Who Are You Being?

 

Sometimes a sentence can grab your attention and send you down a rabbit hole.  This sentence grabbed me and shook me awake.  “You have to stop just completing and begin living.”  I immediately thought of the difference between doing and being.

Doing is all about completing.  It is a “to do” list.  You complete the objective, tick off the box, and immediately start on the next thing on the list.  At the end of the day, you might be able to proudly look at a completed list, but the question begs to be answered – at what part of the day did you begin living?

What are the things you can shift in your life to make those changes easier?  How can you get off the treadmill of doing and start living the life of being.

“The highest level of creativity consists in being, not doing” – Marianne Williamson

Who or what are you becoming?  How you are being reflects how you are growing.  If you are too busy doing, then no growth is happening.

• It’s about the choices you are making in each moment.
• It’s about the things you are saying, not just out loud, but within your head.
• It’s about how will you be different after reading this?
• Choose wisely

It begins when we enter school.  We are taught to excel at doing.  To give the answers they want, the ones in the book.  Creativity is frowned upon in most subjects.  If you espouse a different opinion on what the writer might have meant, it becomes the “wrong” answer.  I always thought it was funny, how someone other than the author could know beyond any reasonable doubt what the writer might have been alluding to.

This continues through grade school, junior high, high school and even the colleges and universities. A lot of very successful creative minds left college partly because their creativity was being squashed.  They all have the entrepreneur mindset.  They all have some things in common, which includes doing things different than the norm.  They look at what is, and wonder what else could be?

• Richard Branson – Virgin
• Steve Jobs – Apple
• Bill Gates – Microsoft
• Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook
• Travis Kalanick – Uber
• Oprah Winfrey – media mogul
• John Mackey – Whole Foods
• Sophia Amoruso – Nasty Gal Fashion
• Coco Chanel – Fashion
• Anne Beiler – Auntie Anne’s Pretzels
• Barbara Lynch – Restaurant Chains
• Debbie Fields – Mrs. Fields Cookies.

Oprah has said that she was hired for a T.V. news show as an anchor.  Unknown to her at the time, the other anchor didn’t want her on the show.  Several months later he got his way and she was demoted.  It was very devastating.  Within every “failure” there is a nugget of gold.  She lost her job, but her demotion put her into a talk show format.  She said that the minute she took on that show, she felt like she had arrived home.

That is a sign – when your “job” feels like home.  You know that this is what you are meant to do.  It is being a “creative”.

Steve Jobs found this out when Apple ousted him.  It took him awhile to recover “who he was” because he had become so identified with the company, that he had stopped being and was just doing.  It essentially created a mid-life crisis.  He was looking at all kinds of possibilities from politics to becoming an astronaut.  He went on to launch both Pixar Animation Studios as well as NeXT.

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my life,”  Steve Jobs

He then goes on to say pretty much what Oprah said:  “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.”

“Once you shift your order of priorities from “having – doing – being” to “being – doing – having” your destiny will be in your hands” – Sadhguru

This reminds me of putting batteries into something.  Batteries have a positive and a negative side.  If you put them in backwards, they don’t work.  It is only when the connections are correct that they “turn on” the item.

When you approach your life with “having – doing – being” you have the heaviness in your life.  You are pushing the boulder up hill.  You might make it to the top, but the success won’t be fulfilling.

It is only when you approach your life from the “being” first, then the doing and having come afterwards.  Then your batteries are fully charged and working to speed you up to the hilltop.  The success is fueled by your passion, love and creativity.  You are a human “being” loving all parts of your life.

Both Oprah and Steve Job’s had failures.  Those failures led to connecting or reconnecting to “having – doing – being” in the right order.  You  have these wonderful talents,  They take the form of creativity, which becomes the doing part.  When you are living your life from the having your talents expressed through creativity, then you enter the being part of your life.  This is because you are living your divinely planned destiny in those moments.  The more of those moments you connect with in your life, the more on purpose you are.

“Being free from the fear of failure means you can focus more clearly on what you’re doing – and will be more likely to succeed” – Zen Health

It’s like you have these batteries not only installed correctly, but they are being recharged or fueled by your living the “having – doing – being” in the correct order.  You may not see it today, or even tomorrow as some things take a while to grow and mature.  But there will come a time when you look back and you will be awestruck how every little misstep, mistake, and seeming failure adds up to bring you exactly to where you are supposed to be.  In that moment, you will be so grateful that things didn’t go the way the mind planned, but instead the way the heart directed.

Living From A Place of Surrender

“A crisis creates the opportunity to dip deep into the reservoirs of our very being, to rise to levels of confidence, strength, and resolve that otherwise we didn’t think we possessed” – Jon M Huntsman Sr.

Crisis gives you the opportunity to get unstuck.  To actually get up and do something more.  To open up the door to bigger things in your life.  A crisis gives you the keys to open the cage of mediocrity.  It gives you the opportunity to discover:

• If you are really committed or just interested?
• Do you want to be the hero, or the person who stands there and thinks, “somebody should do something”?
• Are you ready to choose extraordinary?

When you have a crisis in your life, no matter what kind of crisis it is, there is always hope.  From the space of hope and faith, you can choose to turn it into an open door of opportunity.  The danger comes when instead, you are experiencing a closed door of suffering.

“Sometimes our lives have to be completely shaken up, changed, and rearranged to relocate us to the place we’re meant to be” – Quotes & Thoughts

One of the lessons you can learn in times of crisis is the wisdom of not knowing. Daniel Boorstin said, “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”  In order to make the best decision in a time of crisis you have to let go of what you think of as normal.  Normal doesn’t work in times of crisis.  By adopting the wisdom of not knowing you will be better equipped to navigate the changes that the crisis will make as it passes through your life.

“In times of crisis, it’s always better to hop out rather than staying stuck in the chaotic life.  At such times, one must form a steadfast resolution to live liberated, whatever be the situation” = Unfathomed Liberal Words

Times of crisis require you to be more open, curious, flexible, and expansive.  Openness is a key that opens doors to learning new ways to do things.  It opens the door to creativity.  When you allow fears to keep you in contraction and frozen, you are experiencing the closed door of suffering.  It takes courage to keep the door open.  To forget what you think you know, so that new knowledge can be accepted and adapted to what is needed in times of crisis.

Look at what this current crisis is engendering around medical supplies.  Everyone is making face masks and shields and discovering better ways to protect the front line doctors and nurses during this pandemic.  Scientists are working hard in finding a vaccine.  When this crisis has ended the things learned will help millions of people in the future to be better prepared for the next pandemic.

“It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature.  Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment” = Bram Stoker, Dracula

Resilience is a key factor when in times of crisis.  Resilience is what allows you to use the crisis in your personal growth.  When you are in times of personal struggle, it becomes somehow easier to let go of the things that are no longer serving you.  For example, you might have things that you have held on to from an emotional attachment, but they don’t serve you in any way.  They just take up space in the “closet”.  Resilience gives you the space to do the inside work.

“The time of crisis is a bell to adaptation.  The time of crisis is the one, when your growth is the fastest.  The time of crisis teaches you not to sweat away, the next time it appears” – IshitaG.

Doing the inner work is what opens up the space for grace and clarity.  When you are seated in the space of grace, you are seated in your soul.  The outside world can continue to be in turmoil, but if you are seated in your soul, it no longer impacts you in the same way.  From the “breath of acceptance” you can acknowledge what is wrong and starting working on adapting what you already know.  You can figure out how to blend in the concept of being open for learning and the concept of approaching that space from a state of clarity.  You will intuitively know what is now most important.

“A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry.  It gives a chance, an opportunity, to choose well or to choose badly” – Desmond TuTu

In times of crisis you have a choice to not react to all of the negativity.

• For every negative thought you have, replace it with three positive thoughts.  It’s a great practice and if you are consistent, it will make a dramatic shift to a more positive life.
• Create some new mantras around positive thoughts you want to embody in your life.
• Relax and let go of the negativity, both mentally and physically.  Practice tightening a muscle group and then relaxing it.  Do this for your whole body.  As you relax each group, you settle further into a deep relaxation.

When you make these practices part of your life, you not only improve your inner state, you impact your health too.  When your inner state is in a place of grace and clarity, it gives you the space to deal with whatever is happening in your outer world.  You grant yourself the gift of moving forward with courage instead of hiding in fear and contraction.  You make better decisions when your inner space is in a place of peace and harmony.  Remember that you always have a choice – you can impact your outer world, or you can be impacted by it.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.  Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less” –Elephantontheroad.com

All of my favorite books and movies have some things in common.  The characters are all curious.  They want to understand how and why things are the way they are.  They are courageous and not afraid to do the hard things.  Because of these two things their characters grow in meaningful ways.  This is a time in your life for you to be both curious and courageous.  Open the doors to resilience and allow the space of “not knowing”.  Start learning what is needed to grow your inner self in this time of crisis.  Times of crisis gives you fertile soil.  It is the best ground to grow from. Do not let this opportunity pass you by.

Turning a Corner

There is an old curse that people used to say, according to various fiction writers.  “May you live in interesting times.”  It was meant to imply that you would live in times of great change and unrest.  You might be wondering if you are today, this moment, living in interesting times.  If you are, how do you “aim true”?

In thinking about this I wonder if you are in fact living in a time of great shifting and upheaval.  Think of the change in a landscape after a volcano has blown its top.  We used to live outside of Seattle, WA and I remember going camping, hiking and fishing around Mt. Saint Helens.  When the mountain had its huge eruption, the landscape totally changed.  You would walk down the same path as before, only it wasn’t the same.  The eruption changed the landscape into something surreal.

Are you experiencing changes on a personal level, such as going to a grocery store with a list of items that you can’t find?  For those few items you do find, are you being limited by the store as to how many items you can purchase?

Turning A Corner In WW II

One of the things I love to do is get curious about patterns and shifts in life.  During WW II all of the men went off to war.  This left factories without workers and so many women were called upon to join the workforce to keep the machines running.  It was a time of great upheavals and shifts.  When the men came home they expected the women to go back home to the kitchen.  Women had stood in the place of their husbands or boyfriends and worked a fulfilling job for several years – as well as keeping care of the home and children.  Many of them didn’t want to go back home into their old roles as solely a wife or mother.  They felt that they could be more than that, and wanted it to continue.

Overnight it seemed that the roles of a man and woman had shifted.  They had turned a corner and it wasn’t possible to just go back to the way it was.  It’s taken a long time for those roles to continue shifting and solidifying into true equality.  It is still going on to some extent.

It feels like you may be about to have a similar experience of what happened to the workforce during WW II.  What if the result of this virus is that you are about to experience a “turning of the corner” moment, in multiple ways of how you used to live your life?

“Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is” – Unknown

Is This The End Of The World As We’ve Known It?

Malls have been slowly dying for the past 10 years or so.  Is this the end of malls?

Working from home has been moving one step forward, two back for a few years.  Where I work it wasn’t encouraged.  It was well tolerated for a few years, but lately they had decided they wouldn’t approve it for fulltime employees who wanted to shift from the office to home any longer.  Now of course for those states on lockdown everyone who can work from home is.  If this home lockdown truly continues for a couple of months, will businesses have turned a corner and begin abandoning commercial multistoried office buildings?  Will working from home become the “norm” of the future?

Has the virus killed ISP data caps?  Internet providers have been lifting the data caps due to everyone being at home and using the internet – both for work and entertainment.  Once you have given something away for free, it is very hard to put the genie back into the bottle.  It becomes a negative experience for your customers and they will go to someone who is still not capping their online connections.

What if we have just “turned the corner” for movie theaters?  You see Disney and several other companies releasing the movies to either buying the movie or streaming it and paying to view it.  If this was to continue there would be need to be a drastic change to how much it cost to make a movie in order for the industry to survive.  Would the mega dollars paid to the big stars go away?  Would movies become all computer generated, with voices being the only real part of the movie?

What about the million dollar contracts for sports stars if the big arenas were no longer deemed safe?

Once you start down the rabbit hole of wondering, there is no telling where you might end up.  The world is full of patterns.  The patterns continue until they transform, collapse or end.  When you are in the middle of a pattern that is in transition, it is really hard to recognize what is happening.  Even if you recognize that a pattern shift is being played out, it is really hard to determine where it is going.  It is impossible to guess how fast or slow the change will be, or how much it will impact you.  You just know that transformation is in motion.

If you go back to the caterpillar to butterfly analogy you are inside the chrysalis and you are still just goo.  Until you break free of the chrysalis you won’t know what it is that you have transformed into.  You won’t know the true impact on your life.  What corner(s) have you just turned that you can never go back from?  It is like one of those pictures that you can connect the dots on.  It is only after the transformation has been completed that you can see what you have transformed into.

How Do You Aim True?

I feel  like there is an elephant trying to go through a door and it has gotten itself stuck.  On the other side of the door is a brand new world to explore.  I can get glimpses to see that it is a new world.  I can’t however know how much of a change has actually occurred.

Will we all be working from home and will commercial real estate transform all of those buildings into housing?  What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

Will the majority of people order groceries and have home delivery?  Will grocery stores become more of a shipping facility than a store where you walk down the aisles and buy more than you planned on because of impulse buying? What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

Will drones become the future of deliveries?  Will self driving cars that self sanitize become the way of getting from point A to point B if you do have to leave home? What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

All questions and answers can be discussed and explored – but nothing will be truly known until the elephant clears the doorway.  Even then it will take time to fully realize that the corner has been completely turned.  Before you can see how much the new direction impacts your life.

What you have in this moment though is the ability to be curious.  To explore, not with a depressing attitude that the world is changing and you want it to remain the same.  But with a curiosity that says, “I wonder what happens next?”  “Do I aim high or low with my life goals and dreams?”

I  Wonder What Happens Next?

I firmly believe that there are going to be some great opportunities when we clear that doorway – when we turn that corner.  You can make guesses.  You can get curious and talk with others – but only from the perspective of good things are about to happen.  This isn’t said to try and make light of the health and economic devastations that are happening.  It is said to let you know that you don’t have to let fear take over your life.

You can’t control everything that is happening, or is about to happen.  You can take the recommended steps to protect the health of yourself and your family.  But once you have taken those steps – then go back into curiosity.  Go back into wonder.  Stay in the positive emotions of love, joy, happiness.  Tell fear that it is in quarantine.  Don’t let it out to take over your life.

Come and join our conversation on April 4th.  Let’s talk about whatever is showing up for you and how you can turn the corner on fear and change your relationship with it.  Let’s talk about your dreams and goals and how you can still be proactive in bringing them into reality.  This isn’t the time to go into retraction with your life.  It is instead the right time, to proactively take whatever positive steps you can to keep moving forward.  To keep expanding the love, joy, happiness, curiosity in your life.

Shots Fired

“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you” – Unknown

In April of 2010 around 11 PM as my nephew and a friend were cutting across the park to go to his friends mom’s house the first shot was fired.  As my nephew was hit, he yelled at his friend to run.  When the second shot hit my nephew his friend started running.  As the third shot hit my nephew and he crumpled to the ground his friend stopped, turned around and saw the shooter emerge from the bushes and take off running.

His friend helped him up and somehow got my nephew to his moms house and they called 911 for an ambulance.  The doctors tried to get a lifeline helicopter but the fog that night was too thick for the helicopter.  After working on him for over an hour, they thought they had him stable enough for transport to another hospital 30-45 min away.  As my sister tried to catch up to the ambulance driving over the mountain pass, they phoned her to tell her to turn around.  My nephew had died in route.

Let’s go back in time to the beginning of this fateful Friday.  My nephew woke up early and grabbed his surfboard.  On the way to Lighthouse field he stopped and gave away some breakfast sandwiches he had made to several homeless guys as he checked in on them.  It was a regular routine for him to encourage them to quit drinking and take back control over their lives.  He then went on to meeting one of his best friends at Lighthouse Field.  His friend was going to film him surfing.  The waves were supposed to be really good and he had this trick he had been working on for some time.  He wanted to have it filmed so he could see what it looked like.  The waves were as predicted and he nailed his trick.

From there he went to work at O’Neils Surf shop.  Then he met another friend and together they went to another friends house.  Close to 11 PM they started across the park so he could get his bike and ride home.  Then “Shots Fired” happened.  A random gang banger shooting.  The shooter never said a word.  He just blew up our world from the cover of darkness for no reason that we could ever understand.

“Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us” – suburbanment.com

Fast forward a few years.  Our family is still recovering from my nephews murder.  My sister started a non-profit Mother Grizzles Against Gangs, but she ran out of money and closed it down.

Santa Cruz Sentinel 2014> "Four years ago this month, JoAnn Tennent lost her only child in a shooting near Grandview Street in Santa Cruz. Carl Reimer was 19, and no one has been arrested in his homicide.  Wednesday evening outside Santa Cruz City Hall, Tennent shared her grief with more than 80 people gathered at the third annual Victims Rights March of Solidarity. She also carried a message of hope and strength to stand together against gangs and violence in Santa Cruz County. “Carl wasn't just my son, he was your son. Because all your children are my children too,” she said. “When someone takes someone from your life, it's devastating. We can't just act like this doesn't happen.”  As part of National Crime Victims” Rights Week, the march started at Santa Cruz County Superior Court at 701 Ocean St. and ended at city hall. Participants held pictures of loved ones who had fallen victim to crime in the county, and they marched with posters with slogans such as “Stop gang violence” and “Violence does not only affect the victim.”"

As a coping mechanism I had started writing to heal my sadness and grief.  I was posting things on my personal Facebook page that I was writing.  I thought just maybe it would help my friends and family.  We were all rebuilding our lives around Carl’s loss.

“if you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed”  – Unknown

A lot of people started commenting and sharing what I was writing and they encouraged me to do more.  And so this LemonadeMaker page was born.  I named it LemonadeMaker because I believe that we are all making lemonade out of life’s lemons.  It all started as part of my own recovery, and it grew into a life purpose.  It’s a vast vision, a dream that I work to fulfill every day.  It’s a calling. Although we lost someone we loved so much – the day of his death was also a day that Carl was following his own dreams.  He had a great morning.  He was really stoked that he had nailed his trick with his surfboard.  He wasn’t leaving his dreams for someday I will . . . , he was living them on purpose.

“In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths” – Quoteslife101.net

I looked at my life and realized I wasn’t doing the same.  I was putting off my dreams for when I retired.  For later.  So when I started LemonadeMakers it was for the purpose of realizing my dreams of being a game changer.  Of being an influencer.  Of helping others to fulfill their dreams now.  Because none of us are promised a later to do it in.

 

Steven Pressfield stated in “The Art of War”, that most of us have two lives; the lives we live and the lives we are capable of living.

5 years later LemonadeMakers has almost 100,000 followers.  This happened because I saw something positive to retrieve from the ashes of my grief.  My nephew left me a trail to follow and I have been walking down it ever since.  It has totally changed my life.  I had put off the dream of writing, because my mind fears said I would fail.  Obviously that wasn’t true.  I had told myself for years that I was an introvert and couldn’t communicate with strangers.  Too my surprise this was also totally not true.  How many mind fears – lies – are you listening too instead of pursuing your dreams?

Don’t put your dreams off to tomorrow.  Start fulfilling them today.  Live the life you are capable of living.

Sign up now.  Click the button to register now.

 

 

Don’t Let Something Amazing Pass You By

“Sometimes, thing don’t go as planned.  Life doesn’t always go the way you hope it will.  You can’t plan everything.  Life takes you where it wants to – you’re pretty much just along for the ride!  Just breathe – Re-Evaluate – Step out of the box – Forgive – Be grateful.”  – Namala Lakesh

I believe in plans.  But I also believe in being flexible.  I believe in taking stock and making constant adjustments.  It’s like a sailboat.  You are subject to winds and currents, but with the rudder and sails, you have the ability to maneuver into the direction you want to go.  Which is why I love the way I plan out my month and year.  I make plans and then as life happens I see where I need to make adjustments.  To re-evaluate what is really most important in the current time and space to accomplish.  That’s why I am sharing this system with all of you.  It works!

“She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her away, she adjusted her sails.”  – Elizabeth Edwards

Sometimes things happen in the reverse order of your expectations.  The patience comes in because you automatically put expectations on the plans.  You visualize them out step by step, and then life happens.  You lose you job, the promised promotion and/or raise doesn’t materialize.  Someone close to you is faced with a critical medical diagnosis.  The money you had planned for vacation now has to go to put in new plumbing.  In short, life happens.  You need to adjust your sails.

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you.  If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up.  Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”  – Michael Jordan

Sometimes obstacles are like the monsters under the bed.  You hear a noise.  Your imagination runs wild.  Your heartbeat goes out of control.  Suddenly you are screaming.  And it was all in your head.  Other times they are legitimate.  I remember one of the contestants in America’s Got Talent had been a singer, then tragedy struck.  She went deaf from a medical condition.  She stopped singing and gave up her career.

“Our life doesn’t always turn out the way we planned, but sometimes that’s because what we planned wasn’t suppose to be our life.”  – Gdonell

Mandy said in an interview, “I made the mistake of associating my entire identity with one single dream, and when that dream died, I very much felt like I died. I became a husk of a person for awhile.”

“Life doesn’t always go according to plan.  Sometimes heading in a new direction can be scary until you realize you’re headed toward a new and exciting destination.”  – Susan Cole

Then she got an electric tuner and spent 10 hours learning to sing each note perfectly.  “I couldn’t believe it”, she says, “My perfect pitch and muscle memory all came together.”  Mandy Harvey.

“If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore.”  – Michele Ruiz

Then one day she decided to stop fighting against her dreams and start fighting for them.  She began writing her own songs and singing again.  She discovered that this real obstacle could be overcome.  She discovered that a big chunk of the real obstacle was in her own mind. Singing a song she composed she got sent straight through to the finals on America’s Got Talent.  She finished fourth.

“You don’t always need a plan.  Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, and let go and see what happens.”  – Mandy Hale

If you take a good honest look at your life so far, you will see times where what you had planned fell apart – and that it was a good thing.  You underestimated what you were are capable of. You made plans that were far too limiting in regards to your potential.  When you let go of the expectation of the plan, and how it should go – and instead learned to feel your way with intuition, amazing things happened.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”  – Joseph Campbell

You discover hidden talents.  You uncover better ways to expand your comfort zones.  So when the path you are walking on changes direction, don’t be afraid to keep going.  When the sign says “dead end” don’t be afraid to go off the path and create your own.  When the wind blows you backwards, grab a tree and hold on.  When life challenges you to sit it out, get up and fight to keep moving forward.

“If we can just let go and trust that things will work out the way they’re supposed to, without trying to control the outcomes, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully.  The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.”  – Goldie Hawn

LemonadeMakers is hosting a monthly free class on goals, resolutions, plans – whatever you want to call your means of change and transformation in your life.  We discuss on a live Zoom call what is happening that is working and not working.  Ideas to try to get us motivated to change and transform our lives.  Where we might re-evaluate our plans.  How to adjust our sails.

We invite you to join with us the first Saturday of every month.  The next class registration is opening today.  Come join us!  Click on the box to register now.

20/20 Vision For A Well Lived Life

 

Revised 1/30/2020

“A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision” – Eric Ries

All around the world people make plans.  They set goals.  They build on their dreams.  Every year brings you some of the same goals and maybe this year you have a few new ones.  For the majority of us that is as good as it gets.  Why?

Because sometime in January or February or maybe even March your willpower begins to fade out.  You slow down.  You procrastinate and put it off for next month (this is me – lol).  You tell yourself what’s the hurry?  I have all year to get this done.

What if this year you do something unique?  What if you pivot instead?

“You can only succeed.  You cannot fail.  Failure is impossible …, an illusion…, Nothing.  Everything moves the human story…, forward.  Everything advances you on your journey” – Neal Donald Walsh

Thinking back to secondary education (Jr. High, High School or College) did you get your assignments done when they were assigned or when they were due?  How many late nights cram sessions did you have to do to finish a paper that you had weeks to complete but waited until the last minute?

The majority of us were late night crammers.  And that is one of the things that leads us to fail in our dreams. resolutions, goals, and plans.  Not fail as in we can’t do it but fail as in, we decide to quit trying to do it.

When you make your goals with the intention of accomplishing them within 12 months, you will delude yourself that you have plenty of time until there isn’t any time, and then you will quit.  Why?

You are out of integrity with your life

Because unlike school when you would have failed a class and then been grounded by a parent, you are only lying to yourself.

The problem with lying to yourself though, is that you are then out of integrity with yourself, and it plays out in your life over and over again.  Every time you say you are going to do something, that negative voice will say – “yeah right – you know that you are not really going to accomplish this, so why waste any time or effort in pretending.”

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe.  Otherwise, why else even be here” – Steve Jobs

This year what if instead of a 1-year plan, why don’t you do something different?  Do a weekly plan.  You choose how many weeks you want to plan for.  12 weeks is sufficient to work in a new positive habit.  For most goals it gives you enough time to plan out how to accomplish it.  If the goal needs more than 12 weeks such as education, plan out major steps that can be accomplished within 12 weeks.

Ready?

Get out your pencil and three pieces of paper for this exercise.  I want you to limit yourself to three goals.  Write one goal on each sheet of paper.

“How does the WHY relation to the vision” – Simon Sinek

Now write down some steps that would need to happen in order for you to accomplish your goal.  As an example, you might want to go back to school to get a degree for a change in your career or to help you advance further in your degree.  Since this is probably more than 1 year, plan out 3 steps that can be accomplished within the chosen number of weeks.

• You must also write down the WHY this goal is important to you.
• What dream is it helping you accomplish?
• How do you feel about that dream?
• What emotions does it create deep inside of you?
• What is the importance of it to you – not anyone else?

If it isn’t pulling you to complete it, it’s not really your goal.  Keep digging until you reach that place where the dream hooks you.  Then do the following step.

• #1 – find three colleges that you would like to attend.
• #2 – Look up the website and download information on the classes required to get your degree.
• #3 – Call and talk to an admissions officer about your plans.

Only list three steps that can be accomplished within the chosen timeframe.  Your goals should always be driven to your life purpose.  To move forward into who you are meant to be, who you are becoming.  Otherwise, it is just wasting your time, effort and money.

Always check in with our inner guidance system and follow where that is leading us.  There will always be some positive emotions, some connection – it will lead us if we get quiet and listen and feel for it.

“The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.  Don’t settle” – Steve Jobs

For a budget goal, you could plan out goals for each pay period.  Weekly, biweekly, monthly – according to the time frame your paychecks arrive.

• #1 – spreadsheet with lines completed for each bill that is due within the pay period.  List the name of the bill, date due, amount due, balance due.  List the net income after taxes.  Deduct all payments to arrive at a balance left after paying all of the bills.
• #2 – Determine your goals – saving money for vacations; for a big purchase such as a car or home; rainy day fund; education fund for your children; etc…,
• #3 – Goals for zero debt – what debts to payoff first, second, etc…,

Continue in a similar manner for your third goal.  What is so cool about this pivot is that you can play with it to see what number of weeks works for you.  The budget goal for example will continue all year long.  You will have accomplishments for each time period that you are working through.  Celebrate each milestone – it is what fuels you to the next milestone and gets you over the disappointments when life happens and creates havoc in accomplishing our dreams.

“If the challenge we face doesn’t scare us, then it’s probably not that important” – Simon Sinek

I know that if someone gives me something I may or may not make the time to actually do the work.   So, take a second and think about what I wrote up above.  Did you take out paper and pencil or did you just read through it thinking that you would come back later and do it?

What I also know about myself is that if someone takes the time to work with me through the material, I get some action and forward momentum started. I will answer the questions and get my brain thinking and planning.  So, take this small first step for 2020 and let’s create something personally designed just for you!

Commit to your dreams.  Travel down a clear path to your date with destiny.

Get Clarity By Magnifying Your Life Purpose

“If you can tune into your purpose and really align with it, setting goals so that your vision is an expression of that purpose, then life flows much more easily.”  – Jack Canfield

There is a dream that you had as a child.  It was a persistent dream.  It was a longing that would not be denied.  Maybe you went for it and failed.  Or maybe you were too scared to even try.  Or maybe you had the “one hit wonder” and then faded away, too afraid that you could never repeat or even surmount the dream.  That dream contained your purpose.  How it was fulfilled was your vision of what it could be.

“Focus on your own happiness, focus on your own life, focus on your own vision.”– GreatestQuotes.net

My dream was to write. 

I did well in school.  I loved learning.  I would read 6-7 books a week.  I would check out the maximum number of books every week and read them all.  My family was always moving somewhere new.  Until my Freshman year in high school I didn’t attend any complete grade in one school.  So books were my best friends and my escape.  And every single book I read, I would say to myself, “I could write this book.  Maybe even write it better than the author did.”

“Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.”  – Peerhustle.com

The problem was while I told myself that, the doing of the actual writing was outside of my comfort zone and I was terrified that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.  The fact that I got straight A’s and was in honors didn’t overcome the fears.  In fact it magnified them.  In my mind I was sitting on the pedestal and if I actually tried to write a book, I would topple off the pedestal and be subject to ridicule.

“Don’t try to overhaul your life overnight.  Instead, focus on making one small change at a time.  Over time, those small changes will add up to big transformation.  Don’t give up!” – emilysquotes.com

So I dreamed of writing year after year and fed my purpose a starvation diet of book after book that someone else who was smarter and braver wrote while I just dreamed about it.  I believe that God plants your purpose inside of you.  It never goes away.  I believe that door after door of opportunity comes you way to express it to its full potential.  I believe that the ups and downs of life itself are generated in such a way to try to coax you or force you to take up your dream and live it.

“A vision of a desired future allows you to engage and identify immediately in your focus with an improved condition.  It changes what you perceive and how you perform – NOW.  It’s not about achieving something in time.  It’s rather about the quality of choices you are making in this moment – what you choose to perceive, feel, and do.  It’s about getting the most out of your experience.”– David Allen

I believe that at least one of the New Year’s Resolutions or goals that you set – are a part of your life purpose. 

When my nephew was murdered I was forced through the door of writing.  I didn’t really understand what was happening at first.  By the time I realized that I had committed myself to writing LemonadeMakers I had literally changed my world.  All my goals before that were about changing myself to make other people happy.  Lose weight and be healthy for my family.  Climb the corporate ladder so that my family would be secure financially, and so on.

“Focus on where you want to go instead of the obstacles in your path.  Drive and persistence will take you to your desired destination.”– slideshare.net

Now all of a sudden, the question that I was asking was,

“Who do I need to be to make LemonadeMakers be what it is supposed to be? What do I need to learn? What habits do I need to bring into my life? Who can help me?”

It is such a unique space of focus away from fear of not being loved if I wasn’t giving all of me to my family or job – to the space of how can I help others find this place seeing “what else is possible”? It is kind of funny when I finally understood that giving all of me to my family or job was from fear and not love. And now I am finally living most of my time from love and not fear. Fear still shows up, disguised as self sabotage. Then fear is shown to the door, when once again I recognize it for what it is.

Somewhere in your goals that you are setting for 2020 is a part of your life purpose. 

It is the thing that you dream about when your mind wanders.  What is it that you do, that is similar to my inside my head comment when I was reading a good book.  What is your version of a “I could do this”?  Think about the thing that pops into your head, that is immediately discounted by your negative self talk.  There is something there to explore and understand more fully.

That “thing” will keep showing up month after month, year after year, decade after decade.  That idea or concept will not leave you – it can’t. It will keep haunting you, until you are expressing it to its fullest potential or you have died with the dream still unfulfilled within you.  So take a leap of faith.  Be brave.

Come join us on February 1st for our “Living the Dream” free workshop and take the first step in putting your dream into reality.

We are going to explore some ideas outside of the box on how to start living our dreams.  We are going to dig into our goals and expose the root systems to see how they connect to our life purpose.  It is more than a dream board.  It is more than writing the dream out on paper.  It is more than a calendar full of appointments and meetings and blocking out time to implement what needs to be done and when you will do it.  It is  more than a single leap of faith or five baby sets of doing something.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light. . , that most frightens us. . , ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ . . , who are you not to be?. . , Your playing small does not serve the world . . , We are all meant to shine. . ,  as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ― Marianne Williamson

I invite you to join us on February 1st for a live workshop on how to make 2020 the year of achievement. Get clear on what you want and how to obtain it. If your 2020 goals are already stalling, get recharged and refocused. Learn how to pivot to success.

Just click below to get started.

During the call you will have the opportunity to create, find a pivot or two, reimagine and refuel your life dreams.

I know that if someone gives me something I may or may not make the time to actually do the work. But if someone takes the time to work with me through the material I get some action and forward momentum started. So take this small first step for 2020 and lets create something personally designed just for you!

Instead of just thinking “I could do this” come and find out just how much you can do, confront your deepest fears. Stop playing small. Shine out in all of your brilliance. Give yourself permission to be all that you can be in 2020.

 

On The Journey Of Self Transformation, You Need A Map

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

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

Where is your comfort zone today?

What growth to it happened last year?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life presents you with so many decisions.

A lot of times,

the answers are right in front of you.  

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

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

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

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

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

Life’s Storms Compose the Music of Our Souls

 

Keep Going

No Matter how bad things are right now

No Matter how stuck you feel

No Matter how many days you’ve spent crying

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

No Matter how hopeless and depressed you feel

I promise you won’t feel this way forever

Keep Going

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believing in Your Imagination Makes Anything Possible

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OR you reframe it.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turn the tide on mediocrity. 

Break free of the riptide of your past. 

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

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

Winter-Sorrowful, Spring Is Coming

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A note for my Dad

I learned to say goodbye at an early age

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

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

Silent tears wishing I was still with you

 

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

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

I feel my frailness crumble as you both pull me apart

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

 

Years go by with a few hours here and there

Visits so short they can’t even be remembered

How many times I reached out to you?

Only to hear the deafening silence.

 

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

The cold became the color of blinding whiteness

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

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

 

Deep sadness covers me like a layer of snow

Leaving my heart cold, pain frozen into arctic ice

Daddy why did you die and leave me alone

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

 

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

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

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

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