The Blame Game.

I've learnt a ridiculously important lesson recently. A lesson which is pretty much life changing; it's phenomenal, undeniable and so, so important. It's a lesson about people, the past and the future and something called ownership.

So often in life we come face to face with people who help us make a mess of our lives; someone who encourages us to get addicted to something pointless, someone who causes the people we care about to lose faith in us, someone who takes us away from our hopes and dreams and future. We get caught up in something we've unknowingly walked into and find ourselves blaming someone else for where we've ended up. It's a tough call and sometimes we really aren't the ones to blame, but the thing is that it's our life and no one else should be able to change that.

To put it bluntly, no one else is responsible for who I am and what I do. It‘s a choice; a constant choice to live in an honorable and morally upright way; or not. It doesn't really matter what I've done in the past, it doesn't matter who I've been, it doesn't matter how many people have come in and wrecked havoc in my life. My situation is not really their fault; it‘s the fault of the little voice that keeps saying that the past has taken away the future.

We all play the blame game. Whether we've been holding on to what someone did, or holding on to a tragedy that changed our lives; whether it happened yesterday or 5 years ago, if we're blaming something or someone for our situation right now, then welcome to the blame game.

There's a simple way out of this downward spiral- we like to call it ownership. Ownership hurts. It's putting a stop to blaming your past and instead taking ownership for yourself. It's being responsible for your actions and forgiving the people of the past. Ownership is freedom. Freedom from living a life which is constantly determined by what others have done to you, freedom from the things that should be forgotten, freedom from things that shouldn't matter.

Life's what you make it. It's not about the mistakes, it's about moving on and owning up. Live for the things that matter and don't hang onto things that don't. Don't get stuck living because of what someone else has done to you because that's a waste of a perfectly good life.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think this wonderful duo of words isn‘t really used enough. It‘s turned into a pretty rare pair of words that doesn‘t really mean as much as it should. The real tragedy though, is that we really do have so much to be thankful for. We just don‘t realise it, or acknowledge it. I know that I don‘t say thank you enough. I don‘t genuinely and personally thank people as much as I could; as much as I should... So I wanted to use this post to firstly say thank you. Thank you and thank you again. Genuinely.

Thank you to each and every person that is reading this right now. Thank you for your time.

Thank you to anyone who has ever spoken a kind word to me. From those people that encouraged me when I was a familiar face in a familiar environment, to the people that came around me in the toughest of tough times.

Thank you to the people that took the time to get to know the ‘new kid‘. I've loved getting to know every single one of you.

Thank you to the people that never stop encouraging me, the people that never say a mean word, the people who put up with my mistakes and help me out when I‘m being really inconvenient.

Thanks to the brilliant people that look out for me to make sure I don‘t get in trouble or do anything stupid.

Thanks to the people that continue to challenge me to be the best I can be.

Thanks to the people that always, always, always have my back no matter how far apart we are. Thank you for caring for me.

Thank you to everyone that has ever annoyed me, told me off or got on my nerves. I've learnt a lot about who I am because of you. I love you guys the most of all and I hope you know it.

But there are few ridiculously important people that I can never thank enough. Firstly, the Big Man upstairs: God. He‘s given me such a wonderful life and I have no idea how I would survive if He wasn't always at my side. He has been with me through every single moment of every single day and I‘m honoured to live for Him.

Secondly, my Mumma and Daddy. These two people don‘t get thanked enough; my biggest fans and greatest heroes. They‘ve been there for me always and they will always be there for me. We scream at each other and laugh together too. We drive each other crazy, but I could never ask for better parents. So thank you, mum and dad.

You see, often we find ourselves sitting around and complaining about how tough our life is. We complain about what we don‘t have and what we want. It‘s so easy to list the things that we don‘t like and aren‘t thankful for, but it can be a lot harder to actually thank people and thank God for the things we do have. The fact of the matter is that thankfulness and gratefulness is a pretty hard skill to master. It‘s incredibly hard to be thankful in tough times and it‘s even harder to look back and realise the good that came out of tough stuff. But a lesson I learnt as a child, from a veggie-tales video, is that a thankful heart is a happy heart. No matter what‘s going on, no matter how low we feel, if we can be thankful, then we can be happy.