“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”. ~  Sir Walter Scott (1808)

When my eldest daughter told me that she had realised she was copying me, when making choices for her own life and had stopped doing so as she wanted be authentically herself, I couldn’t have been happier.

I asked her whatever had possessed her to want to copy me in the first place, and she told me simply, “Because I love you, I guess”.

There is an old saying that ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’, but how much imitation is too much?

Think about it carefully. Do you really want the responsibility of knowing that there is someone out there, who is not truly being themselves, because they are imitating you?

Or would you be content to spend your own life living as another person would have you live it?

An innocent act of admiration for someone in your life can lead to a web of deception, a web that you may not even realise that you have got yourself caught up in, until one day you wake up to the fact that the person who is living your life, isn’t really you.

I know this to be true, as I’ve lived the “lie”, albeit an innocent lie, but none the less destructive.

Throughout the month of March, the theme at the Calm Space was “change” and I submitted my article to Karen rather timidly, with the content being so personal.

There were two deciding factors on why I finally decided to allow Karen to publish what I had written. One – Karen told me she loved the article (and it always helps to know the Editor is happy!)

My second deciding factor was that I realised that someone who reads my story may actually learn something, and benefit from the mistakes I have made.

My message is an important one. I do hope you will read my article at the Calm Space, “Living the Richest of Lives”.

“Your experiences are not limited to what you have created in the past”. ~ Gary Zukav