Can Life Be A Daring Adventure?

I have had on my desk for several years a large rock on which is inscribed, “It is not the destination, It is the journey”.  We think that accomplishing our big dreams or goals in life is the point.  But really that isn’t true.  There will always be a new destination, dream or goal.  It is who you become on the way to the destination. Every daring adventure is really all about the transformation.

Our brains will try to convince us not to go on the daring adventures.  It will insist that we have limitations.  It will try to close us off from transforming our life.  It tries to convince us that transformation will affect our very survival, that we can’t exceed the boundaries that it deems by logic to be safe and secure for us.

Getting our brain and heart to effectively communicate is a difficult process for most of us.  Take the analogy of the  shoreline here in the photo.  The sand is the logic of the brain.  The waves the emotions of the heart.  There is a point when the waves come up against the sand and they blend together.  That is the space that we are looking for, in having this internal conversation between the logical brain and the emotional heart..  That moment of overlap in which the different perspectives can be viewed.  A unity of understanding can be achieved in that moment of overlap, when the two meet energetically – the influence of chaos from the emotions with the logical rigid mind, which is demanding that we stick to the known rules and do not go exploring.

This is one of the things that we will be exploring in our upcoming seminar on “Living A Transformational Life”.  There is a wide difference of meaning between change and transformation.  When we change our lives, the majority of times it just doesn’t last.  We go on a diet, lose the 20 lbs and then less than a year later, the 20 lbs has crept back on.  Change is primarily achieved with willpower.  The problem with will power is that it is short lived.  At some point the rubber band that we have stretched out snaps back or breaks.  Then we are back to square one in the changes we had made. 

Transformation on the other hand, alters us to the point that we no longer have the option to return back to what we were before.  Once the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis it can’t return to the caterpillar’s body, no matter how much it might want to.  The transformation process has altered the DNA and physical form.  There is no way to return to that old body.

Some of the concepts that we will be exploring with the webinar are the acronym of FACES, being:  Flexible, Adaptable, Coherent (resilient), Energized and Stable.  It is about creating opportunities in the sea of potential, and seeing the potentialities on the plains of possibility.  About movement, about flow, and the charge of being truly alive.  It is about collaboration through creating harmonies out of differences.  Like the waves upon the sand, we will come together honoring the differences in our lives.  We will be linking the brain and heart together to create something new and different for each of us.

Is your life a daring adventure?  Come to our webinar and learn how to disolve the boundaries that have imprisioned you off from your heart and souls desires.  Listen to the words of William Ward:

“The adventure of life is to learn. 

The goal of life is to grow. 

The nature of life is to change. 

The challenge of life is to overcome. 

The essence of life is to care. 

The secret of life is to dare. 

The beauty of life is to give. 

The joy of life is to love.” 

 Ask yourself some great questions:  Where are you now?  How do you feel about it?  Where do you want to go?  How would you like to get there?  In what manner are you now traveling there?  What steps can I take?

Events

Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere – MLK Jr.

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed.  If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth”  – William Faulkner

Kym Worthy is a true Lemonademaker.  She inspires me because she truly makes a difference.  She changed not just her local county that she worked in, she really changed cities around the entire United States.  She was like water.  She went around obstacles, she broke up boulders in her way, she flooded the media, she stormed through anyone and anything standing in her way and got justice for rape victims who had been waiting for it for as long as 30 years.  She is my hero.

“There be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protect”  – Elie Wiesel

Her story starts back in 2009 when she was an assistant DA with Wayne County in Michigan.  In the summer of 2009, Rob Spada who worked in her office was taking a tour with local police through an evidence warehouse.  Passing by rows upon rows of white cardboard boxes he asked what they were.  He was told they were rape kits.  When he pulled down four random boxes he discovered that they were all unprocessed rape kits – 11,341 kits, some more than 30 years old (statute of limitations is 20 years).

In the past half-dozen years, backlogs of untested rape kits have been discovered in Memphis, 12,000; Cleveland, nearly 4,000; Tulsa, 3,783; Milwaukee, 2,655; Dallas, 4,144; San Diego, 2,873; Miami, 2,900; Honolulu, 1,500. Smaller cities are not immune, either. Kansas City, Missouri, had 1,324 backlogged kits; Tempe, Arizona, more than 500; Flint, Michigan, 246.

“When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty” – Unknown

Rob Spada contacted Kym Worthy in his office and told her what he had found.  She first wrote to then Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans requesting a meeting to discuss how to proceed.  When she didn’t get a response, she wrote Chief Evans again, adding, “It is imperative that your Department move on this as soon as possible.” Again, nothing.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”  – Desmond Tutu

Not one to stop at no answer, the story was leaked to the newpaper resulting in “Rape Evidence Shelved?” as the front page of the Detroit Free Press on September 22, 2009.  Worthy put together a plan for her office to take the lead on testing the kits, but then Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, who controlled her budget, shot it down. The county simply couldn’t afford it, he said, and it was really a problem for city hall and the police, not the county.

Kym is not a woman who takes no for an answer.  What she did next was to spearhead a national movement for reform.  In May 2010, at the invitation of U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), she testified about the backlog before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.  Later that year, the research arm of the Department of Justice gave Worthy and her partner agencies a grant to test 400 random kits, to provide a statistically significant snapshot of what was at stake, and then in April 2011, the agency followed up with a $1.5 million grant to address the backlog.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”  – Unknown

To test all of them, Worthy estimated she’d need about $17 million (the lab work ran $1,000 to $1,500 per kit). On top of that, she intended to investigate every single case, even those that didn’t end up having meaningful forensic evidence. But she had only three sex-crime investigators on her staff, the police department had as few as six.

“One person can stop a great injustice.  One person can be a voice for truth.  One person’s kindness can save a life” – Nicky Gumbel

The nonprofit Detroit Crime Commission—which, on behalf of Worthy’s office, had negotiated the cost of testing down to $490 per kit—joined with the Michigan Women’s Foundation to launch what organizers believe was the first-ever crowdfunded campaign for a government program, called Enough SAID (Sexual Assault in Detroit).

“An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation”  – Mary McCarthy

They received donations from everyone and everywhere.  A local canasta club started donating the pot from its weekly game; the Galentine’s Book Club kicked in $525. In October 2015, a coalition of African American businesswomen held a fundraiser that leveraged the rivalry between the University of Michigan and Michigan State football teams to net more than $30,000. Sheryl Sandberg donated an unsolicited $25,000 to the cause. To date, Enough SAID has raised $1.5 million in private contributions.  by the beginning of 2016, $8 million had been allocated to Enough SAID by public bodies ranging from the state attorney general’s office to the Michigan legislature.

Worthy didn’t just rustle up money; she also transformed the “entire culture of law enforcement,” as her deputy Spada puts it. In his 20-plus years at the prosecutor’s office, he says, “I’ve seen a change in how police approach sexual assault victims. That’s been brought about by Kym, in how she attacked the problem and let it be known publicly that society had certain kinds of assumptions about what a victim would act like or be like.”

“If you look at any other group of people suffering injustice, women are always in the worst situation within that group”  – Salma Hayek

Worthy also has spearheaded the push for concrete legal and procedural reforms. Michigan law, enacted in 2014, requires that rape kits move through each level of law enforcement according to a mandated timeline—three months from start to finish—and both police and healthcare professionals must notify victims about their right to obtain information about their own kits.

“The time is always right to do what is right”  –  Martin Luther King Jr.

I believe that Kurt Cobain stated the problem of rape many years ago.  Kurt Cobain said, “Rape is one of the most terrible crimes on earth and it happens every few minutes.  The problem with groups who deal with rape is that they try to educate women about how to defend themselves.  What really needs to be done is teaching men not to rape.  Go to the source and start there.“

See the full article which includes ones rape victims story of getting justice 15 years later.  This story was first published by Elle and I found it with an article in NationSwell.

Do you see in your own life where injustices were tolerated by yourself and others?  Be inspired for follow in Kym’s footsteps.  She got creative.  She raised awareness.  She didn’t let the matter go away.  Even though her journey took years to complete, she stayed true to her vision and her conscience.

We all Matter

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another – Simone de Beauvoir

When I was a little girl and I was behaving badly, my mom would always say it was because my hair was in my eyes, and I needed to get my bangs cut.  I never did figure out if there really was a correlation between hair in your eyes and bad behavior.  But if there is, then there are a lot of people in the world that need to get their bangs cut.

It seems like the news agencies and our government have gotten into a rut.  A pattern of bad behavior where they are just waiting to maliciously pounce on one another.  They have forgotten their purpose.  They got sidetracked and can’t seem to find their way back to their purpose.

Sometimes the same thing happens to us.  We get sidetracked off on some piece of drama.  As it plays out, we get sucked further and further down that particular rabbit hole.  It’s like when you go into the kitchen to get a drink of water.  Then you notice stuff on the counter that someone got out and didn’t put away.  So, you put it away.  Then you notice dishes in the sink.  So, mumbling about how you have to do it all, you take care of that.  Then you are tired and go back into the living room to sit on the sofa, completely forgetting that you got up to get a glass of water.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them – regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or economic circumstances – Christopher Dodd

The world right now if you pay attention to the news seems pretty scary.  It would seem that it is filled with violence, and racial and gender hatred.  For some reason, the news and our political leaders around the world seem to be focused on the small minorities of events that are truly negative.  Nothing is said about the positive things that are going on around us.

In Washington hundreds maybe even thousands of employees are doing a great job, but you don’t hear about their progress, you hear about the negative fighting that is going on within the political parties and even amongst their own parties.

In your local town, the news for 45 minutes will be about every negative thing going on around the world, and then they spend a less than 5 minute segment on someone in the local area that is giving back and helping those in need.  We need to reverse this trend.  Spend more time on the great people all around us that are doing great work helping others.  Celebrate milestones in people’s lives.

It has to begin with peaceful collaborative action.  We as in all of humanity, all matter and we are all equal.  We may have different colors of skin; have different religious beliefs; have different cultures and social and economic backgrounds, but we are still all the same.

We all need to be seen and heard as being a part of our families and communities.  We need to turn towards each other in brotherly love and trust.  We are all one people, and we need to start standing together.

We need to cultivate it like a garden – the gardening science of human relationships.  We need to weed out what is wrong, support what is weak, and prune off anything that isn’t supporting the growth of peace.

We’re All human, aren’t we?  Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving – J.K. Rowling

Each of us has a powerful voice that needs to be heard.  You have the right to speak up when wrongdoing is being done or condoned.  It is the basis of how this country was founded.

Instead of listening to those who seek to tear down your country out of fear, you need to show the world just how powerful a group of people can be when they come from their hearts with peace and love to each other.

We need to transform that fear into love and forgiveness.  The world will be changed by our positive examples of reaching out to each other in love.

You have thoughts and ideas of what can be done to improve our broken system.  You need to listen with both ears to what others are saying.  You need to be slow to speak from the standpoint of making sure that your words are contributing to the discussion, and not tearing it apart.  You need to be part of the solution.  We all want a world without war, conflict or suffering

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible – Maya Angelou

When you see police shootings of unarmed men or women in their pajamas who were just trying to report a possible crime, it is obvious that changes must be made.  Not only laws or procedures, but hearts and minds need to be changed.

If you start with your own heart and mind, seeking to rip out the prejudices and judgements that you have yourself, then we will have made a good start to what needs to be done by every person in our world.

Walls turned sideways are bridges – Angela Davis

The Best Is Yet To Come, In New Beginnings

“Always believe something wonderful is about to happen . . . ” – Unknown

“When the world says give up, hope whispers try one more time”  – Unknown

“A woman’s strength isn’t just about how much she can handle before she breaks.  It’s also about how much she must handle after she’s broken”  – Unknown

• Your first step, was because you wanted to get something or somewhere. 
• Your first word was because you wanted to communicate. 
• Your first day of school opened up a whole new world for you. 
• Going from grade school to junior high school to high school to college, each step opened a new door.  It also closed a door behind you. 
• Your first relationship, your saying “I do” and I will love you forever. 
• Seeing your newborn child for the first time, that beautiful baby that had been making its presence known for months being in your arms for the first time. 

Each first time, held a new promise, a hope of a dream coming true.  Each first was what you chose to make of it, to trust in the magic of a new beginning.

“A wise girl knows her limits.  A smart girl knows she has none”  – @getlanded

Make Your Life Extraordinary

“Refuse to be an extraordinary person trapped in an ordinary life” – Zaro Dean

A little step can be the first step in the beginning of a great journey. Live a life that is a story worth telling.  I heard one of those kinds of stories recently.  The storyteller had me laughing so hard throughout his story.  It was the story of how one day when he was having a bath, he wondered if anyone had ever rowed a bathtub across the English Channel.  Now you might think that this kind of dream is very silly, I know I did.  But as he told it I was simply amazed.

They say that in an average lifetime we spend six years dreaming.  How many of those dreams have you brought into reality?  How many have you made even a small effort to bring into reality?  Tim Fitzhigham and his story is remarkable, because he made a really crazy dream come into reality.  Just think what you could accomplish if you put in half of the effort that he did?

It helps that as part of his career he is a comedian.  So, he didn’t take himself too seriously.  Now as you may or may not know, a man by the name of Thomas Crapper was an inventor of the toilet.  Hence the reason why his last name is very famous.  Tim first went searching for someone to donate an appropriate bathtub to row across the channel and the company Thomas Crapper and Co Ltd donated a copper Victorian style bathtub to which he attached a kind of pedestal.

Next he had to learn to row a boat.  Then he had to request permission to sail across the channel from both Britain and France.  The British thought it was a fine idea, the French not so much. They actually made an amendment to their law to prohibit sailing bathtubs across the channel.  Tim was successful in getting the British Navy to make his bathtub a registered boat, so that he was now in compliance with French law.

Now what is really amazing is that in getting all of this accomplished Tim talked to British Rear Admirals and even the Queen of England to make sure that he could in fact sail his bathtub across.  He tells his story on the British equivalent of a TED talk and it is really, really funny.

The French tried to remove him from his boat partway across the channel and to blow it up.  He told them that since his bathtub was a registered boat, and he was the captain of said boat, that doing so without his permission would constitute an act of war.  Since it was true, they had to leave him with his boat.

He didn’t make it due to an injury on his first try, but he did make it upon the second try.  He raised 20,000 pounds for a charity, and you can hear him tell his story on The Moth Radio Hour on NPR entitled, “All At Sea”.

What I loved about his story is that he is making his life extraordinary.  He received a Royal Navy Commission, he met the Queen, he has written a book about his journey and received international stardom.  All because he came up with a crazy idea and then made it happen.

Probably over 95% of you would never have set out to do something so crazy.  You would have never believed that any government official would give you the permission.  You wouldn’t have reached out to the Navy or the Queen of England.  You would have thought, “they will think I am crazy” and not even picked up the phone.  They probably did think he was crazy, but the thing is, they supported him anyway.

How many really good ideas have you thought of that you could do, but you let yourself be talked out of it.  You told yourself who am I to do this thing?  You listened to close friends and relatives that asked you “what are you thinking? Are you crazy?”  And so, you let the dream die before it even had a chance to breathe.

Those of you who do reach out to try the crazy idea, usually do so because of a personal crisis in your life. It may be like me that someone close to you was murdered.  Or it could be like Candy Lightner, the founder of MADD that your child or husband was killed by a drunk driver.  Or it could be like the Susan Komen Foundation that you lost your daughter or wife to breast cancer and set out to find a cure, so that no one else loses a loved one to that dreaded disease.

It could be that because of an accident you were told you would never walk again and be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.  But you decided that would not be your fate and through hard work and determination you found your way to leave the wheelchair behind.  It could be that now you are working to help others regain their mobility, whether it is physical, mental or emotional trauma that must be overcome.

Most of you are not quite as crazy as Tim, but you still have the crazy idea that you can make a difference in the world, by transforming your pain into something positive.

I really loved Robin Williams as the professor in Dead Poets Society.  I loved the quote that the purpose of education is supposed to help our youth learn to think for themselves, not just recite rote answers.  That they should seize the day and make their lives extraordinary.

We need more extraordinary people in our world, because those are the kinds of people that make things happen.  They seize the dream out of their hearts, and they keep trying.  They realize that even the mistakes they will make along the way can be something wonderful.

So go out today and find your bathtub moment. The crazy idea that you can bring into reality. Like Tim you might find that your crazy idea can be done, and along the way you might just meet the Queen of England and get a Royal Navy Commission. Who knows what just might be possible?

The Courage To Continue

“Success is not final.  Failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts”  – Winston Churchill

This is so true.  You tell yourself a story within every challenge, that is partially a lie.  You tell yourself as soon as you climb this hill; as soon as you cross that river; as soon as you build a bridge across that ravine, then you will be wealthy, or famous, or a hero, whatever being a success means to you.  You will live happily ever after.

That isn’t completely true though is it?  Life will continue to give you more hills to climb. rivers to cross and bridges to build.  It is not just one success, instead “it’s a series of both successes and failures“.

As a metaphor, you don’t transform from a caterpillar to a butterfly just once.  Each time it is time to grow, you again need to transform.

In order to transform you need to let go of some “truth” that you believe, some story that is part of who you are.  The reason you have to let go of it, is because it is not really 100% truth.  It is a mixture of truth and lies that you have told yourself in order to get through a previous transformation process.

Now it is time to clean up the debris from that transformation, time to recycle the old cocoon, and make space for the new one.

It is time to face the inner darkness, release the lies (aka “the Kraken”), and embrace a fuller truth.

With the situation in the world at this moment, you and I find ourselves in this space of growth and transformation once more.  The world is changing and the world we knew last year will not be the world we know in the coming months.

The entire world is wrestling with the darkness in regards the physical, mental and emotional health as well as the economic situation. The shadows are being revealed and contained within each shadow is a gem that you can release and learn from.

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll discover will be wonderful.  What you’ll discover is yourself”  – Alan Alda

There has been more than one time in my life when the shadows overtook my life.  One happened after my mother passed away.  There were secrets about her life that came out.

Secrets the depth of finding out that one of my sisters had a different father than we had been told all of our lives.  There were a series of truly devastating secrets that came out.

I found myself in more grief and anger about the lies, than I had suffered over her passing away from the cancer.  I was mad at her, mad at God, mad at everyone and everything.  I cleaned up the mess the best I could, and began the process of forgiveness and putting my life back together.

I told myself that why I forgave an unbearable hurt from the exposed lies of another living family member was from compassion.  But in reality this was only partially true.

I did forgive from that place, but a bigger piece of the truth was that I couldn’t face losing anything more, and it was easier to forgive than it was to permanently end that relationship.

“Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage . . . , that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions”  –  Aung San Suu Kyi

Now when it feels like this darkness is coming up for me around fears of what is happening in the world, I am so grateful and thankful that I had the wisdom to surround myself with strong courageous wise women.

You can gather together with members of your soul tribe, and remind each other of the truths that you already know.  The truth is that you have many choices.

Sometimes you can fall into the trap of thinking that you have this choice or that choice on how to proceed.  You might find that you do that to yourself a lot.  A black or white choice, always looking at only the either this or that.

The truth is it isn’t simply black or white – you have the whole color spectrum.  You just don’t see it because of your limited thinking – the blinders that you have on.

You might be thinking that you can’t continue to grow and transform, dragging this weight behind you.  Yet as the same time you want to avoid the hurt that will happen if you leave the baggage behind you.

The truth might be that you don’t like either of those choices and want different ones.  The truth is that you have a large number of choices, and you should be asking yourself, “and what else is possible?”

Good friends can help you light the candle of courage.  They can help you to hold it up high to shine the light all around. While they can’t and shouldn’t make your decisions, they can hold the space protectively around you while you make your own choices. 

The truth is that these wonderful women will support whatever choice you make, as being the best choice that can be made at this time.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I’ve ended up where I needed to be”  –  Douglas Adams

There is a story which really fits the challenges you face in your life, every time you reach a moment of transformation.  In the Bio-Dome experiment they planted trees.  At first they were really excited because the trees were growing so fast and seemed so healthy.

Then something happened when the trees reached a certain height.  They would topple over and die.  Without the wind blowing against the trees, the roots did not grow big enough and deep enough to handle the weight of the tree as it grew.

Maybe you have wished in the past that you had been raised as the  “silver spoon” baby with every need met and no trouble in your life.  You imagine the perfect family, with the perfect life.

Such a life would actually be harmful to you, because there would be no transformation.  No growing from life’s experiences.  No strength and no courage.

“May the stars carry your sadness away, May the flowers fill your heart with beauty, May hope forever wipe away your tears, and, above all, May silence make you strong”  – Chief Dan George

It is time to let go of what was, and create the future you desire. It is time to release the night of darkness and welcome a bright morning sunrise.

Life’s Storms

Revised 5/13/2019

I wrote this poem on a Sunday (see it at the bottom). It had been banging around in my head for a while wanting to be released. So, I took some quiet time while everyone was asleep and let it out. The entire poem is printed at the end of the post.

There is no growth without change. You’ve got to let go of some old stuff. And that can hurt. Often when I’m in the most pain, I realize it’s coming from my trying to control everything. Or resisting the changes that come with the progress. But you see that light . . ., that beautiful next level . . ., and that’s what you have to focus on – Ali Brown

I found the quote by Ali after I wrote the poem and was struck by how much of what I am trying to express in the poem is in her quote.

You have to release what no longer serves you. That could be the story that you have been telling yourself that holds you in chains of fear about success and failure. It could be the story that you tell yourself that you are not capable of being more. The stories you could be telling yourself go on and on.  They are varied and unending, depending on what your life has been about so far.

This control is when you stand up on the ship of your own destiny and release the anchor holding you to your stories. You drop the weight that holds you in place. You open to the winds of change.  You drop all of the baggage of blaming the world for where you are at this moment in time.  You decide to take your control back – control of how you think, how you react.

You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying.  What you can do is calm yourself.  The storm will pass – Thimber Hawkeye

It takes a lot of courage to stand up to the storm of fears and doubts. To realize that as you set sail on your ship, that there will be those who you leave behind, because they are still chained to their own stories. 

When I thought deeply about this I thought of Pompeii.  The volcano was going to erupt.  It had been giving signs of the coming destruction for months.  The people who were awake and listening, left the island behind.  But so many of the people didn’t believe what they were seeing on a day-to-day basis.  And they left fleeing to safety too late. 

I am sure that they fully believed the lies they were telling themselves, the false stories about how safety lay in staying – not in fleeing with nothing to their names, to untold dangers.  No, for them staying was the only smart thing to do.

You, however, face your fears of not knowing how you will steer the ship, or even where the next safe harbor will be.   You have the courage to face the fears of the unknown, to face the lies that you told yourself and make the right decision – to face and live through the changes that are coming.

There comes a time when you just have to listen to the music of your soul and set sail to the unknown. And so the journey begins. 

Life’s Storms

Storms without a name whip the seas into a fury, winds screaming through torrents of rain.
Waves crashing against the shore, bring in lost and forgotten debris.
Stand tall on the deck of your ship, as the birds scatter beneath the howling winds,
Let it blow away what no longer serves you. 

You feel the backlash of empty words with no truth, the shadows are winning.
No sunlight, every battle lost, and shadow is winning. No rescue. 
The lack of love, the hunger for life is insatiable, an open mouth that wails to be fed.
You can’t undo what has been done, it doesn’t serve you. 

Thunder rolls and lightning flashes exposing what still needs to be released.
Let it go out the door, don’t run after it as if falls off the deck and into the sea.
Feel the weight of the past, as the sounds of the anchor being lifted vibrate through your body,
The anchor being lifted from the bottom of the sea, the sound of your journey echoing onward.

Change, the anchor of our soul, it both drops into the sea, and is pulled back up into the ship,
Change moves us ever forward on the journey, unearthing the destination clue by clue, star by star.
Change reveals the next adventure, the next treasure that we are seeking,
Change reveals the next harbor in which to rest our soul

Bright morning stars, as day breaks open the dawn releasing the light, as it climbs the clear sky,
Light breezes blow as it fills the sails, with the dust blown clear, we see what has been done.
Every color sparkles as it plays upon the sea, as we awaken, transformed once more,
We hear the music of our soul, whispering as the journey begins again, echoing ever onward.

Getting onto the Right Path

One of my favorite stories comes from Love, Medicine and Miracles by Dr. Bernie Seigal. A young man wanted to become a violinist. His parents said no, become a lawyer. He went to law school and started practicing law. He then developed what was diagnosed as terminal cancer. Thinking he was going to die, he got a job playing violin for an orchestra. Years later, he was still alive because he realized he was on the wrong path. He had to live his life, not the life of his parents.

Knowing when to walk away is wisdom, being able to do so is courage.

Isn’t it amazing that cancer is what gave him courage enough to walk away?  He demonstrated how true the maxim is that every cloud has a silver lining.  Can you think of examples when you went through a dark time only to find at the end that it gave you what you had always dreamed and wanted?

Your body knows when you are not living your authentic life, and you will receive a wake-up call.

• It is important, that you listen.  That you look within and examine your life.
• It is vital, that you create the courage to make the change.
• It is critical, that you realize that just because you are walking down the right path, doesn’t mean there won’t be obstacles.
• Your need of courage includes being courageous enough to face the fact that you will still make mistakes, experience disappointments and despair.

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.  Everything we see is perspective, not the truth” – Marcus Aurelius

This is where the ability to both look around you, and within yourself becomes important. It doesn’t mean that you are on the wrong path just because something goes wrong. It just means that you need to grow more, to be able to continue the journey.

In every journey something in your life will become complete.  It will have played out its purpose.  That road map will no longer lead you in the right direction.  You need to wake up to follow a new direction and not just blindly continue down a road that no longer leads you in the right direction.

Every year roads change.  New maps are made.  If your car has a GPS unit it will need to become updated.  The road that used to go through that small town, now bypasses it.  Internally your GPS has updated itself and you need to follow a new path.

U-Turns don’t take you all the way back.  They just take you back far enough that you can take the turn you missed.  Life’s road twists and turns.  There are no two directions that are ever the same.  So, when you complete a U-turn, it is just like taking a right-hand turn.

You can’t truly go backwards, although it seems like it some days.  Trying to, is very disappointing, as you can’t recreate what we left behind.  You changed and so did everyone else.

Don’t allow yourself to become the boulder blocking the path. This is what happens when you try to go backwards.

• You block our own path.
• You recreate similar patterns of self-destruction.

If you do, that is when you know that it is time to listen to the heart.  Your heart and soul are like the magnetic needle on the compass. Always go to “true north” and you will be on the right path.

I have always maintained that U-turns are part of every journey to some place that I don’t know. I expect them, I laugh when they happen. U-Turns can be really interesting.

What I have learned in my life is that every single experience has something important in it that I needed to learn. I may only understand later, why that piece of knowledge was required.

I have been in the mortgage industry for over 40 years. So I have lived through good and bad cycles in the financial industry. Years ago I had a good job, but the owner of another company kept calling me to come and work for him. Finally after months of getting his phone calls, I gave notice and went to work for him. This job would end up being a U-turn for me.

He had hired a free lance writer to create a manual for the mortgage brokers he worked with, and she seemed unable to finish the project, so as part of my job I took that project to completion.

Then two weeks later I was laid off, when the interest rates hiked up and his business slowed down. I really yelled at myself, because I felt I had made a wrong decision in taking that job.  I felt I should have stayed where I was, safe in  my comfort zone.

We ended up having to move out of state in order for me to find work. But what happened next, was really interesting.

The Savings and Loan I went to work for needed manuals written for their servicing department, and because I had that experience I got the job of being both an underwriter and a trainer. I created several training programs for them, as well as the servicing manual.

Then I got a second part time job teaching at South Seattle Community College for an adult education class for loan processors and loan officers. I ended up creating new manuals for this position too, because their manuals were so bad. Both of these jobs would not have been available to me, if I hadn’t taken that earlier job and got the experience of creating a manual.

“Move on.  It’s just a chapter in your life.  Don’t close the book, just turn the page for a new chapter”  – Unknown

So you will fall down. You may even get lost. U-Turns are a given. But as long as you take out that compass, listen to your heart, and keep creating the courage in your soul, you will be on the right path. As long as you tune into true north, you can take that step into the unknown, knowing that this is the right path.

What Does The Term, “The sky’s the limit” Mean To You?

What does the term, “the sky’s the limit” mean to you?  For me, it is where the comfort zone meets “what else is possible?”

What is stopping you is the unwillingness to live beyond this reality.

  – Unknown

It is an extension of “what is possible”, that is beyond what “normal” is for me. It is where all of the magic is, approaching life from that attitude.  All our of limitations are self installed.  We choose them either by accepting them from someone else, or our own inner critic forming them after a failure. The sky is not the limitation, we are. We see these limitations in our professional life, our personal life and our spiritual life. Some of these limitations come from our culture, through the “roles” we play with our friends and family.

Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness.  But it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.

  – Unknown

When we go on a hero’s journey, the walls that we have built around us, to limit us, get torn down. When you take any really great story, you find within it what Joseph Campbell called the Hero’s Journey. My two favorite stories are “Star Wars” (the first three with Luke) and “Lord of The Rings”. 

The main character (Luke or Frodo) is going through a “normal” or boring life. Nothing much is happening. Then there is a call to adventure (Luke has R2D2 show up and Frodo has Gandalf), something new is introduced into the characters life.  This alters the hero’s destiny. At first the hero refuses the call to adventure – this isn’t for me. I can’t get involved. This can sometimes be because the hero knows that the role that you play within your family, or tribe will be forever changed once you cross the threshold.

Our worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace.  And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.

  –  Jerry Bridges

Then the hero encounters the mentor – someone who gives advice and gets him ready. It could be someone supernatural, mystical or angelic. The hero crosses the threshold – leaves home and enters into the adventure. There are tests, allies and enemies are encountered in the journey which teach the hero a lot about him or herself. Plan A and possibly Plans B and C fail, as the hero experiences setbacks and has to rethink how to proceed.

Because you are alive, everything is possible.

  – Nhat Hanh

The hero has faith which leads them to access higher levels of knowledge and abilities to meet the tests with. The hero sees their limitations and ultimately has to defy and defeat them in order to pull through. The setbacks all lead to the ultimate crisis of life or death, where the hero struggles to complete their destiny (Luke battling the evil emperor and Frodo himself and the ring). Now the hero gets the reward – they have won out over the enemies. Many times the loses are mourned even as the victory is celebrated. The hero begins the journey back home, forever changed by the journey. The old limitations of what the hero thought they were capable of have changed. They have been forever transformed.

The reason people awaken, is because they have finally stopped agreeing to things that insult their soul.

  –  Unknown

I believe that we all take numerous hero’s journeys. We take them in our personal lives, our professional lives and our spiritual lives. We take small journeys and we take “dark night of the soul” journeys. Each time we need to transform our lives, we take a hero’s journey. We reinvent ourselves, we improvise, adapt and overcome our self made limitations. We get creative, we become flexible and adjust as we experience paradigm shifts.

There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

  – Bruce Lee

So don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon. Use your imagination and creativity, to discover that the possibilities of your world are limitless.

[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]

How Does One Become A Butterfly?

A caterpillar must endure a season of isolation before it turns into a butterfly.  Embrace the time you have alone, it will only make you stronger.

  – Steven Aitchison

Life is a journey of learning and discovery.  As young children we take in everything we can learn.  We are authentically ourselves.  Somewhere along the line of growing up, we learn to hide who we really are.  To keep ourselves safe.  To avoid ridicule.  To be the perfect person, so that we will be loved.   We have many reasons why we start hiding.  But there comes a time in our life, when we realize that in order to be truly happy, we have to transform back into who we really are.  We need to become the person we were created to be.

Butterflies can’t see their wings.  They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can.  People are like that as well.

  – Unknown

Transformation gives you the chance to rewrite the story of who you are and who you are capable of being. There are many things in our life that we give negative meanings to. But what if you gave pain the definition that it shows you that which is not for you? This would be a positive thing to know – what doesn’t belong to me or my life. Envy is another word that has a bad rap. What if envy simply shows you things which you may wish to empower in your life? That would be a great thing to know – things I want in my life and can empower myself to obtain.

To be nobody but yourself is a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight – and never stop fighting.

  – E.E. Cummings

The being that is forming in the cocoon is no longer a caterpillar. For the caterpillar the past is truly a place of reference. It can no longer live there, because that body is gone. Within the cocoon the caterpillars body literally melted into goo, and then formed a totally new body. As the butterfly’s body grows into its new shape, it becomes cramped as the wings want to expand out. It isn’t a place of residence for the butterfly, so it has to break loose and spread it’s wings and find a new home.  Even though everyone who knew you as a caterpillar is expecting you to still be a caterpillar, you can’t go back.  You have to fight to go forward, staying true to who you now are.

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

  – Mary Oliver

The butterfly had to break out of the old place of residence and begin a brand new journey, where everything is experienced for the first time. It must break open its heart to begin this journey, because it has to trust its intuition for flying, for finding food, for making a new home. Literally everything for the butterfly is a brand new experience.  You have to have the courage to follow your own heart and intuition.

You will know you made the right decision when you pick the hardest and most painful choice but your heart is at peace.

  – Unknown

Transformation is a scary business. Because I am a perfectionist, I hate doing something new for the first time. I am doing the best I can with my posts, knowing that I will have spelling errors or grammar mistakes in my writing. I can proofread this a dozen times and the minute I publish I find something I missed. When I sponsor the post, I can’t make any changes, so anything I missed becomes a permanent part of the post. I am living with being imperfect in order to just get the post out there.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

  – Steve Jobs

When we listen to our intuition, we are right where we are meant to be.  We can impact the people that we share the world with.  It may be a tiny corner of the world.  Or we could be like a comet and affect the entire world as we fly through the night sky.  It isn’t up to us to say how much of an impact we will make.  It is up to us to live life as fully as we can.  To follow the dreams that have been written in our hearts.  To break out of the comfort zone and spread our wings and fly.  It doesn’t even matter if we know where we are or where we are going.  It only matters that we fly.  That we soak up the sun.  The we soar with the breezes.  And if we can do that, then whatever we leave behind will be sufficient.

[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]

Helping others

Robert Norton discovered the truth of how helping others helps you get over your own troubles. He recently lost his mother right before his wedding, which created an emotional roller coaster for his bride and himself.

When he returned from his honeymoon, he discovered that the man who mowed his lawn was walking 2.5 miles with his lawn mower because his car broke down and he couldn’t afford to get it fixed. What stunned him is that the man who mows his lawn is 83 yrs old.

So he and his wife started a GoFundMe account and raised enough money to buy his lawn care man a new truck.

They raised $13,000 and a local car dealer sold him a 2004 Nissan truck at cost and the balance of the funds were used to pay for his auto insurance, license plates and a Home Depot gift card to purchase a new lawn mower.

“He’s going to cut our yard as long as he wants to cut our yard and we’re going to pay him as long as he wants to cut our yard,” said Robert. “I think anybody who is 83 years old who works as hard as he does, as loyal and faithful as he is, his work ethic and character, should have a vehicle to drive and do his work in.”

See more:  http://www.liftbump.com/…/90189-man-who-mows-lawns-shows-…/…

Perspective

This will make you stop and think… look carefully. Which perspective are you holding onto?