Visualization Is Key To Communicate With The Soul

“Hope is the thing with feathers – that perches in the soul – and sings the tune without the words – and never stops – at all” – Emily Dickenson

Hope is perching on your soul and sings to you every day. It tells you these wonderful stories of what you can accomplish in your life. Visualization is critical to hope, as it draws in everything you want in your lives. Hope is what keeps you going when you seem to be failing in bringing your vision into reality.

“I always think it’s important to constantly visualize success, but to consider failure, even for a second, so you can be prepared if things don’t work out just as planned” – Jen Gotch

3M was trying to create super strong adhesives when they accidentally created the glue on “Post it Notes”.  For years they couldn’t figure out how to use this glue in a commercial way. 

Then came a second accident.  One of their employees who sang in a church choir put the glue on a piece of paper so that he wouldn’t lose his place in the hymnal for the songs they were singing.  He discovered it could be removed and put back on without destroying the paper. 

Then employees used it for over 3 years experimenting with it before they started to market it.  Today it is one of their top selling products.  So just because you might fail at what you are trying to bring into reality, doesn’t mean it really is a failure – sometimes it is even better than what you were trying to create.

In the movie “The Secret” and the book that followed it, they talked about visualization. Many people will tell you that they have a hard time visualizing. 

If I tell you not to picture “your kitchen”, 99% of you immediately see your kitchen in your minds eye. It is a little harder to build a visualization of something that you have never seen, but block by block, with practice it can be done.

“By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map.  And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful” – David McCandless

A good question to ask yourself when you’re lost is – “What is the task I now face in my journey?”

It seems easy to get lost in the search for meaning in your life.  Having meaning in your life isn’t some grand purpose of changing the world around you.  It’s about being in right relationship with the world around you.

A different question to ask, is “what is my soul wanting to express through me?”

This gets to the heart of your belief of what your destiny or purpose in life is.  Visualization is key to unlocking that door of opportunity.  Taking the time daily to meditate and allow your soul the space to talk to you is critical to obtaining the key to the deeper questions in your life.

This really helped me to connect deeper to my imagination. When I read books, I now see the story in my mind. The sun shining on the ocean as it flashes bright lights along the cresting waves.  I hear the waves crashing on the shoreline.  I feel the wind blowing and as I dig my toes down into the cool part of the sand, I smell the salt air, the tangy taste of it in the wind.  As I described this did you enter into my visualization?

I can totally enter the world being created by the author. When I am in this space, I see connections and possibilities that I have never thought of before.

This is how I learn from everything that I read, because I enter into a world I have no experience of. I love it when a really good movie or book brings you totally into the world they have created. You forget what you’re experiencing isn’t real.

“If you want to reach a goal, you must see the reaching in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal” – Zig Ziglar

I am sure that you heard the joke of the man who was on his rooftop during a flood.  The water was cresting higher and higher, as it inched up towards the top of the roof he had climbed.  He was sitting there waiting for rescue. He prayed to God for help. 

So, God sends him three chances for help.  The first one was some people with a canoe telling him to come down and get in the canoe.  “No thanks, God is sending me help” he tells them. Then God sends him some people with a motorboat telling him to climb on board and be saved.  “No thanks, God is sending me help” he tells them.  Then God sends him a helicopter and they lower down a ladder, and for the third time he says to his potential rescuers, “no thanks, God is sending me help”.

As the flood waters come higher, they eventually swamp the roof, and the man drowns. Upon entering heaven, he asks God, “why didn’t you save me?” God says, I sent a canoe, a motorboat and a helicopter, but you refused to get in.  We don’t know with the joke what sort of help he was expecting.  We just know that he kept declining the opportunity to save his life.  Maybe he had no idea, and so with no real visualization he didn’t recognize the opportunities.

Visualization is how you can attract the things you need, to bring your goals and dreams into reality. You have to remember that part of your journey, is the lessons you learn along the way.  By visualizing how you can grow and change, you speed toward our destination. By visualizing into the space, the gratitude of already having it, and using all of the senses in the visualization – you make it so real, that the divine opens doors of opportunity for you to receive it.

Synchronicity will bring it into your life. You have to take the risk; you have to grab the opportunity.  If you won’t get into the boat – then it goes past you and is gone.

The most important thing for you is to look for the doors and opportunities and grab them. Go through those doors, no matter how scared you are. Take the leap of faith that this is your answer.  Climb the ladder being presented.  Get into the helicopter.

Choose To Evolve. Choose Love. Be In Gratitude

Do Not Let Fear Hold You Back

Never let your fears hold you back from pursuing your hopes – John F. Kennedy

• How does one become fearless?
• Can you really be totally fearless?
• Would you want to?

When I think that fear is standing in the way of something that I want to do, then I need to do something to break up that fear into smaller pieces.  My own experience in life so far, has been that some measure of fear is healthy.  It helps me to not be stupid and hurt myself.  It also feeds into my spirit of victory when I accomplish something by growing through the fear and doing it anyway.

• So how do you control fear in your life?
• How do you control your life at all?
• How do you figure out what is within your control and what isn’t?

Part of it starts with understanding what is and is not under your control.  When you accept responsibility for and control over, such things as your judgments, impulses, and desires, then your life changes completely.  These are things that are within your ability to control.

If you try to control other things beyond your control, that is when you just get weighed down. It is like trying to swim with cement shoes, it isn’t going to end well.

Here’s the truth about big life changes:  some people won’t come with you.  and that’s okay – Early Mama

You can’t control our reputation because it is based on exterior things that are beyond our control.  We can’t control the spin that other people put upon what we say or do.  We can however, chose to take the high road and not get mired down in the drama.  How many times have things you have said or done been taken out of context and used against you?  You will be driven crazy trying to control stuff like that.

Your anxiety or getting angry about it doesn’t make it go away.  It doesn’t suddenly become something that you can control.  All it does is make you unhappy and destroy your peace of mind.  You have the choice of continuing to self-inflict injuries upon yourself by trying to control it, or you can let it go.  Realize that in the end, people will either recognize you for who you really are, or they won’t.  It is not something within your control.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid? – Thegoodvibe.co

The realization that what other people do is not your job to control, and you can’t make them change, will shift your world completely.  You begin to focus on walking your own path.  You are no longer trying to control another person’s journey.  With your focus on your journey, the ups and downs of life even out.  Your path becomes more serene.  You aren’t trying to avoid drama; you are just not drawing it into your world.  If something comes into your space, you just take a few deep breaths, let go of any desire to change someone’s else’s journey and keep walking drama free.

What is amazing is that we also have the ability to shift the memories we have into ones that don’t create a negative emotional response inside of us.  Our brain allows us to recall memories and reconsolidate them.  This means that we can take a childhood memory and add new information that wasn’t available to us as children.  We can turn fearful memories into fearless ones.

Everything we want is on the other side of fear – Jack Canfield

My sister Julie for example is a real scaredy cat.  She jumps at anything.  When she was a teenager, there was a movie that came out with a ventriloquist dummy that was a horror show.  She was watching T.V. alone late at night and the commercial came on for the movie.  She was terrified that it was coming after her.  So, she went to my parents’ bedroom door, opened it and called for my mom.  My parents’ bedroom was up some stairs, and their bed was against the railing of the stairs.  So, my mom leaned over the railing to tell my sister to be quiet, so she didn’t wake up our dad.  When my sister saw a head looming down the staircase she screamed and fell over backwards, falling down the couple of stairs that she had started up.  Needless to say, my dad was woken up – lol.

My sister as an adult can laugh at this story and it is no longer scary, because she has new information available to her, that her teenage self didn’t have.  We can do this with any scary memory that we have.  Update our memory with new information.

Life is like a game.  You can play it safe and be good, or you can take a chance and be great – iliketoquote.com

With visualization we can do the same thing to our future.  We can see into our future regarding something that we are scared of.  We can go through the experience step by step over and over again in our mind.  We can cross over from being fearful of the situation to being confident of it.  This is exactly what Olympic Athlete’s do.  They see themselves performing their routines perfectly over and over again.  They have hooked up machines to them and discovered that the muscles of the athletes are actually firing just like they were physically doing the routine when they are just using visualization.  The more they do this, the better their skills become.

So, with visualization, we can preview anything coming up in our lives that we have intense fears over.  We can practice what we would say or do over and over again.  This will give us some confidence that we can accomplish the thing that we are afraid to do.  When a rock climber wants to solo a difficult climb without ropes, they start out with ropes.  They climb it several times to learn where to put their hands and feet.  They then replay the climb over and over again in their minds.  They lose a lot of the fear over the climb this way because they have gained confidence in their ability to do it by the repetition.

I am the master of my habits – #Goalgetter

So, break down the walls of fear that you built to keep you safe.  Start believing and visualizing your dreams coming true.  Take a practice run to see what you can do with the ropes of safety.  Then expand that with visualization.  Then go for the life you have been dreaming of living.  Don’t let fear hold you back.  Go become the person that you have never been, but wished you were.

Everything In Life Is About Balance

One of the most common complaints is not enough time.  There isn’t enough time to get everything done.  When you have the demands of a career, a family, volunteering for your favorite charity, a spiritual life, trying to fit in physical fitness, etc. . . .  how can you fit all of that into one 24 hr time period, or even spread it out through your week?  How do you balance the hours in the day with everything that needs to be done?

The most common answer is something called “time management”.  I have read many books, heard speakers talk about it, but I have never been able to manage time.  The best I can do is keep that running list that just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

“You can do anything, but not everything.”  – David Allen

What if it isn’t time management that brings a semblance of balance into a person’s life?  What if it is boundary management?

How many times have you said yes to your friend when she asked you to watch her kids, when you didn’t have the time to do it or even want to do it?  How many times do you have priorities screaming at home you want to get done, but you let your girlfriend talk you into going out on the town?  Not only did you burn up hours that you wanted to do something different with, now your budget is out of whack $100.00, and you didn’t even have “that” good of a time.

You could write a book of similar things that happen with work, such as having to work on Saturday because someone else in your department didn’t get their job done on time.

Or your child’s school talked you into committing to baking 12 dozen cookies for the bake sale.  You want to just drive by the grocery story and buy cookies from the bakery, but every other mom is baking and so you feel that you have to too.

All of these are not time management issues.  They are boundary issues.  You don’t know how to say no in such a way that they know you mean it.  How do you say no in such a way that they know you still love them, but “no I can’t commit to that.”

“Life is about balance; too much and too little can kill.  The best way to balance life is setting your boundaries and learning to say enough”  – M G Garcia

When you don’t stand up for the life that you want, then you end up living the life that everyone else pulls you into.  Boundaries keep your life on track and within the path that you have chosen to walk.

There are a lot of trainings and seminars that sound fun to me.  A lot of books that look like a great summer read.  A lot of TV series that look like they would be fun to watch (everyone at work is talking about them).

But I have boundaries in my life where I self-limit the number of hours I spend on things that are not furthering the dreams in my life.  I still enjoy TV and read great books, but I limit the number of hours that they suck up, because I could read book after book after book if I let myself.  The dishes would sit in the sink, the laundry would pile up and I would get around to a lot of chores as soon as I finish the next chapter – LOL.

So boundaries are both between me and the world, and between me and my dreams.  I don’t have perfect balance.  I binge on books or TV every once in awhile.  But I am constantly asking myself, “does this help me grow and expand LemonadeMakers in some way?”

When I do the occasional binge, it is because I have been working way too hard, and my brain needs a break.  I just don’t let my brain stay on a permanent vacation.  I love doing the research, finding the quotes and photos and writing these posts.  I love the comments people make and interacting with the community.  I am constantly learning new things so that I can bring them to my community and engage them in even more meaningful ways.

“Try to always live a balanced life.  Don’t deprive yourself, but don’t overindulge; don’t be lazy, but learn that it’s ok to relax; challenge yourself, but don’t be afraid to silly and let loose”  –  Alex and Ani

In addition to boundaries, balance is also about letting things go in your life.  Understanding the deeper concept of what letting go or giving up actually mean.  What is the difference between them?  How do we know when we should keep trying, and when we just need to stop?

I always think of the hospital shows on TV.  You see the doctor giving a patient who is having a heart attack CPR.  5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes?  How many times do you shock the heart to restart it?  There comes that moment when everyone else in the room has stepped back.  You can see they want to say, stop, this isn’t working.  But they are afraid to say it.  Then finally someone says, “you have to call the time of death”.  No matter how many times you try, that heart isn’t going to start beating again.

So how do you know if it is too soon or too late?  When do you let go?

When do you say goodbye to a job?  To a relationship?  To a dream?  To a belief?  When should you be holding on, and when should you be letting them go?

Balance is usually achieved by living between the two extremes.  Not letting go of things just because it is too hard; and knowing when to let go of things that no longer serve you.  Letting go of things that are actually beginning to harm you, because of your refusal to let go.

“Balance is not something you find.  It’s something your create”  – Unknown

You need to relook at what is happening with the thing you are trying to hold on to or let go of.

• Why are you being called to either hold onto it or release it?
• Is it tied to a fear?
• Is it too hard to accomplish?
• Is it unhealthy?
• Have you outgrown it?
• Have you just not grown into it yet?
• Does it still reflect who you are growing into being?

I always think of children when explaining this concept.  My son had a pair of rain boots that he loved.  He was around 3 years old at the time.  They were like fireman boots, all black, with a red circle around the top of the boots, and went up to his knees.  I noticed one day that he was squishing his toes to fit into the boots.  So I put them away in the top shelf of the hallway closet to save for his baby brother to wear when he was older.  Every time I turned around he had found those boots and put them on.  It didn’t matter where I hid them.  I finally had to give them away.

This same son, fast forward to high school age.  He enrolled in a drafting class because he was interested in drawing.  About six weeks into the class, he came home wanting to quit the class.  He said it wasn’t what he thought it was going to be.  He wanted to take a German language class instead.  I said he should stay in the drafting class and finish it.  My husband thought he should be allowed to quit it.

So he transfers into the German language class.  About six weeks later we were having the same conversation about the German class.  I told my husband that he needed to learn to finish what he starts.  Whatever reason he come up with for quitting, it wasn’t the real reason he wanted to quit.  The real reason he wanted to quit, was because the class just hit a hard spot.

When life hits a hard spot in a job, or a relationship or a dream – you might think it is time to quit.

• You might think that the fact that you are having problems means it just won’t work out the way you wanted.
• You might think that the hard spot is proof that you were wrong about that dream being your destiny.
• You might think that God is telling you to turn and go back to what you had before.
• You might think that you are being called to a different dream.
• You might think you should close the door on this one as being the wrong one.

The only way to know that you should keep trying or quit, is to ask yourself the hard questions around why you are doing so.  You need to look at your past and see what kinds of patterns you have in regards to trying harder or quitting.  You just need to keep growing into the best version of yourself.

Keep expanding your comfort zone.  Wake up and be conscious enough to understand when the subconscious is leading you astray.  To balance that understanding of when the subconscious is being tricky and telling you to walk away from something that you just had a setback with.

• 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?

Remember LemonadeMakers is here to help you dig deep into these kinds of questions, to bring clarity and purpose to the forefront in your life. 🙂

All Things Are Possible

Never settle.  Fight for the life, the career, the dreams, the love that you deserve.

  – Mandy Hale

Women cry not just when they are sad.  They cry when the are angry, frustrated, and misunderstood.  They also cry when they are in joyous exultation, happy beyond bearing.  When a divine truth enters a woman’s life, it strips her bare.  These are tears that need to be honored.  It is time to say goodbye to something that no longer bears the resonance of truth for us.  It is time to say hello to a new truth.  Playing with the fire of truth, we burn away the parts that no longer belong and refine what remains.

I will not trade my authenticity for your approval.

  – Wild Woman Sisterhood

I went to see the Wonder Woman movie this past weekend.  I enjoyed it, as I watched her face her idealisms being shattered.  I watched her as she refined herself, her purpose in her life.  The decision she made to leave the island.  The decision she made to liberate the village.  The life changing decision that she made in facing up to Ares and his taunts.  Ares demonstrated in front of her that mankind wasn’t worth her sacrifices.  I loved the principle that was celebrated, that it really didn’t matter if the people were judged as being worthy of her sacrifice.  She wasn’t their judge about such things.  She was doing what she did for her own beliefs that she held sacred. 

Transformation is the journey you are on.  You are exploring the wisdom of your soul.  You are shedding old ways and beliefs that no longer fit who you are becoming.  Be brave, dear one.  You are becoming your authentic self.

  – Unknown

It reminded me of when you are walking down the street and you see homeless people panhandling.  Many would say, “they are not worthy of our hard earned money”.  That, “they will just use it for drugs or alcohol”.  That somehow, “they deserve the situation that they have landed themselves in”.  My hope is that this movie gets us to rethink about the automatic judgments we make.  The condemnations that we believe we are justified in holding.  That we open our hearts instead to look for a different way.  A better way to help those who have lost their way.  We can’t change their lives for them, they have to do that.  But we can give them a helping hand, a hand up, not just a hand out.  That we can help to empower them to see, that they are worth something still.  That they have a powerful story that can help save others.

 If you are not free to be who you are, you are not free . . .

  – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

There are days when the frustrations of running up against road blocks make you want to blow up the road, and disappear into the wilderness.  You can’t let those days make you run away.  There are too many people out there that are looking to you to show them the way to follow their dreams.  Hold on to sisters who are fellow dreamers and action takers.  When your flame is being blown out, they will shelter you from the wind.  They will help you to regroup.  They will be your saving grace to keep you from going dark.  Each time we get into a level of frustration that has us wanting to “tap out” of life, we need to reassess what we are doing.  If the actions we are taking are not getting us where we desire to go, then we need to reassess and regroup.  What else is possible?  How can we redefine what we are doing? 

It takes 4 weeks for you to notice a change.  It takes 8 weeks for your friends to notice.  It takes 12 weeks for the rest of the world to notice a change.  It takes 1 day to decide that you are enough.

  – Unknown

I wonder how many times our change actually took place, and we stopped working on it on week 3 because we couldn’t see it happening?  Maybe you have achieved something new, and then you threw away because you were still looking at yourself through the old filter.  You couldn’t see what you had actually accomplished, so you just went back to the same old you? 

Don’t wait until you’ve reached your goal to be proud of yourself.  Be proud of every step you take toward reaching your goal.

  – Unknown

 Imagine you have a potters wheel in front of you.  You are sculpting a bowl.  You look at it and it isn’t what you were trying to make.  Do you take the clay and throw it against the wall?  Do you blame the clay or the wheel for not producing your work of art the way you wanted it to be?  Or do you simply squish it back down and start over?  If our bowl is to be molded to what we want, maybe we just look for ways to do it differently.  What can we add, or take away?  Go faster or slower spinning the wheel?  More or less water?  Create definitions higher or lower?  We have millions of choices to get where we are trying to go.  We also have millions of chances and changes to make in getting us there. 

Transformation is often more about unlearning, then relearning.

  – Richard Rohr

I always think about babies for this.  They learn to roll over to change what they can see or touch.  Then they learn how to get their legs underneath them so that they can move them and learn to crawl.  Then they start using leverage against furniture to get them to stand up on their legs.  Then they start walking and from there they start running, climbing and jumping.  Each step fed into the next step.  They don’t crawl once they have learned to walk.  They let go or unlearn the crawling piece as they transform how they get around the room by walking, running, climbing and jumping. 

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

  –  Socrates

In this same way, each new thing we learn essentially replaces a previous truth.  At one time I was a roller, then a crawler, then I let those old truths be replaced with the next level of learning.  All of those old levels of learning were necessary to get me where I am today.  But they are not what is going to get me where I am going tomorrow.  When the new door of opportunity for learning and growth opens up, go through the door.  Don’t stay a roller or a crawler, stuck in a cramped space that no longer allows any room for new growth.  Don’t settle.  Shoot for the stars.  Any time we find ourselves stuck in a cramped space and not growing, we need to accept responsibility for being there.  In some way we are inhibiting our growth and transformation.  Then step through the door to growth and transformation.  Adjust your sails to catch the wind and fly across the waves.

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask.  Everything you want also wants you.  But you have to take action to get it.

  – Jack Canfield

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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.

Don’t Be The Missing Piece In The Divine Puzzle

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!

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.

To Grow, We Must Transform

How can you tell if you still might be in a caterpillar stage of growth? Some questions to think about –

Do I hide my value or discount the gifts that I have for this world?
Am I tightly guarded, afraid?
Do I feel like I am stuck in the mud, unable to move?
Can I see my potential, but don’t know how to unlock it?
Do I feel vulnerable, tossed about with no control?

I Can Because I Am Limitless. I Am Because I Know No Boundaries

Have you ever had a healing crisis? A healing crisis isn’t just a health related crisis. It can be healing any part of our life that just isn’t working out the way we know that it should.

Nothing has transformed my life more than listening to what needed to be heard.

  – Jeffrey Shaw 

Years ago, when I was first working in the financial industry I had just received a huge promotion. I was really working hard, and for some reason, the different aspects of the job were just not working out right. I finally had a long talk with my boss, and following her advice I turned things around. I knew that I was perfectly capable of doing the job, but I just couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. I think that at different shifting points in our lives we run up against this road block. We need a different set of eyes to see what needs to be seen. To see what needs to be transformed.

If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks.  I’ve had them; everybody has had them.  But obstacles don’t  have to stop you.  If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up.  Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

  – Michael Jordan

Do you know why Michael Jordan was so successful?  This quote gives us a clue.  He didn’t reach a roadblock and say, “oh well, I guess I am not talented enough to do this”; or “oh well, I guess this dream was just too big for me to accomplish”.  No, he practiced until he was able to break it down.   He worked with coaches who were able to help him see what he couldn’t see.

Remember that your greatest talent is so much more powerful than your biggest fear.

  – Unknown

There comes a time when we need to take a calculated risk. If you look at the game of baseball it really speaks to calculated risk. The player who is on first base, will watch the pitcher, the batter, and outfielders to gauge how far off the base he can go without getting caught. If he gauges it correctly, he can steal a base, or even make it to 3rd base with an infield hit from the batter because of getting the head start.

I think sometimes you forget that you were born to be awesome.  (here’s your reminder)

  – Unknown

In our lives, if we risk nothing, we get nothing. In personal transformation, we need to take calculated risks. In our life of personal growth, in order to grow we have to take our foot off the safe “base” we are on. We need to risk opening the chrysalis with the hope that we have finished our transformation, and the wings are ready to fly.

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.

   – Ronnie Max Oldham

This really is the only way to live your life. Not putting off things until we think it is safe. Really opening our hearts completely in how we care about others. To understand that the reality is that almost anything is possible. Whatever is currently stumping you, just means that you are not asking the right questions, or the right people for help.

Our thoughts are very powerful. When we focus on what we lack, we create blockages and limitations. We become imprisoned by the vibration of our negative energy.

  – Randi G Fine

In other words if we think that we can’t we will be a self fulfilling prophecy.

If you think you can or you think you can’t you are right.

  – Henry Ford

I find myself doing this sometimes. I stress about not having enough time and sure enough, unforeseen stuff starts filling up my life. Then I catch myself, and unlock the door to that cage, freeing myself and all of a sudden, the stuff just starts going away and I have my time back to do what needs to be done.

Remember, the moment you accept total responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you claim the power to change anything in your life.

  – Hal Elrod

So if you find yourself in any sort of “healing crisis” at the moment, just take some time to meditate as to how you just lost yourself in the woods. Transform the path by backing up or regrouping. Get back on the path that you were traveling.

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive.  You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over.  But one thing is certain.  When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.  That’s what the storm’s all about.

  – Haruki Murakami

This is another critical piece of the transformation puzzle, in really getting to know oneself. 

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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