Choices, Chances, Changes, and The Courage To Make Them

An old Cherokee told his grandson, “My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth.”
The boy thought about it, and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”
The old man quietly replied, “The one you feed.”

I have always loved this story because it is so on point. You have choices on how you interpret things. You have choices on how you feel. You can go down the positive, optimistic road.  Or you can go down the negative, pessimistic road. I try very hard to go down the positive road. 

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.  –  Nelson Mandela

You can change your life by having the courage to bring into your life something that was never fostered or nurtured in you as a child.  All of the good wolfs qualities, joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth come from having a positive self-worth. Just because you were not raised as a positive person seeking joy, peace, love, hope in your life, doesn’t mean that you can’t live your life from that place.

The pathway here of the good wolf is the same one as Robert Frost’s less traveled road. Many people feed the “evil” wolf’s feelings of drama – anger, jealousy, greed – they blame all of their problems on someone else. Nothing is their fault. They just have bad luck. Can’t get ahead, and so on, and so on. The “evil” wolfs path is paved with bad choices made in the past, and excuses for what is happening in the present. 

You have two choices,

accept conditions as they exist,

or accept the responsibility to change them.

If you find that you have strayed into feeding the “evil” wolf, you can stop feeding him. We all have times that we make poor decisions. You have the power to change circumstances immediately by accepting responsibility for where you are.  For all of the choices you have made.  To not make any more excuses for your mistakes.  As the saying goes, “the buck stops here”.  Just start making better choices.

Sometimes you think you are making a good choice, only to discover you didn’t.  How can you tell which road to choose? You can tell the difference in how the energy or vibrations make you feel in your body as you contemplate your decisions.

When you are compromising your spirit, it feels wrong. You might get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. But every time you make a good choice, a positive choice, even if it has negative consequences, you feel lighter, cleaner in your spirit.

Picking a path with heart – Carlos Castaneda

Choose the path that takes you where you need to go. It is the path of growth.

Do what you are afraid to do.

It is how good character is developed. 

Embrace, accept and celebrate each choice you make that keeps you walking your own path in life.  Embrace it and own it when the bad wolf wins. Stop feeding it and start feeding the good wolf again.

It is easy to wander off the path.  To get distracted.  Each minute gives you a new chance to get back on your own path, making better choices.

You have the choice every day to be just like the crowd, asleep at the wheel, and just existing in life.  To get distracted by the bright shiny lights.  To get so busy with life’s distractions that you fall back asleep.  

You can always choose again, to wake up and to be different.  Every choice you make, makes you who you are.  You can choose to be distinct.  To be what only you can be. 

I choose to live by choice not by chance,

To be motivated, not manipulated,

To be useful, not used,

To make change, not excuses,

To excel, not compete,

I choose self-esteem, not self-pity,

I choose to listen to my inner voice,

Not to listed to the random opinions of others . . .

   – InspirationBoost.com

When I think of this, I immediately think of the photos of the little old ladies in New York City.  They dress up in wild colors.  They wear outrageous hats.  They have style.  They are saying “Look at me, that’s right, take a second or third look”.  They crack me up, because they don’t care if you are judging them, because they are having too much fun being an original distinctive wild woman.  Their life viewpoint, have fun and give people something to talk about.

Let Your Inner Child Whisper In Your Ear

At some point in your life, you were told to grow up. Stop acting like a child. Hide your feelings. Be an adult. Be more serious, and so on. You lose a vital part of who you are when you listen to that. You bury it so deep that you forget it is even there. You begin to sleepwalk through your entire life.

“Are you feeling a bit shaken, maybe stirred, maybe fearful and doubtful and completely utterly wildly terrified?  Good.  Keep going”  – Victoria Erickson

You “release the Kraken”, the Inner Queen of your life.  You stop the drama.  You stop being so sad, or angry.  You stop trying to be all things for all people.  You just let all of that stuff go.  You are no longer afraid of who you are.  You realize that you have always been more than enough.  You finally get that caring for yourself is an act of love, and the only way you can survive.

“You can’t give up on something that your heart is still rooting for, no matter how hard the fall is.  Your heart is the ultimate master.  It knows the things the mind doesn’t yet have an answer for.  It leads the way out of your darkest moments.  It’s your one and only Chief of Staff. You have the power to thrive under any circumstances, as long as you use your heart as the compass”– Andrea Balt

This inner child has so much imagination. They have such enthusiasm for life. They don’t see what is, they see what might be. The possibilities of endless wonder. It is having fun today, instead of planning for it on your yearly vacation. Picture in your mind a steep hill.  You are at the top the hill looking down.  You are on your bike, and you are about to start down the hill, to break a world speed record.  You can see everyone you know at the bottom of the hill cheering you on.  Your best friends, your brothers and sisters, even your mom and dad. 

Imagine the story you will be telling ten years from now.  Is it the story about the wild ride down the hill, or how you carefully rode down the hill with the brakes on all the way to play it safe?  Celebrate your inner child and fly down that hill!

“The most potent muse of all is your own inner child” – Stephen Nachmanovitch

That inner child doesn’t wallow in disappointment. If the idea fails to work as planned, they simply dust themselves off and start a new plan. If the child has a fight with their best friend, five minutes later it is forgiven and forgotten. They don’t just run down the street; they leap down it.

Every minute is to be filled with a sense of wonder and joy.  That inner child is waiting to take your hand and dance with you through the fields of flowers, to laugh rolling down the hillside.

If you still have that child locked up and buried deep inside, I encourage you to set it free. Let it explore and come up with fun plans for your life. It’s magical looking at your life through the kaleidoscope and spinning the designs. Imagination will get you everywhere.  Answer the toy phone and see who is calling you. 

Give that spirit of the child over to your personal genius. See what you can discover about your purpose that you didn’t know.  You will be amazed by how wonderful and fun life can be when you aren’t supervised by your inner critic.

“So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us” – Gaston Bachelard

When you have big dreams, you become a person of vision.  When you follow that vision, you have the passion, strength and patience to change the world.  You are living in a time right now, where men and women of vision are about to make huge changes in the world.  When a “new normal” is about to be created.

Don’t let your mind or anyone else tell you that you can’t be a big part of bringing those changes into reality.  Your dreams are valid.

“Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”  – Steve Jobs

Today realize that you are old enough to start reading fairy tales again.  Holding the hand of your inner child, step through the mirror and see what Wonderland has in store for you. Visit Neverland and see if you can fly. Go looking for treasures on Treasure Island. Explore the deep oceans with Captain Nemo.  

All of these stories have such vital life lessons in them. They can help you understand deep things about yourself. People may think that you are crazy for doing so, but I have it on the best authority that “all of the best people are”.

Celebrate Life – Life Gets Better With Change, Not Chance

Once upon a time, there was a wicked stepmother who tried to poison her stepdaughter with a poisoned apple. She was afraid of what Snow White was becoming.

Life is full of surprises.  Not all these surprises are pleasant, so you need to be ready for what life brings you.

  – Unknown

Deep inside of us is a protector that is afraid of us changing. Like the wicked stepmother, this protector uses fear to try and manipulate us into remaining the same. When Snow White took a bite of the apple, it put her into a deep sleep like state. Everyone thought she was dead. But she wasn’t. She was frozen in time, so that she couldn’t change.

Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid.  Courage means you don’t let fear stop you.

  – Bethany Hamilton

Have you ever felt like that? So afraid of change, that you are frozen in time? Too many choices so you can’t make one? Or maybe you feel that there are no choices? 

What if I told you that 10 years from now, your life would be exactly the same?  I doubt you’d be happy.  So, why are you so afraid of change?

  –  Karen Salmansohn

Are you hiding under the bed because it suddenly occurred to you, that the monster under the bed was you? What if everything you are hiding from is just “all in your head”?  Change will not come about by waiting for some outside, unseen force to step in and make everything perfect.  We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.  We are the change that we seek.  We are the only ones who can create the change we so long for. 

The fears we don’t face become our  limits.

  – Robin Sharma

I am a big Sci-Fi fan and one of my favorite lines from the movie “Dune” is:

Fear is the mind-killer. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

  – Frank Herbert, Dune

Everything we want is on the other side of what fear is making us believe. It is all an illusion, and if we can let it pass through us and out the other side, we see the truth. It isn’t real. Only you are real.  Never be afraid to be someone new.  To try something new.  When we are bored, it is because we are staying within the limits of what we already know.  Break out of those limits. 

Only you know when you are giving maximum effort towards your goals.  Only you know who you really are, and if you truly believe in yourself.

  – Nav-Vii

That doesn’t mean that sometimes the truth behind the illusion won’t be hard to deal with. There are things in our past that we have buried, and when fear digs them up, we need to shine the light of truth on them. What we need to realize however, is that it is all buried treasure. It may be disguised as worthless junk. It might be tarnished, covered in dust and cobwebs, but if we clean it up, we can see it for what it really is.

May we ever choose the harder right, instead of the easier wrong.

  – Thomas S. Monson

Our child’s mind didn’t understand the value it has. It only felt the hurt upon receiving it, and so it was buried deep. But when fear sees us moving to change, it grabs those forgotten things we buried, and brings them up out of the dungeon to scare us back into submission. When we confront what fear brings us, and shine it up, we can see what the treasure really is. The illusion fades and only we remain.

Fear is an opportunity.  It is a fuel for courage to transform us into a finer human being.

  – Unknown

And that is when the real adventure begins. Once upon a time, . . .  I remembered that limits only exist in my mind.  Like Luke Skywalker I gathered my courage and went into the cave to face my biggest fear.  And like Luke, I discovered it was me.  I was afraid of being who I am.  I was afraid of what my full potential would require of me.  All of my life, I have been the responsible one.  The one that everyone turns to when they have a problem.  The one who can handle anything.  This gave me a feeling of worth and value. 

Our true identity is to love without fear and insecurity.  Our higher potential finds us when we set our course in that direction.  The power of love and compassion transforms insecurity.

  – Doc Childre

What the cave showed me is that I was using this as a cover.  It kept me busy.  It made me look good.  But it wasn’t growing me.  I came to the realization that while I was doing “good”, I could do better by living my true purpose in life.  By using the divine gifts I could write about myself, about the things I had experienced, about the things I had seen, and the things I had studied about for years.  To encourage not just my own personal circle of family and friends, but to gather a worldwide community through LemonadeMakers.

The key to change . . .  is to let go of fear.

  – Rosanne Cash

I had allowed the wicked stepmother to put me to sleep, but now I had to wake up.  Now I had to help others to wake up.  To help them discover for themselves what they have hidden in the cave.  To discover their own life purpose and divine gifts.  To help see that what they have been looking for is within them.  I can’t tell you what it is, but I can help you to ask the right questions, to help you get curious and set out on your own personal transformation journey.  I can applaud when you find it and walk on your true life path for your souls journey.  Cheering you on for letting go of fear and setting yourself free to be who you really are.

I alone cannot change society for the better.  But I can radically transform my own Consciousness, overturning the conditioning that limits my potential.  We can all do this, one by one.  Over time we can change ourselves to the degree that society changes from the inside out.  Giving birth to a new way of being.  Manifesting our birthright of living in a peaceful and abundant world.  Have no fear.  Trust yourself.  Live your full potential.

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Love Is A Superpower

 Admit it, as some point in your life, you wanted to have super powers.  Wonder Woman, Super Girl, Super Man, Batman or Robin, Spiderman?  What super power did you want to have?  What Super Hero do you want to be?

One of my favorite stories of my children is when my middle son Seth was around 5 years old.  We were having a costume party and he wanted to be Superman.  It wasn’t around Halloween, so I made the costume myself.  I made a cape and the Superman S was made out of felt and was on the cape, and on the leotard on his chest.  I found these wonderful red knee socks that were fuzzy and looked a lot like boots.  The costume was perfect and when he put it on the night before the party he was so excited. 

He climbed up on the back of our couch, leaped into the air, and came crashing down to the floor.  He was so mad.  He thought that if he had the costume he would be able to fly.  It took all of my ingenuity to talk him into wearing the costume for his party, because if he couldn’t fly he didn’t want to attend his own party.  I am so thankful that he chose the couch and not a high tree to jump out of – lol.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.  They went out and happened to things.

  –  Leonardo da Vinci

I think that a great super power is this very thing, going out and making things happen.  As women we handle many roles.  We are a mother (giving life, nurturing and believing in our children), a daughter (giving love, respect and gratitude to our parents), a wife (life sustaining devotion, inner beauty, and immense power) a sister (who will fight for you and always love you no matter what).  And many of us become care givers for our elderly parents.  All immensely challenging roles.

You laugh, cry and work harder than you ever thought you could.  Some days you’re trying to change the world and some days it’s just diapers.  Some days you love your life, and some days you wonder if you can just take one more step.  Some days like Old Mother Hubbard there is nothing in the cupboard and your wallet is empty.  But your heart is full and you have faith.  So you make it through to the next day and the next day after that.  Your heart is full, sometimes of laughter and sometimes of tears.  You have memories of your family as you grew up, and memories of raising your own.  You may not think it, but you’ve changed the world just by being in it.  On those days when one more step seems too long, remember you are a super hero.

We are strong, smart and crafty in creating a “home” and a “refuge” in the middle of a chaotic world.  We can open and close car doors, front doors, and refrigerator doors, while holding onto both children, bags of groceries, purses and a diaper bag.  We bring a new definition to multitasking as one of our super powers.

Each of us is a wonder.  We are unique, in an unrepeatable way.  The real you, is unique and the only one of you that will ever be on this earth.  Never before and never again, will there be someone just like you.  It such an amazing thing to let sink in.  You didn’t just happen to be here now.  You are here for a reason, a purpose.  A purpose that can only be accomplished, if you let the real you be up front and center.  Your super power is so needed in our world. 

We all have angels guiding us . . . , they look after us.  They heal us, touch us, comfort us with invisible warm hands . . . , what will bring their help?  Asking.  Giving,  Thanks.

  –   Sophy Burnha

We are all given the opportunity to be one of those angels among us.  Super Heroes are ordinary people who have extraordinary hearts.  If you have the power to make someone happy, that is a super power that the world needs more of. 

I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people.

  -Maya Angelou

A kind word to a stranger.  Calling a friend when they cross your mind and not putting it off until later (when you forget).  Everyone walking today encounters a dark road at times in their life.  When they get lost in the woods and are looking for the breadcrumbs to find their way back home.  What we all need at that time is someone who is lighting the way with just a single ray of hope.  Be that ray of hope.  It just takes a smile, a listening ear, to take the time to acknowledge that you have been in that dark place too.  That is why we give, because we have all known what it feels like to be lonely, depressed, to have nothing.

I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. 

  – Christopher Reeves

Christopher Reeves not only played a hero in the movies, he was a hero in real life.  When life’s lemons took away his ability to walk, he did not give up, feel sorry for himself.  I am sure he felt like it at times, but he remained steadfast in speaking out for all of us about what really being a hero was all about.  He knew that it wasn’t important how others saw him, what was important was how he saw himself.  Because of that he continued to make a difference.

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you.  What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

  – Jane Goodall

We all have the super power to make a difference.  Most of the time we won’t even know what kind of difference we have made.  But if you were to line up 50 adults and go down the line, every single one of them would have more than one person that had made a difference in their life.  A special teacher, an Aunt or Uncle, a best friend, a stranger on the street who simply smiled at them when they needed one the most.  Probably most of the stories they would tell would surprise you.  You probably didn’t realize that what you said or did had an impact.

You want to make a difference in the world?  It starts with how you walk into a room.  Instead of saying, “Here I am” begin with “There you are”.

  – unknown

You might not know it, but you have made a difference to someone.  It may not be huge, but it matters just the same.  The really cool thing is that your influence never needs to stop.  We can affect eternity with our super powers of love.  Love can heal us.  Love can help us to grow into who we came here to be.  Love can grant us forgiveness for ourselves and others.  Love can help us to move on when it is time to let go.  Love moves us forward when it is time to return to the journey of discovering just how great we really are.  And love can inspire us to be even more than we ever dreamed.

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When You Are On Your Souls Path, There Is No Such Thing As A Real Obstacle

 We have this idea in life that there are people “out there” who have no problems. That if you have enough money, power, fame, the perfect soul mate – whatever label we put to it, then magically everything in our life would be perfect.

Wanting something is not enough.  You must hunger for it.  Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.

  – Les Brown

Become That Kind Of Woman

Dreamers, Just Do It

Dreamers make wishes when they blow out the birthday candles with complete confidence they will come true. They blow on the dandelions seeds and spread their wishes all over the world. They wish on the first star they see each night. The secret they know is — we are all just dreamers in an endless universe.

Judith Thurman said, “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never been to, perhaps more homesick than familiar ground.”

Doers take the dreamers up a notch. They believe in the magic, but they also know that it takes a little bit of elbow grease to make the machines run. They know that to take the dream into reality we must put it in writing. We must plant the seeds, water and fertilize them, weed when needed, and watch in amazement as the miracle of growth happens. Doers know that the energy goes when the attention flows, so rather than giving their energy to their fears, they focus their energy on their dreams. They know that action needs to follow the dream.

Sarah Ban Breathnach said, “The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.”

Thinkers know that they can put the dream on steroids because they realize the power of thought and attitude. It is like strapping a rocket onto the doers goals, when the doer has the right thinking to get the dream off the paper and into reality. The trick is the right amount of thinking, in combination with action.

Creative thinking outside the box produces inspiring ideas that can change the world. Plato said, “Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.” When we go deep inside ourselves and draw up the dream, enhance it by stripping away all of the negativity about the dream that we have, we become free thinkers who can see without prejudice what the destiny of the dream is. We talk with our souls and see possibilities for the dream everywhere we look. This helps the doer to pick the best door to open to the best opportunities.

That brings us to possibilities. Thomas Edison said, “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.” Since his most famous quote is “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”, I think that this quote is certainly made by someone who knows it to be absolutely true. If he had not continued his work, then his numerous inventions, most famous being the light bulb would not have been invented. He founded General Electric, had a motion picture and record company in addition to others. All because failure to him was just more information to think about. A part of the process, and not something to be avoided. 

I also love the quote by Audrey Hepburn “I M Possible” instead of impossible. Inside each of us is the space where we know. We know, that we know, that we know, that anything that comes into our heart and soul for us to do, is for us to do. And most important, that it is completely possible for us to do.

So greet your dream with open arms, know that the doer and the thinker will show you the endless possibilities for you to bring that dream into reality – then go do it.

Challenges Change Everything

Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge – Eckhart Tolle

In 1885 the first practical auto was driven down the road.  The horse and buggy industry didn’t take notice.  They felt that this new fangled invention was just a temporary fad.  A few years later this industry discovered they were wrong, as the auto took over the roadways and became the common mode of transportation.

In March of 2009 Uber was founded and it is doing the same thing to the taxi industry.  In a few years the same thing will happen with the long-haul trucking industry as driver-less trucks will become the norm.

One of the constants in our world is change.  If you aren’t paying attention your industry could be impacted, and you might no longer have an occupation.

Just like these examples, most industries that we know and recognize in a certain way today, will at some point in our future totally change.  Most will be caught unaware when it happens.

In our personal lives, the same thing is true.  Everyday in some way, you are a new person.  In the past 24 hours you have probably learned something new.  You have probably changed your mind about something.  You realized, due to getting more information, or looking at it in a new way, that maybe what you thought about it wasn’t 100% true.

You outgrew a belief.  You adopted a new belief.  You released an old belief.

There are moments which mark your life.  Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same and time is divided into two parts, before this, and after this – N. Kazan

Change builds resilience in you.  Resilience isn’t being numb to the changes.  It means that even though the change you experience may have felt like you are a failure, or hurt you in some way, that you kept going.

It takes courage to let go of what can’t be changed.  Sometimes this means that you have to learn a new job skill.  Sometimes you have lost an arm, a leg, went blind or deaf.  It takes courage to find a new and different way to still be able to live the dreams you have for yourself.

When I was growing up, I realized through hard life lessons that my parents were not, and could not be the foundation of my world.

When I married my husband, I thought that he would be the foundation of my world, and through a hard life lesson, I learned that this was also not true.

Then I thought that God would be the foundation of my world and discovered that this also was not true.

I had to be the foundation of my world.  Then on that foundation, I could build my spirituality, my family, my friends, my career, and everything else in my life.  But I had to build them upon me, as my own true foundation.

The reason this is true for me, is I had to accept responsibility for just me.  I had to accept reality, and not try to push decisions or the results of those decisions on anyone else, including blaming God for what was happening.

I had to be the one.  I had to be the “hot coal”.  If you have ever had to heat your home with wood or coal, then you know that if you bank the fire at night, it is easy to get going in the morning.  This is because underneath the cold looking ashes, lies a hot coal.  It is easy to get the fire going again with those hot coals.

There is no way for me to be a perfect woman, but there are a million ways I have can be a good wife, mother, sister, aunt, niece, and friend.

Look around you. Everything changes.  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 –  Dr. Steve Maraboli

You need to be like the hot coal.  You don’t want to be like a burning match.  When the winds of change blow into your life, if you are the match, you will burn out quickly and die.  But the winds of change blowing on the hot coals will cause you to burst into flames of light, and not burn out.

What you believe defines you.  What you tell yourself about who you are, how you react to change, is all a part of this definition of who you are.

In the cover photo you see the same tree.  The same field.  But each section presents a different season, time of day,

When you try to remain safe inside of the box, and resist change, you inhibit the natural growth that is supposed to happen in your life.  You in essence become a desert deep inside of yourself.   You stop living your life.  You stop loving yourself. That is the real tragedy in life.  You just stop living and just keep existing.

All you can change is yourself, but sometimes that changes everything –   Gary W. Goldstein

It really is up to you how you live your life.  You can’t blame anyone else – not your parents, or your spouse, your boss or God.  You can choose the green grass – a beautiful life; or you can choose to walk through the dried up dusty abandoned land of blame and abdication of change and the responsibility that it entails.

What’s In Your Backpack?

Sometimes you don’t realize the weight of a burden you’ve been carrying until you feel the weight of its release.

 – Unknown

Have you ever had several inches of your hair cut off?  For many years I would grow my hair long enough to cut and donate to “Locks of Love”.  When they would cut off that much hair, my head would feel so light, like it was floating.  It only lasted for a day or two and then the new normal would kick in.  The weightlessness feeling would disappear. 

Have you ever felt that same way when you left a bad employer?  Ended a bad relationship?  Walked away from something that was consuming your life in a bad way, like an addiction?  Did you feel free?  Like a heavy weight had been lifted?

A smile can hide so any feelings; fear, sadness, heartbreak . .  but it also shows one other thing:  strength.

 – qutoesforbros.com

We all of us sometimes smile, and pretend our world is perfect.  When really deep inside, our world is being carried on our backs, and we can see it tipping us over.  We can see that we are about to lose it all.  We can see it, slipping off our shoulders.  It’s like the weight is crushing us to the ground.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why do we take on too much?  We don’t ask for help.  We don’t want to fail.  We don’t want to be seen as needy.  We tell ourselves we must be perfect 24/7. 

Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are. 

 – Bernice Johnson Reagan

Maybe what the life challenge is all about, is to teach us that this idea of perfection or not needing any help, will never work long term.  It might get you through a challenge or two.  But eventually it will become too heavy, and we will fall down.  We need to learn to receive as well as give.  We need to learn how to unpack our bags.  To let go of the things that no longer serve us.  We need to look at each item in the bag.  Are these socks really ours or do they belong to someone else?  What about that ugly top that we hide in the closet, who does that belong to?

We all have baggage, find someone who loves you enough to help you unpack.

  – Unknown

I think of the example of going grocery shopping with either a hungry spouse or your children.  You are walking down the aisle and getting the items on your list.  When you are not looking, they sneak things into the cart.  They hide it underneath something already in the cart, so you can’t say no. Then when you get to the check out line, you discover five things in your cart that you didn’t put into it.  We are like this in our personal lives.  We not only cart around other peoples items in our bags, we pay for them too.  That is the best reason to have someone help you unpack.  They can help you figure out who those socks and ugly tops actually belong to. They can help you release them back to their true owners.

Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.

  – Tea Bag Quote

We do this unconsciously for the most part.  Part of it comes from the initial wounding experience that you had as a young child, sometime before the age of 8.  For some reason so many people I know, including myself, it is age 4.  You experienced a childhood trauma, which impacted how you view the world.  What also happens is that you take on some of the problems as your own, that came from the other person involved in your wounding. 

If you want to fly, you’ve got to give up the things that weighs you down.

 – Savannah Smith

For example, in my own case, I walked in on my mom having an affair.  As an adult I had a problem with trust.  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust others so much as I didn’t trust myself.  This caused me to attract untrustworthy people into my life.  I finally through years of transformational work discovered that this issue wasn’t about me at all. It was about my mother.  When I released this baggage everything in my life shifted, because I finally knew that I could trust myself.  I was carrying around a mountain that didn’t even belong to me.

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light.  Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.

  – Glenn Clark

We all do this.  When you go camping, they tell you to put your food up in the air between trees so that wild animals can’t get to it.  In our backpacks, we have these items that attract the “wild animals”.  We attract these experiences into our lives over and over again.  We have a pattern of the kind of friends we attract; the kinds of significant others; the kinds of jobs; etc……  Why does the same thing keep happening to us? 

Keeping baggage from the past will leave no room for happiness in the future.

  – Wayne L Misner

We are attracting it into our life, it is our “wild animal”.  What the transformation process does, is it helps us to unpack our backpack.  To see what is really inside.  What are we carrying that no longer serves us?  What are we carrying that belongs to someone else?  What grudges, slights, hurts, and painful mountain heavy experiences are we carrying in our backpack?

It’s not the heavy load that breaks you, it’s the way you carry it.

 – Lena Horne

We are only meant to carry the load for a short time.  The time of the experience happening.  Not months and years later.  The weight of the past must be released.  You are meant to find the gold, and let go of the rest of the boulder.  Refocus on where you are headed.

Even the boulder that you are currently carrying, that you are trying to find the gold in.  The weight of that boulder can be lessened if you confine it to the lesson itself.  Sometimes we take the lesson to mean that we can’t do anything right.  That our whole life has been one failure after another.  That we are doomed.  That our existence itself is a burden.  None of those things are ever true.  It is our mind pressing down from the weight of every single burden we have ever carried, into one gigantic mountain.

When I accept myself, I am freed from the burden of needing you to accept me.

 – Healrhyplace.com

You need to give yourself the gift of forgiveness.  The gift of compassion.  The gift of redemption.  The gift of letting go.  Get a piece of paper and start unpacking your backpack.  Write down every untold story that you have inside of your heart.  For years I blamed myself for my parents divorce.  If only I hadn’t opened her bedroom door, I wouldn’t have uncovered her dark secrets, and my parents would still be married.  But the truth is that had nothing to do with me, and was the result of their bad decisions and choices over which I had no power.  We all have these stories inside of us that must be released.  That must be unpacked and let go of.

So stop carrying the mountain.  Unpack your backpack.  Release the weight of the past. 

Always pray to have eyes that see the best, a heart that forgives the worst, a mind that forgets the bad, and a soul that never loses faith.  

– Unknown 

Give yourself the gift of seeing the best things in your backpack.  Of forgiving the worst things that you blame yourself for.  Of forgiving the bad things that happened to you, so that you don’t carry the weight of other peoples sins inside of you.  And never lose faith that everything in your life can serve you, if you give yourself the gift of love and forgiveness.

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Will You Answer Destiny’s Call?

Dare To Believe In Your Dreams

When I look at this picture, I see a little boy with big dreams. But when he looks out over the city in the moonlight, I think that he is overwhelmed by the vastness of the city. The moon is large and full and seems to be almost overpowering.

Overcome Fear, Behold Wonder

In the world, in this moment, many are being overcome with fears.  Fears of the pandemic.  Fears of losing your elderly loved ones to illness and disease.  Fears can be based on past experience, of knowledge of something that has happened in the past.  This past fear is then projected into the immediate future of a danger that is seeking you.

Instead, Take a deep breath.  Just be aware and conscious of just this single moment.  This moment of inhalation or exhalation of your breath.  When you just concentrate on your breathing, you see how to live outside of this kind of fear.

In this moment, you are alive, breathing.  Your eyes are taking in what is around you.  Your ears are hearing sounds both from near and far.  You feel the softness of the material of the clothes you are wearing.  Maybe the way the tag on the collar of your shirt irritates your skin.  You think to yourself that you have to remember to use the scissors and cut that tag off.

If you have been outside, you might feel the rain drenched softness of the ground under your feet.  The soft dirt clings to the bottom of shoes as you sink into it with each step.  You smell the scent of rosemary as you walk along the path, its heady scent drifting on the breeze.  The sounds of the waves crashing down on the shore drowns out the call of the sea gulls, as they ride the air currents high above you.  You are awake and aware of the wonder of life itself.

If are in a state of fear, you won’t be aware of any of the sounds or smells of nature around you.  So, your choice in this moment is are you to be overcome with fear, or filled with wonder?

Think of those advertisements you might see for going to Disneyland or Disneyworld.  They are filled with the young children who can’t sleep because tomorrow is the special day when they enter the world of magic.  Their faces are the epitome of excitement and wonder.

When was the last time, that look was on your face?  The last time when you dropped the heavy burden of fears, and beheld the magic of life?  This photo reflects the majesty of our world, the beauty of creation and it is how you behold the wonder of life.

Remember the movie “Dune”?  The line around fear has stayed with me, Frank Herbert was a master with this thought around fear.

Fear is something that you can’t run away from.  Running away only puts more distance between you and the solution to your fear.   The only way to deal with fear, is to face the illusions that it brings.  You can only be fearless, when you learn to recognize the illusions from what is true and real.

“Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth, any cause to wonder that he does not hear it”  – Tacitus

Isn’t that something to wonder about?  This concept that you create the fears out of your own illusions, is something to think deeply about.  Illusions usually come from thinking that there isn’t enough of something that you want.

Not enough money, not enough jobs, not enough food, not enough of . . ,   what would happen to your fears if you could sincerely and honestly allowed a moment of perfect freedom into your world?  If you could truly believe that there is more than enough, and it is just waiting for you to step out of the illusion to get it?

I couldn’t find the person who wrote the “Reality of Fear”, but I loved it.  It captures the illusion of fear, in that it convinces you that the lie is truth.

You are scared of the dark it says, when really what you’re scared of is what you have projected into that darkness.  You can’t see in that darkness, the possibilities of what might be there.  A thief will rob you.  A killer will murder you.

Your mind freezes us with “what if’s”.  And the “what if’s” are made up in your mind.  The monster under the bed is actually the fears in your mind, manifesting the illusion into something appearing real.

Reality of Fear

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

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

You’re not afraid of the people around you . . .  you’re afraid of rejection

You’re not afraid of love . . .  you’re afraid of not being loved

You’re not afraid to let go . . .  you’re afraid to accept the reality that its gone

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

What if you took all of those fears and said this instead?