Stand Tall
Life can be frigid cold and it tries to freeze you out. Refuse to succumb. Stand tall in your frozen glory, for in due time Spring will be here. Crisis is like the coldest winter day. The biting truth covers you in ice and threatens to freeze everything. Hold on, like the seasons shift and wane, so too does crisis.
What Does The Term, “The sky’s the limit” Mean To You?
What does the term, “the sky’s the limit” mean to you? For me, it is where the comfort zone meets “what else is possible?”
What is stopping you is the unwillingness to live beyond this reality.
– Unknown
It is an extension of “what is possible”, that is beyond what “normal” is for me. It is where all of the magic is, approaching life from that attitude. All our of limitations are self installed. We choose them either by accepting them from someone else, or our own inner critic forming them after a failure. The sky is not the limitation, we are. We see these limitations in our professional life, our personal life and our spiritual life. Some of these limitations come from our culture, through the “roles” we play with our friends and family.
Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness. But it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.
– Unknown
When we go on a hero’s journey, the walls that we have built around us, to limit us, get torn down. When you take any really great story, you find within it what Joseph Campbell called the Hero’s Journey. My two favorite stories are “Star Wars” (the first three with Luke) and “Lord of The Rings”.
The main character (Luke or Frodo) is going through a “normal” or boring life. Nothing much is happening. Then there is a call to adventure (Luke has R2D2 show up and Frodo has Gandalf), something new is introduced into the characters life. This alters the hero’s destiny. At first the hero refuses the call to adventure – this isn’t for me. I can’t get involved. This can sometimes be because the hero knows that the role that you play within your family, or tribe will be forever changed once you cross the threshold.
Our worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.
– Jerry Bridges
Then the hero encounters the mentor – someone who gives advice and gets him ready. It could be someone supernatural, mystical or angelic. The hero crosses the threshold – leaves home and enters into the adventure. There are tests, allies and enemies are encountered in the journey which teach the hero a lot about him or herself. Plan A and possibly Plans B and C fail, as the hero experiences setbacks and has to rethink how to proceed.
Because you are alive, everything is possible.
– Nhat Hanh
The hero has faith which leads them to access higher levels of knowledge and abilities to meet the tests with. The hero sees their limitations and ultimately has to defy and defeat them in order to pull through. The setbacks all lead to the ultimate crisis of life or death, where the hero struggles to complete their destiny (Luke battling the evil emperor and Frodo himself and the ring). Now the hero gets the reward – they have won out over the enemies. Many times the loses are mourned even as the victory is celebrated. The hero begins the journey back home, forever changed by the journey. The old limitations of what the hero thought they were capable of have changed. They have been forever transformed.
The reason people awaken, is because they have finally stopped agreeing to things that insult their soul.
– Unknown
I believe that we all take numerous hero’s journeys. We take them in our personal lives, our professional lives and our spiritual lives. We take small journeys and we take “dark night of the soul” journeys. Each time we need to transform our lives, we take a hero’s journey. We reinvent ourselves, we improvise, adapt and overcome our self made limitations. We get creative, we become flexible and adjust as we experience paradigm shifts.
There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
– Bruce Lee
So don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon. Use your imagination and creativity, to discover that the possibilities of your world are limitless.
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In order to stand out, one must be different
In order to stand out, one must be different. I have always loved the saying “why fit in when you were born to stand out?” by Dr. Seuss. For me it was really hard to make this change, as I had spent most of my life being invisible. I love the analogy of a rainbow. It isn’t just made up of red, yellow, blue, green, pink, and purple. It is made up of 100 of shades of every color, and every mix of color imaginable. Take just the 1,000’s of shade combinations of purple in the rainbow. While you might think that no one will notice if one shade is not shining brightly, the rainbow is diminished in its beauty when that happens. It requires every single shade to be there, in order to be the beautiful promise of God. We require every one of you to shine brightly to deliver the promise of God, which he made when he sent you to this earth. Being a leader is an interesting subject for women. I was listening to a part of Sheryl Sandberg’s Ted Talk today, and she was talking about how when she was in school she was told to not raise her hand so much. I remember the same thing happening to me. That I was bossy, a know-it-all, too smart for myself. So I shut down and started being even more invisible. I started waiting for someone to pick me instead of volunteering, and this carried over into my adult life. I turned down promotions saying that I didn’t want the responsibility, when what I really wanted to say was I didn’t want to risk being told to once again become invisible. I continually pushed down the answers I had for senior management and let others steal the ideas and promote themselves. I finally had enough and became what I called an agent of change for my own self. I started listening and following my intuition. I stepped out of my comfort zone, stood up and voiced my opinions. And I have kept expanding my comfort zone. Every mistake I have made is like compost in the garden. It may feel and smell like manure when it happens, but if I compost those failures into my life, I can learn and grow from them. I learned that I can fail and my life isn’t over. I learned that the person who judges me the most has been me, and so I gave the judge permission to cheer me on instead. I love this quote I found today, “when you dance to your own rhythm, people may not understand you; they may even hate you. But mostly they’ll wish they had the courage to do the same.” I am going to hang it over my desk. I have spent too much of my life wishing I had the courage to do what I see others doing. Instead I am going to “dance to my own rhythm” and let someone else be inspired to do the same. The Lion is released from the cage, and ready for the grand adventure!
How Does One Become A Butterfly?
A caterpillar must endure a season of isolation before it turns into a butterfly. Embrace the time you have alone, it will only make you stronger.
– Steven Aitchison
Life is a journey of learning and discovery. As young children we take in everything we can learn. We are authentically ourselves. Somewhere along the line of growing up, we learn to hide who we really are. To keep ourselves safe. To avoid ridicule. To be the perfect person, so that we will be loved. We have many reasons why we start hiding. But there comes a time in our life, when we realize that in order to be truly happy, we have to transform back into who we really are. We need to become the person we were created to be.
Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.
– Unknown
Transformation gives you the chance to rewrite the story of who you are and who you are capable of being. There are many things in our life that we give negative meanings to. But what if you gave pain the definition that it shows you that which is not for you? This would be a positive thing to know – what doesn’t belong to me or my life. Envy is another word that has a bad rap. What if envy simply shows you things which you may wish to empower in your life? That would be a great thing to know – things I want in my life and can empower myself to obtain.
To be nobody but yourself is a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight – and never stop fighting.
– E.E. Cummings
The being that is forming in the cocoon is no longer a caterpillar. For the caterpillar the past is truly a place of reference. It can no longer live there, because that body is gone. Within the cocoon the caterpillars body literally melted into goo, and then formed a totally new body. As the butterfly’s body grows into its new shape, it becomes cramped as the wings want to expand out. It isn’t a place of residence for the butterfly, so it has to break loose and spread it’s wings and find a new home. Even though everyone who knew you as a caterpillar is expecting you to still be a caterpillar, you can’t go back. You have to fight to go forward, staying true to who you now are.
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
– Mary Oliver
The butterfly had to break out of the old place of residence and begin a brand new journey, where everything is experienced for the first time. It must break open its heart to begin this journey, because it has to trust its intuition for flying, for finding food, for making a new home. Literally everything for the butterfly is a brand new experience. You have to have the courage to follow your own heart and intuition.
You will know you made the right decision when you pick the hardest and most painful choice but your heart is at peace.
– Unknown
Transformation is a scary business. Because I am a perfectionist, I hate doing something new for the first time. I am doing the best I can with my posts, knowing that I will have spelling errors or grammar mistakes in my writing. I can proofread this a dozen times and the minute I publish I find something I missed. When I sponsor the post, I can’t make any changes, so anything I missed becomes a permanent part of the post. I am living with being imperfect in order to just get the post out there.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
– Steve Jobs
When we listen to our intuition, we are right where we are meant to be. We can impact the people that we share the world with. It may be a tiny corner of the world. Or we could be like a comet and affect the entire world as we fly through the night sky. It isn’t up to us to say how much of an impact we will make. It is up to us to live life as fully as we can. To follow the dreams that have been written in our hearts. To break out of the comfort zone and spread our wings and fly. It doesn’t even matter if we know where we are or where we are going. It only matters that we fly. That we soak up the sun. The we soar with the breezes. And if we can do that, then whatever we leave behind will be sufficient.
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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.
Like most of us, I have a dream. LemonadeMakers is my vision that pulls me through each and every day. The space it currently occupies is a wide chasm from where I believe it can go. I know, from the bottom of my soul, that this is why I was born. And if I let my mind go wild, it is terrifying to think of everything that I need to do in order to grow it into what it is meant to do.
That is where inspiration comes in. It gives me the confidence to admit I don’t know it all, but I can find someone who does.
It gives me the courage to think outside the box to figure out a way to get everything done on a shoestring budget.
It helps me use my favorite words of improvise, adapt and overcome when I come up against 2-ton boulders that block my way. It gives me super powers to blast those boulders into pebbles and continue on my journey.
It gives me the grace to let someone else take the wheel when I am tired and not think that I have to do it all myself.
It empowers me, refueling my tank when it is low to keep on the path to the next destination.
Inspiration is the key to the kingdom.
courage
“It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Courage
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Sir Winston Churchill
We all recognize the courage that it takes to stand up and speak. What we don’t really think about is that it takes courage to listen – really listen to someone else’s point of view.
Most of the time we aren’t really listening. Part of it is because we are preoccupied; and part of it is because we think so much faster than people speak.
But part of it is also because if we really listen to take in another persons point of view, it might mean that we need to change our own. No one likes to be wrong, so if we are listening to something that might not be a match to our thinking, we are usually busy marshalling out thoughts to wage war against their point of view. So we don’t really hear them.
We all want to be heard and so few of us are. Today give someone the gift of really listening to them. You don’t really need to do anything except listen and acknowledge. Most of the time people aren’t really looking for advice, just someone to listen deeply, because they already have their answers and your listening to them will allow them to access their inner wisdom. They will walk away thinking that you are so wise, and all you did was give them the gift of being heard!
Courage
“Courage is fear that has said its prayers” – American Proverb
In the end we have to take a leap into the unknown trusting we will be given wings to fly. We would not have been given the gifts that we have if we weren’t supposed to use them. We fail to give thanks or show appreciation if we don’t use them. So widen out your box today by stepping outside of the boundaries & more of yourself.