Your Life Purpose Is The Way Home

 

There is a funny thing about how time works in fairy tales.  At the end of the adventure, they say “and they lived happily ever after”.

The reality of time is that it takes your whole lifetime to live through the happily ever after part.  You don’t get to your star with a one and done journey.  A life purpose isn’t a one and done.  The journey will last your entire lifetime.

Your life purpose might be experienced in different ways in different times in your life, but it is always the same life purpose.

“At the end of life, what really matters is not what we bought, but what we built; not what we got, but what we shared; not our competence, but our character; and not our success, but our significance.  Live a life that matters.  Live a life of love” – Unknown

The story you are living in this moment is just a chapter in one of those books where there are over 1,000 pages and this one is the 4th one in the 12-book series.   There are a lot of hills, valleys, lakes and oceans to walk. It is a lot of walking to follow your star.

There are multiple ways in which your life purpose will be lived from the moment you are born, to the moment when this body dies, and you go on to the next adventure.  So, while you’re not who you used to be in this moment, you also still have time to become who you came here to be.

“Fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what’s about to happen.  When you feel helpless, you’re far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts” – Chris Hadfield

There are times in your life journey when you:

• will go through a storm,
• or walk through the desert,
• or climb a mountain,
• or feel like you are drowning in overwhelm.

The actual danger you perceive versus what danger you are in usually don’t match up.  Danger is a thing, and fear is your reaction to it.  It’s not the thing that will stop you.

It is your imagined fear about the thing.  This is because what fear tells you is happening, is entirely different than reality.

Become skilled at facing fear.

Think about when you were learning to ride a bicycle.  There were some fears involved with learning to ride, as everyone crashes.  Some people just skin their knees or elbows.  Some people break an arm or leg.

When I was a kid, there were no helmets, so some people when the crashed had a head injury.  Riding a bike can be dangerous, but you determined the risk was worth it, because everyone else was riding a bike.  So, you overcame your fear, and learned to ride despite the risk.

“A mistake should be your teacher, not your attacker.  A mistake is a lesson, not a loss.  It is a temporary, necessary detour, not a dead end” – curiano.com

Most fears originate from a lack of understanding about what is happening or could happen.  It is a lack of knowledge and experience.

You know from watching everyone who learned to ride a bicycle before you – those crashes are going to happen.  You will make a mistake:

• You might grab the brakes too hard and flip the bike head over heels
• You might spin on gravel and lose control
• You might turn too sharp and lose your balance
• You might go too fast and not be able to stop
• You might get distracted and hit a parked car

All of which will crash your bike.

Each crash teaches you something.  Going back to your bicycle – when you got personal knowledge of your bicycle, the fears you had in the beginning went away.  No one is afraid of the bicycle itself, but rather the fears of being hurt from crashing that the imagination produces.

Here is the interesting point – did the bicycle change or did you change to eliminate those fears?

It was you.

In his book, “An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth”,  Astronaut Chris Hadfield talks about how he realized what his life purpose was as a 10 yr. old child watching men walk on the moon.  He shaped his entire life to support that dream of being an astronaut.

• As a teenager he learned how to fly,
• Learning how to make decisions and stick with them – it’s a skill that’s required for long term dreams.
• He went into the Airforce as a pilot,
• He got a degree as an engineer,
• He became a test pilot,
• He then joined NASA for the space program.

From 10 years old forward everything was focused on what he perceived as his life purpose.  I am sure that he had times when he questioned what he was doing.  I am sure that he had friends and relatives that said his chances of actually going into space were limited, especially in the years where NASA had to downsize the space program.

This got me to think of other life long goals such as professional sports.  Say you decide that you want to be an Olympic Athlete – you would choose the sport that you have the most natural talent, passion and drive for.  Then you would eat, sleep, and drink that sport everyday for years.

It’s really different from what Chris did – he had stages of accomplishment he went through based on the above list.

It wasn’t enough to just learn to fly a plane.  You also had to acquire a needed job skill in addition to being a pilot.  He had to develop a certain mental headspace that a test pilot has – being able to run towards risk instead of avoiding it.

Unlike the Olympic Games in which you have many competing, only a couple of pilots go with each flight.  So your second profession has to be what else is needed on the Space Station and you have better be a master of it too.

He had vertigo – a fear of heights.  He trained his mind that it was ok to be up high, if there isn’t the possibility of falling.  The best thing about space flight, was that he really couldn’t fall.  He took that fear, recognized his fear and the facts around his fear, and realized he doesn’t have to live in fear.

He talked about how when they strap him into his seat preparing to lift off how it is hot and cramped.  Behind his back is a parachute/survival kit and it makes for an uncomfortable position, which you have to deal with for a few hours’ minimum – even so, he couldn’t imagine any place else he would rather be.

Those words to me perfectly describe a person who is in the zone, on course to completing a life dream.  A person who at that moment is totally on purpose.  The hyper-focus is so clear, that nothing distracts or impedes you.

He describes that moment when you switch from hoping something is going to happen, to knowing it will. That moment of lift off, when you know it is a sure thing.

The closest feeling, I could come to is when you step up on the stage for graduation and walk across to get your diploma.  At that moment you know that nothing can take away your sense of accomplishment in putting a period to a lifetime goal.  It feels like magic, winning, and that feeling of knowing all of your hard work paid off.

You can listen to his 2014 Ted Talk here where he talks about his experience of going blind while out on a space walk.   It was all of the years of preparation which enabled him to stop the panic that anyone would have and creatively figure out how to fix the issue.  As he stated in the quote above, the best answer to stop fear is competence.

• What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose?
• Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them?
• Have you allowed distractions to sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

As always, we are here to help in any way we can.

Embrace The Wholeness Of Who You Are

 

Every adventure starts out as a journey of self-discovery.  Part of the discovery is who you are deep down inside.  As you learn about the parts of yourself that you have hidden away even from you – you will learn to face your own shadows.

“When you know yourself you are empowered. When you accept yourself you are invincible” – Tina Lifford

What are your shadows?  They are the parts of you that you disowned as a child because you were made to feel that they weren’t acceptable.  They peep out at you, when you see the same shadows in other people.

What triggers you to instant anger, shame, rejection of others – there is your shadow.  Once you face and embrace your own shadows, you will quit attracting them into your life experience of others.

The values you have at your core, also come from your childhood.  Some of them are from your parents.  You either choose to emulate their values or you could go 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

For example, my mother used to say in complete truth for her, “Do as I say, not as I do.”  One of my core values is not being a hypocrite, because this was a real hot button for me.  My other core values of being truthful and honest, come from this same place.  The one thing that I will not tolerate from my friends and family is being lied to.

“If you don’t know yourself, you don’t know your nature. If you don’t know your nature, you don’t know where to exist. By knowing your nature, knowing yourself, you know what to be and how to live. And that only comes from knowledge of self, knowing yourself.” – RZA

“Knowing yourself is life’s eternal homework” – Felicia Day

Part of really knowing yourself, is understanding what are your core values, and where did they originate?  When you begin on the journey of self-discovery you will find things that surprise you.  You will find things that may dismay you.

The great thing about this journey is that you have the ability to adopt new values, transform the existing values and basically transform your life from the inside out.  You have the ability to attain self mastery.

Attaining true wisdom, means that you have invested in yourself.  This means an investment in both time and money.  Some things are easy to do by yourself.  Some things are easier when you have a coach or mentor that can help you to see the things that you are blind to.  You are the one who has to begin the journey to self-enlightenment.

You can start your investment in reading books and eLearning for self-education.  Then you could add in a personal coach, begin taking courses with seminar or workshop programs.

The investment in yourself helps you to explore your creativity, innovation, ideas for your life purpose.  You learn how to plan and achieve goals with less effort.  You learn what motivates you.  How to brainstorm new ideas for the vision you have for your life.

Fear takes a partial bit of truth,

then makes the worst catastrophe possible all around it

and sells it to us as the absolute truth.

Fear will try to hold you hostage to limiting beliefs about yourself.  I have always loved this quote, because what you have identified as the fear is never the fear.

It is in the investigation of what is hiding behind the fear, that you can truly identify and then release the real fear that is holding you back from your life.

Reality of Fear:

You’re not scared of the dark – you’re scared of what’s in it

You’re not afraid of heights – you’re afraid of falling

You’re not afraid of the people around you – you’re just afraid of rejection

You’re not afraid to love – you’re just afraid of not being loved back

You’re not afraid to let go – you’re just afraid to accept the reality that he’s gone

You’re not afraid to try again – you’re just afraid of getting hurt for the same reason

It is in being courageous that you accept that vulnerability, is what is going to help you get in touch with your true self.  Everything you have experienced in life has a purpose.  There are no mistakes or coincidences in your reading this today.

It’s time to focus on you.  It’s time to commit to who you are beneath the surface.  The world won’t stop spinning because people choose to not accept you, or understand who you are beneath the surface.

• What makes you happy?
• What makes you feel at peace?
• Focus on loving what you think is weird about yourself.
• Focus on loving your personality flaws.
• Focus on your true purpose in life.

“To know yourself as the being behind the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.” – Eckhart Tolle

“You have to get new knowledge and force yourself to really implement what you’ve learned.  You have to set boundaries in place for yourself.  The important thing is if you don’t know real love, someone will teach you self hate.” – Tony Gaskins

Take swimming as an example.  You can read a book about it.  You can watch a video about it.  You can watch others swim.  But your actually learning how to swim means that you have to get into the water and experience how you can move through the water and not sink and drown.

The important part of about truly knowing yourself, is the application of what you are learning through and from all of the different mediums.

It’s about effecting real change deep inside of yourself.  It’s about not just planting a seed of knowledge, it’s about watering it, weeding around it and pulling out the things that might stagnate or keep that seed from growing into a healthy plant.  It’s about first transforming your inner world, and then your outer world, and then the whole wide world.

“The most important relationship we can all have is the one you have with yourself, the most important journey you can take is one of self-discovery.  To know yourself, you must spend time with yourself, you must not be afraid to be alone.  Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle

Finding Peace In The Midst Of Chaos

 

“And then one day I decided that hurry and stress were no longer going to be part of my life.  Stress is self-created; I decided to stop manufacturing it.  We can choose an internal calm and joy even amid the chaos” – Brendon Burchard

In times of uncertainty, you tend to fill in the blanks in your life, so that you give yourself a feeling of some sort of control.  I can’t control COVID-19; I can’t control political upheaval; I can’t control rioting in the streets.

But I can control what?  Most people tend to answer chaos and uncertainty with more inner chaos.  Instead try something different.

The question to ask yourself is – does this feed the chaos, or my inner peace?  What you need is a change of consciousness.  A decision to stop producing stress and instead choose inner calm and peace.

• You can control what you watch, read, or listen to – Does it build you up?  Does it make you laugh?  Does it energize you?  Does it bring you joy?
• You can control the discussions you participate in with others.  If they are not upbuilding conversations, walk away.
• You can control the music you listen to, helping you to release emotions that need releasing.
• You can do things that bring the feelings of joy back into your life.
• You can control what you are feeding your heart, mind, soul and body.

If everyone were to exercise these kinds of controls, it would end all wars, eliminate conflicts and prevent injustice.

“Staying positive doesn’t mean you have to be happy all the time. It means that even on hard days you know that there are better ones coming.” – QuotesCollective.com

“Peace.  It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work.  It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.”  – Simple Reminders

Pinchmeliving.com has a great meme with 10 Truths You Need to Know for Inner-Peace & Happiness.

• It’s impossible for anyone else to define you, you’re the only one who gets to say who you are.
• You were born with everything you need; you’re not missing anything.
• Perfection is a man-made illusion, we’re all beautifully imperfect.
• You are NOT your thoughts; you are the calm awareness behind the noise in your mind.
• Your beliefs can be modified to lift you up, you are fully in control of your happiness.
• The past and future don’t exist anywhere except in your mind.  Now is the only real moment.
• Your calling in life is to fully express who you already are, unapologetically shine your light.
• Challenges are gifts for your growth and can unlock your full potential.
• Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself, to be free.
• Surrender is the gateway into sustainable inner peace.  Let go.

credit to Pinchmeliving.com

In finding your inner peace, the path leads through resilience.  It’s about focusing on this present moment.  You are trying to have an important phone call.  One child is hugging you and the other wants you to pay attention to the cat.  You have a choice in this moment.

You can go into chaos and frustration, or you can practice resilience by hugging your daughter at the same time you are talking on the phone.  You can practice resilience by telling your children to wait a few minutes, and they can have your complete attention.  Then once their needs are filled, you can give them something to do, and go back to the work that you are doing.

Resilience has the component of compromise within it.  When life throws lemons into your well-planned schedule, you have a choice to practice resilience.  You can focus on the negative things that just happened, with pain, anger, grief, and fear and let the bitterness eat at your soul.  Or you reach back into your resilience pool and focus on the present moment.

• Focus on what is still good in your situation.
• Focus on gratitude.
• Focus on peace.
• Focus on all of the magic that is still in your life.

In a storm like a tornado or hurricane there is a calm center, in life you have to find this calm center deep within yourself.  When everyone else is running around crazy, you do not have to buy into the chaos.

It’s a matter of practice, but once you’ve been in this calm centeredness a few times, it becomes easy to immediately place that peace like a protective bubble around you.  It really is a simple decision that anyone can make, to stand in the center of their own peace.

“We can weather anything if we stay calm in the eye of the storm” – Lolly Daskal

Ask yourself:

• What am I grateful for today?
• Who am I connecting with “my heart to their heart” today?
• What expectations of “normal” in my life am I letting go of today?
• What beauty in the world am I creating today?
• How am I walking in beauty today?

Take A Transformational Anchored Adventure

 

Lately there haven’t been any adventures in my life.  Between working from home all day and working on LemonadeMakers, I’ve been spending all of my time in front of the computer.  I am starting to itch to just go for a drive, anything to get out of the house.  So, I started thinking about adventures – what are they all about?

Surprisingly, I’ve been on adventures during the entire lockdown, I just didn’t know it.  I’ve read books, listened to podcasts and Ted Talks.  All ways to go on an adventure.  Have you learned anything new in the past few months?  That is going on an adventure.  So come on an adventure with me now –

Catch the trade winds and set sail.

Explore.

Dream.

Discover.

“In order to realize the worth of the anchor, we need to feel the stress of the storm” – Corrie Ten Boom

Change is a scary word. It has a heavy weight to it, like an anchor.  When your anchor is hooked in the rocks on the sea floor, it prevents the uncertainties of life from casting you adrift.  When life’s chaos erupts in your life, change is the anchor that helps you cast off for a new adventure.

Change challenges you to look honestly at your life.  You can’t spell challenge without change.  To rise up to life’s challenges, you have to be prepared for change.  Every challenge is an opportunity for self-transformation.  The change in the challenge is what grows you.  Change becomes something to look forward to, instead of something to resist.

“Don’t be afraid to take on big challenges. They give the best rewards” – Spencer Christensen

When the anchor is pitched into the sandy seashore unattached to the ship, it serves no purpose.

• The purpose of the anchor is to hold fast in the rocks of the sea bed, when the winds huff and puff to blow the ship into the raging seas.
• The purpose of the anchor is to hold fast in the rocks of the sea bed, when the tides pull the ship out to sea or push it against the shoals of the shoreline.
• The purpose of the anchor is to hold fast, no matter what the height or the depths of the waves.

The anchors in the photo below are not doing what they were designed to do, which is to hold you steady in life’s storms.

This year you have risen to a few challenges.  You never know with supply chain shortages what you will find missing at the store; first you’re required to wear a face mask outside your home, then not – but maybe still depending on where you live or where you go; maybe you decided when schools began again to continue home schooling your children; and remote working from home or hybrid or fulltime back at the office; all have been challenges to both you and your household.

Failing to reach your goals, another year of watching your dreams slip through your hands, struggling to make ends meet—all that is far harder than rising to the challenge of going on a new adventure. This pandemic is a wake-up call to focus on your personal growth.

“Often what feels like the end of the world is really a pathway to a far better place” – Karen Salmansohn

What’s funny is realizing that every single challenge is an adventure.  Adventure’s not only challenge you to change your normal routine, they teach you new things.  For example working from home – now you know if you like working from home.  You’ve got a whole new respect for the teachers that teach your children nine months of the year.  Your company has discovered that they may not even need an office.

“Focus on what only you can do. Give the rest of it away.” —Elise Mitchell

You don’t have to be the bravest or smartest person.  You don’t have to know how to do everything.  You just have to be courageous enough to realize that every decision you make has some risk attached to it.  You can’t face a challenge without change happening.

So go for the challenge that makes you smile instead of anchoring in around your limitations in life.  Sitting in an empty field with your anchor raised up, is anchoring in to those limitations.  You are not looking ahead.  You are anchoring to your past.

If you think that you can’t sing, get singing lessons.  It’s not the mountain you conquer when you take action.  It is your past beliefs and limitations that are being conquered.  It is you refusing to buy into “I can’t do that”.

Taking on challenges you’ll see that you are capable of doing more than you thought.  You see that it wasn’t as hard as you thought.  It will strengthen your mind, gaining self-confidence.  How you handle what happens to you, determines how far you go. Challenges can take you apart, refine you, and change who you thought you were.

Create Your Growth Anchors

Hope is not a growth strategy.  Action is the only answer to a challenge.  You are in a time of disruption.  Life is ripe for opportunity, as well as full of danger.  Both action or inaction create risk, meaning it impossible to avoid risk.  So take the risk of action – go on an adventure!

Learning is an adventure.  Learning will challenge your habits, your beliefs and stretch your comfort zone.  Travel the universe while sitting in your living room.  It is the perfect time to challenge yourself to climb a new mountain.

• Cultivate a growth mindset – Spend 30-60 minutes a day reading a life-changing article or book
• Work with a life or business coach (we are here to help) – discover your purpose, highest values, deepest desires.
• Wake up to where your life is out of alignment – he who looks outside dreams, he who looks inside wakes up.
• Journaling daily about your goals without limits, celebrate your failures
• Reflect on your life to see reality clearly.

Every minute of attention that you focus on events outside of your influence, is a wasted minute.  Focus on what you can control, ignore the rest. To thrive, you need to adapt yourself to a changing world.  Focus on what you love doing.  Choose a goal that you’ll enjoy chasing for the next five years, minimum, to ensure you’ll follow through.

“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do.  Strength comes from overcoming the things you thought you couldn’t” – Unknown

Play to your strengths.  A hedgehog is great at rolling up into a ball to protect itself. Decide on your hedgehog concept to be really good at ONE thing.  Focus on what you can be the best in the world at.

The Anchor of Partnership

• Create a tribe to keep you accountable and energized,
• Create a tribe so that others are strong where you’re weak.
• Create a tribe to deliver results that are more than the sum of its parts.

The synergy that happens with a group that takes action is beyond amazing.  Multiple solutions abound when you’re open to all suggestions from your tribe.

LemonadeMakers is a tribe of people who get together to talk, share, and help each other through life’s changes and transformations.

Finding a mentor doesn’t just mean finding a person who has done what you’re trying to do.  It doesn’t have to be a real live person.  There are great mentors from historical biographies.  YouTube, Ted Talks, or watching a video by personal development experts, are all great examples of finding a mentor.  There are great inspirational movies out there too.

From the movie Peaceful Warrior:

“Socrates:  Everyone wants to tell you what to do and what’s good for you.  They don’t want you to find your own answers, they want you to believe theirs.

Dan Millman:  Let me guess, and you want me to believe yours.

Socrates:  No, I want you to stop gathering information from the outside and start gathering it from the inside.”

The Anchor of Taking Action

What’s important in your life?  Write down in your journal how you currently spend your day, minute by minute, then create your ideal daily schedule. As you work to close the gap between the two lifestyles, you’ll find time you didn’t know you had.  You’ll discover you are more productive than you thought.

Do not schedule every minute of your day.   Many of the activities and obligations that you thought were important, have turned out to not be necessary. Taking action requires blank spaces in your calendar—for solitude, room to breathe, creative space—so protect this freedom.

Personal growth means knowing there’s always more to learn.  Start now by learning about ways to have a happier life:

1. Visualization:  Spend even two minutes each morning making mental movies of your best life—including how you want to feel most of the time, how you spend your day, where you’re living, who you’re with—and you’ll manifest these desires.
2. Afformations:  A term coined by Noah St. John. Instead of using traditional affirmations like, “I am so happy that I am earning $1M a year”, which your mind is going “liar liar?”  He suggests using an affirmation which is asking questions instead like, “How could I earn $1M a year ?”  Instead of your brain going down the “liar, liar” path, it begins searching for answers to your question.
3. Great people:  They say, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.  This is because of “mirror neurons” in our brains.  These neurons will copy the beliefs and habits of others around us.

There’s at least one person in history, in your social circle, in a podcast, in a TedTalk – who has faced a situation almost exactly like yours and wrote about it.  There are 1,000 of YouTube videos that can teach you how to do anything from applying makeup, to changing your cars oil, to building a shed, to programing a software program.  Challenge yourself to learn something new.

Failure Is Just A Part Of Growing

 

• What does the word “Risk” mean to you?
• Is it married to your fear(s) until death do you part?
• Does the phrase “course correct” imply to you that you’ve failed?
• Does the idea of “untapped potential” make you break out in hives?
• Do you avoid the “road less traveled”?

Fear makes almost everyone uncomfortable.  Fear is an integral part of risk; of going down the road less traveled; of even thinking of putting yourself into a situation where you would need to dive deep within to bring up some of that untapped potential.

But – if you are brave enough to get your friends to open up to the dreams they have, you will see some of their untapped potential being exposed to the light.

If you are brave enough to open up and share your own dreams, you will learn things about yourself that you didn’t know.

Risk is like a barometer to show you much courage you have allowed yourself to have.  You have extraordinary dreams that you would do in a heartbeat, if you could be guaranteed that you wouldn’t fail.

Courage will tell you that you have to let failure

be a normal part of putting action to your dreams.

I currently subscribe to an online newsletter called “The Profile” and it features Polina Marinova.  She is doing things a little differently.  She is doing deep dives on prominent figures and it is really interesting.

I wanted to share some of the things that one her profiles had to say about failure.  While this article pertained to pursuing a business, the lessons contained can be applied to any kind of change or transformation you are thinking about making in your life.

Click the link and check her out (you don’t have to subscribe, click and the part that says to check her out), she has both free and paid subscriptions.  (everything in quotes is from her article and reading her article inspired me to write this one).

“Failure is not the outcome – failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.” – Sara Blakely

Sara Blakely says that she is no stranger to failure.  She failed her LSAT tests ending her dream career as a trial attorney.  She had an interesting dad, who taught his children to celebrate failure.

When she was growing up, each person at the dining room table had to share their biggest failure for the week while they were eating dinner.  If they didn’t have one, her father would be disappointed, because that meant they hadn’t put themselves out there to do something impossible.  She learned from this that the only true failure is when you don’t try.

One night getting ready for a party she stumbled onto an idea for a gap in the fashion industry, and that began the creation process for Spanx.  She stated that she kept the idea to herself for a whole year while she worked behind the scenes, before she sought validation from friends and family.  By the time she told them about it;

• she had named her product,
• researched the market,
• patented it,
• created a prototype.

She knew that all of the negative comments about her idea would have killed it if she had talked about it immediately.  How many ideas have you had, where that happened to you?  Her advice?  Don’t seek validation from others until you’re ready with proof of concept.

It is common when an idea pops into your head to discount it.  Today while writing this blog, a neighbor was mowing his lawn, and the noise of the lawnmower was irritating me.  I said to my office partner that someone should invent a solar powered electric lawn mower.  It could be that someone has.  I don’t know.

I thought about it for a moment and said. “it could have a rechargeable battery that sits in the sun all week just waiting to be popped into the machine.  It would be quiet like an electric car, as well as being better for the environment.’  My car is a hybrid and when it is in full electric mode you can’t hear the engine.

Just think that both the lawn mower and the leaf blower could be quiet – I swear that there isn’t a zoom meeting that happened in the past year where someone wasn’t apologizing for the yard maintenance people and the noise in the background.

Now like Sara –

• I know nothing about getting something like that done.
• I know very little about solar power or engines.
• I am not mechanically inclined.
• I don’t know other things an inventor would commonly know.
• I have no connections or funding on how you would do this.

The only difference between Sara (with her initial lack of business, manufacturing, and fashion industry knowledge) and myself is the level of passion she had for it.  For me, this is just a wonderful idea that I am happy to give to someone else.  For her, it was an idea she was in love with.

“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” – Sara Blakely

When you take fear out of the equation, it becomes easy to embrace the unknown. One of the keys to her success, is that she was a fashion outsider, and didn’t know how it was supposed to be done.  Her ignorance became her greatest asset.

“I had no idea how things were supposed to be done, and if you have no idea how something’s supposed to be done, I guarantee that you’ll end up being disruptive,” she said. When you are an outsider you see things in a different way, because you don’t know how it’s supposed to go.  Beginners mind always starts by asking the question “why” over and over again.

In 2000, Blakely used her $5,000 in savings to start her company, and by 2012, she was named the youngest self-made female billionaire.  Sara still owns 100% of Spanx because she never took on outside investors. She sees an opportunity in every failure or disappointment. “Spanx wouldn’t exist if I had aced the LSAT,” she says.

Take control of your mindset by immersing yourself with great books that teach you how to life a positive life.  Sara tells how her dad bought her the Wayne Dyer program called “How to Be a No-Limit Person”  when she was having a hard time with personal and financial issues.

Most of higher education teaches you what to think, Wayne Dyer taught her how to think.  A critical part of using failure to be successful, is that you have the ability to control your own thoughts and confront your self-doubt. “Now more than ever, your greatest weapon is your mindset,” says Sara.

I have followed Wayne Dyer for years.  I was privileged to see him at a conference.  The world lost a great wisdom teacher when he passed away.

“Success, to me, is finding the courage to live your fullest and biggest life.” – Sara Blakely

How about you?  Are you living life to your fullest potential?

As always, we are here to support you – to whisper words of encouragement – to celebrate each and every failure and success!

Choose Courage, Raise Your Anchor and Set Sail For The Unknown

 

“It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are” – E.E. Cummings

Are you really happy, or just comfortable?  Raising your anchor and leaving the comfort zone is the beginning of all change.  Courage comes into play when you have traveled far enough away that you lose sight of the shore.

All of a sudden fear will raise its head and start creating as much chaos as possible.  Fear knows that the more it churns the waters, the more likely you will panic and return to the safety of your comfort zone.

“We have to be honest about what we want and take risks rather than lie to ourselves and make excuses to stay in our comfort zone” – Roy T. Bennett

Have you ever watched “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”?  Part of the story line was about his relationship in life compared with his best friend.  His best friend was strongly anchored to his shoreline,  his comfort zone.  Ferris Bueller was all about challenging every rule or restriction in his life.  In the movie he says, “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

As soon as Ferris Bueller’s friend watched his dad’s prized auto go through the window and crash down the hillside, he realized how uncomfortable his comfort zone was.  He talked about the lack of relationship he had with his father, and how this crisis was going to force his dad to pay attention to him.

He was definitely coming outside of his comfort zone.  He was owning how much he needed to change his life and start living it instead of just existing in it.  He had to reach the space where remaining the same in his comfort zone had become untenable.  The space where it was scarier to remain in his comfort zone, than to change the relationship with his dad.

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are” – John Pierpont Morgan

Have you ever completely redecorated a room?  You might start with one piece that you find that really speaks to your heart and soul.  Then as time goes along, you are subconsciously looking for something that will tie into the theme that is being created in your head.  In your minds eye you might start out with a beautiful photo of sea turtles swimming underwater in the ocean.  Then you find a shelf made out of driftwood.  Then you find a frame with sea shells and some fish netting.  And so on.  Until one day you look around the room and it feels complete.  It feels like home.

“The woman I was yesterday introduced me to the woman I am today which makes me very excited about meeting the woman I will become tomorrow” – Unknown

When you are “redecorating” your life by stepping outside of your comfort zone, you will start with just one thing.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are throwing out what you have.

It could mean that it needs to be updated or repurposed in some way so that it now fits perfectly with how you are redesigning your life.  Maybe it needs a fresh coat of paint.  Maybe you saw something on a DIY show where they reconstructed an old dresser for a new use.

For example, why not take that anchor you were using to stay in your comfort zone, and use it to instead anchor in grace?  Grace is one of my favorite values in my own life.

“It’s not only moving that creates new starting points.  Sometimes all it takes is a subtle shift in perspective, an opening of the mind, an intentional pause and reset, or a new route to start to see new options and new possibilities” – Kristin Armstrong

What’s important, is to realize and really fully embrace, that imperfect action is better than no action. It is really easy to procrastinate getting started with something that is new and challenging.

I have the “perfectionist” trait of thinking that I just need some more information before I start. So I will research something new “to death”, finding myself going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole with google dragging me along to trail to “one more thing”.

I find the same thing when I am searching for the new photo for a quote for a post. I finally had to limit myself to searching five pages. If I haven’t found it by then, I reword my search criteria. Otherwise, I was searching down 20-30 pages and still not happy with the results.

“Every morning wake up and ask yourself, “What five little things must I achieve today for this to be valuable day?” – Robin Sharma

 

“It’s not about perfect.  It’s about effort.  And when you bring that effort every single day, that’s where transformation happens.  That’s how change occurs” – Jillian Michaels

When you’re ready to make a change in your life, excuses lose their effectiveness.  Excuses are thieves.  They steal away your time.  If you listen to them, you will fritter away your life until one day you wake up and that thing you were going to invent from that idea you had is on the market and someone else has become a millionaire from it.

Have a goal; schedule your time to put it into action; accept responsibility for what does and doesn’t work; then take more action, and keep taking more action until it is completed.

Consistency is what leads to success.  If you only practice an instrument once a month, you will never be a successful musician.  You need to be stingy with where you are spending your time.  Don’t spend it doing things that are not moving you forward in your journey.

Spend it doing the things that fill you up; things that move the needle.  Things that make you feel brilliant, powerful, beautiful and brave.

This is so important.  Share what you have overcome with others.  I have shared a lot about my nephews murder and how that changed my life.  I wanted everyone to know that you can move through the most heart wrenching pain and come out the other side thriving.

Share your story with others.  Share it with me.  Somewhere someone is staring at the mountain that they have to climb.  They are thinking they can’t do it.  Every loss creates a challenge through change.  It all starts with choice.  You can stay in the river and look at the mountain, and stare at it all day.

Or you can start walking.

Just remember that we are here to listen, to offer support, and share with you as you walk up and down your own mountains of loss and change in your life – as well as help you celebrate your bravery.

Climb Every Mountain

“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving; we get stronger and more resilient” – Dr. Steve Maraboli

You have this vast reservoir of untapped potential.  The only way you discover it, is when life throws lemons at you.  That is when you learn to reach down deep inside to tap this reservoir.

Like pulling up a bucket in a deep well, you must bring up your hidden potential to the top.  As you go through life’s storms, you learn how to develop that potential into what is needed to reach the top of your destination.

As you journey down your road, you will start climbing the higher elevations in life.  You might have this idea that the hill you are climbing will get you to the top.  Then you reach the top of that hill, only to discover that you are still in the foothills.  You haven’t even started on the mountains waiting for you.

“She was unstoppable, not because she did not have failures or doubts, but because she continued on despite them” – Beau Taplin

This is where courage comes in.  The courage to continue despite the fears.  The foothills were testing your strength.  As you sit there looking up at a mountain, it would be perfectly normal to let fear take over and stop you in your tracks.

Your mind is getting busy at this point creating all of the possible means of falling down a mountain.  From instant death, to hitting a crevasse and breaking multiple bones as you fall deep within the earth.  Rolling down the mountain pass covered in snow, creating an avalanche that buries you alive.

Courage doesn’t make those fears your mind is making up go away.

• Courage tells you all of the reasons why this is the right thing to do.
• Courage tells you that you can take a guide or go with a group.
• Courage tells you that there are safety procedures that can be learned to protect you from falling to your death.
• Courage tells you what about your journey is more important than listening to fears death fantasies.

“Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up” – Mary Holloway

Part of resilience is based on compassion for yourself as well as others.  Compassion for yourself teaches you that failure is not fatal.  That when you have the courage to continue despite life’s setbacks, success will happen.

Every morning having the courage to get started again, is like being reborn.  A fresh start.  Each day what matters is what you do that day to continue towards your destination.

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful” – Joshua Marine

Part of the overcoming of challenges, is being able to organize your suffering, so that you only have to bear the pain that is absolutely necessary.  This allows you to not be overwhelmed by what is happening.

You begin to see the connections to what has happened, and how the lessons you are learning are actually needed for the balance of this journey.  When you approach life from this perspective, you understand that each challenge brings in an experience.

Each experience brings more maturity, skills, and values into your life.

“Strength does not come from winning.  Your struggles develop your strengths.  When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength” – Mahatma Gandhi

Sometimes the new reality seems to be two steps backwards.  You have choices as to how you handle that.

• You can rail against life, God, and the world.
• You can fight it tooth and nail and refuse to accept it.
• You can just sit on your butt and scream until the cows come home.
• Or you can accept it and figure out what your next step is.

What you do next is what matters most.  It’s the courage to continue, one step at a time, one day at a time.  It’s that next step forward.

“Some failure in life is inevitable.  It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default” – J.K. Rowling

You could probably write down a long list of failures in your life.  Some small and some so large they almost buried you under the grief and negative emotions of “not enough”.  You are not someone to sit around in sackcloth and ashes bemoaning the unfairness of life.

You are out there picking up courage wherever it can be found.  You realize how much worse your life would be, if you were home just sitting on the couch and not even trying.

“I’m not sure if resilience is ever achieved alone.  Experience allows us to learn from example.  But if we have someone who loves us – I don’t mean who indulges us, but who loves us enough to be our side – then it’s easier to grown resilience, to grow belief in self, to grow self-esteem.  And it’s self esteem that allows a person to stand up” – Maya Angelou

Every single failure should be proudly worn on a necklace as badges of courage.  You have towered over your circumstances each and every time.  Embrace the beauty that your life is reflecting.

Shine Your Light, Transform The Darkness

 

“Transformation is often more about unlearning then learning” – Richard Rohr

When you were a little child you started forming your values based on how you were raised.  As you grew older those values grew, changed and transformed based on your experience of life.  Those values influence what you focus on as being important.  They influence how you live your life.  They reflect the reality you perceive and the behaviors you demonstrate in the daily living of your life.

“A mistake is an accident.  Cheating and lying are not mistakes, they are intentional choices.  Stop hiding behind the word mistake when you get caught” – The Coach from Raise Your Mind

Being imperfect, you will make mistakes along the way.  You will make bad decisions, bad choices.  Some of those will be intentional based on your fears.  Some you won’t realize are intentional.  This is because your subconscious is self-sabotaging you due to its fear of what might happen if you do the right thing.

Your values if you have chosen them intentionally, will assist you in your life journey to achieve the goals you set for yourself. Your values will also excuse or accuse your bad decisions.  This is because your values can validate the difference between the simple wrong choice, and the times self-sabotage intentionally made that wrong choice.  It is up to you to try, or not try to do better in the future.

At first the goals we form are all education types of choices.

• Do you finish high school?
• Do you go to college or a technical school?
• What kind of career to you want?
• Do you want to get married and settle down to have a family?
• Do you want to travel and experience life and settle down later?
• Does life happen for you or to you?

Unforeseen tragedies can shift your values and focus, such as when my nephew was murdered.  Any kind of major unexpected life event can significantly transform your life.  In my case, LemonadeMakers was a direct result of my own life event.

“The Hero’s Journey is a concept to describe people’s self-perception when they are in a growth process” – Unknown

When life events cause you to question everything in your life, you have entered upon a Hero’s Journey.  It is common for fears to crop up.  Grief creates a whirlpool of emotions, you blame yourself for everything falling apart.  You question all of your life values as being incomplete, unstable, and not good enough.  You push feelings deep down inside of you.

“Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others choices make us” – Richie Norton

Transforming your life is a process with a lot of ups and downs.  Intentional living can help you to sort out what values you are keeping and what values you are letting go as they were adopted as habits from those you lived with.  What’s vitally critically important is that you stop standing in the ruins of your life.

Acknowledge the impact of what happened.  Make choices that mean something for you in your life and “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”.

• Choose to live by choice,, not by chance
• Choose to make changes, not excuses
• Choose to be motivated, not manipulated
• Choose to be useful, not used
• Choose to excel, not compete
• Choose to live with self esteem, not self pity
• Choose to listen to your inner voice of intuition, not the random opinion of others

“Transformation isn’t sweet and bright. It’s a dark and murky, painful pushing. An unraveling of the untruths you’ve carried in your body. A practice in facing your own created demons. A complete uprooting, before becoming” – Victoria Erickson

The thing that you fear the most isn’t powerful in and of itself. Your being in fear of it is what makes it seem powerful. Facing the truth instead of pushing it away, takes your power back from the fear.  The Hero’s Journey is a time of self reflection.

“I traded easy answers for honest questions.  Replaced being judgmental with open-hearted curiosity.  Stopped warring with myself and found peace with others.  I burned all the old maps and then discovered my true path” – John Mark Green

Run to whatever inside of you is hiding. Pay attention to what is triggering responses inside of you. Who or what is making you angry? What is triggering the arguments you are having with others? That is what you need to follow, to find the honest answers about what inside of you is calling out for transformation.

“It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that’s where transformation happens. That’s how change occurs” – Jillian Michaels

This can be viewed as a spiritual journey.  It is a path of recovery of those values that you should keep, and a time of personal growth for the new values that come from the release of past negative beliefs and actions you have uncovered in your transformation journey.  Through the struggle of uncovering the false beliefs and values in your life you gain strength to continue your journey.

“Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional” – Glenda Cloud

It is comparable to when the caterpillar has transformed into the butterfly in the chrysalis and is ready to break out and take flight.  There is first the struggle to break out of the chrysalis and then spread the wings to dry – this process strengthens the wings allowing the butterfly to gain the strength to actually fly.

The past couple of years has challenged all of us.  This has been an unforeseen tragedy for everyone.  There has been drastic changes in being forced to stay home.  Work from home.  Loss of income.  If you are a first responder the fear of contracting the virus, both for yourself and your loved ones.  Not being able to hold funerals for those loved ones that passed away.  Children staying home from school and being home schooled by parents.  So many challenges and struggles that will be continuing for some time in the future.  Just not knowing what’s next.

These challenges create a lot of frustration and other negative emotions.  It certainly impacts your values.

• How do you cope?
• How do make sure you have the “right” attitude for what comes up for you?
• How do you come out of this transformational fires burning away all that doesn’t belong (old values) to you?

Are You Inviting Hope Into Your Life?

“Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams.  Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential.  Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do” – Pope John XXIII

You may at this moment be facing a similar landscape in your mind.  Your mind is filled with fears of:

• I can’t . . ,
• I must not . . ,
• I don’t think I can . . ,
• It’s safer not to look . . , think . . , see . . ,

How do you embrace hope instead?  You begin small and when the mind says “I can’t” or “I don’t” you replace those thoughts one by one as they appear.  You approach it as a curious question, “I wonder what if?” I did this, or said that?  Then as you strengthen those hopeful thoughts you can begin to replace them with:

• I will  . . ,
• I can . . ,
• I must . . ,

Hope is stronger than fear and you can fill your hopeful space with courage to forge ahead into the great unknown.  To explore all of the possibilities of a moment, and choose the one that fills your heart with the most hope.

Choices

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears” – Nelson Mandela

Every morning you have a choice.  You can rise up with the light laughing at the fears you had last night.  Or, you can roll over whining and cowering in fear, as your mind carries you deep down into the darkness.

Every day you can hug the world with a great big bear hug.  Or, you can curse the world because you don’t yet have want you want, or need from it.

Every evening you can dream big dreams, longing to give more laughter, joy, and love to the world.  Or, you can dream nightmares where you are all alone, abandoned and just waiting for death to take you away.

“Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself” – Tony Benn

Emotions

Emotions can heal you or control you.  Fear based emotions are toxic.

• Fear kills dreams
• Fear kills hope
• Fear ages you beyond your years
• Fear holds you back from living up to your potential
• Fear can paralyze you so that you don’t reach out for your dreams

Emotions are fueled by your perceptions of what is happening.  You have a choice to perceive what is currently happening in your life as a train wreck, the worst trip of your life.  Or, as a learning opportunity; a mission to where no one has gone before; an adventurous quest in which you find your purpose in life.  Your perceptions reflect the reality that you are creating.

Positive emotions are creative emotions.  When you look at your world through the lens of love, you become creative.  Singing, painting, writing poetry, dancing, crafting beautiful objects out of your imagination.  Love is the passionate search for your own personal truth.  A calling down deep within your soul longing to be expressed.  It’s a part of God, and it is an act of reaching out to the greater good.  That is what births hope.

Hope is the Pearl born from Fear

“Hope is the only thing stronger than fear” – Unknown

It’s a funny thing how fear and hope are connected.  It is like the oyster which takes an irritating grain of sand and turns it into a pearl.  Fear is the oyster who is afraid of the hope that the sand is bringing to the oyster.  So it coats it over and over, hoping to bury it and by seeming accident it creates something beautiful.  Inside of every fear you have is that grain of sand.  Irritating you to make another choice.  You keep trying to cover it over, but eventually the fear is broken open and there in the middle of the shell is the beautiful pearl just waiting to be plucked out.

It’s an interesting dichotomy that both fear and hope are entwined together.  Where you find one, you will always find the other.  It’s just a matter of looking back at your past experiences.  Follow the thread of how fears are born from uncertainty.  You might be learning something new.  You are afraid to fail.  Fears becomes that irritating grain of sand.

But as you learn and take in knowledge about it, you start to gain some experience of what this is going to be like.  That grain of sand starts getting a coat of confidence.  You start to gain some confidence that you can figure this out.  You acknowledge that you will make mistakes.  But those failures or mistakes can actually provide vital information.  Another coat of confidence coats that grain of sand.

If you understand that every experience is in fact a learning tool, it will in turn build more confidence.  Slowly those fears of failure turn into hope that you haven’t bit off more than you can chew.  Hope provides even more confidence and slowly the uncertainly disappears.  Your grain of sand has become a pearl of wisdom and dreams being fulfilled.

What is Shaping your Future – Fears or Hope?

“When it rains look for rainbows.  When it’s dark look for stars” – Unknown

Always look for the reasons to smile.  My sister and I were talking earlier about the Covid-19 and how the enforcement of staying at home has been affecting people.  A friend of hers back east has lost three friends to suicide in the past few weeks.  It has certainly been a trying experience for a lot of married couples.  Jada Pinkett Smith was talking about her marriage to Will Smith and how she has now realized that she doesn’t really “know” her husband at all, even after 25 years.   She says that she goes straight to “fight” and that isn’t an option when you are forced to remain at home under quarantine.  They are choosing to  “go through some stuff” and become best friends again.

It is raining right now.  Are you looking for rainbows?  When the darkness comes into your head and heart, do you look for the stars?  Again look back at the cover photo – are you choosing to see the beautiful green meadow with the sun shining through the fog – or, are you choosing to just see the rain and the darkness of your life’s current event. When you look back at the cover photo do you only see the reflection of the death of everything in it?

Don’t be afraid of your fears.  They are a sign post telling you that something is coming into your life that is going to change everything.  Instead of feeling a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, imagine that your fear is in fact anticipation.  The anticipation of opening that oyster to find a beautiful pearl just waiting for you to pluck it up and wear it proudly.

Never let fears stop you from pursuing your dreams.  Don’t let your fears of what might happen, mean that you don’t make anything happen.  Come join us for our next Zoom call.  Bring all of those creative “hope” juices to the table and let’s see what we can make.

Living From A Place of Surrender

“A crisis creates the opportunity to dip deep into the reservoirs of our very being, to rise to levels of confidence, strength, and resolve that otherwise we didn’t think we possessed” – Jon M Huntsman Sr.

Crisis gives you the opportunity to get unstuck.  To actually get up and do something more.  To open up the door to bigger things in your life.  A crisis gives you the keys to open the cage of mediocrity.  It gives you the opportunity to discover:

• If you are really committed or just interested?
• Do you want to be the hero, or the person who stands there and thinks, “somebody should do something”?
• Are you ready to choose extraordinary?

When you have a crisis in your life, no matter what kind of crisis it is, there is always hope.  From the space of hope and faith, you can choose to turn it into an open door of opportunity.  The danger comes when instead, you are experiencing a closed door of suffering.

“Sometimes our lives have to be completely shaken up, changed, and rearranged to relocate us to the place we’re meant to be” – Quotes & Thoughts

One of the lessons you can learn in times of crisis is the wisdom of not knowing. Daniel Boorstin said, “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”  In order to make the best decision in a time of crisis you have to let go of what you think of as normal.  Normal doesn’t work in times of crisis.  By adopting the wisdom of not knowing you will be better equipped to navigate the changes that the crisis will make as it passes through your life.

“In times of crisis, it’s always better to hop out rather than staying stuck in the chaotic life.  At such times, one must form a steadfast resolution to live liberated, whatever be the situation” = Unfathomed Liberal Words

Times of crisis require you to be more open, curious, flexible, and expansive.  Openness is a key that opens doors to learning new ways to do things.  It opens the door to creativity.  When you allow fears to keep you in contraction and frozen, you are experiencing the closed door of suffering.  It takes courage to keep the door open.  To forget what you think you know, so that new knowledge can be accepted and adapted to what is needed in times of crisis.

Look at what this current crisis is engendering around medical supplies.  Everyone is making face masks and shields and discovering better ways to protect the front line doctors and nurses during this pandemic.  Scientists are working hard in finding a vaccine.  When this crisis has ended the things learned will help millions of people in the future to be better prepared for the next pandemic.

“It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature.  Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment” = Bram Stoker, Dracula

Resilience is a key factor when in times of crisis.  Resilience is what allows you to use the crisis in your personal growth.  When you are in times of personal struggle, it becomes somehow easier to let go of the things that are no longer serving you.  For example, you might have things that you have held on to from an emotional attachment, but they don’t serve you in any way.  They just take up space in the “closet”.  Resilience gives you the space to do the inside work.

“The time of crisis is a bell to adaptation.  The time of crisis is the one, when your growth is the fastest.  The time of crisis teaches you not to sweat away, the next time it appears” – IshitaG.

Doing the inner work is what opens up the space for grace and clarity.  When you are seated in the space of grace, you are seated in your soul.  The outside world can continue to be in turmoil, but if you are seated in your soul, it no longer impacts you in the same way.  From the “breath of acceptance” you can acknowledge what is wrong and starting working on adapting what you already know.  You can figure out how to blend in the concept of being open for learning and the concept of approaching that space from a state of clarity.  You will intuitively know what is now most important.

“A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry.  It gives a chance, an opportunity, to choose well or to choose badly” – Desmond TuTu

In times of crisis you have a choice to not react to all of the negativity.

• For every negative thought you have, replace it with three positive thoughts.  It’s a great practice and if you are consistent, it will make a dramatic shift to a more positive life.
• Create some new mantras around positive thoughts you want to embody in your life.
• Relax and let go of the negativity, both mentally and physically.  Practice tightening a muscle group and then relaxing it.  Do this for your whole body.  As you relax each group, you settle further into a deep relaxation.

When you make these practices part of your life, you not only improve your inner state, you impact your health too.  When your inner state is in a place of grace and clarity, it gives you the space to deal with whatever is happening in your outer world.  You grant yourself the gift of moving forward with courage instead of hiding in fear and contraction.  You make better decisions when your inner space is in a place of peace and harmony.  Remember that you always have a choice – you can impact your outer world, or you can be impacted by it.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.  Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less” –Elephantontheroad.com

All of my favorite books and movies have some things in common.  The characters are all curious.  They want to understand how and why things are the way they are.  They are courageous and not afraid to do the hard things.  Because of these two things their characters grow in meaningful ways.  This is a time in your life for you to be both curious and courageous.  Open the doors to resilience and allow the space of “not knowing”.  Start learning what is needed to grow your inner self in this time of crisis.  Times of crisis gives you fertile soil.  It is the best ground to grow from. Do not let this opportunity pass you by.

Choose To Live By Your Choices, Not Chance

 

365 days a year LemonadeMakers posts a blog about something positive and potentially life changing.  I write about my own life, the struggles I’ve had and the struggles I am in the middle of.  I write about the beliefs I’ve come to adopt.  I write a lot about change and transformation.

“You and you alone make the decision as to how you view the experiences in your life and it’s important to know who you are; not to judge, not to focus on your flaws and imperfections, but to discover who you want to be and decide if you’re living by choice or chance” – Live Purposefully Now

It started with my nephews murder and my writing myself out of a dark time.  Right now we are all dealing with some aspect of the Covid-19 in our lives as well as the “normal” life lemons that show up for all of us.

“Choice is the most powerful tool we have.  Everything boils down to choice.  We exist in a field of infinite possibilities.  Every choice we make shuts an infinite number of doors and opens an infinite number of doors.  At any point we can change the direction of our lives by a simple choice.  It is all in our hands, our hearts, and our minds” – tinybuddha.com

LemonadeMakers just recently hit the milestone of 100,000 likes/follows on our page.  In connection with that milestone I asked for some comments about how LemonadeMakers has impacted your lives.  Some of you responded and it made us so happy to see that LemonadeMakers was able to have a positive impact for you.

Just three of the many comments received:

• “I started following this page . . ,  It brought hope, inspiration, power to have control of my life again.”
• “You have encouraged me on many levels. From story to questions, you have made me think and feel. I love that you are constantly improving and sharing the moments in life that seem vulnerable yet they strengthen you.”
• “I have drawn inspiration for the day from many of your posts and have tried to make several of them a habit of my daily practice . . , much to my personal joyfulness (and hopefully, others around me as well).”

“Every morning you have two choices:  Continue to sleep with dreams or, Wake up and chase your dreams.  The choice is yours . . ,”  – Unknown

“Life isn’t always easy.  I struggle day to day.  But I choose to live life to the fullest and keep reminding myself that I am stronger than anything that stands in my way”  – Tanya Masse

I have been thinking about how while we have reached this 100,000 milestone, most of the people who have become fans don’t see our posts.  On an average day less than 2,000 people see our posts reflected in their daily feed.  I get complaints from both friends, relatives, and fans that Facebook doesn’t show LemonadeMakers on their news feed.  LemonadeMakers wants to support you during the struggles of your daily life.  In order to support more positivity in your life, here is how you can make sure that Facebook is reflecting LemonadeMakers in your newsfeed.

• If you’re not seeing any LemonadeMaker posts, go to our page and leave likes and comments on a few recent posts.
• Next go to your Facebook page. I’m going to show you how to edit your news feed for your mobile phone, since that is the most common way LemonadeMakers read our posts.

To edit your News Feed preferences on your phone:

• Tap the 3 lines at bottom right corner of the Facebook app.
• Scroll down to Settings & Privacy.
• Tap Settings.
• Scroll way down to News Feed Settings.
• Tap News Feed Preferences.
• Tap Prioritize who you see first
• When you start to scroll down the icons for your friends, family etc. . , a search button will display
• You can simply touch the icon/face and a star button is attached to the photo.

(I suggest at this point you type in LemonadeMakers, because if you are like me you have hundreds of friends and pages you have liked over the years).  You are limited to 30 picks for prioritizing who you are seeing first.

Your selections aren’t ranked #1, #2, etc.   It is random how it comes up.

Notifications:  If you really don’t want to miss LemonadeMakers posts, you can get notified each time we post.

• Click on notifications settings
• Go down the Pages you follow
• You can turn on/off allow notifications
• You can turn on/off to receive it as a Push
• You can turn on/off to receive it as a Email
• You can turn on/off to receive it as a SMS

Please note that we do post more than one post a day, so if notifications annoy you, don’t activate this.

On the Facebook mobile application on the bottom right hand part of the screen is a little bell – if you click on the bell it takes you to all of your notifications.  You will see not only a LemonadeMakers notification, but any friend requests, birthdays and people who are asking you to like their pages.  That way you can find us really easy if you missed our posts when they popped up.

Hopefully this helps you stay connected with us.  Another way to stay connected is our monthly Zoom call.  Click in the box below to register.  We have a lot of fun conversation.  I bring some ideas and everyone has the opportunity to join in the conversation or to just sit back, relax and listen.

“It’s not circumstance.  It’s not chance.  It’s the choice we make that determines the destiny of life”  – RVM

 

Start Walking, Be Aware, Watch For Possibilities

“It is not the perfection of one’s life but the direction of a life that provides evidence of regeneration”  = John Macarthur

My mother had this habit of saying that she was working on “getting it all together”.  One day I found this cute little card and I had to buy it for her.  It had the picture of a tall filing cabinet with the drawers partially open.  There were files half way out of the cabinet with the papers spilling out of them.  In one of the filing cabinets was a mouse going through the files looking for something.  The caption read “I finally got it all together, but I forgot where I put it.”

“Happiness is not perfection.  It’s looking past imperfection and see the beauty of life” – Surbhi Bhosie

Your life will not be fully lived if you are waiting on getting “all of your ducks in a row.”  You have to begin where you are.  Like the momma duck you need to starting walking and have faith that the ducks will line up behind of you.  There is a joke about how when you finally got your ducks all in row, you’ll discover that they’re not even your ducks!  It isn’t about perfection.  It’s about creating something, anything that gets your closer to your dreams and goals.

Never Turn Away

It has been said, “If you want to get your ducks in a row, you must first get your head above water.”  We are living in a world that is becoming hard to recognize as anything normal.  If you work in sports, entertainment, retail, the restaurant industry, the travel industry – you may have lost your income.  You may still be employed but working from home with children driving you to distraction.  You may be caring for elderly parents terrified that they will get this virus.  In one week you have decided that being a couch potato and binging on T.V. isn’t as relaxing as it sounds.

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect, it simply means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections” – Iliketoquote.com

So with everything in your life going sideways or upside down, how do you find beauty in a world that feels like it is breaking apart?  By creating beauty in the world, wherever you find yourself.  There is an artist that did this magnificent beadwork on canvas, and then she tore it to explose of the beauty hidden underneath.  When you find yourself feeling broken, remember to look for the beauty in the brokeness.

“I realized that to be more alive I had to be less afraid.  So I did it.  I lost my fear and gained my whole life” – Mantraband.com

In mosaics there is great beauty by taking the broken pieces and creating a new piece of art.  It tells a story.  Instead of throwing away the broken things in your life, look for ways to incorporate them into a new meaning.  Don’t abandon your dreams and goals for 2020.  Just look for new creative ways to keep growing your comfort zone and reveal the beauty of hidden possibilities and potential.

Focus

“The road remains wide open while your dreams are alive, only fear can block the way” – Fratley

What is it that you are currently focusing on?  That is the direction you will find yourself heading.  Years ago I was driving home from work one night.  I saw that the car coming towards me had wandered into my lane.  I quickly steered my vehicle off onto the shoulder of the road.   The driver of the oncoming car continued crossing over into my direction.  I could not get out of his way and he hit the side of my vehicle on the drivers side just past the passenger door.  My vehicle was bouncing back and forth, from side to side.  For a moment I thought I was going to roll the vehicle over.

I was sitting in my car, trying to calm my heart down and he came running back to my car.  He kept repeating over and over how sorry he was.  Apparently he was looking at the concrete wall that had been built into the hillside of a new subdivision and was not paying attention to where he was steering.  When you look off to the side of the road, you will unconsciously steer in the direction that you are looking.  By the time he realized he was going to hit me it was too late.  He had not only left his lane, he had crossed completely through my lane and hit me off the road on the shoulder.

 

That is why focus is so important.  It is so easy to swing the pendulum from one side to the other and not be grounded in the present.   If you are too far to the right you might ask yourself:

What is running through your mind as the hamster wheel endlessly spins?  Is it negative mind talk or positive “I can do this” thoughts?  Have you basically already surrendered your life to fear and anxiety? Instead of listening to the minds endless list of “I can’t because thoughts”  what if you turned the sentence around to view it with curiosity – “how can I?”

• I can’t do this because . . . , change to: I wonder how I could do this?
• I can never get anything right . . , change to: I wonder why I think I can’t get anything right?  When did I start thinking that?
• I won’t ever be good enough . . , change to: What is my definition of “good enough”?  Where did I get that definition?  If my best friend or my child told me that sentence what would be my response back to them?  Why don’t I say that to myself?
• Someone will always be better than me . . . , Change to:  answer back  “so what?”  “Who cares?”  I am better than someone and someone else is better than me.

Just Go For It!

“Life is a balance of holding on and letting go” – Rumi

Right now there is a lot of things that you can’t control.  Right now there is a lot of unknowns about what is going to happen next.  The world is shifting and transforming right in front of you.  Instead of feeling like running around and screaming “the world is falling” what if you just got still?  If you just took a deep breath in and let it out slowly over and over until your mind quiets down?  What if you sat in the space of learning to live between effort and surrender?

Something important to remember is that before you try to balance anything, you need to make sure that you are on firm ground.  A steady foundation.  Ask yourself, what do I need to stay grounded, in touch, in love, connected and emotionally balanced in this moment?  You are not going to find it outside yourself.  Look within, to find it.

What if you just looked at what to let go of – all of the cursed unknowns in your life right this moment, and just surrendered them.  What if you got into the space of curiosity – of wonder  – of imagination?  What if you rethought/restructured what dream needs to take flight and just went for it right now?

Put your trust in your higher power.  Embrace change.  Embrace life.  Expand instead of contract.   There is tremendous power in your dreams.  Use it to take flight.   Start by recognizing your “super powers”, your talents and then find ways to serve others by using them.  Do great work even in trying times.