Annie Guest Post: The Hardest Lessons are the Most Important

Today, I am privileged to give you a guest post from my friend Annie. (You may remember her from a previous post in February about her half marathon with Best Damn Race.) 

About Annie:

Annie Ermanis is 30 years old and lives in St. Pete Beach, FL. She was adopted from South Korea, and recently went back to meet her birth family. Annie loves running, and will be training soon for her first marathon in November 2014. Writing is her passion, and by sharing her feelings through it, she hopes to reach others in a positive light and help spread awareness in the importance of love and compassion.

Read on for Annie's recent examination of judgement and embodiment of #PassLove. If the world was filled with more Annie's, I cannot tell you how awesome of a place it would be! Thank you Annie for always inspiring me to be a better me, to analyze my own faults, and to love fully. You are the best!! :)

Recently, I learned that some of the hardest lessons are the most important.  Those are the ones that give us strength, and the ability to keep growing.  The most recent lesson that crossed my path was not to judge others so quickly.

I have learned that my judgments of others’ imperfections are a reflection of my own insecurities.  When something bothers me about another person, I’ve recognized that it’s probably something I do as well, and need to look inward and figure out how to transcend that. 

While it’s been a long journey to get to this realization, I also want to point out that it’s definitely okay to not be okay all the time.  Being able to sit with any emotions that come up is much better than stuffing them down and pretending they don’t exist; because they do.  We are where we are in life, and I choose to make an effort to honor everyone’s paths with compassion.  That does not go without saying that it can be very difficult to do at times.

Breaking free from our own beliefs about ourselves and others is extremely hard to do, and I have come to realize that at times, I was the only one holding me back.  I am trying to become more mindful of the thoughts that run through my head, and how I can change them to allow more positivity into my life.

I realized that thinking and saying something are two very different things.  I want my thoughts and words to be congruent.  What I project is what I want to feel.  A lot of times people will lie when they tell someone something, but are thinking something completely different in their heads.  I am the first one to admit I have done this before, and am consciously trying to break that cycle.
  
I want to live an authentic life, and feel free to express myself honestly and openly.

I oftentimes catch myself making negative judgments of others, and I have to stop and backtrack to start changing my way of thinking.  It’s so easy to make a snap judgment of someone or a situation,  that we forget to tune in to what else could be going on.

We are all human beings with beating hearts; instead of working so hard to hurt one another, we must transform those efforts to work together.  After all, we all have the same goal.  And that is to love and be loved.  #passlove