Strong Person

 

The fire and heat from the struggle purifies you and you realize just how strong you are – as they say in the song what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
I have met some amazing people who have been on a long Hero’s Journey and they can make an inspired glass of Lemonade from the lemons in their lives.
I celebrate their example and strength

Ego

So when you feel the ego edging in and edging god out, take a breath and recommit. Use the wholeness words with the visualization and see just how delicious your life can be in any given moment.

Story

What is your carefully crafted story of why you can’t do or have your dream? For me it is, What if I am not the genius I think I am?” Ego is goal oriented and works to get approval, control, getting even, etc…, when you leave the ego behind your a free agent ready to respond to the infinite possibilities of the present moment.

Transforming Criticism

Whether you are criticising others or yourself you are really doing the same thing. You are being in an unconscious state of being. I know that when I am in an unconscious state of being, I am not being conscious of how I am feeling. It is like when you are driving the car down a familiar road, like driving to work. All of a sudden 5 minutes have past and I don’t remember even driving to where I am at. A unconscious state of being reflects that I am in a state of lower vibration, a sign that I am out of integrity with myself. In this state I criticize myself or others in order to maintain that lower vibration without even realizing it – just like driving 5 minutes down the road and not remembering doing so.

If I try to bring up my vibration or someone lovingly tries to bring up my vibration by paying me a compliment, I could from this low state of vibration automatically go into deflection. Deflection keeps positive energy from landing, being received and being acknowledged. If keeps us from challenging ourselves, preventing us from expanding our capacity for experiencing positive energy.

When I am not staying conscious and start feeling out of sorts it is a sign that I am out of integrity. The questions to ask are – what feeling am I trying to avoid, or what am I doing that I don’t want to do?

To get back into the state of higher vibrations and be in a conscious state of being, we need to create space within us to feel and appreciate natural good feelings. There are a number of wholeness words that I really love because for me they express a visual that is uplifting in my mind. For example, laugher – picture a laughing baby, you can’t help smile and feel your vibration lift higher. Luxuriate is another visual for me, as a cat lover, the visual for me is the cat rolling in the sunshine. You can just see the kitty enjoying each sinuous turn of its body as it soaks up the warmth, and if you add the senses to the visualization it is most certainly purring. Can you think of some words that provide an uplifting visualization for you to keep in your toolkit, so that when you notice you are out of integrity, you can take a quick moment to center, ground and kick start your vibrations back into a higher vibration?

Open up and welcome the new high water mark of possibility that’s trying to establish itself in you. Look at your faults with cheerful wonder and know that they will dissolve and transform much more rapidly with your awareness of what is happening and how you can consciously facilitate your journey back into a higher vibration. Wholeness comes from expanding your capacity for abundance, love, and success.

What is your carefully crafted story of why you can’t do or have your dream? For me it is, What if I am not the genius I think I am?” Ego is goal oriented and works to get approval, control, getting even, etc…, when you leave the ego behind your a free agent ready to respond to the infinite possibilities of the present moment.

So when you feel the ego edging in and edging god out, take a breath and recommit. Use the wholeness words with the visualization and see just how delicious your life can be in any given moment.

Chasing

I am a facilitator with the Female Quantum Journey and this came up in our call today – not chasing after things , but rather being in a space of allowing things to unfold in our lives. Many of us spend time chasing after things thinking that the thing we are chasing will make us happy, only to find out that it doesn’t fill the hole we are trying to fill in.
What matters most in our life is what we nurture and grow and blossom into. When we accept and love who we really are, that we are already whole and complete that is when we blossom into wholeness.

Objectives

Few people take objectives really seriously. They put average effort into too many things, rather than superior thought and effort into a few important things. People who achieve the most are selective as well as determined. – Richard Koch – Author

I am at a point in my life where I have more going on in the external world than ever before. The kids are all grown up and raising their own families and I have become even busier than when they were at home. I have my fulltime job; my women’s group BraveHeart Women which I am extremely active in; and my nonprofit LemonadeMakers has started out with social media and the website will be going live sometime next month.

When I read this quote today, it reminded me of what I saw growing up and continue to see from friends, family and acquaintances. I think that lots of us got into the habit when we were in school and the class was boring. The subject or teacher didn’t interest us in the slightest, so we just put in enough effort to get a passing grade. We may work at a job that isn’t fulfilling and so we put in just enough effort to not get laid off or fired. We have a marriage more of convenience than passion (passion dying out because of our average effort), and so again we put in just enough effort to get by.

We live a life of average – no passion, no fire, no dreams. We are just punching the time clock through our entire life.

This isn’t the kind of life that I want for myself. When I find myself at the “average” effort, I really examine what it is that I want from this job, this marriage, this life? Then I look at where I am at and try to determine if this is something that I want to put the superior thought and effort into changing, or have I outgrown this job or relationship and it is time to move on. Whatever the answer is, it begins with “what do I really want here?” If I can get that here by changing me, then that is what I put my effort into. If I can’t get what I want by changing me, then it is time to let go.

We all have only so many hours in a day. We spend them on something, and we can’t get that time back. When you are lucky enough to find something in your life that you are “on fire” about, that you are passionate about, that is truly life fulfilling, then you need to look at the other areas of your life from a time commitment perspective. You need to let go of things that you may really like to do. I have cut back on the everything in my life that isn’t about my husband, kids; or about my job; or BraveHeart Women and LemonadeMakers.

Life for me isn’t about just getting a passing grade. It is about making a difference. All of my effort to do so comes from leaving behind everything that was of “average effort” in order to dedicate myself to the “superior effort” of creating community for both BraveHeart Women and LemonadeMakers.

If you find yourself wondering at the end of the day, punching the time clock and then sitting on the couch – then now is the time to look back in your life and find the things that you used to dream about doing or being someday. Fine the last thing that you were on fire about, that you were passionate about. Get involved in making those old dreams come true. Dreams can and do come true and they make a life worth living.

Change

So many times we see that things around us and just not working and that we are failing to help those in our lives. This man, didn’t just shrug his shoulders and blame the system; he didn’t just shrug his shoulders and say if the experts don’t know how to fix this, then what can I do.
Instead he made a change, and the change, the change changed everything.

 

http://www.upworthy.com/his-students-were-struggling-so-he-changed-1-big-thing-then-everything-changed?g=2&c=upw1&fb_ref=Default

Push

“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.” – Marissa Mayer – President and CEO of Yahoo!

For me breakthroughs happen two ways. I follow Marissa’s path and realize that the resistance is what happens when I am about to grow. Like a seedling in the ground, you need to push through that layer of soil in order to grow and I push and breakthrough the block.

If I am growing and expanding in some way that is in accordance to the Divine plan or contract, if I don’t push through what will happen is a breakdown. It is sort of the “we can do this the easy way or the hard way”.

If you have ever had a breakdown you will know what I am talking about. It isn’t pretty. I will be procrastinating – saying this isn’t the right time for something to change or happen. So the Divine starts poking at me and makes the situation I am avoiding change into something intolerable. It starts small and escalates little by little until I can’t stand it any longer. If I am still not moving, then the breakdown happens and things go crazy.

It may be that it was time to leave an employer and now I get fired. It could be that a friendship had been outgrown, becomes toxic and ends badly. It could be that my diet had to change, and now I have a serious illness because I didn’t do it. I am sure that most of you can think of things that you knew you had to let go of, in order for you to grow to the next level. And if you didn’t do it the easy way, by letting go of the resistance and poking your head through the soil, then the Divine ends up pushing you through in a painful way (hitting you on the head with the two-by-four).

I don’t know why we choose to resist. In most instances when we chose to push through, it wasn’t near as scary as our minds made it out to be. I have so many stories where I had this huge story I made up as to how hard something was going to be. When I finally made my mind up and pushed through it, and then I was scratching my head trying to figure out how I created that story in the first place.

I think that sometimes it is just the momentum of getting started. The visualization that I have in my head is around gardening, as it is something I like to do, but somehow always put off. Anyway, when you are digging and you have this large rock that needs to get moved, the inertia of getting it moving is hard, but you start it rocking back and forth, and then it begins to roll, which makes it really easy to keep it moving.

So today, I have a project that has been like that large rock that needs to move. I know that it is time, but because I am making up this huge story of how hard it is to get started, I have been putting it off. I have the best excuses of it’s not the right time; my cat getting attacked by the coyote; my dad getting all of the tests done on his heart and dealing with his condition; having new roommates moving in. All really good reasons (say excuses!). But I know better.

So today, I vow (big hairy promise) to get this rock moving in the right direction. No more reasons or excuses. I know that once I get started I will laugh at my resistance and everything will come together quickly, easily and in the best way possible. I have my intentions for what the completion will look like and I know that the Divine will bring me something that is perfect.

What rock can you release resistance to today? Everything is easier with help, so type a quick line to say what you will start pushing through, so I can be uplifted with your commitment and we can push through together!

Shrinks

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage – Anais Nin – 1903-1977, Author

I was listening to a recording by Derek Rydall who just released a book called Emergence. In the recording he tells the story of a near death experience he had while snorkeling in a coral bed.

He was following some fish and not paying attention to where he was at and found himself trapped in the coral reef. There were fire coral around him which release a toxin that kills, and the narrow corridor that he had swam down was like a maze. No matter where he turned there didn’t seem to be a path back out. He panicked, he prayed, and was barely able to keep himself from touching the dangerous corals that were all around him. His strength was giving out and he saw himself playing out the “he died so young” scenario’s in his head. Then all mentally and physically played out, he surrendered – not a giving up, but rather an acceptance of this is it – I will die here – what he described as a death of his ego.

Immediately following this release of all resistance, a huge wave came over the bed and he was lifted up onto the only safe piece of coral there was and standing up, he could see the path to get out of danger and back to the beach.

When I saw this quote this morning, it reminded me of Derek’s story. We all have resistance to something in our lives every day. That resistance could be to stopping a bad habit, to starting a new habit that we know will improve our lives, to making that phone call or having that conversation that we know we need to do to stay in integrity with ourselves.

So many things we have this tiny bit of resistance to. Resistance creates a drag. It shrinks us and devours our energy. It is like walking around dragging a 100 lb suitcase behind us. It slow us down in achieving the things we want in our lives.

When we release the resistance and do the “thing” you can feel the weight drop off. It is like the difference between fighting to swim upstream against a current that is trying to take us down the waterfall and going with the current, where you only have to occasionally course correct your direction, without expending a lot of energy.

If you find yourself dragging throughout the day, take a moment to look at what is going on in your life – look for where the resistance is. Expand your courage, stretch your mind and/or body, and take the leap of doing the “thing” that you are resisting. Feel the energy expand in your body. You will literally feel the weight drop off your mind/shoulders.

Take a moment to see yourself in Derek’s shoes in that coral reef. The surrender to accept “what is” and then the weight drops off. He isn’t terrified any longer. He is one with the Divine. And at that moment the Divine says, “I am here” and lifts him up to safety so that he can see the answer that in his panic and resistance he couldn’t see before.

That place, that space, is where we all can go, when we surrender to “what is” and ask ourselves, “what else is possible” and let go of the resistance.

New Truth

If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance. – Orville Wright – 1871-1948, Inventor and Aviation Pioneer

I find that (for me) the secret to testing what I believe to be true is reading about everything I can get my hands on. Every truth changes as I grow and change. That’s because each piece of knowledge becomes a building block expanding the rooms that I store all of my knowledge in. I get better views of things as the pieces form a new vista to look upon and discover something new around every corner, in every nook and cranny.

The number of inventions and records that have been broken were because someone didn’t believe it couldn’t be done are too numerous to mention. The Wright Brothers plane is just one of thousands. But it isn’t just inventions or sports records that are made that make this thought true. It is also in how we live our day to day lives.

I have learned different ways of thinking from the experiences that I have had as well as the experiences that others have had in their lives; how their truths intersect with mine and how there are threads in their history that match up to the threads in mine. They may have taken the pattern in a different direction, learned something fundamentally different than I did. They may even have different memories of something that we experienced together.

That doesn’t make their memory wrong, or them wrong or right in how they handled the experience. It is just different. Their pattern served them in some way, just as mine did. What I have learned though is that those patterns while serving me in some ways, have not served me in others. What I have learned is to let go of the attachment to my pattern. When I traced the threads of the pattern back to the beginning, I see where it has served me, and where it has caused myself and others pain.

A few years ago I told a story in a class up on stage about a defining moment in my childhood. I told a story about my mother when I was 13 yrs old and we were homeless. There was something that happened during that defined me as a person, with my vowing that I would never put my own family into the situation that we had devolved into through a series of bad choices my mother made.

The positive threads of this pattern were that I became very successful in a banking career. The negative aspect of this pattern was that unconsciously, I had made my husband feel that he wasn’t needed to provide for me or our family. It wasn’t until I told that story that I realized what I had done. It wasn’t intentional but it was an aspect of the pattern that I was living in up until that moment. Once I saw what I had done I had a long heart to heart conversation with my husband, and he said the most amazing thing – he said, “I loved you so much that I figured that I could live with it, just to have you in my life.”

I let go of the attachment to this truth that I had lived my life by. In your life, there are patterns that you are unconsciously living. If you are brave enough, you can trace the pattern back to the childhood experience(s) that created it. You can find in your life places in your life where it served you, and places were it didn’t. You can even realize as I did, that you can let go of that attachment and expand into a new truth.

We don’t have to accept life as it is, we can grow and make life different. We can expand our knowledge and wisdom and let go of the old truths and welcome in the new truths that are from love, trust, and gratitude. My son Joe when he was little had a pair of rain boots that he loved. Even when he outgrew them he would shove his feet into them and wear them. I would hide them (because I was saving them for his younger brother) and he would find them and put them on. I finally had to give them away, to keep them from hurting his feet. Don’t be like my son, and keep shoving your life into those boots who served you, but now you have outgrown them. Let go of the attachment, and accept a new truth or two into your life.

There are no limits, no can’ts, but there are unlimited possibilities and yes’s. We have an acronym with my BraveHeart Sisters “WEIP” – what else is possible? If you live life from that space, then you will advance forward confidently in the knowledge that yes, anything really is possible – even a new thought or truth (or in the case of Joe a new pair of rain boots)

Greatest Good

The greatest vision of myself is possible by aligning not to the highest good, but to the greatest good.

The difference is the same as playing small or reaching for the stars – the highest good is playing it safe, coloring in the lines, and doing the “best” that you can. It sounds like a good thing, but is in fact a cop-out as you walk down a well worn path that thousand before you have walked. “oh well, she is doing the best she can, with what she knows and has” kind of life. This is not the kind of life that I want to look back on when I am moving on to the next great adventure.

One Vessel

The Māori name, “Waka Kotahi”, means “one vessel” and is intended to convey the concept of “travelling together as one”. Even though we all have an individual path, these paths are all layers of the one path of human experience. Even though we may be traveling to different destinations, we all end up at the end of our lives at the same destination.

I think that this is the component of community that I love so much. We don’t have to be at the same place in our lives, have the same culture, the same beliefs. What we focus on is the things we have in common. The differences are what makes each of us unique and special. Because our differences don’t have to the thing that pulls us apart, they can be the thing that holds us together.