Rules smules

Recently, my sister told me about an incident in which she left the water running outside while filling up the pool.  Her intentions were good as she was trying to take care of the pool while her husband was away.  However, she ended up going to bed early and forgetting about the water.  She awoke to a flooded backyard, but no real damage.  

Who hasn't done something of the sort, right?  I let her know that I am sure her trees appreciated the drink and the good thing about adulting was that she wasn't 'in trouble'.  The struggle is real.  Even as adults we carry over the trauma from childhood of all the things that we did wrong and got in trouble for.  We anticipate when people are going to be unhappy with us and we revert to our childhood ways.  Many times our behavior as children was the basis of whether your parents were happy or not.  A screw up as a child not only meant you did something wrong but you impacted the emotions of an adult.  I won't get started on how ones emotions/feelings/etc should not be based on what someone else does - maybe in another post.  My point is just to say, we carry that mess over into adulthood.  We act like we still have the rules we had growing up.  

Aside from not breaking the law, if we are adulting on our own, we do not have "rules".  As adults, hopefully, we are living from our values rather than fear based rules.  Personally, at this stage of my life I value calm and peace of mind.  The decisions I make and the things that I do are now out of what I value and not out of what I fear.  Sometimes I have to continually remind myself of that.  

I continue to define my values.  As I do so, I can more confidently live them out in my actions and my decisions.  I'm still a work in progress but for today, I live by my values and not by any rule.  I'm at peace recognizing this and working toward it.  For today, I seek out that which is calming and promotes my feeling of freedom vs. fear.  Light bulb!  Looks like I've just found another thing I value:  Freedom....