Bravery Is Taking One Step, Then Another, And Another

“Running away from your problems is a race that you will never win”  – Unknown

What is the difference between

leaving something that doesn’t serve you

and running away?

I think it is several things.  The realization that there is nothing that you can do to change the situation.  You can only change yourself.  If the situation doesn’t change after that, then it is time to ask yourself “why am I still here?”.

Years ago I have interviewed for a new job and was hired.  The first hour of my first day at the new job, I knew that I had made a mistake.

The owner of the company had a lot of anger issues in how he treated his employees.  He wasn’t the person I had interviewed with and when I was shown around the office he wasn’t there.  If he had been, and I saw how he treated his employees I never would have accepted the position.

As an example he would walk around the office and open the paper drawers for the fax machines.  If they were down even a few sheets of paper, and even if the receptionist had filled them 5 minutes ago he would start yelling and cursing at her.

The Saturday of my first week there, I went into the office to set up my desk with the various underwriting guidelines they used for several different companies.

While I was there, the owner of the company came in and we started talking.  I had already worked for an owner like him, and I had sworn I would never allow someone to treat me like that again.  So I told him very clearly that the first time he yelled and swore at me, like I had seen him do to others, would be the day I quit.

• your employment 
• your family
• your spouse
• your friends

have you stayed in instead of leaving? 

You tell yourself that you have no choice but to stay. But you always have choices.

Your happiness starts with you. 

Not only how you treat yourself, but how you give permission to others to treat you. I could only make that choice because I loved myself, and trusted  that doing the right thing would work out in the end.

“With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble.  Courage is the foundation of integrity”  – Mark Twain

It is how you treat yourself with the inner voice inside your head.

“Note to self:  You don’t have to be brave every single minute.  Sometimes, you rest.  You say, “I’m not brave enough for that . . . right now”.  But you will be.  Soon”  – Nanea Hoffman

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are”  – e.e. cummings

Ability And Inner Guidance Know Best

Updated 11/26/2021

“Your life is yours to live, no matter how you choose to live it.  When you do not think about how you intend to live it, it lives you.  When you occupy it, step into it consciously, you live it.”   – Gary Zukav

Take a moment to think about this past week in your life.  How many things are habitual that you do?  How much of your life is lived on autopilot?  You get up in the morning, shower, brush your teeth, . . .  daily habits that you don’t think about if you should do or not do.

Now think about how much of your life you actually thought about living?  Did you do anything new?  Did you plan out a trip to somewhere you’ve never been?  Did you drive down a different street going to or from work that you’ve never been down before?  Did you do anything different than the previous week, month or ever year?

How much of your life is lived consciously?  Can you say like Alice in Wonderland, “I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed quite a few times since then?”

There is a saying that we have two ears and one mouth, because we are supposed to listen twice as much as we speak. I think that this ability to listen also applies to listening to our inner voice. I know that this is something that I constantly practice.

Do you ever have that nagging feeling as you are walking out the door to go to work or run errands? That feeling that you are forgetting something, but can’t think of what it might be? Do you run down your mental checklist and don’t see anything that you have forgotten? Then later, something happens and you realize what it was you forgot? Happens to me all the time. That is the inner voice talking, but not being listened to.

“The more you trust your intuition, the more empowered you become, the stronger you become, and the happier you become.”  – Gisele Bundchen

It is the same voice that tells you stay away from that person – you know the one that makes your skin crawl? It is like a radar warning you away from danger or from a bad relationship. Have you ever pushed that voice down saying, “there is nothing wrong with this person” to yourself, only to regret later not listening to it?

When I worked for a major bank in San Diego years ago I had that feeling about a new hire.  I was a mortgage loan supervisor at the time, and every new loan would come across my desk and I would assign the set up clerk and loan processor for the file.  This new hire literally made my skin crawl.  I told the branch manager that there was something majorly wrong with this guy, but he passed the background check, so that was all he cared about.  So I went through each new loan submission this guy turned in and rejected almost all of them as having something wrong with the documentation (translate loan fraud). 

Our office was on the 15th floor facing the freeway.  There was a side road that ran along the freeway and one afternoon everyone was at the windows watching something going on down below.  When I went to see what was going on, this loan officers Porsche was alongside the chain link fence next to the freeway and it was on fire.  The fire department was there and as they were shooting water at the car, I could see these funny sparks shooting out around the vehicle.  Pretty soon I saw the police arrive and they handcuffed the loan officer and put him in the back of the police car. 

Turns out he had several hand guns and rifles in the trunk of the car along with ammunition.  It was live ammunition going off that was creating the sparks.  It was a few days before he came back to work, and he was fired.  I never let my branch manager forget that I had told him that there was something wrong with that guy.  Sometimes we just know intuitively when something isn’t right.

“Problems are the gifts that make us dig out and figure out who we are, what we’re made for, and what we’re responsible to give back to life.”  – Tony Robbins

This inner voice is the key to having a life of transformation that doesn’t throw you into “dark night of the soul” transformation. When you listen to this voice, reflect on what it is trying to tell you you can save yourself a lot of trouble.  I love Tony Robbins quote because it puts a slightly different spin on knowing yourself.  You need to understand your place in this world, in order to figure out what you are responsible to do with your life.  The biggest changes you have made in your life usually come out of the biggest challenges.  It shows you who you really are when you pull back the curtains and stop pretending to be the “All Powerful Wizard”.  It shows you how to pay it forward and do good with your life.

I am sure that most of us have heard of the saying, take 10 deep breaths, then talk. It is critical that you pause before reacting. What is so important about taking the deep breaths, is that it helps you step out of the whirlpool of emotions that you are drowning in.  You can step back and see from a less emotional viewpoint what really needs to be said, or done at that moment.  It allows you to reconnect the heart and mind, so that you can make good decisions instead of emotional ones.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”  – Aristotle

When I was growing up, there was a lot of yelling and fighting between my parents. It was one of the things that I used to say, “I won’t be this kind of parent when I grow up.” When my kids would do something that made me mad, the house rule was they had to go to their room. When I was done being mad, and able to have a conscious conversation about their behavior then I would go to their room and we would have a talk about what had happened.

It was part of my own self knowledge – I needed the time and space to disconnect from the anger or frustration in order to be the kind of person, the kind of parent I wanted to be.  Pausing, Reflecting and the Taking Action.

“When you know yourself you are empowered.  When you accept yourself you are invincible.”  – Tina Lifford

Like Treasure, Brilliance is Uncovered…

Updated 03/17/2020

Have you ever felt like you have a recurring theme in your life?  Something that keeps showing up for you over and over again?

“All of us have gold hidden within, but we have to dig to get it out” – Joyce Meyer

When I was 4 years old I went through a trauma that said it wasn’t safe to be seen or heard.  Childhood traumas can create both a protection reaction and a self-sabotage reaction to similar feelings or emotions as adults.  It is a primary teaching in my coaching practice – to mine what memories you  have as a child to patterns in your life now.

I spent most of my adult life trying to figure out why I always seemed to have one foot on the gas, and one foot on the brake. My experience had become an unconscious program running in the background of my decision-making process. 

All unconscious programs both help you and hurt you.  This is why like buried treasure; they must be dug up and be understood.

I went for professional help because I had buried the memory, and could remember nothing of my childhood until my first day of school. Once I uncovered the memory, I could see how this one experience had impacted my entire life.  I had become stuck in my own life, and it was like the car stuck in the mud.  The wheels were spinning, but all that was happening was that I was throwing dirt all over the place.  Now that I could see how the car was stuck in the mud, I could use tools to get back onto the dry road, and get moving on my own journey of personal transformation.

“The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your  mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself.  That’s the moment you  may be starting to get it right”  – Neil Gaiman

You have these buried treasures that you were gifted with to share with the world. At some point in your life, someone or something happened that convinced you they were worthless pieces of trash.  So, feeling guilty, embarrassed, ashamed, and afraid, you buried them deep inside of yourself. 

Piece by piece, they must be dug up, polished up, and shared. It is these treasures which will shift the world to a better place for all of us. I write to share my treasures with everyone. I am working very hard to help others to be able to share their treasures with the world.  Elizabeth Gilbert in her book “Big Magic” called this “strange jewels” which are buried within you, waiting to be uncovered. 

You may have spent your life looking outside of yourself for fulfillment. You may believe that if you are the perfect child, the perfect student, the perfect spouse or parent, or the perfect employee, then you will be fulfilled.

Nothing outside of yourself can really provide long lasting validation, security or love. You can get temporary fixes, but sooner or later they will all fail.  Then you convince yourself that the next partner, or the next job or the next whatever will be the thing that makes you happy and fills that void. Or you may just condemn yourself as a complete failure.  Instead of looking for something, you stop seeking any kind of love, security or fulfillment.

Sometimes it feels like you have spent your whole life running away from yourself because the pain that lives within you is too much to bear.  You bury it down deeper and convince yourself that it’s the only way to survive. 

But in that pain is great treasure.  There is beauty in the depths of your soul, where you have hidden your gifts.  The great religious leaders recognize the truth of this.

“We are all jars of clay, fragile and poor, yet we carry within us an immense treasure”  – Pope Francis

Every moment of your life is wrapped up in change.  Every truth of today, will not necessarily be the truth tomorrow.  New discoveries in science, uncover and shifts the foundations of what you know.  Technology is constantly changing all aspects of your life.  Just think of the number of new authors made possible by Kindle books. 

I never thought I would be able to change from reading paper books to online.  I never thought I would use Uber or Lyft instead of imposing on a friend to pick me up or drop me off.  My news comes from my iPhone more than TV.  Little things that add up to a lot of changes.

In the same way, as you dig and uncover what lies deep within yourself, you will reach new truths about yourself.  You will become more conscious, more awake.  You will find yourself making small changes in how you live your life. 

You may shrug off old habits which no longer fit or feel right.  You may organize or arrange your life differently to make room for new ways of living your life.  You may find yourself no longer procrastinating until decisions make themselves, but rather consciously make your decisions in a way that moves you forward to living your life purpose.

The Founder of Agape International Spiritual Center, Michael Beckwith took it a step further in reflecting that these divine gifts and priceless treasures were given to you to help shift not just your own consciousness, but the consciousness of the world.

You have these treasure maps inside of you, which lead you to the divine treasure of love. Love of Self, Love of God and Family, Love of the World. You may be a diamond in the rough, but as you take this journey through divine love, the beauty of the diamond will be revealed within you.

Don’t Be Afraid To Dance Your Own Dance Of Life

In order to save myself, I must destroy first the me I was told to be – The Dreamer

When you were this girls age, you had dreams about who you wanted to be when you grew up.  You may already have been singing, or dancing, or wanting to be a doctor or lawyer.  Between this and that statement they let you know that you should choose a less challenging career than a doctor or lawyer, because you really aren’t that smart.

Or it could be more subtle where you are being directed by your parents into the career that they want for you.  That career your mom or dad wanted; or everyone in your family has this career (our family is all in the legal or medical field); or the one you want won’t be able to support you – all valid reasons by their way of thinking.

Along the way you learn to hide who you are.  You learn that others will judge you or belittle you.  So, you put on masks to conform to what friends and family expect – who they want you to dress like, look like, act like.  You hide your dreams so that no one can destroy them any further.

You learn not to trust your heart to be in others hands.  You give up on what is possible and settle for what is conforming to the needs and desires of others.  You forget who you are and what you are here for.  You no longer take part in the dance of life, but instead settle back against the wall and watch those with more courage or talent dance it in front of you.

Ten years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life, you didn’t settle for it – Unknown

There is only one way to truly know who you are deep down inside.  You have to get in touch with your own soul.  You need to be by yourself, and sit with yourself, and just listen.

Looking back at your life, find the places where you were really happy.  Find the things that are so easy for you to do, that others find hard or impossible.  Trace back all of the threads that have your name engraved upon them.  Start picking out and removing all of the threads that are not you.  Look for the gold and silver pieces and toss out the dross.

Now look for the patterns that are left.  The amazing thing is that it usually takes you back to this age.  The age when you acted out who you really were, before society broke you like a young colt and told you who to be.  The threads of genius that are all you, can now be taken up and made into whatever pattern you want.  It is never too late to be who you were meant to be.

Sometimes when you make this journey deep into our soul, you discover that your life has to be completely shaken up.

• UPLIFT:  You are covered in dust and debris that needs to be removed.  We need to rearrange almost everything. Uplift what you buried.
• EMPOWER:  Change almost everything.   Empower your heart and soul to lead you in the right direction.
• VALIDATE:  We need to go to the place we are supposed to be.  You need to validate that your dreams are right.  You can be and do what they are leading you to.

A close friend of mine relocated from Los Angeles to Italy and she loves it.  The best thing to do is to remove what doesn’t belong and then figure out how to rearrange what does.  It is an individual journey that defines who you are in a totally new way.  You discover your truth by looking for it down deep within and then integrating it into your life.  You are on a life adventure.  This journey is for you alone.  Embrace it and life it fully.

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated.  It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path.  Listen to your own truth – Ram Dass

There are some that will say that living your life purpose, is being selfish.  That you are ignoring the wishes of others.  But actually, the reverse is true.

Each one of us was given as part of our life journey a divine destiny.  You were born into the place and the family that would give you the tools to accomplish this purpose.  Some of those life lessons come through adversity, some come as part of the journey of rediscovering who you are really meant to be.

If you don’t take the risks, make the changes and transform your life, then your destiny will not be fulfilled.  And you will not be living the life that God sent you here to live.

So, it is actually selfish to not live up to your full potential.  To not find out who you are supposed to be.  To not utilize your power to its full capability. To not live out loud and up front your God given destiny.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

“Happiness is not something readymade.  It comes from your own actions” – Dalai Lama

As an adult you might look at all the clean laundry on this bed and sigh, thinking that it all needed to be folded or hung up and put away.

But my two grandsons didn’t see a pile of work to do, they saw fun.  The smiles on their faces make my heart burst with joy.  Can you remember being this age and thinking that everything in and around your house was just waiting for you to figure out a way to have fun with it?

As an adult you need to get back that lens of seeing things as something ready made to make you happy.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do, are in harmony” – Mahatma Gandhi

One of the things that I love about watching small children, is their ability to just be themselves.  They aren’t hiding who they are behind a mask, no fake smiles, no hidden agendas.  If something does happen that makes them sad or mad, their emotions flow straight through them.  The don’t pout in the corner waiting for someone to coax them back into a good mood.  They have their moments when a tantrum hits them, then they immediately get distracted and two minutes later they are on the bed rolling in clean clothes and laughing about nothing.

They don’t have baggage that they carry around with them, that slows down their emotions.  They don’t find themselves trapped in an endless loop of replaying a bad experience over and over again.  They don’t let their emotions send them into an endless spiral of judgment and negativity.  They don’t spend their days getting triggered by something unimportant. They don’t let a single thing cause them to spend the rest of the day in a bad mood.

“The best thing that you can do to this world is to be joyous.  Being joyful, is the greatest offering you can make to the world”  – Jaggi Vasadev

Have you ever been in a terrific mood, driving down the freeway as you go to work?  Then someone cuts you off.  You might mutter under your breath.  Or maybe you yell at the driver shaking you head or hands.  Or maybe you drive right up on their bumper to let them know how angry you are.

A few weeks ago, two drivers were going down the freeway, and I don’t know what started the argument, but they were taking turns cutting each other off, then they pulled their cars over and one man got out with a baseball bat.  Fortunately, there was a highway patrol behind them, and he was able to stop it from escalating even further.

Why do people let someone else’s actions destroy their own good mood?  Why do they feel the need to somehow get back at them for their either unthinking or aggressive driving habits?

“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy”  – Unknown

It isn’t easy to let things go as fast as they happen to you.  But if you remember these two rascals and a load of clothes just out of the dryer, maybe, just maybe, you can be like a child.  Feel the emotion, and let it flow out of you.  Take back your self respect and don’t allow anyone to push you down the rabbit hole of negative emotions.  Just walk away.  Dance down the sidewalk.  Laugh.

Just because someone invites you to argue and fight,

doesn’t mean you have to accept the invitation.

Self-Awareness allows you the space to check in within you and choose happiness.  To choose not to worry.  To choose the “easy button” in all aspects of living your life in joy and happiness.

When you choose to live your life from the place of gratitude it helps you to shift your energy, to bring in more of what you want in your life.  As you walk down your chosen path, the journey of life brings you many things.  Not all of them are meant to stay.  Everything in your life currently is serving some sort of purpose.  Part of the journey is figuring out why it is in your life.

What it is supposed to be teaching you, and once you know and implement that knowledge, then it is time to let it go.  What an interesting thing it is to recognize that in every moment you have choices laid before you.  You can choose anger and frustration, or you can let the negative emotion roll in a wave over you and past you to the shore.  Watch as it draws all of the negativity back out to sea.

“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong.  The amount of work is the same” – Carol Castenada

Sometimes happiness is a feeling. Sometimes it’s a decision.  Don’t let stupid things break your happiness.  If you really look at life, while you will have tragedy happen in your life, most of your unhappiness from day to day is your being triggered by something stupid.

• What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose?
• Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them?
• Have you allowed distractions to sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

Remember, we here at LemonadeMakers are here for you.  Contact us and let us help you choose a million reasons to be happy.

Celebrate The Hero In Each Of Us, That Voice That Is Brave Enough To Say “Enough” And “No More”

“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do.  It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t” – Rikki Rogers

Life in a Jar . . .  a play written by school children in Kansas.  Tells the story of Irena Sendlerowa who saved around 2,500 Jewish babies from Nazi death camps.  Saying that what she did was nothing special, she said “I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality.  The term hero irritates me greatly.  The opposite is true.  I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.”

She was captured by the Gestapo and beaten, breaking and crushing her legs and feet, and then driven away to be executed.  On the way, she was rescued.  She was never able to walk without crutches afterwards.

I think that most of us wonder if we would have had the strength and courage to do what Irena did.  Risk our lives for children that we didn’t know.  To survive that kind of beating.  To have the attitude of thinking that we could have done more than rescue 2,500 children.  She is a special kind of hero.

As brave as Irena was, think for a moment of being the mother who had to decide if she could give up her child.

What guarantee was there that this would in fact save her child?  Where did such inner strength come from?  Most of the parents who gave up their children did not survive the war and lost their lives in the death camps.

Put yourself in that place for just a moment, could you have given your child to Irena?  Their story is told in the PBS program, “Irena Sandler:  In the Name of Their Mothers”.

Harriet Tubman is another amazing woman.  Born a slave, she ran away leaving her husband and children to escape slavery.  Walking almost 90 miles to Philadelphia with no map, directions or help.  She returned to the South at least 19 times and lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad.  She was very intuitive and had dreams that would tell her when to leave the road, or that a particular way was not safe.

A movie about her life was made, called “A Woman Called Moses“.  She is an inspiration again, for standing up for what is right with bravery and courageous action.  After rescuing her family, the fact that she went back again and again, with a large bounty on her head for over 10 years makes her a monument to courage and determination.  She was also involved in helping women get the vote, working with Susan B Anthony.

“Believe in yourself and all that you are.  Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle” – Christian D. Larson

You could write story after story about amazing people who showed tremendous resilience and courage.  Who dug down deep within themselves to find their inner strength to live through trials and tribulations.  Who fought through the inner and outer darkness of their lives.

In fact, all of us have such stories within our own lives.  You may think that what you have done in your life doesn’t compare to the stories you have heard, the ones that you have labeled as heroes.  I am sure that if you were to talk with Malala Yousufzai, she would insist that what she did standing up in defiance to those who wanted to prevent her being educated, was nothing notable.  We are all Irena’s, and Harriet’s, and Malala’s.

Maya Angelou is another courageous woman, my hero.  Her writing and her wisdom are so inspiring.  One of my favorite quotes of hers, “I can be changed by what happens to me.  But I refuse to be reduced by it”.  We all face in our lives numerous times that test us.  Things can happen that can shatter you, that can pierce your soul.  But nothing that happens can reduce you to something less that you are.

“A strong woman knows she has strength enough for the journey, but a woman of strength knows it is in the journey where she will become strong” – Unknown

Like the water in a lake.  Something can cause large ripples that disturb your peace, that shatters your emotions.  The cause of the disturbance, like a large rock, might sink to the bottom of your lake, your soul.  It might forever change you, but it does not reduce you.

You still have the power to return to your inner and outer peace.  To continue to learn, grow, and transform your life.  To be curious as to what else is possible in your life.  To be an intelligent, courageous, loving woman who teaches others by being her best possible self.

Journal prompts:

• What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose?
• Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them?
• Have you allowed distractions to sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

Have Faith That Everything Will Work Out For The Best

There is an inner beauty about a girl who believes in herself, who knows she is capable of anything that she puts her mind to.  There is a beauty in the strength and determination of a girl who follows her own path, who isn’t thrown off by obstacles along the way.  There is an inner beauty about a girl whose confidence comes from experiences, who knows she can fall, pick herself up and move on – Unknown

I love the last line.  When we step outside of our comfort zone, when we take a leap of faith, there are times we fall down.  It is part of the process.  When a baby starts crawling, then climbing up and walking along the furniture, they display the perfect attitude.  They take a step or two, with wobbly legs and almost no balance.  They fall on their butts.  They may cry.  But the next thing you know they are back to trying to take another step. 

We tell them “come to moma” and they get the biggest grins on their faces, so excited.  They take a wobbly step after wobbly step into the moms arms.  This is what walking outside the comfort zone is about.  Taking a first step and another, wobbling along the way.  Crashing and burning and getting back up until we can walk with perfect balance and ease.

She was unstoppable. not because she did not have failures or doubts, but because she continued on despite them  – Unknown

No matter how many defeats we encounter, we can recover.  We are resilient and we don’t “cry uncle”, we figure out another way around the obstacle and continue on.  Along our life journey we can expect that there will be times when we become lost to our purpose and passion in life.  We may encounter some sort of addiction problem; we may go through the loss of a spouse or child that sends us off the deep end; we may have severe health issues that make us wonder if we want to continue living; we may encounter mental health issues.  What we need to understand is that there isn’t any mistake or issue in our life that we can’t rise up out of.

Strong Woman – you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.  In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it  – Maya Angelou

Recovery from anything goes through a process.  Good days, bad days.  You will sometimes feel all alone and maybe even abandoned by others.  The flip side of that feeling is that you are now empowered to help others who are struggling.  Your friends and family may not understand what you are going through.  Instead of bottling up your struggle or judging them as insensitive, you have the opportunity to try to explain in a million different ways.  Sometimes if they haven’t walked in your shoes, it is like trying to explain the fax machine to a two year old.  You can explain how it works a million different ways, but they won’t understand.  So that has to be ok.  Sometimes we just have to accept, “it is what it is” and move onward.

Whenever we begin to feel as if we can no longer go on, hope whispers in our ear to remind us that we are strong – Robert M Hensel

Your problems won’t magically go away, but as you recover they will become more and more manageable.  The days of overwhelm will get fewer.  As you go through the process of recovery, you will change in many small and large ways.  It is hard to see the changes yourself.  It is like when you have a 12 month old who is learning how to walk, run, and talk.  They are growing like crazy, but we don’t really notice until nothing they have fits.  But if you were to go on a trip for two weeks and come back to that toddler, you would immediately see all of the changes in growth and things that they are doing.  Others notice the changes faster than we do, because they have the space away from us.

Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress.  Working hard for something we love is called passion – Unknown

The important thing to remember when we are going through any kind of recovery, is the end result that we are working towards.  What we are fighting for.  Working out everyday at the gym results in our becoming happier, healthier, stronger, as step by step we are recovering.  There may be times in the fight where we miss guarding ourselves and get punched.  We may fall to the ground, breathing heavy, wondering if we can get back up.  What we have to remember is that as long as we get back up, keep fighting for our wholeness, we have not lost.

Sometimes when you’re in a dark place, you think you’ve been buried, but you’ve actually been planted.  – Unknown

Take the time to breathe.  It seems simple, but have you ever we taken a yoga class and been reminded that you are holding your breath and you need to breathe?  Or maybe doing something on a machine in the gym and the instructor is reminding you to breathe?  There are times were we seem to hold our breath, because something is somewhat painful.  There are times when are so excited or angry that we forget to breathe.  The proverb of taking 10 deep breaths before speaking or acting comes into play here.  When we take really deep full belly breaths it somehow seems to disconnect us from our runaway emotions and allows our brain to reconnect and begin to direct our thoughts. 

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same  – Carlos Castenada

If we take those 10 deep full belly breaths right now, you will see what I mean.  It will allow you to see some patterns, some logical reasoning comes back into your space and you can see how although the recovery was painful, it does have some wonderful jewels buried right alongside of you.  There are some positive things that you have learned about yourself on this journey.  Today is the best day to celebrate with gratitude those gifts.  Believe in yourself again.  Love those around you and most importantly love yourself.  Live, Laugh, Love and celebrate life again.

Say YES To New Adventures

It all begins and ends in your mind.  What you give power to, has power over you, if you allow it.

  – Unknown

So how do you work with your mind to change your story?  You acknowledge that you are where you are in your story because of how you did, or did not use your power.  You realize that while you can’t control every challenge that happens in your life, you can control your response to it.  That is where your power to control your story originates – how you respond.

Allowing people inside your life is a beautiful thing.  Letting go of people who drain your spirit is another beautiful thing you can do for your life.  The key to being happy is knowing you have the power to choose what to accept and what to let go.

  – Dodinsky

First step is to silence the mind.  The subconscious mind is so busy trying to distract us from our real story.  It wants us to get lost in the stories of who our parents said we were.  Of who our friends and relatives expect us to be.  But our true story is waiting in our hearts to be re-discovered.  To be released from the cage that we put it in when we were small children. 

Meditation is a great way to learn to silence the mind.  Visualization is another great way to give the mind something structured to do, so that it will let our heart and soul communicate with us.  For me, my heart and soul communicates best in my dreams.  Many of my poems and best blog posts come from ideas in my dreams.

The soul usually knows what to do to heal itself.  The challenge is to silence the mind.

  – Unknown

Second step is to let go of trying to control things that you have no control over.  To let go of what you can’t change.  Which usually means that we are trying to control the behavior of someone else.  Or control things over which we have no power in the first place. 

In our life story we sometimes have to climb a high mountain pass.  We are supposed to travel up over the pass and back down the other side.  As we follow our road over the mountain, we may find the road has been washed out.  We might find the road has had a rock or mud slide.  Maybe a bridge is out, or there is a raging forest fire.  We might have to detour around whatever the roadblock is.  That doesn’t mean that we drag all of those rocks, mud, broken bridges or burning bushes with us, as we go down the other side of the mountain.  We leave that roadblock on the road.  It is not our business to fix the road.  It is not our burden to control the journey and demand that the road be repaired before we continue across the mountain.  Our business is to simply travel to our destination by any means possible.  It is in the traveling that we learn, change, adapt and transform.

One of the happiest moments in life is when you find the courage to let go of what you can’t change.

  – Unknown

Third step is to really, truly, believe from the bottom of your soul, that you are unique, no one in the entire universe is like you, and that is how it is supposed to be.  Stop trying to fit in a mold.  Stop trying to be Martha Stewart in the home, and Oprah at work, and Marilyn Monroe in the bedroom, all rolled up into one amazing super woman.  Don’t try to make yourself live out someone else’s story.  Live your own.  

You weren’t made to replicate, obey or stand in the shadow of another person.  You were made to stand in your own power and find the truth in your soul..

  – Lonerwolf

Fourth Step is to realize that while we all need a helping hand once in a while, nothing will destroy our power to live our own story faster than having the habit of depending on others.  Just like a tree that grows in the forest, we must grow deep roots to support our upward growth.  If we start leaning on the trees that we are planted by, when the storm comes into our life our roots will not support us and we will crash to the ground.  The unfortunate thing about our crash is how we damage those next to us as we fall.  We must learn to stand up alone and be an original.

Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others.  If you lean, you will never be strong or original.  Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.

  – Orison Swett Marden

Fifth Step has to do with your relationship with yourself.  Really understanding what real self love and self trust is all about.  Not having these vital areas in balance in your life is what leads to most of our broken, damaged relationships – with friends, with family, with our spouse, with our co-workers at our job,  It enters into how people treat us, how we communicate our needs, wants and desires, and how we are perceived in the world.

The relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.

  – Jane Travis

Sixth Step is your relationship to others and the world.  You can’t make everyone happy and it isn’t your job to do so.  There are always going to be people who say that you are “not enough” – not good enough, not pretty enough, not rich enough . . .  and so on.  Those judgments are on them.  They want to feel better by having their own problems being pushed off on to you.  It is not your job to judge them back.  To think that you have to show others what kind of “bad” people they are.  Their true colors will come out without your help or assistance.  Don’t blame others for your life, and don’t accept the blame for how they are living their own life.

Give.  But don’t allow yourself to be used. 

Love.  But don’t allow your heart to be abused. 

Trust.  but don’t be naïve. 

Listen.  But don’t lose your own voice.

  – thisislovelifequotes. net

There are more steps, breadcrumbs that you find along your journey.  It all begins with a simple decision.  Is this DAY ONE, or is this ONE DAY?  You decide.  What’s your story?

Destiny Gives Us Fairy Tales

The winds scattered my leaves but my roots remained firm.  They tried to wound me, but I grew stronger in the broken places.  I wondered if I would survive, but then I saw a sparkle . . . My tiara was a little tangled perhaps but it never fell off after all.

  – Jane Lee Logan

When we were children we touched dragonflies and reached for the stars.  We talked to the moon and danced through the forest with the fairies.  We saw wonder and believed in happy endings.  What we may not have realized is that the happy ending, was just that moment in time.  That there was more to the story.  The heroes journey doesn’t end.  There are always more challenges, more growth.  Change, transformation, life continues ever onward.  The end is never really the end.

Love your whole story even if it hasn’t been the perfect fairy tale.

  – Melanie Moushigian Kouloruis

In the ups and downs of life, our story goes by the meaning we put to it.  How many times have you heard of someone being laid off or fired?  They are anxious, panicked, and feel like the world has ended.  But at some point, they start their own business, or get hired at a new company and the next thing you hear is how losing that job was the best thing that ever happened.  What changed?  The meaning they were putting to their own story.

We long for a fairytales in a world full of nightmares.

  N.C.

It really is about the meaning that you give to what is currently happening in your life.  We seem to feel that life should be all roses, and forget that the roses also have thorns.  Is it a rosebush or a thornbush?  Look at the fairy tales themselves.  Peter Pan had Captain Hook, pirates and the Crocodile.  Snow White had the Evil Queen and her minions.  Ariel had her father, the Sea Witch.  There are always obstacles, failures, dragons and demons.  They help us to grow by overcoming them.

If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy tales and I like them best of all.

  – Audrey Hepburn

From the Genie in the bottle, we learned to form our wishes with a lot of thought and detail, because otherwise they will turn on us.  We find helpers along the way.  We fight through our fears.  We become less judgmental and more compassionate as we see how hard life can be.  We become better people.  The reason why there is a happy ending, is that the characters did not give up.

Love is overcoming obstacles, facing each challenge with integrity.  Love is difficult to define and it begins with learning to truly love ourselves.  Love is realizing that the world or life, doesn’t just happen to us, it happens because of us.  And every single challenge, obstacle, and opportunity that happens is worth it.  It is worth it because when you believe in “YOU”, you can make anything happen.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

  – C.S. Lewis

I loved the Lewis Carroll line, “the best gift you could give her was a lifetime of adventures” because it comes back to the meaning that we give to what is happening in our lives.  If you look at this as a lifetime of adventures, you can be Princess Lea, or Indiana Jones.  If you look at the movies they played in, they had a lot of bad things happen.  They lost loved ones, lost homes, failed in epic battles.  But they also believed that in the end, good wins.  And if your “good” isn’t doing so well right now, then it isn’t the end.  You are still in the middle of your adventure.  Or maybe you’re at the scene right before the end, where everything is dark and tragic and stacked up against you so high, there is no way you can win.  But if you keep moving forward, no matter how hard that step by step is, you are about to get your second wind and turn it all around.

All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.

  – Walt Disney

We need both courage and imagination to live the life we dream of.  I am a huge Princess Bride fan.  This reminds me of two scenes in the movie – one is when Wesley is on the bed.  He is still not fully recovered from being mostly dead.  He can hardly move, and the prince comes in to finish him off.  Wesley challenges him “to the pain” and describes in great horrific detail what will happen to him should they fight.  The prince ends up giving up without a fight.  The whole time Wesley was completely vulnerable, but he didn’t just give up.  Using his creative imagination he bluffed his way into victory from a place of complete defeat.  The other scene is when Inigo Montoya finds the six fingered man and starts fighting him.  At one point it appears that he is going to die and fail to avenge his father.  But then he gets that second wind and defeats him.  Both stories had that climax when it seemed all was dark and failure was imminent.  But they kept going, one using a bluff, and one using the years of training and preparation to win the battle.

I’m a romantic and I kinda believed in this fairy tale.  And in some ways I think that’s always been to my advantage, because if you can believe in something great, you can achieve something great.

  – Katy Perry

Every night you dream.  In your dreams about your life are these seeds of greatness.  Your heart and soul speak to you in dreams.  They put a little soil around those seeds of greatness.  They water them.  They weed out of your life the things that don’t belong.  They weed out the things that are holding you back.  But at the end of the day, it is up to you to take those small plants and put them out into the world to grow into what they are supposed to be.  We see it happen all around us everyday.  People using their imagination and technology are out there creating products, businesses, services.  They are giving back to their community.  They are making a difference in the world, by doing what others say can’t be done.  Then there are the ones who never transplant their dreams into the world, but hold them tightly in the dark spaces of their souls.  They are so afraid of the dream, that they stunt it into a characticture of what it might have been.

A dream is a wish your heart makes. 

  – Unknown

 Remember Mary Poppins – “Anything can happen if you let it.”  Just because you lose a shoe at midnight, it doesn’t mean that you walk home barefoot.  Maybe it means a new pair of dancing shoes!  And who doesn’t want a new pair of shoes?

Passion Is The Seed Of Genius

Nothing is as important as passion.  No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.

  – Jon Bon Jovi

Passion is always calling to us.  It pokes at us in our dreams.  It shows up in the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read.  We see it everywhere and we unconsciously sweep it under the rug.  We don’t have time for it right now.  We have jobs to go to, bills to pay, children to raise.  It becomes our someday mantra.  Someday I will write poetry.  Someday I will write the music that I hear in my head.  Someday I will write down the story I have been telling my children and draw out the illustrations.  Someday I will take that class at the local community college and learn more about that profession that is calling to me.  We will live the life of our dreams someday.  Someday we will listen to our hearts calling.  Someday we will live it, breathe it, begin it.

Passion is living uncomfortably on purpose.

It is choosing to stay up late and wake up early.

It is choosing to forego certain luxuries, and sometimes even some necessities.

It is choosing to look foolish, even when you care what others think.

It is asking for advice and choosing not to take it.

It is being afraid and anxious, but going out of your comfort zone anyway.

Unknown

Even though all of our “reasons” for not following our passion seem to be logical and reasonable, they are in fact killing your soul.  It has this intense yearning to reach out and grow, and we are burying it and telling it we will attend to it later.  Your time is limited.  The cemetery is filled with people who died with their book, their music, their unexplored talents never allowed to grow into the marvelous creations that they could have been.  My grandmother made the worlds best carrot cake.  Her frosting was with cream cheese, but it was different than any frosting I have ever tasted.  It wasn’t too sweet, which is where for my taste buds most cakes are ruined.  It was a secret recipe and one day she had a heart attack and died and no one ever knew what her secret recipe was.  Today decide to share your secret recipes.  Today choose to live uncomfortably on purpose.  Choose to look foolish and walk away from the comfortable life and let the fires of your passion direct you.,  Today choose to take the first step outside of your comfort zone,.

Always go with your passions.  Never ask yourself if it is realistic or not.

  – Deepak Chopra

When you step outside of that comfort zone, it is really scary.  Others will say, “have you gone crazy?”  But secretly in their hearts they are jealous.  As they watch you take not only the first step, but step after step, what you are doing is giving them permission to gather up their own courage and take their own first step.  Like when we try to do anything that is new, there will be failures.  What is so interesting when you look backwards and review your journey, each of those failures are when you grew the most.  For me, it has been learning from a self sabotage failure, expand my comfort zone, live in that space for a while, then another push out of the comfort zone, another failure, grow from the experience and live in the new comfort zone for a while and do it all again.  Your own journey will show you a pattern. Each time we examine the pattern, we can tweak it to change the trajectory to be less failures, or less time in the new comfort zone, or add in anything that we think is missing from the process. The critical thing is just like following the trail of breadcrumbs that we keep following to where our passion is leading us.

You can’t do passion halfway.  Living your passion means you’re all in.  You trust your heart and trust your gut wherever that takes you.

  – Joe Plummer

Too many people live an unfulfilled life.  They have a daily existence of doing, but they are not really being.  They wake up, go to a job that doesn’t fulfill them, come home and watch TV or take care of their families needs, but at no time is there time to live the life they dream about in their hearts.  Don’t settle.  Don’t just live in the rut and decorate it, thinking that will make it more bearable.  We think that we are making others happy by denying ourselves.  But you living a half lived life doesn’t benefit anyone.  You are in fact robbing your family of knowing and loving who you really are.  You are stealing from the world what gifts you brought to the world.  You are telling your God, thanks for the seeds of genius that you planted in me, but I am not going to use them.

Respond to every call that excites your spirit.

  – Rumi

Instead be scared of living a life without passion directing it.  Be scared of living an unfulfilled life. Be scared of being dead, while you are still alive.   Don’t put off your dreams one more day.  Life is really pretty simple.  Stop make it more difficult than it is.  Start doing things that you love.  Eat every last bite.  Go our and start creating.  Live your dreams out loud.  Wear your passion in dramatic color.   

Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping . . . waiting . . . and though unwanted . . . unbidden . . . it will stir . . . open it’s jaws and howl.  It speaks to us . . .  guides us . . . passion rules us all, and we obey.  What other choice do we have?  Passion is the source of our finest moments.  The joy of love . . .  the clarity of hatred . .  and the ecstasy of grief.  It hurts sometimes more than we can bear.  If you could live without passion maybe we’d know some kind of peace . . .  but we would be hollow . . . empty rooms shuttered and dark.  Without passion we’d be truly dead.

  – Josh Whedon

Your Saving Grace Is To Be Your Own Hero

Can you imagine this conversation between two people looking out over the water and seeing a hand reach up out of the water?

Can’t you see she is drowning?

She’s just doing that for attention.

Someone should help her.

If we acknowledge her, then she’ll never stop.

I think she is in danger.

She’s just feeling sorry for herself.

It’s too late now.  She is gone.

Why didn’t she ask for help?

This conversation plays out in all of our lives at some time.  For me it was my daughter was close to two years old,.  She wasn’t talking.  Literally no words.  She had sounds, so she wasn’t mute.  She just didn’t say mama or dada or anything.  I had taken her to doctors and they determined that physically there was nothing wrong.  She could hear fine.  She understood what you were saying, she just couldn’t communicate back.  So they said I should force her to talk. That she wasn’t talking because I gave her want she was trying to ask for.  They said, “When she was indicating that she wanted something, don’t give it to her unless she says the word”.  So we had a painful few months of following the doctors directions.  Then I took her back and demanded to see some specialist.  This issue was not that she didn’t want to say the words, the issue was that something wasn’t connecting correctly.

So we saw the specialist, and they couldn’t figure out anything that was wrong.  So they told us to put her in daycare.  They felt she wasn’t around enough children.  Even though she had an older brother, cousins and friends her age from church – that wasn’t sufficient.  So we put her in daycare,  Another bad decision as it made her stand out.  When they were sharing in circle time and she couldn’t verbalize her sounds into real words, she became even more withdrawn.  So again, back to the doctors.  Finally they authorized speech therapy.,  The area we lived in had a school she attended for four hours a day.  They had a two to one ratio of speech therapist teachers who worked with her and the other children, who all had some sort of speech disability.  Within 6 months she had a 100 word vocabulary and she was finally able to express herself.  It took me one whole year to get her the help she needed.

I felt like I was having that conversation with those doctors, that I typed above  I knew she had a problem and they were not listening or helping.  They were just making things worse.  Fortunately I kept after them until she got the help she needed.  She had delayed speech, and it was an inherited condition.  I discovered later that one of my grandfathers daughters from his first marriage had the same thing happen with one of her grandchildren.  And my daughter had the same thing happen with a couple of her own children.  It was not that she was doing it for attention.  It was not that trying to help her get what she wanted but couldn’t tell us, was just encouraging bad behavior.  She was asking for help.

Ships don’t sink because of the water around them; ships sink because of the water that gets in them.  Don’t let what’s happening around you get inside you and weigh you down.

  – Unknown

Have you ever been the person asking for help?  Did it feel like people were watching and talking, but no one could hear you through the water?  This happened to me when I was 28 years old.  I had been diagnosed with Glaucoma.  They didn’t want to do surgery because I was so young.  A lot of times when you are young and healthy, when they do laser surgery on your eyes, your eyes think that the surgery is a problem and “repair” the surgery back to what it thinks is the normal way for the eye to be.  So we were trying out three different drugs.  The first on didn’t work at all.  The second one had a side effect of making me suicidal.  I could tell it was making me depressed and giving me dark thoughts.  I was struggling with it, but it was making me afraid to talk about it.  I finally was able to tell the doctor what was happening and he put me on the third drug.  Due to different side effects I ended up doing the surgery.

I was talking to my husband about the second drug and asking him if he couldn’t see what was happening.  He said, that he could see it, but was so afraid of putting me over the edge I was balanced on that he did nothing.  We talked about it for some time.  I explained, that what that did was to make me feel like he didn’t care.  That even if what he said or did was not the perfect thing, at least I would have known that he was trying, that he cared.  Instead I felt abandoned and that he didn’t care about me.  Like the woman in the story, I felt like I was reaching for help and he was just watching me drown.

We all have bad days.  We all witness others having bad days.  Sometimes those bad days turns into weeks and months and years.  We are crying out for help.  We feel abandoned.  We all watch it happening to someone we know or love, and we don’t know what to do.  So we do nothing, or we get bad advice from experts and do the wrong thing.  What we need to do is go to divine source.  The divine source speaks to us in our hearts.  When we reach out to others from that space, even if what we do is not the perfect thing to do, they see that we are trying from a space of love and compassion. Not from a space of judgment, or making someone be wrong. 

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.  When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do, you will sink and drown.  Instead you relax, and float.

  – Alan Watts

We need to realize when we are drowning and ask for help.  We need seek deep within to find what it is that is currently trying to be exposed and released from our life.  A wrong belief that is holding us hostage.  A drug or alcohol addiction.  A relationship that is killing us, but we won’t let go of.  That we are trying to save someone, who is just taking us down with them.  When we try to save broken people, we need to take care that we don’t cut ourselves on their broken pieces.  So many patterns, addictions, issues of self sabotage.  They need to be released so that we can again relax and float.  Life sometimes takes us to the edge, but it is always within our control, it is our choice to be a victim, or we can decide that this life can and will be better and we are a thriver. 

Life sometimes takes you into troubled waters not to drown you but to cleanse you.

  – Unknown

 So when we find ourselves in deep water.  Relax and float.  Reach out for help, but always remember it really comes down to being our own hero.  No one else can fix us, and we can fix anyone else.  It is always an inside job. 

In Order To Change The World, You Must Be The Change

“Only I can change my life.  No one can do it for me”  –  Carol Burnett

This photo so clearly explains why other people don’t get the transformations that you are being called to make in your life.  There are two different levels of perception here.  And each person can only see their own level of perception.  Both are true.  I can explain what I see with twenty thousand words, and if your level of perception is contained in the world she is pulling away, dark depressing and dreary, you will never see the sunshine that I do.

 “Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands”  – Clint Eastwood

The better you know yourself the better you can embrace change.  Self knowledge is vital, because your subconscious minds run these programs behind the scenes.  Your subconscious like things exactly the way they are.  It will try to keep you in your comfort zone.  You need to let go of the old programs.

Most of the fears that you have, are fears of the unknown.  Those fears feature negative programing.  This programming will keep you stuck in the shadows, in the dark.  It will keep you from perceiving what else is possible.  I know that for myself when I have a medical issue, waiting for test results is the worst.  My mind goes crazy thinking of all of the possible worst case scenarios.  I am definitely in a dark place with wild imagining of brain tumors, cancer, a failing organ, and so on.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new”  – Socrates

But once I have a diagnosis, it all changes.  Now I am researching and figuring out how to cure the issue and become healthy again.  Now I have something tangible to work towards.  The unknown has been removed and that fear is dissolved.  I am free again to begin making positive changes for my health and my life.

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears” – Nelson Mandela

That doesn’t mean that fear doesn’t show up again.  It does.  But if you are being honest with yourself, you can identify the unknown piece that is creating the fear and remove it with new knowledge.

“If we don’t change, we don’t grow.  If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living”  – Gail Sheehy

How do you know when fear of the unknown is showing up in your life?

• It shows up whenever you find yourself avoiding something that needs to be done
• It shows up when you find that your progress towards a dream is slowing down
• It shows up when you begin to lose passion and fire towards the dream.
• It shows up when you begin to feel like you are wading through the mud instead of flowing down the stream.

Whenever these feelings start to exist, it is time to get quiet in your mind.  To sit quietly and ask your inner knower

• “What am I not seeing?”
• “What is it that is slowing me down or sidetracking me?”
• “What research can I do to bring light to this area?”

“I am on the hunt for who I’ve not yet become”  – Unknown

Once you identify the fear, then sit with it a while longer.  See what lies beneath that fear.  I can guarantee that there is always another layer.  Fears tend to travel in packs like wild dogs.  Each dog having its own fear.  Once you think you have given each dog a name, now you can make the dog stop its barking by addressing its own particular fear.

You will know if you are successful because you will feel the energy and passion return to your dream.  All of a sudden you will feel flow happening and that progress is being made.  It is like a hose that has a kink in it.  At first it feels like you are not getting any water pressure.  But once you find the kink and straighten it out, the water comes rushing out at full force.

“Change can be beautiful when we are brave enough to evolve with it, and change can be brutal when we fearfully resist”  – Bryant McGill

The key is to pay attention to what is happening in your life.  It is so easy to get lost and sidetracked.  It is so easy for the fears so sneak up on you and gain control.  It is also easy to stop and listen to your heart and soul for guidance.

“It doesn’t matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop”  – Unknown

It takes practice to check in with yourself on a regular basis.  Meditation and journaling are two practices that will help you to keep track of where you are, and wake you up if you start to fall asleep.

I know how much my writing helps me to catch myself when I start to get sidetracked.  It brings my energy back up into the higher vibrations.  These higher vibrations are a vital part of bringing your dreams into reality.  Remind yourself of what you have already transformed in your past.  Take courage that you can transform whatever is currently in front of you now.  Truly, the better you know yourself, the better you can embrace what is now changing in your life.

What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose? Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them? Have you allowed distractions to side track you? Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

If not, contact LemonadeMakers via messenger.  We can talk – asking and thinking about the right questions will open doors for you.