Own it

        I like to longboard. I like to boogieboard. I like to ride my bike. I like to fly kites.

        What do all these things have in common?

        They all require me to control another object. The last thing I want is for the object to control me. 

        In the words of my awesome skateboarder friend when he was helping me learn to better control my longboard, "You just gotta own it." Meaning, you just gotta learn control, show it who's boss, be one with the board. It's about unity, synchrony, balance, grace. I actually can't think of a better way to say it. You just gotta own it.

        A few days later Rich was teaching me to fly a stunt kite and I wasn't catching on right away. In other words, my kite kept nosediving it into the ground. Rich had his own way of saying it (systematically breaking it down into four individual levels, of course), but in a sense he also told me, "You just gotta own it." Dividing it into levels gave me the focus I needed to gain control of the basics before moving on to more complicated moves. So I guess my new phrase isn't just for longboarding! It's also for flying kites :).

        So why am I writing about this on the blog I created to publish things I choose to laugh about? Because I think it applies to life, too. I think we can all work a little harder to "own" who we are and to be comfortable in our own skin -- even when we make mistakes or do dumb things (please see any of my posts below :)) -- and to gracefully handle those situations that are difficult for us. We can own up to what we did by not blaming others or making excuses or getting discouraged, but by taking control and finding ways to make good out of any situation. That is a divine attribute. Have you ever noticed how God can transform all of our challenges into tremendous opportunities, if we let Him? I really believe that Heavenly Father has a wonderful ability to transform negative into positive. He can and wants to make beautiful things out of our hardships. He promises to make our wilderness as Eden, and our desert like His garden (2 Nephi 8:3). I have been working hard to develop this attribute within myself, and it really does make all the difference.