Life is short. Do what you love to do.
I found out yesterday that my dentist passed away the day after Christmas. We had become good friends over the years and it really hit me, because I had been in his office just a few days before he passed away. He was just a few years older than me, and we would often talk about all of the things we would do when we retired. Now he will not do any of those things. So here are a few things that I have been thinking about, since hearing this news. Life is short. Do what you love to do. If you don’t like something in your life, then change it. You are the only one who can. If you are looking for your soul mate, then become the person your soul mate is looking for. Open your mind, it is the only way to learn something new. Open your heart and let down the drawbridge that is keeping everyone else out. Open your arms and hug someone like you mean it. Travel some place new every year. Take out that bucket list that you are saving for when you retire. Go out and do those things now. Dance in the rain, splash in the puddles. Release the wild abandon of your inner child. Live your dreams, Create wondrous events in your life. Succumb to the life you really want, but are afraid to have. Eat chocolate. Drink wine. Laugh often. Be proud of the wrinkles on your face, because they show what a wonderful life you are living. Don’t wait until your are old to wear purple, big hats, and foolish grins.
Impossible really means I’m Possible
When you look across the ocean with the sunrise or the sunset, you see the colors mirrored on the surface. This is like our appearance, beautiful when calm and serene. But if you dive down deep, into the depths, that is where the true beauty of a person lies, in their soul. This is the beauty that we miss, when we make surface judgments about someone. Rumi says, “Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.” Self knowledge is the place to start. We need to dig down deep within us, and question all of the stories we have told ourselves about our life. What do we know to be 100% totally true? If we seriously ask and listen to the answer to this question, most of us would have to acknowledge that most of our stories about life are made up. We make them up to make sense of the things we have seen, done, and experienced. John Lennon said, “The more I see, the less I know for sure.” This is because the more that we learn about life, the more we see that most of our knowledge is surface knowledge. The deeper we dive, the more we see how much more complicated and interconnected our understanding of life is. “Knowledge is knowing the depths of the ocean. Wisdom is knowing where to swim” Saleem Sharma. Sometimes life can be hard to navigate. When the storms come in, the waves churn up from the bottom of the sea bed. Things come to the surface that have been long buried. We are like this when the storms of life blow in. All those things that we stuff down inside of us, because we either can’t, or don’t know how to deal with them, come churning up to the surface. Instead of being afraid of what we have buried, we need to rise up and calm the waters. Be still. Breathe. Be at peace. Realize that God never brings anything into our lives that we can’t handle. Wake up to your dreams. Live them out in your reality. Lean on the divine, and on those who love us. Change what can be changed, release the rest. See the hope of a new day, the beauty that lies within each of us, and the love that never dies. Remember that you can do anything you “think” you can do, and impossible really means “I m possible”.
Follow Your Own Road
Rumi said, “It’s your road and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
When we try to walk down another persons road, it leads to disillusionment and disappointment. It isn’t “our” road. In the book “The Pilgrimage”, Paulo Coelho said that “it is our decision to walk, that creates the road ahead of us”.
It is both being courageous and having curiosity, that keeps us forging ahead on the path. It is the journey itself, that grows us as a person. It has been said that it’s never about obtaining the “goal”. It is rather about who you need to become, to achieve the goal. Marianne Williamson said, “you must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.”
I have always loved the saying, “It’s not the destination,… it’s the journey”. This is because the path isn’t the destination. The path is where we live our life. It is all of life’s experiences. The good, bad, and the ugly. The messy pieces as well as the glorious adventures. The destination is simply a road sign. A sign that we made it to “X”. Then we begin planning a new destination or goal. It’s all about the road we choose, the path we forge.
So cast off the bowlines. Sail out of the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds and see where they take you.
Very Happy
This makes me so happy. Intolerance and hatred get too much news time. I love it when someone posts about the good things that happen. Goes to my favorite quote, “we don’t have to agree on anything to be kind to one another.”
Directly quoted from Eslam S. Mohamed’s facebook post below.
“Yesterday i went to Olive Garden restaurant to have dinner with nice families. We were a group of 7 adults and 5 children. Everyone in the restaurant was knowing that we were Arabs Muslims on the table coz of the language and the ladies were having scarves over their head ( Hijab ). After finishing we asked for the receipts and the waitress came to us with that receipt in the picture. Yes, someone paid for us and wrote those wonderful words on the receipt. I can’t express how this act touched our hearts. Among all the bad things happening to Muslims and the hate speech that the presidential candidate had made lately , there is still light in the dark, there is still hope within the frustration. All what i can say to who did that, Merry Christmas to you too and God bless such a beautiful heart you have (smiley face).
See More: Muslim Family Apprehensive About Visiting Restaurant in the Deep South. Then They Got the Bill…
Lemonade Maker Debbie Allen
Debbie Allen is a LemonadeMaker. Like many other LemonadeMakers, she created a foundation called “Shelby’s Rules”, after her daughter died. She is working hard to educate teens of the dangers of alcohol poisoning, to prevent other families from losing their children to it. If the other girls with her had called for help, her death could have been avoided. They didn’t realize the seriousness of what was happening with Shelby, and thought she just needed to sleep it off.
Shelby Lyn Allen was a 17 year-old 11th grade student. On the first night of Christmas break in 2008, Shelby and her friends started drinking. Shelby became violently ill and was semi-conscious when her friends left her propped up over the toilet. When she was discovered the next morning, she could not be revived.
In the aftermath of this tragedy, Debbie began asking questions. Talking with other teens, she realized that most of them had no clue that drinking just a few too many swallows of an 80 proof alcohol, like vodka, can kill you. As unfair as this seems, if you are a girl, your risk is increased by variables such as fluctuating hormone levels and smallness of frame.
Debbie also realized that most adults have no clue about the dangers of alcohol poisoning. Everyone knows that excessive drinking can make you sick (praying to the porcelain god) or have you make a fool of yourself (dancing on the table). Maybe you will even suffer a nasty hangover. But letting a friend “sleep it off” can easily turn into them falling into a deadly coma or vomiting in their sleep, and choking to death.
Once alcohol poisoning has begun the only effective treatment is to get the poisoned person to a hospital emergency room, provide breathing assistance as needed and provide IV therapy (nutrients). Most importantly, this care must be provided immediately to be effective and because of the possibility of brain damage every minute counts. Alcohol poisoning causes the brain to shut down vital organ processes, including breathing. If your breathing stops, your heart stops, you die. By all accounts, if breathing is assisted by intubation (breathing tube) the body will rid itself of alcohol and you will survive.
Shelby’s untimely and ultimately preventable death has devastated Debbie’s family. Shelby made poor choices that night, but those choices should never have led to her death. It is the hard truth that despite our best efforts to protect them, in the end our teenagers safety, their very lives can come down to other young people knowing when and how to ask for help.
If you have teenagers, please get this film to help your teens understand the dangers of binge drinking. “The Unconcious Truth” is now available on DVD and at tyla.org. Contact TYLA at 800-204-222 ext. 1529 to request a copy. This is a film that highlights the dangers of teen binge drinking – perfect to incorporate into high school and community alcohol education programs!
Our dreams are calling us
How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable. – Seth Godin – Author and Speaker Our dreams are calling us. Are we answering them or putting them to voice mail, because we don’t want to have that inner conversation with ourselves. What causes us to put things on hold? How many of your dreams do you have in voice mail waiting for a return call? We all do this in some way. I know that if someone compliments me the first thought in my mind is discounting what they said. When I was growing up my sister closest in age to me was always the pretty one, the beautiful one. She is 18 months younger and her body matured faster than mine. She is several inches taller than my 5’3″. I was the smart one. This comparison ran through our childhood. She to this day carries that role of not being smart, even thought it isn’t true, and I carry the role of not being pretty. This past few weeks my personal FB page has really been growing. I think that FB has been showing my photo for my personal page up in “the people you know timeline”. My guess is that it is a combination of how many of you wonderful people are “Liking” our LemonadeMaker posts and page (Thank You!!!) and, as I am part of several large groups I end up having a lot of similar friends. I also think that some people figured out I am the founder of LemonadaMakers and request my personal fb friend page too. However it is happening, there has also been some of those requests that even though I try to screen them turn out to be men looking at my picture and requesting a friendship. When they say they like my smile – which is the usual first comment they make, I immediately think something negative like that’s because you don’t see the rest of me. Why do we do that? What is it that causes us to turn away from a compliment about our looks, the quality of our work – anything that seems personal? People could compliment me about my children or grandchildren and I don’t turn away from that. Only if it is personal about me. There was a commercial video I saw a few months back talking about the phrase “sorry” when we mean “excuse me”. We are apologizing when we didn’t do anything wrong It was by Pantene the shampoo company and it really reflected how many times we use it when we really mean something else. We open a office door to talk to someone and say “sorry”. We brush by someone and say “sorry”. The list goes on. Look for it in the next few weeks, how many times you or another women says “sorry” when what should be said is “excuse me”. The suggestion is that we feel undeserving, and so say “I’m Sorry” for taking up your time, for taking up space, for thinking that I might have something to contribute. Sheryl Sandberg was really talking about this when she said “we’ve got to get women to sit at the table.” She talked about how she went to a conference room for a meeting and the women were not sitting at the conference table, they were sitting around the table in the extra chairs against the wall. They were doing this even though there were empty seats at the conference table. She felt that a big piece of why we don’t take a seat at the table is because we don’t want the label of “bossy” and the other “B” word when we take the lead. We shouldn’t be afraid to be as ambitious as men. We should ask for what we want – the raise, the promotion, to take the lead. We shouldn’t be afraid to be told we have a beautiful smile. So I am ending this with my most favorite quote by Marianne Williamson because – How dare any of us settle for less when the world is waiting for us to be remarkable! “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. Your 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, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
In order to stand out, one must be different
In order to stand out, one must be different. I have always loved the saying “why fit in when you were born to stand out?” by Dr. Seuss. For me it was really hard to make this change, as I had spent most of my life being invisible. I love the analogy of a rainbow. It isn’t just made up of red, yellow, blue, green, pink, and purple. It is made up of 100 of shades of every color, and every mix of color imaginable. Take just the 1,000’s of shade combinations of purple in the rainbow. While you might think that no one will notice if one shade is not shining brightly, the rainbow is diminished in its beauty when that happens. It requires every single shade to be there, in order to be the beautiful promise of God. We require every one of you to shine brightly to deliver the promise of God, which he made when he sent you to this earth. Being a leader is an interesting subject for women. I was listening to a part of Sheryl Sandberg’s Ted Talk today, and she was talking about how when she was in school she was told to not raise her hand so much. I remember the same thing happening to me. That I was bossy, a know-it-all, too smart for myself. So I shut down and started being even more invisible. I started waiting for someone to pick me instead of volunteering, and this carried over into my adult life. I turned down promotions saying that I didn’t want the responsibility, when what I really wanted to say was I didn’t want to risk being told to once again become invisible. I continually pushed down the answers I had for senior management and let others steal the ideas and promote themselves. I finally had enough and became what I called an agent of change for my own self. I started listening and following my intuition. I stepped out of my comfort zone, stood up and voiced my opinions. And I have kept expanding my comfort zone. Every mistake I have made is like compost in the garden. It may feel and smell like manure when it happens, but if I compost those failures into my life, I can learn and grow from them. I learned that I can fail and my life isn’t over. I learned that the person who judges me the most has been me, and so I gave the judge permission to cheer me on instead. I love this quote I found today, “when you dance to your own rhythm, people may not understand you; they may even hate you. But mostly they’ll wish they had the courage to do the same.” I am going to hang it over my desk. I have spent too much of my life wishing I had the courage to do what I see others doing. Instead I am going to “dance to my own rhythm” and let someone else be inspired to do the same. The Lion is released from the cage, and ready for the grand adventure!
Rescue Dogs
Wilma Melville is a retired PE Teacher. When she retired, she decided to reinvent herself with a 2nd career. She learned how to train rescue dogs. When she was called to help with the bombing in Oklahoma, she discovered that there was a shortage of rescue dogs.
She said, “I can do something about this.” So she started adopting abandoned shelter dogs and training them to have a second career as rescue dogs. In her 80’s now, she has trained over 100 dogs that were abandoned by their owners to be rescue dogs. Just imagine how many lives she has changed by giving these dogs a second chance and training them to search and rescue.
I love what she says, “there is no end to what a dog can teach you.”
New Year always brings the thoughts of a new you.
New Year always brings the thoughts of a new you.
Transformation gives you the chance to rewrite the story of who you are and who you are capable of being. There are many things in our life that we give negative meanings to. But what if you gave pain the definition that it shows you that which is not for you? This would be a positive thing to know – what doesn’t belong to me or my life. Envy is another word that has a bad rap. What if envy simply shows you things which you may wish to empower in your life? That would be a great thing to know – things I want in my life and can empower myself to obtain.
The being that is forming in the cocoon is no longer a caterpillar. For the caterpillar the past is truly a place of reference. It can no longer live there, because that body is gone. Within the cocoon the caterpillars body literally melted into goo, and then formed a totally new body. As the butterfly’s body grows into its new shape, it becomes cramped as the wings want to expand out. It isn’t a place of residence for the butterfly, so it has to break loose and spread it’s wings and find a new home.
Mary Oliver said, “I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.” The butterfly had to break out of the old place of residence and begin a brand new journey, where everything is experienced for the first time. It must break open its heart to begin this journey, because it has to trust its intuition for flying, for finding food, for making a new home. Literally everything for the butterfly is a brand new experience.
Transformation is a scary business. Because I am a perfectionist, I hate doing something new for the first time. I am doing the best I can with my posts, knowing that I will have spelling errors or grammar mistakes in my writing. I can proofread this a dozen times and the minute I publish I find something I missed. When I sponsor the post, I can’t make any changes, so anything I missed becomes a permanent part of the post. I am living with being imperfect in order to just get the post out there.
Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. “
"Hug Lady"
Known as the “Hug Lady” around Fort Hood, Texas, the 83-year-old has made it her mission to hug every service member leaving for war or coming home from deployment. For 12 years she’s been a fixture at the airport whenever planes are arriving or departing filled with troops.
Her routine was disrupted this fall when the breast cancer she’s been fighting since 2005 finally sent her to the hospital.
When word of her illness got out, the Metroplex Hospital in Killeen, Texas was suddenly invaded with service members storming in to hug Laird and to let her know they have her back in the fight against cancer.
They’ve also donated much of the nearly $93,000 raised in a GoFundMe campaign to cover any of the co-pays or deductibles from the “Hug Lady’s” medical bills.
Laird was released from the hospital November 20, and she’s getting back on her feet. She says she has to get back to work.
“Got flights coming up,” she told one of her visitors while in the hospital. “Got to get out and hug you.”
Shine On
Shine with all you have. When someone tries to blow you out, just take their oxygen and burn brighter.” ― Katelyn S. Irons
It is really the best revenge over who or whatever caused the storm – to still shine bright as a diamond. Use that storm to simply wash off the dust and grime that had dulled your shine and sparkle even brighter.
Be a shooting star lighting up the night sky with your brilliance.
As you shoot across the sky, find the rainbow and swallow the colors. Explode across the darkness like fireworks with all of the colors sparkling inside of you, releasing into showers of brilliance falling back to earth.
Helping others
Robert Norton discovered the truth of how helping others helps you get over your own troubles. He recently lost his mother right before his wedding, which created an emotional roller coaster for his bride and himself.
When he returned from his honeymoon, he discovered that the man who mowed his lawn was walking 2.5 miles with his lawn mower because his car broke down and he couldn’t afford to get it fixed. What stunned him is that the man who mows his lawn is 83 yrs old.
So he and his wife started a GoFundMe account and raised enough money to buy his lawn care man a new truck.
They raised $13,000 and a local car dealer sold him a 2004 Nissan truck at cost and the balance of the funds were used to pay for his auto insurance, license plates and a Home Depot gift card to purchase a new lawn mower.
“He’s going to cut our yard as long as he wants to cut our yard and we’re going to pay him as long as he wants to cut our yard,” said Robert. “I think anybody who is 83 years old who works as hard as he does, as loyal and faithful as he is, his work ethic and character, should have a vehicle to drive and do his work in.”
See more: http://www.liftbump.com/…/90189-man-who-mows-lawns-shows-…/…