Life Changes – Dawn Lupul

November 15, 2019November 14, 2019

New Beginnings

A beautiful and stormy day in Puerto Rico – never the same from one moment to the next

Change is scary. Leaving a job, moving, ending a relationship, the death of someone close to you – all of these are major life events.

Even looking in the mirror as you begin to get a little older can be jarring. Suddenly you see things that weren’t there before, like new wrinkles, or dark spots, or perhaps less hair than you remember having.

On a daily basis there are reminders that nothing ever stays the same. It is the roller-coaster existence that we are all on.

When things are going great, eventually they will turn the other way. It is inevitable. And just as certainly, when things aren’t going well something will happen that turns the tide in the other direction.

November 9, 2019November 8, 2019

Today Is the Day

Someone decided to build the CN Tower years ago. Turned out to be a great idea

This isn’t just another day. At least, it doesn’t have to be.

Today can be the day that changes everything. It can be the day you look back at as the moment when you took control of life.

In this moment you can decide to support who you want to be and stop fighting it. You have the power to do it; it all begins with a single decision.

What is the one thing that you want more than anything else that you keep putting off?

Fear is the reason we don’t move forward. Feeling safe with the known, we don’t allow ourselves to explore, to dream and become bigger and better than we already are.

We get very good at making excuses. We decide that we are too old, or that all of the good jobs are taken, or there are no good single people left to meet.

November 7, 2019November 6, 2019

Sailing Smoothly Through Life

You can sail wherever you wish to go. It all begins with a decision

Take a moment and describe yourself. What kind of words spring to mind? Are you intelligent, hard-working, angry, peaceful, successful, stifled, or fulfilled? There are seemingly endless adjectives that you can use to label who you think you are.

Some people find this exercise easy to do. Others not as much. If you are proud of who you think you are, then it is probably much easier to say I am successful, appreciated, ambitious and loved.

If you are feeling not so proud of who you are and where your life is right now, then this may be more difficult. Or you may be overly cruel.

November 5, 2019November 5, 2019

The Evolution of You

How can we be ordinary when nothing around us is? Another beautiful sunset in Costa Rica

Change can be difficult. Our habits become ingrained and we often move through the day with little thought as to what we are doing.

We wake up, shower, get dressed, go to work, come home, watch TV or play games, go to bed, and repeat.

Weekends are different, but also the same. There may be social activities, but there are also routines like grocery shopping, cleaning, taking the kids places, or taking yourself somewhere.

Life has a flow to it, and we can predict with some certainty what we will be doing in one year or six months because it is very similar to what we were doing one year ago.

But what if you feel like you are doing something you aren’t meant to be doing? What if you are someone you aren’t supposed to be?

October 31, 2019October 31, 2019

Everything Is Temporary

There will never be another moment like this one

Time is the big equalizer in this life.

It doesn’t matter how rich you are, or how beautiful or intelligent or strong, time will have its way with all of us.

It doesn’t matter what you do or who you are. This existence is temporary and that is what makes it special.

It isn’t often that we contemplate our own mortality. Death is feared, the young are celebrated, and the elderly are hidden away or pitied as we see that they are nearing the end of their journey here.

When you are young, you think it would be great to live forever. But when you think this way, you are also setting special conditions on what this eternal life would look like.

First, your body has to stay the same. You want to live forever but it has to be in a 25-year-old body.

October 13, 2019

The Big Decisions

Everything changes, seasons come and go, and we make decisions every day. It’s all good

Making the big decisions in life, the ones that collapse multiple possibilities that are available down to just one, can be difficult. Beyond difficult actually. It can be almost paralyzing.

Should I quit my job, leave my relationship, get married, have kids, buy a house, go back to school, move across the country, move to a new country? These are all big decisions. They are big because they are life changing.

Any of the scenarios above would completely change your life from what it is now. The risk of making the wrong decision is what fills us with fear and conflict.

If only we could see into the future and know which decision will work out the best!

But wait – what if you knew that no matter which decision you make, which future path you choose, that it can’t possibly be wrong?

October 3, 2019

Complaining and Indecision

Why do I go away in the winter? Because I can. The beauty of Varadero, Cuba

It seems that every time I engage with old friends, the majority of the conversation focuses on complaining. Just the other day I was reading some messages from friends online, and one of the girls was bemoaning the fact that winter was coming.

Another of the girls, who is living in a warm climate, mentioned that she missed having changing seasons. She remembered how much she loved watching the leaves turn colour on the trees, the cooler mornings, and enjoying a warm cup of hot chocolate in the evening. Those were her memories.

The other girl, who is in the cold climate, spoke of how it was dark all of the time, gray and dreary during the day, and either raining or snowing. She saw nothing good about the upcoming winter at all.

What we focus on becomes how we feel inside. It is impossible to feel joyful when your eyes look for nothing but unhappiness in your environment.

October 2, 2019

Embracing Change

Beautiful Puerto Rico. I spent months looking at this view. Even here the seasons change

It’s that time of year when summer is turning to fall, when the daylight is disappearing quickly and the trees are assuming the majesty of fall colours. Soon they will be bare, ready to stand strong against winter and the harshness of the cold.

It’s a great time to look at ourselves and begin to shed what we no longer need to carry too.

Everything around us changes. The world is built on change. I am not who I was a year ago, nor do I expect to be the same a year from now. And I accept that those closest to me will change too.

Change can be frightening as it reminds us of how fragile our existence really is, and how temporary our life situation is. We arrive, we live, and then we are gone. This is the one thing we all have in common.

One day, we will all arrive at the same finish line, and that is just the way it is.