Wake Up and Live!

Action without vision is only passing time.  Vision without action is merely daydreaming.  But vision with action can change the world –  Nelson Mandela

You can drive down the freeway, not paying attention to where you are going.  You will go places, but in reality, you are just passing time.  Vision without action is daydreaming.  You can write down how you want to go to Scotland.  But if you don’t save any money, it is just a daydream.  But when you put the vision and action together, miracles can happen.

You can put a budget in place and save money. You can check out websites and find a really good deal on airplane tickets, or a travel package.  You can put in your request for vacation time at work.  You can research and plan and pay for the perfect trip to Scotland, and it happens because you put the dream into action.

Don’t tell people your dreams.  Show them – Unknown

I love science fiction books.  The writers dream up things that don’t yet exist or that people of their day didn’t yet know about.  In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathon Swift wrote that Mars had two moons – it would be nearly a century later that they discovered he was right.  Jules Verne had rockets launching into space from Florida.  Kipling had mail being flown all over the world, before there were even airplanes.  Such things as television, solar power, video phones, movies with sound, space flight – all things talked about in science fiction before they were invented.

All of this came from someone’s dream, or vision being brought into reality.  I know that someday in the future, we will beam people from place to place.  Science will catch up to those dreams too.

But what about your everyday life?  Can your dreams create the future for you personally?  I have always loved this Steve Jobs quote:

It is really up to you to get still enough that you can hear the voice of your soul, your intuition.  Not listening to who the rest of the world wants you to be.  But getting still enough that you can hear the whispers that you have ignored for years.

The distance between dreams and reality is called action – Unknown

To listen to that still, soft voice.  You can’t be the anchor for everyone else in your life.  If you succeed in drowning out the voice of your soul, you drown your happiness.  Life is a gift.  Your soul knows the key to happiness.  It wants you to be crazy and live out those dreams that you buried deep within.  It wants you to wake up and be awesome.  The ruts in the road only show up, when you are not living your dreams.  The negative emotions drain your energy, and your life.  Wake up and dig up those dreams.  Don’t let them die in the dirt.  Put your vision into reality.

Your soul will open doors, but you have to be looking for them and walk through them.  Your soul will give you signs, but you have to read them and then do what they say, by following through with action.  If you are listening to the radio and not paying attention, then you will pass the signs by.  Just like on the freeway, there will be more than one sign telling you to stop for gas.  You can’t blame the universe when you don’t pay attention to the voice of your soul and run out of gas.

 Every morning you have two choices; continue to sleep with your dreams, or wake up and chase them – Unknown 

Get curious.  Dream Big.  Be Unstoppable.  There are those who try to make the doors to your dreams slam shut, they try to put things in the way so that they can’t be opened.  You have to see what is, and what else is possible.  That is where the magic happens, that is what makes the miracle possible.  That is the place where the newer, bigger dreams live.  That is the place of giants, where the dreams are deeper than the bottom of the ocean and larger than the boundaries of the universe.   So, Wake Up and Live!

An Inch Of Movement Brings You Closer To Your Goals Than A Mile Of Intention

Things do not change.  We Change

 – Henry David Thoreau

Transformation signifies that I can’t go back to what was.  I can only move forward.  I really like the thinking process that Jason went through, to get to this realization of treating transformation as a game. 

Transformation is my favorite game and in my experience, anger and frustration are the result of your not being authentic somewhere in your life or with someone in your life.  Being fake about anything creates a block inside of you. Life can’t show up for you if you don’t show up as you.

 – Jason Mraz

When my daughter was around 4 years old, she had to have a root canal done.  I was really worried that the experience would make her afraid of the dentist.  She had already had a bad experience with a pediatrician, and would cry when she had to go to the doctor.  I was referred to a specialist and wow!  What an excellent dentist.  He was talking to her and telling her some long complicated story.  I watched as he gave her the Novocain shot – he had her so involved in his story that she didn’t see or feel the needle in her mouth.  He went very slowly, and she didn’t ever notice that she got the shot.  At the end of the visit, she was happy and relaxed.  I was really impressed.  He treated the whole thing as a game.  She didn’t have a traumatic experience.  It really is all about the attitude that we have about it. 

The next part of his quote, is how when we are angry and frustrated in our life, it circles back to us – not something happening outside of us.  It might be that we had expectations that were not realistic, and so we are mad that it didn’t happen the way we expected.  Or it might be that we had the expectation of failure, and so set ourselves up to fail.  We created the block ,and then we banged our head against it in anger and frustration.

In my own life experience I have a large list of “reasons” why I can’t, or why it didn’t work out.  But under those “reasons” is the block that I put there to run into.  We need to learn how to be honest with ourselves.  Not cruel or mean, judging our efforts and calling ourselves a loser.  But rather, we need to dig up the block to see what it was sitting on.  This hidden knowledge, is the real reason why we are not transforming as we wish.  Some of things you might find are the “I’m not enough” excuses.  “I’m afraid” excuses.  “I will just fail” excuses.  I am sure that you could add a few of your own to this list.

I know this transformation is painful, but you’re not falling apart; you’re just falling into something different, with a new capacity to be beautiful.

  – William C. Hannan

For growth to happen, transformation is necessary.  It brings an opportunity into our lives.  We have to show up, for it to happen.  We have a choice to take up the challenge it creates, and work with and through it.  We can choose to fight it, to try to prevent it from happening.  When we resist transformation, it usually creates a crisis in our lives.

Every crisis contains within it the seeds for transformation and growth. 

  – Jodie Gale

It is so much easier to initiate the transformation, than to be pushed into it with a crisis.  Some change is inevitable.  It happens whether we want it to or not.  Other change is optional.  We choose to initiate a process of change, or we choose to not go down that road.

Change can be hard.  It requires no extra effort to settle for the same old thing.  Auto-pilot keeps us locked into past patterns.  But transforming your life?  That requires courage, commitment and effort.  It’s tempting to stay camped in the zone of That’s-Just-How-It-Is.  But to get to the really good stuff in life, you have to be willing to become an explorer and adventurer.

  – John Mark Green

For example.  We can chose to continue our education to go to college, or to not do so.  Either choice is a path that we can take.  What we choose may depend on our belief in ourselves to make it happen, the actions that we take to make it happen.  If we say we want to attend college, but don’t enroll, apply for student loans, etc… it is like waiting for a train to come down a track that is no longer in service.  We can sit there all week, but the train isn’t coming.  Life will present open doors to us, but we still have to get up and walk through the doors – we have to take action.

The best way to initiate change in our lives is to do small simple steps that bring joy to our hearts.  Take the example of college.  You might first start checking out the options.  Go online and google “colleges near me”.  Bible colleges, Cosmetology or Massage Schools, a traditional community college, a state college.  A two year degree or a four year degree?  Write down a few of the local colleges and contact the Admissions office and arrange a tour.  Meet some of the students and professors.  Sit in on a class.  Interview with an Admissions officer.  Pick up financial aid forms.  All of these are small steps to help you start towards your goals.

Maybe you have to work fulltime, and so you go through some of the same steps for an online college.  Including finding out from your HR department if the company will pick up some or all of your tuition or book fees, etc..

Once you have taken on some of the smaller action steps, it becomes easier to now turn in the financial aid package and actually enroll in some classes.  Of course, some of the changes in your life now will be a little harder to manage, as you now have class work time and homework that needs to fit into your schedule.  You will have to make sacrifices in time and money to bring this goal to its completion, but look at what you will have at the end.  You have an education; you can now get a better job.  You might be inspired to go on towards a masters degree or PHD.  But really what you have, is the knowledge that with some hard work and sacrifice, you can accomplish big goals in your life.  You can become a change agent.

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

So what are the changes in your life that you have the intention to make?  What are the changes you been putting off?  What are the things on your “to do” list that remain “just” a good intention?  The things that never take flight, because you just keep transferring it to a new piece of paper, never completing them? 

Take action!  An inch of movement will bring you closer to your goals than a mile of intention. 

 – Dr. Steve Maraboli

Sometimes you just need to put a different perspective to what you intend to do.  Try making a game out of it to get you started.  That could be the first step to take you miles down the road of action.

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Listen To Your Heart, Hear The Music Of Your Soul

“Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to the heart, it knows” – Native American Proverb

The visual here is of listening to nature. The wind, the silence of the deep night, that is the time our heart speaks. The mind quiets in expectation of what might happen. It waits in silence to see what the soul wants to be expressed. Then it becomes busy with plans and ideas and arguments for and against every thought.

“It’s the heart that knows the path, the mind is just there to organize the steps”– Jeff Brown

Your heart knows things that your mind can’t explain. When you drop down into your heart to listen, it is like listening to God, as he answers our prayers. There is a peace to it that is hard to explain. There are what I term “Kairos” moments, where the connection to mind, body and soul are wide open. Into the depths of the open space time stands still. There is an awakening, a sigh, a moment of seeing something out of the corner of the eye. In the space between the inhale and exhale of breath God speaks to us.

Like the stillness of a lake, where not even the breath of wind disturbs the surface. Then there is a single rain drop that hits the center of the lake, and the ripple slowly spreads out to lap at the shoreline. Then another drop, and another drop, a downpour begins. The ripples expand out and over each other. The surface of the water is in chaos. Each ripple ends at a different part of the shore, spreading out the details and nuances of the message. And suddenly our soul knows the answer that we have been seeking. All of this happening between the inhale and the exhale.

“Open your heart to hear the sweet, pure, positive and loving messages of your soul” – Sue Krebs 

You will need some time to take in all of the messages received. Time to process, to both reason and accept without reasoning. When the mind, body and soul are all on a wide open connection, it can seem overpowering. But like the music of the orchestra, if you just slow down your life for a moment, you can hear each instrument as it enters and leaves the music being played.

Disconnect from the electronics for a space of time; no T.V. no radio, no IPhone, no internet. Just sit in contemplation, remembering the messages, the conversation. Just sit, listen and accept. Know that what journey your soul is telling you to take, it is the perfection of divine timing to begin it now.

“Be bold enough to use your voice, brave enough to listen to your heart and strong enough to live the life you’ve always imagined” – Unknown

Your mind will bring in the chaos of the world . Churning your mind into a tornado, it can tear huge holes in your inner peace. It can bring up every mistake, every omission, every single thing that can be viewed as failure to tell you not to take this journey. Not to step upon that particular path. It whips you and beats you with dark images until guilt pours over your heart, drowning it in sorrow that you are unworthy, incapable of going on this journey. It creates confusion and makes you feel lost from your purpose. That you didn’t really understand the message correctly.

“Talk to yourself in two languages – what do I fear and what do I love – in order to balance the body and the soul” – Peter Shepherd

That is when it is vital to listen to your heart and soul. Your heart and soul does not lie about who you are, and why you are here. Listening to your heart you will uncover a wild uncharted world. You will learn what is meant for you, not what others want for you.

When you follow the directions of the cars guidance system, you are listening to someone else tell you how to travel on your life’s journey. You will travel to your destination the fastest route, but are those directions the right way to your destination? You won’t pull off the freeway and travel the backroads. You won’t stop at interesting small towns and walk through shops and find treasures. You won’t meet that interesting older couple in a diner that talk about what it was like when they were young. You will miss out on the life you are supposed to be living.

It takes boldness and courage to listen, because if you are truly open hearted and honest, there are shadows within all of us. This is when you have to be bold in using your voice. You have to be brave enough to stand up, even as you acknowledge that you are not infallible. At your hearts core is a strength that will help you stay in the fight of living the life you have always imagined you could have. It is easy to plan out this kind of life, but life has a way of bypassing your plans and going off in its own directions.

When nothing is making sense in your life, that is when you have to fall in love with every detail of what is happening. When you have to remember, that life is happening for you, not to you. It really comes down to attitude and perspective in the end.

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of the thing not meant for you” – Unknown

“People will want you to behave in a certain way, to make a certain choice because it reinforces the way they see the world.  But you have to do what’s right for you” – Unknown

As always, if you can’t figure out the questions to ask yourself, if self discovery is a puzzle you’ve yet to solve – contact us.  We are here for you.

What if,…..?

“Nothing is a coincidence.  Everything you’re experiencing is meant to happen exactly how it’s happening.  Embrace the lessons.  Be grateful” – www.livelifehappy.com

• What if,…. all the answers are deep within my soul, calling to me – but I am not listening?
• What if,… there are no mistakes, and every experience that you have is to your benefit?
• What would happen to the stories that you tell yourself and others about your life, if you reframed them to your benefit?
• What would happen if you had never been a victim, but was instead an adventurer who was experiencing all that life has to offer?
• How would word a reframe, shift and change your life?
• What if,… it was all “good”?

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant”  –  Horace Mann

The first thing I thought, was well some pretty bad things have happened – how can I just reframe it, to “it’s all good”?  I can do it if I can construct a framework that reflects a pattern that strings each thing together, like a string of pearls.  Each experience can be examined like an individual pearl.  Remember how a pearl is created?  It is an object that irritates the mussels, so that they begin putting a covering over the irritation, which becomes a pearl.  Mussels do this as part of their defense mechanism.  So what kind of covering can you put over every “bad” experience that turns it into a pearl?  How freeing is it to think, that you have the ability to cover over any bad experience and make it into something priceless?

“Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live” –  Robert Kennedy

Sometimes you can become so enamored with the tragedy, that you drag it around with you everywhere you go.  You stand up and testify to how life has done you wrong, and just look at what has happened to you.  You proudly present your wounds as though they are medals of honor.  What if instead…, tragedy was a tool of destiny to liberate you from the falsehood of fate, which lets fear determine your choices.

What if, … you have a divine blueprint written down in your soul, and now is the time to wake up and start creating the life you are meant to be living?

“There is a force within which gives you life, seek that.  In your body lies a priceless gem, seek that.  O wandering soul, if you were to find the greatest treasure, don’t look outside.  Look inside, and seek that”  –  Rumi

What if every experience has a purpose and they are all part of the plan?  Can you see a way that every pearl that you have on your long rope of pearls, is required and necessary to who you are becoming?

Most people don’t show up in their own lives.  We are taught at a young age not to express opinions different than the norm.  We are taught that to stick out and be different will just cause us pain and difficulties.  So like the turtle, we withdraw into our shell of protection and don’t venture out.  What if, … we stopped.  What if,… we took off that shell or mask, and stood up as who we truly are?

“A strong woman may remain silent when people talk behind her back.  But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t notice.  It simply means she chooses not to waste her energy on foolishness.  She has more important things to do” – Unknown

What if,… the reason the world seems to be so crazy right now, is that we are not showing up as who we truly are?

So, how do you figure that out?  Who are you really deep down inside?

“In order to experience the truth of things, you must have a clear mind, be brutally honest with yourself, and make innocence and vulnerability continually accessible, because your perception is always changing and there will always be more to learn and understand and experience” –  Amy Larson

One of the most important discoveries I made on my journey with LemonadeMakers is that the vision I saw initially grows and expands as I do.

I think that if you could see what it is really possible for you to become, you would not believe it.  You would not even set out on the journey, because it would seem too impossible for you to become that person.

That is why you are given small visions, that keep growing and expanding.  Each time you catch up to the vision, it steps out of range, so that you have to work and grow and expand yourself again and again.

Imagine that it is possible to discover who you really are capable of becoming and being?  What your purpose is?

To rekindle your passion into a bright steady flame that lights your way.  To understand what transforming your life really means?  To let go of all of the thoughts, judgments and stories that no longer serve you.

As you listen and try to connect to who you are, you get lost.  You hear the criticisms, judgments loud and clear, but you miss the compliments in your inner dialogs

• Would you be interested in discovering what you are truly capable of?
• Would you take the path less traveled?
• Would you have enough courage to undertake a journey that you know would be filled with mistakes, disappointments, as well as being a mind blowing adventure?
• Would you be willing to admit that you are in fact a divine creation; an amazing world leader – that just hasn’t fully shown up yet?
• Would you be willing to take that first step in discovering just how much you are truly capable of being and doing?

Are you interested in talking about your challenges, to encourage  others, to find/provide inspiration to continue on your individual journey? When you share the lessons of your journey, resilience is grown for everyone.

Chances are that what you’re struggling with, others are too. What life questions you have been asking yourself, others are asking themselves too. Get clear on what you want and how to obtain it. If your you’re interested in forming a weekly or biweekly zoom call, message me on LemonadeMakers.

Are You Ready To Be A Hero For Your Own Life?

We Are Stronger Than We Know

Awaken To Your Soul’s Destiny

It took me years to find the magic of self transformation.  Each transformation I go through, awakens me a little more. It is a personal and sacred journey each time.  Each time I get curious about something, I know that my soul is sending me a new message to wake up.  It’s time to make another transformation, another change, another shift in my life.

I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.

  – Joshua Graham

I now know that I no longer have to walk through the dark night of the soul, to transform my life.  I think about the experiences in my past, and what I learned going through each experience of death and rebirth.  It is the death of something that needs to be released, something that no longer serves me but rather belongs to the old sleepwalking me.  It is the rebirth of the real me.  The parts of me that I hid deep within.  It could be something about myself that I disowned as a child.  It could be the dream that I was told wasn’t possible coming back to life.  It is the realization that I am whatever I choose to become.

I realized that strong souls are forged living through the fires of hell.  That the fire itself is healing, The fires may feel like they are consuming us, but they are refining us.  They burn off the false truths that we cling to.  Like false messiahs they promised they would keep us afloat, but it was all illusion.  They were shown to be false prophets of our subconscious, seeking to keep our souls bound, unmoving in chains.  The fires consume the false beliefs, freeing our souls rise up from the ashes like the phoenix.  We rise up  with wings of faith and soar into a brightly shining divine destiny.  

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

  – Charles Bukowski

While I prefer to live the rest of my life, proactively seeking transformation, I can still honor the forges of hell for the deep truths that they provided.  I am climbing up to the top of the next mountain summit, to view the next horizon of transformation.  Within each new transformation, there is a pattern that reappears in every persons life.  This pattern weaves itself through the tapestry of our life.  In one corner we have the scene of our home and family life.  In another section of the tapestry we find our employment or career.  In another scene we see the health of our physical body, while another reflects the health of our spiritual body. 

In all these scenes there is a common thread that winds through.  For myself, for years it was the fear of being seen.  What is so interesting is that I discovered this thread came from my mother and was actually her own pattern.  When I realized that it didn’t belong to me, it was as though the thread dissolved, and could no longer be located in my life tapestry.  We all have threads in our tapestry that don’t belong to us.  They belong to friends and family.  We need to pull and release these threads back to their true owners.

Other common threads or patterns in the tapestry are my own.  My fears, which hold me back.  They are like the loose hairs that thread and wind themselves into your laundry.  The fears wind around and through the patterns of the cloth.  Have you ever taken a item of clothing out of the dryer only to find stray hairs wound into the fabric of your clothes?  It isn’t part of the material, but it somehow has wound itself into the material.  When you pull on it, it will break, but it is really hard to get all of the hair out of the material.  That is what these patterns of fear are like.  We pull at them, and break them up.  But there always seems to be a part of them still there. 

I have a need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.

  – William Lloyd Garrison

There are also “not enough” threads which are the spaces were the material creates these little pills – the thread gathers into these little knobs, which affect the look of the item.  They are formed from abrasions in day to day life.  Places where we felt judged, not appreciated, ill-used.  These “not enough” threads get created from stories we have told ourselves all of our lives.  These stories, although we would swear are true, are in fact illusions.  When we get curious and start examining why we are rubbing our life the wrong way, we are able to shift these stories.  When patterns are broken, we transform the chaos into new beliefs.  Beliefs of being strong minded; strong souled; strong bodied; and strong hearted.  An awakened soul.

The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.

  – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The reason people awaken when they do, is because they have finally stopped agreeing to things that insult their soul.   They wake up to the fact that they are no longer owned by the desires outside the body, but have awakened to their true nature.  Their heart is on fire, and they burn off the chains that have been holding them in place. 

Be true to life by being true to your purpose.  As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power.

 – Eckhart Tolle

We are in fact spiritual beings, that are awakening to our purpose in becoming human.  We turn inward to remember why we are here and what we came to do. 

Go, knock at the door of your own heart.

 –  Rumi

That is where you start looking for your answers.  Enlightenment is a destructive process because we have to let go of things, stories really, that we have told our sleeping selves were true.  With each awakening we leave behind something or someone.  It takes courage to tear down the stone walls that we built to keep ourselves asleep.  Those stones were hidden deep within us, like unseen anchors they held us in place.  With enlightenment, we begin cutting through the iron chains with a sacred energy that comes through our divine connection.  Heating up the links until they snap apart, setting us free.

It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self discovery, rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.

  – Marianne Williamson

By realizing who we are at our deepest level, we find our personal genius.  That unique gift that the divine gave us, is like the fingerprint of our soul.  No one else has the same personal genius that we have.  Each personal genius is required to fulfill their life purpose and ignite their passions into action.  We are all like individual puzzle pieces sent to the earth to fulfill a divine purpose.  That we why some of us feel the force of Rumi’s words, “do not go back to sleep.”  Because the world is waiting on each of us to fulfill our divine purpose.

This Universe is not outside of you.  Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.

 –  Rumi

Transformation, is a process.  If we fail to involve all of the steps in the process, what we end up with is temporary change.  We change for a few weeks, or maybe a few months, but eventually the rubber band of will power will snap and we will return to the previous habits and lifestyle.  Change is temporary.  Transformation is required to truly shift our life, our DNA, into a totally new being.  With each one of us that awakens, our gifts bring us one step closer to universal peace and harmony.

Behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.

  – Paulo Coelho

So be curious, and take that first step down the path to awaken.  Then be curious and take the next step to enlightenment.  Then be curious and take the next step to transformation. Then be curious and take the next step to the next horizon.  Then be curious and awaken just a little more.  Get curious and become even more enlightened and transformed again and again.

The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.

  – Joy J Golliver

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The Best Is Yet To Come, In New Beginnings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make Your Life Extraordinary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dreams are the Children of your Soul

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

  –  Billy Cox

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

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

  – Pamela Vaull Starr

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

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

  – Unknown

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

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

  – Unknown

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

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

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

  – Carl Jung 

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

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

  – Unknown

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

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul.

  – Carl Jung

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

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

  – Kahlil Gibran

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

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

  – Mother Teresa

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

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

  – Christopher Reeves

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The Courage To Continue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Bold With Your Dreams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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