and, oh, how could he just let us go all by ourselves!

This was not the first time that we were leaving home, but seeing how overwhelmed she was I asked her, "Mom, why don't you just come with us?" Her response was an ecstatic "I would love to"! The next morning we all got ready and headed out the next morning. 

Our trip was nice and calm for the most part. We took turns driving. On one of those occasions, my Mother and sister fell asleep while I, the night-owl, kept driving. I drove out of Texas into New Mexico with no problem. I looked forward to getting to Albuquerque our resting place for the night. I was following the GPS and continued to move forward. NOT REALLY!!! Before I knew it, I began to see a lot of police lights, and orange signs that warned us to decrease our speed. Without a doubt we were facing a random police stop in Springer, New Mexico, which was about 3 hours North-East from where we were suppose to be. My Mom and Sister woke up to all the commotion and then I told them everything that I had come to realize and they began to look for alternative routes. We were exhausted and had to make new plans! We found a hotel and made new plans for the next day. Even though snow fell as we went through the Rockies in Colorado and it rained during our drive in Utah, we made it to our final destination--safe and sound. 

The next couple of days were great because my Mom was there. She went with us to do our book shopping, check in into our apartment, grocery shopping, and everything else that we did not have planned but that we wanted her to try. She just simply went with it. 

As we were examining her travel plans to get back home, she began to feel overwhelmed once again. This time, it was because she was so unsure about getting on a plane because of her motion sickness and flying would be a new experience for her. We talked to her and tried to make her feel as comfortable as possible. Once at the airport, I couldn't go pass the security check point so I just had to let her go, all by herself. Now, I was feeling overwhelmed and unsure of how this experience would turn out. I left the airport with my heart in my hand. 

I kept in constant communication while she was transferring on to a new flight and until she finally arrived home! Although she did not really enjoy the experience she was just happy to have gotten home much faster. I was happy that she had made it without loosing herself. 

Latter that night I began pondering on why my Mother had come with us and why she had decided to take a flight back home. I came to the realization that she was really willing to do anything for us. Of course she had done other things for us before, but this time I was able to have a much better understanding of what motherly love is. It is truly self-less. I am eternally grateful that once more, I got to see how charitable my Mother is. I love her so much!

I know that I won't have my precious Mother for all my life. I am eternally grateful that she is part of my life, and as much as I have her I will cherish her. 

Do you have any stories where you were able to see your mother's unconditional love, or recognize how immensely cool she is? Please comment and share. :) 

New Ideas

As every day is a new beginning, there are many new things that we can try. For the more adventurous this might be easier, but for those of us who are more reserved it is a lot more difficult. Why do I say this? Well, this is my first blog, and coming up with ideas for it has been more difficult than what I thought. Yes, I've done multiple searches online to first discover how to start a blog, then how to come up with a good name and even looked at "the competition," as advised in several sites, so here I am trying something new. My point is, sometimes we don't try new things because we are scared to fail, want instant perfection, or are simply stuck in our ways; but, we end up limiting ourselves in achieving a much higher potential.

I have had my share of trying many new things and while some have not gone so well, I've learned from them . As a fourth grader, without warning, one day my language teacher simply said that we were to have a bilingual spelling bee and the top students would move to a school level competition. Since I had been raised for part of my life early life in another country, I had no idea of what a spelling bee was-much less a bilingual one! But, after some explanation, I decided to see how it would go. It was not easy, and I did not end up as one of the top three people in the class, but because each class had to send a few more representatives, I made the cut. Although it was terrifying to move on to higher ground, I invested time in studying and that proved to be beneficial, as I did win first place at the elementary school level. Now, the next round at district was a different story where I was disqualified early on, but I discovered some new things about myself. Particularly, I discovered that I love to translate. As I grew older I did more research on the subject, and have had the opportunity to translate for individuals, for small groups, and even at large conferences. I have come to see people's eyes light up as they have learned new concepts because of such service. My life has also been blesses significantly. 

I hope that I can continue to help others in this and other ways. I do not know how this blog will turn out in the future, but I hope that as I share my personal experiences and thoughts, along with those of other inspirational people in my life, that your life, can be inspired and keep moving in a positive direction.


Do you have any thoughts on trying new things? Share by commenting below.