This isn’t just doing something wrong, although that is how we notice the bad decision. Remember the scandal about the auto workers who were taking lunch at the park to drink alcohol or smoke pot? Every day there is a scandal somewhere and it resulted from them telling themselves a story around the decisions/actions they were taking. This is how someone paints themselves into the corner of disgrace.

But there is also disappointment when we find ourselves with dreams that never came true. This is from the decision to be easy on ourselves. Where we believe the story that we spun ourselves that we just don’t have the time to do it now, and there will be time later to do it. Then one day we find ourselves truly out of time, because we are dying with our story (our dream) still inside of us.

This too, was not doing the right thing. So pick yourself up today, and decide that today you are going to put into action one small thing to make that dream come true. One small thing that you aren’t going to do anymore that you know is wrong.

It could be that today is the day you quit smoking. That you actually take the 10 minutes to meditate. That you go for that walk before/after work that you are always going to do and find each evening that you didn’t make time to do. Or today could be the day that you do a grand daring action that knocks everyone you know off their feet.

You choose, big or small, but as Nike says, “just do it!”.

3) Visual preparation – create the vision board with pictures and things that show my dream as reality and will inspire me

4) Hero preparation – read about and try to meet people you admire and who inspire you. I am interpreting this to be in the direction of getting in touch with really successful charities and picking their brains as to what works, where they made mistakes, what they wish they had done differently.

5) Physical preparation – get your body into optimal shape to pursue your dream. You all know what I have been doing – new look, released some weight and getting ready for a big push to release more.

What this really says is that following your dream encompasses your life. You can’t leave it to chance. It is not something that is a 9 – 5 job. It is your life. “A dream is what you desire if anything and everything is possible”. And as Gandhi says “If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”

Yet this is showing that some if not all of this smallness inside of me is related to the thought that somehow I developed the belief that you can’t have good without the bad. That the flip side of happiness is suffering, and that experiencing happiness itself guarantees that I will also have suffering.

Maybe this is why some people are afraid of being happy – because they believe that it will be taken away and that suffering will take its place? This is probably the source of the sayings such as, “it is better to love, and lose than to never have loved at all” – and similar thoughts come from. That if we are experiencing anything positive and good, that the negative will follow to take it away.

So instead of being a blind prisoner we can examine our thoughts the next time that this happens to us, to see what is underneath the surface. If this is keeping you a prisoner you can work this belief loose and free yourself from it. Knowledge is power and holds the key to our freedom, if we take the time to examine the layers beneath the surface.

A place where our children can have roots to grow up happy and safe in their environment. A place where no child gets left behind educationally; and where it is safe for children to play in their own front yard without danger of being shot or abducted.

Instead of decaying neighborhoods, we have a community that you can call home, not just a street where you house is located. A place where people come together to support each other; a community that is supported not just by the people who live there, but by both national and local businesses and charities that work together to generate solutions to each problem they face.

I have been guilty of some of the above. I think that we all have. But at some time we woke up to the fact that we can “live” life to its fullest. That there can be more than just existing. And once you wake up you can’t go back to sleep. You might find yourself dozing off once in awhile, but you can’t go back to sleep.

So what do you do when your awake? You find something that speaks to your soul. something that you can do now, to make this a better world. I found (or it found me!) Community Takeover. It is always in my mind now. I see every ad in a magazine or on TV and I think, could I use this concept in the program? Everywhere I turn another idea is popping into my head and I am thinking about how I could incorporate this into the programs message.

I know that this program will be life changing, because it has already changed mine. I know that it will not only change individuals, but families. And not only families, but communities, and from there it will spread out all over the world. Just like how each of us woke up, once the individual realizes that they can join with others in their communities and make a difference, they won’t be able to go back to sleep.

Community Takeover is going to wake up individuals to the difference they can make, and we will wake up the world!

This explains how two people can witness a beautiful sunset, with one not noticing and the other moved to tears. The emotional state of each person serves as a filter through which they view the world. If you are not seeing the magic and beauty of the world around you, then you aren’t seeing it in yourself either.

If you find yourself in this state, then you can take notice of where you are on the emotional scale and then work on increasing your energetic state up the ladder one rung at a time. We all have an emotional or vibrational set point that we return to. It is a middle point that we return to. For example if you are continually feeling emotions between rage and contentment your emotional set point is somewhere around worry, doubt or disappointment. I am sure that most of us can think of someone who is always worried about something. No matter what great thing is happening in their life, they return to the fear of losing it or messing it up somehow.

Our set point is how we attract like people into our lives. This is another way we can determine where our set point is, as they will be a rung above, below or at our own set point. By using a method like the emotional freedom technique (EFT or Tapping), we can change our set point to a higher vibration. By changing it incrementally we can make this change a permanent one.

So if you are feeling the emotions of being overwhelmed, you wouldn’t go from that vibration straight up the ladder to enthusiasm. Rather you would go up the ladder to frustration, irritation and disappointment. Don’t stay there but continue going up the next rung to pessimism, then to boredom which is neutral. The next rung brings you into the positive emotional vibrational scale of contentment. Which is the top scale of the person who is a worrier. So if that fits your set point, you might want to continue up to hopefulness, which is the next rung. Or the rung above that one which is optimism.

Isn’t it wonderful that we can change the way we view our world simply by changing our emotional state? Emotions are just information about where we, and this built in guidance system is how we determine when we are out of alignment with our ‘higher self’. If you aren’t seeing the magic and beauty in the world, there isn’t something wrong with us. We just need a ‘tune up’ to realign to ourselves. To embrace that we are worthy, deserving, loveable, loved, loving and a brilliant eternal being.

Intention is noble, but it is not heroic. I always think of the saying “good intentions pave the road to hell” – it is where a lot of regrets live. Every day I have good intentions that don’t get done. I will think about the phone calls I need to make to connect with good friends, and then I get busy and they don’t get made. I have the good intentions to do so many things around the house that somehow don’t get done.

Adding execution to intention puts a feedback loop into the process, with one feeding the other. It speeds everything up, it is what we call being in the flow. It is synchronicity. Everything we see, hear, feel – it all feeds into this feeling of being inside that zone, tapping into the source of everything. Life becomes a fast moving river, instead of a slow meandering stream.

I go through spurts where I am really good about drinking lots of water. I find that when I am in this zone, that I am naturally more thirsty. I start craving more water and so it becomes easy to drink the 8 – 10 glasses of water a day. I feel better because I am hydrated. It becomes a feedback loop to better health. I think that this concept applies to everything we do when we execute our good intentions.

I love it when I get in this zone creatively. It is like everything I reach out my hand to is just perfect for what I need next. If we follow through with this quote, the reason why we don’t quite get into the zone could be because we were motivated and not inspired? Motivation will not take you into the zone. When you are motivated you are “forcing” what you want to bring into the world, into reality. When you are inspired it is like giving birth. Once you start there is no turning back, no stopping what is being created from being born.

Interesting that being inspired is actually handing over your being in charge to the universal source, to bring forward into reality what you can only see inside your head. Another point of reference to indicate that we are either being motivated or inspired. So if we are in charge, or forcing by our strength of will to bring something into reality, lets step back and see how much easier life can be by letting go and being inspired. Take the good intentions and execute them through inspiration and we will become a raging river that no one can stop.

There are things in my own life, that coming from my background, that many would have said, “it is not possible to have the position and success I have”, without the formal education.

What I have come to realize is that every excuse that we come forward with – each proof that we can’t do something – is just that we don’t yet have the faith to see the bridge or staircase. It is always there, we just don’t see it. Fear keeps us blind. Faith removes the blinders and helps us see clearly that we just need to take the next step. One step forward at a time and with faith we make it across the bridge and up to the top of the staircase.

We are all on our own hero’s journey. It is a journey made by faith. When you hear about someone doing something like lifting the car off a child, or bringing someone out of a burning building, they all say the same thing. When asked weren’t you afraid? They say, I just saw something that needed doing and I did it. I didn’t think about it.

When you think about something, you engage fear. Don’t think about it, just take the next step in faith and surprise yourself. Once you see that you aren’t falling down the ravine, it is easier to take the next one.

And remember, none of the hero’s in the stories are perfect, perfection isn’t what is required. What is required is to just do something that needs doing. As the Nike commercial says, “Just do it”.

The good days we get a lot done, but there are some days when one thing after another delays what we are trying to do.
Acknowledge when this happens, that we are going through a rough patch of weather and know that shortly the weather will clear – it always does. Once the weather clears we can get back on course. This is far better than bemoaning the delay and ranting that we will never arrive at our destination.

Drama does nothing but give you a headache. Instead consult your charts and lay out a new course to get you to your destination. Be proactive and positive instead of reactive and negative.

True joy is found on the journey as well as the destination. As Buddha says “It is better to travel well, than to arrive.”

Is is a silent belief and prayer that no one knows about? Or is it a belief that you excitedly tell everyone you meet?

And what happens when you tell someone that downplays the possibilities of that belief? Do you step back from it or do you plough right on tilling the ground and planting seeds?

And what happens when you meet someone that takes that belief and like a balloon that was barely filled with air, makes it into a giant hot air balloon that it ready to take you to the mountain tops? Do you back away, afraid of the size of the dream? Afraid of the heights that it will take you to? Saying to yourself, I’m not ready, or good enough to make a dream of that size come into the world?

What do you do with your beliefs? Do you shout them out into the mountains and the canyons and listen with estatic happiness when they echo back to you? Or do you whisper them into your pillow or to your friends that also whisper their dreams back to you – the same ones that you and they have had for 20 yrs?

You can dream big, and pray silently for them to come true, but to make big things happen you have to believe big.

Big beliefs that drag you forward into the world making the big things hapopen. You ask for help in bringing the dream into reality. You look for people to partner with to make it happen. You take big steps. And then BIG things happen. Amen.

We stress ourselves out over a perception, not a reality. We get so caught up in our version of the story that we don’t let the other person even know or understand what is going on in our head. We might think that we are fighting with someone else, but we are fighting with ourselves first. Then when we have engaged our fight to a nice hot flame in our heads, we engage the literal person we were fighting with in our heads. Sometimes we have even rehearsed the fight in our head – “I will say this and then they will say that and I will come back with a thrust to the heart and show them how superior or righteous I am!”.

Isn’t that just hysterical? Instead why don’t we have a “how can I make them feel better” rehearsal in our heads? We could assign the perception that the person who just walked by us as though we aren’t there is actually deep in thought (which they probably are). Practice what positive things you could say. Are they having a rough day and need a laugh? How about a hug and a smile? Could you just take a walk with them and let them know that you are available if they need to talk? Making someone else feel better, makes us feel better. Helping them overcome what is bothering them, will naturally help us! Isn’t it better to conquer ourselves, than to take the fight to others?