By: Tony L. Jefferson, Jr.

Well, I have reached another turning point in life.

It seems my life is full of them, but with each one I seek the excitement and adventure of starting fresh and brand new. New beginnings bring about new feelings, people, and experiences. Some of my crossroads haven’t been that great, but for the most part they have been good.

I’ve found that if I embrace change with an open mind and an open heart, my experiences usually turn out better than expected, but when I have the predetermined mindset of what I believe it will be it usually turns out totally opposite of what I would exactly want. The feeling of not knowing is both scary and at the same time produces an excitement inside of myself, that makes me want to rush into it. This is of course the wrong avenue of approach and the consequences of doing so are most of the time negative.

Many changes have happened in my life, within the past year, I got married, got divorced, got deployed to Iraq again, made some friends, lost some friends, lost some family, and gained plenty of life lessons. There were many ways I could have taken these experiences, but I choose to look at the bright side of things.

Yes, I will admit, I did have a lot of negative feelings, there were times when I wanted to cry, times of depression, and times of pain, but I realized, that my problems are mine alone and others have problems as well. So rather than crying and using my bad experiences as a crutch, I took and learned many life lessons from them.

One thing I did, which I’ve done for years, is I wrote about my problems. Writing to me is a great stress reliever and writing and sharing my work in turn helped others with similar problems. Talking to others who genuinely cared to hear about my pain also helped, because many people go through the same type of problems just in different situations, but sharing your feelings with others helps you both learn from each other and eventually get over your problems.

The things that I’ve learned in such a short amount of time, made me realize that there is always a door to the next level of your life, but whether you open it or not is up to you.

Give me some feedback on your crossroads and life lessons you’ve learned?

Regards,

Tony L. Jefferson, Jr.