Soon to be released !!
Introduction
Our life is constantly changing moment to moment, day to day and year to year.
Living authentically is an interesting and popular topic and one that I think needs special consideration. In life, we are being asked more than ever to check in with our true self (spirit), values and personality (ego) daily.
Put simply, authenticity means you’re true to your own personality, values, and spirit, regardless of the pressure that you’re under to act otherwise. You’re honest with yourself and with others, and you take responsibility for your mistakes. In life we are being challenged, prodded and pushed, creating opportunity that might promote transformational growth and change and even redefine how we live our authentic life.
Authentic is defined as:
“not false or copied; genuine; real.” And, my favorite definition, “representing one’s true nature or beliefs; true to oneself or to the person identified.”
As an author and coach, I know in order to become more authentic and to seek this out in others, we first need to be open-minded. We attract the people and things we want in life when we’re open-minded and receptive. This often leads to opportunities and new ways of thinking that expand our minds and bring us ideas that add value and create change to our lives.
Live in the Moment and Be a Great Listener
“What day is it?”
It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day,” said Pooh.” — A.A. Milne
There’s nothing more real than a person who lives in the moment without worry or concern for needless matters. Who do you know that truly embraces the moment? Someone who doesn’t bother checking their smartphone every five seconds to worry about an email from Instagram or some trivial matter? A teacher who left a huge impression on you because of their devotion to their students?
Living in the moment means concentrating on exactly what is happening in your life at that precise time. It demands that we remove the baggage and clutter from our lives to live our best in the moment. Presence and concern for right now are achieved when we eliminate distractions. Like junk email!
Being a great listener is not just suited for conversations with our loved ones or business partners. It’s also about listening to the very important voice inside our heads. Listen to your intuition. Do what your heart is telling you to do. That’s what an authentic person does.
Each second of every day we are being led by our minds and our hearts experiencing change. Otherwise, we are just standing still (paralyzed), going through the exact same moment over and over.
My family owns a funeral home and I made the decision out of college that I would join the business. I didn’t know how much I would learn as a funeral director and mortician, but wanted to be part of the family business. Working in funeral service, I have spent years walking with people through a time of change when someone loses a loved one. I have had the privilege of helping others journey through loss, fear, pain, disfunction, and sadness, assisting them as they transition through their loss. I have witnessed healing, where grief left deep holes, I have witnessed pain and suffering, gratitude, remembering and celebration, and I have witnessed seemingly hopeless and sad situations transform into love. I have been blessed by this.
Through this experience and window into change and how transformational change can affect an individual, I’ve realized the value of change and its affect in our world. I’ve realized what a gift we all can be in our world.
Through this experience I discovered that until we learn to navigate change, we are stuck. We remain in one place with no movement whatsoever. Without movement, we become paralyzed and there is death. Death, because we are no longer challenging ourselves and are no longer moving forward in our living.
I’ve experienced a time of transformation in my life. After years of helping others on their transitional journeys, I wanted to know if I could do a better job of it for myself. I took part in a retreat where all of the participants committed to meditating for an hour every day for one hundred days. After the hour of meditation, we were supposed to document what we learned, thought about, or discovered during our ritual. Many in the group chose to create vlogs (video blogs); I decided to write, so I started a blog chronicling the journey.
This personal transformation manifested clarity and creativity within me. It fed my desires. It has shown me how thoughts can be limiting. It has also shown me how growth is stymied by those limiting thoughts and fears. It has opened the door connecting me with my true authenticity, my source of being, my true nature, values, and personality .
Transformation can be a messy job. It triggers old ideas and patterns that we have buried in our subconscious. All of our triggers and fear are typically connected to another time in our lives; something in our past manifested them. To live in the present moment, we have to work on moving past those fears and triggers, recognize the old patterns and stories, so that we are not hiding behind those stories anymore. Through my practice of blogging and meditation, I have been able to uncover my own limiting thoughts to spur on my own growth. And while it’s a continuing journey, its one well worth the effort.
In addition to documenting my thoughts and discoveries through my transformation, my blog allowed me to discover my voice and my genuine delight of writing. I have continued to write on my blog past the initial one hundred days, and I now have over four hundred posts. I have also written another book, “Living and Dying” finding hope and love on your journey through loss. This love of writing combined with my desire to help others through times of transition led to the creation of this book. You will hopefully see, we all share the same or similar life experiences. It is only our individual stories that make them unique and different. We all experience birth, adolescence, puberty, adulthood, aging, changing jobs, and new relationships: all of these are shared experiences. We live them all differently, though.
My hope with this book is that as I share with you my experience and stories, you will see opportunities for transformation in your own life. That living authentically is a journey of self discovery through change, transformation and lifes tranisition’s.
To accomplish this purpose, I have included some of my writings from my own journey through transformation throughout this book. I want you to be able to see what I was thinking and experiencing while I was going through my periods of transition. I hope that by doing so you will see how embracing challenges and change in our lives will keep us moving forward.
My writings are a compilation of my energetic connection to source (God), my divine guides, Jesus, my Native American guide and archangels Raphael and Michael, and many close friends and family. Without them this writing would not be possible and I give up all personal responsibility for these words and thoughts, acknowledging with sincere gratitude and praise for being so blessed by them.
The first blog I want to share with you is called “We Shall Hear Angels.”
“We Shall Hear Angels”
“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels. We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.” – Anton Chekhov
What would make me think I have anything to say or offer the world?
Perhaps this is the one question we continue to ask ourselves that keeps us from doing just that thing. Speaking up, telling our story, sharing our intimate thoughts, ideas, and secrets put us in a scary position, and it is one that leaves us feeling vulnerable and open to ridicule.
A good friend said to me recently that it would be a shame to die with your story untold, closed off to those who might care, learn, or benefit in some way from that knowledge.
Do you ever wonder why your parents did this thing or that, and now they’re gone, not able to answer that question? I wonder what mine were thinking! How hard and painful their divorce was? I wonder how having a judge grant custody to my father over my mother must have felt to her and why it came out that way. I never asked, and they never said. I’m sure it was too painful for them, and now I’m left to wonder.
Growing up in funeral service and helping people through transformational events in their lives has given me the confidence and awareness to share my story. I mean, why not? It’s become evident to me that we all feel the same basic emotions of fear, pain, loss, joy, and peace. Although our individual stories may be different, these feelings are universal.
“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels.”
My first book, Living and Dying, is available online through my website, www.mkanthony.com. While I’ve already got my sights on the next book, it is a joy to be blogging as way to practice writing and sharing my thoughts, ideas, and secrets.
Every day I wake up excited to venture out into the world with my thoughts. As I sit here at the keyboard, nothing specific comes to mind, but after a moment or two these words come tumbling out. It is my sincerest desire to bring more love into the world, to shine a light so bright even a blind man could see, and that is a good thing. I invite you to show up, to live and not die. So, we all can see the sky sparkling with diamonds!
The second one I want to share with you is “Still Singing.”
“Still Singing!”
A good friend said to me, “Don’t die with the music still in you.” It prompted me to write my book “Living and Dying” and to start living more authentically and honestly to the best of my ability. Over the past few years, I have created major change and restructuring and have begun a new journey in my quest for a personal peace and enlightenment. I believe I have more books, other professional opportunities, and continued growth and success ahead of me. I believe that I live in a world of infinite possibilities and opportunities, and I believe in you and me. I believe I have a song written in my heart, and it appears to the world in many different ways and in many different colors. I believe.
Don’t die with the music still in you!
So, as you begin this journey, be open to new ideas, be ready to be open and vulnerable, and be ready to embrace change when it comes to you.
“Blessings on your journey”
Hope and Love on life's journey 