Rise Above The Storm

Sometimes it feels like the bad guys are winning.  Like there is no justice.  That we have been abandoned by our friends, our family, and by God.  It seems like we are burning alive and everyone just stares at us.  You can see them talking to each other about the tragedy.  No hero is showing up to save the day. That moment of tribulation, of complete annihilation of who we are, is a turning point.  All of us go through it at some point in our lives.  Some of us visit this place more than once.

I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.

  –  Joshua Graham

I always think of the old show, “The Six Million Dollar Man”, Steven Austin.  The line in the show, “we can rebuild him, better than before”.  Sometimes we have to die to who we currently are, in order to be reborn as the person that we are meant to be.  We can rise again.  God did not abandon us.

If you’re not okay, that’s okay.  It will happen sometimes.  But you have to tell yourself that things will be better tomorrow. Even if they’re not better tomorrow, keep telling yourself they will be.  Because eventually, tomorrow will be better.

  – Sam Miller

What we discover in life and in relationships, is that we are not really in control of anything.  Things will happen that we don’t want to happen.  When my mom kicked our 1st stepfather out, my siblings and I were devastated.  We loved him at that moment more than her.  He was the one that really stepped in and took care of us.  He was crying, we were crying, and my mom was standing at the door with a new stepfather asking “our dad” to leave.  We had to accept that he wasn’t going to be in our lives any longer.  We had to let him go, because to continue to cry and beg our mother to bring him back only created trouble for us.

She’s been through hell and came out an angel.  You didn’t break her, darling.  You don’t own that kind of power.

  – BMM Poetry

Then there are the things that we don’t want to know, but have to learn.  One of my best friends in high school had an alcoholic stepmother.  Sometimes she would pass out in the bathroom and we would have to drag her into the bedroom and on to the bed.  We should never have had to experience that, but we had to learn how to clean up after her or she would be horribly mean to my best friend.

Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do.

  – Nelson Mandela

This was a man who certainly had experience to speak from.  He grew up in apartheid Africa, becoming a lawyer and speaking out against the injustices in his country.  He was arrested for treason and sentenced to life in prison.  He served 27 years in prison and was released in 1990.  He negotiated an end to apartheid and became the first black democratically elected president of his country.  He didn’t come out of prison preaching violence as a way to end the injustices of racism.  He helped to create a new constitution, and emphasized reconciliation.  He received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it.  You surround yourself with people who make you laugh.  Forget the bad, and focus on the good.  Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don’t.  Life is too short to be anything but happy.  Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.

  – Jose N. Harris

Deep within you is the power to rise above any situation or struggle.  Within you is the power to transform the brokenness that you are feeling into a strong foundation.  Do not lose who and what you are.  Move forward, not building a fortress or wall of protection, but instead building a firm foundation of a new life.

Three things you cannot recover in life:  the word after its said, the moment after its missed and time after its gone.  So choose your words wisely, embrace every moment you have with those you love, and never waste time arguing over things that will not matter in the last 5 minutes of your life.

  – happywivesclub.come

The sun will continue to rise up every morning, and sunset will continue every evening.

The light may feel like it goes out, but it continues on it’s journey.

Feel the burning rage wash through you,

Watch the smoke of injustice as it incinerates your life.

Feel the winds of change, watch the storm surge roll away taking all of your beliefs with it.

Feel the death of a reputation, of knowing the taste of ashes as everything you have worked for blows away.

Now at the end of everything that you knew, that you thought was yours.

Now is when you stand at the crossroads, and choose.

Do you stay in this smoke and desolation of a past life?

Do you stand up, shake it off, and walk down a new path?

Forgiveness is the gift that we can give ourselves, because the haters can only hate by first hating themselves.

A person may break your heart and damage your pride, but never ever give them the power to break your spirit.

  -Susan Gale

Journey Wisely.

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I Rise Up

I Rise Up

The drum beats echo in the night,

calling my heart to wake up,

Whirlwinds suck up the ashes of my abandoned dreams,

I rise up,

Sparks catch the ashes and burst into flames,

igniting my souls dream to wake up,

Surging through the blood,

inflaming the passions of my heart, I rise up.

Dreams are the warriors of my soul,

stirring me to action, I wake up,

Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes ,

I rise up,

Dreams arise from the ashes remade,

even as I slide back into slumber, I wake up,

Rising from the ashes,

I again take flight, I rise up.

My heart rhythm matches the beats of the drum,

echoing in the heart of darkness, I wake up,

The roots imprisoning my feet stir at my souls fire,

heat rises up through my body, I rise up,

My soul breaks free of the restraints put upon it,

to slumber and sleep, I wake up

My soul rising up to take flight to the heavens,

chasing after the sun, I rise up

An eternal flame, a comet, I blaze across the heavens,

I have woke up,

The comet tail blazes across the sky,

it flares as I rise up,

Fully awake to my souls purpose,

once again I battle to fulfill it,

to wake the sleepers up,

For they too were conquered,

reduced to ashes they feel asleep, but now awakening,

WE RISE UP!

You remember what God’s destiny is for you when you are little. You have these hopes and dreams of what you will be when you grow up. Then you start school and like most of us, you lost sight of the those dreams. They got buried and forgotten.  Like tumbleweeds you were blown away by the dust devils across the fields, your dreams broken and unseen.

Then something happens that knocks the wind out of you. Everything that you thought was important in your life, is shown to be fools gold. You stumbled and fell down. You grieved your loss in sackcloth and ashes. And because you are really lucky, you are remembered or are remembering what you are here to do.

So grab your pillows and shake last nights dreams loose from the feathers that you bound them up in.  RISE UP.  Those abandoned dreams are not truly cold and dead.  They lay buried in the dream caverns, waiting for you to bring them back to life.  To blow upon them the breath of life, igniting them once again into a steady flame.

“We always have the potential to rise. Rise out of our slump. Rise out of our negative thoughts. Rise out of our comfort zone. Rise out of our complaints, GET UP AND RISE…, Rising is a choice that’s one powerful thought away” – Kris Carr

What will defines you, is the RISE UP part. Everyone will fall down.  You fall asleep because the going was so hard.  You told yourself that you deserved to take it easy just for a little while.  And so you fell asleep.  It is part of the human experience. There is a spark of divinity in you still, and it is in the RISE UP part.  It is how to become the person you were meant to be. The importance of this, is that the world is waiting for you and your gifts. It needs you to RISE UP, one more time and reenter the ring of life and fight the battle you were sent to fight.  Something happens, these small occurrences, these coincidences.  They start these sparks, that shine brightly .  They will draw you in, they will stoke up those hidden fires.  You will wake up.

“Coincidences are glimpses in to the creative mind of the universe”  – Deepak Chopra

Each time you are reborn like the phoenix, you are just a little bit wiser from life’s experiences. You are stronger because even though you got knocked down, you got back up one more time. As long as you don’t quit, the “fat lady hasn’t sang”. It isn’t over, and you can still be a winner, fulfilling your destiny.  Breathe your dreams to life, by taking one small step.  Listen to the whispers of your soul.  Enter the cave of your dreams and release them from their shackles of limitations, because in truth you have no limits.

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek”  – Joseph Campbell

So if you are feeling a little sore, like a semi truck ran over you, backed up, and ran over you again, remember – remember you are like the Phoenix and can rise up from the ashes. Remember that the spark is always buried in the ashes, and just needs you to blow on it to re-ignite the flames.  The dream doesn’t really die.  It doesn’t expire.  Look inside and awaken.  Undergo a radical transformation and like the Phoenix RISE UP. Listen to your heart and RISE UP.  RISE UP and follow your soul to the stars and beyond.

Remember that when life throws you to the wolves, you can come back leading the pack!

Come join us on March 7th for our next monthly free webinar on how to live your life with 20/20 focus. How to face the fears that are keeping you locked out of your destiny. How to unlock your cages and use those divine gifts with purpose to not only shift and change your world, but the entire world. Come and renew yourself. Find your voice and RISE UP!

To All Of The Dreamers

“Set a goal so big, that you can’t achieve it until you grow into the person who can” – Unknown

I don’t think that the importance of big dreams can be over emphasized.  When you were a small child, you believed that you could do anything, because your mom and dad said so.  Then as you grew older, you would try things and fail.  Because it doesn’t feel good to fail, you started putting limits on what you could do.

So, now as an adult when you set goals to bring a dream into reality, you typically made it something that you felt comfortable could be achieved.  It stays inside of the comfort zone.  Which defeats the purpose of the dream before you even get started.

“It is the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting” – Paulo Coelho

You have to trust in divine destiny.  In the fact that you have a purpose in being here at this moment in time.  That if it has been planted in your heart and soul, then it is yours to do.  It is a different kind of trust than you are used to.  You think that trust is something that is earned by how you behave and act.

This kind of trust though is different because it is not based on past actions.  It is based on your being willing to accept the risk.  No guarantees.  Not because it is safe or certain that this is the right way to fulfill that life purpose or destiny.  It could in fact be the failure that turns you to a completely different path, that leads to that destiny or life purpose.  The trust is that no matter what happens it will serve you.

Your dreams need to be bigger than your fears, because that is how they grow you.  If you don’t have faith in your ability to do something, or be something that you have never been or done, then there’s really nothing to believe in.  This is because you will just go through life doing things you know you can do.  And that is not accomplishing any dreams.

Unless you can imagine your dreams of doing something totally outside of your comfort zone coming true, they can’t get a purchase in your reality. Remember that you grow with your dreams, so they need to feel impossible in order to grow you. So, reach for the stars and change not only your world, but the world around you.

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams” – Oprah

Think of the Wright Brothers and the airplane.  Think of President Kennedy and the “Moon Shot”.  Think of Roger Bannister who had been told that if he actually ran a four-minute mile he would die in the attempt.  Think of Felix Baumgartner who jumped to the earth from a helium balloon in the stratosphere.  He actually broke the sound barrier with his body he was coming down so fast.

All of these people did amazing things because they got out of their comfort zones.  Because they were willing to bust through their fear of failure and dare greatly to accomplish a dream.  A dream so powerful that no one believed it could actually be done.  So how did they do it?  What is their secret?

This means a couple of things have to happen.  You have to put action to the things you want to accomplish.  Your faith has to be stronger than the negative mind talk that is going to try and drown out those actions, into never getting off the ground.  Dreams are life realities waiting for you to make them come true.

• If you don’t feel scared.,
• If you don’t think that your dreams are impossible,
• If you don’t feel like quitting almost every day,

then your dreams aren’t big enough.

“Life is tough, my darling. But so are you” – Stephanie Bennett Henry

So, laugh a lot and realize how truly blessed life can be when you are dancing after your dreams.  It is what the answer is to feeling stuck, bored, and unhappy.  You just need to birth a new dream in your life.

So DARE TO FAIL and WAKE UP and LIVE!

It is reaching into your creative mind saying “I wonder if” to yourself as you think about what your logical mind has said is impossible.  Then you catch a whisp of an idea, that leads you down the rabbit hole.  There is a possibility here you say.  It will probably fail.  But if it did work, then wouldn’t that be wonderful?  And before you know it, it’s become inevitable that it is going to work!

“Some of us let those great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true” – W Wilson

Your Real Strength Is In Your Greatest Weakness

Every great dream begins with a dreamer.  You have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world – Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman certainly walked her talk.  She escaped slavery going to the North.  But she didn’t stay there.  Instead, she made 13 missions to rescue other slaves using the Underground Railroad.  She rescued over 70 families.

When the Civil War broke out, she worked as a scout and spy.  One of the raids that she was part of saved 700 slaves.  She is such a great example of not letting anyone break her soul.  She not only stood firm for her beliefs, but helped hundreds escape slavery.

Harriet had dreams and trusted her intuition.  There are stories of how she would lead the slaves down different paths, because her dreams told her the normal way was not safe, and she was right every time.

We all have had hard times come upon us.  Times when you feel hopeless and helpless, that you cannot take another step.  Days when you feel that the whole world is against you.  Times of loss, of betrayal.  A death in the family, a divorce, a loss of income and status.

People are like stained glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

It is in these times that you have the choice of your greatest pain becoming your greatest source of strength.  In that moment of surrender, you find the spark to go on.

Derek Rydell tells a story of how he was diving in a coral reef in his book “Emergence”.  Not paying attention, he found himself trapped in a coral bed of fire coral.  Fire coral is poisonous.  Try as he might, he couldn’t see the way out.

He talks about the conversation in his head.  First, he was pleading with God to save his life.  It was let’s make a deal.  Then his imagination was running wild on being found dead from the poison of the coral.  What his friends and relatives would say at his funeral and so on.

Finally, exhausted and seeing the sand sharks swimming towards him in the coral he accepted that he was going to die.  At this moment of complete surrender, no longer fighting, a huge wave came through the coral and swept him up on the only piece of coral that was safe.  He was able to stand and see the only pathway safely out of the coral and return to shore.

This was his moment of waking up.  This was his moment of divine consciousness coming both from within and into him.  It was his “Kairos” moment.  The definition of Kairos is the perfect, delicate, crucial moment, that fleeting rightness of time and place that creates the opportunity for action, words, or movement.

In that space of complete surrender, something inside of him finally released who and what he came to earth to be.  He realized his purpose, his divine mission in life.

When Derek stood up on the one safe place, he was standing in God’s time.  He was outside of time.  For that one moment he was completely in the present moment.  He wasn’t seeing his death in the future.  He wasn’t full of regrets for things he did or didn’t do in his past.  He was in a “Kairos moment”, a time when God takes action moment.  Kairos takes you through time because you are standing outside of linear time.

Now it took time to integrate everything that came to him at that moment, but it was the moment that transformed him completely.  He had to seize that moment, in order to save his life.

Difficult times that challenge you are not meant to destroy you.  They are meant to wake you up to your life’s purpose.  It is up to you to accept it or deny it.

When you accept it, you find strength in overcoming the trial.  You have a clear purpose.

It doesn’t mean that you find an easy life.  It means that you realize why you are here, and you start learning how to accomplish it.

The most important thing in your life is not what you do; it’s who you become.  That’s what you will take into eternity.  You are unceasing spiritual beings with an eternal destiny on God’s great universe – Dallas Willard

Those who refuse to accept their destiny, choose to remain asleep in life.  They become bitter, negative souls, hopeless against life’s challenges.

Like the butterfly whose chrysalis gets opened from an outside source, their wings are weak and not capable of flight.

It is in the struggle to break out of the chrysalis, that the butterfly’s wings grow the strength to take flight.

Discover the path that you are meant to walk.  Celebrate the miles you have come and keep going. Believe in yourself and see yourself as the wonderful inspiring person you really are becoming.

Watering Concrete Will Never Grow A Garden

“You should not have to rip yourself into pieces to make others feel whole”  – Unknown

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind didn’t matter, and those who matter won’t mind”  –  Dr. Seuss

“The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it”  – Henry Ford

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”  – Margaret Mead

“Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done.  Life’s too short to think small”  – Tim Ferris

“The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning, but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it. Until this moment. Now I see that I will never find the Light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel”  – Bruce Lee

What would you be if the people around you refused to let you fail?

Burn brightly and never, ever, ever, let anyone convince you to be less than the brightly shining star that you are.

When You Are Lost, You Finally Have The Chance To Find Yourself

As with a heavy fog on a road, what lies ahead on the path of life is never completely clear, but the choices we make can help shape out the shadows  – Bryson Staley

If you’re feeling frightened about what comes next, don’t be.  Embrace the uncertainty.  Allow it to lead you places.  Be brave as it challenges you to exercise both your heart and your mind as you create your own path toward happiness; don’t waste time with regret.  Spin wildly into your next action.  Enjoy the present, each moment as it comes, because you’ll never get another one quite like it.  And if you should ever look up and find yourself lost, simply take a breath and start over.  Retrace your steps and go back to the purest place in your heart . . .  where your hope lives.  You’ll find your way again  – Everwood

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves –  Henry David Thoreau

A Heroes Journey Begins With A Call Or A Fall – What Will You Choose?

Most of us are in what Joseph Campbell calls “Sleepy Land”. We get so bound up in the day to day details of living, that we fall asleep to our purpose.

The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, “Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there, and so it starts.

  – Joseph Campbell

Then one day it happens. We notice that we are missing something. We want more. We wake up to the fact that “more” is not more money.  It is not a better job.  It is not a bigger house.  It is not a more luxurious car. It is elusive, and we may not know what “it” is.  But we begin to figure out what “it” isn’t. It is our birthright,.  It is what takes our life from “normal” to “greatness”.

Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves.

  – Carol Pearson

Men like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson figured out what that was for them. And while they had all of the things that people think will make them happy, it was the “more” that actually brought them to greatness.  The dragons we must confront are all the lies that we told ourselves.  If I rise up in the ranks at work, I will be happy.  If I make six or seven figures, then I will be happy.  If only I had a sports car I would be so happy.  What we must discover is what “it” is.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

  – Martin Buber

They may have started out after all of the material things, but they ended up with the “more”.  There is a Billy Crystal movie from years ago.  It was called City Slickers.  Billy Crystal’s character meets up with this cowboy who asks him if he knows the secret of life.  “One thing.  Just one thing.  You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.”  Billy Crystals character asks him what that one thing is, and the cowboy replies, “that’s what you have to find out.”  It isn’t things and stuff.  It is something more.  It is something that demands more of you than you think that you have to give.  And if you find it, and follow it where it leads, you will lead a life you never thought would be possible.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.

  – Joseph Campbell

This something else is transcendence. Transcendence happens when we “reclaim the visionary, the utopian, the dream of the better or happier world”  – when everything that we touch becomes a prayer. 

The genuine exploration of one’s self as an individual is the greatest contribution you can make toward humanity and all life.  Ironically, inner self-reliance is what makes the whole of humanity stronger.

  – Unknown

So how do we discover what it is? We have to walk out the door of the safe comfortable space we have created for ourselves.  We have to walk down that path to the unknown. We have to enter the dark forest. You have to embark on the Hero’s journey. It is how you discover the vast resources that reside within you. A hero’s journey – finding the edge of your unknown forest, and entering into the heart of darkness.

What do you find there? You explore the caves of the past and you wake up to the dreams of the future. You let go of the life of existence, of “go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed and repeat over and over again”.  The journey is an individual one, and each persons journey is different.  We have to go within and listen to what our own truth is.  Some walks you have to take alone.  Otherwise your truth, your inner voice gets drowned out by others.

The hero journey is inside of you; tear off the veils and open the mystery of your self.

 –   Joseph Campbell

Traveling down into the depths of the abyss we recover treasures of life. We recover the dreams we let die.  Se see that the stories that we have told ourselves about past hurts are not entirely true. We become excavator’s and dig up the bones of the past.  We let the past blow away like dust on the winds of healing. We see that most of the problems in our life have been mirrors being held up to us.  Most of the time, we were too blind or too scared to acknowledge the truth. By exploring the darkness we become enlightened.

The fatal mistake is waiting for life’s circumstances to be right before we begin.  Simply begin with your heart, look deeply into it and trust what you feel.  Practice knowing and you will know.

  – Hugh Prather

We become curious, our mind opens up to new ideas. Changes begin as we see new worlds to explore that have lain beneath the normalcy of our past life. We see possibilities instead of complications. We wonder. We release. We transform. We heal and become whole for the first time.  We have to enter the forest and break away, to walk the hero’s path.

We realize that although we were damaged, we survived and that makes us dangerous. Because we now know how to not only survive, we know how to become whole again. We become both a mentor and a teacher for ourselves.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

  – Rumi

Being a mentor to oneself with love, light, grace, and compassion. Being a teacher to yourself with rage, darkness, fear, and judgment. We are both.  Both are required for the heroes journey. Speaking love to overcome rage,.  Speaking light to overcome darkness.  Speaking grace to overcome fear.  Speaking compassion to overcome judgment.

I guess that’s the thing about a hero’s journey. You might not start out a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to.

  – Kami Garcia

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Sending Love Wherever It Is Needed

We all have those days.  The days when nothing is seeming to go the way you planned.  That day when every mistake you made in the past year, shows up on your desk within 5 minutes of your sitting down.  Those days when you feel that the very idea of being able to control anything in your life, is life’s great joke on you.

“Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all, or by having everything happen at once”  – Paulo Coelho

If you could see what was being hidden in each of our lives, I think that you would be more loving to one another.  There is a video that was done, where little thought bubbles come up as the camera goes down the halls and elevators in a hospital.    Someone is saying goodbye to their dying father.  One man was just told the tumor was benign, while another was told he has cancer.  An elderly woman with oxygen has been waiting for a heart transplant for 69 days.  An exhausted nurse is at the end of a 12 hour shift.  “

Those are the days when you need someone to hug you and say, “You are Good Enough.  You are Capable of Handling this.  You are Important.  You are more than Worthy.  You are LOVED.  You are NOT ALONE.”  These are the days that you need all of the light and love that the world can send you.  What you have to remember, is that at this very moment, someone in the world is either sending you that love, or is in need of you to send that love.

“Could a greater miracle take place, than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” – Henry David Thoreau

It is when you are living your life from the place of passion and purpose, that you shine the brightest.  Knowing that your deepest dreams can be reached.  It is when you take that deep breath, and just let the emotions flow out of you, that you can reset yourself.  It is hard to be loving and empathetic when you are in survival mode.  You need to give yourself the oxygen mask, reset your emotions and then help others.  Find that spark inside of you, and let it shine first for you.  Then shine it for others to help them find theirs.

Recently driving into work, I was playing a CD with healing sounds.  A friend of mine knew that I have been having some health issues, and thought it might help.  So I purchased it and have been playing it all week.

I realized that every area in almost everyone’s life right now is undergoing some issues.  Work layoffs; health issues; injustices in life, and just watching the news can make you a  little stressed out about how everything is in a negative place right now.

Writing these posts and finding the “good news” articles and videos is what keeps my feet walking down my path of transformation.  It is keeping me sane.  It is why I write, and why I want to share what I find with all of the other LemonadeMakers out there.

“Remember . . .  the entrance to the sanctuary is within you”  – Rumi

Then you add in everything negative happening with the war in Ukraine, fighting in politics between the parties, terrorists’ attacks; the workplace and school shootings, countries at war within their own borders, or threatening to make war on other countries – it can all feel overwhelming.

None of these problems have easy solutions.  I think that we are all being called by the Divine to wake up.  To be the love and light that the world needs to heal.  We all need to heal in some way.

“Spread love everywhere you go.  Let no one ever come to you with leaving happier”  –  Mother Teresa

When you lift someone else up, it automatically lifts you up.  As the saying goes, “you rise by lifting others”.  It is not dependent on the other person appreciating your showing them love.  It is not dependent on it being reciprocated back to you.  It could even be ignored.  It will still lift both of you up.

This is because your showing love to others means that you are actively involved in the growth and support of another person.  Right now, you may not be in a place of being able to offer a refugee a place to stay.  You may not be in a place to donate money to help support someone in need.  But you are always in a place of showing love to someone.  Even if it is just a smile and a small prayer that love light their way forward.  You are always able to shine out the love and light to others.

Make Sure To Taste Your Words, Before You Say Them Out Loud

Judging a person does not define who they are, it defines who you are.  It is almost impossible to truly understand what another person has experienced in their life.  Even if you have experienced a similar trauma, you don’t have the same fears, doubts, sorrows or pain that they have, each of which colors their experience of the trauma.

It’s easy to look at people and make quick judgments about them, their present and their past, but you’d be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides.  What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sight.  And more often than not, it’s lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundation of the soul.

  –  Sherrilyn Kenyon

That is why the very act of judgment is so harmful.  Most of us have the mean inner critic that creates a lot of havoc in our life.  We really don’t need the additional bench of outsiders judging us too.  Judging doesn’t bring anything positive to the table. 

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt.  Doubt separates people.  It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations.  It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.

  – Buddha

What doubt and judgment reflects of us is actually small prejudices.  These small personal judgments or beliefs we make are deceptive because the are like the thorns – tiny, but dangerous.  It works its way into the body and festers,  creating an infection than can imperil your life.  This is what leads to extremist thinking and actions.  It is these thorns that lead to bombings, to being a sniper in a tower shooting innocent people, to so many of the mass murders and terrorist actions we see today.

Allow judgments, expectations, and illusions to fade into the darkness. And in the light, all that remains is love. 

  – Greig Grippen

True empathy for one another means that we step out of the initial judgment or thought that we have about ourselves or another person.  It requires that we look beneath the surface to see what the storms of life have dumped into us.  When you peer into the water of a lake, you see the things hidden from view. There is dirt, mud, rocks, sand, sticks, leaves, things that you expect to find.  But what else might be there?  What has the  rain, wind, flooding dumped into the water over the years? 

There will always be a reason why you meet people.  Either you need them to change your life or you are the one that will change theirs.

  – Unknown

I remember that some divers went into a small lake just a few miles from Seattle-Tacoma Airport after a bad storm.  The lake is surrounded by office buildings and homes.  What they found were lawn chairs, outside tables, and various things that had been blown into the water over the years from the homes around the lake.  They also found a very, very, old hand hewn canoe from a tree, thought to be over 150 yrs old.  Just like this lake had been hiding many things beneath the surface, so do we.  Empathy  is what allows us to dive deep and begin to truly understand what might be going on.

We also have to look at the reason we are making the judgments, from a self improvement perspective.  There is a saying that every judgment we make about others, is about something that we don’t want to admit seeing in ourselves.  So when we make that judgment about somebody’s body being covered by tattoo’s or that they have bright green or purple hair, or that outfit is too young for them and so on and so on.  What is that judgment reflecting about us? 

“Go to the edge.” the voice said.  “No, I’ll fall.” I replied.  “Go to the edge.” the voice said.  “You’ll push me.” I replied.  “Go to the edge.” the voice said.  So I went and I was pushed and I flew.

  – Zen Proverb

I know that in the past for myself, I noticed that I made judgments about people who dressed differently than I did – in ways that drew attention to themselves, it was because I was jealous.  I was too afraid to call that much attention to myself.  Now that I know what was underneath of that judgment, it has shifted into being inspired by their courage.  What judgments do you habitually make that could be shifted into something positive?  Instead of judging others by the results of actions, what if we looked at the initial intentions, exercised empathy and went on from there? 

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.

  – Rumi

The rush to judgment is the exact opposite of this.  It is a rush to hate on someone, when the true story isn’t even known.  The whole concept of bad news traveling fast is because no one has yet gotten all of the facts.  When my nephew was murdered, the headline in the paper was about one gang member killing someone in a rival gang.  My nephew wasn’t a gang member and had never associated with anyone who was.  He was simply walking through the park late at night taking a short cut to a friends house to get his bike and ride home.  He was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.  Two days later, the paper corrected itself, on a back page.  We see this happen all of the time on the internet.  Instead, wouldn’t it be nice to see some comments on lets not make judgments until we hear all of the facts of an investigation?

The secret in life is enjoying the passage of time.  Instead of clutching onto the past or fearing the future, experiment with letting go into the mystery of life.  Float on the river of time, curious about its direction, open to its changing nature.  You don’t really know where it’s going, so why not relax and experience the ride?

  – Elizabeth Lesser

Instead lets meet in the field, with the idea of laying aside the blame and judgments.  Lets allow ourselves to live life without the judgment of wrong doing or right doing.  Where instead, we can simply live a more loved filled life.  I know that this sounds like an unrealistic impossible place.  But even if we could come close to the edges of such a field, think about how much our own lives would improve.  About how much the world around us would be improved, just by us trying to live in this space.

In silence there is eloquence.  Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

  – Rumi

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This Is The Year I Am Unstoppable

This is the year, that I become the warrior woman that I didn’t think I could be.

This is the year, that every morning begins with a cup of the grandest vision I can imagine.

This is the year that I find the gold inside of me, and don’t try to dilute it.

This is the year that instead of allowing that critical voice inside my head to stop me, I will dust off my stiletto kick ass heals and crush it.

This is the year, that I let the wild and crazy girl go free.

This is the year that no one (not even me), can put out the burning desire that rages deep inside of me.

This is the year that “I am already everything I need”, becomes more than just a saying.

This is the year, that my “will” is stronger than fears resistance.

This is the year that I will forgive myself freely, and love myself relentlessly.

This is the year that my life is a living, breathing, screaming, invitation to believe in better things, not only for myself, but for the whole world.

This is the year that God is bringing new seasons of growth into my life.

This is the year that new doors of opportunity will up-level my life to a glorious future beyond my wildest dreams.

This is the year that the way I live my life, respects and enhances the freedom of others.

This is the year that I will always speak the truth, even if no one wants to hear, or will listen to it.

This is the year that I shine like a beacon through whatever dark nights come.

This is the year that I dance with change and transformation instead of fighting it.

This is the year that passion and purpose become that favorite dress that I wear for all occasions.

This year when I feel the start of something new, I am going to pay attention and follow the directions.

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Walk Away – Not From Pride Or Arrogance, But Because That Door No Longer Leads Somewhere You Can Live

Knowing when to walk away is wisdom.  Being able to is courage.  Walking away, with your head held high is dignity.

We all stand at the threshold of a great adventure every day. It can be a scary place, because we all have our individual self doubts. We have to unlearn the programming that says it is selfish to put ourselves first. It is not selfish to love ourselves, to take care of ourselves, and make our own happiness a priority. As they say on every airplane takeoff, in case of emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first, then you can help others. 

Every soul is beautiful and precious; is worthy of dignity and respect, and deserving of peace, joy, and love. 

 –  Bryant McGill

You cannot change what is going on around you, until you start changing what is going on inside of you. We need to put on that oxygen mask, so we can take stock of what inside of us is not working. We need to let go of what is not ours to fix, put up with, or allow to continue happening.

We are all born with a purpose and a passion.  It is up to you to seek out that purpose and find your passion.

 – Billy Cox

We are fragile human beings who can be destroyed by another’s words or actions. If we are not being treated with love and respect, we need to see what value we have assigned to ourselves. The people that we surround ourselves with are a reflection of how we view ourselves.  We need to get off the “reduced last chance sale rack”, and get inside the fancy glass case where the precious jewels are displayed.

You are determining the future you every day.  Will the decisions you make today lead you closer to the person you want to be tomorrow? 

– Brenna Smith

How many times for example has someone said, “Where to you want to go to dinner?” and your answer was that you didn’t know or didn’t care.  You do know what you feel like eating, but somehow, you always say, “it doesn’t matter, what you do want?”  The scriptures say something like, he who is faithful in little things, is faithful in bigger things.  What it is talking about is the principle of patterns.  What you do in the big things has been formed by the habits of what you do in the little things.  The habit of always putting others before you, started in the smaller things, like what do you want for dinner.

Be authentic!  Don’t lower your dreams to fit it with others.  If people can’t celebrate your dreams, they are probably not your friends.

 – Phineas Kinuthia

We may be afraid that no one will listen to us, so why speak.  We may be terrified that they will laugh at our dreams and say they are unattainable. We fear being judged as unworthy, not enough.  We don’t want to be all alone and so we abdicate our life away, so that we will be accepted and fit in. This is the story that we tell ourselves so that we don’t have to change.

Instead we can start making choices that feed us, energize us. We can choose to be unstoppable. To be bigger than any worries that are buzzing around us. Those buzzing worries are just scenario’s that no longer serve to build us up. Release what is no longer serving you. Open the window shooing the fly to go buzz its way outside.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do, is also the right thing to do.

The universe is always speaking to us . . . sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more.

– Nancy Thayer

You are more than you have shown yourself to be so far. You are more than you have been willing to see. You are stronger than you know. Trust your intuition and live a courageous life. 

Respect your efforts, respect yourself.  Self respect leads to self discipline.  When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.

– Clint Eastwood 

Today is the day to get up and walk down your sacred path. Choose to dwell in divine possibility. Awaken to the divine guidance that has been sending you messages. Believe in the divine plan, that you are more capable than you ever dreamed. Remember that you will never had to sacrifice your dignity for your destiny.  If it feels like that is the choice, then your intuition is telling you to pass that choice by. 

Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain and overlook the old.  

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Butterfly Effect Is, Everything Happens For A Reason, Change One Thing, Change Everything.

Learn how to see.  Realize that everything connects to everything else.

  – Leonardo da Vinci

Change is a funny thing in our lives.  It happens everyday.  A seed breaks its shell and begins growing a plant.  The Apple Tree blossoms, forms the bud of an apple that grows and ripens.  The seeds are sown, they grow and produce according to their kind, and they are harvested, eaten and the process begins again.

In 1963 Edward Lorenz presented “The Chaos Theory” to the New York Academy of Science and was laughed out of the room.  Thirty years later, this theory was accorded the status of a “law” when physics professors proved it to be true. The original theory stated that, a butterfly flapping his wings set molecules of air in motion, which moved other air molecules and so forth until a hurricane was set in motion on the other side of the planet.  This change effect, states that in our own lives, even a small change can bring about a revolutionary impact in our lives.

We can look at this through the analogy of the ripple in a lake.  A raindrop hits the still water and starts a ripple.  Then another raindrop, and another, and so on.  Each one creates its own ripple.  These ripples expand out, and end up striking each other as the raindrops fall.  Each of these tiny ripples impact each other to create chaos in the still water.  In the same way, our thoughts, words, and the little details and actions that we complete or leave undone each minute, hour and day impacts not only our life, but the lives of others, both near and far.

Every single thing you do matters.  You have been created as one of a kind.  You have within you the power to change the world.

  – Andy Andrews

Your destiny is bound to the destiny of others.  They say, “the devil is in the details”.  The reason this is true is because it is the details that really change you, and the world around you.  You might think that big events change the world, but if you study history and trace backwards, it comes down to something that was thought to be insignificant, that really sets it all in motion.

Think back to something that happened in your life that you can see totally impacted your life.  Trace backwards to where the event really started.  Not the moment that all of the dominoes crashed down, but to the event that started the dominoes to tilt.   A close friend had some major changes happen in her life in the past 10 months.  She didn’t see the connections until just this past week.  When she saw them, she was astounded at what started the whole pattern to breakdown.

My friend and her husband decided the end of last year to move into a new condo unit.  It was a much nicer unit with more space and a great view.  The new condo was renting for $600 more a month than they had been paying.  It also had additional utilities payments that had been included in their rent for the previous condo.  So like most of us, she looked at her monthly budget to determine how they would be able afford the higher rent.

Her old place was next to a Starbucks, and they had been in the habit of going there for breakfast every single day.  So the amount of money they were spending a month, was just about equal to their higher rent payment.  So she thought they would just stop going to Starbucks, and the higher rent would be easily absorbed into their lifestyle.

They moved into their new home and adjusted their spending habits as planned.  This was the detail that escaped my friend when she made this decision, that she saw when she looked backwards.  My friend was contracting her wealth energy by making this decision.  Starbucks was part of her wealth profile.  She felt wealthy by going there everyday, and spending that much money on coffee.  It gave her the expansive energy of abundance.  She could afford to do this, therefore she was wealthy.

A few months later, she noticed that her business was slowly contracting and they were month over month earning less money.  This in turn caused her to further retract her spending habits.  Then my friends husband told her he was leaving her.  He had reconnected with his first wife and decided to divorce my friend, and begin a new life with his ex-wife. 

My friend was devastated, as she hadn’t seen it coming.  It was like she was getting hit after hit.  At one of their meetings to discuss their divorce, she finally got enough courage to talk to him about what had happened.  She asked him, when his feelings for her changed?  He told her that it was after they moved.  He felt like they were losing their lifestyle, and that it started with Starbucks and then continued on to other things. He didn’t want to live that way.

That was when the “lightbulb” went off in her head.  Starbucks had been the energy of her feeling wealthy. When she made that decision, that started the rain drops hitting her lake.  The more raindrops that fell, the more the ripples contracted her wealth energy, which caused her business to lose more revenue.  Those ripples hitting upon each other changed every bit of positive flowing energy in her life.  It was contraction after contraction in every aspect of her life. 

Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness yet become something beautiful.  While she has been through hell the past few months, as soon as she saw the connections forming she immediately started shifting her energy back into the space of abundance.  Her business has fully recovered, and is currently more successful than it was this time last year.  She learned a powerful lesson that has been known for centuries. 

Everything is alive; everything is connected.

  –  Cicero

She feels that if instead, she had thought expansive thoughts, such as what can I do to increase my revenues to afford a higher rent, that her business would have grown and expanded.  They would not have had to reduce their lifestyle, and things would have continue along the same path with her husband.  Now while we can’t say for sure that her marriage would have not ended, but it certainly seems possible that she is correct.

Think back into your own life when you had a situation like my friend.  A time when life started going downhill fast.  A time when one domino after another seemed to be falling.  A time when you hit rock bottom.  Now trace it back to right before it all started falling apart.  There in that space, you made a decision, that was probably a decision of contraction.  There was something there that was a tiny detail, that you didn’t realize was connecting your life and holding it all together. 

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to everything else.

  –  John Muir

This is so important to remember.  Contraction of energy will cause our connections to spin out of control.  It is expansion of energy that grows into abundance.  It is expansion of energy that creates love and compassion to one another.  This is what we need more of, both in our personal lives and the world.  It is the answer to all questions, expansion of love.

Humankind has not woven the web of life.  We are but one thread within it.  Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.  All things are bound together,… all things connect.

  – Chief Seattle

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