We Are Stronger Than We Know
When the butterfly has completed its change, the last step is to break through the chrysalis and unfurl its wings. Once they are dry, it is time to fly.
There is a story about how if you help the butterfly out of its coverings, it is crippled. This is because it needs to complete its growth through the releasing of its casing. If you enlarge the hole it creates, it deforms the wings. The same… is true for us. It is the persistant beating-pushing-stretching of the wings that breaks open the casing and allows the butterfly to fly free. The Grand Canyon was carved out of rock by water, persistence is a powerful thing.
Sometimes life’s struggles are to help us realize that we need to grow stronger to complete our journey. Being courageous requires us to be vulnerable. It is a sign of strength when we put ourselves out there. You can’t really experience life, if you live without risking failure. The reality is that the strongest people feel the pain of change, they understand it, and they accept it as part of the growth process. They realize as Thomas Monson said, “Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.”
A meme I collected said:
It will hurt.
It will take time.
It will require dedication.
It will require willpower.
You will need to make healthy decisions.
It requires sacrifice.
You will need to push your body to its max.
There will be temptation.
But, I promise you, when you reach your goal, it’s worth it.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Looking at history, I think this quote best describes what we know of Anne Frank, who still believed even after the things she experienced, that the world is filled with good people.
When struggles happen to us we have a choice, they can define us or refine us. For Anne they refined her. Those who become defined by their struggles are true victims. They can’t move past the horrible thing that happened. They encase themselves with what happened and choose safety out of fear. They stop growing, becoming deformed inside, until they learn to “let it go”. To break out of the casing and unfurl their wings.
The best advice comes from Bob Marley, “Being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure.” You take a chance of being wounded by living this way, but as Ernest Hemingway said, “The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.”
Awaken To Your Soul’s Destiny
It took me years to find the magic of self transformation. Each transformation I go through, awakens me a little more. It is a personal and sacred journey each time. Each time I get curious about something, I know that my soul is sending me a new message to wake up. It’s time to make another transformation, another change, another shift in my life.
I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.
– Joshua Graham
I now know that I no longer have to walk through the dark night of the soul, to transform my life. I think about the experiences in my past, and what I learned going through each experience of death and rebirth. It is the death of something that needs to be released, something that no longer serves me but rather belongs to the old sleepwalking me. It is the rebirth of the real me. The parts of me that I hid deep within. It could be something about myself that I disowned as a child. It could be the dream that I was told wasn’t possible coming back to life. It is the realization that I am whatever I choose to become.
I realized that strong souls are forged living through the fires of hell. That the fire itself is healing, The fires may feel like they are consuming us, but they are refining us. They burn off the false truths that we cling to. Like false messiahs they promised they would keep us afloat, but it was all illusion. They were shown to be false prophets of our subconscious, seeking to keep our souls bound, unmoving in chains. The fires consume the false beliefs, freeing our souls rise up from the ashes like the phoenix. We rise up with wings of faith and soar into a brightly shining divine destiny.
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
– Charles Bukowski
While I prefer to live the rest of my life, proactively seeking transformation, I can still honor the forges of hell for the deep truths that they provided. I am climbing up to the top of the next mountain summit, to view the next horizon of transformation. Within each new transformation, there is a pattern that reappears in every persons life. This pattern weaves itself through the tapestry of our life. In one corner we have the scene of our home and family life. In another section of the tapestry we find our employment or career. In another scene we see the health of our physical body, while another reflects the health of our spiritual body.
In all these scenes there is a common thread that winds through. For myself, for years it was the fear of being seen. What is so interesting is that I discovered this thread came from my mother and was actually her own pattern. When I realized that it didn’t belong to me, it was as though the thread dissolved, and could no longer be located in my life tapestry. We all have threads in our tapestry that don’t belong to us. They belong to friends and family. We need to pull and release these threads back to their true owners.
Other common threads or patterns in the tapestry are my own. My fears, which hold me back. They are like the loose hairs that thread and wind themselves into your laundry. The fears wind around and through the patterns of the cloth. Have you ever taken a item of clothing out of the dryer only to find stray hairs wound into the fabric of your clothes? It isn’t part of the material, but it somehow has wound itself into the material. When you pull on it, it will break, but it is really hard to get all of the hair out of the material. That is what these patterns of fear are like. We pull at them, and break them up. But there always seems to be a part of them still there.
I have a need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.
– William Lloyd Garrison
There are also “not enough” threads which are the spaces were the material creates these little pills – the thread gathers into these little knobs, which affect the look of the item. They are formed from abrasions in day to day life. Places where we felt judged, not appreciated, ill-used. These “not enough” threads get created from stories we have told ourselves all of our lives. These stories, although we would swear are true, are in fact illusions. When we get curious and start examining why we are rubbing our life the wrong way, we are able to shift these stories. When patterns are broken, we transform the chaos into new beliefs. Beliefs of being strong minded; strong souled; strong bodied; and strong hearted. An awakened soul.
The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
The reason people awaken when they do, is because they have finally stopped agreeing to things that insult their soul. They wake up to the fact that they are no longer owned by the desires outside the body, but have awakened to their true nature. Their heart is on fire, and they burn off the chains that have been holding them in place.
Be true to life by being true to your purpose. As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power.
– Eckhart Tolle
We are in fact spiritual beings, that are awakening to our purpose in becoming human. We turn inward to remember why we are here and what we came to do.
Go, knock at the door of your own heart.
– Rumi
That is where you start looking for your answers. Enlightenment is a destructive process because we have to let go of things, stories really, that we have told our sleeping selves were true. With each awakening we leave behind something or someone. It takes courage to tear down the stone walls that we built to keep ourselves asleep. Those stones were hidden deep within us, like unseen anchors they held us in place. With enlightenment, we begin cutting through the iron chains with a sacred energy that comes through our divine connection. Heating up the links until they snap apart, setting us free.
It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self discovery, rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.
– Marianne Williamson
By realizing who we are at our deepest level, we find our personal genius. That unique gift that the divine gave us, is like the fingerprint of our soul. No one else has the same personal genius that we have. Each personal genius is required to fulfill their life purpose and ignite their passions into action. We are all like individual puzzle pieces sent to the earth to fulfill a divine purpose. That we why some of us feel the force of Rumi’s words, “do not go back to sleep.” Because the world is waiting on each of us to fulfill our divine purpose.
This Universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.
– Rumi
Transformation, is a process. If we fail to involve all of the steps in the process, what we end up with is temporary change. We change for a few weeks, or maybe a few months, but eventually the rubber band of will power will snap and we will return to the previous habits and lifestyle. Change is temporary. Transformation is required to truly shift our life, our DNA, into a totally new being. With each one of us that awakens, our gifts bring us one step closer to universal peace and harmony.
Behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.
– Paulo Coelho
So be curious, and take that first step down the path to awaken. Then be curious and take the next step to enlightenment. Then be curious and take the next step to transformation. Then be curious and take the next step to the next horizon. Then be curious and awaken just a little more. Get curious and become even more enlightened and transformed again and again.
The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.
– Joy J Golliver
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We all Matter
The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another – Simone de Beauvoir
When I was a little girl and I was behaving badly, my mom would always say it was because my hair was in my eyes, and I needed to get my bangs cut. I never did figure out if there really was a correlation between hair in your eyes and bad behavior. But if there is, then there are a lot of people in the world that need to get their bangs cut.
It seems like the news agencies and our government have gotten into a rut. A pattern of bad behavior where they are just waiting to maliciously pounce on one another. They have forgotten their purpose. They got sidetracked and can’t seem to find their way back to their purpose.
Sometimes the same thing happens to us. We get sidetracked off on some piece of drama. As it plays out, we get sucked further and further down that particular rabbit hole. It’s like when you go into the kitchen to get a drink of water. Then you notice stuff on the counter that someone got out and didn’t put away. So, you put it away. Then you notice dishes in the sink. So, mumbling about how you have to do it all, you take care of that. Then you are tired and go back into the living room to sit on the sofa, completely forgetting that you got up to get a glass of water.
Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them – regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or economic circumstances – Christopher Dodd
The world right now if you pay attention to the news seems pretty scary. It would seem that it is filled with violence, and racial and gender hatred. For some reason, the news and our political leaders around the world seem to be focused on the small minorities of events that are truly negative. Nothing is said about the positive things that are going on around us.
In Washington hundreds maybe even thousands of employees are doing a great job, but you don’t hear about their progress, you hear about the negative fighting that is going on within the political parties and even amongst their own parties.
In your local town, the news for 45 minutes will be about every negative thing going on around the world, and then they spend a less than 5 minute segment on someone in the local area that is giving back and helping those in need. We need to reverse this trend. Spend more time on the great people all around us that are doing great work helping others. Celebrate milestones in people’s lives.
It has to begin with peaceful collaborative action. We as in all of humanity, all matter and we are all equal. We may have different colors of skin; have different religious beliefs; have different cultures and social and economic backgrounds, but we are still all the same.
We all need to be seen and heard as being a part of our families and communities. We need to turn towards each other in brotherly love and trust. We are all one people, and we need to start standing together.
We need to cultivate it like a garden – the gardening science of human relationships. We need to weed out what is wrong, support what is weak, and prune off anything that isn’t supporting the growth of peace.
We’re All human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving – J.K. Rowling
Each of us has a powerful voice that needs to be heard. You have the right to speak up when wrongdoing is being done or condoned. It is the basis of how this country was founded.
Instead of listening to those who seek to tear down your country out of fear, you need to show the world just how powerful a group of people can be when they come from their hearts with peace and love to each other.
We need to transform that fear into love and forgiveness. The world will be changed by our positive examples of reaching out to each other in love.
You have thoughts and ideas of what can be done to improve our broken system. You need to listen with both ears to what others are saying. You need to be slow to speak from the standpoint of making sure that your words are contributing to the discussion, and not tearing it apart. You need to be part of the solution. We all want a world without war, conflict or suffering
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible – Maya Angelou
When you see police shootings of unarmed men or women in their pajamas who were just trying to report a possible crime, it is obvious that changes must be made. Not only laws or procedures, but hearts and minds need to be changed.
If you start with your own heart and mind, seeking to rip out the prejudices and judgements that you have yourself, then we will have made a good start to what needs to be done by every person in our world.
Walls turned sideways are bridges – Angela Davis
The Best Is Yet To Come, In New Beginnings
“Always believe something wonderful is about to happen . . . ” – Unknown
Jack Canfield tells a wonderful story of an elderly woman who is meeting with her minister to plan out her future funeral. She tells him all the things that she wants around her – her bible, what she wants to wear, and then she says that she wants a fork. Puzzled the minister asks her why a fork? So she says, “when they have the potlucks at the church you know you are going to have a special desert, when they say to save your fork. The fork is to remind everyone that the best is yet to come.”
When a friendship or relationship ends, or a loved one dies, it can seem like your broken heart is all you have left. There can be no happy ending.
That is when you need to remember the story of the fork.
You need the reminder that the best is yet to come. You may not even see a glimmer of what it could be. You could look at the broken pieces of your heart and think that there is no way it can be mended.
“When the world says give up, hope whispers try one more time” – Unknown
But what you are going to do is not really mending your heart.
It is giving your heart a new beginning.
Think of a clear calm lake. No waves, just a perfectly flat surface. You can see like a mirror the reflections of all that is around it. Now pick up a stone and throw it as far as you can into the lake. As it hits the surface, it creates a ripple on the surface of the lake. All of the reflections you saw before shift and change. The ripple starts small and expands out to the entire lake. Waves lap back and forth on the rocky and sandy shorelines.
Eventually the ripples expand to the point that the surface of the lake is completely calm again. The reflections on the water are clearly seen again.
However, the lake has been forever changed. It now contains that stone on the bottom of the lake. This lake is your heart. Your heart will never be the same, as it contains both the love and heartbreak that occurred.
It can come back into it’s new shape, and look the same, but it has been forever changed. There is always a new beginning. The stone does not define you. Let it go (no I am not singing the frozen song – lol).
“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
Don’t confuse the current storm raging on your path with your final destination. This storm will play itself out. The sun will come out again.
Be strong enough to let that hurt go. Transform that hurt into something positive. Find the gold in the experience. The divine presence is transforming your heart that wants to turn to stone, into a new healthy heart that will open to love again.
Think of all of the firsts that have happened in your life.
- 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
So when someone or something breaks your heart, know that eventually the ripples of sorrow, loss and pain will expand out and fade away. When you lose a loved one, a job, a lifestyle, or best friend – know that it is in the journey itself, that you become strong.
Your heart may have been forever changed by the loss but remember the fork – the best is yet to come. The things that you can’t change, change you instead. See a new beginning, a new way of seeing things, a new chance to dance.
Lyrics quoted from from “I Hope You Dance”, by Lee An Womack
I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin’ might mean takin’ chances but they’re worth takin’,”
Lovin’ might be a mistake but it’s worth makin’,
Don’t let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin’ out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin’ might mean takin’ chances but they’re worth takin’,”
Lovin’ might be a mistake but it’s worth makin’,
Don’t let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin’ out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
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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Love Must Prevail
It’s inspiring to see that in response to one person’s darkest, most violent actions, humanity can still come together in an effort to win with the power of love. The link below takes you to the Broadway site where you can buy the song “What the World Needs Now is Love” that they recorded for $1.99 and support the victims of this horrible tragedy. Watch the video, it brings a smile to your face and peace to your heart.
http://www.broadwayrecords.com/shop/broadway-for-orlando-what-the-world-needs-now-is-love-mp3
Keep Praying
This is a heart warming video in which a family that was having an extremely hard time financially was “adopted” by a couple in an Atlanta Church. As part of helping them they had started a GoFundMe account to raise funds as they were being evicted from a slum home and had no where to go. 2 Chainz found out about their situation through his TRU Foundation and stepped in to help.
So many rappers have the negative reputation of drugs, violence and the over the top opulent lifestyle (expensive cars, flashy jewelry, mansions, etc). I love it when people break out of the box to show that they are not just all about the money, but want to pay it forward, helping those who need it.
The 38-year-old rapper created the “Dabbin’ Santa’ sweater; a screen-printed cartoon Santa Claus doing the dab with snowflakes falling which was highly demanded last Christmas. He made a whopping $2 million in sales and he decided to use the money to give back to the society in collaboration with his TRU foundation. The house the family with 9 kids lived in before now was a rat-infested apartment with no heat and mold growing all over. 2 Chainz discovered their situation through a fundraising website set up by Atlanta’s Progression Church and bought the new home for them.
He shared the surprise on Youtube. “I’m looking forward to seeing their smiles,” he said before the big reveal. “I’m looking forward to the kids growing up knowing that Uncle 2 Chainz came through. […] All you gotta do is pray. Keep praying. You gotta have faith. You gotta believe.”
This isn’t the first time he has given back to his community. There are YouTube videos where he paid the rent for 1 year for a disabled veteran. He has also given a mini van to a family so that they could transport their brain damaged son back and forth to the hospital. He also paid the rent for a year for another family.
Heart of Gold: Rapper 2 Chainz buys a new house for a family of 11
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!
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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Fire & Faith
“Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it – likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.” – Viktor E. Frankl
This sentence really sneaks up on you, because you really have to give it some thought and exploration. You would think that any fire, of any size would be extinguished by a storm. But then it dawned on me that what he was referring to was the wind itself in the storm. A strong wind will blow a weak fire out as it roars by. But a strong fire is whipped up by the fire to even greater heights. A strong fire actually creates a wind within itself.
So someone with a strong faith will do things that they never thought possible, even risking their life to save others. The hero is actually birthed by the strong faith. This isn’t necessarily a faith in oneself or a higher spiritual being, although both of those play into it. It is a strong faith in the idea itself that is being defended. It is the passionate belief of the individual along with those other things that are always talked about.
The woman who lifts an automobile off her child doesn’t have strong faith in that moment that she can lift the car, and probably doesn’t even have a thought about how heavy the car is. What she has strong faith in, is that she will do anything to protect that child and at the moment that means, lifting hundreds of pounds like it is a sack of potatoes. If asked she will say that it was a miracle of God, or that she doesn’t know how it happened.
In Viktor Frankl’s time it was what motivated people to save people of a different religion that they didn’t know, at the risk of their lives and of their families lives. That strong faith could have come from a religious belief; from saving the children who were at risk; from the value of a human life – no matter whose life it was; from a combination of these things and others that they were personally passionate about. But the strong storm of the Nazi regime was the motivating wind of destruction that struck a cord within them that said, “no more” can I stand by and do nothing.
Today in your life, what are you willing to give thought to and apply that strong faith to, and change in your life or the lives of others from that same place?
Faith
“Faith is taking the first step, even when you can’t see the whole staircase” Martin Luther King
I always think of the scene in the Indiana Jones movie when they step into the air with faith that the bridge is there, even though they can’t see it. Anyone at the time of the civil rights movement, or the movement that Gandhi started would have said that the bridge was missing. That is wasn’t possible to do what they did. But they both stepped forward into impossibility and made it possible.
There are things in my own life, that coming from my background, that many would have said, “it is not possible to have the position and success I have”, without the formal education.
What I have come to realize is that every excuse that we come forward with – each proof that we can’t do something – is just that we don’t yet have the faith to see the bridge or staircase. It is always there, we just don’t see it. Fear keeps us blind. Faith removes the blinders and helps us see clearly that we just need to take the next step. One step forward at a time and with faith we make it across the bridge and up to the top of the staircase.
We are all on our own hero’s journey. It is a journey made by faith. When you hear about someone doing something like lifting the car off a child, or bringing someone out of a burning building, they all say the same thing. When asked weren’t you afraid? They say, I just saw something that needed doing and I did it. I didn’t think about it.
When you think about something, you engage fear. Don’t think about it, just take the next step in faith and surprise yourself. Once you see that you aren’t falling down the ravine, it is easier to take the next one.
And remember, none of the hero’s in the stories are perfect, perfection isn’t what is required. What is required is to just do something that needs doing. As the Nike commercial says, “Just do it”.
Faith
“Fear of failure and fear of the unknown are always defeated by faith. Having faith in yourself, in the process of change, and in the new direction that change sets will reveal your own inner core of steel.” – Georgette Mosbacher
I love that the fear of failure and unknown is defeated by having faith in me! That it is really about understanding that failure is simply an opportunity for a change in process or direction. The unknown becomes known by simply moving forward.
I think about my great great grandmother setting out across the U.S. to find a better life. I am sure she was afraid for herself and her family, afraid of failing them. Afraid of the unknown – wild animals, nature, weather, outlaws – Yet they went ahead and faced their fears and the hardships of the journey. They were looking for the same basic things, a home, a better way of life, a chance to be a success. I come from a long line of strong pioneering women and I have faith that I also have that strong inner core of steel that will see me through the changes of direction to the success I am reaching for!