I had a challenging day. Today was the day I learned whether or not I reached round 3 of the next top spiritual author competition. I didn’t make it through and I was surprised. I thought that I had done enough work to promote my message and I spent many hours on my book proposal before submitting it. Why couldn’t I be happy that I was one author out of 2000 people that had made it to round 2? Quite frankly, I had my heart set on advancing to round 3. So I cried some tears of self pity for a very short time. I looked up the 25 authors who had made it to round 3 and made some mental notes to myself. These 25 people have a visible web presence and it appears they have been at their respective crafts for a while. They have been working at this longer than I have. I entered this competition on a whim. Now I have to dig deep and create my long term vision and validate myself at this point. I have to have a stronger belief in myself. This situation just reminds me to dig deep, trust in my heart what I know to be true and give thanks for the opportunities that come my way…The stories you make up about why things happen the way they do are more detrimental than your actual reality. This much I know is true. If I beat myself up and make up a story as to why I did not advance to round 3, this surely does not serve me. If I trust in my dream, I know that this door closing will mean another door opening. Sometimes all that you can do is connect with spirit and trust in that connection. The ego gets a little bruised by life but aren’t we all needing to let go of our ego these days….until next time love yourself!