Climb Every Mountain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shine Your Light, Transform The Darkness

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In A State Of Divine Grace, I Can Move Forward Into A New Life

 

“Missing puzzle pieces do more than complete the puzzle.  They fill in an empty space” – Luanne Rice

Have you ever been working on a puzzle for days or weeks and you get to the end and there is one piece missing?  How did that make you feel?

Did you move furniture, sweep under cupboards, and generally take the room apart looking for that last piece to complete the picture?  Have you ever taken the extreme measure of taking a photo and sending it to the puzzle manufacturer to see if they can send you that missing piece?

If you found the missing piece underneath something, how excited were you to fit it into place?  It’s like a state of grace settles over you.  Calmness.  A feeling that all is right in the world in that moment.  The adrenaline settles down, the anxiety or frustration of lost hours of work dissipates.

Sometimes in life you will miss an opportunity.  You might not have recognized it, or maybe you were so busy with the chaos of life, that you totally didn’t see it.  Then when you do realize it, do you kick yourself over missing it?

Right now, you may feel like you did with the missing puzzle piece that you looked everywhere to find, that you are now an incomplete picture and everything you’ve been doing up until now is just a big waste of time and effort.

What is wonderful about opportunities in real life, is that there is always another new door just waiting to be opened.  I love the saying that “opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor” as it signifies how important it is to be looking for them.  You can’t find them if you are not looking for them.  Looking for opportunities within your dreams or aspirations are the perfect place to find them.

“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes then learn how to do it later” – Unknown

• What is the lens you look at life through?
• Does the thought of saying yes and not knowing how to do it make you scream “no, because what if I fail?”
• Are you willing to go all in?
• Are you willing to take a leap of faith?

Opportunities are supposed to grow you.  If you will only take on what you know 100% for sure you can do, where is the growth?

I always think of cats.  Some are a living example of grace.  They will stretch themselves out in leaping up a tree or a fence.  And whether they make it or land on the ground, they always land on their feet ready to try again.  Others are scaredy cats are always hiding, afraid of everything.

So which kind of cat are you?  The one taking the leap of faith, confident of landing on your feet? Or are you the one hiding under the bed shaking in terror, letting those scary opportunity pass you by?

“You walk in grace, or you walk in fear.  You can’t have it both ways”– Carlos Santana

When you are young, you think that you have all of the time in the world to explore a myriad of opportunities.  But this is an illusion.  Don’t waste time looking backwards.  You aren’t going that way.

Don’t waste time by constantly daydreaming about the future.  You haven’t arrived there yet, and when you do so many things will have happened between this moment and that future, that you won’t even recognize you have arrived.

You need to let go of what no longer serves you and live in the present moment, where the opportunities are.  You need to live in this present moment in order to make space for what is new to come in.  When you are not in resistance, the illusion of time “taking forever” is released. 

“To turn inward, to be courageous and trust our heart – to lean into our independent judgment – a brilliant opportunity we ignore too often” – Amy Jalapeno

In today’s world problems seem to be multiplying like bunny rabbits.

• You may be currently furloughed or laid off from work
• You are trying to home school children while trying to work from home
• You may be worried that your job is not coming back and the industry you work in is not looking good for future job opportunities
• Health issues from Covid-19
• Elderly family member currently in an extended care facility and you can’t visit them
• You may be about to graduate from college and job prospects are extremely limited
• Your employer is going out of business due to financial constraints

“The chaos doesn’t end, you kinda just become the calm”– Nikki Rowe

Grace changes everything.  It gives you the space to go inward and out of the chaos.  To reconnect with your heart and soul.  By leaning into intuition and independent judgment you begin to see a way forward.

I read a story that gives a great example of this.  Look at movie theaters.  Most people will not want to go into the closed space of a movie theater for several hours to watch a movie.  And while the day of the drive ins seemed to be past, they now have the opportunity to make a comeback.

In Germany an architect wanted to create the communal aspects of watching a movie as a group.  So, he launched Windows Flicks, which projects a movie on large exterior building walls.  People living in apartment complexes can watch through windows, patios, or balcony’s and drink a glass of wine and take in a movie while practicing social distancing.

What kinds of projects might you brainstorm for reinventions of businesses that may be facing extinction?  The architect in Germany is fundraising for the German cinema industry, so he was able to both provide a reinvention of watching a movie with others and supporting a business that needs to reinvent itself.

Any crisis can give you the opportunity to reinvent your life in some way – will you take a leap of faith, or hide under the bed scared?

I love this concept.  It takes a fire in your soul to put actions to your dreams.  To keep walking your sacred path to your destiny, even when it feels like the sky is falling.  Grace from the heart tempers this fire, so that it is the exact amount of heat to get your feet moving.  Grace changes everything.

And remember, you never have to walk alone.  Grace is always a step in front of you, and all you have to do is open your arms to receive it.

Self Awareness Is Key To Transformation

Your future dreams are being held in the gift of time.  When divine timing thinks you are ready, your dreams will unfold, one by one.

How can you make progress so that you can draw your dreams into reality?

You can stop thinking that ignoring your negative emotions will make them go away.  What happens instead is that they become buried deep within you and start roots.  Those roots manifest themselves in your being triggered every time someone else’s behavior mirrors that same emotion.  Each root becomes an anchor designed to hold you in place, which keeps you from growing into who you are capable of becoming.

At this point in your journey you are being given time to dig up all of those roots.  When you expose them to the light of day, they will shrivel up and turn to dust.  How do you expose them?

• By promoting healing immediately when others let you down, don’t meet your expectations, or are just mean and cruel
• By stopping yourself from becoming a victim or having victim mentality, and to instead embrace life as a safe place to grow and thrive
• By growing up and embracing your own personal identity, instead of hiding the real you away in fear of not being worthy
• By letting go of all of the things that are not true to you at your core being
• By unpacking the past and learning its lessons
• By resolving the past, in order to get past the “stories” you tell yourself subconsciously, and peeling back the layers to expose the truth
• By embracing yourself as being the powerful being you are.  Acknowledging that you can save yourself, just as you’re meant to

Encourage yourself by looking for what is working in your life at this moment.  What things can you be in the space of gratitude in your life right now?  Where do you see room for more of your potential to come out and shine?  Ask those who know and love you where your greatness is if you can’t see it for yourself.

Realize that it takes time to heal and go through all of the stages of grief.  The stages of grief don’t only apply to the loss of a loved one in death.  It also applies to divorce, loss of a job, most kinds of trauma, even to children leaving home to go off to college.  Take whatever time is required to unpack all of your baggage.

Understand what life lessons are there, and what needs to be let go of because it doesn’t serve you any longer.  It takes time to peel back all of the parts of you that don’t belong to you.  It takes time to expose and accept the parts of you that you have hidden away.  Your life can’t be transformed by waving a magic wand and poof you’ve changed.  It is changed step by step, bit by bit, day by day.

When life falls apart, you think that everything can be solved by just going home again. You think that “going home again” is about a place.  But it isn’t.  Those memories of home are all based on a time, which is in the past. It is why you cannot truly “go home again”. So this chasing of home is not about a place. “Going home again” is more about you chasing a feeling of love, security.  Something that you feel will help you cope with whatever life is currently throwing at you.

“Productivity is how you run away from yourself.  Creativity is how you become yourself”  – Brianna Wiest

When life throws you lemons, you think that you need to do something.  You just don’t know what that something is.  You think that you’re waiting for help. You think that if you ask everyone, someone will tell you what the right thing to do is. Even though, at the back of your mind, you already know what that is. So all that you’re really waiting for, is a time when you’re forced to do it.

When life has fractured you into pieces I want you to remember these things:

• Nothing about you is ugly.
• Beautiful things are made from life’s fires, where the heat cracks you open.
• Beautiful things are made from where you have cracked, letting the light of God shine through.
• Beautiful things are shaped from the parts of you that have fallen apart.  Don’t discard anything that’s lying on the floor.
• Beautiful things are discovered within you, all of those places where you are judging as not being good enough anymore.

Instead of judging yourself by all of your shortcomings or things you failed to do, why not instead let your life be defined by how much you are loved by others.  Repair your foundation in life, your core beliefs and values.  Rebuild and repair your cracked walls and ceilings, as represented by your archetype’s and the labels you identify yourself by.  Sweep up the broken glass and create a mosaic of your life with gold filling in the gaps, these represent windows that you look out of – how your see your world.  Remember you are made of beautiful things.

“You may not see it today or tomorrow, but you will look back in a few years and be absolutely perplexed and awed by how every little thing added up and brought you somewhere wonderful – or where you always wanted to be. You will be grateful that things didn’t work out the way you once wanted them to” – Brianna Wiest

Life is a journey.  There are patterns you will see as you travel to your many destinations.  Life is sometimes remarkable, sometimes terrible, sometimes strange and yet hauntingly beautiful.  Look for the surprises underneath the wrapping paper.  When the moments of despair happen (and they will happen) bring out all of your beautiful memories and hold them close.  Remind yourself that whatever is going wrong now, that this storm will also pass.

The first Saturday of every month we get together on Zoom to talk about our challenges, to encourage each other, and provide inspiration to continue on our individual journeys.  Join us for the next conversation and become even more inspired to reach out and pull your dreams into reality.

 

 

Who Are You Being?

 

Sometimes a sentence can grab your attention and send you down a rabbit hole.  This sentence grabbed me and shook me awake.  “You have to stop just completing and begin living.”  I immediately thought of the difference between doing and being.

Doing is all about completing.  It is a “to do” list.  You complete the objective, tick off the box, and immediately start on the next thing on the list.  At the end of the day, you might be able to proudly look at a completed list, but the question begs to be answered – at what part of the day did you begin living?

What are the things you can shift in your life to make those changes easier?  How can you get off the treadmill of doing and start living the life of being.

“The highest level of creativity consists in being, not doing” – Marianne Williamson

Who or what are you becoming?  How you are being reflects how you are growing.  If you are too busy doing, then no growth is happening.

• It’s about the choices you are making in each moment.
• It’s about the things you are saying, not just out loud, but within your head.
• It’s about how will you be different after reading this?
• Choose wisely

It begins when we enter school.  We are taught to excel at doing.  To give the answers they want, the ones in the book.  Creativity is frowned upon in most subjects.  If you espouse a different opinion on what the writer might have meant, it becomes the “wrong” answer.  I always thought it was funny, how someone other than the author could know beyond any reasonable doubt what the writer might have been alluding to.

This continues through grade school, junior high, high school and even the colleges and universities. A lot of very successful creative minds left college partly because their creativity was being squashed.  They all have the entrepreneur mindset.  They all have some things in common, which includes doing things different than the norm.  They look at what is, and wonder what else could be?

• Richard Branson – Virgin
• Steve Jobs – Apple
• Bill Gates – Microsoft
• Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook
• Travis Kalanick – Uber
• Oprah Winfrey – media mogul
• John Mackey – Whole Foods
• Sophia Amoruso – Nasty Gal Fashion
• Coco Chanel – Fashion
• Anne Beiler – Auntie Anne’s Pretzels
• Barbara Lynch – Restaurant Chains
• Debbie Fields – Mrs. Fields Cookies.

Oprah has said that she was hired for a T.V. news show as an anchor.  Unknown to her at the time, the other anchor didn’t want her on the show.  Several months later he got his way and she was demoted.  It was very devastating.  Within every “failure” there is a nugget of gold.  She lost her job, but her demotion put her into a talk show format.  She said that the minute she took on that show, she felt like she had arrived home.

That is a sign – when your “job” feels like home.  You know that this is what you are meant to do.  It is being a “creative”.

Steve Jobs found this out when Apple ousted him.  It took him awhile to recover “who he was” because he had become so identified with the company, that he had stopped being and was just doing.  It essentially created a mid-life crisis.  He was looking at all kinds of possibilities from politics to becoming an astronaut.  He went on to launch both Pixar Animation Studios as well as NeXT.

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my life,”  Steve Jobs

He then goes on to say pretty much what Oprah said:  “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.”

“Once you shift your order of priorities from “having – doing – being” to “being – doing – having” your destiny will be in your hands” – Sadhguru

This reminds me of putting batteries into something.  Batteries have a positive and a negative side.  If you put them in backwards, they don’t work.  It is only when the connections are correct that they “turn on” the item.

When you approach your life with “having – doing – being” you have the heaviness in your life.  You are pushing the boulder up hill.  You might make it to the top, but the success won’t be fulfilling.

It is only when you approach your life from the “being” first, then the doing and having come afterwards.  Then your batteries are fully charged and working to speed you up to the hilltop.  The success is fueled by your passion, love and creativity.  You are a human “being” loving all parts of your life.

Both Oprah and Steve Job’s had failures.  Those failures led to connecting or reconnecting to “having – doing – being” in the right order.  You  have these wonderful talents,  They take the form of creativity, which becomes the doing part.  When you are living your life from the having your talents expressed through creativity, then you enter the being part of your life.  This is because you are living your divinely planned destiny in those moments.  The more of those moments you connect with in your life, the more on purpose you are.

“Being free from the fear of failure means you can focus more clearly on what you’re doing – and will be more likely to succeed” – Zen Health

It’s like you have these batteries not only installed correctly, but they are being recharged or fueled by your living the “having – doing – being” in the correct order.  You may not see it today, or even tomorrow as some things take a while to grow and mature.  But there will come a time when you look back and you will be awestruck how every little misstep, mistake, and seeming failure adds up to bring you exactly to where you are supposed to be.  In that moment, you will be so grateful that things didn’t go the way the mind planned, but instead the way the heart directed.

Living From A Place of Surrender

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Out of an Abundance of Caution

“Surround yourself with people that reflect who you want to be and how you want to feel, energies are contagious” – Rachel Wolchin

You are hearing these words a lot in todays media – “Out of an abundance of caution”.  It is almost always followed by something that is being cancelled or changing to an online streaming event.  The city of San Jose required that Tony Robbins cancel his upcoming event in March “Out of an abundance of caution”.  When you hear those words “out of an abundance of caution” how does it feel to the energy in your body?  Is is constrictive?  Restrictive?  Does it feel like the turtle pulling in his head and legs so that all you can see is a hard shell?

“Don’t adapt to the energy in the room.  Influence the energy in the room” – FabQuote.co

You have dreams, desires, and ambition for your life.  You have goals that you want to bring to fruition this week; this month; and this year.  When you live your life from that kind of positive energy, it attracts others who feel the same.  You experience movement, progress unlike the turtle who is motionless, hiding in his shell.  If you live your life from “an abundance of caution” what you will experience is being motionless, frozen in time and space.  It is important to surround yourself with people who not only live from a space of abundance, but an abundance that is expansive, not contractive.

“The more positive energy you have around you, the better you will feel about yourself” – Unknown

Words and music both have an energy that plays with your emotions.  I can listen to a sound track of almost any movie and immediately feel the emotions that they are creating.  If I have seen the movie I can see the scene itself.  Here is where someone was in danger – here is where they were really happy – here is where their heart was broken.  The words we hear also impact us emotionally.  Negative words will drain your energy and introduce fear into your spirit.  Fear itself is like a virus that will grow and take over your life if you are not aware of it being inside your energy field.  It contracts you just like that turtle to hide away.  To be safe.

“Stick with people who pull the magic out of you, not the madness” – Unknown

Instead be like the eagle.  When the storm breaks most birds fly to a safe tree branch to hide from the weather.  But not the eagle.  The eagle flies above the storm.  So be like an eagle and fly above the  madness you see happening around you.  Feel the positive energy of the eagle as you fly with it, above the madness of the storm and into the magic above it.  The magic happens when you attract other positive energy people around you, as you support each other reaching up into the heights.

Here is some good advice from Vex King to protect your positive energy:

• Avoid gossip and drama
• Let go of things you can’t control
• Avoid comparing yourself to others
• Keep your faith larger than your fears
• Don’t do anything that doesn’t feel right
• Don’t be afraid to spend some time alone
• Speak kindly to yourself and to other people
• Please yourself before trying to please others
• Stay away from people who drain your energy
• Ignore any opinions that don’t enhance your life

“Let me remind you:  Wherever your focus is directed that’s where your energy goes.  Whatever you allow in your space, you eventually become” – Overlyxclusive

So when the world goes mad, fly high above the madness.  Self direct your energy instead of letting it be manipulated by negative fearful people.  The media spreads the virus of fear, making everything “breaking news”.  Stop letting anyone else control your mind, your feelings, and emotions.  Remember what you focus on determines the reality that you are currently experiencing.  It is easy to let the negative mind take over with possible world ending scenarios that expand your fears until you can no longer think logically.  The secret is to focus on what builds up, not what tears down.

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

So match your own personal energy to that you want to attract in your life.  Positive thoughts change your experience of life.  Every smile, every loving word, every kind action are reflections of who you are.   So dream BIG, stay FOCUSED, work HARD, be KIND.

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.

 

 

Awaken The Sleeper, With 20/20 Focus and Vision

 

Revised 11/14/2021

Vision tells us our destination.  It doesn’t tell us how to get there, it just tells us how we will know when we arrive.  Focus is what helps up to do the work to arrive at the destination that vision has uncovered in our heart.  Focus is the road to the destination.  If we don’t have a vision we can’t have a destination. Without focus, we will find ourselves asleep wandering lost in the forest. We will just keep going in circles back to where we started. Lost, dazed and confused.

If you look back at the last two year’s – did you follow your vision or did you go in circles?

Without focus you travel down the road forgetting where you came from.  The journey becomes the destination in a twisted sort of way.  You will find yourself trying to fill a bottomless hole by acquiring more of everything.  To possess things which promise to make you whole, but which instead create an insatiable appetite for more and more.  Without focus life becomes a merry go round that never stops.

“When you are clear on your vision, it will pull you forward and out of bed in the morning” – Sean McCabe

We have all heard the story of the person who worked at a job for 30 years, retires and gets the gold watch.  Then after a short while of sitting at home with nothing to do, they die.  They never uncovered their life purpose, their reason for living.  They dragged themselves out of bed each day and went to a job that didn’t fulfill them.  They never discovered the reason they were born.  Instead they punched a time clock day after day, month after month, until the years fled.  They never found their way out of the forest.

Awaken the sleeper

The only way to find that vision, your life purpose is to look for it.  It is deep inside your heart.  It is connected to the things that you love to do.  It’s not about something that happens in some distant future.  It is about the quality of choices you are making in your life this moment.  It’s about what you choose to see, to perceive, to feel and what you choose to do in this moment of time.  The choices that push you to engage in life at its deepest meaning for you.  It changes who you are NOW.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.  Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens” – Carl Jung

It’s a funny thing when one day you wake up to your vision.  You might have been wandering in circles for years, looking for that one special person or that title at work that said “I have arrived!”.  You might have worked your fingers to the bone for years to find elusive fame and fortune.  Whatever you thought was the answer to that longing deep in your heart, once you had it, you discovered it wasn’t it.  It was just another circle in the forest.  Then one day it happens.  You finally realize it isn’t outside of you.  It’s not a person, a career, money in the bank, a dream house or car.  It is something inside of you that is calling you home.

Usually what wakes you up is being disillusioned, disappointed, that feeling you have hit rock bottom.  Too many bad decisions and failed plans.  When you stop fighting the uphill battle, give up and give in – when you are in that spot of finally understanding what it means to “let go and let God” it finally happens.  Your heart feels calm, whole and centered.  Your soul comes alive and feels truly safe for the first time because finally we are listening to the inner voice.

Listening with your heart and soul

Your vision becomes clear as you climb a high tree and see the way out of the forest of lost causes.  You understand the connections to what has happened in your life and how each trial and tribulation, each circle around the forest was teaching you something vital that you needed to learn.  Peace with your past, present and future permeates your bones.  You see far off the destination your soul is leading you to.  You realize the importance of the journey.

The journey has places where you became confused as to what the right choice was – at the same time that confusion is where you learned something new that stretched your comfort zone.  The journey was where you were betrayed and broken by someone you thought loved you and would never hurt you – at the same time it was how you learned to heal your heart.  The journey lead to lots of frustration as you tried and failed, over and over to learn something critical to your dreams – at the same time those frustrations lead to more authentic decisions based on your own judgment and not someone else’s.

Make the right choice

Even the parts of the journey where the sadness was a deep pit of despair, you learned to listen the heart, hear the words of wisdom of the soul and recover your happiness and joy.

2022 can be your year of focus, and vision.  With the global pandemic, most people have lost focus.  Their vision has dimmed.  It seems like every time we think that we are moving past the masks and restrictions, this virus mutates into something else.

Instead of waiting for whatever “normal” is going to be and then settling into a new vision, it is time to just do it anyway.  Some of your plans will fail dramatically, and you will learn something.  Some of them be will duds that don’t even get lift off before they came crashing down – and that’s ok.  Plans to go in one direction, will actually come about 180 degrees to go in another direction – which seems wrong but will be exactly right.

• Look for the self sabotage.
• Look for the places where you missed the road signs to turn left or right.
• Look for where you missed the detours.
• Look for where you got lost.

Now program your GPS system with your updated vision.  Get clear about what it is you want to feel and be open to the feeling and not how or what is going to get you there.  Look for signs, clues, and ask for directions.  Don’t give up on your dreams.  Listen to the voice in your heart and soul.  Get back on track to where you are supposed to be.

Be fearless

Have a vision  

Get inspired

Believe in yourself

Always hustle

Stay determined

Stay focused

Stay motivated

Keep pushing

Be happy

Get out there, own the day

Create your own personalized dream map, claim your own unique goals of change and transformation; refine them into goal crushing gremlins; and finally, to truly understand what your motivation around those goals is all about.

 

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.

Will 2022 Be The Year Your Dreams Become Reality?

 

Updated 11/14/2021

We are just about 1 1/2 months until the new year.  It is the perfect time to do a year end review of 2021.  Did you make some new years resolutions, goals, plans for 2021?  How did you grow and make progress, and what have you overcome in this year?

Some people will make goals that are giving something up for a limited time or forever.  Lent is a religious practice that does this.

Some people will make goals to bring something new into their life.

What you discover every single year is that change is hard.  And if that change is motivated by will power alone, it will not last.

“In order to save myself, I must destroy first the me I was told to be” – The Dreamer

So how are you doing on those goals, plans and intentions to change?

What is your definition of progress?

Having 20/20 vision means that you have done the work to see the connections to what you have decided to change and where you are going with your dreams in this new year.  You have spent the time to map out the new year so that you can make some actual progress towards those dreams, instead of letting fears and excuses stall your journey.

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place” – Unknown

Instead of hiding who you are, be bold and step out into the world proclaiming “I am here”.  Stop hiding your dreams, thinking that way no one can destroy them any further. Learn to trust your heart and listen to it. Give up on settling for what is possible, and demand your part in the dance of life.

“Ten years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life, you didn’t settle for it” – Unknown

There is only one way to truly know who you are deep down inside. You have to get in touch with your own soul. You need to be by yourself, and sit with yourself, and just listen. Looking back at your life, find the places where you were really happy. Find the things that are so easy for you to do, that others find hard or impossible. Trace back all of the threads that have your name engraved upon them. Start picking out and removing all of the threads that are not you. Look for the gold and silver pieces and toss out the dross. Now look for the patterns that are left.

It is never too late to be who you were meant to be

The threads of genius that are all you, can now be taken up and made into whatever pattern you want. It is never too late to be who you were meant to be.  When you make this journey deep into your soul, you will discover that your life can only change by completely shaking it up.   You need to remove what doesn’t belong and then figure out how to rearrange what does. It is an individual journey that defines who you are. You can only discover your truth by looking for it down deep within and then integrating it into your life. 20/20 vision is a lifetime adventure. This journey is for you alone. Embrace it and live it fully.

“To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.” – Deepak Chopra

So, how do you make this the year that you transform your life?  You do it by finding the pattern that you fit into.  If you were to read everything about changing your life with new years resolutions, goals and plans that has been published just this month you might find it overwhelming.  Everyone has different ideas about what works.  What they really mean is what worked for them.

It’s an individual journey, one size does not fit all

What I have found is that it is really all about making the connections to what I am taking away or adding to my life purpose.  I pick what sounds right deep inside of me and leave the rest behind.  When I do this, it becomes an infinity loop of expanding energy to keep doing the work.  I want to share this process with you, so that you too can be like Goldilocks and find the pieces that fit just right.

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth” – Ram Dass

It’s an individual journey and one size does not fit all.  Making your dream a reality isn’t easy.  It is sort of like having a puzzle that has the same picture that others have, but your puzzle pieces are cut slightly different.  You are missing some pieces and so you discover that they are not inter-changeable.  Some pieces might fit, but others won’t.  So you have to go to a lot of different puzzles to find the missing pieces that will fit.  It’s a risk because each piece that doesn’t really fit, becomes a failure on your part.

“. . . it’s a life’s journey of finding ourselves, finding our power, and living for yourself, not for everyone else . . . ” – Mariska Hargitay

If you don’t take the risks, make the changes and transform your life, then your destiny will not be fulfilled.   In order to make this a little easier I would love to share with you what I have found.  It’s a method of taking bits and pieces from all different methods of change and transformation and creating a pattern that allows me to plug in things that work for me.

You decide what methods of change work for you

This isn’t just about a vision board or an accountability partner.  It isn’t just about will power or a positive attitude.  Make 2022 be the year that you don’t get overwhelmed and quit.  That this time frustration doesn’t get you stuck in the mud of “it’s just isn’t working” and you give up.  It’s about getting past the negative mind talk and making real progress towards your dreams.  It is about getting on the road of good intentions and actually getting somewhere.

• You discover for yourself the answers to the questions you didn’t know you were asking.
• You look into your soul for your own individual answers, your threads.
• You discern if the puzzle piece fits exactly or not.
• You take what belongs and leave the rest behind.

What I know for sure is that we all hit walls of failure, fatigue, and flat tires. It helps to have a few tricks up your sleeves to handle them.  Then they just create slowdowns and maybe a few detours, but don’t stop you completely.

Make this your year of shift, change and transformation.  Get 2022 vision, insight and find your missing puzzle pieces.  Complete your own puzzle and see the full picture of who you are becoming.