The Best Is Yet To Come, In New Beginnings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make Your Life Extraordinary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dreams are the Children of your Soul

Every day we have a choice.  We can live in fear or move forward in faith.

  –  Billy Cox

What does it take to realize the visions and dreams our of soul?  It takes faith as Billy said, but it also takes making that faith become real with a solid belief.  That belief then needs to move us forward.  It takes action to start implementing steps that move us forward with the faith, that we can make it a reality.  As we take action, we develop practices and habits to change from where we started.  These actions propel us forward to where we want to go. 

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.  Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

  – Pamela Vaull Starr

Dreams create transformation in our life.  As we bring our dreams into reality, it requires change.  Some changes come about from letting go of what no longer serves us.  Some changes come about by stripping away who we thought we were, to become who we really are.  As the saying goes, “How does one become a butterfly?  You have to want to fly so much, that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

Dreams are . . .  illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.

  – Unknown

Since the road of life is not a long flat road, but has hills and valleys, it also will take perseverance. This is because we will run across obstacles on our road.  Some things we can take a detour around; some things we will have to break out the tools to build a bridge over; and some things will require that we climb up and down the mountain.  So to perseverance of not giving up, we also need to add in patience and time, because at least for me everything takes longer than I think it will.

Your dream doesn’t have an expiration date.  Take a deep breath, try again.

  – Unknown

All of these things are required, because at every turn and obstacle fear is going to try to tell us to stop.  That this is not working.  That this dream is too big, too much for us to accomplish.  That look how far we have come – we can rest now and this will be good enough.  Fear will try everything it has to get us to just be happy right where we are. 

Carl Jung adds another piece to the picture that we are painting about dreams. 

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

  – Carl Jung 

Daydreams are outside dreams.  What they call “pipe dreams”, because they are so untethered.  Pipe dreams mesmerize us, as they float by.  They keep us asleep. 

Dreams are answers to questions we haven’t figured out how to ask.

  – Unknown

The dreams of your soul are a totally different kind of dream.  They are the DNA of your soul, the blueprint of what you have been divinely gifted with to achieve in this lifetime.  But in order for us to birth these dreams, and raise them up into the reality of this world, we have to wake up.  We have to become aware.  That is when our life starts to have true meaning.  When we awake to our life’s true purpose.  God speaks to us in dreams.  Dreams of the whispers of the soul.

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul.

  – Carl Jung

That is what made Martin Luther King Jr. speech about “I have a dream” so powerful.  The moment he put down his notes and spoke from his heart, the dream he had been given by the divine came through with such crystal clear clarity that it grabbed the soul of the world.  It was a powerful dream and even though he has passed on from this world, every year we remember this dream.  And even though he is not here to bring it into the full reality of what it can and will be, it is still progressing.  This dream has perseverance.  It keeps on going and it will keep going until it comes into full reality. 

Trust in dreams for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

  – Kahlil Gibran

We all have a dream inside of us that is just as powerful and just as necessary to this world.  Please, please don’t let the dream die with you.  Bring it out of your heart.  Add the faith, the belief to know that you can change into who you need to be in order to make it a reality.  Know that it will take perseverance, that it will take patience and time, but you can become the person that you need to be to make it happen.

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.  Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

  – Mother Teresa

I look at my own journey with LemonadeMakers and I can tell you that this dream has changed my life.  That it is constantly challenging me to make more changes to become the person who can not only hold this vision and dream, but to become the person who can shout it from the mountain tops and be heard around the world.  If we all join hands, and collaborate together to change ourselves, we will change the world. 

So many dreams at first seem impossible.  And then they seem improbable.  And then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

  – Christopher Reeves

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The Courage To Continue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Bold With Your Dreams

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit.  Genius hits a target no one else can see”  – Arthur Schopenhauer

As children you learned this lesson: “do as your told; don’t make waves; be a good girl/boy; be quiet; sit still”; and the rules go on forever. You learned to trade in everything you wanted to do, for the smile of happiness on someone else’s face. The smile that is the proof that they love you, but only when you do as they say.

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first” – Jim Morrison

So you became an expert on putting on the mask.  You squeezed yourself into the mold provided and hoped that no one noticed how much you spilled over the sides of it.  Adults thought that they were molding your character, which may be true.  What they might not realize is that they are also compressing who you are in reality.

“God has plucked you out of eternity, positioned you in time, and given you gifts and talents to serve him in this generation” – Christine Caine

Your brain keeps you in this same position with self doubt and fears. These doubts and fears tell you that you don’t have a personal genius. It tells you that you don’t have what it takes, or that you will have to walk away from everyone that you love as a sacrifice to achieve your personal goals.  It keeps you framed into a small picture of who and what you are.  You are walled away from your self confidence.  It takes a daring attitude, and tremendous tenacity, to free your personal genius.  You MUST break out of the frame of limitations.

“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain” – Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla took a truly different route to access his personal genius. He didn’t let his ideas escape his imagination.  He let the possibilities run wild, then he put in structure and form and tested it.  Only then did he take his idea to completion.  That way his brain couldn’t attack it and destroy it while it only existed on the drawing board.  By keeping it inside, in his imagination, the mind couldn’t attack it until he had worked out all of the possible kinks it might have had. He fenced out limitations, and allowed his spark of brilliance to cascade until he achieved a solid plan for that invention.

“You cannot discover your own genius if you set personal limitations that soothe everyone else around you. The spark of brilliance does not exist because of expectations. It (genius) sets the standard” –  Amy Larson

Not being a slave to the ordinary is the only way to access personal genius. In school you learn that if you want to be an A student, you give them the answers that they want. They may not be the right answers in your own mind, but you can’t argue or reason with them. They only want the answers they are looking for. They stay safely framed in a society that wants you to be small, to live in a fully interpreted world that makes being creative something you do when you have “free time” as a hobby.

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary” – Cecil Beaton

Personal genius happens when you leave that world behind you. We see examples of business disrupters where someone comes in with an idea that totally changes how things are done.  The Internet was a huge business disrupter.  It changed how communication happened; it changed how businesses did their business.  There isn’t any part of society that hasn’t been affected.  When you go outside the “normal” this is how it has always been done – programmed response or behavior, you discover that you can have your own experiences. Experiences that allow you to figure out for yourself what it means to you personally.

“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or others peoples models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open” – Shakti Gawain

The thing that seems so easy to you is your God given talent, your gift(s). You’re certain anyone could do it, that you are not anything special. But if you take off that mask and expose your limiting beliefs in yourself and your talent(s), you will discover that you are in fact special, a genius in many ways . Unleash the imagination. Explore the possibilities of everything in life.

Each one of us has all the wisdom and knowledge we ever need right within us. It is available to us through our intuitive mind, which is our connection with universal intelligence”  –  Shakti Gawain

There bound up in chains and buried in a deep hole is your personal genius. It is time to look into your magic mirror, your looking glass, and see another reality. Assert your integrity of purpose and become a visionary around this gift. Your future has been waiting for you to break free. Don’t let anyone put try to put it back into that limiting frame. Set yourself free, be free to become who you were meant to be.

Come join us on March 7th for our next monthly free webinar on how to live your life with 20/20 focus. How to face the fears that are keeping you locked out of your destiny. How to unlock your chains and break free.  Use those divine gifts with purpose to not only shift and change your world, but the entire world. Come and renew yourself. Find your voice and propel your life forward.

What does it mean to be inspired?

What does it mean to be inspired? The dictionary definition that I like the best is: a divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation. I think of it as the act of drawing in breath, breathing in god’s heart and mind.

Never Doubt Yourself

In 1952 Florence Chadwick, who had swum the English Channel, tried to swim from Catalina Island to the California coastline. After about 15 hours a thick fog set in and she didn’t think that she could make it. After another hour she asked to be pulled into the boat, giving up. She found out she had stopped one mile from her destination. She later swam the Catalina Channel several times. To face the doubt down, you just have to keep going.

When she looked at how far she had left to go in her imagination, (since the fog prohibited her from seeing the coastline in front of her) it was easy to get discouraged and quit. When you want to quit you start thinking and saying ” I have given all I have”. “No one could do more”. “This far is good enough”. “This is all I can take or handle”.

“Strength does not come from winning.  Your struggles develop your strengths.  When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength”  –  Arnold Schwarzenegger

Something important was discovered in the experiment of the biosphere, in regards to trees.  When they first planted the trees they were really excited to see the growth of the trees and how healthy they seemed.  But what they discovered was that without the winds creating resistance for the trees as they grew, their root systems were very shallow and they couldn’t support their upward growth.  They all eventually fell down because the roots couldn’t hold the tree upright.  The same is true for us. 

Have you seen the death crawl scene in the movie, “Facing the Giants”? The high school football player is blindfolded so that he can’t see.  Then another player is placed on the football players back.  He has to crawl on his hands and knees with the weight of that player.  The purpose of the blindfold is so that he can’t see how far he has gone. When you can see how far you have gone, the tendency is to discount it.  You start looking for reasons to quit, because it is too hard.  It epitomizes the strength that you have hidden inside of you.  The strength you hide from yourself, so that you don’t know that it’s even there. 

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what” – Harper Lee

When you see a big goal way down the field and what you have to go through to get there, your mind will start in with the negative chatter.  Your mind will find a million reasons, perfect logical reasons, why you can’t do it.  All words describing how it is impossible.  Your friends and family will probably jump on the bandwagon saying that you would be crazy to even attempt it.  Why start something doomed to failure?

In the movie, when the football player goes past the 50 yard line the coach gets excited.  Like a good coach he sees that the player has the strength to go further. He starts crawling in front of him, saying 10 more steps, 10 more steps until the player collapses saying he can’t go farther and it must be that he is at the 50-yard line. In fact, he is in the end zone and just carried another player on his back the entire football field.  Something that everyone, the coach, the other players and the boy would have said was impossible.

“Sometimes it is not the lack of ability, but the lack of confidence that prevents us from achieving what we really want.  Sometimes it’s doable, but self-doubt makes it impossible” – QuotesEmpire.com

You have amazing strength inside of you. You need to carry inside yourself something inspirational that feeds your soul and spirit to keep going. It could be a past victory.  There are many inspirational movies, Rudy, The Rocky Series, this film and I am sure you have your own list that you could continue with.  It could be looking at the miles you have already traveled. It could be the story of a family member.  Everyone needs the positive thinking of “I Can”, “I Will”, “I AM”, to shove aside the doubts and keep going forward into the end zone.

Next time you’re stressed, take a step back, inhale and laugh.  There is something about the breath that can disconnect you from strong emotions.  The old adage, count to 10 works for this reason.

• Think before you speak.
• You can take back a thought, you can’t unspeak the words.
• Remember who you are and why you are here.
• You’re never given anything in this world that you cannot handle.
• Even when it feels like you have been broken, you are still ok.
• Be strong, be flexible, love yourself and have compassion for yourself and others.
• Always remember to just keep moving forward, – it is always just 10 more steps.
• Like Dory in  “Finding Nemo”, in the face of adversity, just keep swimming.
• Don’t stop until you reach the finish line.

“Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go, just remember how far you have come.  Remember everything you have faced, all the battles you have won, and all the fears you have overcome” – Unknown

What gives us the courage to keep trying and stretching?  It has to do with your ability to change and transform.  It has to do with your attitude and definitions are around what transformation really means.

“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?  Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?”  – Lao Tzu

See the  death crawl video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUKoKQlEC4

Life’s Storms

Revised 5/13/2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life’s Storms

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

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

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

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

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

Ocean

When you look across the ocean with the sunrise or the sunset, you see the colors mirrored on the surface. This is like our appearance, beautiful when calm and serene. But if you dive down deep, into the depths, that is where the true beauty of a person lies, in their soul. This is the beauty that we miss, when we make surface judgments about someone.

Rumi says, “Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.” Self knowledge is the place to start. We need to dig down deep within us, and question all of the stories we have told ourselves about our life. What do we know to be 100% totally true?

If we seriously ask and listen to the answer to this question, most of us would have to acknowledge that most of our stories about life are made up. We make them up to make sense of the things we have seen, done, and experienced. John Lennon said, “The more I see, the less I know for sure.” This is because the more that we learn about life, the more we see that most of our knowledge is surface knowledge. The deeper we dive, the more we see how much more complicated and interconnected our understanding of life is.

“Knowledge is knowing the depths of the ocean. Wisdom is knowing where to swim” Saleem Sharma. Sometimes life can be hard to navigate. When the storms come in, the waves churn up from the bottom of the sea bed. Things come to the surface that have been long buried. We are like this when the storms of life blow in. All those things that we stuff down inside of us, because we either can’t, or don’t know how to deal with them, come churning up to the surface.

Instead of being afraid of what we have buried, we need to rise up and calm the waters. Be still. Breathe. Be at peace. Realize that God never brings anything into our lives that we can’t handle. Wake up to your dreams. Live them out in your reality.

Lean on the divine, and on those who love us. Change what can be changed, release the rest. See the hope of a new day, the beauty that lies within each of us, and the love that never dies. Remember that you can do anything you “think” you can do, and impossible really means “I m possible”.

Getting onto the Right Path

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martin Luther King Jr.

There are so many good quotes for Martin Luther King Jr. His most famous speech, “I have a dream” is full of lessons for us all. I thought about Martin Luther King Jr. a lot the past few days. What would he give a speech to us about today, if he were still alive?

The world is so full of injustice that it is like chains weighing us down. It is like that scene in Sleeping Beauty, where you are chopping down the vines that cover the castle and they regrow faster than you can chop them down. Wage inequality just gets worse every year. Men and women still are not paid the same wage for the same job. We see how terrorism is changing the face of racism, making us afraid of others based on not only their skin color, but their culture and religion. The war against drugs is never ending as drugs continue claim the lives of our young people every day. Lack of access to healthcare continues to be a major problem. I could go on to spit out depressing facts and figures as well as continue the list of things wrong in our world. But I won’t.

One of my favorite MLK quotes is “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?” I think that this quote would be a big part of his speech for us today. “What are you doing for others?” Because at the end of the day, it isn’t some governments policy, law, or program that is going to change our world. It is each of us individually standing up and stating, “I am going to change me”. And as each of us, “changes me”, we will inspire others to do the same for themselves. And individual by individual, the world will change.

What will make this transformation possible is love, forgiveness and lifting each other up. It is the realization that now is the time to do what is right. To teach our children critical thinking, because that is what is needed to lead us forward. To understand all holy scriptures fundamental teaching is that only light can drive out the darkness. All of these thoughts come from other MLK quotes.

If we all started out today, and every day going forward with these kinds of thoughts creating actions of change, the world would change overnight. This reminded me of the Berlin Wall falling down. It seemed to happen overnight, but it was actually the work of many over time. It was small actions that lead to the wall falling down.

The goal should be not to just think about these things one day a year, but rather to think about them daily. Because action goes where our attention is focused. And action is the only way to implement real lasting change upon ourselves.

A last quote “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” We can be disappointed that even though some progress has been made, it hasn’t happened yet,. Just don’t lose hope that if we all keep walking together hand in hand, that it will happen.

If you want to soar in life, you must first love yourself

If you want to soar in life, you must first love yourself.

“You have to love yourself because no amount of love from others is sufficient to fill the yearning that your soul requires from you” – Dodinsky

So many of you have put the cart before the horse when it comes to love. You spend all of your time “earning” the love of others by being who they want you to be. By doing everything in your power to make their life perfect. You put others ahead of yourself and at the end of the day, nothing turns out the way you wanted it to.  You are left feeling like a failure, just “not good enough”.

There is a show on PBS called “Home Fires”.  It takes place in England during WWII.  It’s about a women’s group that contributes to the village and the war effort.  In the first season there is one woman whose husband abuses her.  Like all abusers he makes every time he loses his temper to be her fault.  The real issue at hand for the story line is that he is a newspaper writer who can’t get enough work, so of course he takes it out on someone he is supposed to love.

A few of her best friends figure out what is happening, but at the point in history there really isn’t anything they can do about it.  She is too ashamed to admit what is happening.  The times that she struggles to fight back, he leaves her self-worth in even more tatters.  At the end of the first season, one of her friends was successful in getting him a war correspondent job without him being aware of her having a hand in it.

He leaves the village to go to the front, and now his wife has the opportunity to start loving herself and building up her self-esteem.  The hope being that she doesn’t fall back into the same situation when he returns.  One of the underlying contributors of why women stay in abusive situations is that they don’t love themselves enough to gather up what remains of their self-worth and self-trust, to leave and not look back.

“Love yourself enough to take the actions required for your happiness.  Love yourself enough to cut yourself loose from the ties of the drama filled past.  Love yourself enough to move on” – Dr. Steve Maraboli

You may not be in such an extreme situation with your self-love, but you only have to listen to the comments you make to yourself, to know that it is something you can still do more work on.

When you live your life in such a way that reflects, you’re coming in last, you buy into a lie.  A lie that loving yourself first will take away from loving others.  A lie that says the only way to be worthy of self-love, is to prove that others love you first. How could you attract the love of others, if you don’t even love yourself?

Trying to in essence purchase the love of others by the self sacrifice of yourself, is like trying to fit the square peg in the round hole.  You can push it, twist it, and pound the peg until it shatters, but it will never fit. It won’t fill that yearning from your soul, that begs you to put “love us” first.

5 Things to Quit – right now.

• Trying to please everyone
• Fearing Change
• Living in the past
• Putting yourself down
• Overthinking

You have the power to choose where you are going. You have the power to stop trying to get attention from those who hurt you most. You have the power to stop hating your body, your personality, and the pieces of you that don’t fit in the square hole.

You can start with loving yourself, saying “I love my thighs just as they are”, “I love my imperfect smile”, “I love that I snort when I laugh”, “I love me”.  You can get the truth of the situation into your bones – nobody will ever love you more than you love yourself.

It is critically important to your health and happiness – both physical and mental – that you treat yourself right.

What if for the rest of this year you devoted yourself to loving you more?  Your choices will change your life.

Make peace with your mirror and watch your reflection change.  The loss of judgment in your eyes.  The removing of the wrinkles of anxiety across the forehead, that you aren’t good enough.  The curve of the smile of self-confidence, that says you are amazing, and you are rocking that outfit.  The glow of inner peace and love that fills your space with light.  And – LOL – Best hair day EVER!