“You must constantly ask yourself these questions: Who am I around? What are they doing to me? What have they got me reading? What have they got me saying? Where do they have me going? What do they have me thinking? And most important, what do they have me becoming? Then ask yourself the big question: Is that okay? Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” ~ Jim Rohn.

The month of January is often a challenge for me, in many ways.

With children home from school for most of the month, it is difficult to find any time to be peaceful, when they have music playing constantly in the house. I look forward to the house becoming quiet for a change, and hearing the sounds of silence yet again.

And there is always the heat issue, including our rainy season in the sub-tropics, which contributes to the humidity. Funnily enough, though, this summer has been unseasonally cool, an unexpected luxury which I am revelling in! While I have expected the heat to arrive I realise, with huge amounts of delight, that with each day of little heat, we move one day closer to autumn, when the weather will become cooler again. Ah…bliss!

None of us has any control over summer school holidays or the weather, so we might as well accept the inevitable and find the pleasure in each moment of every day. We can’t change these things.

It is incredibly easy to find the pleasure behind the noise in the house all day. The noise tells me that my children are still young enough to live at home. I can enjoy their company and they are indeed very good company!

And the warmer days allow myself and the rest of my family the freedom to enjoy our swimming pool, finding relief from the humidity of the days.

What we are becoming, on a personal level, is a matter in which we do have some control over. We have the choice of how we allow the people who we interact with throughout our lives to affect us.

Everyone we meet can, and does, influence our behaviour at the time of our meeting. They may also shape our future thoughts and feelings, unknowingly painting a picture of the person we have become, who we are constantly in the process of becoming.

The month of January has given me the opportunity to ponder the question of who we are becoming, taking my mind off the few days when it has been warm and when I have missed my solitude, and it is with much pleasure that I have written these thoughts in my article at the Calm Space this month, “An Infinite Work of Art ~ You”.