What if,…..?

“Nothing is a coincidence.  Everything you’re experiencing is meant to happen exactly how it’s happening.  Embrace the lessons.  Be grateful” – www.livelifehappy.com

• What if,…. all the answers are deep within my soul, calling to me – but I am not listening?
• What if,… there are no mistakes, and every experience that you have is to your benefit?
• What would happen to the stories that you tell yourself and others about your life, if you reframed them to your benefit?
• What would happen if you had never been a victim, but was instead an adventurer who was experiencing all that life has to offer?
• How would word a reframe, shift and change your life?
• What if,… it was all “good”?

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant”  –  Horace Mann

The first thing I thought, was well some pretty bad things have happened – how can I just reframe it, to “it’s all good”?  I can do it if I can construct a framework that reflects a pattern that strings each thing together, like a string of pearls.  Each experience can be examined like an individual pearl.  Remember how a pearl is created?  It is an object that irritates the mussels, so that they begin putting a covering over the irritation, which becomes a pearl.  Mussels do this as part of their defense mechanism.  So what kind of covering can you put over every “bad” experience that turns it into a pearl?  How freeing is it to think, that you have the ability to cover over any bad experience and make it into something priceless?

“Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live” –  Robert Kennedy

Sometimes you can become so enamored with the tragedy, that you drag it around with you everywhere you go.  You stand up and testify to how life has done you wrong, and just look at what has happened to you.  You proudly present your wounds as though they are medals of honor.  What if instead…, tragedy was a tool of destiny to liberate you from the falsehood of fate, which lets fear determine your choices.

What if, … you have a divine blueprint written down in your soul, and now is the time to wake up and start creating the life you are meant to be living?

“There is a force within which gives you life, seek that.  In your body lies a priceless gem, seek that.  O wandering soul, if you were to find the greatest treasure, don’t look outside.  Look inside, and seek that”  –  Rumi

What if every experience has a purpose and they are all part of the plan?  Can you see a way that every pearl that you have on your long rope of pearls, is required and necessary to who you are becoming?

Most people don’t show up in their own lives.  We are taught at a young age not to express opinions different than the norm.  We are taught that to stick out and be different will just cause us pain and difficulties.  So like the turtle, we withdraw into our shell of protection and don’t venture out.  What if, … we stopped.  What if,… we took off that shell or mask, and stood up as who we truly are?

“A strong woman may remain silent when people talk behind her back.  But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t notice.  It simply means she chooses not to waste her energy on foolishness.  She has more important things to do” – Unknown

What if,… the reason the world seems to be so crazy right now, is that we are not showing up as who we truly are?

So, how do you figure that out?  Who are you really deep down inside?

“In order to experience the truth of things, you must have a clear mind, be brutally honest with yourself, and make innocence and vulnerability continually accessible, because your perception is always changing and there will always be more to learn and understand and experience” –  Amy Larson

One of the most important discoveries I made on my journey with LemonadeMakers is that the vision I saw initially grows and expands as I do.

I think that if you could see what it is really possible for you to become, you would not believe it.  You would not even set out on the journey, because it would seem too impossible for you to become that person.

That is why you are given small visions, that keep growing and expanding.  Each time you catch up to the vision, it steps out of range, so that you have to work and grow and expand yourself again and again.

Imagine that it is possible to discover who you really are capable of becoming and being?  What your purpose is?

To rekindle your passion into a bright steady flame that lights your way.  To understand what transforming your life really means?  To let go of all of the thoughts, judgments and stories that no longer serve you.

As you listen and try to connect to who you are, you get lost.  You hear the criticisms, judgments loud and clear, but you miss the compliments in your inner dialogs

• Would you be interested in discovering what you are truly capable of?
• Would you take the path less traveled?
• Would you have enough courage to undertake a journey that you know would be filled with mistakes, disappointments, as well as being a mind blowing adventure?
• Would you be willing to admit that you are in fact a divine creation; an amazing world leader – that just hasn’t fully shown up yet?
• Would you be willing to take that first step in discovering just how much you are truly capable of being and doing?

Are you interested in talking about your challenges, to encourage  others, to find/provide inspiration to continue on your individual journey? When you share the lessons of your journey, resilience is grown for everyone.

Chances are that what you’re struggling with, others are too. What life questions you have been asking yourself, others are asking themselves too. Get clear on what you want and how to obtain it. If your you’re interested in forming a weekly or biweekly zoom call, message me on LemonadeMakers.

Are You Ready To Be A Hero For Your Own Life?

Having Courage Is One Of The Six Impossible Things

“Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second”

 – Lewis Carroll

Life seems like that sometimes. I remember years ago that we were driving north on I-5 in Oregon and we had just crested the top of a hill around Roseberg. You could see quite a way in front of you as the road sloped down into a valley. Ahead of us was a semi-tractor trailer and he ran over something that looked like shiny metal in the road. Immediately his tires blew and he started swerving and then the whole rig tipped onto its side.

For a moment it was like slow motion.  I could see so many small details as the whole scene played out like a movie. Then whoosh, time sped back up and my husband was pulling off the road and running back to make sure the driver was ok. The driver was just shocked by what had happened. But for me, it was the weirdest experience of time I have ever had. It was like the rabbit said, forever came in just one second.

“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then”  – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love.  To postpone my dream no longer.  But do at last what I came here for and waste my heart on fear no more” – John O’Donohue

Courage is being in love with the anticipation of what comes next, even when we have no idea what that might be.

We Are Stronger Than We Know

Awaken To Your Soul’s Destiny

It took me years to find the magic of self transformation.  Each transformation I go through, awakens me a little more. It is a personal and sacred journey each time.  Each time I get curious about something, I know that my soul is sending me a new message to wake up.  It’s time to make another transformation, another change, another shift in my life.

I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.

  – Joshua Graham

I now know that I no longer have to walk through the dark night of the soul, to transform my life.  I think about the experiences in my past, and what I learned going through each experience of death and rebirth.  It is the death of something that needs to be released, something that no longer serves me but rather belongs to the old sleepwalking me.  It is the rebirth of the real me.  The parts of me that I hid deep within.  It could be something about myself that I disowned as a child.  It could be the dream that I was told wasn’t possible coming back to life.  It is the realization that I am whatever I choose to become.

I realized that strong souls are forged living through the fires of hell.  That the fire itself is healing, The fires may feel like they are consuming us, but they are refining us.  They burn off the false truths that we cling to.  Like false messiahs they promised they would keep us afloat, but it was all illusion.  They were shown to be false prophets of our subconscious, seeking to keep our souls bound, unmoving in chains.  The fires consume the false beliefs, freeing our souls rise up from the ashes like the phoenix.  We rise up  with wings of faith and soar into a brightly shining divine destiny.  

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

  – Charles Bukowski

While I prefer to live the rest of my life, proactively seeking transformation, I can still honor the forges of hell for the deep truths that they provided.  I am climbing up to the top of the next mountain summit, to view the next horizon of transformation.  Within each new transformation, there is a pattern that reappears in every persons life.  This pattern weaves itself through the tapestry of our life.  In one corner we have the scene of our home and family life.  In another section of the tapestry we find our employment or career.  In another scene we see the health of our physical body, while another reflects the health of our spiritual body. 

In all these scenes there is a common thread that winds through.  For myself, for years it was the fear of being seen.  What is so interesting is that I discovered this thread came from my mother and was actually her own pattern.  When I realized that it didn’t belong to me, it was as though the thread dissolved, and could no longer be located in my life tapestry.  We all have threads in our tapestry that don’t belong to us.  They belong to friends and family.  We need to pull and release these threads back to their true owners.

Other common threads or patterns in the tapestry are my own.  My fears, which hold me back.  They are like the loose hairs that thread and wind themselves into your laundry.  The fears wind around and through the patterns of the cloth.  Have you ever taken a item of clothing out of the dryer only to find stray hairs wound into the fabric of your clothes?  It isn’t part of the material, but it somehow has wound itself into the material.  When you pull on it, it will break, but it is really hard to get all of the hair out of the material.  That is what these patterns of fear are like.  We pull at them, and break them up.  But there always seems to be a part of them still there. 

I have a need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.

  – William Lloyd Garrison

There are also “not enough” threads which are the spaces were the material creates these little pills – the thread gathers into these little knobs, which affect the look of the item.  They are formed from abrasions in day to day life.  Places where we felt judged, not appreciated, ill-used.  These “not enough” threads get created from stories we have told ourselves all of our lives.  These stories, although we would swear are true, are in fact illusions.  When we get curious and start examining why we are rubbing our life the wrong way, we are able to shift these stories.  When patterns are broken, we transform the chaos into new beliefs.  Beliefs of being strong minded; strong souled; strong bodied; and strong hearted.  An awakened soul.

The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.

  – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The reason people awaken when they do, is because they have finally stopped agreeing to things that insult their soul.   They wake up to the fact that they are no longer owned by the desires outside the body, but have awakened to their true nature.  Their heart is on fire, and they burn off the chains that have been holding them in place. 

Be true to life by being true to your purpose.  As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power.

 – Eckhart Tolle

We are in fact spiritual beings, that are awakening to our purpose in becoming human.  We turn inward to remember why we are here and what we came to do. 

Go, knock at the door of your own heart.

 –  Rumi

That is where you start looking for your answers.  Enlightenment is a destructive process because we have to let go of things, stories really, that we have told our sleeping selves were true.  With each awakening we leave behind something or someone.  It takes courage to tear down the stone walls that we built to keep ourselves asleep.  Those stones were hidden deep within us, like unseen anchors they held us in place.  With enlightenment, we begin cutting through the iron chains with a sacred energy that comes through our divine connection.  Heating up the links until they snap apart, setting us free.

It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self discovery, rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.

  – Marianne Williamson

By realizing who we are at our deepest level, we find our personal genius.  That unique gift that the divine gave us, is like the fingerprint of our soul.  No one else has the same personal genius that we have.  Each personal genius is required to fulfill their life purpose and ignite their passions into action.  We are all like individual puzzle pieces sent to the earth to fulfill a divine purpose.  That we why some of us feel the force of Rumi’s words, “do not go back to sleep.”  Because the world is waiting on each of us to fulfill our divine purpose.

This Universe is not outside of you.  Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.

 –  Rumi

Transformation, is a process.  If we fail to involve all of the steps in the process, what we end up with is temporary change.  We change for a few weeks, or maybe a few months, but eventually the rubber band of will power will snap and we will return to the previous habits and lifestyle.  Change is temporary.  Transformation is required to truly shift our life, our DNA, into a totally new being.  With each one of us that awakens, our gifts bring us one step closer to universal peace and harmony.

Behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.

  – Paulo Coelho

So be curious, and take that first step down the path to awaken.  Then be curious and take the next step to enlightenment.  Then be curious and take the next step to transformation. Then be curious and take the next step to the next horizon.  Then be curious and awaken just a little more.  Get curious and become even more enlightened and transformed again and again.

The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.

  – Joy J Golliver

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Can Life Be A Daring Adventure?

I have had on my desk for several years a large rock on which is inscribed, “It is not the destination, It is the journey”.  We think that accomplishing our big dreams or goals in life is the point.  But really that isn’t true.  There will always be a new destination, dream or goal.  It is who you become on the way to the destination. Every daring adventure is really all about the transformation.

Our brains will try to convince us not to go on the daring adventures.  It will insist that we have limitations.  It will try to close us off from transforming our life.  It tries to convince us that transformation will affect our very survival, that we can’t exceed the boundaries that it deems by logic to be safe and secure for us.

Getting our brain and heart to effectively communicate is a difficult process for most of us.  Take the analogy of the  shoreline here in the photo.  The sand is the logic of the brain.  The waves the emotions of the heart.  There is a point when the waves come up against the sand and they blend together.  That is the space that we are looking for, in having this internal conversation between the logical brain and the emotional heart..  That moment of overlap in which the different perspectives can be viewed.  A unity of understanding can be achieved in that moment of overlap, when the two meet energetically – the influence of chaos from the emotions with the logical rigid mind, which is demanding that we stick to the known rules and do not go exploring.

This is one of the things that we will be exploring in our upcoming seminar on “Living A Transformational Life”.  There is a wide difference of meaning between change and transformation.  When we change our lives, the majority of times it just doesn’t last.  We go on a diet, lose the 20 lbs and then less than a year later, the 20 lbs has crept back on.  Change is primarily achieved with willpower.  The problem with will power is that it is short lived.  At some point the rubber band that we have stretched out snaps back or breaks.  Then we are back to square one in the changes we had made. 

Transformation on the other hand, alters us to the point that we no longer have the option to return back to what we were before.  Once the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis it can’t return to the caterpillar’s body, no matter how much it might want to.  The transformation process has altered the DNA and physical form.  There is no way to return to that old body.

Some of the concepts that we will be exploring with the webinar are the acronym of FACES, being:  Flexible, Adaptable, Coherent (resilient), Energized and Stable.  It is about creating opportunities in the sea of potential, and seeing the potentialities on the plains of possibility.  About movement, about flow, and the charge of being truly alive.  It is about collaboration through creating harmonies out of differences.  Like the waves upon the sand, we will come together honoring the differences in our lives.  We will be linking the brain and heart together to create something new and different for each of us.

Is your life a daring adventure?  Come to our webinar and learn how to disolve the boundaries that have imprisioned you off from your heart and souls desires.  Listen to the words of William Ward:

“The adventure of life is to learn. 

The goal of life is to grow. 

The nature of life is to change. 

The challenge of life is to overcome. 

The essence of life is to care. 

The secret of life is to dare. 

The beauty of life is to give. 

The joy of life is to love.” 

 Ask yourself some great questions:  Where are you now?  How do you feel about it?  Where do you want to go?  How would you like to get there?  In what manner are you now traveling there?  What steps can I take?

Events

Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere – MLK Jr.

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed.  If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth”  – William Faulkner

Kym Worthy is a true Lemonademaker.  She inspires me because she truly makes a difference.  She changed not just her local county that she worked in, she really changed cities around the entire United States.  She was like water.  She went around obstacles, she broke up boulders in her way, she flooded the media, she stormed through anyone and anything standing in her way and got justice for rape victims who had been waiting for it for as long as 30 years.  She is my hero.

“There be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protect”  – Elie Wiesel

Her story starts back in 2009 when she was an assistant DA with Wayne County in Michigan.  In the summer of 2009, Rob Spada who worked in her office was taking a tour with local police through an evidence warehouse.  Passing by rows upon rows of white cardboard boxes he asked what they were.  He was told they were rape kits.  When he pulled down four random boxes he discovered that they were all unprocessed rape kits – 11,341 kits, some more than 30 years old (statute of limitations is 20 years).

In the past half-dozen years, backlogs of untested rape kits have been discovered in Memphis, 12,000; Cleveland, nearly 4,000; Tulsa, 3,783; Milwaukee, 2,655; Dallas, 4,144; San Diego, 2,873; Miami, 2,900; Honolulu, 1,500. Smaller cities are not immune, either. Kansas City, Missouri, had 1,324 backlogged kits; Tempe, Arizona, more than 500; Flint, Michigan, 246.

“When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty” – Unknown

Rob Spada contacted Kym Worthy in his office and told her what he had found.  She first wrote to then Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans requesting a meeting to discuss how to proceed.  When she didn’t get a response, she wrote Chief Evans again, adding, “It is imperative that your Department move on this as soon as possible.” Again, nothing.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”  – Desmond Tutu

Not one to stop at no answer, the story was leaked to the newpaper resulting in “Rape Evidence Shelved?” as the front page of the Detroit Free Press on September 22, 2009.  Worthy put together a plan for her office to take the lead on testing the kits, but then Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, who controlled her budget, shot it down. The county simply couldn’t afford it, he said, and it was really a problem for city hall and the police, not the county.

Kym is not a woman who takes no for an answer.  What she did next was to spearhead a national movement for reform.  In May 2010, at the invitation of U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), she testified about the backlog before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.  Later that year, the research arm of the Department of Justice gave Worthy and her partner agencies a grant to test 400 random kits, to provide a statistically significant snapshot of what was at stake, and then in April 2011, the agency followed up with a $1.5 million grant to address the backlog.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”  – Unknown

To test all of them, Worthy estimated she’d need about $17 million (the lab work ran $1,000 to $1,500 per kit). On top of that, she intended to investigate every single case, even those that didn’t end up having meaningful forensic evidence. But she had only three sex-crime investigators on her staff, the police department had as few as six.

“One person can stop a great injustice.  One person can be a voice for truth.  One person’s kindness can save a life” – Nicky Gumbel

The nonprofit Detroit Crime Commission—which, on behalf of Worthy’s office, had negotiated the cost of testing down to $490 per kit—joined with the Michigan Women’s Foundation to launch what organizers believe was the first-ever crowdfunded campaign for a government program, called Enough SAID (Sexual Assault in Detroit).

“An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation”  – Mary McCarthy

They received donations from everyone and everywhere.  A local canasta club started donating the pot from its weekly game; the Galentine’s Book Club kicked in $525. In October 2015, a coalition of African American businesswomen held a fundraiser that leveraged the rivalry between the University of Michigan and Michigan State football teams to net more than $30,000. Sheryl Sandberg donated an unsolicited $25,000 to the cause. To date, Enough SAID has raised $1.5 million in private contributions.  by the beginning of 2016, $8 million had been allocated to Enough SAID by public bodies ranging from the state attorney general’s office to the Michigan legislature.

Worthy didn’t just rustle up money; she also transformed the “entire culture of law enforcement,” as her deputy Spada puts it. In his 20-plus years at the prosecutor’s office, he says, “I’ve seen a change in how police approach sexual assault victims. That’s been brought about by Kym, in how she attacked the problem and let it be known publicly that society had certain kinds of assumptions about what a victim would act like or be like.”

“If you look at any other group of people suffering injustice, women are always in the worst situation within that group”  – Salma Hayek

Worthy also has spearheaded the push for concrete legal and procedural reforms. Michigan law, enacted in 2014, requires that rape kits move through each level of law enforcement according to a mandated timeline—three months from start to finish—and both police and healthcare professionals must notify victims about their right to obtain information about their own kits.

“The time is always right to do what is right”  –  Martin Luther King Jr.

I believe that Kurt Cobain stated the problem of rape many years ago.  Kurt Cobain said, “Rape is one of the most terrible crimes on earth and it happens every few minutes.  The problem with groups who deal with rape is that they try to educate women about how to defend themselves.  What really needs to be done is teaching men not to rape.  Go to the source and start there.“

See the full article which includes ones rape victims story of getting justice 15 years later.  This story was first published by Elle and I found it with an article in NationSwell.

Do you see in your own life where injustices were tolerated by yourself and others?  Be inspired for follow in Kym’s footsteps.  She got creative.  She raised awareness.  She didn’t let the matter go away.  Even though her journey took years to complete, she stayed true to her vision and her conscience.

We all Matter

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another – Simone de Beauvoir

When I was a little girl and I was behaving badly, my mom would always say it was because my hair was in my eyes, and I needed to get my bangs cut.  I never did figure out if there really was a correlation between hair in your eyes and bad behavior.  But if there is, then there are a lot of people in the world that need to get their bangs cut.

It seems like the news agencies and our government have gotten into a rut.  A pattern of bad behavior where they are just waiting to maliciously pounce on one another.  They have forgotten their purpose.  They got sidetracked and can’t seem to find their way back to their purpose.

Sometimes the same thing happens to us.  We get sidetracked off on some piece of drama.  As it plays out, we get sucked further and further down that particular rabbit hole.  It’s like when you go into the kitchen to get a drink of water.  Then you notice stuff on the counter that someone got out and didn’t put away.  So, you put it away.  Then you notice dishes in the sink.  So, mumbling about how you have to do it all, you take care of that.  Then you are tired and go back into the living room to sit on the sofa, completely forgetting that you got up to get a glass of water.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them – regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or economic circumstances – Christopher Dodd

The world right now if you pay attention to the news seems pretty scary.  It would seem that it is filled with violence, and racial and gender hatred.  For some reason, the news and our political leaders around the world seem to be focused on the small minorities of events that are truly negative.  Nothing is said about the positive things that are going on around us.

In Washington hundreds maybe even thousands of employees are doing a great job, but you don’t hear about their progress, you hear about the negative fighting that is going on within the political parties and even amongst their own parties.

In your local town, the news for 45 minutes will be about every negative thing going on around the world, and then they spend a less than 5 minute segment on someone in the local area that is giving back and helping those in need.  We need to reverse this trend.  Spend more time on the great people all around us that are doing great work helping others.  Celebrate milestones in people’s lives.

It has to begin with peaceful collaborative action.  We as in all of humanity, all matter and we are all equal.  We may have different colors of skin; have different religious beliefs; have different cultures and social and economic backgrounds, but we are still all the same.

We all need to be seen and heard as being a part of our families and communities.  We need to turn towards each other in brotherly love and trust.  We are all one people, and we need to start standing together.

We need to cultivate it like a garden – the gardening science of human relationships.  We need to weed out what is wrong, support what is weak, and prune off anything that isn’t supporting the growth of peace.

We’re All human, aren’t we?  Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving – J.K. Rowling

Each of us has a powerful voice that needs to be heard.  You have the right to speak up when wrongdoing is being done or condoned.  It is the basis of how this country was founded.

Instead of listening to those who seek to tear down your country out of fear, you need to show the world just how powerful a group of people can be when they come from their hearts with peace and love to each other.

We need to transform that fear into love and forgiveness.  The world will be changed by our positive examples of reaching out to each other in love.

You have thoughts and ideas of what can be done to improve our broken system.  You need to listen with both ears to what others are saying.  You need to be slow to speak from the standpoint of making sure that your words are contributing to the discussion, and not tearing it apart.  You need to be part of the solution.  We all want a world without war, conflict or suffering

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible – Maya Angelou

When you see police shootings of unarmed men or women in their pajamas who were just trying to report a possible crime, it is obvious that changes must be made.  Not only laws or procedures, but hearts and minds need to be changed.

If you start with your own heart and mind, seeking to rip out the prejudices and judgements that you have yourself, then we will have made a good start to what needs to be done by every person in our world.

Walls turned sideways are bridges – Angela Davis

The Best Is Yet To Come, In New Beginnings

“Always believe something wonderful is about to happen . . . ” – Unknown

“When the world says give up, hope whispers try one more time”  – Unknown

“A woman’s strength isn’t just about how much she can handle before she breaks.  It’s also about how much she must handle after she’s broken”  – Unknown

• Your first step, was because you wanted to get something or somewhere. 
• Your first word was because you wanted to communicate. 
• Your first day of school opened up a whole new world for you. 
• Going from grade school to junior high school to high school to college, each step opened a new door.  It also closed a door behind you. 
• Your first relationship, your saying “I do” and I will love you forever. 
• Seeing your newborn child for the first time, that beautiful baby that had been making its presence known for months being in your arms for the first time. 

Each first time, held a new promise, a hope of a dream coming true.  Each first was what you chose to make of it, to trust in the magic of a new beginning.

“A wise girl knows her limits.  A smart girl knows she has none”  – @getlanded

Make Your Life Extraordinary

“Refuse to be an extraordinary person trapped in an ordinary life” – Zaro Dean

A little step can be the first step in the beginning of a great journey. Live a life that is a story worth telling.  I heard one of those kinds of stories recently.  The storyteller had me laughing so hard throughout his story.  It was the story of how one day when he was having a bath, he wondered if anyone had ever rowed a bathtub across the English Channel.  Now you might think that this kind of dream is very silly, I know I did.  But as he told it I was simply amazed.

They say that in an average lifetime we spend six years dreaming.  How many of those dreams have you brought into reality?  How many have you made even a small effort to bring into reality?  Tim Fitzhigham and his story is remarkable, because he made a really crazy dream come into reality.  Just think what you could accomplish if you put in half of the effort that he did?

It helps that as part of his career he is a comedian.  So, he didn’t take himself too seriously.  Now as you may or may not know, a man by the name of Thomas Crapper was an inventor of the toilet.  Hence the reason why his last name is very famous.  Tim first went searching for someone to donate an appropriate bathtub to row across the channel and the company Thomas Crapper and Co Ltd donated a copper Victorian style bathtub to which he attached a kind of pedestal.

Next he had to learn to row a boat.  Then he had to request permission to sail across the channel from both Britain and France.  The British thought it was a fine idea, the French not so much. They actually made an amendment to their law to prohibit sailing bathtubs across the channel.  Tim was successful in getting the British Navy to make his bathtub a registered boat, so that he was now in compliance with French law.

Now what is really amazing is that in getting all of this accomplished Tim talked to British Rear Admirals and even the Queen of England to make sure that he could in fact sail his bathtub across.  He tells his story on the British equivalent of a TED talk and it is really, really funny.

The French tried to remove him from his boat partway across the channel and to blow it up.  He told them that since his bathtub was a registered boat, and he was the captain of said boat, that doing so without his permission would constitute an act of war.  Since it was true, they had to leave him with his boat.

He didn’t make it due to an injury on his first try, but he did make it upon the second try.  He raised 20,000 pounds for a charity, and you can hear him tell his story on The Moth Radio Hour on NPR entitled, “All At Sea”.

What I loved about his story is that he is making his life extraordinary.  He received a Royal Navy Commission, he met the Queen, he has written a book about his journey and received international stardom.  All because he came up with a crazy idea and then made it happen.

Probably over 95% of you would never have set out to do something so crazy.  You would have never believed that any government official would give you the permission.  You wouldn’t have reached out to the Navy or the Queen of England.  You would have thought, “they will think I am crazy” and not even picked up the phone.  They probably did think he was crazy, but the thing is, they supported him anyway.

How many really good ideas have you thought of that you could do, but you let yourself be talked out of it.  You told yourself who am I to do this thing?  You listened to close friends and relatives that asked you “what are you thinking? Are you crazy?”  And so, you let the dream die before it even had a chance to breathe.

Those of you who do reach out to try the crazy idea, usually do so because of a personal crisis in your life. It may be like me that someone close to you was murdered.  Or it could be like Candy Lightner, the founder of MADD that your child or husband was killed by a drunk driver.  Or it could be like the Susan Komen Foundation that you lost your daughter or wife to breast cancer and set out to find a cure, so that no one else loses a loved one to that dreaded disease.

It could be that because of an accident you were told you would never walk again and be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.  But you decided that would not be your fate and through hard work and determination you found your way to leave the wheelchair behind.  It could be that now you are working to help others regain their mobility, whether it is physical, mental or emotional trauma that must be overcome.

Most of you are not quite as crazy as Tim, but you still have the crazy idea that you can make a difference in the world, by transforming your pain into something positive.

I really loved Robin Williams as the professor in Dead Poets Society.  I loved the quote that the purpose of education is supposed to help our youth learn to think for themselves, not just recite rote answers.  That they should seize the day and make their lives extraordinary.

We need more extraordinary people in our world, because those are the kinds of people that make things happen.  They seize the dream out of their hearts, and they keep trying.  They realize that even the mistakes they will make along the way can be something wonderful.

So go out today and find your bathtub moment. The crazy idea that you can bring into reality. Like Tim you might find that your crazy idea can be done, and along the way you might just meet the Queen of England and get a Royal Navy Commission. Who knows what just might be possible?

Dreams are the Children of your Soul

Every day we have a choice.  We can live in fear or move forward in faith.

  –  Billy Cox

What does it take to realize the visions and dreams our of soul?  It takes faith as Billy said, but it also takes making that faith become real with a solid belief.  That belief then needs to move us forward.  It takes action to start implementing steps that move us forward with the faith, that we can make it a reality.  As we take action, we develop practices and habits to change from where we started.  These actions propel us forward to where we want to go. 

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.  Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

  – Pamela Vaull Starr

Dreams create transformation in our life.  As we bring our dreams into reality, it requires change.  Some changes come about from letting go of what no longer serves us.  Some changes come about by stripping away who we thought we were, to become who we really are.  As the saying goes, “How does one become a butterfly?  You have to want to fly so much, that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

Dreams are . . .  illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.

  – Unknown

Since the road of life is not a long flat road, but has hills and valleys, it also will take perseverance. This is because we will run across obstacles on our road.  Some things we can take a detour around; some things we will have to break out the tools to build a bridge over; and some things will require that we climb up and down the mountain.  So to perseverance of not giving up, we also need to add in patience and time, because at least for me everything takes longer than I think it will.

Your dream doesn’t have an expiration date.  Take a deep breath, try again.

  – Unknown

All of these things are required, because at every turn and obstacle fear is going to try to tell us to stop.  That this is not working.  That this dream is too big, too much for us to accomplish.  That look how far we have come – we can rest now and this will be good enough.  Fear will try everything it has to get us to just be happy right where we are. 

Carl Jung adds another piece to the picture that we are painting about dreams. 

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

  – Carl Jung 

Daydreams are outside dreams.  What they call “pipe dreams”, because they are so untethered.  Pipe dreams mesmerize us, as they float by.  They keep us asleep. 

Dreams are answers to questions we haven’t figured out how to ask.

  – Unknown

The dreams of your soul are a totally different kind of dream.  They are the DNA of your soul, the blueprint of what you have been divinely gifted with to achieve in this lifetime.  But in order for us to birth these dreams, and raise them up into the reality of this world, we have to wake up.  We have to become aware.  That is when our life starts to have true meaning.  When we awake to our life’s true purpose.  God speaks to us in dreams.  Dreams of the whispers of the soul.

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul.

  – Carl Jung

That is what made Martin Luther King Jr. speech about “I have a dream” so powerful.  The moment he put down his notes and spoke from his heart, the dream he had been given by the divine came through with such crystal clear clarity that it grabbed the soul of the world.  It was a powerful dream and even though he has passed on from this world, every year we remember this dream.  And even though he is not here to bring it into the full reality of what it can and will be, it is still progressing.  This dream has perseverance.  It keeps on going and it will keep going until it comes into full reality. 

Trust in dreams for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

  – Kahlil Gibran

We all have a dream inside of us that is just as powerful and just as necessary to this world.  Please, please don’t let the dream die with you.  Bring it out of your heart.  Add the faith, the belief to know that you can change into who you need to be in order to make it a reality.  Know that it will take perseverance, that it will take patience and time, but you can become the person that you need to be to make it happen.

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.  Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

  – Mother Teresa

I look at my own journey with LemonadeMakers and I can tell you that this dream has changed my life.  That it is constantly challenging me to make more changes to become the person who can not only hold this vision and dream, but to become the person who can shout it from the mountain tops and be heard around the world.  If we all join hands, and collaborate together to change ourselves, we will change the world. 

So many dreams at first seem impossible.  And then they seem improbable.  And then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

  – Christopher Reeves

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We Don’t Have To Agree, In Order To Be Kind To One Another

“We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t” – Frank A. Clark 

It is interesting how as a human you tend to want everyone to think just like you do.  In my family, we like to have “conversations”.  When my grandmother was alive it was so interesting to listen to all of the adults after dinner.  She would usually introduce a topic that she knew some of my aunts or uncles wouldn’t agree on.

Then she would come at that topic in several different directions.  She was a researcher, and in her past had taught school in a country school with all the grades together.  She was really smart and if you were going to come at another viewpoint than hers, you had better know your stuff.

I grew up with it being normal to have conversations with others about conflicting viewpoints.  There never were any fights or loud voices.  No one was ever judged as wrong, just different.

So, raising my kids, we would also talk about things that we don’t agree with each other on.  My youngest son and I are on opposite sides of the political spectrum.  We all give each other a hard time, but it is with a joke encapsulating it.

No name calling or escalating into arguments.  Because whatever your viewpoint is about something, if you have an open mind, you can find some good points in almost any viewpoint that you can agree on.

He is pro guns and very conservative.   I am the “hippy” who still believes that someday we will really be a global civilization and get along.

What is so interesting is that we both have examples of the others’ beliefs that we can poke fun at, and we have lots of stuff that we are totally on the same page about.  The reason it works for us, is that we realize that as we grow and shift and transform, sometimes those viewpoints that we have held to for years, also change.  What you felt strongly about at 5 yrs. old; at 15 yrs. old; at 25 yrs. old; at 50 yrs. old will not be the same things.

Be a freethinker

“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs.  This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.  Where is it absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless” – Leo Tolstoy

You don’t have to compromise your convictions to be kind to one another.  You don’t need to buy into being in fear of others, just because they are different. 

People are not meant to be matching bookends to you.  It really doesn’t matter what your political viewpoint is; what your skin color is; what your culture is; what sexual orientation that you identify with.  It doesn’t matter what your religion is. 

Imagine if you were to sit down and fill out a survey about any of the important things in life. Things like being able to feed your family; having a safe place for them to live; having adequate medical care; equality – both for racial relations and work wages.  

I think that the survey would reflect you could agree on all of those things universally viewed as being important.  You might differ in how you think it should happen, but those small differences should never escalate into hatred and violence.

Spread #love, not hate. Spread #peace.

Have you ever become best friends with someone that you didn’t agree with?  It is possible to love someone that you totally disagree with about certain issues.  My husband and I have been married for almost 49 years. Our politics are on the opposite side of the spectrums, and our religious views are not the same.  But in comparison to how much we had in common, those things don’t interfere with our loving each other.

Even though we are in different political parties, I can acknowledge the good in his viewpoints.  We agree that we can have our own religious views and still love one another.

I think it is part of what has made us successful in our marriage.  We are best friends even though we don’t have the same beliefs about every single subject.

The more we can see the humanity in one another, the harder it is to hate someone.  No one should ever be judged wrong, just because someone else doesn’t agree with every word they say.

You don’t know what is going on in someone else’s life.  Something as simple as a smile has turned a stranger who was walking down the street away from suicide.  

If you could just be kind to everyone you meet, that simple act of kindness could save a life.  Be a heart that listens, and throw kindness around like confetti!  Be aware of opportunities around you to be kind. 

I love the video called Life Vests Inside – Kindness Boomerang’s – One Day.  You can watch it on “YouTube”.  https://youtu.be/nwAYpLVyeFU

It starts off with a young boy falling off his skate board.  A man with a orange vest like a road worker helps him up.  Then the boy sees an elderly lady crossing the street and having trouble holding on to her bags of groceries, so he puts down his skate board to help her.  Then the elderly lady sees a young woman trying to find coins for a parking meter and hands her some coins, and it continues on to end back up with the road worker being given a cold glass of water.  What I loved about it is that they included young and elderly; men and women; white, black, brown races; rich business man and homeless man.  Everyone had a chance to both give and receive kindness. 

The growth comes from really understanding that there can be different perspectives.  From understanding how what has happened in another person’s background could create a different belief system.

We have this idea that someone has to be wrong and someone has to be right.  You should never judge another’s choices unless you have a thorough understanding of their reasons for making those choices.

This thinking would mean that in almost all cases, there is room in your world for more than one belief.  Obviously we are not talking about harmful conduct.

“The best ideas emerge when very different perspectives meet”  – Frank Johannsson

The analogy of the map and directions fits here.  If you are going to San Fernando Valley from Ventura, CA, you might take the 101 to the valley or you might take the 101 to the 23, which becomes the 118.

Which way you go, would depend on where in the valley you were going and what traffic was like.  The 101 tends to be tied up with traffic more often and the 23/118 would probably be faster, again depending on where in the valley you were driving to.

I could argue for one and you could argue for the other.  I could have experienced a faster time one day, and you could have experienced a faster time the other way on a different day.  Depending on the circumstances the wrong or right answer would change.

Most things in life are that way – it all depends on the circumstances and the perspective you are currently viewing life through.

Regardless of which view you had, you could still be kind.  You could still show respect.  You could still hold yourself to a higher standard of grace and elegance when having a discussion.  You could still try to achieve the same goal, getting to San Fernando Valley.

So be kind.  Be compassionate.  Be respectful.  Express your beliefs with grace and tolerance.  Spread #love, spread #peace.