Photo Courtesy of Rahsaan Patterson’s Facebook page

This week was an aggravating but at the same time fulfilling week for me. It was hectic, frenzied and full of unnecessary issues that had to be addressed. The week was centered around preparing my awesome wrestling son for a big tournament in Dallas. My husband and I spent the week shifting our schedules, running here and there and basically exhausting ourselves all in an effort to make sure that our beloved son had every opportunity to be well prepared for his tournament. And it all paid off, because he placed 2nd! Now he has only been wrestling for the first time for less than six months and already has 5 medals to his name. Can you feel my pride exuding from this blog?

In the midst of all this chaos, I also had to address petty jealousies at work, in a friendship and help my daughter address some of her own with her friends at school. It’s going to happen, we all are going to handle it in the only way we know how but my advice to you is always stay true to yourself. I have posted many times about friendships, people’s insecurities, challenges of dealing with everyday people not only as friends but in the workplace, at church, and with family. But I still say, stay true to yourself!

Do not allow another person’s actions make you lose focus on your higher purpose. Don’t let the ways of the world get you down and make you stoop to another level that God does not intend for you. Wake up everyday and keep your mind centered on your true priorities and on what you value. If it’s family, focus; if it’s work, focus; if it’s friendships, focus; even if it’s money, well FOCUS! You cannot be all things to everyone but you can try to be all things to those who you truly value. It is no one’s job to address another’s insecurities but that person who is feeling insecure. If you want a different way of life, you don’t look to someone else, you make it happen for yourself. In my line of work, we are always brought in to clean up the jobs that other’s have not been performing to the company’s standards. This week, we witnessed an employee being terminated behind non-performance and I was specifically there to fill that person’s shoes. I was bragged on and praised for the measures I had implemented in only a few days. At the same time, instead of learning from this lesson, this person chose to make the transition more difficult and try to turn her fellow coworkers against me. I am used to this, we are always hated and despised and I just add this to the list of projects that have turned out the same way. To this I say, if you don’t want my expertise in the picture, then ascertain what your manager wants and deliver. It is that simple. I am not the enemy, they were their own worst enemy. I am out to make a living just like this employee is and my focus is on providing a comfortable life for me and mine. It is not personal, it is business.

See, staying true to yourself is all about your overall well-being. It is about learning who you are, accepting who you are, deciding what you want and going after it without apology. Staying true to yourself is about really looking at yourself, not who you think you are or who you proclaim to be, but matching your actions with your words. If you are posting Godly messages all day on Facebook then live a Godly life. If you are preaching success to someone else, be a representative of success, all the while remembering that success is relative. If you want love, show love. If you want friendship, be a friend. If you want attention, give attention. I believe God built this universe to be reciprocal. Where would we be without God’s reciprocal love? What if we gave Him our love and He just failed to return the favor? I shudder to think at what would become of us in that instance.

This week I allowed a handful of people to bring me out of character. I allowed them to bring out the worst in me, the side that I pray about daily for God to keep suppressed. I pray for God to make me a better person, for Him to speak to my soul and guide me in my ways but I too fall short of the glory of God. By the end of the week, I evaluated, changed what I could for my own peace of mind, and put all the rest that I had no control over in the hands of God. Last night I prayed over my decisions, God spoke to me and my mind is at rest. For me, staying true to who I am is all about immersing myself in my husband and children. For me, it is about having peace of mind at all times and keeping my notoriously bad, quick temper at bay. I don’t want to be aggravated behind nonsense. I don’t like wasting value time with my family venting about the nonsense of others and things in the world I cannot change. I am already in preparation for a new project, my son’s next wrestling tournament, my daughter’s decision to start tennis lessons and planning vow renewals with my better half. There is not much room for anything else that cannot align with the sense of purpose I have created for myself.

So I say once again, stay true to yourself and put yourself first. If you can’t take care of you, how can you be there for the ones you love?

Until next time, STAY TRUE TO YOURSELF!

~ Mara Prose