These hair stylists know that a haircut is a powerful thing
These hair stylists know that a haircut is a powerful thing. It inspires confidence in men and women alike. On Saturday, they volunteered their time and talents at the Ogden Rescue Mission to give haircuts to homeless members of the Ogden community. Along with support and donations from many other local businesses and friends, the results of that afternoon were incredible.
Watch the Video Here: Haircuts for the Homeless
Sliding Doors
Sliding Doors is a movie that came out years ago with Gwyneth Paltrow, in which they alternate between two different realities based on her making it through the sliding door of the subway home. If she catches the train, she also catches her husband with another woman in her own bed. If she misses the train he is alone when she arrives and stays married to him.
In each parallel universe she becomes a different person. How many split second decisions based on timing of the moment can you think of – those cases where if only I was one minute later or earlier that would not have happened?
About three weeks ago I was on jury duty. Driving home on the second day, another car making a turn came into my lane and dented up my car. I finally got it out of the shop this week, (delayed due to waiting until after jury duty was over) and his insurance is not covering my deductible because I have no witnesses. So as I am a work in progress just like everyone else, I am working through my personal feelings of “it’s not fair” and why do I now have to go through presenting my case to the state insurance board, etc……, because I am refusing to just roll over and take the $720+ hit to my finances.
So anyway, when this guy hit me, I immediately went into how if I hadn’t been on jury duty, I would not have been in the intersection making this turn at that time, and he would have either not had an accident because no one was in the lane, or he would have hit someone else, but not me. For me, jury duty was a sliding door. Not as big an impact as Gwyneth had in the movie, but a sliding door nonetheless.
What is interesting about the movie is the ending. They take her back to one version, in which she didn’t catch her husband. In this version she is leaving the scene in which she now discovers his affair. The final scene is with Gwyneth in the elevator with the man she had a relationship with in the other version, tying up the ending to mean that no matter whether she made the subway or not, she was destined to be with this man.
So how much of destiny really occurs in our lives? Did my having a very minor accident with this man, which delayed me getting home about an hour change my destiny? Did the minor accident keep me from having a major accident further down the road? Was there a purpose to the accident, a meaning that I will get as I take my case to the state insurance board?
This is one of my back shelf beliefs. Things that I learn about and am curious about but not yet sure it constitutes a belief or not. What is destiny really? How much does destiny or fate really play into our lives? How much does our desire to tie everything up into neat little bows, make us put fate or destiny as the causation of what happens to us? If destiny is true where does that put free will? Does that eliminate choice and make it simply an illusion?
Then there is the concept of Karma. Is Karma a destiny that you have consequences for your actions that play out throughout your life?
I don’t have all of the answers. I think that all of them are right in some aspect though. I do believe in a core destiny, that we come to bring something to this world, or experience in this lifetime. I believe that we have free will and choices at every step of the way as we live our life, to encompass that destiny or run away from it. I do believe in some sort of concept of karma, that our choices all have consequences, both intended and unintended. But each moment of our life, we have a new opportunity to make new choices and we can always turn our ship around if it is off course.
The woman in the photo made the choice to climb up the cliff. Each moment she is making a new choice for a hand or foot hold to take her up to the next level. I think that we are all like this woman, choosing each moment to take ourselves to the next level. I would have chosen the rocky path up to the top, rather than the climbing up to the cliff. Each path is a different choice but the same destination. Is one wrong or right, or does it matter? What do you think?
Teachers Are Amazing People
Teachers are amazing people. This article reflected 11 different teachers and what they do above and beyond. One of them is a teacher that we featured last month, Chris who spent 10 minutes each building the children’s self esteem.
The photo is of a row of lockers that the teachers painted over the summer with names of new and old classics book spines. They wanted the kids to have something special to come back to.
Elizabeth Miranda of the Philippines might just take the cake for being the most dedicated teacher ever. Each and every school day, she walks two hours through jungle and crosses five rivers just to reach the students in Sitio Barogonte, an extremely remote village.
And you thought your commute was bad. She’s the only one close enough to be their teacher, so she had to find a way to make it work. And she has.
Click on the link to see more great stories of teachers who are real hero’s.
Hope is perching in our souls and singing to us everyday
I love the Emily Dickinson poem in which she says, “hope is the thing with feathers – that perches in the soul – and sings the tune without the words – and never stops – at all”.
Hope is perching in our souls and singing to us everyday. It tells us these wonderful stories of what we can accomplish in our lives. Visualization is critical to this hope, as it helps to bring in everything we want in our lives.
I think that is why I love to read from real books, and not on a computer screen. I order the fictional books on my kindle now, but for those books that I know that I want to underline and really think about – those books have to be paper.
In the movie “The Secret” and the book that followed it, they talked about visualization. Many people will tell you that they have a hard time with it, but if you tell your mind not to picture “your kitchen”, 99% of us immediately see our kitchen in our minds eye. It is a little harder to build a visualization of something that you have never seen, but block by block, with practice it can be done.
When I learned how to do it, I started with visualizing an orange. First I would see a circle, then I added color (orange), then texture (the dimples, feeling the smooth bumps), then I would see it squirting juice down the side of the orange, feeling the spray on my face. When I reached that point of seeing the juice, I could actually taste orange juice in my mouth as I watched the juice run down the side of the orange. I just practiced every day for several weeks, until one day I didn’t need to do it step by step, it just instantly popped into my head. Then I moved on to other things. They seem real, because I put all of my senses into the visualization.
This really helped me to connect deeper to my imagination. When I read books, I now see the story in my mind. The sun shining on the ocean as it flashes bright lights along the cresting waves, hear the waves crashing on the shoreline, feel the wind blowing and digging my toes down into the cool part of the sand, smelling the salt air, – I can totally enter the world being created by the author. When I am in this space, I see connections and possibilities that I have never thought of before.
This is how I learn from everything that I read, because I enter into worlds I have no experience of. I love it when a really good movie brings you totally into the world they have created. You forget you are even watching a movie.
I am sure that you heard the joke of the man who was on his rooftop, the water in flood stage cresting higher and higher towards him. He prays for help and God sends him some people with a canoe and he says “no thanks, God is sending me help”. He prays for help and God sends him some people with a motor boat and he says “no thanks, God is sending me help”. Then a helicopter comes and he says, “no thanks, God is sending me help”. Then the flood waters come higher and he drowns. Upon entering heaven he asks God, “why didn’t you save me?” God says, I sent a canoe, a motor boat and a helicopter, but you wouldn’t get in.
This kind of visualization is how we can attract into our lives, the things we need, to bring to us the goals and dreams we want. We have to remember that part of the journey, is the lessons we learn and how we grow and change, as we go towards our destination. By visualizing into the space the gratitude of already having it, by using all of the senses, we make it so real, that the divine is busy seeing what doors of opportunity it can open for us. What kinds of synchronicity it can bring into our lives. But we have to get into the boat.
The most important thing for us is to be looking for the doors and opportunities as they pass by us and grab them. Go through them, no matter how scared we are. Take the leap of faith that this is your answer, and climb up the ladder being presented and get into the helicopter.
Aunt Bertha Software Program
It can be so confusing and frustrating when you are seeking for programs and/or services to help with the healthcare of a loved one. If you have tried everything and have lost your housing, where do you turn to? What agencies can help? What nonprofits are there to help you in your town? If you don’t know what is out there, how can you get the help you need? Enter the software program “Aunt Bertha.”
Founded in 2010 in Austin, Texas, the startup Aunt Bertha is an online database of human services, connecting governments, charities and churches with the 75 million Americans in all 50 states who need their services, says founder Erine Gray. Thus far, his company has helped more than 177,000 people.
When you look at the 1.4 million nonprofits in the U.S., how do you know which ones are good and which ones are not?” asks Gray. “Most people are not professional social workers. For somebody in need, it’s very difficult to find out what’s available to you.”
“What we wanted was a simple way for a seeker — the term we use for a person in need or their relative or champion — to essentially raise their hand and let an agency know electronically they need help,” Gray, a GLG fellow, explains. “Part of the vision is being able to find and apply for services in seconds.”
Eventually, as more users enroll in programs, Aunt Bertha will be able to track whether the charity met the person’s needs. As soon as a seeker submits an application for rental assistance or hearing aids, say, through the online portal, the service will clock the nonprofit’s response time and follow up with a satisfaction survey, creating a granular picture that’s more detailed than what can be found on GuideStar or Charity Navigator. The assessment will direct users to sign up for more effective programs.
“We can tell you what people are searching for, what they’re finding and also what they’re not,” says Gray. For instance, if the number of searches for soup kitchens in Lubbock, Texas, suddenly spikes, it could encourage city lawmakers to look at large-scale solutions.
“If we’re successful, the entire nation will be able to visualize, in real time, where the pain is in the United States and see the suffering in the underbelly that doesn’t really show. Policymakers and data scientists will be able to see hotspots far earlier than any set of economic forecasts,” Gray says. “To be able to unlock that data and get it in the right hands, would be an amazing experience. We’d be able, in real time, to alleviate that suffering.”
Read more: http://nationswell.com/aunt-bertha-easy-access-social-services/#ixzz3sx5hCHLA
Diana Nammi
Diana Nammi has been battling for women’s rights since she was a teenager growing up in Iran. In the link you can find a video interview that BBC did and her last sentence is so powerful, “the world should not stay silent about these things.”
A former Peshmerga fighter who came to the UK in 1996, she has been instrumental in the campaign to bring honor killers to justice in British courts as well as striving to get forced marriages banned in this country.
Her achievements were recognized when she received one of the six recipients of the Barclays Women of the Year Awards in London in 2014. She has earned this for her work at the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO), which she founded in her home in 2002 to provide advice and counselling for women from Middle Eastern, North African and Afghan communities.
In the past, the only recognition that she and her staff have had is abuse, threats and even physical attack. She says. “Many people tried to prevent us talking about this and said, ‘You are disclosing private matters to the world’, but it is honor killings that bring dishonor. Killing women should not be tolerated.”
She is turning her attention to “marital captivity” – women trapped in desperately unhappy, often violent, religious marriages who are unable to divorce. She is also launching a campaign for all school staff to be trained to spot signs of honour-based violence, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. And Nammi wants pupils to be taught that they have the right not to face honour-based violence.
“What we need next is to raise awareness within the community and to educate people about this law and about why the practice is wrong.” Children as young as nine are being forced into marriage, she says. In some cases, “they are still attending schools, struggling to do homework, and at the same time they are being raped by a middle-aged man regularly, and being abused by their families”.
“We need to tell children from a young age what human rights are,” she insists. “At the moment, it is the opposite, with many people telling young girls, ‘It’s your duty to be a good mother and good wife and housewife’, but they are not telling them their rights. We need to empower them.”
She Who Leaves a Trail of Glitter
She who leaves a trail of glitter is never forgotten. Do you believe this about yourself and your life? Or do you think it only about someone else, someone more beautiful, more intelligent, richer than you? Too many of us don’t even feel worthy to have the glitter, yet alone leave a trail of it for others to follow.
So many of us come out of childhood thinking that we are not enough. Not enough to have our parents love us the way they should have. Not smart enough. Not talented enough (insert – don’t sing, don’t dance, don’t draw). Not pretty enough. The list is endless about how we are not enough, to be loved, accepted, to have our dreams become a reality.
It has been said that the biggest disease affecting humanity is “I am not enough”. It is the driver of every act of self sabotage. I am not enough, so whenever things start happening that put this belief in danger, we will self sabotage ourselves back into reaffirming this belief.
Marissa Peer is a bestseller author, celebrity hypnotist and speaker. A lot of her focus is on helping people overcome this limiting belief to help them stop sabotaging their lives. One of the things that she recommends is putting on your phone a timed text message stating “I am enough” and having it text you each morning and evening. Write on the mirrors in your home, especially in your bathroom and carry around a piece of paper to remind you “YOU ARE ENOUGH – you are so enough it is UNBELIEVABLE how enough you are.”
So think about your language and how often do you say things like
– I am so stupid
– I always forget important things
– I am ___________ – whatever derogatory label you say about yourself (fat, lazy, ugly, etc…)
Is there somewhere about yourself that you don’t think you are enough?
When you get praise, how often do you reject praise, and you add in a piece of criticism? “That is a beautiful outfit you have on today”, and you say – this old thing, it makes be look fat.
Even scarier, do your sons and daughters say these things about themselves? When they are 1, 2 or 3 years old we celebrated that they took their first step, their first word, the first time they went potty in the potty chair. But there comes a time when they start school and they start being compared to others. Now they are experiencing the “not enough” and they start believing it.
Turn it around for yourself, for your children. Learn to accept praise without feeling unworthy. Hear the words you say about yourself, and change them when they are downgrading or demeaning. I always wanted my mother to say I did a good job – I made it a point to say to my children that they did a good job.
Lie to your brain, cheat your fear, and steal back your life of “I am more than enough” feeling that you had as a very young child. I am enough; you are enough; and we’ve always been enough. Now grab the glitter and start leaving a trail, spreading it with every step you take.
You have to teach your heart and mind how to sing together…
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“You have to teach your heart and mind how to sing together…, then you’ll hear the sound of your soul.” Renee Carlino, Sweet Thing
This photo has an amazing story for me. It is a story of how when you set an intention, the universe sets things in motion. It is about waiting on divine timing. It is about miracles. It is all about the heart and soul communicating together in the best possible ways. It is about listening to the heart sing to you about your destiny.
This photo sings to my soul. I first found this photo with another persons caption on it back in July of this year.
I fell in love with the artistry and how the photographer captured so much emotion within the photo. For me it was a spiritual experience. I searched for the photographer and couldn’t find them. I wrote emails to people who had used the photograph asking if they knew who the photographer was, and no one responded.
There are over 18,000 different uses of the this photo and I couldn’t find one that gave credit to the photographer. My business coach who finds things I can’t find, couldn’t locate the photographer either. We continued looking for over six months. I used the photo in July, and again in September, and again in November.
An amazing thing happened in November, when one of the photographers best friends saw the photo and commented on why I wasn’t giving credit to the photographer. I was so excited to finally locate her.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]Thankful Service
1,000 people attend funeral for Billy Aldridge, a US Marine Corp veteran with no family.
Billy died at the age of 80 in an Indianapolis nursing home last month and the company handling his arrangements posted his story on Facebook. They asked the public to help give this man a dignified funeral service.
I think they did a good job!
I Get Around
Ok for all of you dog lovers out there, this is just so cool! Tumbles is his name and he was born with only two rear legs – no front legs. What is so cool is that with a harness attachment of a 3-D sled, they are making him two legs for this two missing front legs.
He is just 6 weeks old and just wants to be a normal puppy. The 3-D lab at Ohio University is making his new legs. It is actually a sled that it attached with a harness, and it will allow him to eat and walk just like he has legs. They have a cool video showing the process and the prototype of Tumbles new wheels.
see more: http://www.kctv5.com/…/2-legged-dog-gets-3-d-printed-harness
Shine On
Shine with all you have. When someone tries to blow you out, just take their oxygen and burn brighter.” ― Katelyn S. Irons
It is really the best revenge over who or whatever caused the storm – to still shine bright as a diamond. Use that storm to simply wash off the dust and grime that had dulled your shine and sparkle even brighter.
Be a shooting star lighting up the night sky with your brilliance.
As you shoot across the sky, find the rainbow and swallow the colors. Explode across the darkness like fireworks with all of the colors sparkling inside of you, releasing into showers of brilliance falling back to earth.
The Greatest Gift
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~Mary Engelbreit
It is really all about the words and the meanings that we assign to them. That is because words tell the story, and the story is what is perceived to be the truth. When in fact the truth is always just your perspective, “your” side of the story. The only way to have the “whole truth”, is to be able to tell the story from all points of view. The marriage of those points of view is probably the closest that we can ever come to the “whole truth”.
Perspective is from Latin perspectus “clearly perceived,” and is a way of regarding situations, facts, etc… and judging their relative importance.
I read a story of a mom that lost her daughter to sudden infant death syndrome and she was working with her third therapist in seven months.
She wanted to know what was wrong with her, that even though she was wearing a mask to the outside world that she was moving on in her life, she felt that she must be doing the “grief” wrong because inside she was hurting so much.
The therapist used words that transformed how she was viewing her grief. She said you are just very sad, and the depth of your sadness is simply a measure of how much you loved your daughter. This viewpoint of “how deeply she loved her daughter” allowed her to express the overwhelming grief, instead of bottling it all up because “seven months” had passed.
Stories allow us the space to heal the pain, and once we have healed the pain, perspective helps us to stop being a victim. Life isn’t always fair, and no one should lose a child, no matter their age. But it happens.
Every day if we look for it we can see evidence of injustice happening all around us. It is easy to get lost in the emotions created when it happens to us or someone we love. We see evidence of it in the news when the world erupts in moral outrage over things like the Paris bombing, or the kidnapping of the school girls in Nigeria, that still over one year later haven’t been found.
We have large and small things that happen to us, our friends and family that have an impact on our life. But hidden in the heartache and challenges are golden nuggets that are the gift of the trials and tribulations that we experience. It is all about perspective.
It is about not only what you look at with the experience, but also where you are looking from, a point of view. Every experience has something to offer us. When my nephew was murdered, and my sisters nonprofit that she started failed, that could have been the end of it.
But I didn’t want that to be the end of my nephews story. So I created LemonadeMakers to help the small community nonprofits be more successful. So that others like my sister can make a difference in this world. I believe with all of my heart that this is what my life has been leading me to. To this moment, to create this business to help all of the nonprofits that I can reach. Out of the pain of injustice, loss, and deep mourning came something good.
The smallest change in perspective can change a life. See life with new eyes and look for the gift. Pull out the telescope or binoculars and peer deep inside yourself. Dig deep and find the gold of the experience. Change the story, and realize just how blessed you are.
Asha Tyson said, “Don’t think that you’ve lost time. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. And now is the right time.” Now is the right time to let go of what can’t be changed, and live the life that the divine has put before us, with happiness, gratitude and grace.