The Best Things In Life Are The Moments When We See The Little Things Clearly
Such a profound question – what is life?
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, that hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
– Gilda Radner
When you look around at your friends and family, how many people do you know that “just exist”? They are here. They wake up each day. They take in the breath of life, they eat, they go to work or school, they come home and watch a movie, TV, play video games. They are here, but what else is there in life, besides just being here?
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
– Marcel Proust
There is something about asking questions that opens life up. About being curious. Asking yourself the questions that you are afraid to ask, afraid of how the answers might change your life. Questions like, “Why am I not happy with who I am”?
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
– William James
I think that there is more to life, than just existing. I think of some of the stories that I love best. They are made up of characters that progress down a timeline, the hero’s journey. They are walking along a path and something happens. Things go wrong, they change to meet the challenges and come out the other end a different person than the one we met in the beginning of the story.
Time is like a river, you cannot touch the same water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again. Enjoy every moment of life . . . ,
– Unknown
They discover things about themselves during the journey. They discover the “fire in the belly”, passion. They learn to speak up and speak out. They learn that they have courage to fight for truth, justice, life and liberty. We root for them to beat the odds and win. Take the first “Rocky” movie. He is employed in a sketchy business as a collector for a loan shark.. He boxes and is made fun of, nothing but a loser and a bum. He dreams of a better life and thinks that fighting in the ring, could be his ticket to be somebody. He gets a one in a million shot at it, wins against the heavyweight champion, falls in love.
Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.
– Unknown
Boxing was his passion. He learned to have self confidence in his talent. He learned that we can all be somebody if we are willing to pay the price of hard work to make it happen. If we are willing to not give up when it looks hopeless. As the rest of the series of movies show, transformation is an ongoing process. We will learn valuable and painful lessons when we don’t remain conscious of who we are and where we are going in life.
Most of us have been through some sort of personal hero’s journey in our life.
Someday everything will make perfect sense. So, for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears and keep reminding yourself that EVERYTHING happens for a reason.
– Unknown
What did we discover about ourselves? Brendon Buchard tells a story about his own personal journey when he was in college. He had a bad breakup with his girlfriend. She was the one he was going to spend the rest of his life with. So to try and get out of his depression he went on a trip with a college friend to South America. They were driving in a rural mountainous area on a narrow road. The road turned out to be a hairpin curve. His friend lost control of the car, and they went tumbling off the mountain. When he came to he was bleeding. They had fallen down a ravine. He thought that he was dying. In despair he asked himself three questions – Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?
Thankfully they didn’t die. They both got medical attention, and when he returned to the United States he was a different person. He is an international bestseller with multiple books; he is the founder of Experts Academy and High Performance Academy and is a sought after motivational speaker. How was his life impacted from getting a broken heart? From an auto accident that could have ended his life? We never know how the painful experiences of our life, will be positively used for the rest of our lives.
Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once.
– Paulo Coelho
I think that we all want to live a life that results in great friends and family that love us. That results in us being happy and passionate about what we do with our days and nights. That results in knowing that we had a positive impact in the world. But sometimes we fall asleep to those dreams. Sometimes we get so beaten down by our hero’s journey, that we give the dream up as being impossible. What I have discovered in life is that we tend to do one of two things. We act without thinking our decision all of the way through and so we end up paying the bill of “unintended consequences”. Or we think about it, and think about it, and do nothing about it. Why? Because we can’t face our fears about “what if?”.
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they life.
– Lao Tzo
So each morning, what if the first question we ask ourselves is:
If my life is a story, what can I do today to make it a New York Times Bestseller?
What could I do today, that a movie producer would want to make my life into an inspirational movie?
What can I do today that uses up all the best parts of me (my talents), to inspire the world around me to be a better place?
What can I do today that makes people laugh, smile and be more joyful?
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.
– Norman Cousins
They have a saying, that the best stories are in the graveyard. There are books that never got written; apologies and forgiveness that were said in their heart, but never left their lips. Millions of secret recipes that never got passed on. Don’t wait for the end to ask, “Did I live, love and matter”, but instead ask it each night. Ask if you showed love, and gave love to others each night. Ask if you were able to do one small thing today that mattered to someone. If you can say yes, to these questions each night, you have a wonderful life. You inspire me to try harder, to be better, to live fully in the present. To lose myself in the sunset.
Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun.
– Randy Pausch
[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1] [lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]
Passion Changes Everything
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
– Mark Twain
Finding your passion isn’t just about a dream job for your career, or about being wealthy. It is about finding your authentic self. It is about having a meaningful life, with both spirituality and community weaved together. This authentic life is your life propose. The surest way to find your life purpose is to follow where your passion leads you. When you find it and align everything in your life with it, that is when your eyes light up, and your heart sings with joy. You literally fill up your soul with light and shine brightly from within. This is your calling, given to you by the divine. It is the difference between really living and just existing.
Always go with your passions. Never ask yourself if it is realistic or not.
– Deepak Chopra
When you are in alignment with your purpose, passion creates a calmness within the heart, so that no matter what the madness and chaos that is happening around us, we are at peace. When you embrace your authentic self, you have no competition. When you focus on your passion and fulfilling your purpose, the doors of opportunity swing wide open. Creativity seems to pour out of your soul. Ideas pop into your head. You see so many possibilities that your like a kid in a candy store and you can’t decide which one to taste first.
Have the courage to follow the things that you are naturally drawn to. Pupose is the reason you journey, walking the path towards insight pulls you forward. Passion is the fire that lights the way, and keeps you going on the dark and stormy nights. I think of Jane Goodall, who has lived her whole life for monkeys. I don’t understand her passion for them, but you can see it. What I can understand, is having that kind of passion. I have it, for LemonadeMakers. It is your job, your responsibility, your calling, to let the world know why you are here. The world needs people who have come alive with passion.
Curiosity only does one thing, and that is to give. And what it gives you are clues on the incredible scavenger hunt of your life.
– Elizabeth Gilbert
We find happiness by being driven by this curiosity, because it causes us to ask questions that we would never think to ask. It causes us to look in strange places for answers to the questions and make connections. The connections might seem strange, yet they fit perfectly to what is happening in our lives. Each one a clue to the next place to look, the next discovery to make. We get so excited about what we are discovering that our friends and relatives look at us as though we have gone over the deep end of the pool.
One of the oldest and most generous tricks that the universe plays on human beings is to bury strange jewels within us all. And then stand back to see if we can ever find them.
– Elizabeth Gilbert
It is looking in the strange places that we find clues to what we are capable of in our lives. We see how everything in our past is connected. We can see the dots being connected. The main path we are walking, with all of the side roads winding through the woods. We see how each served a purpose, even though we did not connect the dots until years later. But each jewel we discover is required to have the complete set of our string of pearls, which is our life.
You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – pleasantly, smiling, non-apologetically – to say “no” to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside.
– Stephen Covey
You have to peel off the masks of social conditioning that say you must meet the needs of others, before your own. That what you need and desire, is as important. In fact, will be fatal to your soul if you don’t pursue it. You must become what you are seeking. It needs to seep deep into your pores, become part of your cells. Live and breathe your dream.
Do you remember having a favorite article of clothing that you loved to wear? It might have been when you were a child, and you wanted to wear it every day, and your mom would argue with you to choose something different. But you only wanted to wear that particular outfit. So you would pitch a fit until she gave in, or maybe you snuck it out of the house and changed and wore it anyway. Wear your passion like that. Be a rebel.
You’ll learn as you get older that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your own terms, and never ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though everyone is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit it.
– Mandy Hale
[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1] [lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]
Talent Can Happen, Genius (Vocation) Must Happen
Doing what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible with talent is genius.
– Henri Frederic Amiel
What is the difference between your talents and your vocation? Your talent is the thing that you spend the 10,000 hours training for to become a master. In the old days, you were apprenticed to a master craftman and you learned at the masters feet to grow your talent, your skills. You have worked hard to become the best in your field of endeavor – you may have gone to school to learn to be a doctor, an accountant, a teacher. Or you may have learned on the job how to be a plumber, an electrician etc…Your vocation is what you were made to do, it is a divine calling, a divine purpose.
A Man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.
– Thomas Merton
Your vocation in life comes from where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.
– Frederick Buechner
I firmly believe that all of us have a vocation, a calling. That we are an individual puzzle piece that completes Gods plan for what is happening in our lifetime. If we walk away from that, then that piece of the puzzle is missing, it is incomplete. We might still be able to see what the puzzle is supposed to look like, but the hole is still there. It is sometimes really scary and daunting to realize what our talents and vocation truly are meant to be. We look at that and we get scared of failing to complete the picture. We get scared of getting called up on stage to sing in front of an audience. We get scared that if we truly shine, people will judge us as imperfect. They will throw judgment or hatred for where we demonstrate that we are not perfect. Of being called a fraud. Of being laughed at.
If you’re not the hero of your talent story, you simply become a player in one you didn’t choose.”
– Jermainne Perry
Sometimes walking away has nothing to do with weakness, and everything to do with strength. We walk away not because we want others to realize our worth and value, but because we finally realize our own.
– Robert Tew
What we don’t realize is that true failure happens when we walk away. When we plug our ears and ignore the calling. When we deny who we are. When we walk past that door of opportunity and say, “Oh no, I am not talented enough, capable enough, you have the wrong person”. When we do that we end up living an unsatisfying life. We drag ourselves to work everyday at a job we hate, doing boring work. We numb ourselves at home with liquor, drugs, or being a couch potato, watching movies and T.V. and doing nothing with our life.
Everyone has talent, what is rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.
– Erica Jong
Everyone has a purpose in life . . , a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.
– Deepak Chopra
Part of the journey of the intersection of talent and vocation, is that we have to go back in our lives and pull the vocation out of the deep hole that we buried it in. How many times have you watched one of the many shows on T.V. for talent contests – whether singing, dancing, or being a comedian. You hear person after person say that at some point in their life, people discouraged them. Told them they weren’t good enough. Not enough talent. Rejected for auditions.
Every man has his vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because the editor said, “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas”. It wasn’t true, he was just in the wrong job, not his vocation. Oprah same thing. She was fired because she couldn’t sever her emotions from her stories. That is exactly what made her so good at her T.V. Show. It was part of her vocation to follow the emotions of the stories being told. Elvis after performing at “The Grand Ole Opry was told that he should return to being a truck driver. It wasn’t that Elvis couldn’t perform, sing, or play his guitar. It was that Country Western music wasn’t his vocation. So don’t let rejections around your vocation stop you. It may just be that you haven’t yet found how your talent and vocation intersect.
Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
– St. Francis of Assisi
Vocations usually start out as something small. Maybe as a child you would draw pictures in crayon. Your mom thought you were a genius. As you grew older, you started drawing fashion designs for your dolls. Then when you got into Junior High or High School you started taking art classes. Your talents were nurtured and they grew. Then one day, you discovered sculpture. It took over your life. You felt incomplete when you were not working with metal, stone, or marble.
Entrusted with the task of crafting, to create a work of art, a masterpiece, your vocation sheds light on the path, so that you will know which way to go. The vocation is built into you. You literally have no choice. It is the air you breathe.
If you are what you should be, then you will set the world on fire.
– St. Catherine of Seina
David was Michelangelo’s masterpiece. He saw him in the marble and released him, a symbol of beauty and strength. Look at what the world would have missed had his talent and vocation not intersected. If he had walked away from his vocation, saying it was too much pressure.
We must realize our own talents and, having realized, accept them; and play on them like a symphony in which all other instruments are harmonized to make a better universe.
– Jeane Dixon
[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]
Laugh out loud. Smile just a little. Share with a friend.The Journey Is Mandatory; Traveling With Baggage Is Not
If you are unhappy with anything…, whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.
– Tina Turner
When you let go of whatever the negative thing is, you are not agreeing that the situation was acceptable. You are walking away because whatever is going on is not worth destroying you. You release the anger, the frustration of trying to get someone else to see your truth; or trying to fix something that isn’t your business to fix. You wall away, and you do not walk back and reclaim it, because someone promises that this time things will be different. You walk away, leaving that baggage on the ground, and you climb up onto that plane and you fly far, far away. Never settle.
You can’t reach for anything new, if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk.
– Louise Smith
Regrets are heavy baggage. Whatever we walk away from or whatever we feel we have lost in our lives, usually have regrets attached to it. What we said or didn’t say, what we should have done or did do. Whatever didn’t turn out perfectly sits on the scale of our judgment against ourselves or others. Forgive both yourself and others, wipe the scale clean of all debris. Recycle those regrets, let go of the past, so that you can truly move on.
We are all responsible for the energy we have around us. Drama Queens can’t exist without an audience. Stop being one, and they will find someone else. This creates space in your life for the right kind of people. Those who see the real you, that you’ve buried deep within. They hold up the mirror to you, so that you can see your potential. The endless possibilities of who you really are. They believe in you, because they love who you are, not who they want you to be. These are once in a lifetime kinds of people. Find them and keep them in your life.
We all fit together to create this experience we call life. None of us can see the part we play or the way it all turns out. Maybe the miracles that we see are just the tip of the iceberg. And maybe we just don’t recognize the blessings that come as a result of terrible things.
– Making Faces, Amy Harmon.
When my granddaughter and I saw the movie “Passengers”, I thought that quote really is the story line of the movie.
A computer malfunction in the sleeping pod of the main male character happens and he gets woken up around 30 years into a flight of around 120 years. During first year he goes crazy being alone.
important encounters are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.
– Paulo Coelho
Then one day he finds a sleeping pod of a beautiful woman and starts obsessing about waking her up. Even though he knows he shouldn’t one day he does it. At first she thinks that like him, it was a computer malfunction. Then she discovers the truth, and her anger at what he has done to her life drives her crazy. Then a third person, a ship employee is awakened due to continuing computer malfunctions. They discover with his help that the ship is failing due to damage received from asteroids. The ship employee dies from health complications created by his pod leaving them to try and save the ship of over 5,000 fellow passengers and the crew.
In the process of doing this they almost die several times. They discover that their being together is the miracle and blessing of their being able to save everyone else. In saving them, they save themselves.
I entered the after-loss broken and shattered. It’s like I had this big bag of fragments I once called life and dumped them in the middle of this new world and said, “Here. this is all I’ve got left. What can I do with this?”
– Benjamin Allen
They come to peace with living out their lives together alone on the ship, knowing that they won’t reach their destination in their lifetime. She learned to let go of the baggage of what he did to her. He let go of the baggage of what he did. They realized that without everything that happened to them, the entire ship would have been destroyed. They let go of what they planned for their lives by taken this journey, and lived the journey they instead found with each other. They realized that blessings can come as a result of terrible things.
We all have some sort of emotional baggage in our lives. One bag is filled with things that people said to us, situations where our character was unfairly tarnished. This bag is waiting for apologies that will most likely never happen. Then there is this other bag of regrets where we lied to someone; promises we broke; things we said to others because our pain was so great that we needed to hurt someone else just as much as we were hurting. The items contained in the bags could be listed down long pages. They are not unique to us. What we have to come to realize, is that we need to let them go. All of them.
I always liked the story of Noah’s Ark and the idea of starting anew by rescuing the things you like and leaving the rest behind.
– Zach Braff
In order to release yourself of this baggage you need to enter sacred space. Go down into your heart and the soul of who you are. Keep what builds you up. Release everything negative. When you find yourself, and release what is not yours to keep, you make space for your life to transform once again. You start moving forward in your life once more. Reach for what is in front of you. When you know what you want next in life, you wake up excited about life. If you aren’t excited about your life, this is a sign that it is time to give yourself healing. Time to once again enter the chrysalis and transform your life.
[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]Storms Make Your Roots Go Deep
If you were in the first balloon with wind, lightning, and rain beating against you it might seem futile to struggle to fly the balloon to safety. The storm could be internal or external, both can seem overpowering, even life threatening. What we need to remember when we are going through a storm, is that the storm isn’t our destination. It can’t rain forever. The storm is just part of our path, and it will last as long as it needs to, in order for us to learn what is needed.
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
– Willa Cather
When we are suffering through a real storm in our life, it certainly puts all of our other worries and concerns into perspective. The loss of a job, health crisis, loss of a loved one, or a severe financial struggle, makes us wonder how we can get so mad, that someone didn’t put down the toilet seat. We see how often we let trivial, petty things take away our peace. If you think back the past few months, how many arguments have you had in your life? And how many of those arguments can you not even remember what triggered them to happen? Whatever it was, wasn’t truly important enough to lose our peace over. It also helps us see, how many times the storm blowing through our life was created by us.
A wise woman recognizes when her life is out of balance and summons the courage to act to correct it, she knows the meaning of true generosity, happiness is the reward for a life lived in harmony, with a courage and grace.
– Suze Orman
I love the analogy of a tree with deep roots. The trunk and branches are what we live in the outer world. The root system is our inner world. During a storm, the outer world is what usually gets affected. The leaves get blown away, we may lose a couple of branches. But as long as we stay strong in our roots, our inner world, then we can withstand whatever happens in the outer world. In fact, the storms can cause us to grow our roots even deeper. That is how we stay in balance, living life with courage and grace.
When someone is going through a storm, your silent presence is more powerful than a million empty words.
– Thema Davis
When someone is in deep pain, we often don’t know what to say or do. Sometimes we realize that nothing we can say or do, will make any difference. Have you have ever been in the middle of a crisis or a life storm, thinking to yourself, I don’t know if I can take anymore? The presence of someone who we know loves us, just giving us a hug, can be the one thing that gets us back on our feet, ready to withstand one more day of heartbreak. Know that the light that shines from within you is creating a beautiful rainbow.
Pain means you’re growing. Fear means you’re risking. Tears mean it mattered. Take what hurts you and let it help you.
– Mandy Hale
In the moment of melt down, when we think that it is unbearable, we transform from the ashes like the phoenix. We reveal our true self. Instead of dying we awaken as though we had been in hibernation. We become fully alert to what has happened for us (not to us) and we shake the sky as we shine through the darkness like the sun coming out from behind the moon in a solar eclipse.
I admire people who choose to shine even after all the storms they’ve been through.
– Joubert Botha.
I love the book, Women Who Run With Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She writes that, we have created these doors from every storm in our life, and that if we yearn for a deeper, more fulfilling life, we have to start opening doors. It reminded me of a saying, “The tiger and the lion may be more powerful…, but the wolf does not perform in the circus.” We have to free ourselves from the cages that we have locked ourselves into, as we perform in the circus of a daily life where we deny who and what we are. We have to be willing, even if we think that we are not strong enough, to speak to what we have hidden and locked behind those doors. We have to be willing to be wild and howl at the moon.
The truth is that we are never “ready” to face the unconscious. There are all those parts of you that you hid away because you were ashamed. The parts of you that are not worthy, not good enough. The not pretty enough parts of our body, the not smart enough parts, the parts that were bullied and made fun of, and so on. There is never the “right time” to unbury and reveal the real us.
If you have yet to be called an incorrigible defiant woman, don’t worry, there is still time.
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The most courageous thing we will ever do in our lives is to stand up in the storm as it is happening and intervene. To stand up and show the world who you really are, to reveal the beauty of your wild soul. Instead of drawing back with your head held down in submission, own it, front and center.
As the quote across the photos said, you will not be the same person who entered the storm. It is up to you to arise from the ashes. It is up to you to unlock all of the hidden doors. It is up to you to own all the parts you hid away. To reveal yourself, no longer hiding and trying to be invisible. Breathe. Spend time in stillness and awareness. Try new things. Explore and seek connection with others who want to converse in the language of the heart.
[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]
Strength, Wisdom, Courage, These Are The Bags For Our Journey
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. The butterfly must care for itself to both emerge and then complete the process of self transformation.
I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.
– Audre Lorde
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. We can be supported by the sun, to dry ourselves off. We can be uplifted with the winds. But we are the ones that must spread out our wings in order to thrive.
Damaged people are dangerous because they know they can survive.
– LoveFromASelfHammer
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 putting yourself out there to really live life. It is in fact a gift, this struggle, because all of us have far more strength than we ever dreamed possible. You must do the thing that you think you cannot do.
Strength comes from struggle. When you learn to see your struggles as opportunities to become stronger, better, wiser, then your thinking shifts from “I can’t do this” to “I must do this”.
– Toni Sorenson
Remember Star Wars when Luke is trying to lift his ship and he struggles and gives up. Then Yoda shows him. Luke could have done it the first time, but he doubted, he had a lack of faith not in God, but in himself. You must do the thing that you think you cannot do. It would not have been placed before you if God didn’t know that you could do it. It is there so that you can believe it yourself. To grow your faith, for the next time fear stops you.
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.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Looking at history, I think this quote best describes two people who suffered in Nazi Germany. Anne Frank, who still believed even after the things she experienced, that the world is filled with good people. We can read her diary, as well as the writings of those who new her. The other is Viktor Frankl. His book “Man’s Search For Meaning” should be required reading for everyone.
We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend.
– Brene Brown
When struggles happen to us we have a choice, they can define us or refine us. For Anne and Viktor they refined them. They both chose to reach toward the grief and pain of what was happening to her, to her family, to her people. They somehow knew, had that inner wisdom to realize that by reaching out, they was in fact healing themselves. 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.
Being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure.
– Bob Marley
Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly, like in the romantic movies. Laugh uncontrollably and giggle whenever you can. Never regret anything that brings smile to your eyes as well as your face. You take a chance of being wounded by living this way, but living any other way is not really experiencing life.
The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.
– Ernest Hemingway
[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]
Be The Drop, The Ripple, That Shifts The World
“No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities” – Joseph Campbell
At conception you were granted a “stone”, a sacred life purpose, that you are to “cast across the waters”. That stone’s purpose is to create many ripples. Those ripples begin to change you from the moment of casting that stone. The ripples created also impact many others. As you cast that stone you set out on the journey of discovering and living your life purpose.
As you walk that path, it shifts and changes both you and the world in some way. This is because you are impacted by everyone else’s ripples. Each ripple touches and changes the other ripples.
For each stone that is cast or not cast, there is a change in the water. It doesn’t matter if you are someone who is hoarding their stone afraid to cast them, or you are one who grabs the courage and risks casting your own “stone” or life purpose. There is always an impact.
“The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion’– Paulo Coelho
You were born with a reluctance to change. You resist it. You fear it. You create stories around every impulse to create change in your life. Why? Because you’re human.
You build walls, not to keep other people out, as much as to keep yourself safe within.
As a human you also have this calling to improve your life. You demonstrate this every January when you create New Year’s Resolutions around the changes you want to make in your life. Dreams you want to materialize. Goals that you want to achieve. You work hard to bring them into reality.
The funny thing is that you keep these competing challenges active in your life. You don’t want to change, yet you want your dreams to come into reality. You make it hard work by fighting yourself internally around the changes you earnestly desire to make. You don’t know what is worse, that you try and fail, or that you try and succeed.
How do the doubts show up? You are afraid that you will lose your soul along the journey to success. That you will become too proud; that money will change you into someone you won’t like; that the cost will outweigh the benefits.
You are also just as terrified that you will fail to live your soul’s unique version of success. You compare your journey with all of those that you know. You compete, you judge; You are envious, or you pity their fall from grace. You are full of the dark emotions such as anger, regret, worry, blame, guilt and fear. You have people in your life that threaten your peace of mind and your self-worth. Worst of all you have your own judgmental inner self.
“We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced” – Malala Yousafazi
You may have been given a powerful life purpose, such as Mother Teresa and Malala. You may have been given a small vision and life purpose. No matter how small or powerful your life purpose is, you will come up against obstacles in fulfilling it.
You have made up stories about what has happened in your life since childhood. Those stories will either weaken or strengthen you, depending on how you have cast yourself.
The choice is always within to cast your stone and live up your full potential or hide from your true potential and play small. When you play small you will cast blame your parents, your “ex”, your employer, or your best friend who provided the knife that stabbed you in the back. That way you can create the victimhood that keeps you safely hoarding your “stone” and refusing to allow change to transform you into something powerful beyond measure. To transform you into who you are meant to be to fulfill your divine purpose.
“Just as one drop of water creates countless ripples, so does one gesture of kindness or love change countless lives” – Randi G Fine
Water is an ultimate teacher for you. It changes shape to adapt to its situation.
Steam, fog, a cool refreshing liquid against your skin, a single snowflake, a sheet of ice or a mountain glacier, a hot volcanic pool of water that would be death to enter.
Oceans waters waves kiss the shoreline gently, in a storm it pounds against the rocks wearing them down into small particles that get dragged deep onto the ocean floor. It carves into the earth deep canyons and flows down those same canyons as a beautiful waterfall.
It both gives and takes life. It is neither good or evil, light or dark. It reflects back to you how if you take action with your stone or conversely you have inaction with your stone, still an impact is made on this earth.
In a different way, you can have what they are now terming “Raindrop” moments. This is the disruption of a certain type of business, by new developments that take over in technology.
Think of things such as physical books in print, newspapers, music in CD/Albums, which have become digital. Think of live streaming and all of the options you now have in watching movies and T.V. and the loss of business with cable companies and how it is changing the nature of both entertainment and business.
We can see the future disruptions in the movie and TV industries, changing from having human actors to artificial actors.
We see businesses such as Taxi’s being impacted by new businesses such as Uber.
These are all the results of someone who cast their stone across the water and created a ripple that was felt around the world. They made an impact.
Change happens whether you want it to or not. What water has to teach us is the ability to adapt, to improvise, and to overcome. It teaches you to shift your shape and transform. You have your “stone”, the divine purpose that you are here to achieve. The method of how you are doing so, is within you.
The ability to change, shift your shape, to transform, is what brings you to success. You must be that change that you wish to see in the world. If you think that world hunger is wrong, what are you doing to feed someone? Whatever you have strong beliefs around, what are you individually doing to make that change in your own space in this world?
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks”– Christopher Hitchens
Be like water and adapt, improvise, overcome, shift your shape (consciousness), transform.
At some point in your journey you will come to a crossroads. You will have to pick a path (without any ability to know), if it will or will not lead you to your destination. You have to ask yourself that unanswerable question, Do I go forwards, backwards, left, right, diagonal?
Steve Jobs asked this question to John Sculley when he was vice president at PepsiCo, before Apple was a household name. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
Do not allow anyone’s definition of who you are, including your own, to define who you are. Like water, you can transform into what is needed to travel your own unique path in life.
The important thing is to stay curious, keep looking for open doors, keep asking unanswerable questions. To quiet the mind, and to listen to the soul, which is the source of the unanswerable questions. To go deep within, to visit and learn from the place our of real existence. Promise yourself, to not permit fear of failure or fear of greatness keep you frozen in place.
“Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle” – Christian D. Larson
That something is divine guidance, trust in it and don’t stop.
You Are Stronger Than You Think
“Don’t be satisfied with stories how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth” – Rumi
Stay strong, even though you have every reason to breakdown. Strength doesn’t come from the doing what comes next or what is expected. It comes from doing what you think you can’t do. Strength comes from breaking through and blasting past, what you didn’t think that there was any possibility to do.
For years no one believed you could run faster that a 4 minute mile. Doctors said it was medically impossible. It was a barrier than remained in place for years. Then in 1954 Roger Bannister broke the record, then 41 days later his record was broken. Once the myth was broken, the records were broken over and over. It now stands at 3:43:13.
Unfold
your own
myth
When you are down in that pit of despair, what gets you up and out of it, is listening to the sound of your heart beat. That small still inner voice, the one that constantly gets beat down by the voices in your head. It is that small voice of the heart beat that tells you what you are really capable of.
You must listen to what it says, when it whispers, “you will make it through this, and this will make you stronger for tomorrow“.
“There is an invisible strength within us; when it recognizes two opposing objects of desire, it grows stronger” – Rumi
It is in the journey itself, that you develop the strength to continue the journey. It is the spark that lights the flame, which lights the way. Into the darkness your strength shines forth. Out of the ashes, you arise again and again.
Within your soul, you are a limitless divine expression of God. You are made in his image. Every single day you have the opportunity to create the life of your dreams.
Your stories are powerful. They are important. They must be told. Do not be ashamed of the steps of your journey.
While you may see failure after failure, others see a strong woman who continued moving forward. Who didn’t stop, never gave up. While it may seem like you took a step or two backwards, you continue to move forward.
Invisible strength is forged in the fires of transformation, hammered in each step of the journey, you grow stronger and stronger.
“Our fate lives within us, you only have to be brave enough to see it” – Brave
There is within all of us, light and darkness. It can’t be seen; it casts no shadows. But like the wind, you can feel the results of its passing.
The combination of light and darkness is what makes your soul fierce. It strengthens your heart and mind. It is the collaboration of all of your parts, that make you a whole human being. It is when they combine, that your passion is ignited in your soul, and you are finally ready to transform. To breathe in the inspired divine breath. To break loose from the barriers and boundaries of who you were told you were, to who God made you to be.
It is when life seems to be failing you, that you discover the deeper powers that lie buried deep inside of you. It is when you think that you have lost everything, that you find the only reason left to live. It is that moment when you discover what you are made of. That you see just a sliver of what you are truly capable of.
It is terrifying, soul expanding, and it seems like the fire of the crucible will totally destroy you. It is when you discover that you are in fact only now truly alive. The joy of life in that moment, burns out the pain of transformation.
“Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us more effectively. Look for the learning” – Louisa May Alcott
I love the line, look for the learning. It is the silver lining in every situation. It is funny how when you look back at life, so many little decisions you make combine into patterns that create the tapestry of your life. Each thing nudges you forward.
Like the baby learning to walk, it is sometimes hesitant, sometimes stumbling, and sometimes falling. But each time you get back up, you get closer to your destination. And when you reach one destination, a new path opens before you, a new challenge to grow, a new opportunity to learn. Always look for the learning.
PM us if you would like to have a conversation around unleashing the powerful being that you are.
Ask, Seek, Knock, But Most Importantly, Open The Door
One of my favorite scriptures is, “So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.” Luke 11:9. So why is it, when the door is opened to us, we are so afraid to step through it?
Always continue to grow. It is possible to achieve what you wish, if you take the time to learn who you are, and are willing to be who you were meant to be.
– Embellished Minds
Babies are all about growth. It is almost like you can see them growing in what they are learning, and in the growth of their young bodies. When we are babies, somewhere around the time we start rolling around and trying to crawl we get to go into a walker. The walker opens up a whole new world for us. I remember with my first born that once he got into the walker, there wasn’t a plant in my moms living room that had any leaves left within his reach. The walker opened a door of growth for him and he took advantage of it. Nothing was safe from those tiny hands.
It is impossible to live without failing at something. Unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case you fail by default.
– J.K. Rowling
As older kids, we have things that we wanted really, really bad. Maybe it was our first bike. We got it, with training wheels and start learning to ride the bike. Then we begged to have the training wheels off. We accepted that as part of learning to ride the bike we would fall. Finally it happens and after a few crash and burns, we are riding down the street. A whole new world of freedom opens up for us. Now we can ride our bikes to our friends house, or to the movies, or the grocery store. Distance was no longer a problem.
Whatever makes you uncomfortable is your biggest opportunity for growth.
– Bryant Gill
At some point in our growing up, we stop thinking that those open doors are a good thing. We start becoming afraid of them. Start becoming afraid of growth. We start to worry about failing. We realize that once we step through that door, we are closing the door to our past behind us. The future is uncertain and scary. There are no guarantees that walking through the door is going to turn out the way we expect. In fact, in most cases it won’t be what we expect. But each door that we step through is the opportunity to create something new and wonderful in our life.
Close some doors, not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.
– Paulo Coelho
It reminds me of the Garth Brooks song, “Thank God for unanswered prayers.” What we think we want in our lives, is often a small, safe vision. What the divine has planned for us, is a much larger vision. The difference between the two happening, is our personal growth. Each new beginning requires us to walk away from an ending.
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
– Joseph Campbell
This door is something that is only open to you, that only you can see. So when you shut the door to your past behind you, others around you, who love and care about you, may panic. You can try and explain it to them, and they still might not understand. Because you are seeing this door through the eyes of faith. Through the heartfelt vision and intuition, that is saying to you, yes – step through this door. Take the leap of faith. You will have the wings to carry you across the great divide.
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
– Walt Disney
It is so scary to walk through the door, because you know in your heart of hearts, that your vision is being reflected at the end of a long tunnel. You aren’t sure what is between you and the end of the tunnel. You don’t know how this will change your life, but you know it will change. You are afraid of what will need to be released, in order to grab onto this opportunity.
Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows.
– Dan Brown, Angels and Demons
One of my favorite Alice in Wonderland quotes, “I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.” This is what happens every time we step through a new door. Some things get too small, and some things get too big. Anything that no longer fits, is left behind. A very little key can open a heavy door.
There are things known, and things unknown, and in between are the doors.
– Jim Morrison
We have so many more open doors in front of us, we just don’t see them. We can’t perceive them, because most of the time we won’t move unless circumstances force us to do so. How many times have you thought I should leave this job, or this relationship? We are unhappy. We don’t see things getting better, instead they are going downhill fast. Yet day after day, week after week, month after month, we are still there.
If the doors of perception were cleaned, everything would appear to man as it is, INFINITE.
– William Blake
Then one day it happens, and our employer lays us off or our partner says goodbye and leaves. And we are broken hearted, even though it is something that was making us unhappy. It’s because our doors of perception are dirty, and we can’t see through the dirt, to the wonder and beauty on the other side of that door. We literally wait until the pain becomes so great, that it forces us to change.
Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.
J.K. Rowling
Every adventure requires the first step,…. and remember, all adventurers are thought to be mad! According to Alice, all the best people are. If you could open a door to anywhere, where would you go? Start walking down the hallway. You will see door after door after door of possibilities. The key is in your hand. The door is right there.
The door is wide and open, don’t go back to sleep.
– Rumi
[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]
Grace, Accepting, Receiving, And Giving Bring True Freedom
Grace comes into your soul when:
- When you face who you are – acknowledging the real reasons why you do what you do
- What your actions have been – even the ones you are hiding from yourself and others
- You face yourself with no excuses – the choice was entirely yours, not because of others
- As honestly as you can do it – without illusions or rose-colored glasses
If you dig down to the bottom of the matter, you will find that you have done the best you can, with what you knew at that time. Sometimes that falls short of what you wanted to happen. It is impossible to see where the entire string of possible consequences of a decision can take you. It is impossible to know what you or will not do until the experience happens.
That’s when a real decision must be made on how to handle what’s happened. Hindsight only helps you to see where the smallest of your actions may have led you astray, unfortunately, hindsight all comes too late to be of any use.
It is vitally important when plans have gone astray to give yourself gifts as balms for our health and wellbeing.
- The gifts of compassion for intentions gone astray.
- The gift of acceptance of what is, guilt heals nothing.
- The gift of love, for knowing that you can and will be better.
To love a person is to see all of their magic and to remind them of it when they have forgotten. That is the beauty of reflection. When you see the goodness in me, you are also seeing it in yourself. The same is true of the judgments you make about others. It speaks to something in yourself that you have judged as being “not enough”. Grace helps you to accept the good and the bad in both.
“You can’t pick and choose what parts of her to love” – Heir of Fire, Sarah J Maas
Everyone is a rose with thorns. You are an Amazonian Queen with warriors’ blood that rises up when you are challenged. You are not reduced by failures, but rather grow stronger through each step through them. You don’t just go through the storm; you ride through it shaking the world. There are some who will find fault with you. They even throw stones, rocks, and arrows at you.
They are challenged by your not accepting the “norms”. By your not staying safely inside the box. What you have learned is that the only way to truly live life, is to dare greatly.
You might lose your way momentarily, but the winds of courage will blow away the clouds that covered your vision. You will win through, even though at times you may just want to die and be done. You came to earth to live your life on purpose. You don’t have to apologize for doing so. You may be flawed, but you are still priceless.
In life you are tested as you climb up the proverbial mountain. You may reach the top and think, ‘I made it!’ Test over. But you forget that you also have to climb down the mountain. It can be as hard to get down as it was to get up the mountain.
I always think of cats. They climb up into the trees, on the top of roofs etc. . . . but it is the getting down part that has them crying for help, seeking to be rescued.
In both going up and coming back down, grace is how you are able to navigate through both the darkness and the light. Accepting the lessons learned, taking them to heart, and processing them into wisdom is the meaning of divine grace.
A Strong Woman is one who feels deeply and loves fiercely. Her tears flow just as abundantly as her laugher…,
A Strong Woman is both soft and powerful, she is both practical and spiritual…,
A Strong Woman in her essence is a gift to the world…,
A Strong Woman doesn’t “need” a partner to complete her, she is whole in herself…,
A Strong Woman is fierce, fearless and independent.
“Sometimes, being strong is to forgive in the name of love, to make someone smile when our own heart is broken, to comfort a friend when we ourselves needed help and to keep the faith when we have lost hope” – Brigitte Nicole
Starting in your own families, your own neighborhoods, you need to show that love is the answer to all of the questions. Remember how far “we” have come in society.
Life has always been “some steps forward, and some steps backward”, so don’t let the fear that is being dished out discourage you. Keep walking forward in faith that you have won battles in the past, and you will win battles today, and tomorrow.
“Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet.
Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped.
Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other”– Elder Marvin J Ashton
Sometimes in both your personal life and in society, the breakthrough comes in the breakdown.
Grace connects to courage at the breaking point
When you are tested to the breaking point, grace helps you to bend. To be flexible. To consider what is happening.
With peace in your heart dissipate the clouds of darkness and bring your heart back into the light. When you are in the depths of negative emotions, you make assumptions based on limited information. It is so common to put the worst viewpoint, to what is happening.
If you can instead seek deeper communications to fully understand what is happening, you will find that the light of reason almost always discovers a way to rise above the disaster. Transcend the challenges by listening to your heart and soul. You are the one that you have been searching for.
“I understood myself only after I destroyed myself. And only in the process of fixing myself, did I know who I really was” – Sade Andria Zabala
So let go of things, thoughts, attitudes, and feelings that don’t serve you. The moment that you accept yourself fully as you are, is when the real journey begins.
You are at that moment delivered into your own beauty and power.
It is in the unfolding of life as we are supposed to be living it that our hearts truly open.
Remember, we are here to support you in whatever way we can.
Love Is The Master Key To Happiness
Love yourself. Forgive yourself. Be true to yourself. How you treat yourself sets the standard for how others treat you.
– Steve Maraboli
Years ago I worked for a mortgage company in the Seattle, WA area. When I interviewed for a loan processor position, the branch manager told me that I shouldn’t take the job if swearing bothered me, as everyone in her office swore. I am good at tuning out what I don’t want to hear, so I went ahead and accepted the position.
I had been on the job just a month or two when one of the other employees in the branch came up to me with a question. She wanted to know what I had said to everyone that made them not swear when I was part of the conversation. I told her that I hadn’t even realized that they didn’t swear when they spoke to me, and that I hadn’t told them anything. She wanted to know why they were treating her different than they treated me. I told her something like the above quote. We subconsciously tell people how to treat us. If she wasn’t being treated how she wanted to be, then she needed to look inside of herself to determine what needed to be changed.
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
– Unknown
I think that the hardest part about giving and receiving love is that it puts us at risk of being hurt. We worry about whether this new being in our lives will hurt us, if we open our hearts up to giving and receiving love.
Faith ends where worry begins, and worry ends where faith begins.
– George Mueller
My father (stepfather) married my mother, and took on six girls ranging in ages from newborn to 9 yrs old (I was the 9 yr old). Not one time in over 49 yrs has the word “stepdaughter” ever come out of his mouth. Every time it has been “my daughter”. My parents went on to have one more child, my brother, who is my dads only “blood” child. My brother and my dad have a rocky relationship. What so many of us had a hard time with, is that we want people to behave in a certain way. We want a mother, father, spouse, brother or sister, to say or do certain things, and when they fall short of our expectations, we create trauma around it.
When you love someone, you love the whole person just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.
– Leo Tolstoy
My mom passed away over 20 yrs ago, and our dad has been living with my husband and I for the past 11 years. A couple of years ago, my brother and I had a long talk about his dad, and why I maintained our relationship after our mother died. With those that we love in our lives, our close friends and relatives, it can be easy to look at their faults. To see all of the “dirt” in their lives. Those faults pop up like neon lights blinking and blinking, “look here”, but there are also hidden nuggets of gold laying alongside each fault line.
None of us can be the perfect parent, son, daughter, sister, brother, or spouse. It has meant a lot to me that “step” never came before daughter. He has other well hidden (LOL) nuggets of gold, and he has his share of dirt, just like every one of us. We need to adjust our “glasses” to see others through the filters of gold, instead of just neon signs of dirt.
At the same time, we can’t live our own lives trying to live up to the expectations of others.
Stop seeing yourself through the eyes of others. You will never be able to live up to their expectations, and it will leave you feeling broken and insecure… Rather see yourself as the beautiful soul God made you to be, and know he made you to do great things.
– Karen Kastyla
Have your ever looked at yourself through the “fun house” mirrors at a fair? They distort your shape, making you tall, small, thin, fat. Some of them distort just a portion of your body and others the entire body. When we try to live our lives for others, we distort ourselves creating a fun house mirror – we don’t see us, we just see the distortion.
This is your own journey. Don’t let others define it for you. You shape the path of your journey through your effort, hard work, love, aspirations, dreams and always your pure intention.
– Abira Mukherjee
When I look at this photo, I see love on both the mans and the cats faces. The cat doesn’t expect the man to act like another cat. The man doesn’t expect the cat to be a dog. They see the nuggets of gold in each other. Their love is apparent. They may not live up to 100% of the expectations. And that failure to live up to expectations, doesn’t mean that they damn up their love behind a concrete barrier, demanding that the other behave a certain way.
I know that my cats expect breakfast each morning the minute my feet hit the bedroom floor. Since during the week I get up at 5 AM, on Saturday, Sunday, and any holidays, they still expect breakfast at 5 AM. They seem to live with the disappointment (although they can be quite demanding and noisy about it – LOL). They still rub up against me purring. They still hop in my lap and try to type on the keyboard when I am busy. I still pet them, feed them, and cuddle them. I know that I will have to remove at least one cat every time I sit down at the keyboard to compose one of these posts. I accept their need to interrupt me when I am not paying them enough attention, and they accept that I am eventually going to shut them out of the office so I can finish my post without kitty paws typing. (I blame all spelling errors on my cats!).
In the end nothing we do or say in this lifetime will matter as much as the way we have loved one another.
– Daphne Rose Kingma
[lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1][lp-logic ids=”3473″ limit=1 use_content=1] Content to use [/lp-logic]