Passion Is The Seed Of Genius

Nothing is as important as passion.  No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.

  – Jon Bon Jovi

Passion is always calling to us.  It pokes at us in our dreams.  It shows up in the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read.  We see it everywhere and we unconsciously sweep it under the rug.  We don’t have time for it right now.  We have jobs to go to, bills to pay, children to raise.  It becomes our someday mantra.  Someday I will write poetry.  Someday I will write the music that I hear in my head.  Someday I will write down the story I have been telling my children and draw out the illustrations.  Someday I will take that class at the local community college and learn more about that profession that is calling to me.  We will live the life of our dreams someday.  Someday we will listen to our hearts calling.  Someday we will live it, breathe it, begin it.

Passion is living uncomfortably on purpose.

It is choosing to stay up late and wake up early.

It is choosing to forego certain luxuries, and sometimes even some necessities.

It is choosing to look foolish, even when you care what others think.

It is asking for advice and choosing not to take it.

It is being afraid and anxious, but going out of your comfort zone anyway.

Unknown

Even though all of our “reasons” for not following our passion seem to be logical and reasonable, they are in fact killing your soul.  It has this intense yearning to reach out and grow, and we are burying it and telling it we will attend to it later.  Your time is limited.  The cemetery is filled with people who died with their book, their music, their unexplored talents never allowed to grow into the marvelous creations that they could have been.  My grandmother made the worlds best carrot cake.  Her frosting was with cream cheese, but it was different than any frosting I have ever tasted.  It wasn’t too sweet, which is where for my taste buds most cakes are ruined.  It was a secret recipe and one day she had a heart attack and died and no one ever knew what her secret recipe was.  Today decide to share your secret recipes.  Today choose to live uncomfortably on purpose.  Choose to look foolish and walk away from the comfortable life and let the fires of your passion direct you.,  Today choose to take the first step outside of your comfort zone,.

Always go with your passions.  Never ask yourself if it is realistic or not.

  – Deepak Chopra

When you step outside of that comfort zone, it is really scary.  Others will say, “have you gone crazy?”  But secretly in their hearts they are jealous.  As they watch you take not only the first step, but step after step, what you are doing is giving them permission to gather up their own courage and take their own first step.  Like when we try to do anything that is new, there will be failures.  What is so interesting when you look backwards and review your journey, each of those failures are when you grew the most.  For me, it has been learning from a self sabotage failure, expand my comfort zone, live in that space for a while, then another push out of the comfort zone, another failure, grow from the experience and live in the new comfort zone for a while and do it all again.  Your own journey will show you a pattern. Each time we examine the pattern, we can tweak it to change the trajectory to be less failures, or less time in the new comfort zone, or add in anything that we think is missing from the process. The critical thing is just like following the trail of breadcrumbs that we keep following to where our passion is leading us.

You can’t do passion halfway.  Living your passion means you’re all in.  You trust your heart and trust your gut wherever that takes you.

  – Joe Plummer

Too many people live an unfulfilled life.  They have a daily existence of doing, but they are not really being.  They wake up, go to a job that doesn’t fulfill them, come home and watch TV or take care of their families needs, but at no time is there time to live the life they dream about in their hearts.  Don’t settle.  Don’t just live in the rut and decorate it, thinking that will make it more bearable.  We think that we are making others happy by denying ourselves.  But you living a half lived life doesn’t benefit anyone.  You are in fact robbing your family of knowing and loving who you really are.  You are stealing from the world what gifts you brought to the world.  You are telling your God, thanks for the seeds of genius that you planted in me, but I am not going to use them.

Respond to every call that excites your spirit.

  – Rumi

Instead be scared of living a life without passion directing it.  Be scared of living an unfulfilled life. Be scared of being dead, while you are still alive.   Don’t put off your dreams one more day.  Life is really pretty simple.  Stop make it more difficult than it is.  Start doing things that you love.  Eat every last bite.  Go our and start creating.  Live your dreams out loud.  Wear your passion in dramatic color.   

Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping . . . waiting . . . and though unwanted . . . unbidden . . . it will stir . . . open it’s jaws and howl.  It speaks to us . . .  guides us . . . passion rules us all, and we obey.  What other choice do we have?  Passion is the source of our finest moments.  The joy of love . . .  the clarity of hatred . .  and the ecstasy of grief.  It hurts sometimes more than we can bear.  If you could live without passion maybe we’d know some kind of peace . . .  but we would be hollow . . . empty rooms shuttered and dark.  Without passion we’d be truly dead.

  – Josh Whedon

 

Your Saving Grace Is To Be Your Own Hero

Can you imagine this conversation between two people looking out over the water and seeing a hand reach up out of the water?

Can’t you see she is drowning?

She’s just doing that for attention.

Someone should help her.

If we acknowledge her, then she’ll never stop.

I think she is in danger.

She’s just feeling sorry for herself.

It’s too late now.  She is gone.

Why didn’t she ask for help?

This conversation plays out in all of our lives at some time.  For me it was my daughter was close to two years old,.  She wasn’t talking.  Literally no words.  She had sounds, so she wasn’t mute.  She just didn’t say mama or dada or anything.  I had taken her to doctors and they determined that physically there was nothing wrong.  She could hear fine.  She understood what you were saying, she just couldn’t communicate back.  So they said I should force her to talk. That she wasn’t talking because I gave her want she was trying to ask for.  They said, “When she was indicating that she wanted something, don’t give it to her unless she says the word”.  So we had a painful few months of following the doctors directions.  Then I took her back and demanded to see some specialist.  This issue was not that she didn’t want to say the words, the issue was that something wasn’t connecting correctly.

So we saw the specialist, and they couldn’t figure out anything that was wrong.  So they told us to put her in daycare.  They felt she wasn’t around enough children.  Even though she had an older brother, cousins and friends her age from church – that wasn’t sufficient.  So we put her in daycare,  Another bad decision as it made her stand out.  When they were sharing in circle time and she couldn’t verbalize her sounds into real words, she became even more withdrawn.  So again, back to the doctors.  Finally they authorized speech therapy.,  The area we lived in had a school she attended for four hours a day.  They had a two to one ratio of speech therapist teachers who worked with her and the other children, who all had some sort of speech disability.  Within 6 months she had a 100 word vocabulary and she was finally able to express herself.  It took me one whole year to get her the help she needed.

I felt like I was having that conversation with those doctors, that I typed above  I knew she had a problem and they were not listening or helping.  They were just making things worse.  Fortunately I kept after them until she got the help she needed.  She had delayed speech, and it was an inherited condition.  I discovered later that one of my grandfathers daughters from his first marriage had the same thing happen with one of her grandchildren.  And my daughter had the same thing happen with a couple of her own children.  It was not that she was doing it for attention.  It was not that trying to help her get what she wanted but couldn’t tell us, was just encouraging bad behavior.  She was asking for help.

Ships don’t sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them.  Don’t let what’s happening around you get inside you and weigh you down.

  – Unknown

Have you ever been the person asking for help?  Did it feel like people were watching and talking, but no one could hear you through the water?  This happened to me when I was 28 years old.  I had been diagnosed with Glaucoma.  They didn’t want to do surgery because I was so young.  A lot of times when you are young and healthy, when they do laser surgery on your eyes, your eyes think that the surgery is a problem and “repair” the surgery back to what it thinks is the normal way for the eye to be.  So we were trying out three different drugs.  The first on didn’t work at all.  The second one had a side effect of making me suicidal.  I could tell it was making me depressed and giving me dark thoughts.  I was struggling with it, but it was making me afraid to talk about it.  I finally was able to tell the doctor what was happening and he put me on the third drug.  Due to different side effects I ended up doing the surgery.

I was talking to my husband about the second drug and asking him if he couldn’t see what was happening.  He said, that he could see it, but was so afraid of putting me over the edge I was balanced on that he did nothing.  We talked about it for some time.  I explained, that what that did was to make me feel like he didn’t care.  That even if what he said or did was not the perfect thing, at least I would have known that he was trying, that he cared.  Instead I felt abandoned and that he didn’t care about me.  Like the woman in the story, I felt like I was reaching for help and he was just watching me drown.

We all have bad days.  We all witness others having bad days.  Sometimes those bad days turns into weeks and months and years.  We are crying out for help.  We feel abandoned.  We all watch it happening to someone we know or love, and we don’t know what to do.  So we do nothing, or we get bad advice from experts and do the wrong thing.  What we need to do is go to divine source.  The divine source speaks to us in our hearts.  When we reach out to others from that space, even if what we do is not the perfect thing to do, they see that we are trying from a space of love and compassion. Not from a space of judgment, or making someone be wrong. 

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.  When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do, you will sink and drown.  Instead you relax, and float.

  – Alan Watts

We need to realize when we are drowning and ask for help.  We need seek deep within to find what it is that is currently trying to be exposed and released from our life.  A wrong belief that is holding us hostage.  A drug or alcohol addiction.  A relationship that is killing us, but we won’t let go of.  That we are trying to save someone, who is just taking us down with them.  When we try to save broken people, we need to take care that we don’t cut ourselves on their broken pieces.  So many patterns, addictions, issues of self sabotage.  They need to be released so that we can again relax and float.  Life sometimes takes us to the edge, but it is always within our control, it is our choice to be a victim, or we can decide that this life can and will be better and we are a thriver. 

Life sometimes takes you into troubled waters not to drown you but to cleanse you.

  – Unknown

 So when we find ourselves in deep water.  Relax and float.  Reach out for help, but always remember it really comes down to being our own hero.  No one else can fix us, and we can fix anyone else.  It is always an inside job. 

 

 

Chaos Is A Key To Change And Transformation

In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.

  – Deepak Chopra

Chaos is actually a good sign.  It tells you that you are about to have a breakthrough.  I love this photo – we literally have the elephant in the room.  It is being ignored and creating chaos.  Chairs and tables are being destroyed, dishes crashing to the floor, and she is sitting there like “what?”  Chaos is one of the keys that tells us things are about to change.  We have the ability to choose in this situation.  We can continue to ignore the “elephant in the room” or we can acknowledge it and start to deal proactively with the changes happening in our life.

All great changes are preceded by chaos.

  –  Unknown

All of the great inventions have come from a place of chaos.  When you think outside of the box, it is in a place of chaos.  All of the possibilities are buzzing around your head, all trying desperately to get your attention. It is being willing to be told you are stupid and foolish to think that you can be an agent of change.  A chaos agent.  Someone who stirs things up.  Look at the disruptors currently bringing change in our world.  3D printing is on the brink of being able to create organs that can be used to transplant and save lives.  They are creating car parts, hearing aids, and implants.

Madness is somewhere between chaos and having a dream.

  – R.M. Drake

Soon every piece of personal information, drivers license, credit cards, bank accounts, your id card for work will all be digital and take just your thumb print or a scan of a chip located within your body.  Virtual reality will soon impact with endless possibilities beyond gaming.  Our houses will soon be totally controlled with the “internet of everything”.  More and more of everyday life will become fully automated, such as self driving cars.  Think of every science fiction movie or book you have read and we are quickly approaching the implementation of that fantasy becoming our reality.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join in the dance.

  – Alan W Watts

When life is crazy and the chaos is driving us mad – faith in the divine plan gives us an anchor.  It keeps us steady in the raging storm, so that when the storm has passed, we can pick up the pieces of our life and carry on.  It gives us a vision to hold on to that can keep us calm  in the midst of the insanity.  And if we are courageous, we can let go of the expectations of how our life should be and see instead how our life could be.  When you let go of the expectations, you make space for something better.

Never mind your ideas of how things should look, your expectations of how things must be.  Life will scramble all of that into an unrecognizable chaos.  The difficulty, the joy, the privilege is in being undone and then creatively reshaping yourself into a form you never imagined could be so beautiful.

  – Amy Larsen

When the chaos creates frustration, it is because we have become confused.  A lack of clairity creates the frustration.  It is a poisonous emotion, stopping us from achieving our dreams.  We need to step out of this negative emotion, out of the darkness.  Release the frustration and get back into curiosity about what is happening.  Curiosity about what old belief we have outgrown that is expressing itself thorugh the frustration.  And get curious about what new something is being born into our life.

Life has dark moments and it is out of our darkness that we often find our greatest beauties and strengths.

  – Bryant McGill

 Chaos is only a problem when we get stuck in it.  If in every place we go, the elephant is in the room wrecking all of the furniture, then we need to seriously examine our life.  That kind of chaos is not a predictor of change, but rather an avoidance of making changes.  Chaos is a bridge to take us from where we currently are in our life, to where we are seeking to go.  A bridge makes the connection from one side ( where we are ) to the other side  ( where we want to be ).  You use it to travel across the river or lake, or across the ravine.  You don’t park on the bridge and live the rest of your life there, afraid to go forwards or backwards.  It is our self-identifying with the chaos, as though that is who we are, that will keep us in the darkness.  While life and chaos will give us those dark moments, it is not who we are.

Change is growth.  It is living life.  It is about recognizing and being conscious of what the journey is teaching us about ourselves.  Becoming conscious, becoming self aware.  It is recognizing the elephant is in the room.  Is it being self destructive and needing to be addressed?  Or is it just sitting there waiting to be called into action?

In Order To Change The World, You Must Be The Change

“Only I can change my life.  No one can do it for me”  –  Carol Burnett

This photo so clearly explains why other people don’t get the transformations that you are being called to make in your life.  There are two different levels of perception here.  And each person can only see their own level of perception.  Both are true.  I can explain what I see with twenty thousand words, and if your level of perception is contained in the world she is pulling away, dark depressing and dreary, you will never see the sunshine that I do.

 “Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands”  – Clint Eastwood

The better you know yourself the better you can embrace change.  Self knowledge is vital, because your subconscious minds run these programs behind the scenes.  Your subconscious like things exactly the way they are.  It will try to keep you in your comfort zone.  You need to let go of the old programs.

Most of the fears that you have, are fears of the unknown.  Those fears feature negative programing.  This programming will keep you stuck in the shadows, in the dark.  It will keep you from perceiving what else is possible.  I know that for myself when I have a medical issue, waiting for test results is the worst.  My mind goes crazy thinking of all of the possible worst case scenarios.  I am definitely in a dark place with wild imagining of brain tumors, cancer, a failing organ, and so on.

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

But once I have a diagnosis, it all changes.  Now I am researching and figuring out how to cure the issue and become healthy again.  Now I have something tangible to work towards.  The unknown has been removed and that fear is dissolved.  I am free again to begin making positive changes for my health and my life.

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

That doesn’t mean that fear doesn’t show up again.  It does.  But if you are being honest with yourself, you can identify the unknown piece that is creating the fear and remove it with new knowledge.

“If we don’t change, we don’t grow.  If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living”  – Gail Sheehy

How do you know when fear of the unknown is showing up in your life?

• It shows up whenever you find yourself avoiding something that needs to be done
• It shows up when you find that your progress towards a dream is slowing down
• It shows up when you begin to lose passion and fire towards the dream.
• It shows up when you begin to feel like you are wading through the mud instead of flowing down the stream.

Whenever these feelings start to exist, it is time to get quiet in your mind.  To sit quietly and ask your inner knower

• “What am I not seeing?”
• “What is it that is slowing me down or sidetracking me?”
• “What research can I do to bring light to this area?”

“I am on the hunt for who I’ve not yet become”  – Unknown

Once you identify the fear, then sit with it a while longer.  See what lies beneath that fear.  I can guarantee that there is always another layer.  Fears tend to travel in packs like wild dogs.  Each dog having its own fear.  Once you think you have given each dog a name, now you can make the dog stop its barking by addressing its own particular fear.

You will know if you are successful because you will feel the energy and passion return to your dream.  All of a sudden you will feel flow happening and that progress is being made.  It is like a hose that has a kink in it.  At first it feels like you are not getting any water pressure.  But once you find the kink and straighten it out, the water comes rushing out at full force.

“Change can be beautiful when we are brave enough to evolve with it, and change can be brutal when we fearfully resist”  – Bryant McGill

The key is to pay attention to what is happening in your life.  It is so easy to get lost and sidetracked.  It is so easy for the fears so sneak up on you and gain control.  It is also easy to stop and listen to your heart and soul for guidance.

“It doesn’t matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop”  – Unknown

It takes practice to check in with yourself on a regular basis.  Meditation and journaling are two practices that will help you to keep track of where you are, and wake you up if you start to fall asleep.

I know how much my writing helps me to catch myself when I start to get sidetracked.  It brings my energy back up into the higher vibrations.  These higher vibrations are a vital part of bringing your dreams into reality.  Remind yourself of what you have already transformed in your past.  Take courage that you can transform whatever is currently in front of you now.  Truly, the better you know yourself, the better you can embrace what is now changing in your life.

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

If not, contact LemonadeMakers via messenger.  We can talk – asking and thinking about the right questions will open doors for you.

I Am What I Choose To Become

“Today I am discovering who I am.  Today I am becoming my person, worthy of developing all of me.  Today I am beginning to know that I am okay the way I am”  – Ruth Fishel

Discovering who you are requires that you go on a journey.  You can’t become who you are trying to become by remaining where you are, or what you are.  This journey begins with curiosity.  Asking the hard questions of ourselves.  Where am I going?  What am I learning from what I read, what I listen to, what I am watching on TV?  What do those I associate with have me thinking about?  Are the answers to these questions what I want my life to be about?  It isn’t chance that helps me to become what I am seeking.  It is making transformational life changes that does that.

“If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored.  One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things”  – Henry Miller

When you start out on this journey of self discovery, you think that if you can just learn enough, take in enough knowledge that you will develop the wisdom to become the person you want to be.  It is the natural first step, and you may get lost in this first step.

• You are doing a lot of work, but it just doesn’t seem like you are making any progress.
• You keep departing, but it doesn’t feel like we are ever arriving.

There is this gap.  You keep stuffing it with creative ideas, and plans, and dreams – but it doesn’t seem like you are creating anything that truly bridges that gap.

I love the word GAP – because it is Gods Area of Preparation.  That is why it doesn’t seem like the bridge is ever getting completed.  The  gap will be bridged when divine timing and actions have been completed.  Don’t give up.  Keeping fighting to reach the other side of the gap.

“I love the person I’ve become, because I fought to become her”  – Kaci Diane

I remember the true story of an Olympic Athlete.  She went to a sports camp as a child and demonstrated some talent with volleyball.  The coach told her that if she worked hard, it would give her a scholarship to college.  So she worked hard and when it came time, she wrote to the colleges with a good volleyball program and asked them to come see her play.  She got her teachers to write letters about her and was successful in getting a full ride to college.

Her senior year in college she was watching the Olympic Games and decided to chase the dream of being in the Olympics.  So again, she wrote letters to come see her play and got her professors to write letters and was successful in getting into the tryouts.  She spent a week in tryouts and worked hard, and even though she felt the other players were better she made it to the team.  The team lived and worked in Southern California for 4 years to the next Olympic Games.

During that time she realized that if she was going to be on the team that played in the games, she needed to tear her game down and rebuild it.  Now think about this – she was good enough to get a full ride into college.  In college she was All American.  She tried out and was accepted on the Olympic Team.  Obviously she was talented and skilled.  But she knew that she could be more, so she fought to be more.

“I always did something I was a little not ready to do.  I think that’s how you grow.  When there’s that moment of “wow, I’m not really sure I can do this” and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough”  – Marissa Meyer

So when we are having a bad day, week, month or year – that is something to remember.  Sometimes we need to tear ourselves back down to the foundations of who we are, and rebuild.

Take all of the lessons that we have learned in this life, all of the crazy experiences, hurts, blessings in disguise and know that none of it was a mistake.  Find positive ways to be in the world.  Make a difference, no matter how small it feels.  We can be the change we want to see in our world.

• Be open to the challenge of change.
• Face our fears of not being enough, not knowing enough, and do the things we know need to be done, even if it terrifies us.
• Love who and what you are, and who you are becoming.
• Trust that you have within you everything that you need to do so.
• Believe in yourself.
• Wish upon the stars and then put faith in that wish coming true.

“Do not confuse the word “belief” with the word “wish”.  The two are not the same . . .  the element of faith is the only sure power by which a wish may be translated into a belief, and a belief into a reality”  – Napoleon Hill

It can be really scary, to keep going when you are in the part of change that you have to move mountains.  You see the pain, the heartache, the mistakes that you are making along the way.  You judge yourself, and cower in fear.  You wish it would all just go away and leave you lying in the middle of the floor, just a shapeless puddle of confusion and fears.

Instead,  get up.  Shake off the confusion, face the fear and walk in in the power of who you really are.  Remember that it isn’t what happens to you that defines you.  It isn’t the mistakes you made along the way that defines you.  What defines you is who you chose to become in spite of all of it.  At the end of the journey, the only one who is responsible for who you become is you.  You are a work in progress.  Each day is a new day.  A new pattern of thoughts.  A new wave of emotions, A new belief that you can become whatever you wish to become.

“You’ll learn as you get older, that rules are made to be broken.  Be bold enough to live life on your own terms, and never ever apologize for it.  Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path.  Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look.  Dance as though everybody is watching.  March to the beat of your own drummer.  And stubbornly refuse to fit it”  – Mandy Hale

Windwalkers – The Eagles Among Us

Soaring in solitude,
Grandfather Eagle calls to me as he circles high above.
With a few strokes his wings push him higher,
even higher above mother earth.

His razor vision upon me,
he reminds me that I have the gift of inner vision
to see far off in the distance of my own journey.

Just as he sometimes soars on the air currents,
and other times beats his wings to fly against the wind,
I too can adjust my journey to meet what is coming down the road to meet me.

As he circles overhead,
he conserves his energy by gliding with the air currents.
I am reminded of the need for rest,
to not be constantly pushing my body to exhaustion.

He appears to be drifting,
but one pump of his wings reminds me that action
is always needed to remain in forward motion and go the full distance.

At all times he is connected to mother earth,
staying grounded with his vision.
He always remembers where home is. I see he flies with purpose.

If I am to remain strong in my vision,
I too must be grounded into our mother’s soul,
so that I am not blown off course by the winds of distraction.

He flexes his talons and cries out again
reminding me that I must listen to my intuition
in order to know when to take flight,
and when to stand strong and fight for the vision within me.

I must be strong enough to not only give birth to it,
but to also grow it into maturity.
I must know when it is time to leave the nest,
stretch out my wings and take flight.

He shows me visions of his long journey,
I see high above the ground the hundreds of miles he has flown,
from new moon to new moon,
over the mountains, the desert, hills, valleys, lakes, and rivers he has seen.

He speaks to me of his great courage
in his willingness to explore the unknown,
to not just look in the light,
but to peer into the dark shadowed places.

He is not terrified of the emptiness of the unknown.
I see the great lesson from the creator that he is teaching,
to not be afraid to journey into places and experiences that are unknown.

Even the dark places have important lessons to be learned.
He plummets out of the sky dropping without sound,
and with perfect accuracy catches his prey unaware.

As he climbs back into the heights,
he calls out to see if I understand the import of yet another lesson,
that of being here now.

The prey was not aware of the danger approaching.
The prey was living in either the past which can’t be changed,
or the future which hasn’t yet happened.

I nod my head grateful for the reminder
to be alert to what is happening around me,
so that I don’t miss the messages that the great creator sends me.

The Windwalker alone of all birds’
flies above the rain instead of landing until storms ends.

He reflects that those with the Windwalkers gifts
must never allow circumstances to deflect us from our purpose,
but instead gather our courage and stretch our limits.

By flying higher,
we gain a greater perspective,
we can see that while others might be shortsighted
and think we are in retreat,
we are in fact advancing high above the clouds.

We do not let hardships bring us down into hiding,
but we continue onwards in our journey.

His sharp beak and strong jaw muscles
reflect the importance of knowing when to speak,
how much to say,
and how strong the words need to be
in order to impart the lessons of the past
and those visions yet to happen.

The Windwalkers,
like many of our earth’s brothers and sisters in the animal kingdom,
have many lessons to teach us
reminding us of what we already know but have forgotten.

We must have the eyes to see,
the ears to listen,
and the wisdom into our heart,
to them implement it in our lives.

When you hear the cry of the eagle,
Stop,
and contemplate what his reminder to you might be.

Curiosity Is The First Step In Awakening The Soul

“Many of us step foot on to the path to spiritual enlightenment expecting it to lead us onward and upward, hoping to become something better than we are, and ready to gather all of the important things we need along the way.  What a surprise it is when we eventually realize that this path isn’t taking us onward but inward, that we’re not gather things so much as letting them go, and that there was never anything more to aspire to than the truth of what we already are” – Cristen Rodgers

Something will occur in your life when the soul is ready to wake up.  It could be a health scare or near-death experience that you have.  It could be losing a parent, spouse or child.  Loss of identity when you lose your job.  A divorce.  Then come the signs of feeling that your life is empty, devoid of real meaning and purpose.

It is as though you are lost in the woods, and you keep trying to find a trail back to your car.  You keep wandering and you’re starting to panic.  You feel as though something is lost or missing in your life.  Like there is this giant hole that you keep walking around.  You don’t know what it means, except that you have to find something to make your life meaningful.

You start questioning everything you have been taught.  Either you have abandoned God, or you feel he has abandoned you.  There is a sense of injustice.  You feel like a blind person groping about in the darkness in a strange place.  Loved ones may be trying to help you, and you just want everyone to leave you alone.  In fact it seems to be a necessity if you are to figure this out – you must be alone.

“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning.  They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers.  Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others at oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening.  Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance” – Henri Bergson

It is the being alone that allows you to go within.  Solitude is important when you start on this path to enlightenment.  You need for space for just sitting and going within.  To connect, to see what is crying out to be released as not being part of your authentic self.  To regenerate and renew the pieces of you that were killed off as part of social conditioning.  The parts you buried because you were told it wasn’t safe to be who you really are.  It takes a great deal of courage to go within and choose to be your true self.

When you start down this path, you will think you are missing something.  Think back to the Wizard of Oz and the journey down the yellow brick road.  Toto was a catalyst for Dorothy always running off when Dorothy was needing to wake up and become conscious about something.  The first thing she found on the journey was the ruby slippers.  She had no idea of the power of the slippers and they remained dormant until she was enlightened enough to correctly use them.

The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, they all had what they were looking for.  The journey for them, was to look inside and expand their boundaries and eliminate their limitations.  To realize their full potential.  They weren’t missing anything.  They just needed to awaken to who they already were.  To choose to be better.  To let go of doubts and stories.  You tell yourself similar stories about not being capable of doing something.  The Wizard of Oz cast of characters needed to gather enough experience, to have the confidence that they were more than enough.

As you walk down your own yellow brick road of self-discovery, you will uncover the enlightenment that you’re seeking.  You will discover who you are deep within your heart and soul.  You will grow and transform into who you are destined to become.  Your life experiences have been designed specifically, to help you learn the skills required to fulfill your destiny.

Instead of continuing to conform to others ideas of who you should be, you choose to listen to the guidance of your own soul’s voice.  To travel the unexplored path, to think outside of the box, to be curious and question everything you have been taught.  To discover the impossible journey.

Curiosity is the beginning of awakening.  It is the first step on the path to discover who you are, what your purpose is, what feeds your soul.  When you get curious you start exploring the world around you with different eyes.  You get clarity about what to release and leave behind, as you see what no longer fits who you are becoming.  You open up to new things; new truths, new understandings, new awakenings.  You create the magic of uncovering who you are.

The treasures of gifts you never acknowledged.  You let go of fear after fear.  You start honoring and valuing who you are deep down inside.  Self love and self trust grow and expand with each fear that you release.  You realize that each fear was designed to hold you captive.  You were caged by fear, so that you couldn’t discover your divine self.

“You reach a point where you feel yourself going through an awakening.  You look at what you used to do and who you used to be.  It hurts because you realize you believed in and promoted nonsense.  You grow; you evolve and you stop because you no longer operate at that frequency.  As a result, there’s certain people that you have to walk away from.  As a result, you start to realize just how messed up the world is.  You want to help; you want to heal; you want to make it a better world.  This is how you know you’re awakening a higher level of consciousness . . .  “ – Sylvester McNutt

When you start living from that authentic place deep inside of you, you will be truly seen.  In order to be who you are at the soul level, you have to let go of the stories you have been defined by your whole life.  It is like a puzzle where the pieces were jammed into place because they didn’t quite fit.  When you are living life from the authentic place at the soul level you begin, piece by piece, to rearrange all of those jammed pieces of the puzzle.

You realize who you are at your deepest level.  When that happens, all the pieces will fit together with no gaps.  That is when you will experience a whole new level of love, grace, peace and serenity in your life.

You will still have road blocks on your path.  You will still continue to grow through success and failures.  The difference is that you begin to recover faster.  The difference is that as you embrace what is true, you keep being curious about your life purpose.  You ask better questions that when you started.  The difference is measured by real progress on our life’s journey.

Never Be Defined By Your Past

Fear is like the Wizard of Oz, projecting itself onto the screen, frightening you with how powerful it is.  When in reality, it is a small man behind the curtain. Don’t be afraid to move the curtain and expose the fear. Finding the blessing in the fear, is the opportunity to open your heart and mind to the idea of change and reinvention.

“Sometimes painful things can teach us lessons that we didn’t think we needed to know” – Unknown

Lessons show up in painful situations.  Sometimes you consciously choose to change, because you have taken the time to realize something isn’t working and why. Other times you stumble upon ( notice the word stumble) an opportunity.

Sometimes you trip over something and you catch yourself before the fall, hopping across the floor as you try to regain your balance. Other times you can trip over something that face plants you on the ground, and has you digging rocks off your skin. Either way there are still choices to make.

“One of the happiest moments in life is when you find the courage to let go of what you can’t change”  – Unknown

“No matter who tries to teach you lessons about life, you won’t understand it until you go through it on your own”  – Unknown

The classic opportunities for reinvention tend to come from two things. With a heartbreak such as; losing a job, ending a relationship, the death of a close friend or family member.

The classic “good but scary” opportunities for reinvention are you go away to college, you move to a new town with a new job, you get the really big promotion such as those COO, CEO, CFO types of promotions or the best of all, you decide to be an entrepreneur and your own boss.

In today’s world, your fill in the blank might be related to the changing world from Covid-19.  It might be you are living in a war zone.  It might be that you are reaching out to help with refugees in your town.  It might be a medical problem with yourself or a family member.  It might be trying to figure out what’s next in your career or family life.

“There are things in life we don’t want to happen, but have to accept; things we don’t want to know but have to learn; and people we can’t live without, but have to let go”  – Unknown

In today’s world lots of businesses are rethinking how they do business.  They are trying to see the gaps and create opportunities to bridge them. Bringing an idea to life is hard work. You can expect it to cost you more personally, financially, and maybe even reputational than you thought it would. There are sleepless nights. You become a master of second guessing your choice to make this move.

“Disney taught me to never stop 

believing in my dreams

Harry Potter taught me that love and friendship

dominates all kind of evil

Narnia taught me that we must all grown up 

& leave our childhood behind,

but must never forget it

Percy Jackson taught me that there’s

a hero in every one of us

Glee taught me that no matter how different we are,

there’s always that one thing we have in common”  – Unknown

But to be truly committed you need to “burn the boats”.  This expression is a “point of no return”, where you have destroyed all other choices, and you are left with no options but the intention you started with.  It comes from a famous incident when a Spanish Explorer landing in Mexico ordered their ships to be burned.  They either would conquer the country or be killed, because they had no way to return home.

So take away plan b, eliminate the lifeline.  Go all out for what you are passionate about. Follow your bliss. Look at what is working and not working. What you love to do and hate to do. The key is to get immersed in what you are passionate about and hire help for the rest.

“Each day I am thankful for nights that turned into mornings, friends that turned into family, dreams that turned into reality, and likes that turned into loves”  – Unknown

• Surround yourself with people who love to learn, share and build.
• Join or create a mastermind group with people who are putting their ideas into action.
• Seek out those in your community who solve problems and ask for suggestions.
• Create that special group of people who will be your cheerleaders, helping you to remain positive and take the risks that need to be taken, instead of holding yourself back.
  

And remember the three most important words in your fear busting vocabulary: Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.

It All Begins With A Dream, A Story. Stay True To The Dreamers Story.

“Promise to stay wild with me.  We’ll seek and return and stay and find beauty and the extraordinary in all the spaces we can claim.  We’ll know how to live.  How to breathe magic into the mundane”  – Victoria Erickson

I think that turning your dreams into realities is all about staying wild.  To stay adventurous and be curious.  To breathe magic into the mundane.  To touch the stars, and fly with dragonflies.  It is about dancing with fairies and talking to the moon.  It is about following Alice into the mirror or down the rabbit hole.  It is about returning to Oz for more adventures.  The imagination is critical to planting the seeds of your future.  Don’t listen to those who purvey logic and say it can’t be done.  Listen the to whisper of your heart as it leads you to create what others can’t even imagine.  Whimsy is the “new black”.

“Refuse to be that person that, like so many others who is still driving down the same road years down the line, mournfully longing to go back in time to be given just one more chance to take the road they should have taken because they ignored all possible extraordinary signs.  It’ll never get easier to make the leap and this is your chance, so make the change.  Take the road now”  – Victoria Erickson

The things that you do and don’t do shape who you are.  They put detail into your mind, body, heart, and soul.  The stretchmark’s of childbirth.  The laughter wrinkles.  The broken hearts and mended souls.  You have learned how to be brave, how to smile through the tears.  You promise yourself and your loved ones that whatever tragedy is happening in your life this moment – everything will still be okay.

You have learned how to shift your sails through the tides of change.  How to ride the wild waves and make it back to shore.  How to stand in the wind and just keep swimming.  How to leap instead of crawl.  How to rise out of the ocean depths and fly across the water.  To ride the storm like a wild horse and how to lead it back into calm waters.  You are not a settler.  You didn’t settle to drive down the straight and narrow roads, that ones that don’t lead to adventures.   You chose the road to high adventures.

“I have the deepest affection for intellectual conversations. The ability to just sit and talk.  About love, about life, about anything, about everything.  To sit under the moon with all the time in the world, the full-speed train that is our lives slowing to a crawl.  Bound by no obligations, barred by no human limitations.  To speak without regret of fear of consequence.  Talk for hours and about what’s really important in life”  – Unknown

I love my tribe of special girlfriends.  We sit around the fire and drink wine and talk.  We talk about our lives and solve not only all of our problems.  We move on to solving all of the worlds problems.  My mom would always ask me what we talked about, and I would say that we just created a better world for all of us.

There is a movie with Sam Waterston, John Heard and Liv Ullmann called “Mindwalk” – it is about a lawyer, a politician and a scientist who meet up at Mont St. Michel.  They get caught up is the magic of having one of those kinds of conversations.  They explore everything as they walk around the castle.  I loved the film because you see how exhilarating a conversation can be when you aren’t arguing with each other but instead opening up each others minds to explore new ideas and concepts.

“The idea is to live your life in a way that makes you feel lit up.  Alive.  Fully fledged.  Beautiful.  Know and find what nourishes you inside out, bones to skin and then build your world from that alone.  All else is not part of your revolution.  Or your ultimate evolution”  – Victoria Erickson

Our dreams are meant to be moments of connection.  Connecting ideas, concepts and changing the reality of your life.  They are expansive.  They flash across time and space, to a point in the future and then ricochet back to you with what the next step is to make them a reality.  The dreams are fluid and watery as they flow and adapt to new information.  They are always moving forward, never retracting.  They are malleable, luminous, free like the clouds in the sky to form new patterns and shapes.  Follow your passion. Listen to your heart.  Don’t be afraid of changing and adapting.

“There’s a turning point.  It arrives when we find ourselves quietly hovering inside the realization that the choice is between two pains:  the pain of the jump or the pain of regret”  – Victoria Erickson

Leaping is such a wonderful visual word.  Like you have a “pride of lions”, the word for leopards as a group is a “leap of leopards”.  When a leopard kills an antelope it has to take his kill high up into the trees. If he doesn’t other animals will take his kill away from him.  The adult male leopard weighs 80-198 lbs, and the female 63-132 lbs.  An antelope outweighs the leopard with the largest weighing more than 1,000 lbs.  So if the leopard doesn’t balance his leap perfectly, it risks being crushed by its own kill.  If they don’t make the leap high into the tree branches, it risks losing its dinner and starvation.  Every time I see the word leap, I think of the leopard.

“Remember that you are more than skin and bones.  You are one thousand stories of before.  One thousand stories of potential.  One thousand stories you’ve yet to see and know and feel and breathe.  There’s more to come.  And it’s something beautiful”   -Victoria Erickson

If you don’t leap, you won’t be able to continue bringing your dreams into reality.  If you do leap, you will be risking failure.  Experience has shown that you will need to leap again.  To rise up and continue your journey. Since there will be pain of failure, pain of regret, or pain of the leap itself, tip yourself over the edge.  Flip your fears into courage.  There are thousands of stories yet to be lived and told over the campfire.  There is so much more potential to be revealed.  You are still unraveling the parts of you that don’t belong and uncovering the true you that you buried so long ago.  So when given the chance to leap, take it.  Live a new story.  Share that story with others.  I can’t wait to hear your stories.  To hear your dreams of realities not yet created, as well as all of the transformations you already have unveiled.

“There will be certain people and places that’ll open your aliveness, flooding you with the same awe and sweet ache as a thousand daydreams revealed.  Hold these connections close, for one day you’ll know a clearer view of what they truly were from the beginning – still moments of perfection in an ever spinning world”  – Victoria Erickson

So as you sail about in the sky, reaching for the castle of your dreams, treasure the still moments of perfection that happen along the road.  Make sure you take time each day to dip your toes into the pools of imperfections.  Those imperfections that you not only live with, but have come to appreciate as part of your souls journey.

See the daydreams unveil themselves.  Get a clear focused view of your current destination.  See the moment of clarity in your life purpose(s).  Take out your compass and adjust your course as needed.  Stay in the wild spaces.  Keep leaping.  Remember to live your life not in the past, or in the future, but in this moment.  Feel the love, the joy, the happiness.  Most of all, live with open heartedness.  See the beauty of your life in its thousands of forms.

Transformation Is A Coin, One Side Painful, The Other Side Beautiful. Just Flip The Coin Until You Get To The Beautiful

“Life is like a roller coaster.  You can either scream every time there is a bump or you can throw your hands up and enjoy the ride” – Unknown

A roller coaster is an interesting ride.  I grew up in Santa Cruz which is home to one of the oldest wooden roller coasters in the United States.  I went on it all of the time.  It is a ride that jerks you around, makes your stomach do flip flops.  Then there is the thrill of adrenaline coursing through your veins when you have both hands up in the air, and can you feel yourself lift off your seat, thighs riding against the bar across your lap.

It can make you frightened, scared, sick, excited and thrilled all in the same moment.  True change and transformation do the same thing.

“And suddenly you know…  It’s time to start something new and trust in the magic of beginnings” – Unknown

There are differences between change and transformation, there is a process to change.  You determine that you have something that you want to remove from your life, and something you want to introduce to your life.  So, you make a change.

I use losing weight as an example because it is something that is common to wrestle with.  A diet is something that you can change to lose weight.  You restrict yourself in your food intake and you might also introduce more exercise.   The problem with this way of doing things is that for 90% of us, it is a temporary change.

For a short while you run every day and eliminate carbs as an example.  You could lose 10, 20, 30 lbs. – but at some point, the willpower that you are exerting for this change dies out and you return to your normal habits.

Transformation isn’t about adding temporary measures to achieve a goal.  It is all about changing the lifestyle. It starts in the chaos.

For myself as an example, there is a reason why I gained weight, and now it needs to be released.  If the pain of wanting to release it doesn’t outweigh the pain of why I gained the weight, then anything I do won’t last.  I know this to be true, because I have been on this roller coaster of losing weight only to regain it all back.

You have to unravel the untruths in your body that the weight was formed from.  You created your own set of demons that put on every pound.  You have to uproot the entire plant and root system, or like a weed it just comes back.  Letting go of the demons you created is an acknowledgement that the “truth” they promised to be for you was a lie.

“One of the most courageous decisions you’ll ever make is to finally let go of what is hurting your heart and soul” – Brigitte Nicole

I have always loved the saying that life is a riddle, wrapped up in a mystery. inside an enigma.  It came from a radio broadcast and is attributed to Winston Churchill.  That is what it is like when you run up against the fear of change.

Somewhere inside of you is the riddle of what has triggered the fear.  Inside the fear is a mystery or story about the fear. Inside the story is the enigma of something subconscious that you can’t remember or recognize.

It is what makes the change temporary and why sometimes such extreme chaos is triggered in order for the transformation to happen.

In my own case with weight, I can feel something different this time.  It’s been three months of change for me so far.  I have released about 25 lbs.  The chaos that has triggered the change is health related.  I can feel a difference in the motivation this time.  It doesn’t feel like short-term thinking for the first time.  Time will of course tell me in the end if this is true transformation.

Whatever the transformation is, it is something that impacts all areas of your life.  It is so drastic a change that you can’t go back to what you were.

For Cat Stevens his transformation was around his spirituality.  He changed his name, he stopped singing and gave up a successful music career, he changed his religion. – and that changed everything.  He had a brush with death and almost drowned in the Pacific Ocean.  He promised God he would work for him, if he could make it back to shore.  Then a wave came that carried him back to shore.

It would be 25 years before he performed publicly again.  It wasn’t a short-term change using willpower. It was a lifestyle transformation.

“Life is filled with so many exciting twists and turns.  Hop off the straight and narrow whenever you can and take the winding paths.  Experience the exhilaration of the view from the edge. Because the moments spent there, that take your breath away, are what make you feel truly alive” – Stacey Charter

• When the winds of change blow, what is your reaction?
• Do you build a wall to keep it out?
• Do you build a windmill to harness the energy to facilitate a true transformation?

All great transformation is preceded by chaos.  Chaos is what sends you on the journey.  For Cat Stevens it would appear that he built a wall to keep things out.

Later in life, he returned to the music world, although he hasn’t had the same success as when he left it.  He released a new album, and it appears that he has torn down the wall, to instead use the energy of the windmill.  He has become very involved with various charity organizations.

Like a roller coaster, his transformation took him to the edge of cutting himself off from the world, and now is taking him to the edge of incorporating his life back into the world, but with a focus of helping child refugees and his charitable foundation, “Small Kindness”.

“You have to stop thinking you’ll be stuck in your situation forever.  We feel like our heart will never heal or we’ll never get out of this impossible struggle.  Don’t confuse a season for a lifetime.  Even your trials have an expiration date.  You will grow, life will change, things will work out” – Brittney Moses

The difference when undergoing transformation,

• You are making the changes from an energetic space, not a willpower space.
• You are making them out of Love not fear.
• You are making them from a place of courage not fear.

Life or death choices are one thread, a single coin.  It is all about which side we are viewing them from.  Lack or abundance?  Love or fear?  Life or death?  Are you screaming at life or throwing your hands up in the air and enjoying it?

Don’t Lose Yourself In The Hatred Of Others

Stay away from people who gossip and spread rumors.  They are choosing the path of emotional bullying and negativity.

  –  Dr Steve Maraboli

This is a really profound quote. It really struck a chord in my heart because I so resonated with the underlying truth. Really sit with the words, “tell me why they were so comfortable to say what they were saying to you”. It is really a hard thing to sit with.  I think that we have all been told gossip.  Some has been quite mean and spiteful.  It can be painful even to hear, especially if is about someone we care about.  What did that person really tell you what they had heard?  

Be careful who you trust, if someone will discuss others with you, they will certainly discuss you with others.

  – Unknown

So what does it say about me, that someone might come to me with some “juicy” gossip that they are spreading about someone I know. What signals am I broadcasting that they think I want to join in and be a part of something like that? How am I telling them that I love the drama of someone else’s downfall?

It’s not your job to stop them from talking behind you, but it’s your job not to let it affect you.

  – Unknown

People for the most part will not say to you a mean or hurtful thing about someone that you really care about. People for the most part will not gossip with someone that they know won’t put up with it.

A lot of problems in the world would disappear if we talk to each other instead of about each other.

  – Unknown

There are some minor exceptions to this rule, like my father in-law. Years ago we were staying with my in-laws waiting for the closing on our home. I had went up to the kitchen to get something and he was there. He went off on a tear down of his son, about how he was a disappointment , that all of my father in-laws failures could be traced back to his children. He said mean, hurtful cruel things about his son. Finally he ran out of steam, and I just looked at him and said, “so what kind of response are you looking for here? Why are you telling me these things? I love my husband and he isn’t anything like the son that you are describing”, and walked away. He is the exception to the rule because he is so unhappy in his life, and he doesn’t want to take responsibility for how it has turned out, so he goes around trying to tear you down to his level. The only thing you can do with someone who has a toxic personality is limit the exposure to them.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

  – Unknown

Years ago I adopted the saying, “not my movie, not my drama”, for when people that I work with start down the road of tearing down someone in their life. My sister says, “not my circus, not my monkeys”. I try very hard not to join in or be around those kinds of conversations. If they won’t let the conversation be turned to something positive, then I excuse myself and walk away.

Someone who hates you normally hates you for one of three reasons.  They either see you are a threat.  They hate themselves.  Or they want to be you.

  – Unknown

What we need in our lives is more positive conversations; more love shown in both our words and out actions. More up building and less tearing down. More compassion and less drama. More celebrating of the positive accomplishments of people and less glorification of the tragedy that takes someone out.

I’m not going to tear you down . . .  if you’re bad-mouthing me, you’re already down.

  – Dr. Steve Maraboli

This even plays out in the feedback we provide around customer service. How fast are we to complain to someone in charge when we are not treated the way we want, but do we have the same rate of speed to ask for someone in charge to praise a persons excellent customer service in taking care of you?

Talking badly about someone else while they aren’t there to defend themselves says more about you than the person you’re talking about.

  – Unknown

This quote takes it a little deeper for me that just avoiding the “drama queens”. It says that the quality of the conversations that I am part of is due in some part (large or small) to what I am attracting – knowingly or unknowingly. Gives me a slice of a shadow that I didn’t realize might still be there to work on rooting out.

I know this will seem a bit crazy, but if you want to know something about me, the best person to ask, is me.

  – Unknown

When I was in high school, I was invited to a slumber party.  I didn’t know the girl well.  I was new to the school, and desperate to fit in.  There was another new girl at school that was also invited.  I am really embarrassed about what happened next.  The girls had a game where as each person would fall asleep they would start gossiping about that person.  I joined in, even though I didn’t really know any of them.  I can remember saying stuff about the other new girl, Denise.  Then feeling guilty I pretended to fall asleep so that I didn’t feel like I had to participate.  Of course, you know what happened next.  They started in our me.  As soon as I could leave without anyone noticing I did.  I walked several miles home, at 3 AM crying the entire way.  I felt horrible for what I did and how they made me feel when they started in on me.  The next day I called Denise and apologized for what I had said.  Denise and I ended up becoming best friends.  It was a life changing moment for me.  I never wanted to feel like that again, and I certainly never wanted to hurt someone like that again.

Let them judge you.  Let them misunderstand you.  Their opinions aren’t your problems.  You stay kind, committed to love and free in your authenticity.  No matter what they do or say, don’t you doubt your worth or the beauty of your truth.  Just keep shining like you always do.

  – Unknown

So remember your life purpose.  Tell your story, your voice matters, yes it is important.  You were born to make an impact.  Pursue your dreams.  Negative people need drama like oxygen.  Stay positive.  It will take their breath away.  Remember what the grandmothers used to say, “Birds peck at the best fruit”.

Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.  Delicious ambiguity . . .

  – Gilda Radner

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New Day, New Chapter

“Not everything has a happy ending, but that’s life.  Just pick up the pieces and move on to the next chapter”  – Unknown

Something tragic happened here.  A bridge was destroyed or a chasm opened up where there used to be solid ground.  Seems to be a great graphic for what the world looks like at the moment.

All kinds of stories and possibilities.  Sounds like some relationships doesn’t it? You meet someone, get to know them.  Start loving and trusting them.  Years may go by with you both the best of friends.  Maybe it is even a sibling or a parent.  Something breaks down in the relationship and everything ends.  It could be gradual or suddenly without warning.  The father cuts off the child because the child isn’t doing what the father wants.  The brother and sister get into an ugly fight, saying unspeakable things as only those who truly know us can.  Years go by without them speaking to each other.  Your best friend cheated with your spouse.

“The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it . . .  some stories just don’t have a happy ending”  – Jodi Picoult

Or this could be the job that you thought you were indispensable at.  You worked long hours – days, nights and weekends spent away from your family.  You poured your heart and soul and even your identity into the job and they fired you or laid you off, or the company shut its doors.  No warning, no idea it was going to happen.  You are devastated.  You feel you are a failure.  You feel like you were used up and then thrown out with the trash.

“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”  – Fallen

Or maybe something terrible happens.  Like my sister, your only child is murdered.  The loss of the child ends your marriage and you find yourself lost and alone.  Or maybe it is tragic news for your personal health.  So many possibilities of tragic things that can happen in your life, that leaves you lost, alone, afraid and thinking that your life is over.

“Anyone who tells you to get over it and stop living in the past clearly doesn’t understand the concept of time.  If you’re feeling it now – it’s the present”  – Ranata Suzuki

The thing that all these stories have in common, is that you need to grieve what the loss to you is.  You need to go through the stages of grief for the loss.  You need to work through and let go of the guilt, anger, lost love, loss or betrayal.  It seems that when these things come into your life you get into a fighting mode.  You fight to hold on to what is falling off the edge of the tracks.  Then you fight to let it go before it drags you down into the chasm.

“Grief never ends . . .   But it changes.  It’s a passage, not a place to stay.  Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith . . . It is the price of love” – Unknown

There always comes the day when you feel like you’re actually going to start to live again.  It starts gradually.  You find yourself smiling or laughing.  It might shock you at first.  But gradually the grief lessens, and the joys start coming back into your life.   You become less scared.   You are less terrified that you are so broken that you won’t be whole again.

You start grabbing onto scraps of courage.  You realize that there is a sacredness to tears.  They cleanse your soul.  They speak not only of the grief you are going through, but also of the love you had.  You know that you are turning a corner, when you can hold the grief in one hand and the love in the other.  You realize that you don’t have to pick one.  You realize that when you put your hands together, they are just opposite sides of the same coin.

“The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on.  When you’re faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking” – James Patterson

You realize that you are stumbling through a “dark night of the soul”.  It’s like a natural disaster has hit you.  It tore everything you have built off the foundations.  The wood, the windows, the roof, is in pieces, and they are lying around like someone smashed a popsicle fort.  Like Humpty Dumpty, you feel like you can’t be put back together again.  You realize when the pity party has broken up and all of the revelers have left you alone, is that this is also something wonderful.

Instead of being unhappy with your floor plan; instead of just repainting the same walls and ceilings trying to dress up something you were already unhappy with – you get to rebuild from the foundation up.  You get to build from rock bottom a new solid foundation with the floor plan of your dreams and the best paint colors you can dream up.  You get a “do over” and get to rebuild your life.  You decide, you choose to be the Queen of your own specially designed life.

“One day she finally grasped that unexpected things were always going to happen in life.  And with that, she realized the only control she had was how she chose to handle them.  so, she made the decision to survive using courage, humor, and grace.  She was the Queen of her own life and the choice was hers”  – Kathy Kennet

 A new pattern of thoughts

You are using the brain in your head, heart, and root chakra – You listen to you soul’s voice of intuition and seek fulfillment of your life purpose.  You realize that you don’t have to have it all figured out, in order to move forward towards your dreams – just the next step.

A new way of using the emotional vibrational scale 

Stay in positive emotions.  When the negative emotions come up, like a wave riding into the shore, you allow them to dissipate into the sand and be released.  You don’t hold on to them, rather like the foam left behind as the wave withdraws, the negative emotions simply fade away.

A new spiritual connection to the world 

You face yourself and fully accept who you are, a perfectly imperfect person.  A divine child of God.  With a divine commission to fulfill.

A new belief system 

It’s ok to be daring and different, not afraid to live out loud who you really are.  You are a person of integrity towards your life purpose and with imaginative vision you seek to walk your own path in love, trust, and grace.

“Your life will consist of a series of times when you must reinvent yourself.  We desperately cling to the idea that things should stay the same, but life and growth are about change.  Don’t mistake the end of a chapter for the end of the story.  Lean into the plot changes, and follow your character arc.  If you are in a dark part of your tale, know that this night will not last forever, but you must be brave enough to see it through.  This is not the end, oh no my friend.  Take courage, better things await you” – John Mark Green