I love to read. My favorite books help me find myself. I adore authors who can take what they have learned or a collection of research they have spent their lives collecting into no-nonsense language that leads me to understand myself on a deeper level.

I am currently reading a couple of books, one of them is about emotions. Susan David talks about emotions. She has so much fantastic advice and a perspective on our emotions that has changed my life.

Susan, who I like to think we could be on a first name basis, asked me to find what I value. Not what values do I posses because of my upbringing. Not what I value because I feel socially pressured to do so, and not what goals I have that cleverly disguised themselves as values.

So I have spent the last couple days considering this question. I have come up with a few.

I Value:

~Connection to the Creator of all things

~My relationship with my husband, children, family, and friends

~The serenity of my home

~My Health, fitness, and mental agility

~My children's education

~ Writing my story and living through written word

It dawned on me that I have so much in my day to day schedule that doesn't align themselves with what I hold most valuable. Even more, fascinating is that quite a lot of what I do, the stuff that feels quite annoying at times, is so intertwined with what I value the most.

I get up very early in the morning to spend time with my Creator, to read in the silence of my living room and then I write. I workout and I plan my day. After the family wakes up we eat, we clean, and we spend time together as a family. When my husband heads to work, the children and I start school. We go to a tutor twice a week, we attend a co-op once a week, and we learn how to learn from every angle. I have spent many days curled up with the three of them asking "Whats next in the math equation?" and reminding them that "We always capitalize the first word of a sentence."

I dust the woodwork, and I donate unnecessary belongings. I go to the grocery store, and I cook the dinners.

I have room to grow, and I am looking forward to it. There is, as I am learning, many angels to see my day to day doings.

Sometimes when reading about how to make my life feel a bit more like my life, I walk away feeling like I am so far gone on the "doing it wrong train" that I have little hope.

Not this time, however. This time I realized my values make up who I already am. I might have squashed them at times and ignored them to binge watch Netflix, but they are there. They make up who I am, who I have always been and fantastically who I will be.

I haven't made it all the way through Emotional Agility by Susan David just yet but based on the first three-fourths of it I highly recommend this book.

May you too spend time seeking out what you find the most valuable, and I hope you can also see how it is already alive in you.