Beating of a grateful heart

It's July 6, 2014,

As a wake up in the morning, I hear the birds, the leaves and all of the sounds of early morning. I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for my life, and this is only made possible by a series of events that has led me down this path today. I just have to say how grateful IM for all of the people in my life that support me in every way. Now my life before this wasn't very tragic, but I found myself struggling on a daily basis, to make sense of my world. I was constantly thinking on how I could mold myself to the world around me. If anyone out there is like me, they know that it is a constant battle to try to live a life based on manipulating yourself and molding yourself to your surroundings. It gets downright tiring.

I have noticed since I changed my course and path of my life that things are easier, before, I would need permission to do something or a reason that was not my own to go down the path, and now I've given myself the ability to do things on my own, without permission of those people who I  view as influencing my life. I do not need approval from anyone! That also brings up the matter of consequence, before, I could give that responsibility of making that decision and it's outcome to someone else, now that responsibility of the decision and outcome is mine own. Before when I basted decision on something it was the fear of the outcome that I base that on. Now it is based on the journey not the outcome. 10 times more free because I'm not worried about what the outcome is only, I focused on the journey and whatever the outcome happens to be, is what it is.

I guess what I'm saying in short is I finally grew the set of balls that it took to make the decisions and take the outcome on as my own. And can I tell you how much more of a man am I today for that.

Now some of my friends like the new Lauren, and some of the friends do not. Those friends that view me as independent and strong and I'm manipulative, love it! The other that used to manipulate me and use that weakness to do their bidding do not like the new me. Because I cannot be manipulated! I do things because I want to, not because I have a sense of responsibility to them.