There comes a time in everyone's life when they should  take a step back and begin doing some soul searching.Some do this,  others never do.I think we should count our blessings.   Literally.  One by one.   After all,  we do have them.   Some people wait their entire life before acting upon making changes.  Why wait ?  What are they waiting for?Some people assume that lightening will strike them and show them what changes they should make in order to live a meaningful life.    Many go around and around and around,  in the same circle,  never getting anywhere.Day after day passes and suddenly the person wakes up and looks in their mirror.  What do they see ?  A very old person who has watched life literally pass them by.  So many missed opportunities.  People they wanted to connect with,  long gone.   All of those chances of making peace and setting aside internal baggage,  gone forever.  I watched  a spiritual enlightenment video today...as I generally do at least once a day... and what the man said rang true.   If you are someone who Friends say,  they hope one day  to be just like you.....then you know you are on the right track to meaningful living.   If you are someone who friends say... "man! I never want to be like him or her".....   you've got your homework cut out for you.   Has there ever been someone in your life whom you said to yourself...  "I sure would like to be him or her " ??   If there has,  what is stopping you, right now,  from turning your life around and actually being like the person you admired the most ?Facing FearFear is one of the biggest challenges we face as human beings.  The fear of failing.  The fear of consequences;   The fear of losing.  The fear of winning.  Fear has many faces.   I remember being thirty five years old in boot camp.   Everyone around me could not have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old.  I had to face  many fears learning how to become a soldier in the United States Army.  Would I be able to complete boot camp?  Was I strong enough?  Could I complete the basic requirements for the course,  itself.I will never forget the day I had to face just  one of my biggest fears.  The fear of heights.  I, along with many other soldiers in the making,  had to scale a 50 foot wall and then climb out onto a long rope and make my way from one side to the other...without falling.  The only thing underneath me was a safety net.   I can't recall the distance I had to drag my entire body while laying on my stomach,  to get to the other side.  From where I stood and the height I was at...the distance could have felt like it was forever.   As I slide across the rope,  I focused on the other side.  People were yelling positive comments for me to get to the other side and people down below were yelling negative comments and laughing...hoping I would fail and fall.   I recall shaking like a leaf and mentally willing myself to the other side.  I held on to the rope for dear life.The moment I had reached the other side was the moment I realized I had conquered one of my biggest fears.  Failing.  Out of all of my fears in life,  being a failure was at the top of my list.Why fear failure ?There are many reasons, we as humans,  fear failure.   In my case,  my mother always told me as a youngster...  "You will never amount to anything!  You will always be a failure".   What a terrible thing to say to a child.   My mother said this so many times to me, that I actually believed it.  The belief that I would never amount to anything caused problems for me in school.  I had no motivation to finish.  Why complete school if I was going to fail anyway?   Why work hard at this or that,  if I were never going to amount to anything?  Parents do not realize how their negative comments impact the lives of their children.   I carried my mother's comments with me into adulthood.   Anything I did as an adult,  it was never good enough.  Or so I felt inwardly.   This caused me to become a perfectionist as a young adult.  It caused me to always look for faults in others.  This was completely wrong.There came a day in my life as a young adult when I said to myself,  I must take control of my life.  I need to get rid of my negative baggage from childhood.  If I didn't get rid of the negative baggage,  my life was never going to change and I was going to live my life hating everyone,  including myself.   That was something I could not live with.  Hating others or myself wasn't even on my list of "to do" things.I still recall the day I decided to join the military.  It was about six months  prior to my 35th birthday.  I had been in a band and was very happy about overcoming my fear of "stage fright".  I had a very good job and so I had overcome the fear of failing in that department.  I told all of my friends that I was going to either become a police officer or I was going to join the military.  They laughed and none took me seriously.  One day,  they stopped laughing.  They saw me running three miles a day.  They saw I was very serious about getting into shape and doing exactly what I said I was going to do.  I went to several interviews after passing the LAPD test and then found out LAPD was not going to hire any new officers.  President Bill Clinton put a hiring freeze on any new police officers.  I didn't want to wait.   I  decided to go  to the Army recruitment center and I signed up to become a soldier.  I never looked back.Stop DreamingI took the drastic measures of changing the course of my life.  For some people,  this is necessary.  For others,  it may be just a few simple changes.  In the early 80s,  I decided it was cheaper to read as many self help books as necessary rather than pay someone to tell me what I inwardly already knew.   I already knew I was set up for failure by my mother's negative comments that ate at me day in and day out.  When she made the comments,  she probably didn't think the comments were serious.  Maybe she was just letting off steam.  Maybe as a mother,  she was just frustrated.  Her comments hurt me deeply and they affected my life.  It also didn't help that my father was a raging alcoholic who caused deep stress and mistrust with men because he physically and mentally abused my mother for years.  Being a witness to my  mother being a battered woman day in and day out,  affected me for years, on an emotional level.I knew I had to stop dreaming and start turning my desires into a reality.  I desired to overcome my inner fears.  What better way to overcoming inner fears than having to be forced through boot camp,  to change your life ?  I knew if I did not join the military,  I would never have the courage to change my life,  on my own.   I was already a mother of two.   The military's cut off age is thirty five years old.   What I did was drastic,  but what I did saved my life and my sanity.Thinking "ah yes, someday, I'll do this or do that " is not good enough. You have to truly believe you are going to make changes in your life and you must truly take the steps to actually change your life from negatives  to positives. This is what you're working towards and yes, you are going to do  it. There is no doubt about it and it is not going to be "someday". You may not know exactly when it is going to happen but it is definitely going to happen.   But you must make it happen.  Thinking to yourself...well, maybe I'll do this or that.. is going to make changes in your life.  It isn't.  If putting both feet into change is too scary,  then take baby steps.Where to start?Start by making the decision that you are making changes and decide that today is the day.  Have a plan!  Write it down.  Draw pictures.  I remember when I purchased my one acre of land that was bare.  It was an acre of grass.  I sat down and drew the plan.  I drew where I wanted my driveway,  my trees,  my home.  You have to have a plan.  Then you have to act on the plan. Once you start to achieve some of your smaller goals you'll gain the confidence to face even bigger ones.Remember to keep it positiveNegative thoughts are very noisy.  In fact,  negative thoughts are so noisy that it makes it hard to think about  anything positive.  Start thinking about the positive  things you'd like to do in order to  change your life and really focus on those positive thoughts.  Once you step up to the plate and actually begin working on those positive goals,  you will see how easy it is to remove the negative thinking out of your life.Feel the joyI love sharing this short story with people because it was a moment of realization for me and the moment I actually began feeling the joy of taking positive steps to change my life.  I had been staying at my mother's home in Kissimmee, Florida for a couple of weeks as I awaited the day I was to leave for bootcamp.  Every day,  I got up early and put on my tennis shoes and hit the pavement for a three mile run.   I ran all over Kissimmee, Florida and didn't realize how many things I had missed because most of the time I was driving,  instead of running past places and people.  One particular morning,  I set out on my run.  It was very sunny and the weather was absolutely perfect.  As I was jogging down a sidewalk,  I noticed people coming out of this small white church.  I saw a few people going to their cars;  some were standing around chatting with each other and then I saw this one particular man walking on the sidewalk,  in my direction.   There was still quite a bit of distance between us,  but I swear to you I actually saw a glowing aura surrounding him.   Thinking it was the sunlight in my eyes or glare from the sun,  I lowered my eyes and kept jogging.   But as I became closer to him,  a very strong energy radiated away from this man, in my direction.   It pulled toward me very strongly.   What the heck was going on ??   I felt this huge swelling in my heart and I thought I was going to burst out laughing...from an overwhelming sense of happiness!  My heart was suddenly filling up with the biggest sense of love I had never felt in my entire life!!!As I was within about 15 feet from this man....he smiled and I swear to you not only did I smile back,  I wanted to stop and hug him!  But I didn't!  Lest he thought I was a crazy woman!  I smiled back and I said hello as I jogged past him and I could not help but turn around and look at that man as he kept walking.   What was that about ???The Holy SpiritWhen I got back to my mother's home,  I told her about my experience.  She thought I was crazy.  But she laughed about it.  I did too.   I'm telling you,  that was the craziest thing I had ever experienced.  This was in 1993,  so it was way before social networking,  facebook,  twitter and all that jazz.  I called my son who was doing his mormon missionary work at the time.  He explained to me that I had just felt and experienced  the holy spirit!  I had to agree.  I had never felt anything like it before and I have to tell you I've never felt anything like it since.  The amount of love, happiness, glee, bursting positive energy that radiated off of that man was like nothing I had ever felt before.  It was truly magnificent.The soul cannot be idle.  The soul is energy in itself.  The man I had passed was so full of positive energy that it literally radiated OFF of him and into my own soul.   The soul without the holy  spirit can go in any direction:  it can love but be unfaithful; it can work but be misdirected; it can belong, but wrongly.   The holy spirit  anchors your soul. The unanchored soul seeks harbor elsewhere: in money, sex, drugs, alcohol, fame, greed and power.  Being filled with the holy spirit  is the only safe harbor. The holy spirit guides your soul,  energizes it,  contains it,  but more importantly,  the holy spirit always takes you to  the path of  inner salvation.I am by no means,  a religious person.  I do not believe there is one single god in existence.  I believe that I have always had "guides" working with me, helping me and showing me the path to spiritual enlightenment.  That path has often times been filled with hurdles that others have thrown in my way,  but I can always go back and do some deep soul searching if I need to get redirected.  Whenever I am  in doubt or whenever I begin to feel fear...whenever I feel negative thoughts trying to weasel their way into my soul...  I always go back on the man passing me by on the sidewalk.  So full of pure love that it filled my heart with bursting positive energy.  If you do a bit of soul searching,  you may remember someone or an experience that caused you to stop and take notice that indeed,  life can be filled with love, happiness and positive direction.  But you must walk or in my case, run  toward it.  It will not simply come to you.  Stop desiring change and take action to make those changes.  It will happen.