For two weeks, I’ve been trying to write a short piece for this newsletter and I admit I’ve been struggling.  I wanted to write about President Obama and how he has inspired me to be a better Mom, a better friend, a better wife, a better Life Coach….a better person all around.  I wanted to write about how I believe this nation is more connected to their country than ever before and how I see hope and confidence again in the eyes and hearts of so many Americans, including myself.  I wanted to tell you that we don’t cry when we lose all hope, we cry when we feel we’ve gotten it back which is what I witnessed when I watched the Inauguration ceremonies. 

  I wanted to share with you my personal pledges of service that I have made in response to President Obama’s call for change, but each time, I sat down to write this article (the one I’m not writing), I started thinking, judging, and evaluating what I was writing.  I’d write a sentence or two, roll it into a proverbial ball of paper and hit the delete key.  Nothing I wrote seemed to capture the essence of what I was feeling.  “This isn’t good enough; it needs to be better; my readers will hate I; it’s boring”, etc, I repeated to myself in the tone of a cross mother.   With all this silly mind chatter, I was no longer someone who loved to write.  To the contrary, I despised it.  I certainly could not write an article much less a sentence from a place of “despise”, so I put it off and the result was “no article”.  Writing became more about what “everybody” would think and less about the joy of expressing my thoughts and my feelings.  I was trying to control what you all would think by monitoring my every word and ultimately lost the “essence” of me in each draft I wrote.   

Then I remembered President Obama’s Inaugural words:

“I want hope to triumph over fear, and unity of purpose over conflict

and discord”.

These words deeply resonated with me.  How would I feel as a writer if I allowed confidence to take the “front seat” and put my fears in the “backseat”? 

How would it feel if I followed my true purpose in writing and stopped giving carte blanche to the mind babble that continually causes me angst, stress and worry?

I now know exactly how it feels. It feels like Freedom!

I know this because that’s how I felt when I stopped trying to meet what I thought were everyone else’s expectations and simply gave voice to what was inside me.

So, I ask you, who would you be and what would your life look like if you believed your dreams were attainable?  If you allowed your true purpose in life to triumph over the duplicitous mind chatter that holds you back from living the life you were meant to live, one of purpose, passion and meaning?  What would it feel like if you didn’t give voice to what “everybody else” thought?  Would it feel like freedom to you?

Click here to watch Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s I Pledge Video:   YouTube – Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's I Pledge Video