There Is A Dance That Only You Know How To Do

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being depressed or dispirited, they would ask the following four questions:

When did you stop dancing?
When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

When I read George Carlin’s quote I thought of the above words – because the wolves being silent at the moon, and the moon howling back – this spoke to me of a wolf being dispirited and the moon howling back those questions. 

This quote by George Carlin with the wolves being silent also reminded me of a time of reflection. Being silent and going within to review the actions of the year. A time to release the baggage of the past.

And you were just like the moon, so lonely, so full of imperfections, but just like the moon, you shined in times of darkness – Unknown

Every January we think of the new year’s goals or resolutions, new dreams to grow into our lives. The things we want to accomplish or bring into our lives. In order to be ready for that contemplation, you need to create a clean slate.

A good way to do that is to examine what you set out to do last year, what happened along the way, and what you need to acknowledge and release. 

Part of what can be released is all of those dreams that didn’t happen. You can mourn and release those dreams that no longer are a part of your life, because you have outgrown them.

We all have shadows within us.  Dark places where you hide the things you don’t want to face.  Where you hide things you are ashamed of.  These things need to be brought into the light.  You need to release them, so that they can become what they were meant to be.  They are the broken bits of you, the dreams you abandoned because of someone or something that hurt you. 

You can also release any toxic relationships that have ended or need to now end.  Release the darkness.

And like the moon, she had a side of her so dark, that even the stars couldn’t shine on it; she had a side of her so cold, that even the sun couldn’t burn on it –  Abigail J

I have always thought the saying is so true, “We make plans, God laughs”. This is because you tend to make plans that you feel safe about, things you know that you can do. Those kinds of plans don’t grow you or accomplish all that you are capable of doing. So, God laughs because he will take those plans, tear them apart and rebuild them into better ones.  Those are the unanswered prayers, the dreams that won’t grow you towards your destiny.

Throughout the year you can look for those examples, where your small safe plan, was revised with divine humor into a much bigger plan.

Or it might be that because  you didn’t do a release from last year, that this year’s plans have not even got off the ground. 

Look not for the desires you have, for they are simply things that you want in your life.  Look for what your soul longs for.  What each heartbeat is sending to you, telling you that THIS IS WHY YOU ARE HERE! 

When the wolf howls at the moon, you can hear the yearning in his voice.  Give your own yearning a voice in your life.

Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon – Paul Brandt

So with the next full moon, you can again review, release, and restore life. Every quarter, the moon will usher in a new season.  That is a perfect time to release the old, failed, or aborted dreams, and plan anew. 

We dance for laughter,

we dance for tears,

we dance for madness,

we dance for fears,

we dance for hopes,

we dance for dreams,

we are the dancers, we create dreams.

Albert Einstein

One of my all-time favorite songs is “Moondance” by Van Morrison.  I love the summer and autumn nights of a full moon.  With a warm breeze blowing and sitting on a sandy beach, watching the moon rise over the water – there isn’t a better feeling.  You can feel the magic of the night strumming your heart strings. 

  

Specialize In The Impossible

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power to they have to change it.
Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion.
Impossible is not a declaration. It is a dare.
Impossible is potential.
Impossible is temporary.
Impossible is nothing.

  – Muhammad Ali

Every great invention and every great exploration are great, simply because at one time, it was considered impossible.

Nothing is impossible to a willing heart – John Heywood

Consider the cell phone you have in your pocket:

• From a phonograph with vinyl records, to CDs to my Ipod – I can now carry around 1,000’s of songs on the cloud downloaded to my cell phone
• From the telegraph to party line phones, to land lines with expensive long-distance rates, to a cell phone that started out in a large box, to what we now carry around in our pocket – we can call anywhere in the world for just pennies a call, and I can talk with family members all over the world at the same time and see them “live” with Skype.
• From old fashion manual typewriters to electric typewriters, to word processors, to desk top computers, to my cell phone where I can text or email someone anywhere in the world and they get it in a minute.
• From pony express mail to mail delivered via planes, trains, and automobiles to email delivered to my cell phone.
• From the black and white TV to technicolor, to High Definition to 3D – I can now watch movies on demand, or TV shows when I want to (on demand) on my cell phone.
• From the camera on my phone I can record, download to YouTube and become a famous person, making my own videos.

I could go on to describe so many things that we now take for granted, that just 100 yrs. ago would have been considered impossible. So, when you think that you are in an impossible situation, remember the words of Muhammad Ali, “impossible is just temporary”.

It is an opportunity to think outside the box and consider the possibilities instead.  Impossible is not a fact., it is only an opinion. 

So, stop thinking that something can’t be done and instead wonder “why not”? The only limits to your dreams are the ones that you self-impose.  In fact, it is when you are in the middle of doing the impossible thing, that you suddenly find yourself.

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve:  the fear of failure – Paulo Coelho

When I was a kid, they had a show on T.V. called “Mission Impossible”, which later became a movies series.  Every assignment was impossible to do, and somehow, they came up with a way to be successful. 

When you have a dream that others think is impossible, they will think that you are crazy.  They will ask you why you want to try to do such a thing – it is risky, it is dangerous, it is impossible.  But once the impossible thing has been done, then they want to know how you did it.  What’s your secret?

So many of you have lived through unimaginable tragedies in your life. If you can look at what you are capable of being and doing, it gives you hope.  You have hope that so many of the things you see wrong in your world, things that can be made right.

Nothing is impossible, unless you simply decide to live in the world that you have been given. If you decide that someone’s opinion is now a fact, then you won’t have the resources or potential to change it. 

What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible is rarely a function of our true capability.  It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are – Anthony Robbins

What gives me hope is that someone who reads this, is one of those kinds of people.

That you are one of those people who know in your heart that impossible is a dare to do something about it. That impossible is potential that you are going to harness and make something fantastic out of it. The impossible is no-thing, that it is nothing.

Together we can change the world, because for us, nothing is impossible. We can end world hunger. We can end poverty. We can end terrorism. We can end diseases and addictions that take away our loved one’s way too early in life. 

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible – Theodore Roethke

I Rise Up

 

I Rise Up

The drum beats echo in the night,

calling my heart to wake up,

Whirlwinds suck up the ashes of my abandoned dreams,

I rise up,

Sparks catch the ashes and burst into flames,

igniting my souls dream to wake up,

Surging through the blood,

inflaming the passions of my heart, I rise up.

Dreams are the warriors of my soul,

stirring me to action, I wake up,

Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes ,

I rise up,

Dreams arise from the ashes remade,

even as I slide back into slumber, I wake up,

Rising from the ashes,

I again take flight, I rise up.

My heart rhythm matches the beats of the drum,

echoing in the heart of darkness, I wake up,

The roots imprisoning my feet stir at my souls fire,

heat rises up through my body, I rise up,

My soul breaks free of the restraints put upon it,

to slumber and sleep, I wake up

My soul rising up to take flight to the heavens,

chasing after the sun, I rise up

An eternal flame, a comet, I blaze across the heavens,

I have woke up,

The comet tail blazes across the sky,

it flares as I rise up,

Fully awake to my souls purpose,

once again I battle to fulfill it,

to wake the sleepers up,

For they too were conquered,

reduced to ashes they feel asleep, but now awakening,

WE RISE UP!

You remember what God’s destiny is for you when you are little. You have these hopes and dreams of what you will be when you grow up. Then you start school and like most of us, you lost sight of the those dreams. They got buried and forgotten.  Like tumbleweeds you were blown away by the dust devils across the fields, your dreams broken and unseen.

Then something happens that knocks the wind out of you. Everything that you thought was important in your life, is shown to be fools gold. You stumbled and fell down. You grieved your loss in sackcloth and ashes. And because you are really lucky, you are remembered or are remembering what you are here to do.

So grab your pillows and shake last nights dreams loose from the feathers that you bound them up in.  RISE UP.  Those abandoned dreams are not truly cold and dead.  They lay buried in the dream caverns, waiting for you to bring them back to life.  To blow upon them the breath of life, igniting them once again into a steady flame.

“We always have the potential to rise. Rise out of our slump. Rise out of our negative thoughts. Rise out of our comfort zone. Rise out of our complaints, GET UP AND RISE…, Rising is a choice that’s one powerful thought away” – Kris Carr

What will defines you, is the RISE UP part. Everyone will fall down.  You fall asleep because the going was so hard.  You told yourself that you deserved to take it easy just for a little while.  And so you fell asleep.  It is part of the human experience. There is a spark of divinity in you still, and it is in the RISE UP part.  It is how to become the person you were meant to be. The importance of this, is that the world is waiting for you and your gifts. It needs you to RISE UP, one more time and reenter the ring of life and fight the battle you were sent to fight.  Something happens, these small occurrences, these coincidences.  They start these sparks, that shine brightly .  They will draw you in, they will stoke up those hidden fires.  You will wake up.

“Coincidences are glimpses in to the creative mind of the universe”  – Deepak Chopra

Each time you are reborn like the phoenix, you are just a little bit wiser from life’s experiences. You are stronger because even though you got knocked down, you got back up one more time. As long as you don’t quit, the “fat lady hasn’t sang”. It isn’t over, and you can still be a winner, fulfilling your destiny.  Breathe your dreams to life, by taking one small step.  Listen to the whispers of your soul.  Enter the cave of your dreams and release them from their shackles of limitations, because in truth you have no limits.

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek”  – Joseph Campbell

So if you are feeling a little sore, like a semi truck ran over you, backed up, and ran over you again, remember – remember you are like the Phoenix and can rise up from the ashes. Remember that the spark is always buried in the ashes, and just needs you to blow on it to re-ignite the flames.  The dream doesn’t really die.  It doesn’t expire.  Look inside and awaken.  Undergo a radical transformation and like the Phoenix RISE UP. Listen to your heart and RISE UP.  RISE UP and follow your soul to the stars and beyond.

Remember that when life throws you to the wolves, you can come back leading the pack!

Come join us on March 7th for our next monthly free webinar on how to live your life with 20/20 focus. How to face the fears that are keeping you locked out of your destiny. How to unlock your cages and use those divine gifts with purpose to not only shift and change your world, but the entire world. Come and renew yourself. Find your voice and RISE UP!

Hello Beautiful!

We tend to live our lives based on what we believe about ourselves, our world, our capabilities and our limits.  Where do those beliefs come from?  More often than not they come from what other people have told us, history, science, religion, culture, family.  What if they’re wrong? – Gregg Braden

Growing up in my family we were assigned these roles.  I was the smart one.  My younger sister was the pretty one.  The Twins were just the twins – mirror images in looks but opposites in actions.  My fourth sister was blond and so different.  My youngest sister was the pest, and my baby brother was the spoiled boy.  I went through most of my life believing that I couldn’t be both pretty and smart – it was one or the other, so because I was smart according to everyone else, I couldn’t possibly be pretty too.

Since I also had the belief that it wasn’t safe to be seen, I didn’t mind not being pretty.

It is interesting how I have always reacted to compliments that are not about my being smart.  If someone comments on my photo for example it makes me uncomfortable because it went against an unconscious belief from my childhood.  I always felt like they were not being honest, they were just being nice.

Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future – Deepak Chopra

It is kind of funny, but Facebook has actually helped me to release most of this belief.  It has happened in a strange way, because a lot of men try to use Facebook to meet women.  I am sure that this has happened to most of you.  Complete strangers want to be your Facebook friend.  It never occurred to me that this would happen because they were interested in me, I thought it was because they read my posts and liked them.

So, when I would get personal messages that indicated what they were really after I was shocked.  Now while I now screen my friends’ invitations, it did help me to release this belief.  These men and one woman (lol) didn’t know me, so they weren’t just being “nice”.  They saw something that attracted them.

It is kind of funny how your perceptions can literally change things.  They did this study years ago they called Pygmalion in which they were going to give this class an IQ test.  The researchers told the teacher that 5 students who would perform the best.  The teacher wasn’t told that these 5 children were just randomly picked.

From the teacher’s perception these were the 5 brightest students.  The test confirmed that these 5 students were the best in the class.  The teacher’s viewpoint impacted those students.  Something in the way she taught, the feedback she gave, something she did, made those five students “smarter”.

What we are told as children, from our parents, our teachers, our friends and relatives – what the expectations are for our behavior – subconsciously they motivate us to make them true.  Whatever negative beliefs you have about you, you filter through life’s experiences to make them come true for you.  You get what you expect.

The mind and the body are like parallel universes.  Anything that happens in the mental universe must leave tracks in the physical one – Deepak Chopra

The great news is that once you recognize what these unconscious beliefs are, you can change them.  This morning I had to wait for the Microsoft upgrades to finish before I could finish this post.  Every month or so, your computer gets program upgrades.  In this same way, you have the ability to give yourself a program upgrade.  You can change your reality by changing your beliefs.  By creating new expectations.

When you heal damaging beliefs about yourself, you remove limitations which are restricting your personal growth.

If you feel like you are pushing the boulder up a hill about anything in your life right now, examine what your beliefs are around what you are trying to accomplish.  Realize that this belief is not true.  That it probably came from a childhood experience that you then spent every year since proving was true.  And now you have the opportunity to release that belief and upgrade to a new program or belief.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate – Carl Jung

It is amazing how everything changes when you do this.  It is like the hose was turned on full blast, but because you had a kink in the hose, you were only getting a drop or two at a time.  Releasing the false belief, unkinks the hose, and your life rushes forward in the direction you were trying to go.  That boulder you were pushing uphill turns into a sled sliding down the hill at top speed.

So, I encourage you to find one limiting belief you have, release it as a misunderstanding, and upgrade that belief into something that serves you.

When You Are Lost, You Finally Have The Chance To Find Yourself

As with a heavy fog on a road, what lies ahead on the path of life is never completely clear, but the choices we make can help shape out the shadows  – Bryson Staley

If you’re feeling frightened about what comes next, don’t be.  Embrace the uncertainty.  Allow it to lead you places.  Be brave as it challenges you to exercise both your heart and your mind as you create your own path toward happiness; don’t waste time with regret.  Spin wildly into your next action.  Enjoy the present, each moment as it comes, because you’ll never get another one quite like it.  And if you should ever look up and find yourself lost, simply take a breath and start over.  Retrace your steps and go back to the purest place in your heart . . .  where your hope lives.  You’ll find your way again  – Everwood

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves –  Henry David Thoreau

Trust Without Reservation And Take A Leap Of Faith

 

Updated 7/30/2018

Adventures are how we grow and realize the hidden strengths that are inside each of us. Each day we have the opportunity to start a new adventure.  We can go on this adventure solo, or we can have partners that join us.  It can be a business adventure or a personal journey to explore who we are now and who we can grow into.  The choice of destination can be a fixed point, or it can be left open for divine guidance to take us to where the most growth can happen.  The trust in the first case is that we did our homework and prepared for everything possible, and are ready for the impossible to show up.  In the latter case, the trust is that whatever the divine throws at us to stimulate the growth is something that we can not only handle, but conquer and be victorious over.

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

  – Henry Miller

Martha Beck in her book, “Finding Your Way in a Wild New World” speaks about leaps of faith. She says that the term for a collective (like herd of cows) for leopards is a “leap”. A leopard will leap up into the branches of a tree with an antelope carcass in its mouth that outweighs it. Each time the leopard leaps, it is an act of faith that it will make it up onto a branch 10 feet above it. If the leopard doesn’t make it, it could mean it’s death, as it would most likely land on its back with the weight of the antelope on top of it.  Put yourself in that space and ask yourself – have you have truly ever taken such a leap of faith?

Everyone needs someone who will call and say, “get dressed, we’re going on an adventure”. 

  – Whisper

She goes on to say that each time we face an unknown, with creativity instead of grasping at known quantities, we leap. Each time we dare to think that our art (I insert here whatever your personal genius is) can sustain us financially we leap. She reflects that each time we surrender to the way things want to happen (not under our control), we leap.  When was the last time that you truly surrendered to the divine guidance?  That you truly followed the saying , “let go and let God”?  It is the acknowledgement that we don’t have the answers.  That we want to continue the adventure.  That we are letting go of expectations.  That we are letting go of our own brains “ideas” of how things should be.  That we are letting go of the safety nets.  That we are stepping out onto the tightrope,and one step at a time we are walking across,.  That we are trusting our inner guidance to be the balance we need to get to the other side – whatever and wherever that is.

I highly recommend any of Martha Beck’s books and especially this book – I bookmarked it for you to check out. http://amzn.to/1Xbnz56

What we discover when we leap, is what we are really made of. Do we shrink back at the challenges or opportunities that present themselves to us? Do we pass by the aid of angelic guides, because we think that what we see isn’t the answer we were looking for? That one is too easy, this one is too hard? Then when we find what we think is the perfect one, we get scared off by a family of bears?

The greatest challenge in life is discovering who you are.  The second greatest is being happy with what you find.

  – Picturequotes.com

Today I took a leap. trusting in the magic of my soul. Today was the day that I took a deep breath, let go of certainty, trusted my heart, and leaped into “seeing what happens next.”

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.

  – D Elton Trueblood

So today we traded in all of our fears for faith and trust without reservation in divine guidance.  Those who are curious have the best adventures, just ask Alice about her adventures in Wonderland. In traveling, we think that we are losing ourselves.  Leaving behind the world that we know with all of its limitations and obligations.  Instead, when we travel we find ourselves.  We rediscover who we are and what is important.  We open ourselves to the infinite stream of possibilities and wonder.  Adventure fills your soul.

Only those who will risk going to far can possibly find out how far they can go.

  – T.S. Eliot

I think of Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz. She learned so much about herself with her adventures. She had her companions with her, just as I do today. I don’t know the “how” part of this decision. But I listened to my heart, which said that it is the right decision. Dorothy didn’t know the “how” of getting home, but she listened to Glenda and set out on the journey.

It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end.

  – Ursula K. LeGuin

Glenda the Good Witch tells her at the end, “you had the power to go home from the very beginning”, so Dorothy of course asks, “why didn’t you tell me?” Because Glenda said, “you would not have believed it. You had to learn it by yourself.”

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you have always imagined.

  – Henry David Thoreau

The same is true for me, and you. Adventures is how we learn what are powers are, and what we are capable of creating together. 

Faith is the daring of the soul to go further than it can see.

  –  (from Godfruits.com)

[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]

A Heroes Journey Begins With A Call Or A Fall – What Will You Choose?

Most of us are in what Joseph Campbell calls “Sleepy Land”. We get so bound up in the day to day details of living, that we fall asleep to our purpose.

The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, “Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there, and so it starts.

  – Joseph Campbell

Then one day it happens. We notice that we are missing something. We want more. We wake up to the fact that “more” is not more money.  It is not a better job.  It is not a bigger house.  It is not a more luxurious car. It is elusive, and we may not know what “it” is.  But we begin to figure out what “it” isn’t. It is our birthright,.  It is what takes our life from “normal” to “greatness”.

Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves.

  – Carol Pearson

Men like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson figured out what that was for them. And while they had all of the things that people think will make them happy, it was the “more” that actually brought them to greatness.  The dragons we must confront are all the lies that we told ourselves.  If I rise up in the ranks at work, I will be happy.  If I make six or seven figures, then I will be happy.  If only I had a sports car I would be so happy.  What we must discover is what “it” is.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

  – Martin Buber

They may have started out after all of the material things, but they ended up with the “more”.  There is a Billy Crystal movie from years ago.  It was called City Slickers.  Billy Crystal’s character meets up with this cowboy who asks him if he knows the secret of life.  “One thing.  Just one thing.  You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.”  Billy Crystals character asks him what that one thing is, and the cowboy replies, “that’s what you have to find out.”  It isn’t things and stuff.  It is something more.  It is something that demands more of you than you think that you have to give.  And if you find it, and follow it where it leads, you will lead a life you never thought would be possible.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

  – Joseph Campbell

This something else is transcendence. Transcendence happens when we “reclaim the visionary, the utopian, the dream of the better or happier world”  – when everything that we touch becomes a prayer. 

The genuine exploration of one’s self as an individual is the greatest contribution you can make toward humanity and all life.  Ironically, inner self-reliance is what makes the whole of humanity stronger.

  – Unknown

So how do we discover what it is? We have to walk out the door of the safe comfortable space we have created for ourselves.  We have to walk down that path to the unknown. We have to enter the dark forest. You have to embark on the Hero’s journey. It is how you discover the vast resources that reside within you. A hero’s journey – finding the edge of your unknown forest, and entering into the heart of darkness.

What do you find there? You explore the caves of the past and you wake up to the dreams of the future. You let go of the life of existence, of “go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed and repeat over and over again”.  The journey is an individual one, and each persons journey is different.  We have to go within and listen to what our own truth is.  Some walks you have to take alone.  Otherwise your truth, your inner voice gets drowned out by others.

The hero journey is inside of you; tear off the veils and open the mystery of your self.

 –   Joseph Campbell

Traveling down into the depths of the abyss we recover treasures of life. We recover the dreams we let die.  Se see that the stories that we have told ourselves about past hurts are not entirely true. We become excavator’s and dig up the bones of the past.  We let the past blow away like dust on the winds of healing. We see that most of the problems in our life have been mirrors being held up to us.  Most of the time, we were too blind or too scared to acknowledge the truth. By exploring the darkness we become enlightened.

The fatal mistake is waiting for life’s circumstances to be right before we begin.  Simply begin with your heart, look deeply into it and trust what you feel.  Practice knowing and you will know.

  – Hugh Prather

We become curious, our mind opens up to new ideas. Changes begin as we see new worlds to explore that have lain beneath the normalcy of our past life. We see possibilities instead of complications. We wonder. We release. We transform. We heal and become whole for the first time.  We have to enter the forest and break away, to walk the hero’s path.

We realize that although we were damaged, we survived and that makes us dangerous. Because we now know how to not only survive, we know how to become whole again. We become both a mentor and a teacher for ourselves.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

  – Rumi

Being a mentor to oneself with love, light, grace, and compassion. Being a teacher to yourself with rage, darkness, fear, and judgment. We are both.  Both are required for the heroes journey. Speaking love to overcome rage,.  Speaking light to overcome darkness.  Speaking grace to overcome fear.  Speaking compassion to overcome judgment.

I guess that’s the thing about a hero’s journey. You might not start out a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to.

  – Kami Garcia

[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]

Just Because My Path Is Different, Doesn’t Mean I’m Lost

It’s better to walk alone, than with a crowd going in the wrong direction.

 – Diane Grant

When we try to walk down another persons road, it leads to disillusionment and disappointment. That is because it isn’t “our” road. In the book “The Pilgrimage”, Paulo Coelho said that:

It is our decision to walk, that creates the road ahead of us.

 – Paulo Coelho

Trying to explain to someone what our personal truth is for the path we are walking, is like trying to explain rocket science to a baby.  It isn’t that the baby will never understand rocket science.  It is that the baby isn’t yet developed enough to understand.  We can’t explain our path to someone who isn’t yet at that same stage of their own truth.  It will only create misunderstandings, miscommunications, and lots of frustration.  Even we sometimes can’t put into words the necessity for why we have to do something.  We just know that we have to do it.  It has to do with our being conscious and open minded enough to realize when we are being directed.  It has to do with our acceptance of that direction, even when we don’t know why.

It takes courage to keep walking when the path is obscured by confusion.  TRUST.  BELIEVE.  And just keep walking.  The way will be revealed.

  – Sue Krebs

It is both being courageous and having curiosity, that keeps us forging ahead on the path. It is the journey itself, that grows us as a person. It is our attitude about what happens.  It molds us either for our greater good, or for living out life disappointed as a victim of circumstances and bad luck.  It is the difference between knowing what you need to do, and doing what needs to be done.  It is easy to get the knowledge, but the wisdom only comes from putting that knowledge into action.  It can’t just be “book learning”, it also has to be married to “learning in action”.

Getting lost along your path is part of finding the path you are meant to be on.

 – Robin S. Sharma

It has been said that it’s never about obtaining the “goal”. It is rather about who you need to become, to achieve the goal.  There are many different roads to walk. They go through many different landscapes.  It could be a forest path, with giant trees that shadow the land.  It could be through sand dunes and along beaches.  It could be a path of a river which sometimes meanders slowly, and other times rushes through rapids crushing you against the rocks, and then dumps you down a waterfall.  It could be the hot desert or the frozen tundra.  Each path will require different skillsets in order for you to become the master of your journey.  Different clothing, different shoes, different temperatures to be endured.  Different equipment from ropes, boats, sleds etc. . . .  It is always your choice of where you step, and which path(s) your choose.  If you don’t like the first road you chose, move over to a new one.

You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.

 – Marianne Williamson

It is always our decision to skip and sing our way along the yellow brick road, or to whine, complain, dragging our feet as we ask “are we there yet”?  Are you standing in your own truth?  Are you walking your own path?  Is your heart guiding you?  Look for the opportunities to better understand the journey.  Look for the helpers to guide us on our path.  The destination or outcome of our journey isn’t what is important.  It is who we are becoming, what we are actually doing that makes us successful.

I have always loved the saying, “It’s not the destination,… it’s the journey”. This is because the path we choose is our journey. It is where we live our life. It is all of life’s experiences. The good, bad, and the ugly. The messy parts, as well as the glorious adventures. We can see treasures every single day, if we just take the time to notice them.  Life goes on, it moves on.  It does it regardless of whether we are saying yes to our destiny or running the other way.  Since the path to happiness lies in the direction of our destiny, why not say yes?  Choose happiness.

Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?

 – Garth Nix

Along the way, we live life out loud. We can choose to taste and savor the experiences that that journey brings to us. The more that we can reach out in happiness, joy, and just plain exuberance, the richer our life is. The destination is simply a road sign. A sign that we made it to “X”. Then we begin planning a new destination or goal. It’s all about the road we choose, the path we forge.  Who we are becoming.  What we reveal and release that is not truly who we are at heart.

By choosing the path, we choose the destination.

 –  Thomas Monson

Have you ever heard the saying, “you can’t go home again”?  The reason why is that while you were away, you changed.  You look at things differently.  You think that everything changed.  But in reality it was you who changed.  The house you lived in as a small child, suddenly looks much smaller – the house didn’t change size – but your way of looking at the world changed.  We are all far from who we once were, and we are still farther from whom we are growing into.  What is really scary is when you go home again, and see those who haven’t changed.  They haven’t even put on foot onto their path.  They are still stuck back five, ten, or twenty years ago with the same victimhood mentality.  They are caution signs to keep walking on your path.

One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

 – Henry Miller

So cast off the bowlines. Sail out of the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds and see where they take you. Remember that you are always only one decision away from a totally different life. Embrace the journey and it will love you back.  Trust your journey, even when you don’t understand where destiny is taking you.  It could just be the biggest, most juiciest trip of your life.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray.

  – Rumi

[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]

To Catch Your Dreams, You Have To Be Brave Enough To Chase Them

Have you ever heard of the question  – If you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive, who would you want to have to a dinner party?  Eleanor Roosevelt is on my list.  She seems to have been a remarkable woman.  Her advice?

“Do one thing everyday that scares you”  – Eleanor Roosevelt

I don’t live up to this quote, but I do try to do things that scare me.  First I procrastinate on them a little, though.  Most of the things that scare me, are things that I have never tried to do before.  So every year part of my goals, are to do things that I don’t currently know how to do.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you got your first bike?  I remember being so excited to be able to ride a bike like all of the bigger kids did.  It was a symbol of growing older.  A lot like getting your drivers license or turning 21, a true milestone.  First though you had to have training wheels. It took a time or two to figure out that they were keeping you from falling, because you had to learn to trust them.  Then came the day that you had probably been whining about, the day they took the training wheels off.  You were ready to balance the bike and ride it all alone.  After a fall or two, you figured out how to balance the bike and from then on you were no longer a baby.

What I remember most, is that even though I was scared of falling and getting hurt, I wanted those training wheels off.  Being accepted into the big kids group was more important than letting the fear stop me.  Always remember that when you are scared, you are thinking about doing something that requires you to be brave.  Riding a bicycle without training wheels for a 5 year old is being very brave.

“If it’s both terrifying and amazing then you should definitely pursue it”  – Erada

What is something that you have done this past year that required you to be very brave?  What were the training wheels that you removed, the thing that you were depending on, that you needed to let go, so that you could grow?

When I took my drivers training class, it was part of high school.  The class started right after school, and the first time behind the wheel you had to drive off a side street bordering the high school.  All of your friends would gather around the stop sign, waiting for you to drive the car out of the lot and up to the stop sign on the side road.  Of course, there were several sudden jerking stops as you drove toward the stop sign and all of your friends would laugh.  It was like a hazing in a way, because it eventually happened to everyone you knew.  At some point we would all be the object of ridicule.  But at the same time, it was like – cool, I’m driving a car!

These are the two examples that I keep in my head when I am trying to break through and do something that scares me.  Both of those things scared me, but at the same time, it was cool, look at what I am doing!  It reminds me of the hit song from “Panic At The Disco”, “Hey look ma, I made it”.  It also helps to have mentors like Eleanor Roosevelt.  People that you admire, who you can look to for guidance.   Albert Einstein is another of my dinner party guests.  He said:

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new”  –  Albert Einstein

I think that sometimes you are scared to want something so badly that it hurts.  You are scared of not only failing, but of succeeding and then being disappointed.  Of succeeding only to lose it later.  So you tell yourself that you are afraid of failure, but in reality, you are afraid of success not being enough.  Of success not lasting.

“Move out of your comfort zone.  You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new” – Brian Tracy

I have really thought about this fear of failure/success.  I love the breakdown of the process in the above picture – that moving out of your comfort zone is actually a process of moving from fear, to learning and then to growth. (note:  the photo is from Adobe and I can’t fix the typo)

Once I move past fear the feeling I have shifts into anticipation.  Like fear, it also begins and ends in the stomach.  Like riding the roller coaster as it climbs up and up to the sky, and then hurtles you down to the earth, whipping you back and forth through the turns.  The wind blowing against you, your stomach lurching up your chest as you hold on tight.  Then all of sudden the ride is over and you are running back to the end of the line to do it again.  This kind of fear is telling you that being scared can be a thrill, because you are learning and extending your comfort zone at the same time.  That what you are about to experience by entering the growth zone is worth breaking through the hesitation and going full out.

“Life is inherently risky.  There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing”  – Denis Waitley

They say that at the end of a persons life, what they talk about is the things that they didn’t take the risk and try to do.  Being in love, is one of those risks.  Being afraid of being vulnerable, of being rejected, they hold back the words.  At the end of their life they regret not telling people how they really felt, not saying “I love you” enough to those that mattered to them.  When they had the opportunity, they shrunk back telling themselves, “they know how I feel”.  While that may be true, what any person wants and needs is to hear those words.

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you” – Unknown

So whether it is learning to ride a bike, drive a car, ride a roller coaster or say “I love you” – don’t let fear hold you back.  Be brave.  Say the words, do the deeds.  Feel the fear and do it because it is scary.  Do the things that both excite you and scare you at the same time.  Live your life as fully expressed, as bravely, and as committed as you can.  Just maybe if you can do that, you’ll get more than you ever could have imagined.

“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them”  –  Walt Disney

Never Be Afraid To Try Something New, Turn The Page

I used to work for a company that owned hospitals and healthcare centers, doing accounting.  The majority partner in the business would have the same order for lunch, every single day.  A turkey sandwich with potato chips.  Every single day, he ate the same lunch.  They ordered lunch from TGIF, so it wasn’t like he didn’t have any other options.

I think many of us live in a rut.  Stuck in a groove we can’t get out of, whether it’s our job, family drama or the little frustrations of everyday life.    – Brian Pinkerton

I always wondered if he ate the same breakfast every morning, and the same dinner every evening.  He was definitely a man stuck in a rut.  Rush Limbaugh says that when you are in this experience, you “are out of contact with your own genius”.   You have had this happen in your life at some point and time.  The rut is a place of safety.   You may have had a fear of the unknown, so the rut was a place of safety, because it is always the same.  When you turn the page, who knows what might happen?

So what Zella is telling us, is that being in a rut, can actually be part of the journey – the point is once you recognize that you are stuck, then you can start going backwards, or forging ahead out of the rut.  That you can blaze your own trail off the beaten path to your destination. That you can escape the rut.  That you can get back in contact with your personal genius.  This is because living your life on purpose through your personal genius, is when you know that you are home.

Changing a behavior is like driving down an old, rutted, dirt road.  In order to get out of the rut and onto a new path, you need to jerk the wheel really hard.  If you don’t jerk the wheel hard enough, you’ll just bounce right back on the same, old, rutted path.  So for change to happen, hold on tight, jerk that wheel as hard as you can and get ready for a happy ride.  Change is just beyond, on the other side.    – Perfectharmonysolutions.com

When you listen to your personal genius, your souls voice, it leads you to amazing places.  You find yourself living and doing things that previously you would only read about.  Things that you could never imagine yourself doing. It is a conscious choice to listen to this voice that emanates from deep within.

We’ve all been there.  The stress of moving your household.  First packing then unpacking.  It is exhausting, bad breaking labor.  Or not?  Maybe it’s a chance to play outside the box of go, go, go and instead find the joy in the moment.  That is a totally inside job.

The choices that come from the outside are harder to deal with.  The tragedy knocks you down and makes you a victim.  Even the blessing, is a harder choice, because the blessing usually starts out like the tragedy. It becomes the blessing because you realize that you were stuck and needed your world turned upside down to shake you loose.  The result of the blessing is that you took life’s lemons and made them into lemonade.

Being stuck in the past is like walking forward with your back facing front.  You’ll always miss out on what’s in front of you.   –  thedailyquotes.com

How do you recognize that you are in a rut?  One sign is reliving the past.  It happens because you were comfortable there.  You may complain about it, but you make no movement to actually change it.  Another is repeating the past mistakes over and over again.  Why do you repeat patterns of mistakes?  Because you have convinced yourself that this time will be different.  My mom was married five times, and every single man she married, she met in the bar that she was working in.  One of the things that every single man had in common?  They were all alcoholics.  I remember telling her as a teenager, that maybe if she met men some place besides work, it might work out better?

You must learn a new way to think, before you can master a new way to be.   – Marianne Williamson

This is how you get out of the rut.  You don’t try to solve problems in your life with the same thinking that created them.  You step up and out of the rut.  And you begin blazing a new trail.  So instead of stepping backward into the rut, step forward into growth.  See where life is taking you.  Listen to the voice of your soul, and wake up.  Live your life with the intention to grow, live your life from your true reason and purpose for being here, and love your life with a passion that is on fire!

Keep Going. Everything You Need Will Be Provided With Divine Timing

Life is too short to think small.  If you think that something can be done, then it is too small.  If you think something is probably impossible, that is the goal to go for.  Not because the goal itself is the thing, but because of how trying to reach it will grow you.

If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.  Go for the moon shot kind of goals.

Moon shot goals involve others in coming together as a community to make the really big goals happen.  Moon shot goals help others to reach out past their own boundaries and limitations as they buy into helping you accomplish yours.

The will to win.  The desire to succeed.  The urge to reach your full potential.., these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.   – Sabine Mondestin

The hard work of the goal is in making the vision clear.  When you can see the minute detail, then you can make plans.  With plans come steps.  With steps, you begin moving into action.  You gain a tremendous feeling of confidence when this happens.  This confidence, grants you personal empowerment.  Empowerment fuels your passion to bring the goals into reality. This is how the miracles begin.

It is like the infinity circle in which one part feeds and fuels the next part, in an never ending cycle.  Clarity fuels the plans.  Then plans fuel the steps.

Then steps start the wheels moving and you get action.  Action gets you excited that stuff is finally happening.

Personal empowerment comes from actions taking place.  Personal empowerment in turn fuels passion.  Passion feeds back into clarity.  Clarity begins the whole process again.

This is because as the vision starts moving forward into implementation, you get more clarity.  Clarity starts new plans.  New plans lead to revised actions.  The whole cycle begins spinning again.

With engagement the divine one moves in with synchronicities and doors begin to open.  People show up, all to bring your goals into reality.  You are not meant to accomplish things by yourself.  But no one can help you, until you help yourself.

I used to extinguish under the weight of living, but one day, I reached into my chest, dusted off my courage, and asked myself, “where’s your fire?”  –   D. Antoinette Foy

Be strong about your goals, and flexible about your methods.  Be willing to try things you don’t think will work.  To try things that you have never done.  You learn by discovering what will work for you.

Has anyone ever tried you train you by having you watch them do the job?  They walk you through a program.  They tell you what your inputs should be.  You go back to your desk, and you can’t remember what to do.  Your notes don’t make any sense to you.

But when someone sits beside you, and guides you as you do the work, now it sinks in.  You learn by doing it yourself.  As you do the work, you have the space to think of the questions you need to ask to understand the process.  When you just learn the process you are just a cog in a machine. When you understand the process, now you can innovate.  Now you can teach it.

When you become visible, you take a huge risk.  Because not everyone is going to like you.  Some people are going to hate you, just because you are different.  There will be those people that will be mean and cruel.  That needs to be okay.  You need to understand that you are not here for everyone.

You are not here with your gifts for those who don’t want them.  You are here for those that do.

The only real difference between us, is that some of us have remembered why we are here.  Others are still asleep to their true purpose.   They don’t remember their divine inheritance.    They will find fault with what you are doing, without really understanding why it bothers them so much.  They act as a challenge to help you reach your highest potential.

If you are persistent, you will get it.  If you are consistent you will keep it.  – Unknown

Such an interesting quote.  Being persistent is how you learn something.  Have you ever listened to a two year old, asking “why”?  They are the most persistent creatures in the universe.  Persistence is how you learn.  Understanding comes from doing it consistently.

You literally sink the learning down into your bones.  I like to think of learning, as how you learned to ride a bike.  Most of us can ride a bike.

• But how many of us learned how to ride with no hands?
• Learned how to jump the bike over obstacles?
• Learned how to do a wheelie?

You were persistent enough to learn to ride, getting back on every time you fell.  But were you consistent enough to go past the basics and learn all of the tricks of riding a bike – did you become a master?

How do you let the amazing out?

• You get curious.
• You think, why not?
• You question, how come?
• You imagine, what if?
• You wonder, who can I collaborate with on this?

Curiosity is the compass that leads you to your purpose.  Your reason for being here now.

When you are tempted to give up, your breakthrough is probably just around the corner.  – Joyce Meyer

Then you work on your true inheritance, and accept that as you become masters on this earth, that your signature will become your autograph.

A signature is so much more than just a splash of ink across the paper.  A signature is style.  It is a “look”.  It is something that says who you are.  When you see the Nike symbol, what pops into your mind?  Nike is not just about shoes.

When you hear the Coca Cola jingle, “I’d like to teach the world to sing” how does it make you feel?  Coca Cola is more than just a drink.  That is what a signature is.

You have so much inside of your soul waiting to come out.  That is why you will risk becoming visible.  That is why you can’t think small.

Because some part of you deep inside knows how truly magnificent you really are.  Each of us is a thread in Gods tapestry.  Each of us has a part to play.  Each of us has to become visible, in order for the pattern to be seen.  Each of us has that special one of a kind signature that the world needs to see, feel, and hear.

Walking In Your Purpose Makes You Magnetic

Life is too short to not follow your passion and purpose in your life.  Passion and purpose are like the infinity loop, in that each one both feeds on and fuels the other.  When they are working in tandem, there isn’t anything that you can’t accomplish.  This is the space of the “high” where you feel invincible.  Where everything just falls magically and magnetically into place.  There is purpose in your searching, which is fueled by your passion.  You search for the answers in response to the hunger that both drives and fuels your soul. It begins when you get the smallest glimpse of your true potential.

The meaning of life is to find your gift.  The purpose of life is to give it away.   – William Shakespeare

That time when you were a little child, and you saw someone doing something that just grabbed you, and you thought I want to be that or do that when I grow up.  At that moment you saw your true potential.  At some point fear of failure, or being told that you weren’t talented enough to be that or do that – something happens that puts a cork in your desire.  You bottle it up.  You bury it deep inside yourself, because you are embarrassed that you ever had that thought.  Who did you think you were?

There comes a time when the need of releasing that cork from that bottle, cascades out of you like a river rushing to the sea.  This need is a palpable thing.  Your heart knows it needs to be released.  Your instincts keep calling to you to release it.  It keeps showing up no matter how we try to ignore it.  It just continues to transform itself over and over again.  It might show up at work one time, at your home life another.  With a loss of a loved one.  With the reconnection to an old friend.  It might show up in your spiritual life.  It keeps winding itself through your life, until you finally pay attention.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.   – Eleanor Roosevelt

Within every life, the things that require transformation, are the pieces of misinformation that you have adopted in your life as being true.  You probably don’t even know that they exist in your subconscious.  For example; If your parents were divorced when you were a child, you may subconsciously feel that if you had been a better child, they would still be married.  This might show up in your life with an intense desire to make everyone happy, to put yourself as last, to literally have the welcome mat on your face as people use you, and then leave you.  You surrender and abandon your dreams.

You have convinced yourself that the problem is that you just aren’t giving enough of yourself away.  If you just try harder you tell yourself, then you can make everyone else happy, and only then you will finally be happy.   You keep that dream bottled up.  You tell yourself that your vision of your true potential is unattainable.  That you must settle. That whole story is a lie, a falsehood. That story needs to be transformed.

There will be places where your self sabotage shows up.  Places where the shadow swings into action to stop you.  Going around the bend of the river, you may get damned up by debris.  Some busy beaver has blocked the flow and dammed up the river.  This debris is all of the obligations that you have loaded upon yourself.  The excuses, “I am too busy or don’t have the time” and “I have no money”,  falls into this bucket.

The question comes up, what is behind the “but” excuse for you to follow your dream?  You need to get curious.  You need to start removing the debris, and figure out where it is coming from.  Each of those sticks is tied to some false belief or assumption that you have to identify and then transform.

Recently there were newspaper headlines “Thames River now home to sharks, seals and sea horses, no longer biologically dead”.  After years of cleaning up centuries of pollution, the river has come back to life.  Just like cleaning up the Thames brought the river back to life, you need to “clean up your river” so that you can get back into flow with your passion and purpose, back into flow with your God given destiny.

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

At places it may seem as though you are motionless, frozen in place.  You have allowed the temporary artic blast from the nature of your fears, to freeze your river.  It may seem like a solid block of ice, but deep beneath the surface, it is still flowing to the sea.  It may have become a small dribble, but with the fires of your passion, you can melt the ice returning the river back into its full force.

Passion requires focused direction, and that direction must come from three other areas:  your purpose, your talents, and your needs.  – #sayquotable

Friends and family may try to sidetrack you, by diverting your river to their own benefit, but your need will find a way to get back on course.

At times we appear to be in flood stage, where the passion is so strong that you surrender to it.  It is at these times that you learn to trust in divine providence to take you where you need to go.  With the force of the floods, overflowing the course of the river, it will speed you past boulders that were blocking your path. Remember that all limitations, road blocks, and diversions are self imposed out of fear.  Choose to leap forward over every obstacle as a challenge, that you have in fact already conquered.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is not think, not wonder, not imagine, not obsess.  Just breathe, and have faith that everything will work out for the best.  It is in that space between the breathing in and out, that brief space of holding, that you hear the voice of the divine.  In this space you have the power to choose your response.  Are you going to run from the challenge of having a mighty goal in your life?  Are you going to deny your highest dreams and say that this is not your calling?  Are you going to create a disaster by not having lofty ideals to strive for?  Or are you going to reach for the stars, and really truly own that this starlight belongs to you and only you?

You are here not to shrink down less, but to blossom into more of who you really are.   — Oprah

Gratitude is so important to happiness. Be thankful for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow – always shifting and transforming towards the magnificence that is buried deep inside.  Everything changes, seasons come and go.  You turn around and suddenly you find half the year is over.. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing…, changing.  You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant. You came here to reach certain goals.  To fulfill certain dreams.  To capture the highest ideal of who you are capable of being.  You came here to not only reach the stars, but to reach beyond them.