My First Blog Ever!

 WELCOME TO MY FIRST BLOG EVER!

Introduction and Why blogging is important to me.

    Hello Everyone! I want to say thank you to anyone that is taking the time out of their day, or night, to indulge in my blog. I'm going to take this opportunity in my first blog to give a perspective of my life, and why I feel that my blogs will benefit you in ways that you can't even begin to imagine. I know personally I couldn't believe the difference in my everyday life when I started to develop love for myself. Before we dive too deep into why self-love is important and ways that you can practice the same steps that I currently take I want to introduce myself.

    

My Story and Struggles

    My name is Christopher Lawton and I was born and raised in a very small town in the northwestern corner of Illinois. I spent my first eighteen years of life in the same place, rarely exploring outside of the county I grew up in. When I was two years old my dad left, he's back in my life now and I love him very much, but while I experienced life without him I developed my first negative attribute, feeling worthless, or in other terms never good enough. This view of myself led to countless problems in my future relationships with my parents, significant others, and friends. I would always find myself questioning why they are with me and find a way to create distance from that relationship. When I turned fourteen I was involved in a tragic grain bin accident. I had gotten my first job with a friend that I have played baseball with for the previous seven years of my life. Although we weren't close I respected him for having the most loving heart and never being afraid of being himself. Something that I have always struggled with every since my dad left. It wasn't until the third day on the job that my life came crashing down around me. Everything is still a blur to me eleven years later, and I don't want to misguide anyone on what actually happened to cause the accident. I will summarize that my friend was engulfed in corn, and I rushed out to get help leaving him behind with our other two coworkers, who were both eighteen at the time, trying to rescue him from suffocating on corn. After I climbed out of the 55 FT gran bin I  screamed for help and instructed a worker below to call 911. Time began to stand still what took less than ten minutes felt like three hours for the emergency services to arrive. Not even an hour later the whole community was sitting outside of this grain bin to hear the news on if everyone made it out safely. When I say the whole community I mean everyone in the county came to observe. As I made my way down the ladder I was met by my dad, he came back into my life when I was nine years old, and I saw everyone. I felt like I was in a movie, but had no emotions as I was still in shock. It wasn't until later that night that I found out my friend and one other coworker had passed away. That was the moment when all my emotions hit me once, and I was overwhelmed with the feeling of guilt. Guilt is a difficult emotion to process, especially when all you do is blame yourself for something that you had, or have no control of. This led to yet another negative attribute that I carried with me throughout my life up until this past year. After the accident I coasted through high school not applying myself and barley making it by in each class I took. I couldn't picture a future that I was alive for the longest time, which explained my lack of effort. When I graduated I was fired from four different jobs within the same year, and I was bouncing around between my friends and grandmas couch. Something shifted inside me one day and I decided that enough was enough, I am going to join the military, like my grandpa before me I enlisted in Air Force. This was the best decision I have made in my entire life. The Air Force had consequences if I didn't apply myself in every task that I had to accomplish, this decision was the beginning of my life making a change for the better and for the first time in a very long time I started to feel I had a purpose. Although I had a new beginning I still struggled with the same problems that I did in high school, I didn't feel good enough. Guilt took control of me and I took blame  for everything that went wrong in my life instead of appreciating the good. I won't go into too much detail but these emotions caused me to pick up very bad habits at a young age. Some of theses habits I'm sure you can relate to, but we will save that topic for another blog. Fast forward almost seven years now, I have two beautiful boys and a gorgeous fiancee that I am forever grateful for. I wouldn't be where I am today without my past though,  I know this was a lengthy introduction, but it's necessary for you to understand where I started so you can appreciate how far I came. Once you see that then you will be able to trust in the steps that I take and start to apply those in your daily life as well.

    

What can I do for you?

    You might be asking yourself, so I know who you are, but what are you going to teach me that I don't already know? That's a great question and I will follow it up with these questions. Have you every felt like life is working against you, or that you hate starting something that you want to do because you know that you won't finish it. How about have you ever looked in the mirror and were disgusted with what you saw? Theses questions are just a few of the ways that I thought about myself, and I want to help you so you don't have to feel that way again. In the next Blog I'm going to discuss one key change I made in my life that completely changed everything about the way I view myself. I was able to forgive others by doing this, and most importantly I forgave myself. My next post will be on Wednesday January 26th, 2022. I am beyond excited to help you all make the changes needed to be able to forgive yourself the first step in living a better and healthier life. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts on things that I could be doing better, or something that you want me to talk about in the future. This blog is a way for me to get my story out to the world and help as many people as possible, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you everyone for spending a moment to learn about me and why I am blogging. Until next time 😁