Celebrate your achievements. You deserve it!

I have been afraid of heights my entire life.  There is no known event in my history that would support this fear.  Yet, my fear has drawn a lot of attention to myself, prohibited certain activities that I wanted to do and increased in symptomatic behaviors as I got older.
One day, I decided to start overcoming this fear.  The only way for me to face it was head-on!  Systematically, I started going to high places, standing closer to the edge of a canyon and driving over those mountain passes, instead of sitting on the floor of the vehicle that I was in waiting to get across. 
After four years of exposure to heights, I felt that I was ready to truly celebrate overcoming this lifelong fear.  I booked a Hot Air Balloon Ride in New Mexico.  As God as my witness (and the other people in the basket), I was calm, relaxed and joyful to be experiencing the sublime feeling of floating in air like a cloud.  I would recommend this experience to everyone.

On that note, the quote of today is:

"Only take what you need, give all that you have and live fearlessly."

Softer views

I was thinking about my family this morning.  I have three sisters.  What is so remark-able to me is that we are all very unique people.  We had the same parents, basic influences and were raised under the umbrella of the same culture but we couldn't be more different in attitudes, personalities and interests.
The beauty of such diversity, even within my own family, is that it gave each of us the opportunity to explore something new, learn another way and accept one another for who we are.
I beleive that my family environment made me understand that I could enjoy and flourish in the diversity of life, instead of ridicule and condemn those people and things that are different from me.

On that note, the quote of the day is:

"Labeling is a valuable tool to aid understanding but ought never be used to define."