In Life’s Dance, Do You Partner With What You Want Or What You Fear?

“If you are resisting something, you are feeding it. Any energy you fight, you are feeding.  If you are pushing something away, you are inviting it to stay”  – Michael Singer

Every day in life, you will experience fear in some way.  Some days it feels like the wolf is at the door.  As he claws at the door you can see it starting to splinter apart.  He is fiercely growling, as he is threatening your life.  Your heart is pounding so loudly it almost drowns out the wolf’s noises.

Other times, you can hear the wolf in the distance, howling and teasing you that he is coming.  You can hear his claws as he paces around and around the house.  But he doesn’t try to come in.  He is content to pace outside and torment you that he might try to come in.

Some of these fears are false events, that you think might be coming true in your life.  You worry at them, like the dog at a bone.  You think about them constantly circling round them over and over.  You feel the non-ending stress with headaches and stomach aches.  You can’t sleep without nightmares.

Other fears are things that have happened to you, that you are afraid will happen again.  Traumatic events that replay in your mind.  Some of these events will take professional counseling to get over, others are something that you need to work through and release.

I have a process that I use when the event has too much pain contained within it.  I review the trauma and deal with releasing as much as I can.  Then I mentally pack the rest of it into a box and put it on a shelf.  I label the box with a date to reopen it.

“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong.  The amount of work is the same”  – Carlos Castaneda

On that date, I again work with the trauma and release another portion of it.  Then I repack it into a smaller box, labeled with a new date.  I continue the process until the last of the trauma has been released.

I know that I have reached that stage for two reasons.  (1) I can touch the trauma, and there is no longer a triggered reaction to it. Like touching a tooth ache, I touch it and it no longer causes pain.  (2) There is nothing left to put into a smaller box.  I can then give thanks that I had the strength, will, and courage to come through this trauma with the grace of God.

Part of releasing the pain, is finding one small thing that was a positive life lesson.  I look at it through a strangers eye.  I look for something that I would say as a stranger, to someone who had experienced that trauma.

I stop being the victim.  I stop being in the trauma.  I step outside the drama.

I look for how it strengthened the person’s character.  How they would be able to show more compassion and empathy for others now that they understand this experience.  I keep looking for some nugget of gold.

When I find it, I can release that much pain from the box.  Eventually the box is empty of pain, and instead of pain, I now have a room filled with priceless experiences.

“Opportunities to find deep powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging”  – Joseph Campbell

Some of your fears are not worrying about something bad happening to you.  Some of your fears are about how you are judging yourself.

• You fear being wrong.
• You fear making mistakes.
• You fear being left all alone.
• You fear being abandoned.
• You fear disappointing those you love the most by not being able to live up to their expectations.
• You fear not being able to be what they are trying to make you be.  And you are right.  If you try to be something that you aren’t, eventually you are going to fail.

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine”  – Bruce Lee

So what do you do with your world of fears?

• Don’t resist them.  That just makes them bigger and harder to overcome.  Instead get busy with looking inside your own heart and mind.
• Dig in the cave where the fear has rooted itself.  Dig it up.
• Get curious about what event planted it in that spot.
• Get nosy about what other interpretation could be possible as you examine the roots of the fear.
• Start digging up each individual root of the fear plant, making sure that you don’t leave any roots behind.
• Take it out of the dark cave into the bright sunlight.
• Taking action and getting curious about the fear, allows you to let go of the pain it was causing.
• Taking action you can release the doubts that the fear created and replace those doubts with courage and confidence.

By transplanting this fear out in the warm sunshine, you have faced the worst that the fear has to offer.  You came out of the battle victorious.

Not because you killed the fear, but because you transformed it into something even more powerful.  You transformed it into the treasures of dreams fulfilled.  Of achievements accomplished.  Of courage maintained.  Of emotions generated such as gratitude and happiness. Of having the best adventures, the best stories to share with others.  The best gift of all, is to truly know yourself.

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear”  – Jack Canfield

Life’s Adventures Unlock The Mystery of Who You Are, Start Now

“If happiness is the goal, and it should be, then adventures should be a priority” – Richard Branson

Why should adventures be a priority?  Because it is the best way to learn about yourself and the world.  You learn about what you are afraid of, what challenges you.  What deep seated beliefs you have that you might not be aware of.  It is in fact the best way to experience “LIFE”.  You go somewhere you have never been.

It could be a walk in the woods around where you live.  A hike in the mountains.  A walk along the sea shore, listening to the sea birds call out over the sounds of the waves crashing against the sandy beach.  It could be your first time in an airplane or a cruise ship.  Sitting in a train, you watch the majesty of nature roll by as you cross the rocky mountains, and someplace deep inside you feel the shift.

Somewhere along the line, something will happen out of the ordinary.  You will start out on a certain kind of journey, and along the way the mystery of why you chose that path will reveal itself to you.

“As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen”  – Winnie The Pooh

What is so interesting about travel and adventure is the attitude you bring to it.  You can magnify every discomfort into an ordeal, or you can get curious about what is happening around you.  You can experience it all as an adventure.  You get out of the ruts in your life.  Adventures are the best way to let some stories happen to you.  Discover new trails you didn’t know existed.  Adventures answer questions you didn’t know you had, because with adventures you gain first hand knowledge and experience.

“The books we read answer questions we didn’t even know existed”  – Axel Marazzi

There might be switch backs along the trail and you decide to walk off the trail, and cut through straight up the mountainside.  You come to forks in the trail with no signs, so you have to choose to go this way or that way.  Sometimes the trees are so thick you can’t see the sun.

• It is in the getting lost, that you become aware of what is important.  What are you willing to do to get it?
• It is in the replacing of fear with curiosity that you truly see what your options are.
• It is in seeing the endless stream of possibilities are always there for you to see, but you get so single mindedly focused that you miss every door of opportunity.

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams”  – Oprah

Are you a planner?  I like to get into the details and have things laid out.  It took a lot of practice for me to start leaving space in my plans to just be adventurous.  My husband loves to just get in the car and take a drive.  No real destination, just drive down a road we have never taken, with no idea where it would take us.  Everyone needs someone like my husband, who grabs your arm and says lets go have an adventure.

“Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your live was meant to be”  – Steve Pavlina

Not planning gives me anxiety.  It feels unstable.  But slowly through years of practice, I allow for spontaneity in my life.  Is it easy for you to follow maps to the edges, and then step off the edge?  You know that the world isn’t flat.  You know there are no monsters of the deep to drag your boat down to the bottom of the ocean.

• Do you go to sleep with stars that you don’t recognize?
• How often do you order something you have never eaten before?
• Do you have the conviction, that whatever you are looking for in life, it is out there waiting for you to find it?

There is no end to what you can discover about yourself when you adventure out with your eyes wide open.  Let the journey unfold itself before you.

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that death will tremble to take us”  – Charles Bukowski

A lifetime of adventures

One of my favorite movies is with Diane Lane, in “Under The Tuscan Sun”.  After a bad a breakup, she is gifted with a vacation in Italy by her best friend.  While on the tour bus, they pass by this house and all of a sudden she makes them stop and let her off.  And that is when her adventure really begins.  She ends up buying the house, restoring it, and meets all of these new people.  She has this idea of what she wants in her life to make her happy – her dream life.  At the end of the movie she has everything she wanted, but it all came to her in a totally different way than she planned.

When you try to make life conform to a plan, you miss the mystery and magic of what it is really supposed to be.  The best gift you can give yourself is a lifetime of adventures.

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart” – Confucius

There is a wonderful book by Jack Canfield called “The Golden Motorcycle Club” and in it he writes that we travel in soul groups.  I can just see the ad for my soul group.

“Limitless soul seeking like minded limitless souls, to journey down to earth for a great adventure.  You will be leaving a good life here, to go for a greater experience of life there.  For in going out into the world of the physical body, you will succeed in discovering that you are far more than you ever dreamed of.  You will find that stories are not just something that you can read about.  Stories are what happens to you and for you when you live a life of adventure.  You will discover if you are, “the girl made up of adventure and wine and all things fine”, or “the girl made up of adventure, fine beer, brains and no fear”.

And so . . . the ADVENTURE BEGINS.  Let’s go do something remarkable.

Say Yes, Choose To Make A Difference, The Butterfly Effect

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.

  – R. Buckminster Fuller

I think that most of us have heard the concept of the butterfly effect.  That the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world, can cause a typhoon in another part of the world.  The concept of how making a single change in your life, effects the future of people all over the world.  Every time we make a change in our lives, it shifts who we are.  We in effect destroy the old personality, in creating a new personality.  The caterpillar creates a change by forming the chrysalis around its body.  Then the old body is completely destroyed.  A completely new body is created.  This kind of change is not temporary.  There is no going back to who you were.  Even small changes create revolutionary impacts in a persons life.  Science recognizes this as “The Law of Sensitive Dependence Upon Initial Conditions”, I like “The Butterfly Effect” much better.  LOL.

Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness yet become something beautiful.

 – unknown

I had this experience of seeing how a very simple comment, completely changed my own life.  I was at a seminar and the speaker had asked a question of the audience.  I had raised my hand.  He looked at me.  His face had that expression you get when you think you know someone, but you aren’t sure who they are.  He asked me if I had attended any of his other events, and I said yes.  This was actually my third weekend course with his group. 

One day, whether you are 14, 28 or 65, you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die.

  – Beau Taplin

The next words out of his mouth shifted my whole life into a new space of awareness.  He dramatically raised his arm and made the motion of removing a cape.  He said “You are one of those people.  I am removing your cloak of invisibility.”  With those couple of sentences, I was forever changed.  I could feel a heavy weight had been lifted off of me.  It was like a darkness was removed.  I felt like I was standing in the spot light.  I felt every person in the room see me for the first time. 

Each small act of kindness, reverberates across great distances and spans of time – affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo.

  – Dean Koontz

I had been one of those people who could disappear into a crowd.  Now I can’t do it.  It is no longer natural.  It now feels uncomfortable.  I thank Jesse Koran for listening to that intuitive voice inside of himself, and saying what I needed to hear.  It was definitely time for me to transform.  My purpose in this world was calling to me.  This was just the first of many transformations my life purpose would require of me.

A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth.  The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water.  Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts.  And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them is far reaching.

  – Swani Sivananda

What Jesse said was like a tiny grain of sand, a drop of water in the ocean, but that single action led to the creating of LemonadeMakers.  It lead to creating this blog.  It lead to my first book being written, and this summer it will be published.  It has led to a personal freedom in my life, because I finally said yes to me. I finally acknowledged that maybe I did have a gift with writing.  Now I wondered if maybe you would want to hear what I have learned through all of the lessons in my life.  That maybe, just maybe, you would be encouraged to make a shift and change in your own life.  I woke up, and I discovered that part of my own purpose in life, would be to help others wake up.

My writing had been calling out to me since I was a child.  But I was afraid to listen.  Now slowly that wall I had built between my life purpose and the life I was living, began to crumble.  With each new curious thought, I was able to remove some of that wall.  Curiosity is a huge wall demolisher.  Because it circumvents fears from stopping you.  It leads you to joyously take a risk and see what happens.  It is a prime movement of the transformation process.

By your hand millions – BILLIONS – of lives will be altered, caught up in a chain of events begun by you this day.

  – Andy Andrews

The reason why the butterfly effect is so interesting, is that I shift and transform a tiny grain of sand.  You in turn see something as small as a single sentence in this post, that causes you to shift and change one tiny grain of sand.  Your transformation, in turn inspires another to shift and change one tiny grain of sand.  Soon we have a whole mountain towering 5,000 feet in the air.  And it was built, one tiny grain of sand at a time.  One personal transformation of a small thing in your life, in the next persons life, and so on.  Until 5,000,000,000 grains of sand build a mountain.

Each of us is like that butterfly, The Butterfly Effect.  And each tiny move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through out organizations, our families, and our communities.

  – Shawn Achor

At some point in our life, we start looking for our life purpose.  In looking at all of the butterfly’s around her in this photo, she finds the one that is perfect for her.  She finds her purpose in life.  While her yellow butterfly looks like many others, it is unique in its coloring.  It fits her perfectly.  She recognizes it as being hers and hers alone.  The question then becomes, what does she do with it?  Because taking up this butterfly will forever change her world.  She will grow and transform into something different and new.  She has the ability to change the world with her decision.  And the interesting thing is, that she will in fact change the world either by taking that butterfly, that purpose up or leaving it behind. 

Don’t quit before the miracle happens.

 – unknown

Every action and every non-action matters.  Every choice you make or don’t make matters.  Will you fully live your life, or just continue to exist?  Your time as a caterpillar has ended.  Will you take up your life purpose, your wings?  If you have said yes in the past, is it time to trade in the smaller wings for a large pair?  To expand your comfort zone?  To acknowledge and accept your bigger purpose in this world?

Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight.  Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.

  – Arthur C. Clarke

You might find something within this post that strikes you in a new way.  Nothing has been said here, that hasn’t been said elsewhere.  But as we grow into our life purpose, we see things differently because we are different.  So sometimes a sentence brings a new insight that we didn’t get before.  This information may or may not provide some new knowledge or understanding.  Knowledge applied becomes wisdom, so maybe something in this post served as a reminder to make a transformation.  It becomes wisdom when it transforms us in some small way.  That wisdom then provides foresight to the path that we are now walking down.  It provides a small grain of sand, to put onto our mountain top of transformation that we are building.  It tells us whether to take the right hand or the left hand of the path up ahead.

The very beating of your heart matters.  Every choice you make or choose not to make matters.  Your actions impact the world.  Choose them wisely.  Expand your comfort zone.  Seek out every opportunity to say yes to your life purpose.  Your actions will shape how your future unfolds.  Your story has been so far only one of many possibilities.  New choices, new actions, expansion, transformation – all sit in front of you at this moment.  Say yes to happiness, when your life purpose lands on your hand say yes to whatever will lead to expansion and growth.

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.

  – Charles Dickens

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There are no endings. Just New Beginnings

“Keep going.  Everything you need will come to you at a perfect time” – unknown

Just keep swimming.  The storm clouds will pass, and the sun always shines once again.  It may seem like you are walking through the valley of shadows and death alone, but that is an illusion.

There is the invisible spiritual world that is always by your side.  There are friends and relatives that may not know how to help, what to say or do – but they are cheering you on.  There are people in this world who every night pray for those who feel they are lost on life’s journey.

Just as your faith can move mountains, your doubts are what put them there.  Stop creating barriers that you have to fight to get over.

“Have the courage to make the change, the strength to see you through it, and faith that everything will turn out for the best” – unknown

Some leave you because they are not interested in a transformational journey any longer.  They wish to stay safe within their comfort zone and make no waves that might swamp their little boats.

Some you leave because you realize that you can’t continue to carry their weight and still walk your own path.  You have to cut the chains that are dragging you down.

Out of the best of motives, you find that you have done too much for someone, and you have to stop.  It only hurts them to continue.  You are not giving up on them.  It was just time to release them to their own journey, and for them to find their own way.  It is not the end of your story, just the end of their part in your story.  And that is ok.

“Note to self:  None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought.  Eat the delicious food.  Walk in the sunshine.  Jump in the ocean.  Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like a hidden treasure.  Be silly.  Be kind.  Be weird.  There’s no time for anything else” – Nanea Hoffman

If you have never read any of Caroline Myss’s books or heard her speak I highly encourage you to check out her body of work.  To me she is that really critical aunt that drove you crazy as a kid, but you learn to love and appreciate as an adult.  Because everything that she says is total reality, no sugar coating, and is the best advice that you could get.

The whole reason to be on the path to personal self-transformation is to realize that there are parts of you that are not in balance.  To learn how to bring them back out of the shadow and into the light.  You can’t do that work unless you are willing to be totally honest with yourself.

“Facing personal truths and purging yourself of addictions or manipulative habits requires strength, courage, humility, faith, and the other qualities of a soul with stamina, because you are not just changing yourself; you are changing your universe.  Change one coordinate in your spiritual compass and you change your entire life’s direction” – Caroline Myss

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears” – Nelson Mandela

If you are willing to make a few mistakes, to have a few failures, you can learn how to release the monsters from under your bed.  You can take on one monster at a time.  You can talk to it and learn its story, its reason to exist.  They were created when you were small and most of their stories are just bits of truth wrapped up in drama, trauma, and misunderstanding.

If you can unwind the experience, you can help them take off their masks and their costumes.  You can take away their illusions.  You can help them understand that their help was exactly what we needed at the time.  You can thank them for protecting you.  And if you can change one small thing for them, you can transform their relationship with you.

One small change at a time, one degree makes all of the difference.

 

“It takes courage to grow up and become who we really are” e.e. cummings

Walking on the path of the transformation life, you sometimes find your path ends with a large body of water that needs to be crossed.  You might swim across, but sometimes that body of water has a strong current, rapids or even is close to the drop off of a waterfall.  So, swimming might seem too risky.

You could look for a way to build a bridge across.  But you might decide that you don’t have the “know how” to build a bridge.

You could build a boat to row across, but maybe you don’t have the funds to buy the lumber.

Or you could fly.

What you must never do is to be afraid of doing whatever is needed to get across that body of water.  Because the worst thing that can happen is that you build a house alongside that body of water, and never even attempt to get across.  That is guaranteed to give you a life of regrets.  To be always wondering “what if?”  What if you could have flown across?

What might you have accomplished in your life, if you had just risked continuing down the path of a transformational life?

What is necessary is that you are stronger than your excuses.  Whenever you hear yourself say the word, “but”, you need to stop what you are saying.  Because whatever follows but is an excuse.  You don’t need to unpack your backpack at the word “but” and build a home there.  What you need to do is to get a shovel and dig under the excuse to find the pattern of sabotage that is underneath the excuse.

Root out the pattern and recognize it as a fear.  Shift and change how you are dealing with that fear.  Doubt has built another mountain, and you can refuse to climb it.  You can instead have faith in yourself, in your friends and family, in your spiritual beliefs, and know that if you built that mountain, you can take it apart and keep on your journey.

“When it is all finished, you will discover that it was never random” – unknown

When I look back at what I thought were mistakes, I see these links.  I took a new job, which ended three months later.  I was laid off and I couldn’t find work.  I lost my car because I had no money.  I moved out of state.  I got a new job and the reason they hired me?

It was because of what I was doing at that job for three months.  That experience led to a promotion for a position that I had been aiming for, to teaching at two different community colleges, to creating and running a training program for seven branches of a savings and loan bank.  None of which would have happened without that job for three months.

So was it a mistake?  I don’t think so.  Nothing in that string of experiences was random.  I was following the path of self transformation.  Sometimes the path kicks you butt, and sometimes you kick it back.

So, what do we do?  You swim.  You just keep swimming.  You make mistakes and you keep swimming.  You try new things and you keep swimming.  You change yourself, your world and you just keep swimming.

I hope this year, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.
You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, wherever it is, art, or love, or work, or family, or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, DO IT.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
– Neil Gaiman

Hard Times Are Life’s Opportunity To Take Off And Fly Into Your Potential

Isn’t funny how you will look at someone as being “the overnight success” story.  There is no such thing as the overnight success.  Every step that we take in bringing our dreams into reality has a price.  People don’t see the 10,000 hours you put in to become the master that you are today.  They don’t see the hours that you continue to put in to hone your gifts into the genius category.  What if instead of getting mad about someone’s cutting remarks, we stayed silent.  And to take it one step further, what if instead of crying about what they just said or did (which is what they want) you laughed out loud about it?  What if you said, “if you hate this, just wait – I have more achievements that you can be mad about coming.”  And my personal favorite, “If you don’t like me and still watch everything I do, you’re not my haters, you’re my fans.”

Silence your critics.

Ignore your haters.

Delete your cynics.

 – Robin Sharma

The sad thing is that we listen to the critics at all.  We can have 10 people come up and gush all over us, how wonderful we are, so inspiring.  And then one person finds something negative to say about us, usually personal and not having anything to do with the job we do, and that is all we think about.  What if we turned it around?  Instead of taking it personally and getting wounded, what if we took it as a sign that we have something within us that needs to be released.  Thanking them, literally, because they just made you aware of some personal work that you need to do for yourself?  Just a little housecleaning to track down where that hurt you just felt is actually coming from.

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.

 – African Proverb

I have always loved the quote from Theodore Roosevelt.  It puts everything into perspective, because most haters are not putting themselves out there to accomplish their dreams.  They become haters because the truth that you are living, shows up the lies they are telling themselves.  They become haters because every time one of us puts ourselves out there, it reflects to them that they aren’t fulfilling their own personal destiny.  Every time we get back up from the failures, and keep going until we win through, it is like a stake in their hearts because they are too afraid to fail and so they don’t take even the first step into the arena.  They know that they have a divine destiny, a life purpose.  Instead of listening and following their souls calling, they smother their heart when it cries out to them to walk into the arena and get dirty.

It is not the critic who counts; nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deed could have done better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs; who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

 – Theodore Roosevelt

So how do you unlock your own potential?  You get curious.  You look for open doors to walk through.  You go on adventures.  You read, watch and listen and then think, think, think.  You wonder what if? What could I just do next?  What happens when I?  Like Alice in Wonderland, each step down the path brought something new into her life.  She realized that every single day she was a totally new person; that nothing was impossible; and that all of us are just a little bit mad; and it is always tea time.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where -‘ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough”

    ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

 

Whenever I hear the word relentless, I think of a small child.  You know that age where they ask “why”?  Why is the sky blue?  Why do dogs bark and cats meow?  Why, why, why?  At first it is cute.  Then it drives you mad.  Children are great examples of being relentless when they want something.  How many times as parents have we said no, only to give in later because we can’t take it anymore?  But like a lot of excellent childlike qualities at some point most of us lose that quality of being relentless.  We stop asking because they will just say no.  We don’t ask because what if they say no and we put ourselves out there just to be shot down.  We don’t want to be annoying, or look foolish or be a failure, and . . . . .  so we make excuses.  We place the blame on others.  We start looking around for things that won’t be hard to do.

Why Do I Succeed?

I am willing to do the things you are not

I will fight against the odds

I will sacrifice

I am not shackled by fear, insecurity or doubt

I am motivated by accomplishment, not pride

If I fall – I will get up

If I am beaten – I will return

I will never stop getting better

I will  never give up – ever

That Is Why I Succeed

Unknown

Find a purpose in life so big, that it challenges every belief you have.  That it challenges you to do things and try things that never occurred to you before.  Instead of following the crowd, break out and find your own path.  Change the way you think.  Your story gives you so many clues to your life purpose.  Your dreams are like sign posts pointing you in the direction to go forward and bring them into reality.  Your souls voice is you refusing to be quiet and invisible.  We can’t know your story until you tell it.  Whether that is from speaking, writing, acting, dancing, singing – whatever form it takes, it must be told.  Your story isn’t about being a victim, it isn’t about the tragedy that happened.  Your story is about how you overcame “all that stuff”, and how you took life’s lemons and made the best lemonade in town.

I recently read an article about a 10 year old boy in Texas who likes to invent things.  In his neighborhood, there had been a baby left in a vehicle in the summer that had died.  It really affected him.  Now he wasn’t like most of us, saying how could someone forget their child in the car.  He wasn’t thinking that they should go to jail.  What he was thinking was what could I invent so that when someone makes a tragic mistake, it doesn’t have to result in the death of a baby?  So he now has a patent pending for a little cooler that looks like a giant lego, that will turn on when the heat gets too high and the car seat is occupied by a child.  By cooling the baby, it makes time for the parent to remember they left the child in the car and rescue them.  What struck me about this story is that this totally preventable situation has been happening for years and it never occurred to millions of adults to create some sort of mechanism in the car seat to cool the child and buy enough time for the child to be rescued.  How many other opportunities are there out there for some great thinking outside the box that will save lives? 

How big is your purpose?

 

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Bring Your Unique Light To The World And Fulfill Your Life Purpose

In fairy tales when the princess was born, the King and Queen would give a feast and the wise women or fairies would bestow gifts on the child.  The gifts would range from virtue, to beauty, to wealth, to song.

I believe that you all have these wonderful gifts.  They feed into the pattern of what you came to earth to impact.  Impact is such a special word, because it has weight to it.  A small meteor falling to earth can create a large impact.  Every single one of us can make an impact in someone’s life.  In fact, we can impact the world.

Respond to every call that excites your spirit.  Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray – Rumi

Pattern is another word that has a special energy to it.  Every puzzle that is solved, every person who becomes a master at something. it is all a matter of finding the patterns to a thing, and then using those patterns to your advantage.

A person can say what they believe.

They can take actions to demonstrate that they believe, but it is the patterns that result that really tell the true story.

This is because you can’t manipulate the patterns, like you can manipulate words and actions.  It is the patterns that create the self-sabotages in your life.  It is the patterns that reveal the truth about who you are.  They show up in every aspect of the life that you live, revealing not what you say you believe about yourself, but what is hidden beneath the words.

You can shift and change the patterns in your life by letting go of the things that no longer serve you.

It is like that security blanket a small child has.  Once the child understands that it doesn’t really need the blanket to be safe, the child is ready to let the blanket go.

You have things in your life that served you once upon a time.  But as you grew in knowledge and learned to apply that knowledge wisely, you outgrew some of those old beliefs that kept you safe.

To release the old patterns, you need to try on new behaviors.  Release the training wheels off your bike and ride confidently down the street without them.  Go out and create totally new patterns, that will serve you in your life now.

Every day is a once in a lifetime event.  How much more exciting would our lives be if we embraced this truth and lived accordingly? – Steve Maraboli

What is the thing that your heart aches for?  What is your soul’s longing?  What dream keeps you up at night?

Your purpose is as simple as loving others,

and

as complicated as how do you reach out without fear

and

bring that love into reality?

 

There are challenges in your life.   There are the consequences of bad decisions you made in the past.  You have had your heart broken, and you have broken hearts.  You have scars both inside and outside of your body.  How can you reach out one more time, when you were beaten by life the last time that you reached out?

You must, must, must, let all of the baggage go.  Drop it and walk away from it.  Otherwise, you will spend the rest of your life drifting through it without purpose, or ever fully understanding how to create a life that fulfills you.

It is in the journey itself that you uncover those gifts that you were presented with when you were born.

It is in the pursuit of genius in each of those gifts that the pattern of your life begins to take shape.

Like the puzzle, at first the colors seem so similar that you don’t notice the variations.  The puzzle pieces themselves seem to be the same shape and you can try 20 or 30 different pieces before you find the one that fits perfectly into the space.  There comes a point where the picture takes shape, and you can see what the next piece is.  It gets easier and easier.

You see all of us start out the journey thinking that we know where we are going, and what we need to bring to the journey to arrive at the destination.  But for a special group of us, what we learn is that it is the journey itself, not the destination that truly reveals and uses those gifts we have received.

A strong woman knows she has strength enough for the journey . . .  but a woman of strength knows it is on the journey that she will become strong – Luke Easter

As you grow in knowledge, apply the wisdom and step outside the comfort zones in your life, you learn to listen to your intuition.  That voice that whispers to your heart.  That souls voice says, “go right”.  “Stop here”.  “Now go there”. 

When you follow the directions of the soul, you uncover depths to your life that you never knew could exist.

Your soul reveals that you already know who you are, and what you brought to this life.

• What the meaning of your life is.
• What your purpose is.
• What you are being called to do and how to do it.

All of these things are whispered to you from your intuitive inner knowing.  You just need to listen, accept and then act on it.

• Trust that your life has a purpose.
• Trust that your life is important to everyone that it has touched and will touch.
• Trust that these dreams have been given to you for a reason, and that they are important.
• Trust that your voice needs to be heard, that someone out there needs to hear you and your story, because without it they will be lost.
• Trust that you were born to make an impact.  A deep crater.
• Trust that your life purpose is to live your life out loud so that you can learn, grow, serve and dare to be the magnificent creation of God.

Trust that your soul has a plan, and even if you can’t see it completely, know that everything will unfold as it is meant to – Deepak Chopra

Set Your Life On Fire

“The best thing you could do is MASTER the chaos in you.  You are not thrown into the fire.  YOU ARE THE FIRE” – Mama Indigo

The smallest spark ignites the fire of passion that lives deep within your soul.  When that passion bursts out, then anything is suddenly possible.  That passion says that you will not give up.  That you might get knocked down, but you will get back up.  That you might fail, but you will keep trying until you succeed.

It is in the trying, failing and trying again that you learn just what you are made up of.  It strips away the facades that you hide behind.  It exposes the bones of what you are made up of.

The fires don’t burn the true you,

only the parts that are not you.

The Cherokees teach that your ancient ancestors came from the stars.  Science has proven that your body contains stardust.  Like the stars you burn with an inner fire.

Your eyes, the windows of your soul, shine with that inner fire.  It is that inner focus that drives you forward.  That inner fire is like a forge, in that it will burn away all of the things that don’t belong, leaving the pure beauty of your soul’s core.

Focus is like a bellows, which supplies air to the fire so that it breathes.  That hot air rises to push you up out of the ashes.  It is in that place inside your heart, deep within the soul where joy burns away the pain.  Life isn’t ever what you thought it was.  It is in fact, all about what it is possible to become.  What you are truly capable of being.

“What you want to ignite in others must first burn inside yourself” – One PlanetOnePlanet.com

If you have ever heated your home with a wood fire, then you know the importance of banking the coals at night.  When you do that, then in the morning it is easy to get the fire going quickly.  You need to bank your inner fires when you are being hard pressed.  When you are going through the valley of death and darkness.  If you keep the inner core burning brightly, it doesn’t matter what happens outside of you.

• The burning embers of your dreams will burst into flames.
• You will rise up again.
• You shall escape the darkness.

You shall rise, lighting the way out of the darkness with a brightly burning all consuming passion, to change yourself and thereby change the world.

What matters most is your own self confidence.  Your own beliefs.  Your own self love and self-trust.  Because when the bridges are burning, sometimes that only way out is through.  When you have to walk down that road of fire, you are only going to be able to do it if you believe you can.

Sometimes in order to rise higher, you need to burn the boats containing plans B – Z and realize that plan A is the only option.   You have to be all in.  You have to surround yourself with those who will not be afraid of the changes you are going through, because they are transforming themselves.  People who will believe in your dreams and will fan the flames of your fire.  The chain reaction of one heart on fire lighting another, and another until there is light for all.

“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically – to say “no” to other things.  And the way to do that is by having a bigger “Yes” burning inside” – Stephen Covey

Seek that path that demands more from you than you currently know how to give.  Motivation comes from that fire within us, an awakened soul.

Be fearless

in seeking your transformation

You have the capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than all of your hopes, desires, dreams and inspirations.

Live An Extraordinary, Creative, Inventive Life

Life Is A Journey Of Discovering New Possibilities

Whatever happens,

Wherever you go,

Whatever you do,

Remember this;

No one can take the Fire out of your soul,

the Stars from your eyes,

the Passion in your heart.

Those are yours forever.

 – S.L.

Do you remember that famous line from “The Wizard of Oz”?  Almost at the end, Glinda the Good Witch says, “You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas”, then the Scarecrow asked why she didn’t say anything at the beginning of the journey?  And Glinda replies, “She had to learn it for herself.”  The same thing is true for each of us.

“Have faith in your journey.  Everything had to happen exactly as it did to get you where you’re going next” – Mandy Hale

I love the thought of curiosity in our travels.  Around the next corner, you never know what might be waiting for you.  Your focus will reflect what pops out at you.  You will notice the sun shining brightly, or the clouds coming to cover it up.  You will see rainbows or the coming thunder storm.  It is all a matter of the filters that you are viewing your life from.  Each experience adds up to who we are at this very moment.  And each moment, presents change and a new you.  Who are you becoming, as you journey down the road of life?

“The journey between what you once were and who are you now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place” – Barbara DeAngelis

When you have some specific goals in mind, time seems to be so slow.  You feel like you’re wading through the mud, with each step taking so much effort.  Stepping down into the mud, feeling the cold water flooding inside your boots.  Even your toes are struggling to get a grip on the sole of the boot, as you’re trying to lift your foot out of the mud to take the next step.  Fighting against the boot as it remains stuck in the mud. You tug at your boot.  Finally getting it loose you struggle with the weight of the mud that is still attached to the boot.  You keep trying not to lose your balance and do a face plant into the mud.  It takes forever just to take a few steps in the right direction.

Have you ever felt that way?  Your have to remind yourself that each experience in your life, has been right on time.  Your are never late according the divine destiny.  Each step, and each situation that showed up at your door step right on time.  Right now you may be experiencing sickness, a job loss, work furlough, stress around your financial future, worried about putting food on the table.  That would be you stuck in the mud.  It’s hard to tell where to take the next step.

“I am learning to trust the journey even when I do not understand it” – Mile Bron

Each obstacle that you encounter, every mountain that you climb and then hike back down again, strengthens your muscles.  Some of the muscles are physical, some mental, and some are spiritual.  Learning to pace yourself so that you don’t get injured or tired and quit.  Learning about the importance of not getting caught in the mind whirlpool of indecision.  Learning that even when you think that you’re abandoned by God, you are in fact always being supported.  The breakdown teaches you so much about yourself.  You are stronger than you will ever know.  No matter what is falling apart in your life this minute, you can conquer anything and anyone.

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.  Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place” – Summer Saldana

It is also important to take the time to give thanks to every single person that has been a part of your life’s journey so far.  The wisdom of the mentors in your life.  The love of family.  The blessing of friends, who are only a text, IM or phone call away.  You can Skype girlfriends from around the world, and see their faces and feel in your soul how much they care and support you.  Remind yourself to stop feeling that world is passing you by.  Enjoy the journey.  If you have a habit of getting so involved in planning, in working, in taking action, that you spend all your time “doing” – push the pause button and take time to just “be”.  To remember that joy and happiness are found within the journey itself, not as a reward for reaching a new destination.

“I am deeply reminded that our life’s journey is a gift, not a given, and that we can never truly know how long the journey will last.  All we can do is decide how it unfolds” – Sonia Choquette

The best part of the journey to self discovery, is that it really never ends.  Because each time you reach a destination, the new you that it took to get there, looks around and says, “Where are we going to go now?”  The journey has way-stops or check points along the way, but each destination opens doors.  Doors to new places to go to, new ways you grow into.  Sometimes going around the corner to a new destination, is simply learning to look at familiar things with new eyes.  The thing that I know for certain, is that the journey is never over.  Even when you leave this life, you will still be on a journey.

 “You are not on a journey to God; you are on a journey with God” – Dr. Steve Maraboli

Divine Timing – Trust, Let Go And See What Happens

When you truly “let go and let God” you stop trying to make something happen by a certain time.

You stop pushing the stopwatch.

You stop pushing those goals which are like large boulders up the hill, only to have them roll back down to the bottom when you get distracted.

What will then happen, is that divine timing is allowed to work in its own way, its own time, and its own mysterious plans and ways.

Paths open up before you that take you places that you would never have chosen to go.  Places that open you up to something new and so delightful that you never want to leave.

“Patience is quieting the ego and trusting divine timing” – Dean Jackson

Divine timing has amazing short cuts.  Let’s say that you have on your bucket list to go to Mt. Kilimanjaro.  You have no money to finance this kind of trip.

In your hometown is a non-profit that you volunteer to work for.  One day this non-profit, along with other agencies get a call to provide relief supplies for some villages near the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  You volunteer to go and help to deliver the supplies.  The helicopter drops you off at the village.  You are now within immediate climbing distance of your goal.

Now they ask for some of you to go up towards the summit to deliver the supplies.  Divine timing has just express delivered a bucket list goal and all you had to do is say yes.

Now that story was totally made up, and you are probably saying, but that doesn’t really happen.  So, I want to share my own personal favorite story of divine timing happening in my own life, when I had no other choice but to let go and let God.

My middle son called me to tell me that he and his girlfriend were getting married.  I was so happy for them.  This was in January, and they had set the date for August.  I sat down and planned out what I could do to get enough money together to pay for their honeymoon.

If I was extremely budget conscious and could earn some extra commissions at work, I could just pay for the honeymoon that they wanted In Mexico.  The end of February they called with a new surprise; they had moved up the date to May.  I looked at my now destroyed plan and no matter how I moved the numbers, there was no way to pay for the honeymoon by the end of April.

So, I sat down and pulled out some paper and wrote a letter to myself in that moment in time, from myself in June.  I wrote how happy they were to go on their honeymoon.  They had a terrific time, and I poured every emotion and feeling of gratitude and happiness into this letter.  I wrote how amazed I was how unseen forces seemed to move my financial mountains to make it happen.  I wrote how I never could have foreseen the ability to make my dream of paying for their honeymoon happen, and how grateful I was to God for providing me with the funds.

Then I put the paper away, with no attachment to the outcome in a drawer and placed all of my faith in divine timing.  Two weeks later, I got a phone call from a neighbor who lived across the street from our second home in Upstate New York.  They wanted to know if I was interested in selling them 10 acres of our property. They would pay cash and we could close in two weeks.

Now when we had bought this house, it was on 20 acres.  I didn’t know why at that time, but I negotiated to cut the parcel in half and have 10 acres of land and 10 acres with the house.  We paid full price for the 10 acres with the house and $1.00 for the 10 acres of bare land.  So, I was able to say yes to the neighbor and we negotiated a fair price.  We closed the end of March and the first week of April I was able to fully pay for my son and daughter in-law’s honeymoon.

Even if I had thought of selling the land to pay for the honeymoon, it is highly unlikely that we could have sold and closed on it in 30 days.  That time of year the area is still covered in snow.  But I believe that divine timing knew that when I bought that house five years previously, I was going to need to liquidate that land to pay for my son’s honeymoon.

Because I had listened to intuition and split the property, divine timing was able to maneuver into place a quick sale and funds to pay for that honeymoon.

An analogy of “letting go and letting God” is water.  Water always finds a way.  It might take a year, it might take a day, but what is meant to be will always find its own way to completion.

I always think of the Grand Canyon.  Water carved that canyon out of solid stone.  In one place within the canyon is a small island of stone in a perfect circle of water that wound around it.  I don’t know how that perfect circle of stone is still standing.   But the story my imagination tells me is that the stone was especially strong in that one spot and that it took water a lot of time and persistence, but it was able to carve away all of the parts that didn’t belong, until what was left, was what was supposed to be there.  A tall stone island in a perfect circle of water.

So, know that in your journey, you are always on perfect time, divine time.  You are not early; you are not late.  You are right now where you are supposed to be.

That goal, off in the distance that you are busy running to, will happen right on time.  It may be that like me, you don’t see any way that you can make it happen.  But if you are willing to listen to intuition; If you are willing to do things that may not make sense at the time you are doing them; like splitting up 20 acres into two 10-acre parcels, divine timing will place what you need into your hands, right on time.

• What are your dreams, visions, your life purpose?
• Are you on track to bring them into reality and complete them?
• Have you allowed distractions to sidetrack you?
• Are you unclear on what your life purpose is or how to bring it into reality?

We here at LemonadeMakers not only write about waking up to the reality of who you are and your life purpose and living up to your full potential.   We also are here to help you ask yourself the right questions to open up your mind to the possibilities of living the life you have always dreamed of.  Contact us anytime and we are happy to have that conversation.

Transformation Is A Major Part of Lifes Journey

Can you imagine the conversation that might take place between a butterfly and a caterpillar that is about to build their chrysalis? It might sound like that.

How would you explain this overwhelming need to your non-caterpillar friends that you have to get so totally wrapped up in your need to change and transform? The birds are not going to understand. The bees are not going to get it. None of the other kinds of insects and animals go through this type of change.

But you know that you just have to do it. There really is no other way to answer your soul’s calling. You have to completely transform. You have to let go of what is no longer serving you.

You are not a climber of leaves and branches any longer. You have this overwhelming desire to fly. To soar. You can’t put a name to this yet, because you haven’t experienced it. But you can feel this constant calling to shift and change. You don’t understand it, yet at a deeper level you know that this is why you were born and you have to go for it.

Nothing happens until the pain of remaining the same outweighs the pain of change.

 – Arthur Burt

I believe that the change doesn’t have to feel painful. I think that the emotion that we feel is fear. But if you really analyze this feeling that we get, isn’t it an awful lot like when you are riding in a roller coaster? You are nearing the top of the climb and about to go speeding down the other side, isn’t it that feeling?

What if this feeling, this fear, is really anticipation? I know that I love this feeling of riding a roller coaster. The screaming, laughter, and excitement. Not everyone does. But a lot of us do.

What if this is the feeling of fear of change, and we change our definition from fear to anticipation? If we can change the meaning of this kind of feeling then, when we enter the chrysalis, we are anticipating the feeling of spreading our wings. We are anticipating the feeling of the wind beneath our wings.

If we are anticipating these feelings, then transformation is exciting. It is something to be desired. We enter into a wonderful relationship with it.

Sound interesting? Want to explore this together in greater detail? Continue your journey to transformation with us.  We are having a free online event “A Conscious Conversation” where we will explore how to courageously transform our lives to fully live into our divine destiny.

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