Are You Pushing Your Limits?

“Bravery is not the absence of fear.  Bravery is feeling the fear, the doubt, the insecurity, and deciding that something else is more important”  – Mark Manson

Every year we commit ourselves to making changes in our lives.  We may or may not call them goals, or new years resolutions.  The thing is that we all change, whether it is on purpose or it just happens.  Those changes can happen in uncontrolled chaos, or from being committed to something vitally important.  Whether change happens to us or for us, it is up to us to make those decisions, day by day & moment by moment.

“I wish for the same thing I’ve hoped for since the beginning.  I wish for a life so brave, so unpredictable, so full of unexpected joys and unforgettable love that no box could possible contain all my memories.  Such a life won’t be perfect.  It’ll be something better.  It’ll be my own paradise”  – Patti Smith

I think that the one thing all of humanity can agree on, is wanting a happy life.  It may look different depending on our age, our sexual preference, our religion, our culture, our politics – but it is still desiring joy and happiness in our lives, and our families lives.  Each decision that we make in this regard comes from us following those things mentioned above.  The funny thing is, the personal definition of what constitutes all of those things  — may not be authentic to who we are at a soul level.  A lot of them come from following someone else’s value system.  Our parents, our teachers, our mentors or the society that we associate with.  As they say in Texas, “that dog don’t hunt”.

It’s not perfect, It’s a work in progress

“Finding the passion and purpose in your life is a trial-by-fire process.  You don’t simply wake up one day and become happy doing one thing forever and ever.  It’s a constant work-in-progress”  – Mark Manson

It’s kind of funny how we have this notion in our head that if we are able to make this one change or answer this one soul searching question about our life, that it will be a one and done thing.  That somehow one thing changing would make us happy forever.  There is no one-size-fits-all for anything in life.  This is because growth is a constantly changing who we are.  What makes us happy today in this moment is fleeting.  This is because in life, you literally cannot pass this way again.  Everything is changing and so this moment in time doesn’t last, it doesn’t repeat itself.  Progress is change.

“Passion will move men beyond themselves, beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures” – Joseph Campbell

What I love about figuring out how to accomplish my desires is the concept of failure as an ending.  When you are on your way to someplace that you’ve never been before, even with a navigation system you sometimes end up on a dead end.  Just this past week I had a doctors visit and they had moved their office.  So I am following the directions on the navigation system in my car and I end up at a dead end.  Thankfully there were some security guards talking next to this gate to the high school who knew where I needed to go.

“Believe in yourself and all that you are.  Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle”  – Christian D Larson

Reaching a dead end, my journey to the doctors office had failed.  I didn’t just turn around and go back home.  I sought new directions.  It’s the same thing with whatever our current life goals are.  If you reach a road block, a dead end, the bridge is out – you shouldn’t just quit trying to get to where your passion is leading you.  You should try something else.  You should go in a new direction to the same destination.

New Directions required –

BE different to MAKE a DIFFERENCE

“If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world”  – Elaine Dalton

A big part of being able to make the changes in your life that you desire, is a healthy self esteem.  It is how you bring your life into soul alignment.  It is living a life in integrity to your soul’s purpose.  What your true values are deep inside of you.  Without going through a process of determining what belongs to your soul – and what was adopted from outside of you from an deep seated need to belong – you can’t make true lasting changes in your life.  You can make temporary changes from will power, but it will not result in the personal transformation that you desire.

“Don’t give in to your fears.  If you do you won’t be able to talk to your heart”  – Paulo Coelho

If you don’t want to continue falling back into old patterns and habits you need to learn a new way to facilitate your life changes.  To learn a process that helps you to spot the patterns as they begin again to interfere in your passions and desires for change.  As you increase your awareness, you will find those old patterns hold less power and control over your life.  They began from a desire to keep us safe.  But as you grow and change in life, those patterns become out-grown, outdated.  They need to be released.  That can only happen by your developing awareness of why you created them and how your subconscious is trying to avoid the risk of standing out and being different.

This year you have some dreams that you are working on. You have some goals that you are struggling with. It might be that you are ready to break out of your comfort zone. To go to that next level in your life. To realize your full potential in your job/career; your personal relationships; your health; financial or spiritual goals. Don’t let them go.

Do something different, join us on March 7th and find a new direction to fulfilling your dreams, goals and commitments.

Brand New Ending?

 

What I love about life is the ability to always make a change.  To do something different.  To be someone different.  It’s all about choice.

There are many people who look at their lives and decide they have no choices.  That life is somehow against them.  That they can’t be any different.  It is the excuse of people who feel hopeless and helpless.  But the reality is that you do get to decide how you are going to live your life.

Is this the life

you want to live?

There comes a point where it all becomes too much.  When we get too tired to fight anymore.  So, we give up.  That’s when the real work begins.  To find hope where there seems to be absolutely none at all – Christina Yang

When you are in the middle of life’s storms it may seem like all of the trees have been blown over.  The roots were just not strong enough to keep the tree anchored in the soil.  The homes around you may have suffered extreme damage and become uninhabitable.  They weren’t maintained or strong enough to survive the hurricane force winds.  When every structure you have created in your life has been ripped apart – what then?

That is the moment to notice that you are still here.  You may not be standing; you may have been knocked down.  But you are not out.  It is in this moment of realizing that you have survived that you can take stock of your life.  Because it is in this moment you learn that you were strong enough to survive.  That you get to decide what happens next.

Is this the person you want to be?

Are these the relationships you want in your life?

Is this the job/career you desire?

Is this the BEST YOU CAN BE?

Can you be stronger?

Kinder?

More Compassionate?

I’m sure that you have heard the saying “let go and let God”.  It is one of my constant reminders to myself.  It feels like letting go is easy.  It’s sort of like handing over the trouble to someone else to handle.  It relieves you of the responsibility of fighting for how you want things to turn out.

At the same time, it is human to keep the comfort zone the same.  So, while you are busy telling yourself that you have let go, you are in fact fighting to keep things the same.

How do you know if you’re fighting to keep it?  By noticing that you haven’t really moved on.  You have the same furniture in your comfort zone, you just moved it around.  In order to have a real change in your life, no matter how painful it is, you have to let it all go and move on.  You need to have a moving sale, “all must go”.  You have to donate that old furniture and get new furniture.  It’s the only way we can continue to grow.

Letting go is a release.  If you have the balloons all stacked up and tied together, they aren’t going anywhere.  It’s when you untie all of the balloons and let them go one by one.  It’s when you let the wind take up each balloon and blow it across the sky until you can’t see it anymore – that’s when you have really let it go.  What you are letting go of is not the dream itself, but the version of the dream you were trying to fulfill.

I think it is human to have some really deep-seated desires, beliefs, wishes that you know aren’t ever really going to happen.  You were raised to believe in fairy tales, in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, in the white knight in shining armor that was going to sweep in and rescue you.  You told yourself they weren’t real.  You thought you had released them.  Then something in life happens, and you realize you are still holding out for that forgotten dream.

It’s that kind of faith, in realities not yet beheld, that keeps us going.  And once in a while something comes into your life that gives you hope.   The hope that just maybe that thing you are still hoping for, fighting for, might just come true.  That you are going to turn the corner and have your breath taken away by the surprise of how it shows up.

The best thing in life is to go ahead with all your plans and your dreams, to embrace life and to live life everyday with passion, to lose and still keep the faith and to win while being grateful.  All of this because the world belongs to those who dare to go after what they want.  And because life is really too short to be insignificant – Charlie Chaplin

I think that sometimes we don’t see it, because we are demanding that it to show up in a certain way.  When in reality it has been in front of us all along.  It’s like the love story when the boy or girl is looking at someone as being their soul mate, when in reality the best friend they’ve had their entire life is the one.  They didn’t see what they already had.

New Endings

I think that is what new endings are all about.  To realize that the fairy tale is just slightly different than what you have been looking for.  That the dream is here right in front of you, just waiting for you to see it in its disguise.  Waiting for you to realize you’ve had your own keys all along.

This year you have some dreams that you are working on.  You have some goals that you are struggling with.  It might be that you are ready to break out of your comfort zone.  To go to that next level in your life.  To realize your full potential in your job/career; your personal relationships; your health; financial or spiritual goals.

Life changes when you realize you have the keys to your happiness in your own hands.  Don’t let them go.

Message us for more ideas on how to do this.

Don’t Let Something Amazing Pass You By

“Sometimes, thing don’t go as planned.  Life doesn’t always go the way you hope it will.  You can’t plan everything.  Life takes you where it wants to – you’re pretty much just along for the ride!  Just breathe – Re-Evaluate – Step out of the box – Forgive – Be grateful.”  – Namala Lakesh

I believe in plans.  But I also believe in being flexible.  I believe in taking stock and making constant adjustments.  It’s like a sailboat.  You are subject to winds and currents, but with the rudder and sails, you have the ability to maneuver into the direction you want to go.  Which is why I love the way I plan out my month and year.  I make plans and then as life happens I see where I need to make adjustments.  To re-evaluate what is really most important in the current time and space to accomplish.  That’s why I am sharing this system with all of you.  It works!

“She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her away, she adjusted her sails.”  – Elizabeth Edwards

Sometimes things happen in the reverse order of your expectations.  The patience comes in because you automatically put expectations on the plans.  You visualize them out step by step, and then life happens.  You lose you job, the promised promotion and/or raise doesn’t materialize.  Someone close to you is faced with a critical medical diagnosis.  The money you had planned for vacation now has to go to put in new plumbing.  In short, life happens.  You need to adjust your sails.

“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

Sometimes obstacles are like the monsters under the bed.  You hear a noise.  Your imagination runs wild.  Your heartbeat goes out of control.  Suddenly you are screaming.  And it was all in your head.  Other times they are legitimate.  I remember one of the contestants in America’s Got Talent had been a singer, then tragedy struck.  She went deaf from a medical condition.  She stopped singing and gave up her career.

“Our life doesn’t always turn out the way we planned, but sometimes that’s because what we planned wasn’t suppose to be our life.”  – Gdonell

Mandy said in an interview, “I made the mistake of associating my entire identity with one single dream, and when that dream died, I very much felt like I died. I became a husk of a person for awhile.”

“Life doesn’t always go according to plan.  Sometimes heading in a new direction can be scary until you realize you’re headed toward a new and exciting destination.”  – Susan Cole

Then she got an electric tuner and spent 10 hours learning to sing each note perfectly.  “I couldn’t believe it”, she says, “My perfect pitch and muscle memory all came together.”  Mandy Harvey.

“If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore.”  – Michele Ruiz

Then one day she decided to stop fighting against her dreams and start fighting for them.  She began writing her own songs and singing again.  She discovered that this real obstacle could be overcome.  She discovered that a big chunk of the real obstacle was in her own mind. Singing a song she composed she got sent straight through to the finals on America’s Got Talent.  She finished fourth.

“You don’t always need a plan.  Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, and let go and see what happens.”  – Mandy Hale

If you take a good honest look at your life so far, you will see times where what you had planned fell apart – and that it was a good thing.  You underestimated what you were are capable of. You made plans that were far too limiting in regards to your potential.  When you let go of the expectation of the plan, and how it should go – and instead learned to feel your way with intuition, amazing things happened.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”  – Joseph Campbell

You discover hidden talents.  You uncover better ways to expand your comfort zones.  So when the path you are walking on changes direction, don’t be afraid to keep going.  When the sign says “dead end” don’t be afraid to go off the path and create your own.  When the wind blows you backwards, grab a tree and hold on.  When life challenges you to sit it out, get up and fight to keep moving forward.

“If we can just let go and trust that things will work out the way they’re supposed to, without trying to control the outcomes, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully.  The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.”  – Goldie Hawn

LemonadeMakers is hosting a monthly free class on goals, resolutions, plans – whatever you want to call your means of change and transformation in your life.  We discuss on a live Zoom call what is happening that is working and not working.  Ideas to try to get us motivated to change and transform our lives.  Where we might re-evaluate our plans.  How to adjust our sails.

We invite you to join with us the first Saturday of every month.  The next class registration is opening today.  Come join us!  Click on the box to register now.

Breathe In The Love

Updated 2/01/2020

2020, in the month April it was the 10-year anniversary of my nephew murder.  He would have been 29 years old last month.  It’s hard to process everything that has happened as a consequence of that happening in our family.  My sister has more good days than bad, but she is still and will probably always be stuck in her loss.  My life has shifted so much I don’t think I am even in the time zone.  The ripples of his death will keep moving as long as someone reads this blog about our loss.

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…, ” – Terry Pratchett

Out of every great tragedy there comes the hidden blessings.  One of the blessings I received after my nephew’s murder was someone who was able to take the grief and loss that I felt and turn it into something beautiful and full of hope.  I wrote a poem purging myself of the intense waves of grief.  Writing is how I make sense of the senseless, it is how I can remain sane, when the crazy is calling my name.  So when my nephew was murdered, I wrote a poem about what I was going through.

“Writing is like breathing, it’s possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what” – Julia Cameron

I encourage anyone going through difficult times to write it out.  I think that it releases the poison, that would corrupt our souls.  In pain, we hold our breath.  Writing helps us to start breathing again.  To realize that we can still have a chance for a better and happier life.

“When we focus our energy towards constructing a passionate meaningful life, we are tossing a pebble into the world, creating a beautiful ripple effect of inspiration.  When one person follows a dream, tries something new or takes a daring leap, everyone nearby feels that energy and before too long they are making their own daring leaps and inspiring yet another circle” – Christine Mason Miller

I will print my poem at the end of this.  While I was able to process my way through the grief, it still felt a little dark.  The gift that this stranger was able to give me, was taking this poem and my story, and creating this beautiful song from it.  It took away the darkness in my poem and transmuted it into light.

I reached for this poem when someone else I love is having their own dark night of the soul.  We all need to remember that even though there are dark nights, they can be transmuted into something beautiful.

“Only in the darkness, can you see the stars” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I think that we all have those days, when the sky turns black, with no sunlight or starlight to shine upon us.  We think that God has turned his back on us.  We feel the intense emotions that threaten to drown us.  As I say in my poem, sometimes the sorrow burns us alive.

“Some days our grief appears as small manageable ripples.  Other days it completely crashes over us without any warning.  These are the days you need to be able to sit, reflect and remember; and not feel guilty in doing so” – Just Over the Rainbow Bridge

Sometimes it’s okay if the only thing that we can accomplish in a day, is to simply breathe.  Breathing in the love, turns the storm into a calmer sea.  The sun rises again.  As the poem ends, we can breathe again.  We can breathe in the love, grace, forgiveness, joy and hope and manifest it back into the world.

I hope you enjoy the song.  We had it created especially for LemonadeMakers.

“We all die.  The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will” – Chuck Palahniuk

Carl’s Poem

Yesterday you were so alive riding the oceans waves, yes, life was so simple and innocent

But now your soul has left behind your flesh, and your bones lie there just an empty cage

Help me, I can’t breathe as this news fractures my life, I am so unsafe, I just can’t balance

And grief engulfs me, and anger rages, and I just can’t breathe.

 

I can’t breathe from hearing the news on T.V or reading the printed pages of your murder

I feel the thunderous storm of emotions pass through me as lightning strikes my heart

The senselessness of your passing, the gunshots of a stranger who tore our lives asunder

And so, I grieve, and the sorrow burns as it drowns me, and I can’t breathe.

 

The hours pass into days as I stumble down this long road breathing with heavy sighs

The days spent in crying, and the primal screams of the dark nights merge into numbing weeks

Yet storm clouds break up as I begin to see the healing of the rainbow’s blessings

And so, I grieve, and I begin to breathe, I breathe love.

 

Life carries on with unending support of love that is surrounding me and protecting me

Forgiveness is the answer, so I move past the limitations of grief, rage, and sorrow

To live in limitless love, light and joy, and my heart-lines align to the universal love

And so, I breathe love, and I add grace, I breathe, I breathe grace.

 

Love from Carl’s heart washes through me, cleansing and healing every part of my body

A warm wave it ignites an inner fire of transformation that love is the ultimate expression of grace

It illuminates the greater vision for my life to emerge from within me, a graceful unfolding,

And so, I breathe love and grace, and I add forgiveness, I breathe, I breathe forgiveness.

 

I release the need to blame you Carl, myself, or anyone else for your ending,

I release fears grip on my soul, and I choose to walk this path with love

I have experienced a grace inspired event that challenged me, and I have awakened

And so, I breathe love, grace, forgiveness, and I add joy, I breathe, I breathe joy.

 

Grace has opened a door whose light illuminates my next step as I step out of the darkness

I share this, your gift to the world, that love is the ultimate expression of grace

As I practice this belief, practice will yield to insight, which yields to embodiment, which yields to manifestation.

And so, I breathe love, grace, forgiveness, joy, and I add hope, I breathe, I breathe hope.

 

As I breathe love, grace, forgiveness, joy and hope, life becomes a celebration again

And as I let my light shine, I unconsciously give others the permission to do the same

I will live like there is not tomorrow, I will live like there was no yesterday

I will breathe, I will breathe love, grace, forgiveness, joy and hope and manifest it out into the world.

Do You Have The Courage To Fulfill Your Dreams?

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough”  – Unknown

It takes determination when you are knocked down to get back up, but it is only when we have been knocked down that courage enters.  It takes courage to face the failure.  It takes courage to try it one more time.  It takes courage to find failure once more in your face daring you to try again.

Is it failure or part of the divine plan?

In life many things don’t happen the way we plan them.  In a lot of cases what seems like failure is actually part of the divine plan.  Years ago I walked away from a pretty secure job because I was promised the opportunity for advancement at another company.  I took on the responsibility of completing a manual of guidelines for the new company because the person they had hired for it wasn’t getting it done.  I had never written anything before other than papers for school.  I figured that I could simply expand that knowledge into something new and I did.

Then shortly afterwards the market turned and I was laid off.  Because the market had slowed down in Southern California, there weren’t  any jobs available and we ended up having to relocate back to the Seattle area for me to find employment.  I had berated myself for leaving the previous company; for believing the owner of that new company; for the market turndown.  I had beat myself up pretty badly.

An interesting thing happened in Seattle.  The Savings and Loan I was hired to work for hired me in the advanced position I wanted.  The S&L needed a servicing manual and I had the experience to write it.  I was also hired to teach a course for loan processing and underwriting at South Seattle Community College and Renton Voc-Tech.  All things I wouldn’t have had the courage or opportunity to reach for if I hadn’t made that job change back in California.

I believe it was all part of divine planning.  Can you think of such examples in your own life?  Times when what you planned shifted and changed into what you thought was failure, but was actually part of the plan all along?

Of Caterpillars and leaps of faith

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”  – Eleanor Roosevelt

It is in seeing the beauty of your dreams that you are able to get back up after you have failed.  Finding your life purpose and then bringing it out into the world isn’t an easy journey.  While your soul will not give up, your mind is constantly entreating you to give up.  Seek the peace of sleep.  Take it easy.

“You get in life what you have the courage to ask for”  – Oprah

It’s a constant tug of war between mind and spirit.  When your soul is inspired it sets you on fire.  You find yourself doing things you never would have dreamed it was possible to do.  Every negative thought your mind produces is shot down.  Like the caterpillar you have the push to transform beyond any understanding.

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall hoping to transform it into a door”  – Coco Chanel

Like the caterpillar you learn new skills, building a space in which to transform.  That is what goals and dreams are all about – change and transformation.

You have this yearning to be something different from what you are currently being.  You have these feelings that you can’t really put words to.  You just know that you have to do it.  Can you imagine the caterpillar building a chrysalis and then standing back and judging it as not being good enough?  That the caterpillar would just turn away and forget the whole transformation thing?

The caterpillar doesn’t care that he has never built anything before.  He doesn’t care if it isn’t the perfect shape, or on the wrong branch.  He doesn’t care if the wind is blowing it sideways and maybe today isn’t the best day to complete it.  He is so involved, that he has gone so far out of his comfort zone, it isn’t even in the same town or state.

He is so involved with using these skills – skills that he didn’t even know he was capable of learning, that he is taking a huge leap of faith.  A leap of faith that what he has built, is what it is supposed to look like and feel like.  He trusts his divine inner guidance and forges ahead.  He trusts that what he is becoming will allow him to transform his outer being in such a way that he will fly.

Where does such trust come from?

• It’s in the realization that everyone else is just as scared as you are.
• It’s in the realization that everyone fails.  Falls down.
• It’s in the realization that at the moment you have a choice – to quit or remember WHY you are trying in the first place.
• It’s in the realization that fulfilling a dream means that you are striving to do things you think you cannot do.

You know down deep in your heart and soul that you will never regret giving everything you have to accomplish your dreams.  You know that giving your best effort and then digging down to bring up that tiny bit of extra you didn’t know you were capable of will be worth the cost.  How do you know this?

“The women whom I love and admire for their strength and grace did not get that way because shit worked out.  They got that way because shit went wrong, and they handled it.  They handled it in a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, but they handled it.  Those women are my superheroes”  – Elizabeth Gilbert

Because you see everywhere examples of where other people have done just that.  They worked stuff out, no matter the cost.  It’s not a one size fits all world.  It’s through trial and error that we work stuff out.  You have a secret weapon.  You figured out that in every single change, rather than judging it as good or bad, you see the possibilities rather than the problem.

That’s what the loss of a job in Southern California and the wonderful opportunities that opened up in Seattle taught me.  In every single change, there is a long hallway.  A hallway with all of these doors of possibility open and inviting you to step through.  That is where is courage comes into play – stepping through the door and into the possibilities.

Launch Yourself on Every Wave

 

Life, like surfing, is all about wave selection and balance. Never let the best waves in life pass you by. Ride it now before it’s too late – Kiteboardstuff.com

I believe that your dreams, your true dreams, are given to you at birth.  That you are designed to grow and stretch beyond what you think you are capable of.

That you were given heroes journeys to push you to accomplish the dreams.  That those dreams are what make you passionate and give you a life of purpose.

I think of people who are adventurers and broke open new journeys you didn’t even know you could go on.  People like the Wright Brothers, who pioneered the ability to fly.  Pilots like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart who created and broke records in pioneering flight.  Amelia Earhart said, “What do dreams know of boundaries?”

She had true unfaltering determination and pushed her limits.  She said, “when you fail, your failure must be but a challenge to others”.  I love the concept of my failures actually serving as something positive – to challenge others to succeed in their own dreams.

You don’t get into something to test the waters.  You get into things to make waves – Rituals

Every year there are new tech companies that are creating a new cutting-edge business or disrupting an industry.  Right now, someone is launching themselves in trying to fulfill a dream they never thought they could accomplish.  The really critical thing is to not give up on your dream as being too far beyond your capability to accomplish.

When someone decided one day that they wanted to be a mountain climber, they didn’t just walk out the door and climb a mountain.

• They got training in how to use the equipment
• They got training both in the body and the mind, to equip them for the journey.
• They started with small mountains and worked their way up to the bigger ones.
• They joined a club with others who like that sport, becoming a member of a team.
• They fell down, got back up and fell down again and again, until they started reaching mastery.

It is done step by step, day by day, year by year.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance – Alan Watts

You have to grow and expand your comfort zone again and again.  You have to have the trust that you deserve to fulfill the dream.  You work hard to get the skills that are necessary to make it happen.  You learn to trust yourself and your team.

Change is part of the dance of your life.  You learn to trust the dream as it shifts, changes and transforms too.

Sometimes as you are moving towards the dream, it is like driving through fog.  All you can see is the next 10 feet in front of you.  You travel towards what you see and as you travel, you see farther and farther.  You might see what you thought was a mailbox on the side of road shift into something else as you get clearer eyesight.

This is because your brains will take what little you can see or decipher, and basically guess at what you are seeing based on past knowledge. But as you get more clarity by pursuing the dream it seems to shift its shape into something totally different.

It’s not so much that the dream is changing as it is that you are getting a better understanding about what the dream really is.  Each problem that you encounter and solve changes you.  Each change brings the dream into more clarity.

You begin to realize that there are 50 different ways you can achieve your dream.  That your expectations around the dream are what is really changing, not the dream itself.  You begin to truly imagine the possibilities of the dream.

The big waves in life might come from outside of you, but the ability to ride them comes from inside of you – from your character strengths – Fatima Doman

Over and over again you can see the concept of “as above, so below”.

The teaching of the tree of your life reaching high into the heavens and deep below the surface with the roots.  Life is not lived in one direction only.  If you are reaching only for the sky and neglect your roots, the imbalance in your life may create temporary success, but will inevitably fall over.  And if you only feed the roots and neglect reaching for the heavens, then you won’t produce anything positive in your life.

It is the combination of inner and outer growth that leads to true lasting success.

I love the concept of “together we are an ocean”.  If you are interested, I can help you learn how to create your own personalized dream map, claim your own unique goals of change and transformation; refine them into goal crushing gremlins; and finally, to truly understand what your motivation around those goals is all about.

It’s not just about writing some words on a piece of paper that says in 30 days I will . . . ,   It’s not just about creating a vision board with pretty pictures of our dream house, vacations, our dream body or $1M in our bank account, and then waiting for the “magic” to draw in what we want in our lives.

You need to brainstorm your way to make your dreams a reality.  To map out your detours around your own unique self-sabotaging obstacles, and finally be able to fully implement your plan.

What I know for sure is that you will hit walls of failure, fatigue.  At some point you will get that feeling that “Life happens to you”, when it really is happening for you.  It will feel like when you are getting hit with a sledgehammer.  It helps to have a few tricks up your sleeves to handle those times, so that they just create slowdowns.  Just don’t give up and stop completely.

As a kid did you ever play the game Red Light/Green Light?  You had someone who called out Red Light for Stop and Green Light for Go.  The goal was to reach the finish line first.  Let’s change that game just a little. 

On The Journey Of Self Transformation, You Need A Map

Imagining what we want next year is a far more powerful way to face the future than imaging what we fear – Marianne Williamson

Part of the process of planning out your dreams, goals, and visions of a better life is looking back to see what you have done so far.

Where is your comfort zone today?

What growth to it happened last year?

Part of my own growth for this coming year is taking the pilot program I created and turning it into a teachable course.  I have a card deck that I created that needs to be completed so that it can be sold to help support the cost of this website.  I know what needs to be done, but there is this underlying fear that it isn’t something that you will value as my readers.  I also believe that this is my year to break free of that fear.

I believe that you already know what needs to be done for your life in this year – that the questions you ask yourself, already have answers deep inside of you.  That those answers have been waiting for you to be able to accept them as truths, and that timing is everything.  If you are reading this then I believe that the time for you is now.

I believe that sometimes you need someone else to ask the questions that will send you searching for your own personal truths. The door is waiting for you to open it, and sometimes you just need to hear the invitation one more time.  That time is now.

Part of the process of self-transformation is learning more about who you are.  That person deep down inside of you.

• How many times have you created limitations about what you are capable of?

• How many times have those limiting beliefs created self-sabotage in your life?

• How many times have you been pulled back from transforming your life by the chains of your comfort zone?

• How many times has something that seemed to be what you wanted, pulled you out of growth and transformation?  Like the caterpillar that keeps finding the perfect leaf to consume, and delays making that chrysalis to become the butterfly?

• It all comes back to you and your beliefs around the possibilities – take the leap of faith.

In order to think or live differently, you need to understand your own life patterns.

When I received the scholarship application answers for the pilot program I ran, it revealed some common patterns.

• Almost everyone had thought in the past twelve months about making big life changes – such as moving some place new to them; finding a different job. This indicated that they were unhappy enough in their life to contemplate changing everything.
• A vast majority wanted a better life in order to give back something good to the world.  I loved this, because even though they had some pretty big issues they were dealing with in their lives, they wanted something better not only for themselves, but to help others too.
• They wanted to be better spouses, parents, better people.  These are all roles that we play in our lives.
• Some of the applicants had just completed or were going through a divorce.  When you have a major transition take place in your life, like a death, divorce, or job loss, it becomes a time to take stock of who you are and where you are going.  Many times, these transitions take away the thing you thought you were.  When the kids leave for college, how do you transition to an empty nester?  When you retire from your job, who are you now?
• Around 50% of those who responded had problems in the past or were working towards sobriety and ending addictions.  That is not only living with the label of addict, but also a load of personal issues to work through because most who have some sort of addiction used it as a coping mechanism for their life.

The answers to the questions told me that most of us are looking to make big changes in our lives.  We just need a little help to get started, and a little motivation to keep going so that fears stop us.

Life presents you with so many decisions.

A lot of times,

the answers are right in front of you.  

It’s not just about writing some words on a piece of paper.  It’s not just about creating a vision board and then waiting for the “magic” to draw in what you want in your life.  You need to brainstorm your way, map out the detours around the obstacles, and fully implement your plan.

What I know for sure is that you will hit walls of failure, fatigue.  Life happens not to you, but for you.  I know that sometimes it feels like you are getting hit with a sledgehammer.  It helps to have a few tricks up your sleeves.  To be able to handle them so that they just create slowdowns when the rain or snow is coming down so hard and fast, you can’t see.  And maybe a few detours around washed out roads or bridges.

Just don’t give up and stop completely.   In the movie Star Man with Jeff Bridges there is a line about yellow lights when they are driving down the road.  “Starman: I watched you very carefully. Red light, stop; green light, go; yellow light, go very fast.”

Message me if you want to “yellow light” your own life map, or just need help with a roadblock or how to find the right detour.

It’s Not Just About Chasing A Dream, It’s About Catching It Too – Part One

 

Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.

– Sumner Redstone

If you have been following our posts for some time, you probably know the story of why I started writing my blog.  My nephew Carl was murdered in a random act of gang violence, literally walking through the park at the wrong time.  As you can imagine, this took a toll on our family.  In addition to grieving over his death, I was concerned about my sister making it through this tragedy.  I started writing through my own grief for both of them on my personal Facebook page and it took on a life of its own.

Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement.

– Matt Biondi

After a couple of years I created LemonadeMakers – because when life gives you lemons, you need to make lemonade.  At least I did.   Every part of life is full of choices.  You can choose to hide in the negative or dig for the positive.  Sometimes it seems like we don’t have a choice, but we always do.  It feels like we are so sunk down into the mud, that mud is all we can see.  We then miss the dry ground, the doors that we could open.  The chance for a different choice or response, to what is happening.

All I knew was that I had to bring something good and positive and life affirming to the table for myself and my family.  Then as I cleaned the mud off of me, I saw the need to bring this to others, because we are all going through something.  Maybe not as tragic or violent as my nephews murder, or maybe something even more so.  So a dream was born that just maybe I could help others, inspire them to make their own brand of lemonade.

Love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning.

– Carol Dweck

As LemonadeMakers has grown, so have I.  It has challenged me to work on my writing skills.  Believe me, I have heard from many readers when the grammar is incorrect, or the misspelling made it through spellcheck.  I think I have proof read something 10 times, and then I am reading an old post and see something that I missed.  It has helped me grow a thicker skin, and let go of the need for perfection and so many other lessons.

Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

– Joshua J. Marine

2019 has come to an end and I wanted to talk about how you keep going, growing, and expanding your comfort zone from day to day.  In 2019 my birth father died and I had to let go of the dream I have had for over 55 years – that some day he would call me and tell me how much he loved me and wanted to be a part of my life.

I have been caring for my bonus father (I don’t like the step part of any label, as though it is less than the real thing) and his health has been steadily deteriorating this year and he has been in and out of the hospital.  He is starting to lose brain function and it breaks my heart.

This August we found out that my husband of 46 years has prostrate cancer.  It is outside of the prostrate and so surgery isn’t an option and he is starting radiation therapy.  He was a long haul truck driver, so he had to retire a little sooner than we were planning on.

The entire year I have been working month to month, each month waiting to hear if this is the month I get laid off work.  I have worked for the bank for 15 years and they keep extending the lay off, and they also keep telling me it is coming.

Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success.

– Arianna Huffington

When you add this year up, it has pretty much sucked.  I am sharing this with all of you for a couple of reasons.  I know that I am not the only one that had things go sideways in her life this year.  I think it helps when you know you are not alone in walking and sometimes crawling through life’s storms.  I also wanted to share with all of you some of the great things that happened this year, the times when the storm clouds parted and the sun shined for a brief moment reminding me that storms don’t last forever.

Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. But it is the ability to resist or use failure that often leads to greater success.

– J.K. Rowling

I stepped out and made a video about “Catching the Perfect Wave”.  I tried to do a couple of webinars, which failed dramatically with no one or only a couple of people attending.  I discovered my own way of doing things, rather than just following in someone else’s steps of how things should be done.  I learned a lot and really expanded my comfort zone around talking and teaching with groups of people.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal; It is the courage to continue that counts.

– Winston Churchill

I created a pilot program about transforming your life.  It centered on the first ring of the Transformational Life Compass, which is all about the labels we live our lives around, the archetypes in our personalities and how to see how we are sometimes our own worst enemy in self sabotaging our life.  We granted scholarships to 22 people and while everyone didn’t show up and some didn’t finish – I think it was a great success.  The full program will start in February and I am really excited about the life transformations it is going to create to those brave enough to come and join us.

Important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning.

– Carol Dweck

I think  that 2020 is going to be a turning point year for a lot of us.  I love the thought of 20/20 vision, focus that is crisp and clear.  The ability to see both near and far without fog distorting the images.  So how do we take all of the lessons of 2019, the good, bad and ugly experiences and build on that foundation something even better?

The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

– Michelle Obama

For the start of the year, to give us all 20/20 insight and vision of what we can accomplish in this brand new year, I am designing a workshop.  It will give all of us working together the tools of how to plan out the new year.  What to do when the lemons start falling off the tree and hitting us in the head.

There is a military proverb that says something like “in war the battle plans only survive until the battle begins”.  Every year we make goals or resolutions to make changes in our life.  It might be for health, or education, a better job, working on our marriage, raising children, buying our first home and so on.  Those goals or dreams seem to survive the first month or two of the year and then they morph into something unachievable and unrecognizable.

There are no limits to what you can accomplish, except the limits you place on your own thinking.

– Brian Tracy

With everything going on with my job, my husband, and my dad, I could put my dreams for the next step for LemonadeMakers on hold.  I could put my entire 20/20 focus on these very important personal things in my life.  I could just let LemonadeMakers struggle along until my personal life got easier.  I put my writing on hold for too many years.  I refused to do that in 2019, and I won’t do that in 2020.  I am in a marathon and there comes a point in running where if you keep going, you break through into a new level.  I want to share with you how I did this in 2019 and how I plan on it in 2020.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

  – Eleanor Roosevelt

So stay tuned tomorrow for Part Two, to read about some of the tools I use and that you can use too – I can’t wait to share everything with you!

Pursuing Life’s Dreams, Second Star to the Right and Straight On With No Distractions

And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, “This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this! And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, “No. This is what’s important.”

– Ian Thomas

What we all need to realize, is that the lights of the passing ships are mere distractions preventing you from living your life to the fullest.  They are the battles that you fight each day, but which do not lead us anywhere.  When we honestly realize how asleep we are in our lives, those are the moments when you can begin to challenge the ongoing distractions and bring focus back to the stars – the lights of our true destination.

In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.

  – Yuval Noah Harari

It’s like someone has set up a circus tent in front of us.  You hear the chaos of the music and the shouting barkers telling you about what’s happening in their tents.  You hear the shouts and screams of people as they spin and circle and go up and down on the rides.  You smell the funnel cakes and cotton candy and popcorn.  Bright lights spin on the games as they encourage you to step up and try your luck.  So many distractions that you can’t hear yourself think.  All of the bright shiny objects promising you the moon, if you just come nearer and pay attention to them.  It is a constant battle for your attention.  Who wins?  The one you pay attention to.

It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.

– Og Mandino

I love to ride the roller coaster.  To watch the performers with the animals.  To see the daring artist high up on the trapeze dancing across the wire.  There are lots of fun and exciting things that we can do in our life.  What we have to decide is are they part of our goals and dreams, or are they just fun distractions that keep us occupied, distracted.  Are they keeping us occupied so that we are not making the changes and transformations that we need to make in order to achieve the life of our dreams?  Are they fun things that we should be saying “no” to?

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

– Bruce Lee

Are we living our life with laser-like focus?  I always think of Bruce Lee when he is in his stance about to engage with someone in battle.  He doesn’t hear the sounds around him.  He doesn’t see the bright shiny objects trying to distract him.  He see’s only one thing – the man in front of him that he’s about to engage in battle with.

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

– Marcel Proust

Remember the movie City Slickers?  Remember Curly, Jack Palance’s character?  I love his famous line –

“Curly : Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly : This.
Mitch : Your finger?
Curly : One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch : But, what is the “one thing?”
Curly : [smiles] That’s what *you* have to find out.”

When you are pursuit of the “that one thing”, then the rest of the world fades away.  We don’t see the lights of the passing ships – we are laser focused on that star – that bright shining light in the night sky.  We no longer wander through the circus seeking distractions.  Now we are traveling for fulfillment.  We are seeing the world with new eyes.  New eyes that are open for the first time to the many doors of potential and opportunity that we missed when we were being distracted by the circus.

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize.  If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything 

  – Alan Watts

That is kind of what the movie City Slickers was about – those men had gone asleep to what was important in their lives.  They were living by distraction, not laser-like focus.  The meaning of life can be found in many things if we are awake and looking for it.  It tends to show up when we are out of our normal element.  Going off on a day trip to the mountains, the beach, the desert.  Away from the day to day of our life.  Away from the distractions that follow us around.

Be addicted to your passions, not your distractions.  

  – Unknown

It is when we can get quiet that a connection is possible.  We finally see the truths we have been avoiding with the distractions.  We discover that the thread of destiny in our life, is where the laser-like focus really begins to take shape.  That “thing” that we not so much latch on to, as it latches on to us.  We are pushed, pulled, and prodded until finally we realize that we have no choice – we have to live the life that brings our destiny into fulfillment.

Tomorrow becomes never.  No matter how small the task, take the first step now!

  – Tim Ferriss

If like the character in City Slickers you don’t know what that “one thing” is, go find it.  Go somewhere quiet without any of the normal distractions in your life.  Sit and think about your life.  Dig up all of your old dreams that you abandoned as not being possible when you failed the first time.  Reconnect with your passion, the thing that liberates your energy and your spirit.  The thing that inspires hope in you again.  When you find it, do everything in your power to stay connected.

In life, people tend to wait for the good things to come to them.  And by waiting, they miss out.

  – Neil Strauss

Let the circus roll on by.  Don’t stop for the Carmel Corn or the Hot Dog.  Don’t go on the rides, or play the games, or watch the circus clowns climb in and out of the clown car.  Keep your eyes on the stars, and not the passing ships lights.  Clarity, focus, making things happen.  That’s how you keep your  eyes on your stars.  Ignore the circus as it shouts to you about what it thinks is so important.  Once you understand your own destiny, your secret of life, don’t let that connection go.  Remember that the best view comes after the hardest climb.

Ripples – The Small Changes That Can Have An Enormous Impact

So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.  Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes a universe exist.  Be curious.  And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.  It matters that you don’t just give up.

  – Stephen Hawking

If every morning we wrote out this simple sentence starter “I have no limitations, so I am going to . . . ,” just imagine what you might accomplish in a year.  Everything you do is connected to something.  Every choice you make impacts others.  You just have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

When you make a difference in someone’s life you make ripples. You’re not only impacting their life, but the lives of everyone they touch. Remember – even the smallest drop of water effects the entire pond. One small act of kindness, makes a world of difference.

– KLove

I was reading a book where the writer was talking about having to make 30 sales calls in a day when he was going door to door selling encyclopedia’s.  He in turn used that same concept when he was in business promoting an entertainer.  How he would contact different venues to hire his client.  He said that if you really did 30 calls you would get mostly “no’s”, but you would also by laws of average get some yes’s.  I thought about this concept in regards to failures.  What if we said that for every new thing we tried to learn how to do, we expected to have to try 30 times to be successful?  What if every failure was celebrated to being that much closer to success?

The universe responds to our inner yearnings by mysteriously bringing people into our life to answer our questions and help quell our conflicts.  Every time you follow your intuition, your personal vibration intensifies.  This can be likened to turning up the volume on a stereo.  The more your personal vibration is intensified, the more you will pull people into your life who carry messages for you.  It is a universal law.

  – Denise Linn

What kind of difference would it make in your life, if you viewed failure as the path to success? Not just lip service, repeating a mindless mantra – but truly walking down that path. Can you feel the stones under your feet as you are walking? Can you smell the clean scent of the air after it has rained? Can you feel the warmth of the morning sun as it heats up the day? Are your hands touching the flowers as their fragrance is released by the afternoon breeze? When you are in this space of manifestation, that is when the doors of opportunity start showing up in your life. People come into your life and mysteriously provide you with the exact thing that you need as you are walking down this path. You see a book that answers your questions. You dream about something and then the next day you are walking down the street and there it is.

Always be like water.  Float in the times of pain or dance like waves along the wind which touches its surface.

  – Suntosh Kalwar

Faith is trusting without knowing. When you trust without knowing you make the world alive with possibilities. Creativity comes from curiosity. It is living in the moment. It is not getting overwhelmed by the millions of steps between where you are and where you are going. It is not letting the enormity of your vision scare you into not even starting the journey. Your vision might take you over Niagara Falls in a barrel. It might have you traipsing through the jungle looking for Dr Livingstone. Or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Going into the ocean depths, deeper than anyone has even gone before.

The mind is like water.  When it’s turbulent, it’s difficult to see.  When it’s calm, everything becomes clear.

  – Samreen Zaidi

Our actions have far reaching effects.  The shifts we make in our own personal lives, the transformations and changes we implement successfully ripple out into the world.  We show what is possible.  Our example gives someone else permission to do their own shifts in transformations.  They begin to see how they in turn impact the world.  A few years ago Oprah had a few shows that talked about kindness.  It started with paying for someone’s coffee behind them in line.  There were reports of “random acts of kindness” that ran on for hours because each person in turn would do the same for the person behind them.

Every tidal wave begins with a ripple…, make sure the ripples you create in your life are what you want coming back to you; because eventually…, they will return.

  – Unknown

I love movies that demonstrate this and I think that is why they end up on everyone’s favorite list.  Princess Bride, demonstrates to all of the characters that your actions come back to you. That if you persevere through the hardships it all comes right in the end.  The classic heroes journey of the Star Wars Saga; The Butterfly Effect, how every action creates another and another as we chase after what we want in our life.  How unforeseen reactions alter our journey time and time again.  Groundhog Day, where reliving life over and over finally gets the main character to recognize that he needs to make changes in his own life.

When we focus our energy towards constructing a passionate meaningful life, we are tossing a pebble into the world, creating a beautiful ripple effect of inspiration.  when one person follows a dream, tries something new or takes a daring leap, everyone nearby feels that energy and before too long they are making their own daring leaps and inspiring yet another circle.

– Christine Mason Miller

Each of us in born to express our own inner truth.  When we live a life congruent with that truth, we are part of the larger plan, the grand design.  The more that we seek to expand, to grow into that design, the more we are living out the life God designed for us.  Each of us has an inner compass, and when we are living a life that matches our inner values, then that compass is pointing to true north.  A life of purpose being fulfilled.

I have accepted fear as a part of life – specifically the fear of change . . .  I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says turn back

  – Erica Jong

Take a pen in hand.  Write out this sentence and complete it – If it weren’t so risky I would try ___________________________.  Write this out with five different answers.  Now contemplate this list.  As they said in the old Mission Impossible series on the tape recorder – Your mission should you choose to accept it is . . .  take the first step in making one of those five things happen in your life.  Be a ripple that shifts the world.

Resistance – Here There Be Dragons

 

As fellow travelers on the road of transformation, we here at LemonadeMakers have been checking our course against our mission, vision and purpose.  As part of that “checking in” you take compass headings, check your map and determine the next part of your course.  What you realize as you take your course headings, is that you have gone off course.  You have sunk into the comfort zone.

In order to create the kind of life you want to live; you have to focus on what’s important to you. To maintain harmony in your life and stay on course, means that you need to examine where you are in your own personal hero’s journey.

Self-transformation is a lifetime journey.  It’s the never-ending story of who you are, and more importantly, who you are becoming.

As you travel down this road you will reach what I call “way points”. These way points are the places where you check in and get supplies for the next leg of your journey. Where you pull out your map to see that course corrections need to be instituted.

Unless you have not moved at all, you will need to make some adjustments to get back on course.  That’s because the “dragons of resistance” are always at work.  Fears, distractions, addictions, just the contrary winds of life in general – it is all designed to take you off course.

Part of checking your course is to see where your own map is ending – the edges of your own comfort zones.  While you may have expanded this zone in the past, you are now needing to expand it again. It is time to reengage the battle, to face off with your dragons of resistance.

You have an intuitive knowing that deep inside of you is a second self.  An unlived you.  Your authentic self.

The dragon of resistance doesn’t want that authentic self-released.  LemonadeMakers writes these blogs to help you learn to recognize your own personal dragons of resistance.  LemonadeMakers is offering you the opportunity to wake up and assist you in finding that authentic self.

Do you want to navigate your life with love, inspiration, and peace? In order to help with your staying on course, we try to provide these daily reminders to become more self-aware of what is going on in your life.  To become more self-aware of the doors of opportunity that show up in your life.

If you looked at the ancient mariner maps, you would see at the corners of the map, a warning. “Here there be dragons”. As the hero of your own journey, you are going to face those dragons.

Did your dragon of resistance just raise his head and roar at you?

On the field of transforming yourself, stands a hero and a dragon. You are the hero and resistance is the dragon. The dragon confronts you every single time you want to start on a new journey of self-transformation.  Every time you expand your comfort zone.  Every time you make a new goal, a new dream.  Resistance will make itself known.

You will hear many roars from your dragon – fears labeled no time, no money, too risky.  It feels safe when you are invisible, average, because then your dragons fire can’t burn you.  Every fear that your dragon bellows at you has some part of reality in it.  Some vestiges of truth that have been stretched into a terrifying illusion by the dragon of resistance.

You can use these dragons of resistance as the needle of a compass to what your God-given destiny is pulling you towards.  You know that this God-given destiny is not average. You deserve better than average.

You can use the dragon of resistance to guide you to that calling or purpose.  A good rule of thumb is that the more important the call is to your soul’s evolution, the more the dragon of resistance is going to show up.

The dragon is out to destroy the reason you are being called: the living out loud of your divine destiny, your personal genius, the soul’s gift you have that no one else on this earth has but you.

You will know if you are on course, by the level of resistance you are currently feeling to discovering more about your authentic self.

You are on a lifetime journey of discovery.  There is always something new to learn, discover, uncover and reveal about who you are and why you are here now.

Your work is to learn more about your personal vision, your dreams of who you want to be. To ask what’s missing?

Ready to widen your comfort zone?  Ready to confront and tame or destroy a few dragons?

Life’s Storms Compose the Music of Our Souls

 

Keep Going

No Matter how bad things are right now

No Matter how stuck you feel

No Matter how many days you’ve spent crying

No Matter how many days you’ve spent wishing things were different

No Matter how hopeless and depressed you feel

I promise you won’t feel this way forever

Keep Going

I don’t know about you but I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan.  I read the books when I was a kid.  I was excited when the cartoon versions came out in the 70’s and over the moon when the movies were made.  The composer of the music did a fantastic job.  It really moves the emotions inside of you.  I can listen to the music and see in my minds eye the scene as it unfolds.  I know when something bad is happening, when they are triumphant in battle, when someone has died or when hope is being born again – it’s all there.

“There’s a ripple effect of new thoughts. A tidal wave of new feelings. the demons are being tied up and gagged. I’m just not sure how to handle the new. I thought the old was here forever. I don’t recognize that woman in the mirror, she smiles more than I, laughs more than me” – Swedreams12xx

Music frees you in a way that nothing else does.  It encompasses all parts of life.  So it is no surprise that there is music for the storms that hit you in life.  Music for going to war; for peace accords being signed.  Music for giving birth and for saying goodbye to a loved one.  Music to study by, and music to get your groove on.

Music reminds us that there is a time for everything.  A time for it to feel like your soul is being ripped from you body, to be torn apart so that you can come back together in an even more spectacular way.  A time to heal the broken bits into a new whole that is bigger and better than you were before.

“Even now, as broken as you feel, you are still so strong. There’s something to be said for how you hold yourself together and keep moving, even though you feel like shattering. Don’t stop. This is your healing. It doesn’t have to be pretty, or graceful. You just have to keep going.” – Maxwell Diawuoh

In the middle of a storm you can’t control what’s happening, but you can challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what’s happening.  That’s where your power is.  That’s the true meaning of courage.  The quality of your life, your legacy is how long the ripples continue that you made while you lived.

• What kind of music are you composing?
• Are you pushing outside the comfort zone?
• Are you daring yourself to try something just a little bit scary everyday?

When the storm is battering us to bits, it’s important to just breathe.  Don’t lash back out at the storm, it’s ineffectual and doesn’t stop the storm from swamping your boat.  Just breathe.  Breathe deeply in, holding it for a moment.  Then breathe out, holding it for a moment.  Just keep breathing.  Listen for the music of your own wind chimes.  They will remind you that no matter how much it feels like life is beating you, you are creating beautiful music.

“Doing good holds the power to transform us on the inside, and then ripple out in every-expanding circles that positively impact the world at large” – Shari Arison

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.  It doesn’t mean that you can’t do it alone.  It means that you realize that you aren’t meant to.  When you are in pain and allow others in, it creates connections.  Connections are vital to creating the beautiful music.  Music is filled with bridges that connect the story and flow of the piece.  The harmony of the music is created by bridging together different instruments, different voices.  Sing out your song courageously, and don’t allow the fear to overwhelm your song.

“There are two basic motivating forces, fear and love.  When we are afraid, we pull back from life.  When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.  We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections.  If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create.  Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life”  – John Lennon

Your sense of self acceptance is demonstrated by your levels of connections.  The more connections you have, the more self love and self trust you have.  So keep taking deep breaths to settle your emotional responses.  Allow your heart and soul to reconnect to your brain.  Allow yourself to release the fear and take in the love – love of yourself first and foremost, which makes room to love others.

The depth of love you have for yourself and others can be measured by the depth of authenticity that you show up with in your life.  I believe that every day you have miracles show up in your life that you don’t see or don’t acknowledge.  By showing up with gratitude for what life is revealing to you and about you, you can turn rain storms into rain showers.

“Every time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and . . , those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance” – Robert F Kennedy

You have stories worth telling.  When you hold back from telling your story you degenerate the experience it gave you.  This is true both for yourself, and the value it could provide by helping others weather their own storms.  When you present the perfect face to the world; the perfect family, “no problems here” kind of picture, you are not allowing the rain storms to be seen.

You create a false dome of protection from the rain so that it doesn’t appear to fall on you.  You are in effect saying to others that “you don’t get wet”.  You are in denial.  You are contraction mode.  You are not allowing for new growth to happen.

You need to not only allow for the rain, you need to express gratitude:

• For how it clears the air.
• How it waters the plants.
• How it fills the streams, lakes and oceans as part of the natural cycle of life.

In order to create the ripples that change both yourself and others, you need to show up and be seen.  You need to show up fully in your life, allowing for the growth that comes from being watered.  Allow the expansion of creativity in your life.  Contribute from a place of love, which is the birthplace of creativity and change.

“Just as ripple spread out when a single pebble is dropped into the water, the actions of individuals can have far reaching effects” – Dalai Lama

To show up fully, you must never let fears stop you from pursuing your dreams. Don’t let your fears of what might happen, mean that you don’t make ripples happen. Come join us for our next Zoom call. Bring all of those creative “hope” juices to the table and let’s see what we can make.