Breathe. It’s Only A Bad Day, Not A Bad Life

“She was a true fighter, you could see it in her eyes.  She was not born strong, she was made strong.  She was sculpted to be her own hero when the world let her down, she kept picking herself back up.”  – Unknown

Your power comes from:

 Letting go of what you can’t control – you can’t calm the storm

 Letting go of what doesn’t serve you – stop trying to calm the storm

  Appreciating all the good in your life

  Bringing good to other people’s lives

  Treating your soul like a soulmate and honoring what it tells you

 This is temporary, Breathe through it, the storm always passes

Breathe in the strength, power and courage you need to move on

Breathe out all the pains, frustrations and sorrows that are weighing down your heart

Trust the storm to bring in something better than what it has taken away.

You are where you need to be.  Just Breathe.

The power of the breath cannot be overstated.  When you are stressed out, overwhelmed – when you are in emotional turmoil – your breathing becomes quick and shallow which causes a number of reactions in your body.  Your adrenals are impacted as they release cortisol and start the “fight, flight or freeze” reaction in your body.  Breathing deeply and slowly instantly calms you down mentally so that your body can stop being triggered and relax physically.

Embrace the uncertainty because when nothing is certain then anything is possible – relax and enjoy the beauty of becoming

Strength  is not found in perfection,

• It is found in both the moments of trying and in failing.
• It is found in both the moments of laughing and in crying.
• It is found in both the moments of tenacity and in giving up.
• It is found in both the moments of giving, and in receiving.
• It is found in both the moments of doubt and in believing in the goodness of life, in spite of it all.
• It is found in the moments of courage, bravery, as you continue your journey through both the up hills and the down hills.

That is real strength.

“The world needs strong women .  Women who will lift and build others.  Who will love and be loved.  Women who live bravely, both tender and fierce.  Women of indomitable will.” – Amy Tenney

“She remembered who she was and the game changed.”  – Lalah Deliah

So much of what you worry about in your life, the things causing you to have anxiety are in reality “the small stuff” of your life.  Many of the deadlines that you push yourself to meet, are self created.  Will the world end if dinner is at 6:30 instead of 6:00?  Does it really matter if your child goes to school wearing a stripped shirt and polka dot pants?  Did the PTA call you to say that you have been condemned as the worst parent in the school because you brought store bought cookies instead of baking home made cookies?  All of these things are “the small stuff”.

“When she finally learned how to let go of the things that didn’t matter, she discovered all the things that really did.  Just breathe.”  – Unknown

• What is important is that you cooking a healthy home made meal.
• What is important is that your child’s clothing was clean, neat and that they were happy wearing what they were wearing – expressing who they are as their own person.
• What is important is that you showed up to support your child and their school.

When the “small things” in life get you down.  When life trips you up.  When life sends you on an emotional roller coaster, don’t forget “you are only human“.  You’re still learning.  It’s okay to have a meltdown.  What is important is that you don’t pack your bags and move into the zone of constant emotional turmoil.  Take some deep breaths, re-center and ground your emotions.  Refocus on what is important.  Let go of what isn’t.  Remember what Cristen Rodgers said, “It’s the risk of falling that makes life a grand adventure rather than a guided tour.”

“And one day she discovered that she was fierce, and strong and full of fire, and that not even she could hold herself back because her passion burned brighter than the stars.” – Mark Anthony

Breathe, Release, Remember…,

“What I know for sure is that we are a resilient people, in spite of the difficulties and challenges of life.  We can look deep within ourselves to resolve our own issues so that our light will be our guide.  And we should reach out and extend to others the lessons we have learned so that they too can be empowered.  I’m reminded of a quote by Maya Angelou:  “When you learn, teach.  When you get, give.”” – Ramona A. Gray

I sure that everyone has seen the classic photo of a lone wolf howling at the Full Moon.  But the truth is that a lone wolf is a dead wolf.  The wolf needs a pack to survive.  When something goes wrong in your life, the first instinct is to hunker down by yourself – to isolate yourself.  But like the wolf you were created to be part of a community, you must have connection to thrive.

Isolation simply creates more issues for you in the long run.  There is nothing that stops your mind from catastrophizing, in an endless loops as it pokes and pricks at the pain, thereby increasing the suffering.  I read an interesting quote today that was talking about suicide.  It said that there is an Arabic saying that goes this way:

“You want to die?  Then throw yourself into the sea and you’ll see yourself fighting to survive.  You do not want to kill yourself, rather you want to kill something inside of you”.

I found this so interesting.  It’s not that you truly want to die, even though your mind is trying to convince you that you do.  You just want to end something that you can’t see ending any other way.  It’s the isolation of those feelings that creates the harm.  When you are in this place you need to be reminded and believe that you are a beautiful soul, that is going through temporary suffering.  Let me repeat that “Suffering is Temporary”.  That you are worthy of having a better life.  If you want to change your life, you must open up yourself like the Lodgepole Pine cone and let the fires of what you are suffering release the seeds to create growth and change.

You need to open up to friends about what is happening.  You need to seek counseling.  You need to reach out and reach up and keep reaching until you have transitioned from being in pain and suffering into a positive outlook for your future.  To see the open doors waiting for you to walk through them.  To grow in the new rich ash filled soil, to flourish once again in the sun.

“Let go of what you expect to embrace what’s there” – Chloe Jones

The Lodgepole pine cone is a squat egg shaped pine cone that embeds its seeds inside with a sticky resin.  The seeds are basically locked into a botanical safe.  You would think that it would not be a wide ranging tree – yet it grows from Alaska all the way down to Baja, California in all different kinds of weather zones.  The secret to their seeds being released is extreme heat, such as in a wildfire.  The seeds don’t just survive a catastrophe, they thrive in its aftermath.  This is the definition of resilience.

Resilience is being endlessly inventive, unrelenting, and forever evolving through the chaos of life’s changes.  It is having the flexibility to adapt to what is happening in the current moment without regard to what happened in the past.  You can’t prevent upheavals from happening in your life, but you can be more adaptable to changing conditions.  By putting yourself in the present moment, taking deep breaths and releasing the emotional charge, you can reset yourself.  You can discard the anxiety that is ripping through you, and put your troubles into perspective.

It is in a fire racing through an area that the opportunity to drop the seeds and grow a new tree emerges.  Change opens as many doors and it closes.  Change is going to happen.  You can’t stop things from ending, but you can reach out to the new beginnings that the change brings.  Be courageous and creative enough to embrace whatever happens.

 

“What I have learned over the past 15 months – and the only thing I know for sure – is that everything is temporary.  Happiness, sadness, control, chaos, highs, lows:  They all come and go.  It’s both unsettling and reassuring to rest in the notion that nothing is permanent.” – Kristen Bell

Rest, Renew, and Regenerate

In the aftermath of a wildfire, the Lodgepole pine seeds can become like a thick lime-green carpet across the ground.  The ash-infused soil is prime with rich nutrients to help the seeds grow.  Unlike prior to the fire when the ground was shaded, now the sunlight shines on the seeds as they shoot forth their new life in the aftermath of the destruction of the wildfires.  When a tragedy strikes like a wildfire, such as a death, divorce, loss of a job or illness – resilience is what will help you to see the future as a period of renewal and growth.

Life’s transitions could mean a relocating to a new area to live or working in a completely different field.  It could mean a new opportunity for growth where you are.  How many stories have you heard from friends or relatives who look back on a divorce or a job loss as the best thing that ever happened to them?  It took a catastrophic loss to wake them up.  To acknowledge to themselves that they were merely surviving their old life.

We all need at least one friend that understands what is not being said.  That calls “bullshit” when you say you are fine.  That won’t leave until you open up and say what’s really happening.  That goes down deep into the conversation, until you release the damn you created to hide all of the pain behind.  When you finally start really feeling it, and let out the pain – that’s when you can begin to heal.

I am blessed with both friends and sisters who are the image of this quote:  “Having a sister is like having a best friend you can’t get rid of.  You know whatever you do, they’ll still be there.”  When I was going through the pain of losing my dad they were there.  When I am going through the pain of my husband illnesses and worrying that he’s about to go through deaths door,  they are there.  When I have a tough night of grief striking my heart with the realization that I’ll never see my grandson again, they are there.

They are there because I reach out and say I need it.  As the sayings goes:  “Friends are like bras, close to the heart and there for support.”  The bra gives no support if you don’t put it on.  So when life sends you into the emotional roller coaster of chaos and change, reach out and let the heat of their love release the seeds hidden deep inside of you for growth.

Trust Your Inner Voice And Leave Behind The Illusion Of Knowledge

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking

Have you ever felt lost?  That feeling that says you don’t know how you got to this place in your life.  That fear that eats at your soul, causing the “fight, flight, or freeze” to send you literally fleeing into the darkness, with no idea where you are, or where you are going.  You have no idea how to extract yourself from the situation that you have somehow blindly created.  My visual mind sees the proverb of “painting yourself into a corner”.

‘All progress starts by telling the truth.’  – Dan Sullivan.

If you don’t take the time to listen your inner voice that is what happens.  You get lost in the maze of unconscious decisions.  You come to a dead end, but can’t remember the left and right turns you made.  Unconscious decisions are almost always made from the inner child, who is trying to protect you.  Unfortunately the inner child is under the “illusion of knowledge”.  What you understood about life at 4 or 5 years old; or 10 or 11 years old; or even 18 or 19 years old; that knowledge doesn’t compare to what you understand at 30, 40, 50, or even 60 years old.

These unconscious decisions are made from the “illusion of knowledge” in which you use the same old childish ways of thinking to make decisions that are incomplete, incorrect, or even self-sabotaging and paint you into a corner.  All progress begins with you being honest with yourself.  Becoming self aware.

When you wake up to who you are, you become more self aware.  Every experience in your life is contained within you.  Some parts of those experiences, instead of being healed were judged and rejected as being wrong.  They were pushed into the shadows to be hidden.  When you begin the process of integrating the pieces of you that you have named as shadows, you begin the process of healing those judgments.  Those experiences are not broken pieces of you.  They are just mislabeled.  Healing them means that you are alive.

• You begin to accept all of the parts of yourself, as the unique, special person that you are.
• You pick up those rejected pieces of you and re-own them.
• You acknowledge that you are not perfect, that you have made and will continue to make mistakes.
• You understand that you can’t become what your family, friends and the world wants you to be.
• You  stop pushing away the pieces of you that you are judging as “not good enough”.

What you do with your life from this moment of truth is so important.  It is part of the self discovery of who you are.  For me, I identify with being a life long learner.  Of seeing the connections to everything and everyone in my life.  Of being strategic in following my decisions on  life’s chess board as far as I can and then making the best decision I can see.  I know that many times these decisions will not be the best, but I have left off judging them as shadows.  I do the best I can in that moment – and that whatever happens will just create a new learning opportunity.  I try my best to remain open to the fact that the “truths” I know today can be changed by the experiences of tomorrow.

I love the analogy of a rainbow.  You might think of the primary colors as being the colors of the rainbow.  But it is actually the combinations of those colors in millions of shades that make up who you are in this moment.  No one else has your colors in the shades and combinations that make up who you are.  Don’t reject your colors.  Build your own life from those colors, taking in others perspectives and keeping what resonates with you and leaving what doesn’t behind.

Start Designing Your Life With The Teacher In Your Soul

Listening to internal guidance can be very hard to do when life is stressing you out.  The noise of the chaos around you drowns out that inner voice.  Everyone will have an opinion on what needs to be done.  People will freely tell you how to live your life, what choices you should be making.  They will show up, try to convince you, dazzle you, and intimidate you.

The first thing to do is to drop resistance to what is happening.  “It is what it is”.  When you stop fighting against it, you find the ability to cope with what is.  You lose a loved one, it can’t be changed.  Your employer lets you go, it is what it is.  Coping can only begin after acceptance of what is.  Since you can’t change it, stop pushing back.

Glennon Doyle  in her book Love Warrior said: “I have met myself, and I am going to care for her fiercely.”  She outlines phases that we go through in life.  The typical hero journey where life is good, then tragedy happens, and then we find our way out.  In the process we make discoveries about who we are, and we make changes in how we show up in life.

At this moment in time the whole world is in a unique place.  The whole world has been going through a massive hero’s journey.  It began at the beginning of 2020.

STAGE ONE: LATE STATUS QUO (pre Covid)

You are living in your comfort zone and life is rolling along.  You might be hitting a few speed bumps once in awhile, but on the whole, life is good.

STAGE TWO: FOREIGN ELEMENT (Covid)

…Bam! An unexpected event occurs.  The foreign element of Covid instantly and urgently, changes everything.  Your entire life is turned upside down.  And it’s not just you.  It is happening to everyone around you too.  From normal minor things such as getting groceries, to something more major such as the kids being home-schooled.  If you’re lucky you’re working from home, if not you may have been furloughed or laid off from work.  You’re required to wear a mask everywhere.  You’re told to shelter at home.

STAGE THREE: CHAOS

You may have thought at first that this would be a very temporary situation.  Maybe a couple of months.  But instead those couple of months go past a year, and you find yourself entering into a weird “new normal”.    Then just when you have adjusted to this new normal, it happens again.  Your kids are going back to school – but what does that look like?  Is it safe?  Your job is calling you back to fulltime in the office, but you like working from home fulltime.  You feel like you get a lot more done each day, and who needs that commute?  Plus now you can be home when the kids get home from school.  Just the thought of going back to that old daily commute puts your stomach in a meat grinder.  Or maybe you want to have the ability to do both, having one or two days in the office and 3 or 4 days at home.

The world has changed and what you thought you knew cries out for reexamination. What you’d hoped for, planned for, or predicted before Covid has changed.  It may no longer be possible or even desired. You need to figure out what really matters to you.  This is not a pleasant process because it is filled with so much uncertainty, both for you, your family, and your employer.  But if you just take the time to do the work, it will get you somewhere important. The feeling of being in this chaos phase can be likened to taking a car engine apart – there can be confusion as to what is wrong, what needs to be replaced.  But if you work through the process of clearing up the confusion, you can make some really important and life changing discoveries.

STAGE FOUR: TRANSFORMING IDEA

STAGE FIVE: INTEGRATION AND PRACTICE

This is the stage where you try out those new ideas from your epiphany.  Your employer insists on everyone coming back to the office fulltime.  You suggest a hybrid workplace.  You have done the research and have the data to support your idea.  Maybe it just starts out with coming back to work in the office every other day; two days a week or three days a week.  Suggest that in 30 or 60 days you both reexamine how it is working out.  You follow other companies and what they are doing.  You discover some best practices to implement.  You generate and discard several ways of transforming the workplace until you find the one that fits your workplace culture.

This same concept works for any new ideas you want to implement in your life.

STAGE SIX: NEW STATUS QUO

This happens when your breaking outside of the comfort zone shifts into the new comfort zone, the “new normal”.

STAGE SEVEN: START DESIGNING YOUR LIFE

Pick a regular time several times a year, in which you can take out those kaleidoscope “eyes” and start to DESIGN and prepare for A NEW ADVENTURE.

You can be pro-active.  You can choose how the stage resets.  Your washing machine has more than just one cycle.  Instead of waiting for the foreign elements to bring in chaos, you can choose to start the process of enlarging your comfort zone now.  Be pro-active.  Instead of just imagining what you want to do someday, “I’ll finally write that book” or “I’ll finally travel to a foreign land” or whatever you always say your going to do someday.  You still won’t have the time, the money, or whatever you think that you are lacking in this moment when someday comes.  You just have to go within and shift to stage four and start transforming your idea to make it happen today.

While it is always good to know your limits – it is never good to accept them at face value.

Your current limit is just that – a current limit.  There are so many ways to exceed those limits.  It may mean leaning a new skill.  It may mean using leverage to get around it. When the Apollo mission had to figure out a way back home, the scientists took an inventory of everything they had and figured out a way to make something they didn’t have.

Water is another great analogy.  In order to get around obstacles, it can use the power of a rushing flood to break apart an obstacle.  It can freeze up and expand thereby crushing an obstacle.  It can flow deep within the surrounding area to get under an obstacle.  It can be fog, rain, hail, sleet and snow.  It can work with the wind in a hurricane.  Knowing your limits means thinking outside of the box to discover a way around or through the limitation and still be able to achieve the desired results.

Be like water.  Be magical.  Design something new and wonderful.

“You can’t tame the spirit of someone who has magic in their veins.” – SageGoddess.com

 

A New Life

The Oregon Trail was 2,170 miles, beginning in Independence, Missouri and ending in Willamette Valley, Oregon.  The ruts in the trail grew as high as 5 feet deep in some places.  When your life has been completely shaken up, one of the first things to do is to look at the ruts in your own life.  Where are the places that you have created a rut so deep that you can’t see the possibilities that are all around you?

“Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head” – Meryl Streep

The pasts two years I think that a lot of people are just like me.  Their lives have been shaken up completely.  Working from home, my dad’s passing, and now we have sold our home and are have to moved to another state to build a home.  We stayed with relatives for a year as everything with Covid has taken months to do instead of weeks.  Now we are renting short term as construction is finally starting.  Some changes you may have started, some changes might be the result of others decisions, or life just happening.

Moving to a city where you don’t know anyone will certainly get you out of a few ruts.  The voices in your head will tell you a lot of stories about things to be afraid of.  If you are moving to a new city and state like us, the voices might talk about how hard it will be to make new friends, to get used to a small town.  All of which is nonsense.

“We can’t be afraid of change.  You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea” – C. Joybell C.

Covid-19 is a change, an event.  Losing your job is a change, an event – even if it was your choice to leave.  Having a loved one cross over to their next great adventure is a change, an event.  Having your life partner leave you, is a change, an event.

It is hard to think of being open to these kinds of changes.  They shift and change everything in your life.  They demand you look at areas in your life that you haven’t examined in a while.  That you see where you were so comfortable that you resisted growth in your life.  They push you into a transition period.  These events require you to grow and adapt to what being without someone or something in your life means.  That you look past your fears and create a vision as to who you are now becoming.

“It isn’t the changes that you do you in, it’s the transitions.  Change is not the same as transition.  Change is situational; the new site, the new boss, the new team roles, the new policy.  Transition is the psychological process people go through to come to terms with the new situation.  Change is external, transition is internal – William Bridges

With Covid-19 you are going through social transitions.  It might be that habits such as shaking everyone’s hands are gone forever.  I’m a hugger.  If I liked you, I hugged you.  If feels so restrictive not to do so.  However, now I hesitate because I can no longer judge if it is appropriate, or will be received by someone.  I feel called to ask if I can hug you first.  There is a psychological transition that Covid-19 is forcing on the entire world, to come to terms with what all of the changes being required by this event are doing to us.

“We resist transition not because we can’t accept the change, but because we can’t accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up because the situation has changed” – William Bridges

The easiest example that comes to my mind is when work changes a software program or simply changes how a certain part of your job is done.  You are resistant to unlearning to do something that has become ingrained in you.  To learn to do your job in a different way. 

Someone decides that a part of your job actually should be done by a different department as it makes more sense to do so in their eyes.  You might not not agree and resist the change.  You might resist learning a new software program.  You might resist training someone who is to take over that part of your job.

“Change comes more from managing the journey than from announcing the destination” – William Bridges

Same thing happens when Facebook changes how your page looks.  When Apple updates your phone and changes how your phone looks.  When your banking app updates and changes how you access your accounts. 

Almost daily you are faced with some upgrade, some update that requires you to do something different.  When you look at these kinds of small events, changes and transitions don’t look so scary. 

• What if you took the attitude you have about an app having an update, and used that same feeling, attitude about all of life’s shifts and transition’s? 
• What if you viewed everything as an upgrade? 
• What if you looked at it like you are just getting an upgrade from flying coach to flying first class? 
• What if instead of resisting transition, you enjoy it?
  

Embrace change, no matter what kind of change it is.  When my dad passed a year ago, it created a space in my life.  I have been taking care of him for 15 years.  I’d pass by his room and miss seeing him.  The tendency we all have is to fill up this space with something.  Instead on the advice of a dear friend, I am just letting this space be.  I am ignoring this frantic message in my head telling me to fill it up.

“The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place” – Barbara De Angelis

I want to let life show me instead – what is it bringing into my life as possibilities?  What is that part of my life is transitioning into?

With the passing of my dad, and moving to a new city and state, I wanted to learn what this new world can be.  I wanted to take advantage the possibilities.  I wanted to honor the space between “no longer” and “not yet”.  The space of no longer living with the “caretaker” label.  The space of “??”, the space of living comfortably with the unknown and “yet to be”.

This process had me taking a break from writing this blog for about a year.  I needed to that space to process what had ended, and what’s next.  It’s still a place of transition.  The caretaking has shifted from my dad to my husband, who has metastasized cancer.  Sometimes living life is a dance between fast and slow; between heart lifting and heart breaking – all at the same time.

The important thing is to slow down and breathe.  To let what’s happening wash over you, through you and out of you.  To realize that the waves come and go.  They kiss the shore and then retreat, only to come back again.  Each time they bring something and they take something.  The shoreline changes over time.  Expansion and retraction both happen in their appointed times.  You are in control only of how you choose to react to the changes.

“The most powerful times in our lives can be the time between times, or life’s transitions that give us the opportunity to choose” – Bill Crawford

You may have experienced some sort of event in your life recently, or may be you are experiencing it right now this moment.  Take time to have the space between what was, and what is now coming into your life.  Realize that you have a multitude of choices.  If you have lost a loved one, take the time you need to grieve, to let go, and to open up.  If you have lost your job or business, you still need some space to grieve what you lost.  Be open to transition from a title or position that you once had and see the possibilities of learning something new.  Of a new career or business, a new beginning.

“She understood that the hardest times  in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another”– Sarah Addison Allen

When you allow that space to create the vision of where you want to go, it is the space of growth.  It is messy.  It is uncomfortable.  You will experience feelings you didn’t know you had in you to feel.  It is welcoming change and loss, because that is where the growth happens.  That is where you learn something new about yourself and what you are capable of. Where you can see the opportunity to evolve.  To transition into new beginnings.

Your Life Purpose Is The Way Home

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are times in your life journey when you:

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

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

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

Become skilled at facing fear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All of which will crash your bike.

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

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

It was you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are You Inviting Hope Into Your Life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choices

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

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

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

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

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

Emotions

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

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

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

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

Hope is the Pearl born from Fear

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

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

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

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

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

What is Shaping your Future – Fears or Hope?

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

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

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

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

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

Start Walking, Be Aware, Watch For Possibilities

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

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

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

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

Never Turn Away

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

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

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

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

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

Focus

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Just Go For It!

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

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

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

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

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

Turning a Corner

There is an old curse that people used to say, according to various fiction writers.  “May you live in interesting times.”  It was meant to imply that you would live in times of great change and unrest.  You might be wondering if you are today, this moment, living in interesting times.  If you are, how do you “aim true”?

In thinking about this I wonder if you are in fact living in a time of great shifting and upheaval.  Think of the change in a landscape after a volcano has blown its top.  We used to live outside of Seattle, WA and I remember going camping, hiking and fishing around Mt. Saint Helens.  When the mountain had its huge eruption, the landscape totally changed.  You would walk down the same path as before, only it wasn’t the same.  The eruption changed the landscape into something surreal.

Are you experiencing changes on a personal level, such as going to a grocery store with a list of items that you can’t find?  For those few items you do find, are you being limited by the store as to how many items you can purchase?

Turning A Corner In WW II

One of the things I love to do is get curious about patterns and shifts in life.  During WW II all of the men went off to war.  This left factories without workers and so many women were called upon to join the workforce to keep the machines running.  It was a time of great upheavals and shifts.  When the men came home they expected the women to go back home to the kitchen.  Women had stood in the place of their husbands or boyfriends and worked a fulfilling job for several years – as well as keeping care of the home and children.  Many of them didn’t want to go back home into their old roles as solely a wife or mother.  They felt that they could be more than that, and wanted it to continue.

Overnight it seemed that the roles of a man and woman had shifted.  They had turned a corner and it wasn’t possible to just go back to the way it was.  It’s taken a long time for those roles to continue shifting and solidifying into true equality.  It is still going on to some extent.

It feels like you may be about to have a similar experience of what happened to the workforce during WW II.  What if the result of this virus is that you are about to experience a “turning of the corner” moment, in multiple ways of how you used to live your life?

“Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is” – Unknown

Is This The End Of The World As We’ve Known It?

Malls have been slowly dying for the past 10 years or so.  Is this the end of malls?

Working from home has been moving one step forward, two back for a few years.  Where I work it wasn’t encouraged.  It was well tolerated for a few years, but lately they had decided they wouldn’t approve it for fulltime employees who wanted to shift from the office to home any longer.  Now of course for those states on lockdown everyone who can work from home is.  If this home lockdown truly continues for a couple of months, will businesses have turned a corner and begin abandoning commercial multistoried office buildings?  Will working from home become the “norm” of the future?

Has the virus killed ISP data caps?  Internet providers have been lifting the data caps due to everyone being at home and using the internet – both for work and entertainment.  Once you have given something away for free, it is very hard to put the genie back into the bottle.  It becomes a negative experience for your customers and they will go to someone who is still not capping their online connections.

What if we have just “turned the corner” for movie theaters?  You see Disney and several other companies releasing the movies to either buying the movie or streaming it and paying to view it.  If this was to continue there would be need to be a drastic change to how much it cost to make a movie in order for the industry to survive.  Would the mega dollars paid to the big stars go away?  Would movies become all computer generated, with voices being the only real part of the movie?

What about the million dollar contracts for sports stars if the big arenas were no longer deemed safe?

Once you start down the rabbit hole of wondering, there is no telling where you might end up.  The world is full of patterns.  The patterns continue until they transform, collapse or end.  When you are in the middle of a pattern that is in transition, it is really hard to recognize what is happening.  Even if you recognize that a pattern shift is being played out, it is really hard to determine where it is going.  It is impossible to guess how fast or slow the change will be, or how much it will impact you.  You just know that transformation is in motion.

If you go back to the caterpillar to butterfly analogy you are inside the chrysalis and you are still just goo.  Until you break free of the chrysalis you won’t know what it is that you have transformed into.  You won’t know the true impact on your life.  What corner(s) have you just turned that you can never go back from?  It is like one of those pictures that you can connect the dots on.  It is only after the transformation has been completed that you can see what you have transformed into.

How Do You Aim True?

I feel  like there is an elephant trying to go through a door and it has gotten itself stuck.  On the other side of the door is a brand new world to explore.  I can get glimpses to see that it is a new world.  I can’t however know how much of a change has actually occurred.

Will we all be working from home and will commercial real estate transform all of those buildings into housing?  What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

Will the majority of people order groceries and have home delivery?  Will grocery stores become more of a shipping facility than a store where you walk down the aisles and buy more than you planned on because of impulse buying? What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

Will drones become the future of deliveries?  Will self driving cars that self sanitize become the way of getting from point A to point B if you do have to leave home? What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

All questions and answers can be discussed and explored – but nothing will be truly known until the elephant clears the doorway.  Even then it will take time to fully realize that the corner has been completely turned.  Before you can see how much the new direction impacts your life.

What you have in this moment though is the ability to be curious.  To explore, not with a depressing attitude that the world is changing and you want it to remain the same.  But with a curiosity that says, “I wonder what happens next?”  “Do I aim high or low with my life goals and dreams?”

I  Wonder What Happens Next?

I firmly believe that there are going to be some great opportunities when we clear that doorway – when we turn that corner.  You can make guesses.  You can get curious and talk with others – but only from the perspective of good things are about to happen.  This isn’t said to try and make light of the health and economic devastations that are happening.  It is said to let you know that you don’t have to let fear take over your life.

You can’t control everything that is happening, or is about to happen.  You can take the recommended steps to protect the health of yourself and your family.  But once you have taken those steps – then go back into curiosity.  Go back into wonder.  Stay in the positive emotions of love, joy, happiness.  Tell fear that it is in quarantine.  Don’t let it out to take over your life.

Come and join our conversation on April 4th.  Let’s talk about whatever is showing up for you and how you can turn the corner on fear and change your relationship with it.  Let’s talk about your dreams and goals and how you can still be proactive in bringing them into reality.  This isn’t the time to go into retraction with your life.  It is instead the right time, to proactively take whatever positive steps you can to keep moving forward.  To keep expanding the love, joy, happiness, curiosity in your life.

Shots Fired

“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you” – Unknown

In April of 2010 around 11 PM as my nephew and a friend were cutting across the park to go to his friends mom’s house the first shot was fired.  As my nephew was hit, he yelled at his friend to run.  When the second shot hit my nephew his friend started running.  As the third shot hit my nephew and he crumpled to the ground his friend stopped, turned around and saw the shooter emerge from the bushes and take off running.

His friend helped him up and somehow got my nephew to his moms house and they called 911 for an ambulance.  The doctors tried to get a lifeline helicopter but the fog that night was too thick for the helicopter.  After working on him for over an hour, they thought they had him stable enough for transport to another hospital 30-45 min away.  As my sister tried to catch up to the ambulance driving over the mountain pass, they phoned her to tell her to turn around.  My nephew had died in route.

Let’s go back in time to the beginning of this fateful Friday.  My nephew woke up early and grabbed his surfboard.  On the way to Lighthouse field he stopped and gave away some breakfast sandwiches he had made to several homeless guys as he checked in on them.  It was a regular routine for him to encourage them to quit drinking and take back control over their lives.  He then went on to meeting one of his best friends at Lighthouse Field.  His friend was going to film him surfing.  The waves were supposed to be really good and he had this trick he had been working on for some time.  He wanted to have it filmed so he could see what it looked like.  The waves were as predicted and he nailed his trick.

From there he went to work at O’Neils Surf shop.  Then he met another friend and together they went to another friends house.  Close to 11 PM they started across the park so he could get his bike and ride home.  Then “Shots Fired” happened.  A random gang banger shooting.  The shooter never said a word.  He just blew up our world from the cover of darkness for no reason that we could ever understand.

“Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us” – suburbanment.com

Fast forward a few years.  Our family is still recovering from my nephews murder.  My sister started a non-profit Mother Grizzles Against Gangs, but she ran out of money and closed it down.

Santa Cruz Sentinel 2014> "Four years ago this month, JoAnn Tennent lost her only child in a shooting near Grandview Street in Santa Cruz. Carl Reimer was 19, and no one has been arrested in his homicide.  Wednesday evening outside Santa Cruz City Hall, Tennent shared her grief with more than 80 people gathered at the third annual Victims Rights March of Solidarity. She also carried a message of hope and strength to stand together against gangs and violence in Santa Cruz County. “Carl wasn't just my son, he was your son. Because all your children are my children too,” she said. “When someone takes someone from your life, it's devastating. We can't just act like this doesn't happen.”  As part of National Crime Victims” Rights Week, the march started at Santa Cruz County Superior Court at 701 Ocean St. and ended at city hall. Participants held pictures of loved ones who had fallen victim to crime in the county, and they marched with posters with slogans such as “Stop gang violence” and “Violence does not only affect the victim.”"

As a coping mechanism I had started writing to heal my sadness and grief.  I was posting things on my personal Facebook page that I was writing.  I thought just maybe it would help my friends and family.  We were all rebuilding our lives around Carl’s loss.

“if you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed”  – Unknown

A lot of people started commenting and sharing what I was writing and they encouraged me to do more.  And so this LemonadeMaker page was born.  I named it LemonadeMaker because I believe that we are all making lemonade out of life’s lemons.  It all started as part of my own recovery, and it grew into a life purpose.  It’s a vast vision, a dream that I work to fulfill every day.  It’s a calling. Although we lost someone we loved so much – the day of his death was also a day that Carl was following his own dreams.  He had a great morning.  He was really stoked that he had nailed his trick with his surfboard.  He wasn’t leaving his dreams for someday I will . . . , he was living them on purpose.

“In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths” – Quoteslife101.net

I looked at my life and realized I wasn’t doing the same.  I was putting off my dreams for when I retired.  For later.  So when I started LemonadeMakers it was for the purpose of realizing my dreams of being a game changer.  Of being an influencer.  Of helping others to fulfill their dreams now.  Because none of us are promised a later to do it in.

 

Steven Pressfield stated in “The Art of War”, that most of us have two lives; the lives we live and the lives we are capable of living.

5 years later LemonadeMakers has almost 100,000 followers.  This happened because I saw something positive to retrieve from the ashes of my grief.  My nephew left me a trail to follow and I have been walking down it ever since.  It has totally changed my life.  I had put off the dream of writing, because my mind fears said I would fail.  Obviously that wasn’t true.  I had told myself for years that I was an introvert and couldn’t communicate with strangers.  Too my surprise this was also totally not true.  How many mind fears – lies – are you listening too instead of pursuing your dreams?

Don’t put your dreams off to tomorrow.  Start fulfilling them today.  Live the life you are capable of living.

Sign up now.  Click the button to register now.

 

 

Are You Pushing Your Limits?

“Bravery is not the absence of fear.  Bravery is feeling the fear, the doubt, the insecurity, and deciding that something else is more important”  – Mark Manson

Every year we commit ourselves to making changes in our lives.  We may or may not call them goals, or new years resolutions.  The thing is that we all change, whether it is on purpose or it just happens.  Those changes can happen in uncontrolled chaos, or from being committed to something vitally important.  Whether change happens to us or for us, it is up to us to make those decisions, day by day & moment by moment.

“I wish for the same thing I’ve hoped for since the beginning.  I wish for a life so brave, so unpredictable, so full of unexpected joys and unforgettable love that no box could possible contain all my memories.  Such a life won’t be perfect.  It’ll be something better.  It’ll be my own paradise”  – Patti Smith

I think that the one thing all of humanity can agree on, is wanting a happy life.  It may look different depending on our age, our sexual preference, our religion, our culture, our politics – but it is still desiring joy and happiness in our lives, and our families lives.  Each decision that we make in this regard comes from us following those things mentioned above.  The funny thing is, the personal definition of what constitutes all of those things  — may not be authentic to who we are at a soul level.  A lot of them come from following someone else’s value system.  Our parents, our teachers, our mentors or the society that we associate with.  As they say in Texas, “that dog don’t hunt”.

It’s not perfect, It’s a work in progress

“Finding the passion and purpose in your life is a trial-by-fire process.  You don’t simply wake up one day and become happy doing one thing forever and ever.  It’s a constant work-in-progress”  – Mark Manson

It’s kind of funny how we have this notion in our head that if we are able to make this one change or answer this one soul searching question about our life, that it will be a one and done thing.  That somehow one thing changing would make us happy forever.  There is no one-size-fits-all for anything in life.  This is because growth is a constantly changing who we are.  What makes us happy today in this moment is fleeting.  This is because in life, you literally cannot pass this way again.  Everything is changing and so this moment in time doesn’t last, it doesn’t repeat itself.  Progress is change.

“Passion will move men beyond themselves, beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures” – Joseph Campbell

What I love about figuring out how to accomplish my desires is the concept of failure as an ending.  When you are on your way to someplace that you’ve never been before, even with a navigation system you sometimes end up on a dead end.  Just this past week I had a doctors visit and they had moved their office.  So I am following the directions on the navigation system in my car and I end up at a dead end.  Thankfully there were some security guards talking next to this gate to the high school who knew where I needed to go.

“Believe in yourself and all that you are.  Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle”  – Christian D Larson

Reaching a dead end, my journey to the doctors office had failed.  I didn’t just turn around and go back home.  I sought new directions.  It’s the same thing with whatever our current life goals are.  If you reach a road block, a dead end, the bridge is out – you shouldn’t just quit trying to get to where your passion is leading you.  You should try something else.  You should go in a new direction to the same destination.

New Directions required –

BE different to MAKE a DIFFERENCE

“If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world”  – Elaine Dalton

A big part of being able to make the changes in your life that you desire, is a healthy self esteem.  It is how you bring your life into soul alignment.  It is living a life in integrity to your soul’s purpose.  What your true values are deep inside of you.  Without going through a process of determining what belongs to your soul – and what was adopted from outside of you from an deep seated need to belong – you can’t make true lasting changes in your life.  You can make temporary changes from will power, but it will not result in the personal transformation that you desire.

“Don’t give in to your fears.  If you do you won’t be able to talk to your heart”  – Paulo Coelho

If you don’t want to continue falling back into old patterns and habits you need to learn a new way to facilitate your life changes.  To learn a process that helps you to spot the patterns as they begin again to interfere in your passions and desires for change.  As you increase your awareness, you will find those old patterns hold less power and control over your life.  They began from a desire to keep us safe.  But as you grow and change in life, those patterns become out-grown, outdated.  They need to be released.  That can only happen by your developing awareness of why you created them and how your subconscious is trying to avoid the risk of standing out and being different.

This year you have some dreams that you are working on. You have some goals that you are struggling with. It might be that you are ready to break out of your comfort zone. To go to that next level in your life. To realize your full potential in your job/career; your personal relationships; your health; financial or spiritual goals. Don’t let them go.

Do something different, join us on March 7th and find a new direction to fulfilling your dreams, goals and commitments.

Brand New Ending?

 

What I love about life is the ability to always make a change.  To do something different.  To be someone different.  It’s all about choice.

There are many people who look at their lives and decide they have no choices.  That life is somehow against them.  That they can’t be any different.  It is the excuse of people who feel hopeless and helpless.  But the reality is that you do get to decide how you are going to live your life.

Is this the life

you want to live?

There comes a point where it all becomes too much.  When we get too tired to fight anymore.  So, we give up.  That’s when the real work begins.  To find hope where there seems to be absolutely none at all – Christina Yang

When you are in the middle of life’s storms it may seem like all of the trees have been blown over.  The roots were just not strong enough to keep the tree anchored in the soil.  The homes around you may have suffered extreme damage and become uninhabitable.  They weren’t maintained or strong enough to survive the hurricane force winds.  When every structure you have created in your life has been ripped apart – what then?

That is the moment to notice that you are still here.  You may not be standing; you may have been knocked down.  But you are not out.  It is in this moment of realizing that you have survived that you can take stock of your life.  Because it is in this moment you learn that you were strong enough to survive.  That you get to decide what happens next.

Is this the person you want to be?

Are these the relationships you want in your life?

Is this the job/career you desire?

Is this the BEST YOU CAN BE?

Can you be stronger?

Kinder?

More Compassionate?

I’m sure that you have heard the saying “let go and let God”.  It is one of my constant reminders to myself.  It feels like letting go is easy.  It’s sort of like handing over the trouble to someone else to handle.  It relieves you of the responsibility of fighting for how you want things to turn out.

At the same time, it is human to keep the comfort zone the same.  So, while you are busy telling yourself that you have let go, you are in fact fighting to keep things the same.

How do you know if you’re fighting to keep it?  By noticing that you haven’t really moved on.  You have the same furniture in your comfort zone, you just moved it around.  In order to have a real change in your life, no matter how painful it is, you have to let it all go and move on.  You need to have a moving sale, “all must go”.  You have to donate that old furniture and get new furniture.  It’s the only way we can continue to grow.

Letting go is a release.  If you have the balloons all stacked up and tied together, they aren’t going anywhere.  It’s when you untie all of the balloons and let them go one by one.  It’s when you let the wind take up each balloon and blow it across the sky until you can’t see it anymore – that’s when you have really let it go.  What you are letting go of is not the dream itself, but the version of the dream you were trying to fulfill.

I think it is human to have some really deep-seated desires, beliefs, wishes that you know aren’t ever really going to happen.  You were raised to believe in fairy tales, in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, in the white knight in shining armor that was going to sweep in and rescue you.  You told yourself they weren’t real.  You thought you had released them.  Then something in life happens, and you realize you are still holding out for that forgotten dream.

It’s that kind of faith, in realities not yet beheld, that keeps us going.  And once in a while something comes into your life that gives you hope.   The hope that just maybe that thing you are still hoping for, fighting for, might just come true.  That you are going to turn the corner and have your breath taken away by the surprise of how it shows up.

The best thing in life is to go ahead with all your plans and your dreams, to embrace life and to live life everyday with passion, to lose and still keep the faith and to win while being grateful.  All of this because the world belongs to those who dare to go after what they want.  And because life is really too short to be insignificant – Charlie Chaplin

I think that sometimes we don’t see it, because we are demanding that it to show up in a certain way.  When in reality it has been in front of us all along.  It’s like the love story when the boy or girl is looking at someone as being their soul mate, when in reality the best friend they’ve had their entire life is the one.  They didn’t see what they already had.

New Endings

I think that is what new endings are all about.  To realize that the fairy tale is just slightly different than what you have been looking for.  That the dream is here right in front of you, just waiting for you to see it in its disguise.  Waiting for you to realize you’ve had your own keys all along.

This year you have some dreams that you are working on.  You have some goals that you are struggling with.  It might be that you are ready to break out of your comfort zone.  To go to that next level in your life.  To realize your full potential in your job/career; your personal relationships; your health; financial or spiritual goals.

Life changes when you realize you have the keys to your happiness in your own hands.  Don’t let them go.

Message us for more ideas on how to do this.