Find Your Missing Puzzle Piece To Living A Life Of Purpose

 

“A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter

When you are living a life on purpose, what does that really mean?  You see yourself on a journey to accomplish something that is important to you.  Say for example that you want to run a marathon.  You set a goal of getting up every morning at 4 AM to run before you go to work.

Now you and I know that there are going to be mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed.  When you promise yourself that you will just sleep in this one time and that you will run when you get home instead.  But of course, when you get home, you have so many things to do that evening that you are too tired to run.

When your will power runs dry, what then?

Your actions will always, be 100% congruent with your thinking.  So, if you set a goal to run a marathon, and you set up a plan of how much running you must do in order to complete the marathon – yet you find yourself not getting up at 4 AM as planned, then your thinking is not congruent with your goals.

“You have to have a lot of passion for what you are doing because it is so hard …, if you don’t, any rational person would give up” – Steve Jobs

You need a change of thinking.  You need a breakthrough.  A breakthrough is a natural result of a shift in your thinking.  You suddenly connect past, present, future into a thought that sheds light on something you never saw before.  When you have a breakthrough, it feels as though the DNA in your body has changed every single cell.  Like one moment you knew who you were.  Then the next moment you are someone totally new.  You realize that you can never go back to what you were before.

Shifting your mindset can create opportunities that you never imagined were possible.  Many times, it happens when you run out of ideas.  When you hit the wall.  When you finally let go and let God.  It clarifies and simplifies everything.  It’s like the spotlight appears out of the darkness and shows you the way home.  You become more of who you are supposed to be.

Become more of who you are supposed to be

“Awareness is not a giver of solace – it is just the opposite.  It is a disturber and an awakener” – Robert K Greenleaf

It is kind of funny what happens when you wake up and become aware of how simple life can really be.  You are full of plans to run the marathon.  You are taking action.  Then something happens, and everything changes.

• Do you give up?
• Do you throw in the towel?
• Or do you do something outside the box?
• Something risky – something you’ve never tried and aren’t really sure can work?

Your “WHY” is what creates a compelling vision for your life of purpose

How does your “WHY” relate to the vision you have created?  Your “WHY” is what creates a compelling vision for your life of purpose.  It will clearly capture and establish an emotional connection to keep you on purpose to your vision.

It gets you up at 4 AM excited to go running, even in the rain or when you are just too tired to even press the snooze button.  Your “WHY” is the means to get you to the end result – running in that marathon.

Around 20 years ago, in the month of January, my middle son got engaged.  They set the date to get married in August.  I was so happy for them.  I wanted to pay for their dream honeymoon.  I contacted the travel agent they were working with and got all of the details.  I sat down and planned it out exactly how I could pay for it.

“Hold the vision.  Trust the process” – Unknown

A couple of weeks later they decided to move the date to May.  I was devastated.  I could see no way to pay for it in time.  I decided to try something new I had learned about at a real estate seminar.  I sat down and wrote out a letter expressing how happy I was that I could pay for their honeymoon.  How they had the best time at their dream destination.

About two weeks later I got a phone call out of the blue about 10 acres that we owned in rural Upstate New York.  The neighbors across the street wanted to purchase the property for cash and they were ready to close it immediately.  We settled on the price and two weeks later I had the exact amount needed to pay for the honeymoon.

Want to learn how to do the same thing?

How did this happen?  I created a compelling vision of what I wanted to do.  Not how it would get done.  I captured all of the emotions involved in being able to do this for my son and his new wife.  It created an emotional connection to my vision.  It opened doors I didn’t even know existed.  Want to learn how to do the same thing?

“If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed.  The vision pulls you” – Steven Jobs

I know that if someone gives me something I may or may not make the time to actually do the work. But if someone takes the time to work with me through the material, I get some action and forward momentum started. So, take this small first step for 2022.  Create something personally designed just for you!

If you want some ideas and brainstorming, contact me via LemonadeMakers.

Launch Yourself on Every Wave

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On The Journey Of Self Transformation, You Need A Map

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

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

Where is your comfort zone today?

What growth to it happened last year?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life presents you with so many decisions.

A lot of times,

the answers are right in front of you.  

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

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

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

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

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

 

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it.  The time will pass anyway – Earl Nightingale

On your birthday and at the beginning of each new year you take a look at both the time that has passed, and what time might yet be available to you.

• You think of the dreams you have that haven’t come true yet.
• You wonder if you have what it takes to get them done.
• You might even judge yourself of not being worthy of them coming true.

I firmly believe that if God has planted something in your heart to do, then you must have the ability to do it.  At the same time, you might wonder if he’s really, really sure you can do it, because it feels like it is just out of reach.  You might wonder “who am I” to go after something that big.  Fears creep in all sorts of shapes and sizes to prevent the dreams from being fulfilled.

My son was visiting with his wife and a little dog.  They took in a rescue dog.  He’s named after the pirate in the movie The Goonies – “One-Eyed Willie” because before they got him, he had lost an eye.

Willie loves cheese.  My son will hold up a piece of cheese and Willie will jump up to get it.  He will hold it up just out of Willie’s “normal” jumping ability and it is amazing how high that little dog will jump for his cheese.  At first you think he can’t do it, but he is determined and somehow, he gets just a little bit higher and grabs his cheese.  We all cheer for him.

When you are pursuing a dream, it has to be something just out of reach.  Otherwise, it isn’t something that stretches you.  It must be something that you aren’t sure how to do or what to do to make it happen.  Like Willie, if you want it bad enough, you will find that little bit of extra strength and leap up just high enough to grab “your cheese” (dream) and pull it down into reality.

Take a moment and write this out for yourself (taken from the program DO IT SCARED with my own additions) fill in the blanks at the end of each sentence.

Every year millions of people make New Year’s Resolutions or Goals.  If you have ever joined a gym, you see it happen year after year.  The goal of weight loss or physical fitness of some sort is made, and the gyms are all packed in January.  In February they begin losing a few people.  In March a few more and by April the gym is back to what is normal attendance.

Why do we make goals each year that after a few months fall by the wayside?  And what can you do to make this year different?

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable – Christopher Reeves

I don’t think it is just a matter of being or having something you truly desire.  And it isn’t just a matter of will power.  Or attitude.  Or a million other words that mean essentially the same thing as motivation.  It is more complicated than that.

• Some of it is planning.
• Some of it is accountability.
• Some of it is getting past the feeling of overwhelm.  You have so much on your list of what needs to be done, or what you may not even know how to do.
• Some of it is getting past feeling frustrated when you seem to be stuck in the mud and can’t make any progress.

So many other little negative reasons, stop signs, or caution lights that add up to another year, in which you didn’t make any or very little progress towards your dreams.

Create a vision that is crisp and clear.  A perfect clarity for both the near distance and far into the future.  To build on your foundation of living a better life, whatever that means to you personally.  A year where you can make progress each month and celebrate what you are accomplishing.

A dream written down with a date becomes a goal.  A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan.  A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true – unexpectedlydomestic.com

In pursuit of that, take the paragraph that you wrote out above and chose three words that will create three big hairy audacious goals for this year.

Rather than just talking about how to fill in a bunch of answers and creating a goal plan with steps, I would love to invite you to contact me via messenger.

• Learn how to claim your goals.
• Learn how to refine them.
• Learn how to understand what your motivation around those goals is about.

It’s not just about you writing some words on a piece of paper.  It’s also about brainstorming your way, mapping out the detours around the obstacles to fully implement your plan.

What I know for sure is that we all hit walls of failure, fatigue, and flat tires.  It helps us to have a few tricks up our sleeves to handle them so that they just create slowdowns and maybe a few detours, but not letting anything stop you completely.

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

 

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

– Sumner Redstone

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

Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement.

– Matt Biondi

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

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

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

– Carol Dweck

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

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

– Joshua J. Marine

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

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

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

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

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

– Arianna Huffington

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

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

– J.K. Rowling

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

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

– Winston Churchill

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

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

– Carol Dweck

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

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

– Michelle Obama

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

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

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

– Brian Tracy

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

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

  – Eleanor Roosevelt

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

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

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

– Ian Thomas

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

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

  – Yuval Noah Harari

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

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

– Og Mandino

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

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

– Bruce Lee

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

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

– Marcel Proust

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

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

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

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

  – Alan Watts

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

Be addicted to your passions, not your distractions.  

  – Unknown

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

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

  – Tim Ferriss

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

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

  – Neil Strauss

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

Ripples – The Small Changes That Can Have An Enormous Impact

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

  – Stephen Hawking

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

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

– KLove

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

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

  – Denise Linn

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

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

  – Suntosh Kalwar

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

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

  – Samreen Zaidi

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

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

  – Unknown

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

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

– Christine Mason Miller

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

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

  – Erica Jong

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

Resistance – Here There Be Dragons

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life’s Storms Compose the Music of Our Souls

 

Keep Going

No Matter how bad things are right now

No Matter how stuck you feel

No Matter how many days you’ve spent crying

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

No Matter how hopeless and depressed you feel

I promise you won’t feel this way forever

Keep Going

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Create a Ripple of Inspiration and Meaning In Your Life

“No matter how happy someone may seem, they have moments when they question if they can go on.  No matter how confident someone may look, there are times when they feel insecure and unsure.  And no matter how strong someone may appear, they have days when they feel like they’re falling apart.  Never think for a moment you’re alone with your struggles.  You’re not a mess.  You’re human.”  – Lori Deschene

Most of my friends and relatives consider me a very positive person.  Someone who can handle whatever life throws my way.  A person who will look and look until she finds the silver in the silver lining of the cloud.  But there are days when I think that I am not capable of helping myself, let alone others.  There are days when I feel like I am not having a positive impact on anyone.  There are days when I look at everything I am trying to accomplish with my life and wonder why I am bothering – when it feels like I am working so hard and getting nowhere fast.

“To attract loving and connected relationships, we must first embody the love and connection we seek” – Dr. Debra Reble

Those days will happen to you, no matter how strong you think or others think you are.  When they do happen, I have a story that I pull out to remind myself that I am creating ripples, even when I don’t know who those ripples are helping.

A couple of years after my mother had passed away, a friend that used to babysit my kids when they were little and she was a teenager, lost her daughter (a senior in high school) in a bus accident.  She was having a really hard time and we were talking about her loss.  I really don’t remember what I told her, but I know that it had to do with something I had brought out of the loss of my mom on how to deal with grief and heartbreak.

Years later she was at my mother in-laws funeral and she came up to me to thank me for those words.  She remembered them all.  They helped her through the dark tunnel of her grief.  I had no idea that anything I said could be that impactful.  I know that with her own experience, she also was able to give those words to others when they were dealing with overwhelming grief.  What I don’t know is how many ripples those words have made, and how many more they will impact.

To be truly happy, you must have connection in your life.  First the connection must be to you.  To your life purpose.  To personal growth.  To being the best possible you, that you can be.  Self love, self trust, being honest with yourself.  Then connection to friends, family, to a mission, vision or cause is vital to live a life that brings you satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness.

It’s also about the way you think about things that are happening – are they happening “to you” or “for you”?  Do you look for the silver lining?  Do you assign the best possible meanings to what you see and hear around you?  Or does that negative mind talk take over and make you feel unwanted?

• You are a mistake
• All you do is make mistakes
• You know that everyone is judging you

“Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Things may not be perfect but be grateful for the opportunity to experience each day. Live each day like it could be your last” – Joel Osteen

When your only seeing yourself through the lens of your past mistakes, your regrets and failures – you need to remind yourself that you are so much more.  There is a beautiful person hiding inside of you that is vulnerable and afraid.  Fears of not being worthy, not enough.  Fears of being hurt because someone hurt you in the past.  Whenever this beauty seeks to emerge you push it back because fear tells you it isn’t safe.

Think of the caterpillar all wrapped up in the chrysalis.  He has transformed into a beautiful butterfly.  It is time to break open the lining, to unfold the wings to dry, and take flight.  But in fear he keeps grabbing the sides of the lining to try and stay hidden.  It’s a scary world out there.

• What if he is the one butterfly that can’t fly?
• What if he falls out of the chrysalis and goes smashing down on the ground?
• What if a passing bird eats him?

All these fears overwhelm him and he tries to hide himself to keep him safe.  Yet the real danger is in staying hidden.

Just like this butterfly, you might think that you are providing safety, by hiding behind a mountain of buried pain.  It is time to tear down that mountain.  To remove every single brick of the walls that you have built up.  To put down the suitcase of your past failures and disappointments, and walk burden free into your future.  It is time to spread your wings.  It is time to fly into the future you are meant to have.  Yes there will be new failures as you learn to soar.  Remember that you have potential.  That you have gifts that enable you to live a life full of possibilities.  You can make your dreams a reality.  But nothing will happen, until you try.

“Resolutions for the Soul – No more what if’s…, no more wondering what if I tried that, started that, said that, told that person how I really feel, went on that adventure.  No more wondering what if.  Starting now, we do it, try it, step out, start, take the risk, make the leap.  We make a vow to stop living wondering, what if…,?”  – Rob Bell

Quit collecting every painful word that has even been spoken to you or about you.  Quit putting meaning to thoughtless words and actions of both yourself and others.   Since every experience is seen through your minds eye, change your mind and start collecting hope. Start putting the best meaning possible into what you hear. Start viewing your world through the lens of compassion, both for yourself and for others.

When you focus on leading a creative, positive, inspirational life fear is going to raise it’s head.  Fear is always triggered when you pursue change.  Change is growth and growth is something to be happy about.  Do you remember as a child standing against the wall and measuring how tall you were?  How you would measure yourself against your friends and family members who were taller than you to see if you had grown to the same height or gotten taller?  You couldn’t wait to grow.  Instill that same feeling into your own personal growth.  Fear hates it when it doesn’t know for absolutely positively how something is going to turn out.  Uncertainty is something that fear can’t stand.  But you can change your relationship with both fear and uncertainty.

“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self acceptance”  – Brene Brown,  PHD, LMSW

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

Believing in Your Imagination Makes Anything Possible

 

• How do you believe anything is possible?
• How do you see opportunity instead of risk?
• How do you take flying leaps into the unknown without having overwhelm knock you back down?

Reframing.  It is one of those things that is both simple and hard at the same time.  Every hero story needs a villain.  Something to overcome.

You think that you would love to have the easy answers to all of life’s problems.  Just program the computer to make all of the decisions for you.  A GPS system that told you where to go, and what to do when you got there.

If that was life’s reality, you would be bored.  You would feel like you were living in a cage.  Every child at some point in their life has said, “You’re not the boss of me!”  You would not be happy without the freedom to make your own decisions.

• You reframe the fear that is activating the belief that something is impossible
• You reframe the fear that tells you what you want is too hard to do
• You reframe the fear that what you are thinking of doing, is too risky
• You reframe the fear that you will be overwhelmed by what you are trying to do

“You know what the issue is with this world?  Everyone wants a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic” – Alice in Wonderland

Have you ever been going somewhere with the GPS system in your car telling you where to go?  If you are going on a long trip and you get off the freeway to eat, take a bio-break, or get fuel for your vehicle, the GPS system goes crazy trying to get you back on the scheduled directions.  Reframing is taking our GPS system which is telling us to go from point A to point B and reprogramming it for some additional stops.  Places on the map that are invisible but there just the same.

“Stop worrying how it’s going to happen and start believing that it will” – Unknown

“The strongest factor for success is self-esteem:  Believing you can do it, believing you deserve it and believing you’ll get it” – Unknown

Have you ever completed a big remodel project?  You start out with a plan and design of how everything will be done.  You start tearing down the bathroom walls and floor, and you discover that your $10K remodel just changed to a $20K remodel because all of the plumbing is cast iron.  The pipes have decayed, rusting away and it all has to be replaced.

“Just because the past didn’t turn out like you wanted it to, doesn’t mean your future can’t be better than you ever imagined” – Unknown

Your small change just became a major remodel.  You now have two choices.  You can let fears enter the picture telling you that:

• You’re in overwhelm at the additional cost and time for your remodel
• You’re letting fear of change control your decisions
• You’re feeling not good enough because you should have foreseen this, you knew it’s an old the house

OR you reframe it.

• The good news is that now you won’t have another plumbing bill for leaky pipes
• The good news is that this gives you the ability to reconstruct the configuration of the pipes, and now you can have the bathtub and shower where you always wanted them.
• The good news is you have this reframing process down, which signifies change and growth are finally happening
• The good news is that you’ve discovered your hidden potential for greatness is in an area that you never knew existed – you’re great at pivoting to a reframe

“It’s okay to be a glow stick.  Sometimes we have to break before we can shine” – Unknown

 

That’s what life changes are like.  You start out thinking that you want to make a small change in your life.  You get started taking down all of things that no longer benefit you in your life.  Then the unexpected happens.  You discover a pattern you didn’t know existed, (which has behind the scenes) is what has been keeping you from implementing those important life changes.

“Forget all the reasons why it won’t work and believe the one reason it will” – Unknown

What’s important during a period of reframing is to “see” or create a vision of what exactly you want your life to look like.  What sort of bathroom floor do you want?  What kind of tile for the shower floor? The walls of shower?  What kind of lights and fixtures?  What kind of vanity?  What does your ideal dream bathroom look like?  Don’t focus on the plumbing issues.  Don’t let the cost overruns overwhelm you.  Reset your focus to see the ideal outcome, the end of the project, the finished bathroom.

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him” – David Brinkley

Reframing looks at what everyone else might see as a series of mistakes and failures and asks the question – what else is possible?  You see how to make lemonade from lemons.  It shows you a series of lessons, each one building on the other.  Taking each of those “bricks” being thrown at you, you can begin building a secure foundation to hold the structure, you are creating outside your comfort zone.

“The only limits you have are the limits you believe” – Wayne Dyer

As a professional procrastinator I will take something that might take anyone else a few hours to do and blow it up into a month-long project.  First by researching it to death, because you can never have too much knowledge.

Then by creating a perfect plan, that is revised a million times, because you can’t have too much attention to the smallest detail.  I build up the fear of failure until it creates a bridge to the moon.  Then because I can’t hold back time any longer, I am pushed to finally do something.

• What if you reframe the possible mistake or failure?
• What if you reframe everything that has gone wrong already and that will go wrong in the future?
• What if, instead of letting doubt control your life, you look at everything as just an experiment?
• What if, instead of being afraid, you are curious?
• What if every project is like taking a cup of water and adding a drop of this chemical or that one – to see what happens and writing down the results in a notebook?
• What if this is just a series of lessons rather than errors?
• What if you give yourself the freedom to learn each lesson and just keep creating the next experiment?

“Life is like the ocean.  We can’t control the tide, so we might as well learn to surf”  – Unknown

If you are going to learn to surf through your life, how can you learn to catch the perfect wave?  What is the perfect wave?

Turn the tide on mediocrity. 

Break free of the riptide of your past. 

Start living from a “bucket list” instead of existing with a “to do” list.

Never let fears stop you from pursuing your dreams.  Don’t let your fears of what might happen, mean that you don’t make anything happen.

Winter-Sorrowful, Spring Is Coming

 

In April of 2019 I went to my birth father’s funeral.  He died of complications of dementia.  I hadn’t seen him in years.  My parents divorced when I was four years old.  Despite all of my intensely wanting him to be a part of my life, it just never happened.  Many reasons, excuses and stories – too many to go into here.  What I wanted to talk about from my own experience is the feelings of being a child of divorced parents.

For me it was very painful because I blamed myself for the divorce.  I thought it was something I did.  Since 50% of marriages end in divorce, there are probably a lot of people in the world who grew up like me.  Thinking that somehow you caused the divorce.  I didn’t realize that I believed this until I had kids of my own.

Lots of self-analyzing and trying to figure out where my own self sabotage patterns originated revealed it to me.  My adult self knows that it isn’t true.

My dad like a lot of fathers remarried another woman with children.  They became his family as is right.  Unfortunately, my stepmother didn’t return the favor and the few times I went to their home it was clear I wasn’t wanted.  It was clear as a child, as a teenager and as an adult when I visited with what should have been her grandkids, we were not welcome.

So, my dad and I became completely estranged.  It broke my heart.  For me at least, I always wanted my dad to say he wanted me in his life, and then to try to make that happen.  I had the fantasy that once I was an adult and he didn’t have to deal with my mom, that he would show up and be the dad I always wanted.

I didn’t realize how much of that fantasy was lying beneath the surface until I found out he had died.

Wintercearig is a Norwegian word meaning winter-sorrowful describing that feeling of deep sadness comparable to the cold of winter.  I think that the death of the fantasy was harder than his physical death.

I solaced my heart that he had dementia, so there were probably close to 10 years that he didn’t remember me.  Grief is a slippery animal though.  It comes and goes when you least expect it.  I know he wasn’t a happy man, and I know how hard my mother could be for him.  I just wish it could have been different, and that they could have put aside their own pain for my sake.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer – Albert Camus

I am working my way through winter of my loss.  Part of that process is to pull out the gold from the dross.  To find the invincible summer in my story.  To make Lemonade from the lemons.  My disappointments in my childhood and the letting go of the fantasy as an adult are part of who I am.  I can talk to this with total compassion, because I have been there.  I learned to appreciate the good qualities that my mom and dad had and let go of the expectations that they would ever become who I wanted them to be.

Pain has a lot of lessons to teach you.  I remember years ago I was talking with one of my sister in-laws about forgiveness.  She stated that if her husband ever had an affair that she would never forgive him.  That she would divorce him.  I told her that with big decisions in life, we think we know what we would do.  But until that moment arrives it is all speculation. The reason for that is how connected everything is.

It isn’t just that someone had an affair.  You have to look at all of the circumstances around what happened.  There are so many things that happen in your relationship with your partner.  What is going on at their work?  What is going on with their larger family?  What are all of the stresses in their life that weigh in on your partner, so that they would do something that would destroy their life?

When something this devasting happens and you look at all of the possible choices you have to face, many times we do not do what we thought we would.  You have to stand out in the cold, and really look at every single crystal of the snowflake to make a decision.  Like the snowflake, the breaking of the marriage bond is different for every couple with no two alike.

The future lies before you, like a field of fallen snow; Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show – Unknown

My experiences in life gave me a little bit of a soapbox in regard to fathers who don’t see their children.  The damage it causes those children affects them every day of their life.  Many of us don’t realize how much, until something happens that brings it to the surface.  I had thought I had given up the fantasy of my dad showing up on my doorstep one day, saying “I love you and I want you to be part of my life”.  It was still apparently a running program in the background, taking up energy.

So, if you are divorced and you aren’t connected with your children, make the sacrifice to do whatever it takes to be a part of their lives.  Just show up, with no excuses.  With no blame, except to say, “I’m sorry”.  It may take a while before they trust you again, because even if you didn’t mean to, you broke their heart.  But if you put in the effort and keep trying, eventually they will open the door.

When I am processing pain, grief, sadness, I write.  This is something I am still working on, but I wanted to share the work in progress.

Maybe you are like me, a daughter or son, who just wanted to be told that they were loved, that they weren’t a mistake that could just be thrown away, that they were proud of who you became.

Maybe like me you just wanted them to show up at your door and say Hi.

A note for my Dad

I learned to say goodbye at an early age

To hear “love you, see you soon” knowing in my heart it wasn’t true

Looking out of the back window of the car as mom drove me away

Silent tears wishing I was still with you

 

It’s a broken road my mom and dad have made

I’m tired of feeling disloyal loving you both, being torn between you two,

I feel my frailness crumble as you both pull me apart

My heart is torn, broken with your hammers beating it to pieces

 

Years go by with a few hours here and there

Visits so short they can’t even be remembered

How many times I reached out to you?

Only to hear the deafening silence.

 

The sharp thunder of glaciers breaking up and falling into the ocean

The cold became the color of blinding whiteness

I waited for your presence, the phone call, the letter, anything

To hear you say, “I’m here and I love you.”

 

Deep sadness covers me like a layer of snow

Leaving my heart cold, pain frozen into arctic ice

Daddy why did you die and leave me alone

Never to hear those words, “love you, see you soon” fulfilled?

 

I think I will miss you forever, since we never got to say goodbye

Wishing you had been a constant presence in my life didn’t make it happen.

The gift you gave me in passing me by in forgetfulness,

Is seen daily in my being a part of my own children’s lives