Reflections Of The Heart Liberate The Soul

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, show me who I really am. Many fairy tales tell of magic mirrors. Mirrors that can tell the future. Mirrors that show you your loved ones.  Mirrors that twist everything to mean something different than it really means. And mirrors that reflect back the truth to you. How do you know that the reflection back to you is the truth?

“The more reflective that you are at a soul level, the more of the real you comes into reality”  – Sheryl Silbaugh

A fun house mirror with some twisting of reality, changes how you really look. One mirror shows you a reflection of being short and fat. Another mirror reflects back to you the image of a really tall, skinny girl. Because of the shape of the mirror, the reflections are changed and altered from the truth of what you look like in reality.

Mirrors reverse everything.  Look at how her hand is touching the mirror. The mirror image touching back to her. It looks like the left hand is touching the left hand.  But in reality, it is her left hand touching the reflections right hand. So even mirrors that are true, still change what you see reflected back to you. The reflection back to you is in fact, backwards to reality. It isn’t the real you.

“In a mirror is where we find a reflection of our appearances, but in a heart is where we find a reflection of our soul”  – Unknown

Mirrors are obstacles to light.  Fun house mirrors distort what you see, creating illusions.  What if there were all different kinds of mirrors, each reflecting a different “you” based on what path we took?  Shards of reality based on different life decisions.  How would you pick which reality you wanted?

Based on a multitude of small decisions, how would you be changed? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if in real life you could be like Alice?  Just step through the looking glass to see what would happen if you chose this job or that job? Should you leave your bad situation now, or wait another year?

“Life is only a reflection of what we allow ourselves to see”  – Unknown

The movie “Sliding Doors” is all about the thought of what if you made the train or missed it – how does something so small and simple change or not change your life. I love the concept of how a reflection actually bends back from the surface and allows one to think seriously or ponder what is being shown.

It takes some consciousness and understanding to start seeing who and what you really are. To see beyond the surface reflection, deep into the soul within the body. To understand why you make the choices you do? How much of what happens to you is really within your choices, and not fate or destiny driving you towards some unseen future.

“Time spent in self-reflection is never wasted – it is an intimate date with yourself”  – Paul TP Wong

The reflection you see in a mirror, is bent back from the surface.  It allows you to examine what you see from different angles.  You can bend the metaphorical light of your experiences, to see what is underneath.  It serves as a bridge between learning and experience.  You can remove the barrier of your feelings, thoughts, emotions from the experience.  You then see more of the truth, and less of the story that you tell yourself.

This internal dialogue stripped of the emotional charge, is what enables you to move from victim, past survivor, to a totally new space of thriving.  The depth to which you take these reflections, determines the kind of attitude and actions you take moving forward in life.

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

Reflection provides an opportunity for you to open your heart and mind to your experiences. To see your wisdom and your foolishness. To see your strengths and weaknesses. It also allows you to delve in the possibilities of looking at those experiences through the viewpoints of others involved.

“Facing you, loving you and accepting you as you are can be painfully challenging, but it’s so necessary”  – Dau Voire

Recently my granddaughter got into a bit of drama with one of her friends. They had been out somewhere and my granddaughter borrowed some money from her friend. They didn’t discuss when it would be paid back. My granddaughter didn’t have a way to pay it back, since she didn’t have a job. She did some babysitting, but nothing on a regular basis. So this debt created some friction. Her friend asked her to pay it back, which upset my granddaughter because she didn’t have it. But they didn’t discuss their feelings, they both just pushed it inside.

“Everything in your life is a reflection of a choice you have made.  If you want a different result, make a different choice”   – blog.zerodean

When my granddaughter had a new babysitting job, she paid back the debt. But instead of apologizing for taking so long, she said, “here’s your money, now you can stop bugging me about it.” Of course, her friend was really hurt by those words. So, it escalated into a huge fight. Both girls had a party to the misunderstanding.  Neither girl was able to see how their own lack of communication created a mountain out a molehill.  Neither so far has made it to the point of realizing they were both in the wrong and owning their own part in the debacle.

“It’s unfair to yourself to justify why you’re holding on to toxicity.  There are lessons in letting go and moving on”  – Alex Elle

It is times like this that I wish we could hit a replay button, and see how the story that you internalize is not the true story. Both girls think that they we totally right, and the other is wrong. You too hide behind this gate of reality. You see a distorted image of what happened, of yourself.  You don’t want to be the victim. You don’t want to be the perpetrator.  In most situations in life you are one or the other, and sometimes even both at the same time. So, you create a story and you create drama where there shouldn’t be any.

“Self reflection is a humbling process.  It’s essential to find out why you think, say, and do certain things . . . then better yourself”  – Sonya Teclai

No one else can unlock that gate for you. It can only be unlocked by you. You can’t open anyone else’s gate either by argument or emotional appeal. I’ve had talked to my granddaughter and so far, she hasn’t been able to open that gate. My granddaughter has a saying when we talk, that I am judging her. And she is both right and wrong at the same time. Anytime you want to fix someone or something, you are in fact judging it or them. You are saying that something is broken or disconnected. So in that sense I am judging her, because I can see what is broken. But I am not judging her as being bad, or unworthy or less than she is.

“If you are still searching for that one person who will change your life, look in the mirror”  – Unknown

You do that to yourself all the time. You judge the actions or inactions that you take. You beat yourself up.  You should have done a better job. You shouldn’t have forgotten that important thing. What you need to learn is to take the take for reflection. See what is broken or disconnected.  Ask what you can do to alter the outcome. What can be altered and connection restored?  What is beyond your ability to reconnect? Release the judgement. Accept them as they are, or let them go.

“Be a reflection of what you’d like to receive.  If you want love, give love.  If you want truth, be truthful.  What you give out will always return”  – Unknown

Look into the mirror.  Dig beneath the surface.  Love and accept what you find.  Reconnect with your soul, with your life purpose.  Get back onto the right path for you.  Transform what can be changed and release what can’t.

Connection Comes From The Unfolding Of The Deepest Truth Of Who We Are

 

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.  There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.  You feel it, don’t you?

 – Rumi

Mind, body, heart, soul, the physical body, the spiritual body – bringing them into harmony is like being the orchestra conductor for a symphony.  You have all these different instruments that you bring together to create this fine blend of harmonious sound, and not just a cacophony of sounds.  To weave the notes together to make a beautiful piece of music.  The rising out as a soloist and then the weaving back down into the harmony.   There is a space in this vast room for improvisation like in jazz, where they create bridges that lead in new directions as well as bring the music back to the beginning.

Everyone’s life is an evolution of emotions, spirit and beliefs.  The storyline changes, plots thicken, main characters mature and new spiritual journeys begin.  This is true of inspirational authors.  Their books represent only stages of their life.  New triumphs of the soul have yet to be written.

 – Shannon L. Alder

Instrument’s in effect disturb the air around them evolving into sounds, music.  The notes played arise out of the no-thing-ness of creation to blend into other vibrations thereby creating sounds that can fill you with peace, ecstatic joy, with a feeling of living outside of your own world.  You can reach any emotion with music, making people smile, laugh or bringing them down into intense sorrow.  Have you ever listened to a soundtrack from a movie and you can tell from the soundtrack this is the battle scene, the kissing scene, the near death and triumphant rescue scene?  You don’t even have to know the movie and you can tell based on the emotions within you, what must be happening in the movie at that particular point.  It is like going on a musical journey of someone’s personal soul journey, their heroes journey of personal transformation.

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential . . . these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

 Each instrument is an individual point of consciousness for just those few minutes of playing a masters creation.  You can shift different instruments in and out of the piece and the piece totally changes.  Some changes are small, such as having three violins instead of four, or major such as all of the violins being silent.  In the same way small shifts in our mind, body and soul can be used to help us reach out and achieve our dreams, to reach our highest potential.

Always choose the path the feeds the soul

 – Confucius

 Music provides a detailed road map to where you are going with the piece being played.  There is a tangible vision of how it should be performed.  But there is also a space for the individual playing the piece to do their own version.  They can speed it up, slow it down.  Have you ever listened to various musicians cover a song where they take the song to a whole new place?  It is so interesting to me because when I have a favorite song and someone switches it up, sometimes I am “Wow that sounds wonderful”, and sometimes I am “Wow that really doesn’t work”.  It all depends on how tied I am to the original song.  The more connected I am to it, the more I want it to remain the way I heard it the first time.  No one way is the right way for everyone.  Always choose the one that feeds your soul.  That feels like the perfect fit – not too small or too big, but just right.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.  Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

 – Rumi

 In jazz there is a free flow of creativity among the players. The leadership of the piece of music being created is passed like a baton.  Each person has a unique contribution to the piece and at the same time, there is a collaboration to the piece.  A shared rhythm, melody and harmony is created because you build and shape the music as you go.  No one tries to lord it over the others, but rather hearing the direction one person is going, the others try to uplift it to an even higher plane of existence.  In this way, as each player changes their playing of their own instrument, they change the sound and direction of the music being played.  Not by directing it, but by exploring it.  As you explore yourself and shift and change, so does every other player.  You can see them sitting there, eyes closed, faces of joy, totally lost in the journey the music itself is directing.  The result sounds like they already knew where they were going, but in fact it was the exploration that directed the destination.

Unless someone can look into the core of your heart, and see the degree of your passion, or look into the depths of your soul and see the extent of your will, then they have no business telling you what you can or cannot achieve.  Because while they may know the odds, they do not know you.  Nor do they know the power of your angels.

  – Sandra Kring

It is interesting that when I write, especially poetry I hear music playing in my head.  It is usually a combination of different songs that kind of blend themselves in and out of the writing.  There is an emotional connection to the heart and soul when I write.  I can feel the searching for the right words, both from the meaning of the word and the vibration of the word.  For example, hope and faith.  I tend to go with faith, because to me the vibration of the word hope is lower.  It is more of a maybe word, whereas faith to me has an expectation that it will be so, that it will happen.  Hope has more of a maybe, I don’t know vibration to it.  That is my own personal relationship to the words.  Others would have a different relationship to the words and that is ok.  But what this does is to allow me to touch the personal passion I feel when I write.  Music does the same thing, touching emotional vibrations.

Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change with it.

 – Steve Maraboli

What is the mindset that changes everything?  It is having the courage to take risks, by wearing our heart on our sleeve.  To feel the emotions of everything we come in contact with, and not let it take us out, but rather let them flow on by.  It is about have the capacity to sacrifice the “I want you to like me” feelings, so that I can tell you want you need to hear, instead of what you want to hear.  It is being vulnerable enough within ourselves, to pull out all the bits of behavior and personality we have taken on to be accepted.  And leaving out in the open all the bits that make us who we are that we have hidden away, as not being worthy. It is the wearing those bits of who we are at a soul level, that connects our life to our consciousness.

Once you realize that the road is the goal, and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task, and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy  . . .

  – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Living our truth; reaching for the stars; falling to the earth and trying again – that is the road we are on.  We have to be willing to be rejected because we live real, authentic lives.  We have to be willing to mark out our boundaries not our of fear of others, but love of ourselves.  When we change our mindset and live out loud who we are – that is when we are brave enough to climb that ladder. When we have the courage to reach higher and higher into our true potential – that is when life itself is an ecstasy.

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There are no endings. Just New Beginnings

“Keep going.  Everything you need will come to you at a perfect time” – unknown

Just keep swimming.  The storm clouds will pass, and the sun always shines once again.  It may seem like you are walking through the valley of shadows and death alone, but that is an illusion.

There is the invisible spiritual world that is always by your side.  There are friends and relatives that may not know how to help, what to say or do – but they are cheering you on.  There are people in this world who every night pray for those who feel they are lost on life’s journey.

Just as your faith can move mountains, your doubts are what put them there.  Stop creating barriers that you have to fight to get over.

“Have the courage to make the change, the strength to see you through it, and faith that everything will turn out for the best” – unknown

Some leave you because they are not interested in a transformational journey any longer.  They wish to stay safe within their comfort zone and make no waves that might swamp their little boats.

Some you leave because you realize that you can’t continue to carry their weight and still walk your own path.  You have to cut the chains that are dragging you down.

Out of the best of motives, you find that you have done too much for someone, and you have to stop.  It only hurts them to continue.  You are not giving up on them.  It was just time to release them to their own journey, and for them to find their own way.  It is not the end of your story, just the end of their part in your story.  And that is ok.

“Note to self:  None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought.  Eat the delicious food.  Walk in the sunshine.  Jump in the ocean.  Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like a hidden treasure.  Be silly.  Be kind.  Be weird.  There’s no time for anything else” – Nanea Hoffman

If you have never read any of Caroline Myss’s books or heard her speak I highly encourage you to check out her body of work.  To me she is that really critical aunt that drove you crazy as a kid, but you learn to love and appreciate as an adult.  Because everything that she says is total reality, no sugar coating, and is the best advice that you could get.

The whole reason to be on the path to personal self-transformation is to realize that there are parts of you that are not in balance.  To learn how to bring them back out of the shadow and into the light.  You can’t do that work unless you are willing to be totally honest with yourself.

“Facing personal truths and purging yourself of addictions or manipulative habits requires strength, courage, humility, faith, and the other qualities of a soul with stamina, because you are not just changing yourself; you are changing your universe.  Change one coordinate in your spiritual compass and you change your entire life’s direction” – Caroline Myss

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

If you are willing to make a few mistakes, to have a few failures, you can learn how to release the monsters from under your bed.  You can take on one monster at a time.  You can talk to it and learn its story, its reason to exist.  They were created when you were small and most of their stories are just bits of truth wrapped up in drama, trauma, and misunderstanding.

If you can unwind the experience, you can help them take off their masks and their costumes.  You can take away their illusions.  You can help them understand that their help was exactly what we needed at the time.  You can thank them for protecting you.  And if you can change one small thing for them, you can transform their relationship with you.

One small change at a time, one degree makes all of the difference.

 

“It takes courage to grow up and become who we really are” e.e. cummings

Walking on the path of the transformation life, you sometimes find your path ends with a large body of water that needs to be crossed.  You might swim across, but sometimes that body of water has a strong current, rapids or even is close to the drop off of a waterfall.  So, swimming might seem too risky.

You could look for a way to build a bridge across.  But you might decide that you don’t have the “know how” to build a bridge.

You could build a boat to row across, but maybe you don’t have the funds to buy the lumber.

Or you could fly.

What you must never do is to be afraid of doing whatever is needed to get across that body of water.  Because the worst thing that can happen is that you build a house alongside that body of water, and never even attempt to get across.  That is guaranteed to give you a life of regrets.  To be always wondering “what if?”  What if you could have flown across?

What might you have accomplished in your life, if you had just risked continuing down the path of a transformational life?

What is necessary is that you are stronger than your excuses.  Whenever you hear yourself say the word, “but”, you need to stop what you are saying.  Because whatever follows but is an excuse.  You don’t need to unpack your backpack at the word “but” and build a home there.  What you need to do is to get a shovel and dig under the excuse to find the pattern of sabotage that is underneath the excuse.

Root out the pattern and recognize it as a fear.  Shift and change how you are dealing with that fear.  Doubt has built another mountain, and you can refuse to climb it.  You can instead have faith in yourself, in your friends and family, in your spiritual beliefs, and know that if you built that mountain, you can take it apart and keep on your journey.

“When it is all finished, you will discover that it was never random” – unknown

When I look back at what I thought were mistakes, I see these links.  I took a new job, which ended three months later.  I was laid off and I couldn’t find work.  I lost my car because I had no money.  I moved out of state.  I got a new job and the reason they hired me?

It was because of what I was doing at that job for three months.  That experience led to a promotion for a position that I had been aiming for, to teaching at two different community colleges, to creating and running a training program for seven branches of a savings and loan bank.  None of which would have happened without that job for three months.

So was it a mistake?  I don’t think so.  Nothing in that string of experiences was random.  I was following the path of self transformation.  Sometimes the path kicks you butt, and sometimes you kick it back.

So, what do we do?  You swim.  You just keep swimming.  You make mistakes and you keep swimming.  You try new things and you keep swimming.  You change yourself, your world and you just keep swimming.

I hope this year, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.
You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, wherever it is, art, or love, or work, or family, or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, DO IT.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
– Neil Gaiman

Your Future Lies In The Beauty Of Your Dreams

“Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you”  – Marsha Norman

Such a beautiful idea, dreams coming from your soul, as illustrations of what you can accomplish with your life.  What kind of life did you imagine when you were five?  Ten?  Twenty?  Forty?  Sixty?

• What came true and what did you throw away and abandon on the ground?
• What fears, excuses, and failures did you blame that abandonment on?
• Are you ready to turn a page and start the dream over?

Your dreams are waiting patiently for you to come back and try again.  But it isn’t a matter of doing the same things that already failed to bring your dreams into reality.

It is all about you transforming and changing yourself, so that you can become the person who can support that dream.  I think that is why many fail so many times.  You keep thinking that you just need to keep climbing the same slippery slope.  And every time you slide back down, you think you just need to try harder.

It isn’t about trying harder,

it is about getting smarter.

“Even though the future seems far away, it is actually beginning right now” –  Mattie Stepanek

Dreams serve a dual purpose.  They grow you, shift and change you in order to accomplish them.

And they bring something wonderful into the world, to shift and change others besides yourself.  Dreams are realities not yet beheld.

The story of the Starfish –

What you are doing right this minute, is the beginning of that future.  Even if it is as simple, as saving one starfish.

“Don’t downgrade your dream just to fit your reality.  Upgrade your conviction to match your destiny” – Shinzoo.com

When you work on becoming the person you need to become, to bring your dream into reality, how do you know what you need to transform within yourself?  The clues are like key holes in the walls that you built out of your fears.

Take for example the fear of public speaking.  It is said to be one of the most common fears that everyone has.  You probably have this fear.  So the wall of fear that you have built is designed to avoid any situations in which you might be asked to speak.  Your body will fight against you.  Some people go into hot/cold sweats.  Some become nauseous and even throw up.  Some people get that deer in the headlight look and forget everything, including their own name.

So, what is the key to transforming this fear?

You have to discover what is lying underneath the rock called fear of public speaking.

• Was there something that happened in the past where you were subject to public humiliation?
• Is it tied to a lack of confidence that you have something to say that others would find worthwhile?
• Is it about your own judgment of how you look up on stage?
• Do you drown yourself in the “what if’s?”
  • What if I trip on the stage?
  • What if the microphone doesn’t work right?
  • What if I drop my notes and they are now in the wrong order?

Get curious as to what is underneath your own fear rock.

“Do what you have to do, until you can do what you want to do” – Oprah

When you pick up a literal rock, you might find dozens of different kinds of insects buried underneath it.  Within your rock of fear, there it isn’t just one answer buried underneath it.  It is usually several different items that are weaved together to create the illusion of a huge unmovable boulder of fears. But as you unwind and untangle each fear, acknowledge it, and see how you can transform it, the illusion of the boulder shrinks down into a manageable fear rock.

As you transform those fears with speaker training; As you practice and become well prepared; you realize that your speech isn’t about you.  It’s about helping your audience.  You discover that giving a speech can be a wonderful experience. Having some butterflies in your stomach before speaking is normal.  And having some nervousness with the first couple of sentences is common.  You are planting the seeds of your future success in bringing your dreams into reality.

“Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality” – Malala Yousafzai

What makes it a “Life Transformation” is the realization afterwards, that while it might not be perfect, you did it!  That someone in that audience needed to hear what you have to say. You spoke to that one starfish and helped it get back into the ocean.

You gain the confidence to realize that if you can conquer what might have been a crippling fear about being a public speaker; what else could you transform in your life that has been holding you back?

When you do something this transformational, you literally shift every cell in your body and become a new person.  You can’t go back to that person you were before.  Like the caterpillar, you just emerged from the chrysalis and spread your beautiful butterfly wings and took flight.

As you transform yourself with change after change, you discover that your dream itself keeps growing.  So the journey keeps going.

Along the way you will meet people who tell you logically, that you are wasting your time trying to save a beach full of stranded starfish.  You will experience epic failures.  You will be disappointed by other people who you thought were in the dream with you for the long haul.

If you stay true to your dream and honor your imagination and never, ever, give up – you will be a winner in bringing that dream a lot further than you could have imagined at the beginning.

• 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 sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

Here at LemonadeMakers, we are happy to have those kinds of deep conversations, to help you figure out what is underneath the fears that seem to be holding you back from living your life purpose.  Contact us anytime.

Take The Time To Listen To The Souls Dreams

Sometimes you need to take a break from everyone and spend time alone, to experience, appreciate, and love yourself – Robert Tew

I have a confession to make.  Years ago, when all four of my children were little, I used to hide in the bathroom.  Sometimes the mommy, mommy, was just too much.  I didn’t want to referee who had what toy, who pushed who, or be the mean mom making them clean up their room.

I was tired out from working all day, coming home and fixing dinner, making sure their homework was done, that they all had their baths, and had clean clothes for the next day at school.  I just needed five minutes alone.

If your kids are like mine were, you didn’t get the five minutes alone until they were in bed, and after the 15th excuse to get out of bed, they had finally fallen asleep.

By then of course, you are too tired to even think, and you are falling asleep on the couch.  Just a few minutes of peace.

My husband was a wonderful man who in the summer would take the kids on overnight camping trips.  For one whole weekend, I would stay at home alone.  I slept in.  I read a book.  I would wallow in alone time and recharge.  It was a mini mommy vacation.  When they came home Sunday night all excited about fishing, I was a whole new mom, ready to listen to every story and adventure.

If you really love someone, there’s no such thing as not having enough time for them – unknown

For some reason now that the kids are all grown and out on their own, I have filled my life up with so many things to do.  It took a while to notice that I have let the habit of alone time disappear.  I am following my own advice and putting this time down on the calendar.

It is really important to carve out the space to be able to soul search.  To recover energetically. To be able to do some deep thinking, following the rabbit down the rabbit hole.  To just be without any agenda or schedule or purpose.  It is a part of having a healthy relationship with yourself.  It is a part of loving yourself and making time for just you.

• So, when you carve out some alone time, what do you do with it?
• How much time each month do you carve out to play?
• Try something new that you have never done before?
• If you were to go exploring in your neighborhood or your town, what would you do?
• When was the last time that you sat down and created something just for fun?
• Painting, drawing, sculpting, gardening, singing, dancing, playing an instrument, writing a story or a poem, sewing – whatever direction your creative juices take you.

Alone time is when I distance myself from the voices of the world so I can hear my own – Oprah

I love to garden, to crochet, and I have always wanted to play the piano.  I want to go on a hot air balloon ride.  I want to travel to Scotland and see where my dad’s family came from.  I want to explore medieval castles all over Europe.

I have been neglecting this part of my life because of not balancing myself between my day job, taking care of my husband and his health issues, being there for the grandchildren, and the amount of time it takes to promote and build LemonadeMakers.   The “I should be’s” overwhelm the “I want to’s“.

But what I know from life experience and lots of years of education, is that it is just as important to take the time to recharge my batteries.

So, like the sailor in the ship, you need to make course adjustments, to make sure that you don’t keep losing yourself in life’s often conflicting priorities.

Remember to take those moments, or those weekends to smell the roses.  You will come back reenergized and ready to take on whatever life is getting ready to throw in your direction.

Divine Timing – Trust, Let Go And See What Happens

When you truly “let go and let God” you stop trying to make something happen by a certain time.

You stop pushing the stopwatch.

You stop pushing those goals which are like large boulders up the hill, only to have them roll back down to the bottom when you get distracted.

What will then happen, is that divine timing is allowed to work in its own way, its own time, and its own mysterious plans and ways.

Paths open up before you that take you places that you would never have chosen to go.  Places that open you up to something new and so delightful that you never want to leave.

“Patience is quieting the ego and trusting divine timing” – Dean Jackson

Divine timing has amazing short cuts.  Let’s say that you have on your bucket list to go to Mt. Kilimanjaro.  You have no money to finance this kind of trip.

In your hometown is a non-profit that you volunteer to work for.  One day this non-profit, along with other agencies get a call to provide relief supplies for some villages near the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  You volunteer to go and help to deliver the supplies.  The helicopter drops you off at the village.  You are now within immediate climbing distance of your goal.

Now they ask for some of you to go up towards the summit to deliver the supplies.  Divine timing has just express delivered a bucket list goal and all you had to do is say yes.

Now that story was totally made up, and you are probably saying, but that doesn’t really happen.  So, I want to share my own personal favorite story of divine timing happening in my own life, when I had no other choice but to let go and let God.

My middle son called me to tell me that he and his girlfriend were getting married.  I was so happy for them.  This was in January, and they had set the date for August.  I sat down and planned out what I could do to get enough money together to pay for their honeymoon.

If I was extremely budget conscious and could earn some extra commissions at work, I could just pay for the honeymoon that they wanted In Mexico.  The end of February they called with a new surprise; they had moved up the date to May.  I looked at my now destroyed plan and no matter how I moved the numbers, there was no way to pay for the honeymoon by the end of April.

So, I sat down and pulled out some paper and wrote a letter to myself in that moment in time, from myself in June.  I wrote how happy they were to go on their honeymoon.  They had a terrific time, and I poured every emotion and feeling of gratitude and happiness into this letter.  I wrote how amazed I was how unseen forces seemed to move my financial mountains to make it happen.  I wrote how I never could have foreseen the ability to make my dream of paying for their honeymoon happen, and how grateful I was to God for providing me with the funds.

Then I put the paper away, with no attachment to the outcome in a drawer and placed all of my faith in divine timing.  Two weeks later, I got a phone call from a neighbor who lived across the street from our second home in Upstate New York.  They wanted to know if I was interested in selling them 10 acres of our property. They would pay cash and we could close in two weeks.

Now when we had bought this house, it was on 20 acres.  I didn’t know why at that time, but I negotiated to cut the parcel in half and have 10 acres of land and 10 acres with the house.  We paid full price for the 10 acres with the house and $1.00 for the 10 acres of bare land.  So, I was able to say yes to the neighbor and we negotiated a fair price.  We closed the end of March and the first week of April I was able to fully pay for my son and daughter in-law’s honeymoon.

Even if I had thought of selling the land to pay for the honeymoon, it is highly unlikely that we could have sold and closed on it in 30 days.  That time of year the area is still covered in snow.  But I believe that divine timing knew that when I bought that house five years previously, I was going to need to liquidate that land to pay for my son’s honeymoon.

Because I had listened to intuition and split the property, divine timing was able to maneuver into place a quick sale and funds to pay for that honeymoon.

An analogy of “letting go and letting God” is water.  Water always finds a way.  It might take a year, it might take a day, but what is meant to be will always find its own way to completion.

I always think of the Grand Canyon.  Water carved that canyon out of solid stone.  In one place within the canyon is a small island of stone in a perfect circle of water that wound around it.  I don’t know how that perfect circle of stone is still standing.   But the story my imagination tells me is that the stone was especially strong in that one spot and that it took water a lot of time and persistence, but it was able to carve away all of the parts that didn’t belong, until what was left, was what was supposed to be there.  A tall stone island in a perfect circle of water.

So, know that in your journey, you are always on perfect time, divine time.  You are not early; you are not late.  You are right now where you are supposed to be.

That goal, off in the distance that you are busy running to, will happen right on time.  It may be that like me, you don’t see any way that you can make it happen.  But if you are willing to listen to intuition; If you are willing to do things that may not make sense at the time you are doing them; like splitting up 20 acres into two 10-acre parcels, divine timing will place what you need into your hands, right on time.

• 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 sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

We here at LemonadeMakers not only write about waking up to the reality of who you are and your life purpose and living up to your full potential.   We also are here to help you ask yourself the right questions to open up your mind to the possibilities of living the life you have always dreamed of.  Contact us anytime and we are happy to have that conversation.

Unexplored Possibilities Are Waiting For You To Release Them

“Limitations live only in our minds.  But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless” – Jamie Paolinetti

Possibilities are like rabbits.  The more you think about them, the more they multiply.  Pretty soon you have a field full of them.  The trick is to turn them into probabilities.  Probabilities are a guide to enlightenment, in the journey of life.

It is the secret of how the Phoenix arises from the ashes and is reborn.  The Phoenix has coded in its DNA the belief of triumph over impossible odds.  So even when defeated, it rises once more from the ashes to achieve the impossible.

Imagination is like turning on the faucet.  When you start imagining the possibilities, the water gets turned on and you start getting ideas.

The trick is to just start writing them down.  No judgement or editing or being critical.  Just put them down on paper, idea after idea.  Possibility after possibility.

Once you have wrung every last drop out of your faucet, then you start looking at each possibility and see how many of them can grow into a probability.

That is how the miracles are born.  It is looking for the one thing that leaps off the page, no matter how impossible it seems.  That is the one, the one that your inner guidance is calling out for.  That is the one that causes the Phoenix to rise up from the ashes.  Do not allow the critical, judgmental thinking to chain it from taking flight.

“Possibilities and miracles mean the same thing” – Prentice Mulford

So where does that critical judgmental thinking come from?  It comes from your own insecurities.  From every unkind word you have heard.   From every well-meaning person who said, “Oh no honey, you can’t do that”, girls aren’t good at sports, math, or science.  Or boys don’t playhouse or with dolls.  From every time you tried something, failed and walked away.  From every time you said you would do something and didn’t.

All of those negative experiences pile up in your mind and become these critical judgmental thinking machines.  They promise you safety, that you won’t get hurt if you listen to them, but in reality, they are the bars of a prison of your own making.

The trick is to not believe the magician with his sleight of hand tricks. Not becoming attached to those negative beliefs.  They can become chains linked to an anchor that you drag around.  Your imaginations can’t take flight with chains connected to an anchor keeping you bound to the earth.  You need to release all of those negative, judgmental thoughts, as they do not serve you.

They are limitations, illusions of the magician.  He tells you that if you leave his stage, you will be in darkness, no longer in the protection of his light.  If you build barricades from his illusions of danger, they will leave you exposed to having lived an “unlived” life.  A life lived without passion and purpose.  A life that doesn’t fulfill your divine destiny.

“Breathe in the sweet air of limitless possibility, and make life as rich as you know it can be” – Ralph Marston

 

Probability of Success

I won’t – 0%

I can’t – 10%

I don’t know how – 20%

I wish I could – 30%

I want to – 40%

I think I might – 50%

I might – 60%

I think I can – 70%

I can – 80%

I am – 90%

I did – 100%

Increase your chances of success by saying “I can, I am, and I did”.  What if you stopped saying, “I wish I could” and instead said, “Guess what I did today?”

We at LemonadeMakers would love to hear your stories.  Drop us an IM and share both your successes and not so successful stories.  And as always, let us know if we can assist you in burning those insecurities.  We love a good bonfire!

Silence Is The Space Between The Words, The Inner Sanctuary Of The Heart

When tragedy strikes someone that we love, we all have this tendency to want to fix it. That if we just had the perfect words to say, or the right thing to do, we could make it all better.

But grief is a walk alone.  Others can be there, and listen.  But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, your denial, anger, and bitter loss.  You’ll come to your own peace, hopefully . . . but it will be on your own, in your own time.

– Cathy Lamb

When I was younger they had these commercials for both band-aids and children’s aspirin. In the band-aid commercial the mom puts a band-aid on the little boys scrape, kisses it and he is smiling and his pain is gone. In the baby aspirin the pill magically makes the child feel better. Unfortunately, in real life, we can’t always “kiss it and make it better.”

What we can do is be there with a hug and a listening ear. Let them vent their anger, cry out their sadness, and get a release for the overpowering emotions.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing . . . not healing, not curing . . . that is a friend who cares.

  – Henri Nouwen

When my nephew was killed, my sister was so strong. Making all of the funeral arrangements, who would speak at the service, what songs would be sung, renting the ballroom at the boardwalk – she went all out and was so together. She spoke at the funeral of the over seven years trying to get pregnant because her endometriosis was so bad. How when he was born, the cord was around his neck several times and she had to have an emergency C-section. All the years of loving him, and what he gift he was to her life. She told these stories and not one tear or breakdown. She hugged everyone at the memorial and not one breakdown. I don’t think that I could have done what I saw her do.

Later that night, all of the busyness of the funeral was done, then she broke down. All I could do was hold her. Tell her I loved her. That I was there for her. It was the first time, I couldn’t “kiss it and make it all better.” It has been several years of holding her and loving her, but she has come out the other end of a dark tunnel.

The reality is that you will grieve forever.  You will not “get over” the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it.  You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.  You will be whole again but you will never be the same.  Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.

  – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There comes a time when the healing happens. It doesn’t mean that you no longer miss what has been taken from you, just that it no longer controls your life. Each of us handles grief differently. We shouldn’t judge another person by how they handle it or expect them to “be better faster.”

No rule book.  No time frame.  No judgement.  Grief is as individual as a fingerprint.  Do what is right for your soul.

  _ Hw

We can look with fresh eyes at the beauty that still exists in our world. We can walk step by step in the arms of loved ones, knowing that when we stumble in the darkness of grief, they will put the light of hope in our hearts, that things will get easier.

Healing comes when we choose to walk away from darkness and move towards a brighter light.

  – Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Listening to the silence of the night, we can open our hearts and ears to the sounds of the universe. If we just be in the present moment, we can hear beautiful songs we have never heard before. The night insects, like crickets will sing to us. We can hear the night birds, like the owl tells us a story. We can be serenaded by the croaking of the frogs. Never stop listening for the messages from the creator, because these messages will be a balm to our hearts, helping us to heal.

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The Best Things In Life Are The Moments When We See The Little Things Clearly

 Such a profound question – what is life?

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, that hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and 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

When you look around at your friends and family, how many people do you know that “just exist”? They are here. They wake up each day. They take in the breath of life, they eat, they go to work or school, they come home and watch a movie, TV, play video games. They are here, but what else is there in life, besides just being here?

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. 

   – Marcel Proust

There is something about asking questions that opens life up.  About being curious.  Asking yourself the questions that you are afraid to ask, afraid of how the answers might change your life.  Questions like, “Why am I not happy with who I am”?

Be not afraid of life.  Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

  – William James 

I think that there is more to life, than just existing. I think of some of the stories that I love best. They are made up of characters that progress down a timeline, the hero’s journey. They are walking along a path and something happens. Things go wrong, they change to meet the challenges and come out the other end a different person than the one we met in the beginning of the story.

Time is like a river, you cannot touch the same water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again.  Enjoy every moment of life . . . ,

  – Unknown

They discover things about themselves during the journey. They discover the “fire in the belly”, passion. They learn to speak up and speak out. They learn that they have courage to fight for truth, justice, life and liberty. We root for them to beat the odds and win. Take the first “Rocky” movie.  He is employed in a sketchy business as a collector for a loan shark..  He boxes and  is made fun of, nothing but a loser and a bum.  He dreams of a better life and thinks that fighting in the ring, could be his ticket to be somebody. He gets a one in a million shot at it, wins against the heavyweight champion, falls in love.

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations. 

  – Unknown

Boxing was his passion.  He learned to have self confidence in his talent.  He learned that we can all be somebody if we are willing to pay the price of hard work to make it happen.  If we are willing to not give up when it looks hopeless.  As the rest of the series of movies show, transformation is an ongoing process.  We will learn valuable and painful lessons when we don’t remain conscious of who we are and where we are going in life.

Most of us have been through some sort of personal hero’s journey in our life.

Someday everything will make perfect sense. So, for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears and keep reminding yourself that EVERYTHING happens for a reason. 

  – Unknown 

What did we discover about ourselves? Brendon Buchard tells a story about his own personal journey when he was in college. He had a bad breakup with his girlfriend.  She was the one he was going to spend the rest of his life with.  So to try and get out of his depression he went on a trip with a college friend to South America.  They were driving in a rural mountainous area on a narrow road.  The road turned out to be a hairpin curve.  His friend lost control of the car, and they went tumbling off the mountain.  When he came to he was bleeding.  They had fallen down a ravine.  He thought that he was dying.  In despair he asked himself three questions – Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?

Thankfully they didn’t die.  They both got medical attention, and when he returned to the United States he was a different person.  He is an international bestseller with multiple  books; he is the founder of Experts Academy and High Performance Academy and is a sought after motivational speaker.  How was his life impacted from getting a broken heart?  From an auto accident that could have ended his life?  We never know how the painful experiences of our life, will be positively used for the rest of our lives.

Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once. 

  – Paulo Coelho

I think that we all want to live a life that results in great friends and family that love us.  That results in us being happy and passionate about what we do with our days and nights.  That results in knowing that we had a positive impact in the world. But sometimes we fall asleep to those dreams.  Sometimes we get so beaten down by our hero’s journey, that we give the dream up as being impossible.  What I have discovered in life is that we tend to do one of two things.  We act without thinking our decision all of the way through and so we end up paying the bill of “unintended  consequences”.  Or we think about it, and think about it, and do nothing about it.  Why?  Because we can’t face our fears about “what if?”.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.  Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow.  Let reality be reality.  Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they life. 

  – Lao Tzo

So each morning, what if the first question we ask ourselves is:

If my life is a story, what can I do today to make it a New York Times Bestseller?

What could I do today, that a movie producer would want to make my life into an inspirational movie?

What can I do today that uses up all the best parts of me (my talents), to inspire the world around me to be a better place?

What can I do today that makes people laugh, smile and be more joyful?

Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live. 

  – Norman Cousins

They have a saying, that the best stories are in the graveyard.  There are books that never got written; apologies and forgiveness that were said in their heart, but never left their lips.  Millions of secret recipes that never got passed on.  Don’t wait for the end to ask, “Did I live, love and matter”, but instead ask it each night.  Ask if you showed love, and gave love to others each night. Ask if you were able to do one small thing today that mattered to someone. If you can say yes, to these questions each night, you have a wonderful life. You inspire me to try harder, to be better, to live fully in the present. To lose myself in the sunset.

Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun. 

  – Randy Pausch

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Passion Changes Everything

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

  – Mark Twain

Finding your passion isn’t just about a dream job for your career, or about being wealthy.  It is about finding your authentic self.  It is about having a meaningful life, with both spirituality and community weaved together.  This authentic life is your life propose.  The surest way to find your life purpose is to follow where your passion leads you.  When you find it and align everything in your life with it, that is when your eyes light up, and your heart sings with joy.  You literally fill up your soul with light and shine brightly from within. This is your calling, given to you by the divine. It is the difference between really living and just existing.

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

  – Deepak Chopra

When you are in alignment with your purpose, passion creates a calmness within the heart, so that no matter what the madness and chaos that is happening around us, we are at peace.  When you embrace your authentic self, you have no competition.  When you focus on your passion and fulfilling your purpose, the doors of opportunity swing wide open.  Creativity seems to pour out of your soul.  Ideas pop into your head.  You see so many possibilities that your like a kid in a candy store and you can’t decide which one to taste first.

Have the courage to follow the things that you are naturally drawn to. Pupose is the reason you journey, walking the path towards insight pulls you forward.  Passion is the fire that lights the way, and keeps you going on the dark and stormy nights.   I think of Jane Goodall, who has lived her whole life for monkeys.  I don’t understand her passion for them, but you can see it.  What I can understand,  is having that kind of passion.  I have it, for LemonadeMakers.  It is your job, your responsibility, your calling, to let the world know why you are here.  The world needs people who have come alive with passion.

Curiosity only does one thing, and that is to give.  And what it gives you are clues on the incredible scavenger hunt of your life.

  – Elizabeth Gilbert

We find happiness by being driven by this curiosity, because it causes us to ask questions that we would never think to ask.  It causes us to look in strange places for answers to the questions and make connections.  The connections might seem strange, yet they fit perfectly to what is happening in our lives. Each one a clue to the next place to look, the next discovery to make.  We get so excited about what we are discovering that our friends and relatives look at us as though we have gone over the deep end of the pool.

One of the oldest and most generous tricks that the universe plays on human beings is to bury strange jewels within us all. And then stand back to see if we can ever find them. 

–   Elizabeth Gilbert

It is looking in the strange places that we find clues to what we are capable of in our lives.  We see how everything in our past is connected.  We can see the dots being connected.  The main path we are walking, with all of the side roads winding through the woods.  We see how each  served a purpose, even though we did not connect the dots until years later.  But each jewel we discover is required to have the complete set of our string of pearls, which is our life.

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – pleasantly, smiling, non-apologetically – to say “no” to other things.  And the way to do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. 

  – Stephen Covey

You have to peel off the masks of social conditioning that say you must meet the needs of others, before your own.  That what you need and desire, is as important.  In fact, will be fatal to your soul if you don’t pursue it. You must become what you are seeking.  It needs to seep deep into your pores, become part of your cells.  Live and breathe your dream.

Do you remember having a favorite article of clothing that you loved to wear?  It might have been when you were a child, and you wanted to wear it every day, and your mom would argue with you to choose something different.  But you only wanted to wear that particular outfit.  So you would pitch a fit until she gave in, or maybe you snuck it out of the house and changed and wore it anyway.  Wear your passion like that.  Be a rebel.

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 everyone is watching.  March to the beat of your own drummer.  And stubbornly refuse to fit it. 

  – Mandy Hale

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Seasons Change, People Change; A Year Changes You A Lot

The distance between your dreams and reality is called action.  Desire to transform is what gets us started.  The secret to action is doing just one small thing each day to further the dream into reality.  The secret to success in found in having a daily routine in which you insert those small steps.  Determination is what helps us build momentum, to keep going as the path takes us up a steep hill.  Sometimes that means we let go of less important things. 

The secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

  –  Socrates

Remember the wagon train days.  They loaded their wagons with all of the belongings they couldn’t bear to let go of.  Along the trail to Oregon, you found the landscape littered with such items that became too heavy of a load to continue to carry.  Sometimes it means we learn to do something differently.  We all have good intentions.  We set intentions to accomplish our dreams.  But many times hoping and setting those intentions isn’t enough.  You need to be committed to bringing those dreams into reality.  You need to be faithful with your actions to back up that commitment.  Dedication is how we continue.  

To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. 

  –  Steve Prefontaine

What is currently happening in our life, is a reflection of our past choices.  Releasing and letting go of what no longer serves us, is like cleaning up the gutters on our roof.  If we want the water to drain correctly, then the gutters need to be cleaned of all of the debris that has been deposited into them.  If we don’t, they won’t work correctly, and the water collected from the rain will drip all over, instead of being channeled down the drain spout.  Everything in your life currently is a result of choices.  The people in our lives, our career, the home we live in, the car we drive.., they were once a choice of something that we wanted, needed, or desired to have. 

Seeing things from a higher perspective causes you to experience sudden bouts of stunning clarity – you understand that everything that’s ever happened in your life played out exactly as it was supposed to.

  –  Stephen J. Hopson

The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.

  –  Anthisthenes

For years I told myself that I would write when the kids were in school; then it was when the kids were out of the house; then it was when I would retire – then I would have the time to write.  I kept putting off my dreams, not because there wasn’t time.  That was the lie that I told myself.  It was because I was afraid that what I wrote wouldn’t be worth reading.  Who was I to think that I had some kind of talent?  Publishers would reject my stories.  No one would want to read what I put on paper.  I had to realize for myself that at some point, later would never happen. 

 Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.

  –  Maya Angelou

I had to realize for myself that the words in my head telling me I would be a failure, were not true.  That the voice in my heart telling me I could do this, was the one that I should listen to.  That my personal transformation started with a transformation of my inner voice.  I would no longer allow it, to make me feel small and unworthy.   I might have a learning curve, it might take time to go from a beginner to a master, but if I kept putting myself into action, I could do this. 

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

  –  Helen Keller

There are no limits.  There are only plateaus and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

  –  Bruce Lee

It is our fears that create limitations in our lives.  My fear of failure and being laughed at, created the limitation of not enough time.  Everything that happens for us, can be transformed into something of value.  Now my fear of success has me dragging my heels, because I know if I am as successful with writing as I think that I can be, that once again everything in my life will shift and change.  Some of those changes I may not like, and I can’t see how all of the moving parts of my life will continue to fit in that new space.  What will it require me to give up? 

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.

  –  Joseph Campbell

There just comes a time when those thoughts of holding on tightly to everything in your life, are just too heavy.  When there is no other choice but to let go, and let God.  When the compass points in only one direction, the cave you are afraid to enter, because you know what you will find in there.  You will be laid bare with no more excuses; and you will have to own who you are. and do something about it.  That time is now.  If not now, then when?  When the time is all spent, and there is none left? 

Let today be the day you love yourself enough to no longer just dream of a better life; let it be the day you act upon it.

  –  Steve Maraboli

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

  –  Sir Edmund Hillary

Focus on the good that will be gained. Be around the light bringers, the magic makers, the world shifters, the game shakers.  They challenge you, break you open, uplift and expand you.  They don’t let you play small with your life.  These heartbeats are your people.  These people are your tribe.  This is the tribe of LemonadeMakers. 

There is more in us than we know.  If we can be made to believe it, perhaps for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.

  –  Kurt Hahn

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Imagination Embraces All That We Can Be

Do you want to change the world? Have you ever imagined what the world would be like without:

• Hatred?  
• Violence?
• Bullies?
• Prejudice?
• Intolerance?
• Fill in the blank ——-?

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”  – Nelson Mandela

One of my favorite non-profits is “The Unstoppable Foundation”.  Cynthia Kersey started this foundation out a burning desire to make a difference. Over the years that I have been supporting her work we have become friends. They have a sponsor a village model that they use across Africa, which brings not only education, which I believe is primary, but also clean drinking water and sanitation, medical, food and nutrition, and they help educate the parents for empowerment and income training, so they can raise up the entire village.  The plan is that after five years, the villages are self supporting and no longer need any aid.  They already have many children who have graduated and are attending college.  The five year plan is working.

Right now with the global pandemic most of the NGOs in Kenya have left or closed their doors.  The Unstoppable Foundation right now is asking for assistance to help those in need.  The situation is critical because there is no safety net in Kenya.  No stimulus, no CARES Act.  So The Unstoppable Foundation is asking for whatever donations you have in your heart to give.  Help these families in their desperate need.  A little goes a long way.  If you feel called to support a family across the world, click on this link.

What Malala has done so successfully, is that she makes peace heroic. Success comes about not because of what you accomplish for yourself with wisdom, but because of what you inspire others to do. We all love being inspired by a hero. We are all hungry for meaning in our lives. Malala is bringing that meaning to many young girls and women around the world through education with her foundation.

Education is the beginning of the answer.

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”  – Socrates

Education is the beginning of the journey. This is because book knowledge will only get you so far. It starts you down the path – but the path goes much further.  The kindling of the flame is in being curious, in the “wonder” of application of the knowledge.

When you learn something, it starts with the brain, taking it in. Then it is important to download that knowledge down into the heart so that it can be transmuted into wisdom. Wisdom comes from the correct use of that knowledge. Like the American Indian story, we all have two wolves inside of us.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

When you read, learn, and acquire knowledge you are acquiring treasure.  Walking further down this path requires wisdom or application of that knowledge.  It is “the one you feed” that changes you and thereby changes the world.

Cynthia Kersey and Malala both made the choice to feed the one that helps others.  That is their life purpose.  A purpose that comes from the heart.  This wisdom comes from the heart, not the head.

Martin Luther King Jr. stated that we needed to develop a world perspective, instead of a loyalty to some race, tribe or nation. I think that education of girls and young women has really taken this world perspective on, as it is moving from just a few countries around the world, to envelop the whole world. It will take them out of child marriages. It will provide them with both opportunity and choices.

It will not only take these individual women out of poverty, it will lift entire nations our of poverty. It is what will bring the world out of darkness and into the light. It is both hope and peace. Educating the minds, hearts and souls of everyone is what will change the world.

But what about us, as in each of us?  You and me?

“Education is the beginning of transformation.  Dedicate yourself to daily learning via books, audios, seminars and coaching”  – Robin Sharma

Your formal education may have ended years ago, whether it was completing high school, trade school, or college.  But what have you been doing lately to continue your education?  Are you a life long learner, as part of your transformational process?

You may or may not be a book reader.  If you are not a book reader, the use of audio books can make the commute to and from work a more pleasant experience.

I read books every single day in my life.  I love to learn something new.  I love to get that “click” in my brain when something reveals a new meaning to my understanding of life.  I love to find that small change that I can make in my own life from reading the stories of others.  Even my mystery and sci-fi books reveal new ideas that make my imagination take flight.

I love to share with others what I am learning about myself and the world.  I share because this is my passion – to discover new worlds within the one we all live in.  So I ask you to share – what is the book that you read that has most impacted your life?  The book that maybe you have read more than once?  The book that you have recommended to others?

Share your treasure with us.