On the surface, it's so easy to make judgments about a person's life based on what we see. They drive a nice car, live in a nice house, and are always surrounded by great people.. so they must be happy, right? Or they live with modest means and can't enjoy the comfort of luxury- so they must be depressed? Not necessarily. As I am continuing to attain higher heights of success and maturity, I am learning an important lesson. As cliche as it may be, the old saying- "you can't judge a book by it's cover" is beginning to make more sense to me. As human beings we are often tempted to expect others to react to situations in the same way we think we would react. We hardly ever take into account the fact that we do not know that person's struggle and no matter how hard we try we cannot see life the way they see it- because we are not them.

How many times have we caught ourselves saying "Girl, if it were me in this situation I would do X" or "Why is she doing that? She should be doing this". No matter how good our intentions are it is important to remember that we can only live our lives for ourselves and not for anyone else. We have no way of knowing what goes on in a person's life, relationship, or mind. And quite frankly the only person's life, relationship, or mind we should be worried about is our own. Of course, we should always be looking out for the best interest of our friends and family and offering the most sincere (solicited) advice to them, but we should also be careful not to bombard them with our own preconceived notions of how they should be living their lives.

I challenge you to go through this upcoming week without judging. Let's remove the categories from our mind. Nothing is good, bad, cute, ugly, right, wrong, etc. Let's try to just go with the flow. I often find myself giving an unnecessary amount of time thinking about how others will view what I say, how I act, or even what I wear. I'm willing to bet that the less I judge others on these things, the less worried I will be about being judged. My goal for this week is to worry about what goes on behind my own closed doors and let others do the same.

What a wonderful feeling!  My dream is finally coming true!  This blog/website has been a year in the making and I am so excited that it is finally here.  I get to share my thoughts with all of you and serve as a tool to motivate and inspire those around me.

You can look forward to weekly blog posts (most likely 1 -3 posts a week) that touch on a broad range of topics dedicated to living a successful lifestyle.  I will touch on health, relationships, money, work place issues, and whatever else comes to mind.  The goal is to provide a network where like-minded women can discuss all that being Young, Black,and Rich entails!  In addition to my blog, there will be information on the site including, links to other blogs, interesting articles, upcoming inspirational/entertaining events, etc.

I look forward to embarking on this journey with you..

Alecia D.