Strong Women Stand In The Storm And Adjust Their Sails

Let go of what you thought life was all about.  Let go of your expectations of life and people.  Let go of holding on to something so hard that you become brittle, hard, and breakable.  Let go, so that you can move forward.  Be a once in a lifetime kind of woman, build a castle with all of the bricks that others throw at you.  When women are connected and collaborate together, they are the most transformational force on our world.  Probably in our universe.  When you have your whole tribe behind you, you are fearless, because you know that they have your back.

A woman is like a tea bag.  You never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.

  – Eleanor Roosevelt

Have you ever watched someone who isn’t the type of look that is considered beautiful?  Someone who is so confident and centered in who they are, that they radiate something beyond beautiful.  It is like you can’t not look at them.  They are so comfortable being overweight, or too short, or boyish looking – whatever isn’t considered by the masses to be like a model.  Even so they show us the true essence of beauty.

Embracing your true self radiates a natural beauty that cannot be diluted or ignored.  Confident, powerful, untamable, badass you!

  – Dr. Steve Maraboli

Life tests all of us.  We all get some lemons in our life.  Each time we make lemonade from those lemons we rise up.  We become stronger.  And what is so important to remember is that we are ALWAYS strong enough, even when we think we aren’t.  This is what the whole “make lemonade out of lemons” is all about. 

There is a purpose in each lemon that life gives us.  It is to help us reach back to that dream we had when we were a little girl.  To fulfill that promise that you made to yourself that when you grew up, you were going to . . . , whatever that fill in the blank is.  Don’t disappoint that little girl.  Go out there and create the fulfillment of that dream.  There are thousands of other little girls who are looking for inspiration and encouragement, that they too can fulfill their dreams.  Be brave and be that woman!  Be an empowered woman with vision.  Give to yourself the grace to achieve what you set out to do, and self awareness to do it with a soft heart and honest open arms.

Ask for what you want, and be prepared to get it.  

  –  Maya Angelou

It is better to have a heart without words, unable to express what is crying to come out, than to offer words without the hearts emotion contained within them.  Prayer is a longing of the soul to be expressed in a way, that mere words cannot but fail to express.  The heart speaks to the soul, and it listens to what the soul has to say.  This is the birth of inspiration, the breath of life itself.  Hold on to the vision in your heart.  Trust the process, life’s lemons, in order to bring that vision into reality.

We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free.

  – Kavita Ramdas

I heard the expression today of “The Moon Shot”.  What it was referencing was the attitude that was displayed when President Kennedy said that we were going to the moon.  No one had any idea how to do it, but he energized the nation to figure out a way to do it.  Give your life a “Moon Shot” experience.  Shoot for something that you have never done, or don’t even think is possible for your to do.  Give it everything you have to bring that moon shot vision into your own reality.  Believe.  Act as if.  Live like you have already accomplished it.

I am not what has happened to me.  I am what I choose to become.

  – Carl Jung

As you move down the path of creating your own Moon Shot experience, forgive yourself whenever what you are trying doesn’t work.  Forgive others when they don’t believe in you, and even when they try to stop you.  Forgive God whenever you hit the frustration button and start blaming him, bemoaning your life experience.  Forgive any situations that create heartache, anger, and bitterness in your life.  Forgive yourself for not being, or doing something different.  Let all of the anger, fear, frustration – all of the negative emotions that you have been carrying around, flow free from your heart and soul.  Stop giving failure a negative meaning.  Realize that when you turn that lemon into lemonade, the experience becomes a powerful blessing to you and others.

There is no force equal to a woman determined to rise.

  – W.E.B. Dubois

Self awareness is an amazing gift that we can give to ourselves.  Take notice of what shows up in your life.  Who and what you are attracting into your life.  There is a map inside of you, that tells you where you are, and where you are going.  But you have to be self aware to read it.  Otherwise, it is like listening to six people talk at once, each one in a foreign language.  You know they are saying something important, but you can’t make head or tails of it.  Self awareness is necessary to move the mountains in our life.  Self awareness is what makes life’s journey a full on mountain climbing experience. 

I know it’s hard to women to tap into that feeling of self-worth.  We need to get the message out that you are valued, your are a goddess and don’t forget that.

  – Jennifer Lopez

Don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done.  That you aren’t capable of doing it.  Don’t hide yourself.  Don’t demean yourself.  Don’t let anyone or anything get in your way.  Claw your way up and out, fight for what you believe in, for your dreams and visions.  Choose your battles and don’t give up.  Be the strong, powerful, confident, driven woman that you are.

I believe I’ve always been a big believer in equality.  No one has ever been able to tell me I couldn’t do something because I was a girl.

  – Anne Hathaway

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Don’t Wait, Do It Now

Hopefully I am not the only one that this happens to.  On my commute to work and back to home, my brain is so busy detailing everything I have to do – both at work and at home.  The minute I step into my office or my home, that list magically hides itself.  I forgot most of what I have to do, being busy doing so many other things.  Then the minute my head hits the pillow, the list reappears as a list of everything that I didn’t get done.  Does anyone else go through this?

Why is taking action so hard?  We have these dreams, passions around our life.  The space between a dream and reality is where all of the action has to take place.  We want whatever the dream is.  We talk about it all of the time.  “Don’t wait for your feelings to change to take the action.  Take the actions and your feelings will change”  Barbara Baron. 

We tend to put off the hard parts.  The parts where we aren’t sure what to do.  I do it everyday.  Put off the conversation I don’t want to have with a friend, relative or co-worker.  Put off studying for a test because I am afraid of failing it.  Not asking for what I want, because what if they say no?  I am sure that this list could go on forever.  The key is to just take a first step, then one more.  Don’t look at the whole mountain that needs to be climbed, just look at the next few steps.

I always think about physical workouts here.  If you are on a treadmill, and your goal is five miles.  You start to get worn out and out of breath on mile three.  Those next two miles seems like impossible.  Seems like forever.  Seems like Mount Everest.  Seems like you can’t do it.  But here is where a little stubbornness comes in handy.  You just tell yourself five more minutes, and you take the next step and the next step, and before you know it, that fifth mile is done.  Be proud of every next step, not just the one that puts you over the goal.

“We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”  Aristotle.  It is important that these lists are not just a grocery list or a laundry list.  Things that take up time and space, but are not really taking a step.  That is the first step of procrastination.  What I call the shiny object or squirrel.  Have you seen the cartoon, where the dog is doing or saying something, then shouts squirrel and takes off right in the middle of it?  That is a squirrel.  I come into my office to write this blog post.  Then I see some mail that I forgot to take care of yesterday and so I do that.  Then an email comes in, so I read that.  Then I think of something I wanted to research and I do that.  Two hours later, I haven’t written a single word of the post I came in to write.  That is chasing the squirrel.  I didn’t really take a single step toward writing that post, and now my time is gone.

The best that we can do is to promise ourselves to be better and do better.  The best that we can do is to keep trying, putting one foot in front of the other.  To ask ourselves, what is the most important thing I can do right this moment to take that next step, and then just take it.  Don’t wait for permission.  Don’t wait for the perfect moment.  Don’t wait for anything, just take that next step.  We might fall down.  We might get hurt or do what we later judge to be the wrong thing.  It doesn’t in the big picture matter.  What matters is that we took what we saw to be the next step.  The funny thing about life, is that those steps that we judged to be wrong, are usually the steps that give us what we need for a future step.  So that, in the long run, none of the steps were really wrong.

“I promise myself,

To be so strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person I meet.

To make all my friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make my optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To give so much time to improving myself that I have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of myself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds.

To live in the faith that the whole world is on my side, so long as I am true to the best that is in me”

Christian D. Larson

Perspective Is A Powerful 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 you 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 multiple points of view. The marriage of those points of view is probably the closest that you can ever come to the “whole truth”. 

Does your story say that roses have thorns, or that thorns have roses?  It all depends on your perspective.  Both statements are true, even though it might seem contradictory.

“We don’t see things are they are.  We see them as we are” – Anis Nin

Perspective is from Latin perspectus “clearly perceived,” and is a way of regarding situations, facts, etc… and judging their relative importance.  It is something that changes in our lives as your lives change.  The perspective you have about something gets altered by life, by your own changes.  It gets altered by time. 

Have you ever had something happen to you, that at the time you viewed as the end of your world?  Something that you defined as “the worst day of your life”.  Then as the occurrence plays out over time, you do a 180-degree shift on your interpretation of the event. 

Say that you have planned the ultimate vacation, going on a cruise ship across the ocean.  Then at the last second you couldn’t go.  You are devastated. 

What if your once in a lifetime vacation was on the Titanic?  Now, whatever happened to keep you from your vacation possibly saved your life.  Now it might have shifted from the worst day.  It might now be the luckiest day.

“What you see depends not only on what you look at, but also, on where you look from” – James Deacon

You have this habit of judging yourself and others by how you respond to things in life.  You have this idea that emotions have some sort of timetable to them.  That things such as a death in the family should have a mourning time of no more than one year.  A job loss, a week or two.  A divorce should be over in six months.  And so on.  If you process it quicker, you must not have depth of feelings.  Longer, then you need to learn to let it go.  These are all just arbitrary perspectives.

I was reading a story about a mom that had lost her daughter to sudden infant death syndrome.  She was currently 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 still hurting so much.

The therapist used words that transformed how she was viewing her grief. She said you are just very sad.  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.  In fact, it was the bottling it up, that was not allowing the emotions to pass through.

“You have the capability to change your life all with a simple shift in perspective” – Demi Lovato

You shouldn’t be embarrassed or ashamed of expressing your genuine feelings.   Stories allow you the space to heal the pain.  Once you have healed the pain, perspective helps you to stop being a victim.

Life isn’t always fair, and no one should lose a child, no matter their age. But it happens.  Sometimes the best thing you can do, is to not obsess about how things are.  Instead take a deep breath in faith, that everything will work itself out for the best.

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for” – To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Every day if you look for it, you can see evidence of injustice happening all over the world. It is easy to get lost in the emotions created when it happens to you or to someone you love. You see evidence of it in the news, when the world erupts in moral outrage over terrorists’ bombings, the use of a truck to run down crowds of people, or the kidnapping of the schoolgirls in Nigeria. 

Between 276 – 329 girls were kidnapped (depending on news sources) in 2014 and even though many years have passed and some of them have been released, many are still missing.  Yet the world went largely silent two years later.

You have large and small things that happen to you personally.  Your friends and family can negatively impact on your life. But hidden in the heartache and challenges are golden nuggets that are the gift of the trials and tribulations that you 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 you. When my nephew was murdered, and my sister’s 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 nephew’s story. So, I created LemonadeMakers.  I want to help the small community nonprofits be more successful. I want to help encourage people to use transformation to make positive changes in their lives.  I use my writing to do this, and I am constantly looking for ways to take it one more step.

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 everyone who wants to make a difference in their lives and in the world to do so.  Out of the pain of injustice, loss, and deep mourning came something good.

“My desire is to stand by the fire that burns inside of you” –Martina McBride

The smallest change in perspective can change a life. See life with new eyes and look for the gift. Pull out the telescope (big picture) or binoculars (detailed picture) and peer deep inside yourself. Dig deep and find the gold of the experience. Change the story and realize just how blessed you are.  Do your roses have thorns, or your thorns have roses?   Do you see weeds or wishes? 

“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” – Asha Tyson

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. 

Serenity Prayer For Laughter

“Through humor you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers.  And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be you can survive it.”  Unknown.  Humor is definitely a survival tool.  But it can also be a thriving tool.  I love finding the humor of a situation.

20+ years ago, my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  A nine centimeter tumor was attached to one lung, wrapped around her main aorta and attached to the other lung.  No operations could help her.  The radiation was able to slow it down, and buy her one year.  The last two and one-half months, my aunt, her best friend and myself formed a team of taking care of her 24/7 because she had become bedridden.  We are a funny bunch and so we found these t-shirts at the Hallmark store and wore them all of the time.  Our reason was to break up the tension that would form when our friends and relative came by to visit and basically pay their last respects. 

When they would visit they never knew what to say, so they would ask her how she was doing.  She was dying of cancer, how do you answer that question?  My mom didn’t want to talk about her pain, as she didn’t want to bring the energy down.  She wanted to share fun memories, and find something to laugh about.  So that is what we did, we found the humor in dying of lung cancer.  I am sure that some thought that we were strange, but what it did was to give me a wonderful gift.  I had the privilege of making my mom happy, right up to the end.  I discovered the true meaning of finding the gold in any situation.  I really was fine.

Every time you find humor in a situation, you win at life.  Reality has unintended humor laced throughout it.  It is up to us to find the thread and pull it.  “I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.”  Frank A Clark.  Life is really made up of small things, tiny moments.  That was my big discovery in taking care of my mom.  Those tiny moments can be saved.  Then you pull them out when you need them.  A touch, a smile, laughter.  Laughter that is so hard that it actually hurts your stomach.  The kind of memories that even now you giggle over.

Think of those movies that make you laugh.  Martin Short in Pure Luck.  The Pink Panther movies.  T.V shows like Fawlty Towers with John Cleese.  The kind of shows that you have watched so many times, that you start laughing before the scene actually starts.  Don Knotts and Tim Conway in any movie they made.  The Carol Burnett Show.  These are all my list.  What’s on yours?

So  my encouragement to everyone is to look for the humor, laugh at life.  Laugh at yourself.  Experience life as it is meant to be lived.  Write your own story like Martin Short, Bill Murray, or Steve Martin is going to be producing and acting in your life as a movie.  Live your life like it is your favorite story from childhood – the one that you read over and over again.  I have read The Lord of The Rings series so many times.  I am riding across the plains with Gandalf, fighting the battles and winning the victory.  I mourn the losses and I get right back on the horse to ride forth again and again.  It is the journey that tells me who I am and who I am becoming.

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

“Your life is your life

Don’t let it be clubbed into dark submission

Be on the watch

There are ways out

There is a light somewhere

It may not be much light but

It beats the darkness

Be on the watch

The gods will offer you chances

Know them

Take them

You can’t beat death but

You can beat death in life.  Sometimes

And the more often you learn to do it

The more light there will be

Your life is your life

Know it while you have it

Your are marvelous

The gods wait to delight

In you” 

In closing, I invite you to check out our free 2017 LemonadeMakers calendar.  Just click home on this webpage and you will see our free offer.  It is made up of our audiences favorite graphics from our blog posts.  Have a Happy Holiday and wishing all of your an Amazing New Year. 

Choices, Chances, Changes, and The Courage To Make Them

An old Cherokee told his grandson, “My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth.”
The boy thought about it, and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”
The old man quietly replied, “The one you feed.”

I have always loved this story because it is so on point. You have choices on how you interpret things. You have choices on how you feel. You can go down the positive, optimistic road.  Or you can go down the negative, pessimistic road. I try very hard to go down the positive road. 

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.  –  Nelson Mandela

You can change your life by having the courage to bring into your life something that was never fostered or nurtured in you as a child.  All of the good wolfs qualities, joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth come from having a positive self-worth. Just because you were not raised as a positive person seeking joy, peace, love, hope in your life, doesn’t mean that you can’t live your life from that place.

The pathway here of the good wolf is the same one as Robert Frost’s less traveled road. Many people feed the “evil” wolf’s feelings of drama – anger, jealousy, greed – they blame all of their problems on someone else. Nothing is their fault. They just have bad luck. Can’t get ahead, and so on, and so on. The “evil” wolfs path is paved with bad choices made in the past, and excuses for what is happening in the present. 

You have two choices,

accept conditions as they exist,

or accept the responsibility to change them.

 

If you find that you have strayed into feeding the “evil” wolf, you can stop feeding him. We all have times that we make poor decisions. You have the power to change circumstances immediately by accepting responsibility for where you are.  For all of the choices you have made.  To not make any more excuses for your mistakes.  As the saying goes, “the buck stops here”.  Just start making better choices.

Sometimes you think you are making a good choice, only to discover you didn’t.  How can you tell which road to choose? You can tell the difference in how the energy or vibrations make you feel in your body as you contemplate your decisions.

When you are compromising your spirit, it feels wrong. You might get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. But every time you make a good choice, a positive choice, even if it has negative consequences, you feel lighter, cleaner in your spirit.

Picking a path with heart – Carlos Castaneda

Choose the path that takes you where you need to go. It is the path of growth.

Do what you are afraid to do.

It is how good character is developed. 

 

Embrace, accept and celebrate each choice you make that keeps you walking your own path in life.  Embrace it and own it when the bad wolf wins. Stop feeding it and start feeding the good wolf again.

It is easy to wander off the path.  To get distracted.  Each minute gives you a new chance to get back on your own path, making better choices.

You have the choice every day to be just like the crowd, asleep at the wheel, and just existing in life.  To get distracted by the bright shiny lights.  To get so busy with life’s distractions that you fall back asleep.  

You can always choose again, to wake up and to be different.  Every choice you make, makes you who you are.  You can choose to be distinct.  To be what only you can be. 

I choose to live by choice not by chance,

To be motivated, not manipulated,

To be useful, not used,

To make change, not excuses,

To excel, not compete,

I choose self-esteem, not self-pity,

I choose to listen to my inner voice,

Not to listed to the random opinions of others . . .

   – InspirationBoost.com

When I think of this, I immediately think of the photos of the little old ladies in New York City.  They dress up in wild colors.  They wear outrageous hats.  They have style.  They are saying “Look at me, that’s right, take a second or third look”.  They crack me up, because they don’t care if you are judging them, because they are having too much fun being an original distinctive wild woman.  Their life viewpoint, have fun and give people something to talk about.

Let Your Inner Child Whisper In Your Ear

At some point in your life, you were told to grow up. Stop acting like a child. Hide your feelings. Be an adult. Be more serious, and so on. You lose a vital part of who you are when you listen to that. You bury it so deep that you forget it is even there. You begin to sleepwalk through your entire life.

“Are you feeling a bit shaken, maybe stirred, maybe fearful and doubtful and completely utterly wildly terrified?  Good.  Keep going”  – Victoria Erickson

You “release the Kraken”, the Inner Queen of your life.  You stop the drama.  You stop being so sad, or angry.  You stop trying to be all things for all people.  You just let all of that stuff go.  You are no longer afraid of who you are.  You realize that you have always been more than enough.  You finally get that caring for yourself is an act of love, and the only way you can survive.

“You can’t give up on something that your heart is still rooting for, no matter how hard the fall is.  Your heart is the ultimate master.  It knows the things the mind doesn’t yet have an answer for.  It leads the way out of your darkest moments.  It’s your one and only Chief of Staff. You have the power to thrive under any circumstances, as long as you use your heart as the compass”– Andrea Balt

This inner child has so much imagination. They have such enthusiasm for life. They don’t see what is, they see what might be. The possibilities of endless wonder. It is having fun today, instead of planning for it on your yearly vacation. Picture in your mind a steep hill.  You are at the top the hill looking down.  You are on your bike, and you are about to start down the hill, to break a world speed record.  You can see everyone you know at the bottom of the hill cheering you on.  Your best friends, your brothers and sisters, even your mom and dad. 

Imagine the story you will be telling ten years from now.  Is it the story about the wild ride down the hill, or how you carefully rode down the hill with the brakes on all the way to play it safe?  Celebrate your inner child and fly down that hill!

“The most potent muse of all is your own inner child” – Stephen Nachmanovitch

That inner child doesn’t wallow in disappointment. If the idea fails to work as planned, they simply dust themselves off and start a new plan. If the child has a fight with their best friend, five minutes later it is forgiven and forgotten. They don’t just run down the street; they leap down it.

Every minute is to be filled with a sense of wonder and joy.  That inner child is waiting to take your hand and dance with you through the fields of flowers, to laugh rolling down the hillside.

If you still have that child locked up and buried deep inside, I encourage you to set it free. Let it explore and come up with fun plans for your life. It’s magical looking at your life through the kaleidoscope and spinning the designs. Imagination will get you everywhere.  Answer the toy phone and see who is calling you. 

Give that spirit of the child over to your personal genius. See what you can discover about your purpose that you didn’t know.  You will be amazed by how wonderful and fun life can be when you aren’t supervised by your inner critic.

“So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us” – Gaston Bachelard

When you have big dreams, you become a person of vision.  When you follow that vision, you have the passion, strength and patience to change the world.  You are living in a time right now, where men and women of vision are about to make huge changes in the world.  When a “new normal” is about to be created.

Don’t let your mind or anyone else tell you that you can’t be a big part of bringing those changes into reality.  Your dreams are valid.

“Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”  – Steve Jobs

Today realize that you are old enough to start reading fairy tales again.  Holding the hand of your inner child, step through the mirror and see what Wonderland has in store for you. Visit Neverland and see if you can fly. Go looking for treasures on Treasure Island. Explore the deep oceans with Captain Nemo.  

All of these stories have such vital life lessons in them. They can help you understand deep things about yourself. People may think that you are crazy for doing so, but I have it on the best authority that “all of the best people are”.

The Power Of Pause

 

You are all so busy, that even in the moments when you aren’t crossing something off your list, you fill in the space with something that still doesn’t allow the space to “JUST BE”. When I am resting I am usually still doing something that I call relaxing, like reading a book or solving a word puzzle. And while those things are relaxing for me, I am still in “doing mode” – beat the puzzle or learn something new from the book.

“Learn to pause or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you”  – Doug King

Why is it so hard to “just be”? I love this photo because cats are excellent “just be” creatures. What is the difference between us and the cat in this example? The cats isn’t afraid of:

• I will be irrelevant if I can’t prove you need me every moment
• I won’t measure up to the “super woman” who is the best friend, wife and mother, and corporate executive
• I won’t get everything done
• I am what I do, so I have to be doing every moment

If something isn’t on this list, I am sure that you could add 100 more things that you are afraid of missing, or doing, or being – that stands in your way of “just being”.  They even have an acronym for it “FOMO” – fear of missing out.  You had it even as a child – it’s the reason why you didn’t want to go to bed.  You were sure you were going to miss out on something important.

“Too many people go through life without pausing to enjoy what they have”  – David Gemmell

What is just pausing? Being disconnected from the world for just a few minutes. Check into what you are feeling. Quiet your mind. Look around you at the beauty of your surroundings.  Ignore just for moment, if the windows need cleaning, that you just spotted a spider web, or there is dust on the piano.  It is taking the time to replenish, to give yourself permission to rest and truly relax.

“Something precious is lost if we rush headlong into the details of life without pausing for a moment to pay homage to the mystery of life and the gift of another day”  – Kent Nexbum

Why is this so important?

“Taking time to do nothing often brings everything into perspective”  –   Doe Zantamata

What I find for myself personally, is that when I am avoiding something, I get really busy, usually deep cleaning, which means I take the entire room apart and clean everywhere.  I move all of the furniture, I decide that the bookcase needs to go into another room, which means that all of the books get removed, etc….

“Don’t mistake movement for achievement.  It’s easy to get faked out by being busy.  The question is:  “Busy doing what?”  – Jim Rohn

You get busy to avoid the thing you don’t want to do.  You get busy to avoid the thing you don’t want to face.  You get busy and stay busy and ignore the calling of your soul.  You don’t want to face this thing, and so you get so busy that you forget it for just a little while.

At any moment you can say enough…, You am not going to avoid this any longer.  You can radically change the course of your life, your purpose, your destiny.  You have the power, the faith, and the courage to follow your hearts calling.  You have the ability to pause, to pray, and to stop and practice deep listening to what your soul is calling you to do.  You can pause and just listen.

 “Pause and remember – Change will happen the moment you have the courage to change”  –  Jennifer Young

The courage to change is folded into the realization that every change in your life has been meaningful.  Some were life’s lemons and they tore you asunder.  You may have thought that they were going to be the end of you.  But instead they made you smarter, stronger, and wiser than you were before they blew through your life.

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”  – Unknown

Other changes were easy and like a light summer breeze came and went without too much commotion.  Even so, they changed you in a very meaningful matter.  It revived you.

Introspection, reflection, relaxation, they all mean that you have to take a moment, a pause to let your mind wrap around the changes and accept them in a way that moves you forward in progress.

“When things get too messed up, life seems too stressed, and  you feel trapped in circumstantial webs.  Take a pause, take a breath, break free from all the thoughts and then march ahead”  – shrawanidas

So, pause and practice being a cat and JUST BE.

“Your inner child gets It all, believes it all, hopes for it all and is the only guardian worthy of your heart. That child knows that life – which runs on love and feasts on creativity – is on your side, and that the universe conspires with you, not against you, to help you spread that wild, crazy, messy love through your own story. Please, don’t grow up…” – Andrea Belt

 

Our Deepest Fear About Ourself Is Our Deepest Treasure

 How can a fear that eats us alive, also be a great treasure?  Marianne Williamson has the best answer I have ever heard to this question.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  You’re playing small does not serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

  – Marianne Williamson 

As children we freely express ourselves.  Our emotions flow through us, one minute we are crying like the world has ended, and the next minute we are smiling and serenely happy with the smallest thing that has grabbed our attention.  As we grow older we somehow come under this trance of fearing to be different than everyone else.  We feel like we are not good enough, unworthy in some way and we start striving to earn a place at the table. 

The human longings that are deep inside of us never go away.  They exist across cultures; they exist throughout life . . . , our deepest longing was to know and be known . . . , it’s now also our deepest fear.

  –  John Ortberg

The great thing is that at any moment we can begin to awaken to the truth of who we are.  We can stop pushing our true selves into the dark corner.  Instead we can be setting fire to every thought and feeling, burning it up with dragon fire.  We can set it free to soar high into the night sky to light up the darkness inside of us.  We can free ourselves of thinking that we are not good enough. not pretty enough, not talented enough, or not smart enough.  Instead of fearing the bright lights that we are, we can illuminate the night sky, and help those around us realize that they too can set themselves free.

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.  Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

  – Rainer Maria Rilke

It takes a lot of courage to risk being alive without self imposed limits.  To express who we are.  When I think back to my biggest fears in life, I can see where those fears at times both served to protect me, and at others times caused tremendous harm in my life.  The real trick is to discern when the fear is protecting us, and when it is limiting us.  Every fear in our life has the potential to become a shadow. A shadow is in every folded up place.  It is in those folded up places, that we are not living our life as who we truly are.

I want to unfold.  I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

  – Rainer Maria Rilke

As we have journeyed down life’s paths, we have all experienced someone putting us down for something we said or did.  I remember being ashamed of being an “A” student.  All of my friends were making fun of me, saying I thought I was too good to be hanging out with them.  I remember getting “B’s” on purpose, so that I could fit in better with my friends. 

In every heart there is an inner room, where we can hold our greatest treasures and our deepest pain.

  – Marianne Williamson

So for a lot of years as an adult, I would give my ideas at work to someone else, so they could get the credit for it, because I was afraid to be judged as thinking that I was smarter than my fellow employees.  This created what is termed a shadow – it was created by my pretending to be someone different than I really was.  I thought I was protecting myself.  In reality I was hurting myself, because it held me back from being recognized as a valued employee.

Fear is an idea-crippling, experience-crushing, success-stalling inhibitor inflicted only by yourself.

  – Stephanie Melish

We all have these gifts or talents that we bury.  Our light scares us.  So rather than risk being seen, being noticed, letting everyone know how powerful we are – we hide in just existing.  The moment that you stop being afraid of being different in some way from everyone else is when you experience true freedom.  We don’t realize what a weight that we carry around, hiding from who we really are, until you release it and let it go. 

Draw a map.  Find a path.  Take a breath, and run.

  – Unknown

For years I would grow my hair really long, and then I would go get it cut shoulder length and donate it to Locks of Love to make wigs for children with cancer.  I always remember how light my head would feel, when I got my long hair cut.  It always surprised me how much weight it felt like on my head, but how when I would hold the braid it was so light. 

As our fears grown within us, it is like that long hair.  We don’t notice the weight we are carrying around.  Because it grew slowly, the fear slowly weighted us down.  When we release the fear, like the long hair getting cut, we become lighter.  The way to release the fear is with love. 

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.  Fear of the unknown is our greatest fear.  Many of us would enter a tiger’s lair before we would enter a dark cave.  While caution is a useful instinct, we lose many opportunities and much of the adventure of life if we fail to support the curious explorer within us.

  –  Joseph Campbell

When we are consciously living a life of love for ourselves and others, then we shine our lights brightly because we realize it is our purpose to help others shine their bright lights.  The meaning of life is not expressed by the size of our bank accounts, the title we achieve at a job; the fame and fortune that we seek out.  The meaning of life lies within us living our lives from that place of love.  Letting our lights shine out so that we can share the true treasure of who we are. 

Who am I, you ask?

I am made from all the people I’ve encountered and all the things I have experienced.

Inside, I hold the laughter of my friends, the arguments with my parents, the chattering of your children, and the warmth from kind strangers.

Inside, there are stitching’s from cracked hearts, bitter words from heated arguments, music that gets me through, and emotions I cannot convey.

I am made from all these people and moments.

That is who I am.

  – Ming D Liu

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Self Confidence Is The Best Outfit, Rock It, Own It

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

  – Rumi

As I learned to love myself, my relationship with everyone changed. 

People who lack the clarity, courage, or determination to follow their own dreams will often find ways to discourage yours.  Live your truth and don’t EVER stop!

  – Dr. Steve Maraboli

Loving myself leads to a clarity of my mind and heart. It gave me the courage to say “no more” hiding behind the masks. To say “no more” living in fear of what others will think of me. To say “yes” to me! The heavy armor I had built around me to protect me was in fact made of fear and stress. As I dropped it all behind me, I was left floating free in joy and freedom. 

Love yourself enough to take the actions required for your happiness…, Love yourself enough to cut yourself loose from the ties of the drama-filled-past…, Love yourself enough to  move on.

  –  Dr. Steve Maraboli

I knew in my bones why I was here on earth. I may not always be clear on what to do next, but I am clear as crystal as to where I am going. Clarity of mind is how you find purpose in life. It in turn is linked to clarity of passion, which is the fire of your soul to fulfill your purpose.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of their heart.

  – Rumi

I believe that when we tear down the barriers we have built against loving ourselves, that we dispel the veils of illusion that obscure the direction of our life path. Love is an energy that engages us in life in a whole new way.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

  – Maya Angelou

Life is about breaking our own limitations. It is about outgrowing who we were. It is about living our lives, by outgrowing ourselves over and over. It is about being curious and opening doors and finding new paths to explore.

Confidence is the ability to feel beautiful, without needing someone to tell you.

  – Mandy Hale

There is a voice that comes from deep inside of you.  Sometimes it doesn’t even use words.  Instead you feel something in your heart, or in your gut.  You just have a knowing about something.  Listen to that voice.  The voice of intuition is your souls voice.  It knows who you really are, without the self judgment, the limiting beliefs, the lies that you have told yourself for years.  Instead, look into the mirror, looking into your own eyes, and saying the words below.  For me it was the hardest thing I have ever done.  It was harder than giving birth without drugs (lol) after nineteen hours of labor.

I am pretty enough (beauty comes in all shapes and sizes)

I am smart enough (I can learn whatever I need to know)

I am talented enough (everyone has their own unique qualities of divine genius, mine is writing) 

I am loud enough (my voice is worth being heard)

I am tall enough (3″ heels work wonders)

I am “normal” enough (what is normal anyway?)

I am strong enough ( I know my weaknesses and move forward through them)

I am experienced enough ( I have learned from my mistakes)

I am more than “ENOUGH” for anything and anyone just by being myself

Your heart is the size of an ocean.  Go find yourself in its hidden depths.

  – Rumi

Life is a journey of first learning to love yourself, and then extending that love to everyone you encounter.  It is putting the best possible explanation to every situation.  When we truly love ourselves, it tells others how to treat us.  While there will be those few people who are so dysfunctional as to take advantage of us, we will receive way more in blessings than we would ever lose. 

Once you reunite with your clarity, let it lubricate your parched soul, be the wave you glide on and the energy you give your body to.  Allow it to be the friend you become powerfully fearless with, and the very medicine you need to dissolve your empty parts.  Let it halt your restless yearning and lead your beautiful heart.

  – Victoria Erickson of Rebelle Society

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Happy Thanksgiving

I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for becoming part of our community.  Thank you for taking the time to read our posts.  For commenting and liking them and most of all for sharing them with others.

I wanted to let you know that you have all become special to me, because through you I have realized that I am not the only one who thinks about what I write.  Thanks to you I have realized that there are many people in this world who see the possibilities that our world can become a better place.

I also wanted to take this day for helping me to be able to receive the love that you have shown to me, in encouraging me to continue to write my heart out on this page.  I always dreamed of being a writer, since I was a very small girl.  But I didn’t think that I had any talent.  I didn’t think that what I wanted to talk about, was anything that anyone would want to read.  You have no idea of the joy you have brought into my life.

Thank you!  You are a blessing in my life.  We are a blessing to each other.

Overcome Fear, Behold Wonder

In the world, in this moment, many are being overcome with fears.  Fears of the pandemic.  Fears of losing your elderly loved ones to illness and disease.  Fears can be based on past experience, of knowledge of something that has happened in the past.  This past fear is then projected into the immediate future of a danger that is seeking you.

Instead, Take a deep breath.  Just be aware and conscious of just this single moment.  This moment of inhalation or exhalation of your breath.  When you just concentrate on your breathing, you see how to live outside of this kind of fear.

In this moment, you are alive, breathing.  Your eyes are taking in what is around you.  Your ears are hearing sounds both from near and far.  You feel the softness of the material of the clothes you are wearing.  Maybe the way the tag on the collar of your shirt irritates your skin.  You think to yourself that you have to remember to use the scissors and cut that tag off.

If you have been outside, you might feel the rain drenched softness of the ground under your feet.  The soft dirt clings to the bottom of shoes as you sink into it with each step.  You smell the scent of rosemary as you walk along the path, its heady scent drifting on the breeze.  The sounds of the waves crashing down on the shore drowns out the call of the sea gulls, as they ride the air currents high above you.  You are awake and aware of the wonder of life itself.

If are in a state of fear, you won’t be aware of any of the sounds or smells of nature around you.  So, your choice in this moment is are you to be overcome with fear, or filled with wonder?

Think of those advertisements you might see for going to Disneyland or Disneyworld.  They are filled with the young children who can’t sleep because tomorrow is the special day when they enter the world of magic.  Their faces are the epitome of excitement and wonder.

When was the last time, that look was on your face?  The last time when you dropped the heavy burden of fears, and beheld the magic of life?  This photo reflects the majesty of our world, the beauty of creation and it is how you behold the wonder of life.

Remember the movie “Dune”?  The line around fear has stayed with me, Frank Herbert was a master with this thought around fear.

Fear is something that you can’t run away from.  Running away only puts more distance between you and the solution to your fear.   The only way to deal with fear, is to face the illusions that it brings.  You can only be fearless, when you learn to recognize the illusions from what is true and real.

“Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth, any cause to wonder that he does not hear it”  – Tacitus

Isn’t that something to wonder about?  This concept that you create the fears out of your own illusions, is something to think deeply about.  Illusions usually come from thinking that there isn’t enough of something that you want.

Not enough money, not enough jobs, not enough food, not enough of . . ,   what would happen to your fears if you could sincerely and honestly allowed a moment of perfect freedom into your world?  If you could truly believe that there is more than enough, and it is just waiting for you to step out of the illusion to get it?

I couldn’t find the person who wrote the “Reality of Fear”, but I loved it.  It captures the illusion of fear, in that it convinces you that the lie is truth.

You are scared of the dark it says, when really what you’re scared of is what you have projected into that darkness.  You can’t see in that darkness, the possibilities of what might be there.  A thief will rob you.  A killer will murder you.

Your mind freezes us with “what if’s”.  And the “what if’s” are made up in your mind.  The monster under the bed is actually the fears in your mind, manifesting the illusion into something appearing real.

Reality of Fear

You’re are not scared of the dark . . .  you’re scared of what’s in it

You’re not afraid of heights . . .  you’re afraid of falling

You’re not afraid of the people around you . . .  you’re afraid of rejection

You’re not afraid of love . . .  you’re afraid of not being loved

You’re not afraid to let go . . .  you’re afraid to accept the reality that its gone

You’re not afraid to try again . . .  you’re just afraid of getting hurt for the same reason

What if you took all of those fears and said this instead?

Fly Through Illusions To Reach The Magic of Knowing Yourself

The hardest thing is to really know yourself.  You are kind of like one of those hidden drawers in a roll top desk.  There are a lot of things to see on the desk, which is how you show up in the world.  It hides all of the physical aspects of the desk.  Then when you start looking at the desk itself, and open the roll top there is another layer of things to get distracted by.  All of the obvious nooks and crannies and drawers.

If you really examine the desk inch by inch you discover that something seems to be a little off.  Being curious you start pushing and pulling on the wood of the desk.  Inch by inch your fingers keep looking for the hidden lever, until the hidden drawer suddenly pops open.  You’ve found the real you.  It takes concentration, patience and the ability to be curious instead of judgmental.

“Knowing others is wisdom.  Knowing yourself is enlightenment”  – Lao Tzu

So what does this really mean? Taking this even a step further, is accepting what you discover about yourself.

“When you know yourself, you are empowered.  When you accept yourself, you are invincible”  – Tina Lifford

For me, it is how as children you are taught what being successful is.  You are taught to get good grades.  You are taught to go for higher education for a particular type of job.  Medical fields, teaching fields, computer science fields and so on.  You are taught to excel in school and then go to work and excel in your chosen profession.  In school I was lucky enough to have an amazing teacher who taught me to take concepts apart to truly understand what they meant.  To use the How, What, Why kinds of questions to explore what it really means.

“Know who you are.  Know what you want.  Know what you deserve.  And don’t settle for less”  – Tony Gaskins

What you should do first is really understand yourself.  Know what your passions are in life.  What lights you up and makes you happy?  Having a healthy self esteem, that really knows what your values and talents are.  Most importantly, what your personal genius is.  Once you have identified those, you know who you are at your core being.  What makes you happy.  How you can best serve others.

Then it is up to you to go out and find the profession that meets all of the criteria.  Instead you have been so busy being educated, that you missed the importance of self knowledge in the equation.  Instead, you have navigated or simply stumbled into a profession that is not a true calling.  It’s a paycheck.

How did you choose that profession?  Maybe on the advice of a favorite teacher.  Maybe you were steered by your parents into what they felt was a financially rewarding career.  Maybe it was for the glamour of the profession.  In Hollywood many careers are based on dreams of being a Emmy awarded singer, or winning an Oscar.  If it is truly your “dream job”, would you do it even if they didn’t pay you?

What did you really know about this profession before you entered it?  What illusions did you have about what your profession would give back to you?  How did your passion and purpose play into this profession?  What about your personal genius?  That thing you do that is so easy for you, that you don’t understand why everyone can’t do it? Does it fulfill your divine destiny?  Clarity is powerful.  Pay attention to day dreams, where your mind wanders is an important clue to what you are really seeking in life.

“Are we living  our dream?  Or are we living somebody else’s dream?”  – Arianne Huffington

Truly knowing who you are requires a toughness of the soul.  Knowing yourself in all of the ways that matter, means that you:

• Know your own mind; what your thoughts are, what thoughts need changing = attitude
• Knowing your own heart; and following where it leads, the souls direction = faith
• Knowing your own strengths; and playing from that space of strength = grace
• Knowing your own limitations; and accepting them for what they are = peace
• Knowing your own values; and never crossing them = nature
• Know your fears; they tell you what is really important = mastery

“You have to love yourself, because no amount of love from others is sufficient to full the yearning that your soul requires from you” –  Dobinsky

The world needs you to know yourself, be yourself, love yourself and trust yourself.  It is the only way to get from who you are, to who you want to be.  It is the only way to figure our what you need to shift, change, release and transform to get to where you want to be.  Knowing yourself isn’t easy.  It is usually messy, not pretty.

It is about accepting the parts of yourself that even you are hiding from.  It is stripping away the stories that you tell, that whitewash your less than stellar qualities.  It is about taking down the illusions, removing the cloaks of invisibility and loving what remains.  Own the place of your soul.  Stand tall and take inventory.  Then shift and change and transform into the best version of you.  It isn’t easy, but it is priceless.

“Here’s the truth:  people who get what they want tend to be the ones to make the effort to know what they want”  – Martha Beck