GAPs
It is up to us to be a prisoner of our past, by remaining in it; or to be a champion of our future by building it. If your life path was to travel from one of these formations to the next one and so on to the end, how would you do it? You could climb down and walk to the next peak and scale up and repeat over and over again. Or, you could become a bridge builder. Neither way is wrong or right. Just different choices.
We could for sake of argument take opposing viewpoints on the better, faster way to walk this path. We could discuss how those that follow us would make better speed with the bridge. Or how scaling up each peak would define us, and make us stronger. But at the end of the day, the analogy is that each of us has our own path of divine destiny to walk.
Rainer Maria Rilke said, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” I love this. This is the synopsis my most recent experience of the past year. For many years I knew that in my journey in life, I was having one foot on the gas, and one foot on the brake in accomplishing my goals. The pattern began when I was four years old and I walked in on my mom having sex with a man that was not my father.
What I took from this experience is that it wasn’t safe to be seen. So I spent years of my life trying to be invisible, and it worked. Thus one foot on the brake, and one foot on the gas. Every time my foot on the gas caused me to be close to my goals, I slammed on the brakes and hid. I worked on this and in the past few years thought that I was no longer being invisible.
I had widened my circle of comfort and felt that I had my foot off the brakes. Instead of hiding in crowds I am very social. I speak on stages to hundreds without fear. But the chameleon quality of this life pattern came to my attention this past week. I had been trying very hard to get my website completed, and I realized that I was again driving with one foot on the brake. In the past 6 months I have been the hold up.
I am expanding my comfort zone and that invisible foot was being slammed on the brakes. I was being defeated by a “greater” thing. Many teach that we came into this life to have a certain experience.
Mine seems to be dealing with this pattern of foot on the brakes, when I am pushing hard on the gas to accomplish a goal. Now I recognize it has chameleon like qualities. I know that when I feel like I am not progressing towards my goals, I have to go looking for that sneaky lizard. This life pattern is my GAP – Gods Area of Preparation. This is where I learn about new ways that my life pattern has shifted, and I learn new ways to build bridges to close that gap. Can you see GAPs in your life pattern? Do you see where you need to learn to build bridges to close off the gap to get to your destination?
Helping Hand for Cancer Patients
Picture those commercials with the mom sick with a cold, and the husband and kids make her breakfast. Then they pan to the kitchen, which is a disaster. Now think about how hard it would be to do housework when you are recovering from cancer treatments.
Stacey Steele was diagnosed with ovarian cancer nearly two years ago. “I was so weak that showering would literally be my main activity for the day,” Steele told Today. “And when you’re not feeling good, the last thing you want to do is go into a dirty bathroom.”
Steele said Cleaning for a Reason, a nonprofit that provides free housekeeping to women undergoing treatment for cancer, changed her life. Having a clean home freed Steele up to focus on her health and “keeping things routine and normal” for her kids, she told Today.
LemonadeMaker, Debbie Sardone, founder of “Cleaning For A Reason”, first had the idea to offer complimentary housekeeping to cancer patients years ago when she was the owner of a cleaning company. A woman called for an estimate but said she’d have to call back because she couldn’t afford it — radiation and chemotherapy treatment had left her unable to work
This year marks the organization’s 10th anniversary. So far the group has provided $5.5 million worth of cleaning services for more than 19,500 women. They work with partner companies across the country and Canada to fill about 1,400 requests for service each month. While the businesses do not charge cancer patients for services rendered, Today reports, their employees are paid for their work.
See More: This Amazing Nonprofit Cleans Homes for Cancer Patients Who Can’t
The Syrian refugee giving back to Germany
A friend had uploaded a photograph to Facebook of Assali feeding homeless people on the streets of Berlin. The caption below read: “Acts of kindness: A Syrian refugee mans a food stand for the homeless, to ‘give something back to the German people’.” The image went viral – it was shared more than 3,000 times on Facebook and nearly three million times on Imgur. Assali, 38, had become an overnight social media sensation. Over the past 11 years, Assali has had to flee two countries – Syria and Libya -after speaking out against political corruption and human rights abuses. He has built up businesses, been successful and lost it all. He knows what it is like to be homeless and hungry. When in Syria civil war soon broke out and, in 2013, groups affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) entered Zawiya. Everything changed. “When ISIL arrived, people were killed for having an opinion. Every day I saw someone dead on the streets or in the sea,” he says. Assali created a Facebook group to expose ISIL’s crimes. It attracted 25,000 followers. This led to his arrest. Three months later, he was suddenly offered freedom – in return for his house and car. Assali agreed and the man he made the deal with paid for him to reach Sabratha city, where he was to board a boat to Italy. For days, he waited for the boat at a farm alongside hundreds of others. When they eventually boarded, there were 380 other people with him. The boat sank mid-way through the journey. For two hours, he was drifting in the sea, unable to feel his own body. More than 100 people drowned that night, but Assali was eventually rescued by the Italian navy. A few weeks later, he arrived in Germany, where, in June 2015, he was granted asylum. Now he gives back to his temporary country, who has given him a chance to live there for five years, while he hopes he can return to his homeland when it is safe. See More: The Syrian refugee giving back to Germany
Getting onto the Right Path
One of my favorite stories comes from Love, Medicine and Miracles by Dr. Bernie Seigal. A young man wanted to become a violinist. His parents said no, become a lawyer. He went to law school and started practicing law. He then developed what was diagnosed as terminal cancer. Thinking he was going to die, he got a job playing violin for an orchestra. Years later, he was still alive because he realized he was on the wrong path. He had to live his life, not the life of his parents.
Knowing when to walk away is wisdom, being able to do so is courage.
Isn’t it amazing that cancer is what gave him courage enough to walk away? He demonstrated how true the maxim is that every cloud has a silver lining. Can you think of examples when you went through a dark time only to find at the end that it gave you what you had always dreamed and wanted?
Your body knows when you are not living your authentic life, and you will receive a wake-up call.
- It is important, that you listen. That you look within and examine your life.
- It is vital, that you create the courage to make the change.
- It is critical, that you realize that just because you are walking down the right path, doesn’t mean there won’t be obstacles.
- Your need of courage includes being courageous enough to face the fact that you will still make mistakes, experience disappointments and despair.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is perspective, not the truth” – Marcus Aurelius
This is where the ability to both look around you, and within yourself becomes important. It doesn’t mean that you are on the wrong path just because something goes wrong. It just means that you need to grow more, to be able to continue the journey.
In every journey something in your life will become complete. It will have played out its purpose. That road map will no longer lead you in the right direction. You need to wake up to follow a new direction and not just blindly continue down a road that no longer leads you in the right direction.
Every year roads change. New maps are made. If your car has a GPS unit it will need to become updated. The road that used to go through that small town, now bypasses it. Internally your GPS has updated itself and you need to follow a new path.
U-Turns don’t take you all the way back. They just take you back far enough that you can take the turn you missed. Life’s road twists and turns. There are no two directions that are ever the same. So, when you complete a U-turn, it is just like taking a right-hand turn.
You can’t truly go backwards, although it seems like it some days. Trying to, is very disappointing, as you can’t recreate what we left behind. You changed and so did everyone else.
Don’t allow yourself to become the boulder blocking the path. This is what happens when you try to go backwards.
- You block our own path.
- You recreate similar patterns of self-destruction.
If you do, that is when you know that it is time to listen to the heart. Your heart and soul are like the magnetic needle on the compass. Always go to “true north” and you will be on the right path.
I have always maintained that U-turns are part of every journey to some place that I don’t know. I expect them, I laugh when they happen. U-Turns can be really interesting.
What I have learned in my life is that every single experience has something important in it that I needed to learn. I may only understand later, why that piece of knowledge was required.
I have been in the mortgage industry for over 40 years. So I have lived through good and bad cycles in the financial industry. Years ago I had a good job, but the owner of another company kept calling me to come and work for him. Finally after months of getting his phone calls, I gave notice and went to work for him. This job would end up being a U-turn for me.
He had hired a free lance writer to create a manual for the mortgage brokers he worked with, and she seemed unable to finish the project, so as part of my job I took that project to completion.
Then two weeks later I was laid off, when the interest rates hiked up and his business slowed down. I really yelled at myself, because I felt I had made a wrong decision in taking that job. I felt I should have stayed where I was, safe in my comfort zone.
We ended up having to move out of state in order for me to find work. But what happened next, was really interesting.
The Savings and Loan I went to work for needed manuals written for their servicing department, and because I had that experience I got the job of being both an underwriter and a trainer. I created several training programs for them, as well as the servicing manual.
Then I got a second part time job teaching at South Seattle Community College for an adult education class for loan processors and loan officers. I ended up creating new manuals for this position too, because their manuals were so bad. Both of these jobs would not have been available to me, if I hadn’t taken that earlier job and got the experience of creating a manual.
“Move on. It’s just a chapter in your life. Don’t close the book, just turn the page for a new chapter” – Unknown
So you will fall down. You may even get lost. U-Turns are a given. But as long as you take out that compass, listen to your heart, and keep creating the courage in your soul, you will be on the right path. As long as you tune into true north, you can take that step into the unknown, knowing that this is the right path.
New Wonders Will Be Revealed
1Years ago, when I was young, I had opinions on what would I do, if “such and such” happened in my life. I think that when most of us hear of an experience that someone has, we think “well if that happened to me, this is what I would do”. We sometimes don’t agree with the decision that another has made, when that same thing happened to them. When life does hand us lemons, and we are the one trying to make lemonade out of it, many times we come to a totally different decision. There are many reasons for this. Each of life’s lemons come to us wrapped up in a different series of circumstances. You could look at multiple experiences of someone losing a loved one to violence, and you would find that each instance was handled in a different way. This is because although the label may be the same “man killed by random shooting”, the circumstances in each case tell their own unique story. In 1995 Tariq a pizza delivery man was shot and killed by a 14 year old gang member. Initially Azim, Tariq’s father could barely function. But he came to understand that the 14 yr old boy named Tony who killed his son, was also a victim. He felt called to forgive Tony, and became friends with Tony’s grandfather and guardian. He started a foundation to help kids stop killing other kids. He began talking with kids in schools about the realities of that lifestyle and the importance of making right choices. He made lemonade out of his lemons. This foundation (http://tkf.org/) has grown into an organization of 13 full time staff members and 30 volunteers that mentor over 20,000 students each year. In the article I read, in 13 years they had touched eight million kids (the foundation is now over 20 years old). But I would bet that if you have asked him if this is the road he would take if someone killed his son, this is not the answer he would have given. His unknown road that he journeyed on revealed what kind of man he truly was. This is forgiveness in action. We are all on a road, a journey to discover who we really are. What we are capable of becoming. Buddha says “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” Azim saved himself by walking the path of true forgiveness. He wanted to not only prevent other innocents from being killed, he wanted to save those other victims “kids” becoming killers themselves. His difficult road has lead to a beautiful destination – saving others. What I have learned in life, is to hope that I can emulate the grace I see in others lives, as they grapple with life’s lemons. That until I find myself in that same hard place, I don’t really know what my decision will be. I do know that there is no turning back. So each decision needs to be made in prayer and meditation, with that understanding. What I have learned from the lemons in my own life, is that I no longer allow someone to make me swallow up my soul, and dam up the words in my heart. That I don’t have to apologize for my imperfections, and allow the darkness of others to cover up my light. This is who I am, a woman of deep strength who keeps walking the path, knowing that new wonders are going to be revealed right around the next bend.
Doing the Impossible
In 2013, in Oregon, teenage sisters Hanna (age 16) & Haylee (age 14) lifted a tractor to save their father pinned underneath. In 2015, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Nick Williams lifted a four-wheel-drive vehicle to save a young boy pinned beneath its tire. In 2015, in Vienna, Virginia, Charlotte Heffelmire was able to momentarily use incredible strength to free her dad from a GMC pick-up truck. What do these three things have in common? They are what we call miracles, extreme feats of strength. Adrenaline on overload. What they demonstrate is that the rules, boundaries and limitations don’t exist. Why? Because we can blast through them, when we don’t stop to think about it. These examples show people that did something their mind’s would have told them was impossible. But because someone they loved was in danger, they did the impossible. Hilary Swank said “I don’t think people should have boundaries put on them, by themselves or society or another gender, because it is our birthright to experience life in whatever way we feel best suits us.” There was a commercial at Super Bowl XLIX for Always #LikeAGirl. In the video they have a woman show them what it was like to run like a girl, then a young teen, and preteen and little girl. The older girls ran in an unreal way that was weak and ineffective. The younger girls ran as fast as they could. The commercial highlighted the fact that women especially, when they hit puberty take in limitations to what they can do and be. All of us continue to allow limitations to rule our lives as adults. Some limiting beliefs are conscious and some unconscious. What we need to realize is that they are all just a belief of our imagination. At one time, the saying was man will never fly. If god had meant for man to fly he would have been given wings. But people like the Wright Brothers refused to allow that limiting belief hold them back from their dream “Boundaries are for those who are too afraid to take the leap” quoted from @Business Beware. What wall have you built over the door of opportunity that you are ready to blast into bits? What limiting belief are you ready to let go of? Share with us your limiting belief that you are letting go of. Your share will help all of us to do the same.
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”.
Happiness is the Truth
Our feelings and emotions can at times be overwhelming. I remember when my mom passed away, that in the evenings I would get deluged with emotions of missing her, being mad at her for dying, hurting so much that I just crawled into a ball and cried until I couldn’t breathe. Like a person surfing the waves, we can learn to ride these overwhelming emotions. We may crash and fall off our board, but we can choose to get right back on and ride the next wave. To me riding the wave is allowing the emotion to flow right through us, just as the wave reaches the shore and dissipates into nothing. I think the reason that grief or anger can get us stuck in these emotions, is because we don’t allow the emotions to flow through. It then gets caught in a rip tide that we fight until we are exhausted. When we battle or wallow in the emotions, they will keep circling around us, until we are so exhausted that it beats us into the sand. Allowing the emotions to pass through helps us to heal from the hurt. We recover much faster, and we can begin choosing good memories to dwell on. We can progress into appreciation for the time that we had with what we have lost. The truth is that we haven’t really lost anything. People and things come into our lives, serve their purpose or reason for being there, and then move on to the next thing. The important thing is that we had them in our lives for the time they were with us. When we have a bad memory come up, we can just ride the wave to the shore and then consciously allow it to fade into foam. As the last bubble of the foam pops, then it is time to let it go. Then we can consciously decide that we want to raise our vibrations up into higher levels out from the sadness, grief, or anger. We can start attracting good feelings into our space. We always have a choice, even when we think that we don’t. Taking a few deep belly breaths, placing our hands on our heart, and consciously reaching for something that will help us raise our awareness into something positive. I always think of the laughing baby when the dad tears the paper video or cute kittens and puppies, or a favorite song like Pharrell Williams “Happy” song. It’s a great idea to have some images, songs, poems, movies, etc…, in your tool box so that when you need to raise your vibration, you know how to do it quick and easy. As the “Happy” songs says, “happiness is the truth”.
Hero in Real Life
Stuntman? Jamie Foxx shows stuntman not required, as he played the hero in real life. A car slid on the slick roadway outside of the gate to Jamie Foxx’s home and flipped over. Hearing the crash he called for help, and went to render assistance. Fearing that the car might catch on fire, he unbuckled the mans seat belt and helped him get safely away from the overturned vehicle.
The cops and firefighters arrived and transported the victim to a hospital with major injuries, including burns.
On Monday night, Brad Kyle was able to thank Foxx in person for pulling his son, 32-year-old Brett Kyle, out of a burning wreck after his pickup truck flipped into a ditch in Ventura County, California, the AP reports.
Keep Praying
This is a heart warming video in which a family that was having an extremely hard time financially was “adopted” by a couple in an Atlanta Church. As part of helping them they had started a GoFundMe account to raise funds as they were being evicted from a slum home and had no where to go. 2 Chainz found out about their situation through his TRU Foundation and stepped in to help.
So many rappers have the negative reputation of drugs, violence and the over the top opulent lifestyle (expensive cars, flashy jewelry, mansions, etc). I love it when people break out of the box to show that they are not just all about the money, but want to pay it forward, helping those who need it.
The 38-year-old rapper created the “Dabbin’ Santa’ sweater; a screen-printed cartoon Santa Claus doing the dab with snowflakes falling which was highly demanded last Christmas. He made a whopping $2 million in sales and he decided to use the money to give back to the society in collaboration with his TRU foundation. The house the family with 9 kids lived in before now was a rat-infested apartment with no heat and mold growing all over. 2 Chainz discovered their situation through a fundraising website set up by Atlanta’s Progression Church and bought the new home for them.
He shared the surprise on Youtube. “I’m looking forward to seeing their smiles,” he said before the big reveal. “I’m looking forward to the kids growing up knowing that Uncle 2 Chainz came through. […] All you gotta do is pray. Keep praying. You gotta have faith. You gotta believe.”
This isn’t the first time he has given back to his community. There are YouTube videos where he paid the rent for 1 year for a disabled veteran. He has also given a mini van to a family so that they could transport their brain damaged son back and forth to the hospital. He also paid the rent for a year for another family.
Heart of Gold: Rapper 2 Chainz buys a new house for a family of 11
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.
Martin Luther King Jr.
There are so many good quotes for Martin Luther King Jr. His most famous speech, “I have a dream” is full of lessons for us all. I thought about Martin Luther King Jr. a lot the past few days. What would he give a speech to us about today, if he were still alive?
The world is so full of injustice that it is like chains weighing us down. It is like that scene in Sleeping Beauty, where you are chopping down the vines that cover the castle and they regrow faster than you can chop them down. Wage inequality just gets worse every year. Men and women still are not paid the same wage for the same job. We see how terrorism is changing the face of racism, making us afraid of others based on not only their skin color, but their culture and religion. The war against drugs is never ending as drugs continue claim the lives of our young people every day. Lack of access to healthcare continues to be a major problem. I could go on to spit out depressing facts and figures as well as continue the list of things wrong in our world. But I won’t.
One of my favorite MLK quotes is “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?” I think that this quote would be a big part of his speech for us today. “What are you doing for others?” Because at the end of the day, it isn’t some governments policy, law, or program that is going to change our world. It is each of us individually standing up and stating, “I am going to change me”. And as each of us, “changes me”, we will inspire others to do the same for themselves. And individual by individual, the world will change.
What will make this transformation possible is love, forgiveness and lifting each other up. It is the realization that now is the time to do what is right. To teach our children critical thinking, because that is what is needed to lead us forward. To understand all holy scriptures fundamental teaching is that only light can drive out the darkness. All of these thoughts come from other MLK quotes.
If we all started out today, and every day going forward with these kinds of thoughts creating actions of change, the world would change overnight. This reminded me of the Berlin Wall falling down. It seemed to happen overnight, but it was actually the work of many over time. It was small actions that lead to the wall falling down.
The goal should be not to just think about these things one day a year, but rather to think about them daily. Because action goes where our attention is focused. And action is the only way to implement real lasting change upon ourselves.
A last quote “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” We can be disappointed that even though some progress has been made, it hasn’t happened yet,. Just don’t lose hope that if we all keep walking together hand in hand, that it will happen.