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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

– Sumner Redstone

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

Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement.

– Matt Biondi

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

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

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

– Carol Dweck

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

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

– Joshua J. Marine

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

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

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

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

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

– Arianna Huffington

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

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

– J.K. Rowling

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

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

– Winston Churchill

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

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

– Carol Dweck

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

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

– Michelle Obama

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

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

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

– Brian Tracy

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

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

  – Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Ripples – The Small Changes That Can Have An Enormous Impact

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

  – Stephen Hawking

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

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

– KLove

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

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

  – Denise Linn

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

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

  – Suntosh Kalwar

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

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

  – Samreen Zaidi

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

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

  – Unknown

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

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

– Christine Mason Miller

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

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

  – Erica Jong

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

Resistance – Here There Be Dragons

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Create a Ripple of Inspiration and Meaning In Your Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believing in Your Imagination Makes Anything Possible

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OR you reframe it.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turn the tide on mediocrity. 

Break free of the riptide of your past. 

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

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

Transform Around, Through, Underneath or Over the Top

Transformation literally means going without form. I have always thought that the Grand Canyon is such an excellent example of transformation. The water through glacial ice crushing into solid rock and breaking the obstacle apart.  The power of floods, vast rushing volumes of water, carving out passages through solid rock.

In some areas like this photo, it carved around when it couldn’t go through. Wind can also scrape out tiny pieces at a time, until the solid rock breaks apart and falls down into the ravines. The Red Rock Canyons in Utah are amazing. It looks like the rock was liquid and someone swirled it around with their fingers as it hardened into fantastical shapes.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy – Jim Rohn

In life you build up these walls – like the large boulders in the canyons.  Then you say that they are insurmountable. Too high, too steep, too dense, too solid to change. You seek protection from your fears.  You want to be safe and secure. You didn’t realize what you were sacrificing to get it. Your dreams.  Your freedom.  Your joy and happiness. All laid on the altar of peace and security.  You didn’t realize the obstacles you created was also going to hold you in place.

At some point, you realized that the life you had, isn’t exactly what you thought it would be.  Instead of seeing life’s obstacles as opportunities to learn something, you saw them as reasons to stop trying to change.  Now, you want to make changes in your life.

You want to transform yourself, to fill the hole in your heart and soul.  You can feel that something is missing.  Something vitally important. The voice of your heart has been speaking.  Screaming really, to get your attention.  You think that maybe you hear something far off in the distance.  But when you turn that way, it fades away.  Every time you pay attention to it, it seems to come from another direction. You are sure that if you could just get closer, you will be able to hear what it is saying.

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls – Joseph Campbell

What you discover along the way of overcoming obstacles, is that is where most of the joy in your life journey comes from.  The overcoming of struggles and life challenges can get you excited; it energizes you!  Obstacles are hidden opportunities, that reveal when you are truly living life, and not just existing.

It starts with a dream, a wish to change something.  Many times, it starts with something material that you think will make you happy.  But it doesn’t and so we move on to the next thing and the next thing.  Until the day that you discover you want to make a difference in the world. To help those in need. To leave a legacy that says I lived, I loved, and I mattered. The greatest gift you can give the world is a transformation of our own self.  It’s a conversation about listening to the voice of your soul.

When you stop avoiding the conflict and difficulty, brick-by-brick you are tearing down the wall of fear – Brendon Burchard

What you find is that whatever you do to save the world (whatever the causes are that tug at your hearts), starts with saving yourself. What you find is that like water, when you show up in action every day, transformation happens. Sometimes you are like rushing white water, pushing bricks out of your way. Sometimes you are like the slow drip, drop by drop burrowing through the stone.  Whether it is ice, rain, sleet, snow, steam, fog – whatever form it takes, it is a creative process that leads you to grow.

The action of your movements flow over the top, slide around the sides, and burrow underneath as you travel to your destination. Water flows to the sea. You flow towards your purpose, your destiny. It is possible to demolish the walls that you’ve built. You can create a lasting true transformation in your life.

You cannot be wimpy out there on the dream-seeking trail.  Dare to break through barriers, to find your own path – Les Brown

Each new day awaits your choices of who you are going to be. You can choose to be weak, behind your wall of safety. You can choose to be empowered and take down the wall. You can choose to break the mold that is holding you back and to redefine who you are.

I love this quote below by Neil. Filling our lives with magic and good madness. I think that we have to be slightly mad to go against the norm and be someone who reaches for the sky to fulfill their dreams. A little magic is quite helpful when you are doing that. Above all surprise yourself!

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself – Neil Gaiman

There are a million waves to surf.  How do you find the way that is the most fun for you?  To be able to say, “I know this is what I want to do for the rest of my life”, to know of the freedom of living your life totally on purpose?  To know the joy of living to your full potential.  To know that the best wave is still out there waiting for you to discover it.  You go out and test the waters.

Your Only Limit Is You

 

Lack of forgiveness causes almost all of our self-sabotaging behavior – Mark Victor Hansen

When I first read this, it took me by surprise.  I thought but self-sabotaging behavior is what I am doing to myself.  Why would lack of forgiveness be behind it?  So I went to my earliest memory that created the pattern of “it isn’t safe to be seen”.  Okay my logical mind threw into my face, how is this created from lack of forgiveness?

I had walked into my mom’s room after I woke up from my nap at 4 yrs. old and unknowingly exposed her adultery by finding her in bed with a strange man.  From that experience came the life self-sabotaging pattern “it wasn’t safe to be seen”.  Bad things happened according to my 4 yr. old little girl deep inside of me, because soon afterwards my parents divorced.

What did I have to forgive myself for?

For years I had thought that I was responsible for the divorce.

As an adult I finally learned that what caused the divorce was that my mom got pregnant and my dad had gotten a vasectomy, partly because he thought my mom might be betraying him and partly because there were four little girls and he thought that was as big a family as they wanted.

When she got pregnant, it was pretty apparent that he was right.  I had wrongly assumed responsibility for the divorce, as my walking in on her had nothing to do with the reason they divorced.  So what had a lack of forgiveness to do with the continuing self-sabotaging pattern of being invisible?

Self-sabotage is the proverbial hammer over the head that finally wakes us up, demanding that we pay attention.  For most of us, it takes something devastating to crack us open, to get us out of our minds and into our hearts – Debbie Ford

What I discovered as I dug into this thought, was that this had layers and layers of lack of forgiveness.

Unfortunately, what you will discover when you unwind your own patterns of self-sabotage, it that it is never a “one and done” kind of journey.

Every single time I think that I have unwound the tangled mess around fear of being seen, a new thread of yarn appears and I am again unwinding some small aspect of this pattern to discover another thought, such as this one.  If the pattern is still showing up, then something is still attached waiting for me to find the end of the thread and being unraveling it.

Entwined within the pattern of “it’s not safe to be seen” is fear of failure.  I find fear of failure is like that weed that you can’t get rid of.  It sneaks into everything.

A lot of people think that fear of failure is simply what it says, the fear to fail.

But hidden within that weed is another noxious substance that feeds into my “it’s not safe to be seen”.  It is fear of success.

The fear that if I am successful, it will put me into the spotlight and that spotlight will follow me around like a hidden camera just waiting to expose some defect.  It invites attention like the circus barker with the mega phone calling everyone to come under the big tent and watch as Sheryl tries to fly to high on the trapeze and falls to her sudden death.  All of those people will sit on the edge of their seats just waiting to find a flaw with my performance.  To tell me in detail about my inadequacies.  To in short, put me back into the comfort zone never again to explore my hidden potential.

Like most other creatives, I struggle with self-sabotage, self-doubt, and feeling like an imposter more often than not.  I struggle with expressing myself, because it does sometimes feel easier or safer not to – Jeff Jarvis

Everything is negotiable, you have a right to stand up and say, “this doesn’t work for me”.

If you want to make changes in your relationships with friends or family; lay down rules at work to how you are treated; get out of the debt that is ruining your life, or any other situation that has become just too much – you have to do a reality check on yourself.  It is an inside job.

I know that it sounds like that isn’t the answer, but our self-sabotaging patterns set us up to get the same experiences over and over, designed to keep us in our comfort zone.  You might think it is the “other” person who is making us miserable.  But you have to stand up and start asking for what you want, not what the self-sabotaging habits are telling you that you deserve.

I spent my entire childhood both trying to be the perfect child and trying to do whatever my mother was failing to do with my siblings.  I became the mom I thought we should have.  I was the “one” my mother would constantly tell me she could count on.

The hidden message that I had gotten from my mom was that if I was too much trouble, if I made any waves at all, she might divorce me too.  She was married five times, so that was my social proof my fear was real.

Your create self confidence by

doing instead of procrastinating.

doing instead of over-planning.

doing instead of self-sabotaging.

doing instead of complaining.

doing instead of feeling sorry for yourself.

  – unknown

One day I decided that wasn’t going to buy into my story anymore.  I changed my expectations one inner dialogue at a time.

Whenever I felt the spotlight, I turned into it instead of away from it.  When I got the criticisms, instead of letting it beat me up, I said “today I am a mirror to their problems and they are finding their own faults in me”.

I looked critically at what was said or done (like if the silver spoon had any spots that needed polishing) and thought, ok – “if one thing in this dialogue might be even partly true, what would it be”?  Then I would see if I could find that thread in myself sabotaging pattern and work on just unraveling that single thread and let the rest of the editorial go into recycling.

This is a reminder to myself that I don’t have to be negative, or worry, or argue, or self-sabotage.

It’s ok to be happy and to have fun and to just enjoy life.

Seriously – Hanna Anerod

I started creating self-confidence and owning who I am, and that who I am is a “perfectly imperfect” person.  I will make mistakes.  I will have failures.  Spellcheck will fail me.  My grammar will drive someone crazy. Even though I read through this blog 20 times, it will still have some mistake.  And someone who isn’t putting themselves out there like I am, will catch it for me.  And I will say thank you, because I still want this to be perfect, even if I’m not.  I will grow by stepping outside my comfort zone.  I will have huge successes.  I continue to worry about loving myself and I will keep letting go of the feeling that everyone else has to love me too or I am not worthy.

 

Interpret this quote only to how you treat yourself – amazing to put a different spin on something that was written for those outside of you.  Demand your inner voice, your patterns, your self-sabotaging habits start listening to what is acceptable in terms of the inner you.  To actually completely engage in a life of self-exploration, you need to get curious.  To ask questions that dig deep into the soul level.  To unravel one thread after another.

Be Empowered To Choose A New Path

 

Open your heart to new adventures – Unknown

Finding yourself, who you truly are under all of the masks takes as long as it takes.  I started this journey over 25 years ago when my mom passed away.  I am still learning new things about myself.

I know that really nothing is a “one and done” process.  I’ve come to believe at least for myself that it is a lifelong process.  The trick is to be really kind and compassionate to yourself.

You can’t be so afraid of messing up that you are not willing to take a chance on yourself.  And when you fall off the bridge and down the ravine (and you will do this many times), it is the realization that each time you climb back up to the bridge, you are growing into your full potential.

Blessed are the curious, for they shall have adventures – Unknown

My “go to” for a lot of my life was to feel self-doubt so badly about myself, that I was paralyzed into not trying.

I decided one day that I just didn’t want to do that anymore.

When you decide to live life from a place of curiosity, the risk of failing isn’t such a scary thing.  You learn through grace and compassion a new sense of freedom.  You begin to understand how freeing it is to fail the first time.  You don’t disappear or die from it.  And once you have got that initial failure under your belt, you have freed up your imagination to wonder if doing it this way, or that way might result in something totally fun.

There becomes a point in growing and exposing more and more of oneself that you have to decide.  Do you remain in the new “box” that you have created as a comfort zone, or do you want to continue to evolve more and more into who you are.

You have to decide to continue down the road you recognize, or you start down a new path.

Your purpose in life will become clear when you cease looking outside for answers and start listening to the silent and omnipresent voice of the heart – Lonerwolf

In all the fairy tales, when the journey starts out the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the path is clear.  But at some point in the journey, the path seems like it might even disappear.  The darkness starts creeping in and obscuring what can be seen.  The sights and sounds take on a sinister aspect.

You know the challenge is about to appear.  This happens because the inner world is very protective and has learned to hide who and what you are down deep inside.  It has become the scary monster under the bed, and you are under the covers hiding so as to not be noticed.

When you take up your shield of courage, something new and unexpected will catch our eye.  Growth happens with change.  It requires change.

There is something valuable hidden within each of us that is worth unearthing.  You might not be able to name what it is, but you can hear its voice calling softly.  You have to be willing to challenge and fight the monster under the bed to unearth it.  Every day, every hour, we get to decide we are worth the battle to bring it up and expose it to the light.  Your soul is hoping and praying that you’re willing to set it free.

As a flower craves the light of the sun to grow, we desperately need the light of our souls to become who we’re destined to become – Lonerworlf

Throughout your life you have created patterns that you tell yourself is the path to freedom.  Most of the time these patterns are actually chains, shackles or cages.

It is a false freedom based on fear of exposing who you really are.  It is like throwing a bedspread over dirty blankets or sheets – it looks good from above and you may look like you have your life together, but underneath it is a hot mess.  It is a facade of freedom.

True freedom exposes everything up to the light, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Recognizing and changing the patterns in your life is what frees you from the chains you have wrapped around your soul.  At any moment you have the power to change your story.  Each second you can decide to put the key in the lock of your safe cage and release yourself to be who you really are.

I’m not weak or a mess.  I’m a deeply feeling person in a messy world.  It takes strength to face and feel what few other people have the courage to acknowledge – Lonerwolf

When you aren’t trying to outrun failure,

success takes on a whole new meaning.

Fear loses its foothold and instead of being the monster under the bed, it becomes the worn-out teddy bear missing part of one ear and both eyes.  When you believe that you win, that there is no lose or tie – then the bottom line is that you have expanded your comfort zone.  You learned something new and valuable.

The Loner,

The Rebellion,

The Free Spirit,

The Seeker,

The Loner Wolf,

The Black Sheep,

The Eccentric . . ,

These all are synonyms and the people who relate with any of these belong to the same Soul Group.

  – Rrooh

Failure is just part of the dust that gets into everything when you are walking down the dirt road.  Sometimes it’s like the rock that you need to stop and remove from your shoe.  It might slow you down, it might get you really dirty, but it never has to stop you from putting that shoe back on, getting back up and walking down the road again.

Success is found on the road as we walk it.

You have to draw a line between all of the connecting points in your life.  If you fail to connect all of the points, then you are missing out.

You won’t fully comprehend what has happened, what doors of opportunity were opened that you walked by without seeing.  You won’t see how the challenges exposed you to growth that wouldn’t have been possible without them.

It fully exposes you to the challenge and opportunity of growth in ways that you can’t even imagine if you didn’t walk across the bridge.

If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself.  If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself.  Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation  – Lao Tzu

Asking yourself what do I want to do next?  What challenge or opportunity is waiting behind the next corner to change and transform my life?  To actually completely engage in a life of exploration, curiosity, believe in what else is possible?

How Does Your Life Grow?

Updated 5/14/2019

Benjamin Franklin has a famous saying,

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes – Benjamin Franklin 

I would amend his quote to include change. Change happens whether you want it to or not. It is necessary for growth, and without it there can be no life.  A seed is planted, the seeds shell breaks open, and a shoot pushes its way out of the soil.  The shoot becomes a thriving plant through continued growth.  With the right amount of water, nutrition and sunlight, the plant produces a bountiful harvest. 

The seed stepped into its destiny by not remaining dormant in the ground.  It did not let fear keep it from cracking the hard protective shell.  It pushed itself out of the limitations of the seeds shell.  It pushed itself past the fears that resided in the darkness of the soil, thrusting up into the light.

Stepping into your destiny really is the only real, true, authentic way to live.  Fear is all that holds you back and holding on to that is really what keeps us stuck in the dark – Unknown

Growth and change can be painful, but it doesn’t have to be. You have a choice in how you react to it, and how it affects you.  Change is the law of life.  But all change is not growth.  That is because change isn’t always forward movement.  Sometimes change takes us backward, instead of forward. 

Having an open mind is necessary if you don’t want the growth that happens when you change to be painful. This is because if the mind is closed, then you are forever being controlled by the things that the mind refuses to give up.  Wisdom is knowing yourself so that you spot your patterns of self-sabotage.  Mastering yourself is when you spot the self-sabotage and instead step through the gateway of transformation.

Your vulnerability is a powerful gateway.  Stepping into it invites growth, freedom, healing, your greatest love.  It is a pathway born from courage, connecting your truth + being true to the magic already living within you – DanielleDoby+Tribe

Think of a baby bird. It is a soupy glob inside the egg. It transforms into a baby bird. If it doesn’t transform, the egg goes bad and never has life. Once it transforms it still needs to peck its way out of the eggshell. If it doesn’t get out of the eggshell it will die. Then once it is out of the eggshell it grows to the point that it needs to use its wings and learn to fly. All are components of constant change and growth.  The prize of growth is in the freedom of flight that the mature bird has.

This is a great illustration of change. Some of the changes are beyond the control of the bird. it has no say about changing from the soupy glob and into the baby bird. Instinct has it fight and peck itself out of the shell. The bird could fight against the changes but doing so would lead to its death as it needs to eat to survive. It goes through change and transformation after change and transformation.  It has the freedom of flight.  It has the wind beneath its wings lifting it up into the sky.  The reward is in the fulfillment of its destiny.  

Personal growth is not a matter of learning new information, but of unlearning old limits – Alan Cohen

What it comes down to is how the attitude that you have about change and life, speaks to the kind of life you have. The attitude of survival actually fights against change, because your focus is on avoiding what you don’t want. You avoid disease with drugs, you try to avoid war by creating better faster ways of killing your enemies, so that you aren’t killed by them first. Weapons of mutually assured mass destruction.

A different attitude would be to focus on thriving. In thriving you seek out ways to live a happier, healthier way of life. You seek the good things you want in your life, instead of avoiding the bad things you don’t want. You seek to cooperate with others in love and peace, connecting heart to heart. You become pioneers of a better future.   Assumptions need to be cleaned out of your thinking process, because they serve as blinders, and you miss vital information.

Be the change you wish to see in the world – Mahatma Gandhi

Growth and change are very scary. You will trip and fall and bruise yourself. Others will make fun of you, stating that you can’t change the world (you are a pipe dreamer).  They use fear as a powerful motivator to stay where you are.  Because they themselves have a lack of self-trust, they will say that you can’t trust others.  Because they are themselves bullies, they will say that the bad guys will win, if you don’t act in a forceful way. Since they don’t have a life experience of safety, they will say you won’t be safe until you destroy what the others have. They will say a lot of things, to push you backwards into a cage of fear of loss. They will push you back into the cage of what they falsely call safety. 

Goals are what we reach for, but the real prize is how we change to achieve them.  I always think of Imagine by John Lennon. What if…. we all really do have infinite potential. What if we really can do anything? What if we can make our dreams come true? What if, changing you, really does change the world? 

That is the kind of world I want to live in, and what I find is that the more I create that space inside of me, the more I find others who are doing the same. I really do believe that someday we will be living life in peace, and sharing the world with each other, and the world will really finally be “one”.

Imagination Takes Me Everywhere

 

Logic will get you from A to B.  Imagination will take you everywhere.

  – Albert Einstein

Imagination is directly or indirectly where our expectations of life originate.  We take a goal and make a plan.  We see into the future possibilities.  We attach meaning and purpose to a particular way we “see” the goal being accomplished.  Imagination is how we come up with the plans in the first place.  It is what enables us to make anything possible, anything happen.

The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.

  – Terence McKenna

One of the danger signs on the road of our imagination is that we project meaning into everything that happens.  Now if we are projecting good, positive meanings to what is happening, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  However, many times what we are projecting is suffering into what is happening.  If someone sent you a text message that said, “boy, what a day I am having”.  What’s the first thought that comes into your head?  Without the emotion in the voice or cues from body language, where does your mind go first – to something great is happening in their day or something horrible is happening to their day?

Reality is something you rise above.

  – Liza Minnelli

We need to constantly ask ourselves, what am I busy painting onto the canvas of my imagination?  There are no rules to what I decide to paint.  If I think that I can only be successful if my view of my current reality is matching to what I imagined my life would look like, then I am going to be doomed to disappointment.  How many times have I whined in my head, “but this isn’t how it’s supposed to be?”  How can I rise above what I perceive to be my reality, to what I am trying to create in my life?

Imagination is the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world has ever known.

  – Napoleon Hill

Imagination is what leads to creation.  Think of all of the great science fiction writers and their imaginations.  Deep sea diving, submarines with Jules Verne.  Star Trek and their recorders to our cell phones.  Isaac Asimov and self driving cars and the stun gun (taser).  H.G. Wells and atomic power.  We are so close to being able to print and replace body parts, organ transplants, tricorders for medical diagnosis.  To travel to the stars and go beyond our galaxy.  All things that have happened and will happen in our futures, because someones imagination said, “what if . . , “.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

  – Albert Einstein

Imagination is what you need to see that although there may be problems in your life that need to be solved, they are also realities to be lived through.  It is the meaning I give to my life that enables me to perceive that I am successful, that I am happy.  How I perceive my life to be, is the reality I am creating for myself.  The meaning comes from my feelings about what is happening.  I can get lost in the maze of what it should be.  I can also choose to see life as it truly is and acknowledge that most of the times when I have really grown have been when I was in the middle of some sort of failure.  Taking the risk of failing, is really taking the risk that the growth that comes out of that failure is worth the cost of failing.

The world is a canvas for your imagination.  You are the painter.  There are no rules.  Get to work.

  – Fearlessmotivation.com

There is a beach collage in the movie “The Man of the House” which the mom Sandy, (played by Farrah Fawcett) adds to every time she goes to the beach with the family.  All through the movie she is adding a piece to it, until finally she sets a final piece in it and declares it is done.   It is highly likely that this collage in her head when she first imagined it and what she actually created are not the same.  But who makes the rule that it has to be the same?  We do.  We are the ones painting on our canvas.  We decide what stays there and what gets scraped off and repainted with something new.  The rules are created by us and we can change them.  Our imagination can reshape the rules, can reshape what is on the canvas, can reshape anything to mirror what we desire to achieve in our life.  My perception of my life is what makes up the reality of my life.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

  – John Muir

So what am I focusing on?  Is it something that brings my imagination into reality?  Because if my reality and my imagination are not even close to being the same, then I need to refocus to make it so.  It’s funny how sometimes the way to make that adjustment is to learn to lose how I thought it had to be, in order to find out a better way to live it.  It’s a matter of holding onto the vision that imagination has created and trusting the process of trying, failing, learning and trying again.

Live out your imagination, not your history.

  – Stephen R. Covey

Raise your eyes to see the possibilities everywhere around you.  They are always there.  An endless hallway filled with doors waiting for you to step through.  As you go through a new door, remember – nothing in life is to be feared.  It is only to be understood.  To be perceived in such a way that it creates the reality that you are searching for.  So don’t just sit there.  Get up and get busy!

 

Odyssey – A Long Journey Full of Adventures

 

Success is a journey, not a destination.  The doing is often more important than the outcome – Arthur Ashe

Every year I go on several trips to seminars that are usually three – four days each.  The year before Covid, they arrived all at once.  One of them I was supposed to go on the previous year, but my body had other plans (back surgery) and so I was unable to attend.  So, they transferred me to this event.  The second one is part of the coaching plan I was on, and I wasn’t able to travel yet with the event the previous year (on restrictions from said back surgery) and the third event was an annual American Indian Retreat I do every year.

I go on these journey’s each year to recharge my batteries.  To open my mind to new learning.  To get away from the everyday life, so I can relax.  To let in the divine the messages I am too busy to hear, when I am involved with a fulltime job at the bank as well as running my LemonadeMakers page.  When I am out of my element, I see things I am missing at home.  I meet new people since I go to most of these events by myself.  I get to travel and see what in my life needs to change.

Your soul knows the geography of your destiny.  Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself.  If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey – John O’Donohue

So, no surprise, that with attending a four-day event (Thursday – Sunday) three weekends in a row in three different states, I woke up to some things in my life.  I have always loved trees.  It has always seemed to me that they talk to me.  They are so relaxed and go with whatever mother nature sends their way.

They connect to other trees through the root systems and even send nutrients to other trees far away that need them.  Some of the recent scientific studies show they actually create community and support each other.  Every home we have purchased it was because of the trees on the property, not the houses that I fell in love with.

There is a great book to read to learn more about trees – it’s actually one of the years most recommended books.  I heard about it on a pod cast.

So, imagine my surprise when I realized that lately trees haven’t been talking to me, water has.

When I was at my first event outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico at Tamaya, located on a Pueblo Indian Reservation, they had strong winds blowing.  I had opened the door to my hotel room and was listening to the wind, rain and thunderstorm.  When I closed my eyes and listened, I heard the sound not of the wind, but of strong waves breaking against the seashore.

When I flew into Phoenix for my next event, the winds were blowing, and I still heard the ocean in the air.

At Joshua Tree in California, I spoke to Chief Roberts and his wife Terri about how I was hearing the ocean everywhere I went.  I knew water was calling but I didn’t know why.

One of our outdoor activities was to walk a labyrinth.  As I walked it, I was looking down at the rocks that outlined the path.  All different kinds of rocks, different minerals and crystals in them.  All shapes.  They spoke to me about water.

• How it had loosened them from the soil.
• How it had carved and shaped them transforming them, exposing them to the elements and revealing what they were deep inside.
• How sometimes the changes happened rapidly like a landslide and other times it was slowly drip by drip that changed occurred.

Even in my planning for where we are going to live when I retire, water has been showing up.  First as I wanted to live in Northern Oregon or Southern Washington along the coast next to the ocean.  Then my son sent me a property listing outside of Astoria Oregon on the John Day River for a houseboat.  It was like water was saying, if you don’t want the ocean, how about living on the river?  We chose the ocean and are building a new home west of Olympia, WA.

I felt like the mom in the kitchen making dinner with her three-year-old grabbing her pant leg, saying “mommy, mommy” over and over.  And I kept saying, in a minute, I’m really busy right now.  Water was not letting me get away.  It just kept trying to get my attention.

Your journey in life is not set in stone, you can change direction – Steven Aitchison

As I traveled round and round the labyrinth I started thinking about when water had started talking to me.  How had it been showing up in my life?  That winter was been the wettest winter since we have been living in California – the amount of water was comparable to all the water we have gotten the last 10 years or so combined.  My patio kept getting flooded over and over again.

Then I thought about how we just redid the logo and website and Facebook page design, and it has the ocean with breaking waves on it, whereas before it was the trees in the forest.  Then I thought about the webinar video I created and again it was about “Catching the Perfect Wave”.  Even down to my remodeling of the bathroom I had to replace all of the drainage pipes as they used cast iron when the house was built, and they were all damaged with rust and corrosion.

In a recent deep meditation class, I asked my intuition what I needed to know.  I am very visual, and it showed me this vision in which I had already given birth and was now expelling the afterbirth.  Childbirth has a lot to do with water – LOL.

When I looked up the meaning behind this, it validated my thoughts that I am in the middle of a big life transition.  I have been told for the past 6 months that I am probably going to be laid off from work.  I begn liquidating other properties we owned, paying off debt and getting everything ready for the possibility.

I think that this is why water is showing up for me, “Big changes are coming”.  Everyone I was talking to at all three events were experiencing big changes in their lives.  They were all in the midst of some transition in their lives.

I am taking a leap of faith in my own transition that it is time for me to devote full time to LemonadeMakers.

• To finish the online courses, I am writing.
• To find a new publisher for my first three books, that I had ready to print when the company that was doing it sent me an email that they shut their doors.
• To begin coaching life transformation part time.

This is a big risk as it means I have to find a way to spend more time with LemonadeMakers.  It is a big risk, because I have no idea where this journey will take me.  I just know that water says I have to go.

No one knows what changes, big or small, lie ahead. 

One thing is certain, our journey’s not over. 

Enjoy each and every step.

So, my question for you is this – what is trying to get your attention?  What are you ignoring because you are so busy doing, that you are forgetting to take the time to listen?

• Take the time to look behind you for signs.
• Listen to what keeps occurring in your life.
• See the doors that you walked past not realizing they were there.

Realize that you are probably in the midst of a transition yourself.  Be brave.  Go someplace.  Even if it is to simply take a walk in the woods and get away from the everyday part of your life.  Ask yourself “what do I need to know for the next part of my journey?”