You Can Always – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

My first life philosophy is ,“You can always improve yourself.” To me this means that no matter what I find myself doing, whether, it’s work or school, I can always push myself further and see more of what I am capable of. This will push me to better myself in every area of my life such as: my relationships, my personal nature, and my knowledge. My parents have always enforced this philosophy upon my brothers and I, but I never really understood why. Now when I take time to look back and attempt to find to reason behind it I can clearly see that my parents, like all parents, want what’s best for me and part of that is me being able to work on my weaknesses and improve on them.

My second philosophy is, “Mistakes show you’re trying.” This is especially reflective in my life because if I am doing or about to do something and I’m not good at, then I will stop putting in the effort before I even have a chance to really try. Learning new things require us to come out of our comfort zone which is very hard for me to do but when I push myself I see the positive outcome it has on my character.

As I’ve started to apply this philosophy into my life, I am beginning to understanding that when you mess up it doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it just shows that you are putting in effort to learn something new.

My third philosophy is, “Embrace every season.” By the word season I don’t mean throughout the year, but seasons in your life. Whether you’re going through hard times or the most joyful times of your life, you should learn to take time to look back and reflect on what you can learn from that particular time in your life. Too many times we focus on the wastelands and forget that whatever particular season we are placed in, we are in it to teach us something that will make us a better person because of it.

My fourth philosophy is, “Take opportunities as they come.” You may think that opportunities are going to be thrown at you at all points in your life, but that isn’t true. Because of this I believe that you should take may of the opportunities that you do get even if it doesn’t seem like something that will change your life in the moment. I don’t want to get older and look back at my life and think, “I should’ve taken that job” or “Where would I ended up if I had said yes to that chance.” Instead I want to be able to look back without regrets and know that I’ve lived my life to its fullest. By saying yes to more things you’re putting yourself in a place to allow for more and more growth.

My final philosophy is, “Be the light.” In my everyday life this means that I should be doing my best to brighten up someone else day no matter what my day might be looking like. Although this may sound cliche, once you get into a habit of putting the needs of others before your own you being to have a shift in your character. Your heart becomes one of serving others and helping people learn that they can do the same.

“As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

Whenever I think about this I am reminded of this summer when I went on a missions trip with my youth group to Los Angeles. While we we’re there we worked with an organization called the Dream Centre, which is a church/rehabilitation centre/ community outreach centre. During one of our ministries on Skid Row I met a man who called himself Uncle Joe, he carried around a boombox and pulled a wagon filled with crates of water. I stopped to talk to him and ask about what he was doing and he told me that he had lived on Skid Row for his whole life and that his one goal was to make everyone he encountered everyday smile. To do this he spent all of his government cheques on water and gave it out to the other homeless people he saw in the streets. He used what little he had to make everyone else life better and has inspired me to try and do the same.