Everything I ever learnt in my life I had to learn the hard way. It isn't like that now but for most of my life it was. Somehow I picked up the idea as a child that life wasn't meant to be easy and so it wasn't. We pick up so many wrong ideas as children. It isn't that our parents and teachers necessarily feed us incorrect data (although of course they aren't as perfect as we thought they were when we were young) but children interpret things differently than adults. Children fail to discriminate between important and trivial data, treating all input in the same way. And they do not understand subtlety. Even things said in jest they tend to take literally. So is it any wonder we grow up with misguided beliefs about a great number of things? We all have "baggage"; it is an inescapable part of life! But we can deal with it and we must if we want to live healthy, happy, productive lives.

So many people keep themselves constantly busy and think that they are happy because they are occupied. But the real reason why they keep busy is because they are afraid of being alone with their own thoughts and even more afraid of listening to their soul. Our brains are capable of holding an enormous amount of data (some say as much as a super computer) but our soul holds infinitely more. It knows the answers to everything if we only take the time to listen to it. Your soul is the real you; our brains are full of clutter and have been moulded by the input of all those who have crossed our paths but our soul knows the truth. Take the time to meditate (or at least do some deep thinking) and get to know your soul and you will find your truth and many of life's problems will fade away into insignificance.

I used to think that I was doing something wrong because I kept getting challenges. But I know now that life is meant to be like that. This is why we are here on earth; to meet our challenges square on and overcome them. But having challenges doesn't have to mean that life is difficult if you deal with them when they first become apparent. They won't go away if you ignore them. The same problems will keep coming back to irritate you and cause you increasing amounts of stress. And if you still continue to ignore them they will end up "smacking you fair in the face" so you are forced to deal with them. So much easier to deal with them when they first appear wouldn't you agree? So when something is bothering you, don't push it aside and keep busy to block it out because if you do that, it will just become a bigger problem.

Take the time to be alone and examine it; think about it; meditate on it. If you persist, the solution will come to you. Of course there are times when we need professional help and guidance but that is never enough on its own. In the long run we have to find many of the answers ourselves because no one can ever really know you like you can know yourself. And that's really what life is about - getting to really know our true selves and living in harmony with our souls.