Be The Change You Want To See

“Do the one thing you think you cannot do.  Fail at it.  Try again. Do better the second time.  The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.  This is your moment.  Own it”  – Oprah

In order to stand out, one must be different. I have always loved the saying “why fit in when you were born to stand out?” by Dr. Seuss. For me it was really hard to make this change, as I had spent most of my life being invisible.

I love using the analogy of a rainbow. It isn’t just made up of red, yellow, blue, green, pink, and purple. It is made up of 100 of shades of every color, and every mix of color imaginable. Take just the 1,000’s of shade combinations of purple in the rainbow. While you might think that no one will notice if one shade is not shining brightly, the rainbow is diminished in its beauty when that happens. It requires every single shade to be there, in order to be the beautiful promise of God. We require every one of you to shine brightly to deliver the promise of God, which he made when he sent you to this earth.

“Let excellence be your brand . . .  When you are excellent, you become unforgettable.  Doing the right thing, even when nobody knows you’re doing the right thing, will always bring the right thing to you”  – Oprah

At work the panel of lights over about 10 desks in a row for some reason turns itself off and on by itself.  Since we are surrounded by windows you don’t really notice as it slowly fades to the off position.  It does a gradual shut down.  But when it turns back on 20 minutes or so later, you really notice the brightness of the light.  I missed it subconsciously.  It is funny how while I always notice when the lights have turned back on, I don’t notice the gradual turning off.  I think that leadership is like this.  You may be busy doing your work and not notice right away when leadership is missing – but when it shows up, fully turned on, you notice right away.

Take Every Chance, Drop Every Fear.

“Today I close the door to my past, open the door to my future, take a deep breath and step through to a new life”  – Unknown

You actually do this every single morning.  You may not realize it most mornings.  It is only special mornings that you truly see what is happening.  The first day to a new job.  Your wedding day.  The day a divorce is final.  The day you bury someone you loved.  They are all days when you truly see the door to the past shutting behind you.  And although you may only have a glimpse through this door to the future, you know that everything will be forever changed.

“Your teacher can open the door, but you must enter by yourself” – Chinese Proverb

If you are lucky you have teachers, mentors or coaches throughout your life.  You have them as children, and if you continue to all of secondary education you have them as adults.  But there comes a time when you leave school behind you.  I am mostly self taught.  I dropped out of high school to get married.  My parents never encouraged us to go to college.  They felt that it would take us away from God.  What I did have in my favor was I was smart and I loved learning.  Since I started reading I have read several books a week.  I would alternate between books that took me to a fantasy world where I could solve the murder; or have an adventure in space; or fight the barbarians in medieval times.  And then I would read a book that would teach me something I didn’t know.  I’ve been that way my whole life.

I knew my lack of an education was perceived as a liability (even to my subconscious), so I had to kick open doors to get them to let me show them what I could do.  I also equipped myself by taking a lot of classes online and job related adult education courses, that taught me what I needed to advance in my career.  I started out as a bookkeepers assistant.  I move up to accounting.  I switched over to mortgage financing.  My career has always a series of doors opening to advance up the ladder.  My original goal in school was to be an administrative assistant to someone important.  I went much further than that, I became someone important who had the administrative assistant.

I discovered I had a knack for knowing what to look for in loan applications.  I could see the missing pieces in the story it told.  I could see the incongruencies.  It was almost like a spot light shined on the issue.  I got to where I could almost tell when I picked up a file that there was fraud involved or not.  My gift in seeing where the patterns were broken, has served me well.

“Your life is a result of the choices you make . . .  If you don’t like your life it is time to start making better choices” – Michelle Pennel

When my mother died my whole world fell apart.  All of her lies came spilling out of the closet containing her skeletons.  I found myself in a broken world where I didn’t trust anyone, not even God.  It took me years to close all of those doors to the past.  Years to see that the doors to the future still contained wonderful things for my life.  Years of reading books to explore the possibilities.  Years of  getting certified in Herbal Medicine, as a Reiki Practitioner, and then as a Aroma therapist.  I was looking at a second career in these fields when my nephew was murdered.  Another couple of years went by.  This time I wasn’t mad at the whole world, and I wasn’t even mad at the killer.  I was saddened by our loss, saddened that this world had lost such a special young man, who only wanted to help others have a better life.

“Deep within your soul is a door that opens into a world of wonder.  Open the door and let the magic in” – Unknown

This time I was trying to figure out what was beyond the door that my nephew had opened to me.  I knew from experience that it would require facing fears of the unknown, because every door requires something new and different from you.  Expanding your comfort zone.  Learning that you have so much more potential than you have ever given yourself credit for.  I knew that I would self create obstacles that I would find along the way.  That is how fears work.  But this door was different.  It wasn’t a small round hobbit sized door.  No this door was like the door to the giants house in Jack and the Beanstalk.  When I looked through this door I could barely figure out the table and chairs let alone what else it might contain.  This door was truly scary.

“Follow your bliss . . . , and the universe will open doors where there were only walls”  – Connie Hanks

I knew that creating LemonadeMakers was part of going through this door.  I knew that everything in my life that I had learned, experienced, literally everything I have acquired would be necessary if I walked through this door.  I had a ragged life as a child, I have had some horrible experiences as an adult.  I knew that courage would be required to use and share all of it without exception.  So I wanted to make sure before I walked through, that I wasn’t going to turn tail and run away from this opportunity.  I know from the depths of my soul, that Carl’s death opened this door.  I wanted to make sure that I had the courage and conviction that would be necessary to give to LemonadeMakers.  That I wasn’t going to try, fail, and quit LemonadeMakers.  It felt like I would be dishonoring Carl’s memory in some way if I wasn’t able to be “all in”.

“Most people will go their whole lives and never understand this feeling” – Unknown

So I started writing.  Something that my inner saboteur had kept me from doing all of my life.  I was convinced I didn’t know enough.  That I would only embarrass myself.  I was a high school drop out – that is one of my saboteurs favorite weapons.  I would like to introduce my saboteur Kami to all of you.  She knows all of my weaknesses and pokes holes in the road I travel on.  She has blown up train tracks and bridges.  She has created massive road blocks.  Sometimes it seems like it takes forever to figure out that once again, I have my foot on the gas and brakes at the same time.

When I look back on the very first things I did, it was no more than sharing a quote and a couple of sentences.  But I kept expanding what I was doing.  Then I learned how to work a couple of software programs to create the quotes with the photos.  I created a Facebook page.  My writing kept improving.  I discovered a new gift in finding the perfect photos and quotes to go together.  People started liking things.  They started commenting, then sharing.  Some people told me that my grammar and punctuation wasn’t all that great.  But I kept preserving.  I proofread over and over, but some mistakes still come through.  I learned to believe that it was ok if everything wouldn’t pass an English teachers red pen.  It was my thoughts I was trying to share, and I think that is what is most important.

“Don’t just dream of success; create a plan and act upon it!  Your momentum creates the door upon which opportunity knocks”  – Dr. Steve Maraboli

Join some of your fellow LemonadeMakers as we go through the door of new opportunities.  We have been meeting up once a month with a live Zoom call. It is a huge door of possibility.  The kind of doorway that just keeps growing wider and wider so that all of you can step inside.  When you open doors, you will find all of your fears waiting for you – but you will also find the keys to the treasures of your heart and soul.  I can promise that it will lead you to somewhere you didn’t even know existed.  The real you!

It is a free call where we open doors to discuss whatever is top of mind.  If you have been encouraged by any of my posts – If you have been moved to make a change or transform something in your life, I hope that you will attend.  Everyone is contributing with some great groundbreaking thoughts and ideas.  When we have created a good foundation, we will look at new and deeper ways that you will be able to work with us directly in your own growth.

This will be a  door that no one can shut on you – only you can shut this door.  I hope you will walk through this door with us, because we have some transformations to get done!

It’s Not The Mountain We Conquer, It’s Ourselves

Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps.  The sleeper must awaken.

  – Frank Herbert

It is kind of funny that when we at a certain stage of our journey on life’s path, we have a pat answer for what the life of your dreams is.  We would have the house in that certain neighborhood.  The beach house.  Or maybe we are a big dreamer and we wanted to own an island.  We would have that certain kind of convertible sports car.  The decked out pickup truck.  Maybe we would want a farm with race horses.  What ever the list has on it, it would all be summed up with material possessions.

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.

  – Unknown

Then something happens.  It could be the loss of everything from a flood.  It could be that our soul partner in life dies from cancer.  It could be our son or daughter is killed by a drunk driver.  Something dreadful happens and we realize that all of those “things” are not us living the life of our dreams. 

Be that strong girl that everyone knew would make it through the worst, be that fearless girl, the one who would dare to do anything, be that independent girl who didn’t need a man; be that girl who never backed down.

  – Taylor Swift

My own story comes from the murder of my nephew.  What the wake up call did for me was to realize that the life of my dreams was to contribute in some way.  I thought I would make a small change with creating LemonadeMakers.  That might contribute towards helping society shift away from the hatred and violence.  To shift away from living in fear.  To transform their lives in helping them to wake up to the truth of their own lives.

The magic recipe for living out your boldest dreams:  A pinch of delusion, a dash of audacity and a shot of courage.

  – Kirsty Spraggon

My own recipe would be to say that there really is no big secret on how to live the life of your dreams.  You just need to breathe.  Let go.  And know that this one single moment in time, is the only thing promised.  So I thought up my own magical dream bold recipe::

Dream Ingredients are like the eggs, oil and milk in a recipe that help to bind the ingredients together. Put Imagination; Inspiration; faith In a bowl and mix well.

Active Action Ingredients are like the yeast, or baking powder that cause the mixture to rise and grow outside the comfort zone.  Put Self confidence; Implementation; Determination; Action; Perseverance; Patience into another bowl and mix well.

Magical ingredients are what create the taste and flavor that is special only to you.  Put all of your time, talents, gifts, your personal genius and your inspired passion into a bowl and mix well.

Now mix all of the ingredients together whipping with clarity where needed.  Taste and add additional seasoning as needed – shots of courage – a dash of daring – a pinch of adventure – a spoonful of risk – several spoonful’s of laughter – if it doesn’t add zest to the recipe it doesn’t belong in the recipe. 

Put the mixture into the “never stop believing” pan.

Bake until the impossible has become the reality.  Share your “Never Stop Believing Dreams” with everyone you meet.  Taste their dreams. Share your best secret ingredients.  Experiment with theirs.

 The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.

  – Paulo Coelho

If you are a baker you know that timing is critical.  Solid even heating is important.  And sometimes even with the best ingredients, a soufflé falls flat.  Sometimes you realize halfway through the baking cycle, that you forgot some important ingredient.  Sometimes life just happens.  Just because the recipe didn’t work out as planned doesn’t mean that your dreams have forever fallen apart.  You can always bake a new cake or soufflé.  Your dream doesn’t need rescuing.  You just need to try again.  You can always bake a new reality.

Between your dreams and your reality, there is no distance.  There is no time.  Wake up to your dreams.  Live them as the reality that they are.

  – Unknown

What that meant for me personally was to wake up myself and realize that I wasn’t really living the life of my dreams.  I was just working to pay for stuff.  I realized that I could help others to wake up too.  To imagine a new story for all of us.  While the story is different for each of us, it begins the same.  Discover and uncover who you really are at the soul level.  It is a journey to remember who I was, before the world told me who I had to be.  To let that person come out and create your new story.  For me it has meant stepping out of my comfort zone again and again.  Following the vision, I am as surprised at who I have become.  I am amazed at who I am still becoming. 

So – follow your instincts.  Be curious.  Dream Big!  Love what you do.  Love learning.  Keep an OPEN HEART and a STRONG SPIRIT.  And Most of All – HAVE FUN!

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Freedom Is Found By Listening To The Heart

Have the courage to follow your heart & intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become . . . , almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.  Remembering that you are going to die, is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart.

  – Steve Jobs

I think that one of the hardest things for me to do is to take the time to just be.  To sit in prayer or meditation and just allow my heart to have its say.  I am so filled with doing and avoiding what really needs to be done.  The doing of things does need to happen – I have to pay my bills, read and respond to emails, write posts such as this.  I have to cook, clean and garden.  I work fulltime, so there are the hours spent there and commuting back and forth.  My elderly dad lives with me and I have to care for him.  So when I am avoiding something, like right now proof reading the final copy of my book, I am doing something like this that my mind says also needs to be done.  So allocating time to just sit and be like this photo, is hard for me.

I will persist until I succeed.  I was not delivered into this world into defeat, nor does failure course my veins.  I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd.  I am a lion, and I refuse to talk, walk, and to sleep with the sheep.  I will persist until I succeed.

  – Og Mandino

We think that it is selfish.  That it is not high on the list of necessary things to do for this day.  So when Mastin Kipp sent me an email with a version of this, I was inspired to write a post of my own. Because taking the time to find the freedom to do these things is just as important as your day job.  It is just as important as eating, and more important than cleaning the house and doing laundry.  We are not really living if we don’t take the time to do these things, we are just existing.  We are asleep when we neglect these things.  If we are truly awake, conscious and aware, then this has to be a daily part of our life.

The truth is like a lion.  You don’t have to defend it.  Let it loose and it will defend itself.

  – St. Augustine

If you want more happiness, more joy in your life, check the list to see what is missing in your daily routine.  Trust in the whispers of your heart, for it is leading you intuitively to this practice.  Follow through on your highest intentions, changing them from wishes to commitments.  Voice what matters, because if you remain silent, you are holding back from your life purpose.  Pursue your dreams.  Run after them, putting them into action.  Step by step the pursuit of your dreams leads you to have confidence that what you are bringing to the world matters.  If you have that confidence, then it doesn’t matter what other people say or do, you will stay in pursuit of accomplishing your dreams.  Fulfilling your destiny becomes a primary focus in life.

The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others.  And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion.  A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom. 

  – Osho

Forgiveness for yourself and others is necessary because we all make mistakes.  We all fall short of perfection.  Some of our friends and family may say or do something that discourages us from the pursuit of our dreams.  They don’t see or feel what you do.  So they put up road blocks thinking that they are protecting us from being hurt, when in reality they are the ones hurting us.  Try saying something like this to them that expresses compassion with what they are feeling, “What I hear is that you are in fear for me, and for yourself, in how these dreams are going to be fulfilled.  How it will impact my life, your life and our relationship.”  If we exercise empathy, we can look beyond their fears to see that they do love us.  This allows us to reconcile their actions with their intentions, and grants the space for forgiveness for any hurt we may be feeling.  Opening up the space for their heart to talk to our heart, so that they can not only hear you, but begin to understand.

Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person.  You can call it compassionate listening.  You listen with only one purpose, to help him or her to empty his heart.

  – Thich Nhat Hanh

We must do the same thing for ourselves.  Our shadows present a whole dictionary of negative comments on how our dreams are not going to happen.  They put up brick walls to protect us from ourselves.  We need to take down each brick understanding the motivation.  To exercise self love and self trust, help these gremlin shadows to see how important these dreams are.  Enlist their help for ideas on how we can safely walk the path of fulfilling these dreams, presenting a win/win for ourselves.

You will never be able to escape from your heart.  So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.

  –  Paulo Coelho

Each morning is a new day.  Each morning spend a few minutes in prayer and meditation.  Listen to the whisper of your heart.  Do today what matters most.  Breathe.  Love.  Trust.  Follow the freedom of your heart.  Use your voice boldly.  Live in freedom the life you have always imagined.

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Do Not Let Fear Hold You Back

Never let your fears hold you back from pursuing your hopes – John F. Kennedy

• How does one become fearless?
• Can you really be totally fearless?
• Would you want to?

When I think that fear is standing in the way of something that I want to do, then I need to do something to break up that fear into smaller pieces.  My own experience in life so far, has been that some measure of fear is healthy.  It helps me to not be stupid and hurt myself.  It also feeds into my spirit of victory when I accomplish something by growing through the fear and doing it anyway.

• So how do you control fear in your life?
• How do you control your life at all?
• How do you figure out what is within your control and what isn’t?

Part of it starts with understanding what is and is not under your control.  When you accept responsibility for and control over, such things as your judgments, impulses, and desires, then your life changes completely.  These are things that are within your ability to control.

If you try to control other things beyond your control, that is when you just get weighed down. It is like trying to swim with cement shoes, it isn’t going to end well.

Here’s the truth about big life changes:  some people won’t come with you.  and that’s okay – Early Mama

You can’t control our reputation because it is based on exterior things that are beyond our control.  We can’t control the spin that other people put upon what we say or do.  We can however, chose to take the high road and not get mired down in the drama.  How many times have things you have said or done been taken out of context and used against you?  You will be driven crazy trying to control stuff like that.

Your anxiety or getting angry about it doesn’t make it go away.  It doesn’t suddenly become something that you can control.  All it does is make you unhappy and destroy your peace of mind.  You have the choice of continuing to self-inflict injuries upon yourself by trying to control it, or you can let it go.  Realize that in the end, people will either recognize you for who you really are, or they won’t.  It is not something within your control.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid? – Thegoodvibe.co

The realization that what other people do is not your job to control, and you can’t make them change, will shift your world completely.  You begin to focus on walking your own path.  You are no longer trying to control another person’s journey.  With your focus on your journey, the ups and downs of life even out.  Your path becomes more serene.  You aren’t trying to avoid drama; you are just not drawing it into your world.  If something comes into your space, you just take a few deep breaths, let go of any desire to change someone’s else’s journey and keep walking drama free.

What is amazing is that we also have the ability to shift the memories we have into ones that don’t create a negative emotional response inside of us.  Our brain allows us to recall memories and reconsolidate them.  This means that we can take a childhood memory and add new information that wasn’t available to us as children.  We can turn fearful memories into fearless ones.

Everything we want is on the other side of fear – Jack Canfield

My sister Julie for example is a real scaredy cat.  She jumps at anything.  When she was a teenager, there was a movie that came out with a ventriloquist dummy that was a horror show.  She was watching T.V. alone late at night and the commercial came on for the movie.  She was terrified that it was coming after her.  So, she went to my parents’ bedroom door, opened it and called for my mom.  My parents’ bedroom was up some stairs, and their bed was against the railing of the stairs.  So, my mom leaned over the railing to tell my sister to be quiet, so she didn’t wake up our dad.  When my sister saw a head looming down the staircase she screamed and fell over backwards, falling down the couple of stairs that she had started up.  Needless to say, my dad was woken up – lol.

My sister as an adult can laugh at this story and it is no longer scary, because she has new information available to her, that her teenage self didn’t have.  We can do this with any scary memory that we have.  Update our memory with new information.

Life is like a game.  You can play it safe and be good, or you can take a chance and be great – iliketoquote.com

With visualization we can do the same thing to our future.  We can see into our future regarding something that we are scared of.  We can go through the experience step by step over and over again in our mind.  We can cross over from being fearful of the situation to being confident of it.  This is exactly what Olympic Athlete’s do.  They see themselves performing their routines perfectly over and over again.  They have hooked up machines to them and discovered that the muscles of the athletes are actually firing just like they were physically doing the routine when they are just using visualization.  The more they do this, the better their skills become.

I am the master of my habits – #Goalgetter

So, break down the walls of fear that you built to keep you safe.  Start believing and visualizing your dreams coming true.  Take a practice run to see what you can do with the ropes of safety.  Then expand that with visualization.  Then go for the life you have been dreaming of living.  Don’t let fear hold you back.  Go become the person that you have never been, but wished you were.

All Things Are Possible

Never settle.  Fight for the life, the career, the dreams, the love that you deserve.

  – Mandy Hale

Women cry not just when they are sad.  They cry when the are angry, frustrated, and misunderstood.  They also cry when they are in joyous exultation, happy beyond bearing.  When a divine truth enters a woman’s life, it strips her bare.  These are tears that need to be honored.  It is time to say goodbye to something that no longer bears the resonance of truth for us.  It is time to say hello to a new truth.  Playing with the fire of truth, we burn away the parts that no longer belong and refine what remains.

I will not trade my authenticity for your approval.

  – Wild Woman Sisterhood

I went to see the Wonder Woman movie this past weekend.  I enjoyed it, as I watched her face her idealisms being shattered.  I watched her as she refined herself, her purpose in her life.  The decision she made to leave the island.  The decision she made to liberate the village.  The life changing decision that she made in facing up to Ares and his taunts.  Ares demonstrated in front of her that mankind wasn’t worth her sacrifices.  I loved the principle that was celebrated, that it really didn’t matter if the people were judged as being worthy of her sacrifice.  She wasn’t their judge about such things.  She was doing what she did for her own beliefs that she held sacred. 

Transformation is the journey you are on.  You are exploring the wisdom of your soul.  You are shedding old ways and beliefs that no longer fit who you are becoming.  Be brave, dear one.  You are becoming your authentic self.

  – Unknown

It reminded me of when you are walking down the street and you see homeless people panhandling.  Many would say, “they are not worthy of our hard earned money”.  That, “they will just use it for drugs or alcohol”.  That somehow, “they deserve the situation that they have landed themselves in”.  My hope is that this movie gets us to rethink about the automatic judgments we make.  The condemnations that we believe we are justified in holding.  That we open our hearts instead to look for a different way.  A better way to help those who have lost their way.  We can’t change their lives for them, they have to do that.  But we can give them a helping hand, a hand up, not just a hand out.  That we can help to empower them to see, that they are worth something still.  That they have a powerful story that can help save others.

 If you are not free to be who you are, you are not free . . .

  – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

There are days when the frustrations of running up against road blocks make you want to blow up the road, and disappear into the wilderness.  You can’t let those days make you run away.  There are too many people out there that are looking to you to show them the way to follow their dreams.  Hold on to sisters who are fellow dreamers and action takers.  When your flame is being blown out, they will shelter you from the wind.  They will help you to regroup.  They will be your saving grace to keep you from going dark.  Each time we get into a level of frustration that has us wanting to “tap out” of life, we need to reassess what we are doing.  If the actions we are taking are not getting us where we desire to go, then we need to reassess and regroup.  What else is possible?  How can we redefine what we are doing? 

It takes 4 weeks for you to notice a change.  It takes 8 weeks for your friends to notice.  It takes 12 weeks for the rest of the world to notice a change.  It takes 1 day to decide that you are enough.

  – Unknown

I wonder how many times our change actually took place, and we stopped working on it on week 3 because we couldn’t see it happening?  Maybe you have achieved something new, and then you threw away because you were still looking at yourself through the old filter.  You couldn’t see what you had actually accomplished, so you just went back to the same old you? 

Don’t wait until you’ve reached your goal to be proud of yourself.  Be proud of every step you take toward reaching your goal.

  – Unknown

 Imagine you have a potters wheel in front of you.  You are sculpting a bowl.  You look at it and it isn’t what you were trying to make.  Do you take the clay and throw it against the wall?  Do you blame the clay or the wheel for not producing your work of art the way you wanted it to be?  Or do you simply squish it back down and start over?  If our bowl is to be molded to what we want, maybe we just look for ways to do it differently.  What can we add, or take away?  Go faster or slower spinning the wheel?  More or less water?  Create definitions higher or lower?  We have millions of choices to get where we are trying to go.  We also have millions of chances and changes to make in getting us there. 

Transformation is often more about unlearning, then relearning.

  – Richard Rohr

I always think about babies for this.  They learn to roll over to change what they can see or touch.  Then they learn how to get their legs underneath them so that they can move them and learn to crawl.  Then they start using leverage against furniture to get them to stand up on their legs.  Then they start walking and from there they start running, climbing and jumping.  Each step fed into the next step.  They don’t crawl once they have learned to walk.  They let go or unlearn the crawling piece as they transform how they get around the room by walking, running, climbing and jumping. 

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

  –  Socrates

In this same way, each new thing we learn essentially replaces a previous truth.  At one time I was a roller, then a crawler, then I let those old truths be replaced with the next level of learning.  All of those old levels of learning were necessary to get me where I am today.  But they are not what is going to get me where I am going tomorrow.  When the new door of opportunity for learning and growth opens up, go through the door.  Don’t stay a roller or a crawler, stuck in a cramped space that no longer allows any room for new growth.  Don’t settle.  Shoot for the stars.  Any time we find ourselves stuck in a cramped space and not growing, we need to accept responsibility for being there.  In some way we are inhibiting our growth and transformation.  Then step through the door to growth and transformation.  Adjust your sails to catch the wind and fly across the waves.

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask.  Everything you want also wants you.  But you have to take action to get it.

  – Jack Canfield

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Relax Into Surrender And Receive What Is Promised

“Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is?  What could be more insane than to oppose life itself which is now and always now?  Surrender to what is.  Say “yes” to life and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you”  – Eckhart Tolle

When you are in resistance to something you expend a lot of energy trying to stop something that can’t be stopped.

Imagine that you are holding a rubber band as far as it can be stretched.  At some point one of two things are going to happen.  The band will experience fatigue, break and snap your hands painfully, or you will let it go, releasing the tension.

If you find yourself exhausted every single day, you might want to check to see what you are creating resistance to.

What inner conflict and struggle is going on in your life?  What rigid habits or mind sets do you have which are in conflict with your journey?

Relax and tune into your inner guidance.  Follow where your intuition leads.  Then gently let go of what is creating this tension, the thing that is no longer serving you.  Experience the joy of renewed energy when you are in the flow of your life path.

Part of the process of learning to surrender to what is, is the process of learning to love who you are in this moment.  Accepting yourself with all of your imperfections actually empowers you to grow into your potential.

It is kind of opposite of what you may think.  You put yourself down thinking that condemning parts of yourself, is the way to change those parts of you that aren’t perfect.

Think of a metal spring.  Hold it between two of your fingers, pressing your fingers together so that it is totally compacted.  No space left.  This is how you treat yourself.  Like the expression, “too tightly wound”.  You compress your feelings, your desires.  You hold fingers tightly thinking that it puts you in control.  That you can force yourself to hide the parts you don’t want others to see.

“The greatness of a man’s power is in the measure of his surrender”  – William Booth

But at some point, your fingers are going to get tired.  When that happens you are going to let go of that spring.  Then that spring is going to bounce all over the room.

When that happens, you create a pattern of self-sabotage in your life.  Your life turns into a Greek tragedy. You implode and whatever you were trying to hide, will expose itself in a big way.

But what if instead of trying to hold tightly to the spring, you released the tension just a little bit?  Then a little bit more and more, until there is no tension left.  You find the spring just stands there, perfectly balanced.

By surrendering to who you really are, you empower yourself to become better.  Instead of being your enemy, it becomes your teacher.  You learn to work with it, instead of fighting against it.

“Surrender requires courage.  In meditation, you confront yourself with your problems again and again until you finally understand the absolute need to let go.  Otherwise, you will continue to emphasize the lack of acceptance, regrets, pain . . .   But  when acceptance comes, I can see smiles on your faces”  – Sahajananda

You can’t control other people’s actions or reactions.  You can’t really control your own.  You can learn to let go.

To be like water.  To flow through, under, over, around the obstacles in your life.

Trying to push the boulder uphill just uses up your energy and leaves you tired, angry and frustrated.  Going around the boulder and continuing down your path is much easier.  Don’t try to drag the boulder back down the hill with you.

Leave it alone.  When you surrender, you also release.  It is a do or don’t do thing.  You either surrender or you don’t.  There is no part way to surrender process.  Find the blocks and release them completely.  Or don’t.

It takes a great level of self-love and determination to live your life this way.  But it is the way to growth and change.  To be able to live life as the greatest version of your true self.

True surrender is not giving up or giving in.  It has nothing to do with failure.  It is not being defeated by something greater than you are.

It doesn’t mean that you become welcome mats and let everyone wipe their feet on you.

It is simply and profoundly going with the flow of life. 

Most of the rules you put into your life were built on the concept of fear.  Fear of being hurt, so you closed up.  Fear of being wrong, so you shut up.  Fear of being exposed or humiliated, so you became invisible.

Surrender is about being vulnerable to all of those fears.  To realizing that you are much stronger than you think you are.  That if the worst happens, you can live and grow through that experience in a new way.  You can transform through any experience to come out the other side, stronger and more beautiful than you were.

“The inspiration you seek is already within you.  Be silent and listen”  – Rumi

It is about accepting what is, not what you were in expectation of.  It is about letting go of the should’s and could’s, and accepting what is.  It is silencing the mind and listening to your heart and souls voice.

Go from being a “human doing” to a “human being”.  The mind is all about doing.  The heart and soul connection is all about being who you are at the center of your being.

Believe in your potential, have faith in what will be.  Like the caterpillar, have faith that when you emerge from the chrysalis an even better life will begin.

Always Believe In Yourself

Sometimes the words scatter from your mind, like leaves being tossed by the wind.  You reach out to catch them, and they skitter away, as though playing tag with you.  The words are carved into the leaves, like pain and joy, just as they are forever etched into your soul.

The leaves fall from the tree without regret.  You release them, and then quickly reach out to try to gather them back to your heart.  Even though they leave scars, they are familiar and portray themselves as your bosom friends.

Yet as time passes, you realize that you have to let the dead things go.  As the leaves fall to the earth, they cover up the path you have been walking.  They don’t want you to leave them behind.

Don’t let anything or anyone define you.  You are what you are, because of what you make of tough situations in your life – Demi Lovato

It is time to raise your eyes up to the sky.  To see that although you may have lost the path, the limbs of the trees are now bare, and you can see the hills beyond the trees.  You can see the stars up above, reminding you that life is enduring and goes on.  It is time to release the old way of life and embrace something new.  Clarity comes into our lives when we release the old.

The seeds of successful change and transformation are planted when we release the failures.  Things fall apart, so that new things can come together.

Some days breakfast should start with dessert.  When I am thinking deep thoughts about what is hanging in the balance of my life, it helps to turn things upside down.  How do you know when it is time to let go of something?  That it is truly dead?  That you aren’t giving up just at the point of when it was finally going to work and come together perfectly?

Is the greatest strength in the hanging on or the letting go?  Separation needs to happen, in order for you to come to the best decision possible.  You need to get quiet.  To go deep within.  To step outside of the expectation, the desire, the frustration, divorced from all emotions clouding your judgment.  To become still, motionless – to step into the pause between the inhale and the exhale.

Stay true to what makes you different.  As long as you’re unique, you’re irreplaceable – Olivia Wilde

• When you reach that still perfect moment, what does your heart whisper?
• What direction is your soul being called?

Return to the root of your soul.

• Build the chrysalis and go through another transformation?
• What seeds have fallen there to take root?
• What new life is sprouting?
• What new adventure is waiting there for you to discover?

Listen to the silence, and let it touch your imagination.

Watch as the wind catches your imagination and lifts off.  The leaves blow, dancing to the silent music that only they can hear.  Lifting off they uncover a new path.  You step softly onto it.  And slowly lifting your wings, you start whirling and twirling in the midnight air.

The leaves spin all around you, and you find the freedom to let them drift where they may.  No longer feeling that you have lost anything.  Realizing that it is in the separation that we become free to shed the old and transform into the new.

It isn’t saying goodbye to the old you with regret.  It is the joyous heart of welcoming the butterfly as she emerges from the chrysalis and stretches out her wings to take flight.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our sense to grow sharper – W.B. Yeats

Entelechy is an interesting word.  It is according to Wikipedia: the inner strength directing life and growth to become all one is capable of being.  Just as the acorn is the entelechy of the Oak tree, a caterpillar is the entelechy of a butterfly.

We go through transformation to release all the things that we have acquired through life that don’t really belong to us.  They aren’t part of the essence of who we really are.  So, transformation isn’t so much about changing who we are, as it is about releasing who we are not and accepting who we are.

Pay attention to what centers you, calms you, makes you feel grounded and rooted in your life.  When you go for a walk in the woods, what are you naturally drawn to?  A river or brook or even a fountain?  A meadow, an old oak tree?

The beach with the smell of the salt in the air, the wind blowing your hair, and the sounds of the surf rushing to the shore and pulling back into the ocean?  Whatever it is that says, “this is home”?  Bring more of that into your life.

Make an appointment in your calendar to take time to connect to that feeling.  It brings you back to your roots.  It is your true north.  The magnetic path that your feet want to walk.  If you can’t believe in the magic of this connection, you will never find it.

Never stop believing in yourself.  Remember that those who have succeeded will encourage you.  And those that have failed will not – Olianna Portnoy

Life’s Adventures Unlock The Mystery of Who You Are, Start Now

“If happiness is the goal, and it should be, then adventures should be a priority” – Richard Branson

Why should adventures be a priority?  Because it is the best way to learn about yourself and the world.  You learn about what you are afraid of, what challenges you.  What deep seated beliefs you have that you might not be aware of.  It is in fact the best way to experience “LIFE”.  You go somewhere you have never been.

It could be a walk in the woods around where you live.  A hike in the mountains.  A walk along the sea shore, listening to the sea birds call out over the sounds of the waves crashing against the sandy beach.  It could be your first time in an airplane or a cruise ship.  Sitting in a train, you watch the majesty of nature roll by as you cross the rocky mountains, and someplace deep inside you feel the shift.

Somewhere along the line, something will happen out of the ordinary.  You will start out on a certain kind of journey, and along the way the mystery of why you chose that path will reveal itself to you.

“As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen”  – Winnie The Pooh

What is so interesting about travel and adventure is the attitude you bring to it.  You can magnify every discomfort into an ordeal, or you can get curious about what is happening around you.  You can experience it all as an adventure.  You get out of the ruts in your life.  Adventures are the best way to let some stories happen to you.  Discover new trails you didn’t know existed.  Adventures answer questions you didn’t know you had, because with adventures you gain first hand knowledge and experience.

“The books we read answer questions we didn’t even know existed”  – Axel Marazzi

There might be switch backs along the trail and you decide to walk off the trail, and cut through straight up the mountainside.  You come to forks in the trail with no signs, so you have to choose to go this way or that way.  Sometimes the trees are so thick you can’t see the sun.

• It is in the getting lost, that you become aware of what is important.  What are you willing to do to get it?
• It is in the replacing of fear with curiosity that you truly see what your options are.
• It is in seeing the endless stream of possibilities are always there for you to see, but you get so single mindedly focused that you miss every door of opportunity.

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams”  – Oprah

Are you a planner?  I like to get into the details and have things laid out.  It took a lot of practice for me to start leaving space in my plans to just be adventurous.  My husband loves to just get in the car and take a drive.  No real destination, just drive down a road we have never taken, with no idea where it would take us.  Everyone needs someone like my husband, who grabs your arm and says lets go have an adventure.

“Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your live was meant to be”  – Steve Pavlina

Not planning gives me anxiety.  It feels unstable.  But slowly through years of practice, I allow for spontaneity in my life.  Is it easy for you to follow maps to the edges, and then step off the edge?  You know that the world isn’t flat.  You know there are no monsters of the deep to drag your boat down to the bottom of the ocean.

• Do you go to sleep with stars that you don’t recognize?
• How often do you order something you have never eaten before?
• Do you have the conviction, that whatever you are looking for in life, it is out there waiting for you to find it?

There is no end to what you can discover about yourself when you adventure out with your eyes wide open.  Let the journey unfold itself before you.

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that death will tremble to take us”  – Charles Bukowski

A lifetime of adventures

One of my favorite movies is with Diane Lane, in “Under The Tuscan Sun”.  After a bad a breakup, she is gifted with a vacation in Italy by her best friend.  While on the tour bus, they pass by this house and all of a sudden she makes them stop and let her off.  And that is when her adventure really begins.  She ends up buying the house, restoring it, and meets all of these new people.  She has this idea of what she wants in her life to make her happy – her dream life.  At the end of the movie she has everything she wanted, but it all came to her in a totally different way than she planned.

When you try to make life conform to a plan, you miss the mystery and magic of what it is really supposed to be.  The best gift you can give yourself is a lifetime of adventures.

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart” – Confucius

There is a wonderful book by Jack Canfield called “The Golden Motorcycle Club” and in it he writes that we travel in soul groups.  I can just see the ad for my soul group.

“Limitless soul seeking like minded limitless souls, to journey down to earth for a great adventure.  You will be leaving a good life here, to go for a greater experience of life there.  For in going out into the world of the physical body, you will succeed in discovering that you are far more than you ever dreamed of.  You will find that stories are not just something that you can read about.  Stories are what happens to you and for you when you live a life of adventure.  You will discover if you are, “the girl made up of adventure and wine and all things fine”, or “the girl made up of adventure, fine beer, brains and no fear”.

And so . . . the ADVENTURE BEGINS.  Let’s go do something remarkable.

Say Yes, Choose To Make A Difference, The Butterfly Effect

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.

  – R. Buckminster Fuller

I think that most of us have heard the concept of the butterfly effect.  That the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world, can cause a typhoon in another part of the world.  The concept of how making a single change in your life, effects the future of people all over the world.  Every time we make a change in our lives, it shifts who we are.  We in effect destroy the old personality, in creating a new personality.  The caterpillar creates a change by forming the chrysalis around its body.  Then the old body is completely destroyed.  A completely new body is created.  This kind of change is not temporary.  There is no going back to who you were.  Even small changes create revolutionary impacts in a persons life.  Science recognizes this as “The Law of Sensitive Dependence Upon Initial Conditions”, I like “The Butterfly Effect” much better.  LOL.

Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness yet become something beautiful.

 – unknown

I had this experience of seeing how a very simple comment, completely changed my own life.  I was at a seminar and the speaker had asked a question of the audience.  I had raised my hand.  He looked at me.  His face had that expression you get when you think you know someone, but you aren’t sure who they are.  He asked me if I had attended any of his other events, and I said yes.  This was actually my third weekend course with his group. 

One day, whether you are 14, 28 or 65, you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die.

  – Beau Taplin

The next words out of his mouth shifted my whole life into a new space of awareness.  He dramatically raised his arm and made the motion of removing a cape.  He said “You are one of those people.  I am removing your cloak of invisibility.”  With those couple of sentences, I was forever changed.  I could feel a heavy weight had been lifted off of me.  It was like a darkness was removed.  I felt like I was standing in the spot light.  I felt every person in the room see me for the first time. 

Each small act of kindness, reverberates across great distances and spans of time – affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo.

  – Dean Koontz

I had been one of those people who could disappear into a crowd.  Now I can’t do it.  It is no longer natural.  It now feels uncomfortable.  I thank Jesse Koran for listening to that intuitive voice inside of himself, and saying what I needed to hear.  It was definitely time for me to transform.  My purpose in this world was calling to me.  This was just the first of many transformations my life purpose would require of me.

A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth.  The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water.  Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts.  And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them is far reaching.

  – Swani Sivananda

What Jesse said was like a tiny grain of sand, a drop of water in the ocean, but that single action led to the creating of LemonadeMakers.  It lead to creating this blog.  It lead to my first book being written, and this summer it will be published.  It has led to a personal freedom in my life, because I finally said yes to me. I finally acknowledged that maybe I did have a gift with writing.  Now I wondered if maybe you would want to hear what I have learned through all of the lessons in my life.  That maybe, just maybe, you would be encouraged to make a shift and change in your own life.  I woke up, and I discovered that part of my own purpose in life, would be to help others wake up.

My writing had been calling out to me since I was a child.  But I was afraid to listen.  Now slowly that wall I had built between my life purpose and the life I was living, began to crumble.  With each new curious thought, I was able to remove some of that wall.  Curiosity is a huge wall demolisher.  Because it circumvents fears from stopping you.  It leads you to joyously take a risk and see what happens.  It is a prime movement of the transformation process.

By your hand millions – BILLIONS – of lives will be altered, caught up in a chain of events begun by you this day.

  – Andy Andrews

The reason why the butterfly effect is so interesting, is that I shift and transform a tiny grain of sand.  You in turn see something as small as a single sentence in this post, that causes you to shift and change one tiny grain of sand.  Your transformation, in turn inspires another to shift and change one tiny grain of sand.  Soon we have a whole mountain towering 5,000 feet in the air.  And it was built, one tiny grain of sand at a time.  One personal transformation of a small thing in your life, in the next persons life, and so on.  Until 5,000,000,000 grains of sand build a mountain.

Each of us is like that butterfly, The Butterfly Effect.  And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through out organizations, our families, and our communities.

  – Shawn Achor

At some point in our life, we start looking for our life purpose.  In looking at all of the butterfly’s around her in this photo, she finds the one that is perfect for her.  She finds her purpose in life.  While her yellow butterfly looks like many others, it is unique in its coloring.  It fits her perfectly.  She recognizes it as being hers and hers alone.  The question then becomes, what does she do with it?  Because taking up this butterfly will forever change her world.  She will grow and transform into something different and new.  She has the ability to change the world with her decision.  And the interesting thing is, that she will in fact change the world either by taking that butterfly, that purpose up or leaving it behind. 

Don’t quit before the miracle happens.

 – unknown

Every action and every non-action matters.  Every choice you make or don’t make matters.  Will you fully live your life, or just continue to exist?  Your time as a caterpillar has ended.  Will you take up your life purpose, your wings?  If you have said yes in the past, is it time to trade in the smaller wings for a large pair?  To expand your comfort zone?  To acknowledge and accept your bigger purpose in this world?

Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight.  Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.

  – Arthur C. Clarke

You might find something within this post that strikes you in a new way.  Nothing has been said here, that hasn’t been said elsewhere.  But as we grow into our life purpose, we see things differently because we are different.  So sometimes a sentence brings a new insight that we didn’t get before.  This information may or may not provide some new knowledge or understanding.  Knowledge applied becomes wisdom, so maybe something in this post served as a reminder to make a transformation.  It becomes wisdom when it transforms us in some small way.  That wisdom then provides foresight to the path that we are now walking down.  It provides a small grain of sand, to put onto our mountain top of transformation that we are building.  It tells us whether to take the right hand or the left hand of the path up ahead.

The very beating of your heart matters.  Every choice you make or choose not to make matters.  Your actions impact the world.  Choose them wisely.  Expand your comfort zone.  Seek out every opportunity to say yes to your life purpose.  Your actions will shape how your future unfolds.  Your story has been so far only one of many possibilities.  New choices, new actions, expansion, transformation – all sit in front of you at this moment.  Say yes to happiness, when your life purpose lands on your hand say yes to whatever will lead to expansion and growth.

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.

  – Charles Dickens

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There are no endings. Just New Beginnings

“Keep going.  Everything you need will come to you at a perfect time” – unknown

Just keep swimming.  The storm clouds will pass, and the sun always shines once again.  It may seem like you are walking through the valley of shadows and death alone, but that is an illusion.

There is the invisible spiritual world that is always by your side.  There are friends and relatives that may not know how to help, what to say or do – but they are cheering you on.  There are people in this world who every night pray for those who feel they are lost on life’s journey.

Just as your faith can move mountains, your doubts are what put them there.  Stop creating barriers that you have to fight to get over.

“Have the courage to make the change, the strength to see you through it, and faith that everything will turn out for the best” – unknown

Some leave you because they are not interested in a transformational journey any longer.  They wish to stay safe within their comfort zone and make no waves that might swamp their little boats.

Some you leave because you realize that you can’t continue to carry their weight and still walk your own path.  You have to cut the chains that are dragging you down.

Out of the best of motives, you find that you have done too much for someone, and you have to stop.  It only hurts them to continue.  You are not giving up on them.  It was just time to release them to their own journey, and for them to find their own way.  It is not the end of your story, just the end of their part in your story.  And that is ok.

“Note to self:  None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought.  Eat the delicious food.  Walk in the sunshine.  Jump in the ocean.  Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like a hidden treasure.  Be silly.  Be kind.  Be weird.  There’s no time for anything else” – Nanea Hoffman

If you have never read any of Caroline Myss’s books or heard her speak I highly encourage you to check out her body of work.  To me she is that really critical aunt that drove you crazy as a kid, but you learn to love and appreciate as an adult.  Because everything that she says is total reality, no sugar coating, and is the best advice that you could get.

The whole reason to be on the path to personal self-transformation is to realize that there are parts of you that are not in balance.  To learn how to bring them back out of the shadow and into the light.  You can’t do that work unless you are willing to be totally honest with yourself.

“Facing personal truths and purging yourself of addictions or manipulative habits requires strength, courage, humility, faith, and the other qualities of a soul with stamina, because you are not just changing yourself; you are changing your universe.  Change one coordinate in your spiritual compass and you change your entire life’s direction” – Caroline Myss

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

If you are willing to make a few mistakes, to have a few failures, you can learn how to release the monsters from under your bed.  You can take on one monster at a time.  You can talk to it and learn its story, its reason to exist.  They were created when you were small and most of their stories are just bits of truth wrapped up in drama, trauma, and misunderstanding.

If you can unwind the experience, you can help them take off their masks and their costumes.  You can take away their illusions.  You can help them understand that their help was exactly what we needed at the time.  You can thank them for protecting you.  And if you can change one small thing for them, you can transform their relationship with you.

One small change at a time, one degree makes all of the difference.

 

“It takes courage to grow up and become who we really are” e.e. cummings

Walking on the path of the transformation life, you sometimes find your path ends with a large body of water that needs to be crossed.  You might swim across, but sometimes that body of water has a strong current, rapids or even is close to the drop off of a waterfall.  So, swimming might seem too risky.

You could look for a way to build a bridge across.  But you might decide that you don’t have the “know how” to build a bridge.

You could build a boat to row across, but maybe you don’t have the funds to buy the lumber.

Or you could fly.

What you must never do is to be afraid of doing whatever is needed to get across that body of water.  Because the worst thing that can happen is that you build a house alongside that body of water, and never even attempt to get across.  That is guaranteed to give you a life of regrets.  To be always wondering “what if?”  What if you could have flown across?

What might you have accomplished in your life, if you had just risked continuing down the path of a transformational life?

What is necessary is that you are stronger than your excuses.  Whenever you hear yourself say the word, “but”, you need to stop what you are saying.  Because whatever follows but is an excuse.  You don’t need to unpack your backpack at the word “but” and build a home there.  What you need to do is to get a shovel and dig under the excuse to find the pattern of sabotage that is underneath the excuse.

Root out the pattern and recognize it as a fear.  Shift and change how you are dealing with that fear.  Doubt has built another mountain, and you can refuse to climb it.  You can instead have faith in yourself, in your friends and family, in your spiritual beliefs, and know that if you built that mountain, you can take it apart and keep on your journey.

“When it is all finished, you will discover that it was never random” – unknown

When I look back at what I thought were mistakes, I see these links.  I took a new job, which ended three months later.  I was laid off and I couldn’t find work.  I lost my car because I had no money.  I moved out of state.  I got a new job and the reason they hired me?

It was because of what I was doing at that job for three months.  That experience led to a promotion for a position that I had been aiming for, to teaching at two different community colleges, to creating and running a training program for seven branches of a savings and loan bank.  None of which would have happened without that job for three months.

So was it a mistake?  I don’t think so.  Nothing in that string of experiences was random.  I was following the path of self transformation.  Sometimes the path kicks you butt, and sometimes you kick it back.

So, what do we do?  You swim.  You just keep swimming.  You make mistakes and you keep swimming.  You try new things and you keep swimming.  You change yourself, your world and you just keep swimming.

I hope this year, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.
You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, wherever it is, art, or love, or work, or family, or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, DO IT.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
– Neil Gaiman

Your Future Lies In The Beauty Of Your Dreams

“Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you”  – Marsha Norman

Such a beautiful idea, dreams coming from your soul, as illustrations of what you can accomplish with your life.  What kind of life did you imagine when you were five?  Ten?  Twenty?  Forty?  Sixty?

• What came true and what did you throw away and abandon on the ground?
• What fears, excuses, and failures did you blame that abandonment on?
• Are you ready to turn a page and start the dream over?

Your dreams are waiting patiently for you to come back and try again.  But it isn’t a matter of doing the same things that already failed to bring your dreams into reality.

It is all about you transforming and changing yourself, so that you can become the person who can support that dream.  I think that is why many fail so many times.  You keep thinking that you just need to keep climbing the same slippery slope.  And every time you slide back down, you think you just need to try harder.

It isn’t about trying harder,

it is about getting smarter.

“Even though the future seems far away, it is actually beginning right now” –  Mattie Stepanek

Dreams serve a dual purpose.  They grow you, shift and change you in order to accomplish them.

And they bring something wonderful into the world, to shift and change others besides yourself.  Dreams are realities not yet beheld.

The story of the Starfish –

What you are doing right this minute, is the beginning of that future.  Even if it is as simple, as saving one starfish.

“Don’t downgrade your dream just to fit your reality.  Upgrade your conviction to match your destiny” – Shinzoo.com

When you work on becoming the person you need to become, to bring your dream into reality, how do you know what you need to transform within yourself?  The clues are like key holes in the walls that you built out of your fears.

Take for example the fear of public speaking.  It is said to be one of the most common fears that everyone has.  You probably have this fear.  So the wall of fear that you have built is designed to avoid any situations in which you might be asked to speak.  Your body will fight against you.  Some people go into hot/cold sweats.  Some become nauseous and even throw up.  Some people get that deer in the headlight look and forget everything, including their own name.

So, what is the key to transforming this fear?

You have to discover what is lying underneath the rock called fear of public speaking.

• Was there something that happened in the past where you were subject to public humiliation?
• Is it tied to a lack of confidence that you have something to say that others would find worthwhile?
• Is it about your own judgment of how you look up on stage?
• Do you drown yourself in the “what if’s?”
  • What if I trip on the stage?
  • What if the microphone doesn’t work right?
  • What if I drop my notes and they are now in the wrong order?

Get curious as to what is underneath your own fear rock.

“Do what you have to do, until you can do what you want to do” – Oprah

When you pick up a literal rock, you might find dozens of different kinds of insects buried underneath it.  Within your rock of fear, there it isn’t just one answer buried underneath it.  It is usually several different items that are weaved together to create the illusion of a huge unmovable boulder of fears. But as you unwind and untangle each fear, acknowledge it, and see how you can transform it, the illusion of the boulder shrinks down into a manageable fear rock.

As you transform those fears with speaker training; As you practice and become well prepared; you realize that your speech isn’t about you.  It’s about helping your audience.  You discover that giving a speech can be a wonderful experience. Having some butterflies in your stomach before speaking is normal.  And having some nervousness with the first couple of sentences is common.  You are planting the seeds of your future success in bringing your dreams into reality.

“Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality” – Malala Yousafzai

What makes it a “Life Transformation” is the realization afterwards, that while it might not be perfect, you did it!  That someone in that audience needed to hear what you have to say. You spoke to that one starfish and helped it get back into the ocean.

You gain the confidence to realize that if you can conquer what might have been a crippling fear about being a public speaker; what else could you transform in your life that has been holding you back?

When you do something this transformational, you literally shift every cell in your body and become a new person.  You can’t go back to that person you were before.  Like the caterpillar, you just emerged from the chrysalis and spread your beautiful butterfly wings and took flight.

As you transform yourself with change after change, you discover that your dream itself keeps growing.  So the journey keeps going.

Along the way you will meet people who tell you logically, that you are wasting your time trying to save a beach full of stranded starfish.  You will experience epic failures.  You will be disappointed by other people who you thought were in the dream with you for the long haul.

If you stay true to your dream and honor your imagination and never, ever, give up – you will be a winner in bringing that dream a lot further than you could have imagined at the beginning.

• 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?

Here at LemonadeMakers, we are happy to have those kinds of deep conversations, to help you figure out what is underneath the fears that seem to be holding you back from living your life purpose.  Contact us anytime.