I have a weakness for self-help books.

Not – well, I don’t know how to describe it.   I love “The Four Agreements” and things of that nature.  Right now, I’m just getting into the good stuff of a book called “Within” by Dr. Habib Sadeghi.  Theoretically it’s about weight loss – but the thing is, it isn’t about weight loss at all (so far as I have read).  It’s about human thought patterns, emotions, the ‘harmony’ of life within yourself.

I’m obsessed with nearly every idea in it.

I’m thirty-four years old and I have made mistakes.  There are times in my life that I haven’t been overly proud of how I’ve conducted myself.  But there are other times that I’ve succeeded and been in a really positive, happy place.  And I have found that I spend far too much time remembering and regretting things, instead of being in the present and being proud of who I am and the life I’ve lived so far.

That idea is one of the reasons I love books that help me look at life from a different perspective.  Books that hope to give women in the workplace help being powerful, books that examine inner character … and books that help identify negative thought patterns.

I guess it also helps that I buy into a lot of it.  I really believe what I’m reading and look at ways it is manifesting in the world around me. Dr. Sadeghi talks about String Theory in the first chapter of his book and once I read the basic idea, I became hooked (just watch my husband’s face every time I mention vibrations!).

But it all sort of became crystal clear the other day when I received a very random friend request on FB.  And it niggled in my brain for days.  And I accepted it.  And it niggled some more.  And then I ended up unfriending.  And here’s why ~ social media, and FB in particular, ties us to each phase of our life, and who we were in those moments.  And I think that life was designed to allow us to grown and move away from certain parts of life ~ which social media makes nearly impossible.  I don’t want to be friends -either legitimate or otherwise – with people from my past who may have condemned me, judged me or otherwise thought badly of me.  Why would I do that, except in a pathetic self-flagellation punishing myself for -basically – being young, misguided and confused?  Why would I choose to remember that every time I opened up my FB feed?  Why would I revisit a time in my past I’ve outgrown and has little to no relevance to who I am now?

Without self confidence and self love, I would, just to punish myself for ‘crimes’ or injustices I felt I committed years ago.  But I don’t owe anyone apologies for who I was, just as they don’t owe me any apologizes for you they were (regardless of how I felt at the time).  That time has passed, and we have all moved on and found comfort and safety in the partners we have found and the lives we have carefully created.  The people I have in my life now I have chosen specifically, because they are genuine and honest and enhance my life.  And hopefully, I theirs.

That’s sort of the beauty of finally hitting my stride in my thirties.  I love the confidence I feel in who I am, the people I surround myself with, the life I lead ~ and I’m okay with embracing all my idiosyncrasies and weird loves.

And I don’t want to go back to my twenties when I was rife with insecurity, was confused and misguided with no sense of what direction I wanted to head.  And surrounded by people who superficially were my ‘friends’ but didn’t actually know me or really care about me.

I like the idea that the world is made up of different frequencies of vibrations and similar vibrations are attracted to each other.  When I am happy, happy vibrations come back to me.  And having that idea in my head not only makes me want to send positive vibrations out into the world, but it makes me want to eliminate things that bring about negative or anxious vibrations.

That’s what I love about self-help books.  Finding the positive.