Who Are You Being?

 

Sometimes a sentence can grab your attention and send you down a rabbit hole.  This sentence grabbed me and shook me awake.  “You have to stop just completing and begin living.”  I immediately thought of the difference between doing and being.

Doing is all about completing.  It is a “to do” list.  You complete the objective, tick off the box, and immediately start on the next thing on the list.  At the end of the day, you might be able to proudly look at a completed list, but the question begs to be answered – at what part of the day did you begin living?

What are the things you can shift in your life to make those changes easier?  How can you get off the treadmill of doing and start living the life of being.

“The highest level of creativity consists in being, not doing” – Marianne Williamson

Who or what are you becoming?  How you are being reflects how you are growing.  If you are too busy doing, then no growth is happening.

• It’s about the choices you are making in each moment.
• It’s about the things you are saying, not just out loud, but within your head.
• It’s about how will you be different after reading this?
• Choose wisely

It begins when we enter school.  We are taught to excel at doing.  To give the answers they want, the ones in the book.  Creativity is frowned upon in most subjects.  If you espouse a different opinion on what the writer might have meant, it becomes the “wrong” answer.  I always thought it was funny, how someone other than the author could know beyond any reasonable doubt what the writer might have been alluding to.

This continues through grade school, junior high, high school and even the colleges and universities. A lot of very successful creative minds left college partly because their creativity was being squashed.  They all have the entrepreneur mindset.  They all have some things in common, which includes doing things different than the norm.  They look at what is, and wonder what else could be?

• Richard Branson – Virgin
• Steve Jobs – Apple
• Bill Gates – Microsoft
• Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook
• Travis Kalanick – Uber
• Oprah Winfrey – media mogul
• John Mackey – Whole Foods
• Sophia Amoruso – Nasty Gal Fashion
• Coco Chanel – Fashion
• Anne Beiler – Auntie Anne’s Pretzels
• Barbara Lynch – Restaurant Chains
• Debbie Fields – Mrs. Fields Cookies.

Oprah has said that she was hired for a T.V. news show as an anchor.  Unknown to her at the time, the other anchor didn’t want her on the show.  Several months later he got his way and she was demoted.  It was very devastating.  Within every “failure” there is a nugget of gold.  She lost her job, but her demotion put her into a talk show format.  She said that the minute she took on that show, she felt like she had arrived home.

That is a sign – when your “job” feels like home.  You know that this is what you are meant to do.  It is being a “creative”.

Steve Jobs found this out when Apple ousted him.  It took him awhile to recover “who he was” because he had become so identified with the company, that he had stopped being and was just doing.  It essentially created a mid-life crisis.  He was looking at all kinds of possibilities from politics to becoming an astronaut.  He went on to launch both Pixar Animation Studios as well as NeXT.

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my life,”  Steve Jobs

He then goes on to say pretty much what Oprah said:  “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.”

“Once you shift your order of priorities from “having – doing – being” to “being – doing – having” your destiny will be in your hands” – Sadhguru

This reminds me of putting batteries into something.  Batteries have a positive and a negative side.  If you put them in backwards, they don’t work.  It is only when the connections are correct that they “turn on” the item.

When you approach your life with “having – doing – being” you have the heaviness in your life.  You are pushing the boulder up hill.  You might make it to the top, but the success won’t be fulfilling.

It is only when you approach your life from the “being” first, then the doing and having come afterwards.  Then your batteries are fully charged and working to speed you up to the hilltop.  The success is fueled by your passion, love and creativity.  You are a human “being” loving all parts of your life.

Both Oprah and Steve Job’s had failures.  Those failures led to connecting or reconnecting to “having – doing – being” in the right order.  You  have these wonderful talents,  They take the form of creativity, which becomes the doing part.  When you are living your life from the having your talents expressed through creativity, then you enter the being part of your life.  This is because you are living your divinely planned destiny in those moments.  The more of those moments you connect with in your life, the more on purpose you are.

“Being free from the fear of failure means you can focus more clearly on what you’re doing – and will be more likely to succeed” – Zen Health

It’s like you have these batteries not only installed correctly, but they are being recharged or fueled by your living the “having – doing – being” in the correct order.  You may not see it today, or even tomorrow as some things take a while to grow and mature.  But there will come a time when you look back and you will be awestruck how every little misstep, mistake, and seeming failure adds up to bring you exactly to where you are supposed to be.  In that moment, you will be so grateful that things didn’t go the way the mind planned, but instead the way the heart directed.

Are You Inviting Hope Into Your Life?

“Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams.  Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential.  Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do” – Pope John XXIII

You may at this moment be facing a similar landscape in your mind.  Your mind is filled with fears of:

• I can’t . . ,
• I must not . . ,
• I don’t think I can . . ,
• It’s safer not to look . . , think . . , see . . ,

How do you embrace hope instead?  You begin small and when the mind says “I can’t” or “I don’t” you replace those thoughts one by one as they appear.  You approach it as a curious question, “I wonder what if?” I did this, or said that?  Then as you strengthen those hopeful thoughts you can begin to replace them with:

• I will  . . ,
• I can . . ,
• I must . . ,

Hope is stronger than fear and you can fill your hopeful space with courage to forge ahead into the great unknown.  To explore all of the possibilities of a moment, and choose the one that fills your heart with the most hope.

Choices

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

Every morning you have a choice.  You can rise up with the light laughing at the fears you had last night.  Or, you can roll over whining and cowering in fear, as your mind carries you deep down into the darkness.

Every day you can hug the world with a great big bear hug.  Or, you can curse the world because you don’t yet have want you want, or need from it.

Every evening you can dream big dreams, longing to give more laughter, joy, and love to the world.  Or, you can dream nightmares where you are all alone, abandoned and just waiting for death to take you away.

“Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself” – Tony Benn

Emotions

Emotions can heal you or control you.  Fear based emotions are toxic.

• Fear kills dreams
• Fear kills hope
• Fear ages you beyond your years
• Fear holds you back from living up to your potential
• Fear can paralyze you so that you don’t reach out for your dreams

Emotions are fueled by your perceptions of what is happening.  You have a choice to perceive what is currently happening in your life as a train wreck, the worst trip of your life.  Or, as a learning opportunity; a mission to where no one has gone before; an adventurous quest in which you find your purpose in life.  Your perceptions reflect the reality that you are creating.

Positive emotions are creative emotions.  When you look at your world through the lens of love, you become creative.  Singing, painting, writing poetry, dancing, crafting beautiful objects out of your imagination.  Love is the passionate search for your own personal truth.  A calling down deep within your soul longing to be expressed.  It’s a part of God, and it is an act of reaching out to the greater good.  That is what births hope.

Hope is the Pearl born from Fear

“Hope is the only thing stronger than fear” – Unknown

It’s a funny thing how fear and hope are connected.  It is like the oyster which takes an irritating grain of sand and turns it into a pearl.  Fear is the oyster who is afraid of the hope that the sand is bringing to the oyster.  So it coats it over and over, hoping to bury it and by seeming accident it creates something beautiful.  Inside of every fear you have is that grain of sand.  Irritating you to make another choice.  You keep trying to cover it over, but eventually the fear is broken open and there in the middle of the shell is the beautiful pearl just waiting to be plucked out.

It’s an interesting dichotomy that both fear and hope are entwined together.  Where you find one, you will always find the other.  It’s just a matter of looking back at your past experiences.  Follow the thread of how fears are born from uncertainty.  You might be learning something new.  You are afraid to fail.  Fears becomes that irritating grain of sand.

But as you learn and take in knowledge about it, you start to gain some experience of what this is going to be like.  That grain of sand starts getting a coat of confidence.  You start to gain some confidence that you can figure this out.  You acknowledge that you will make mistakes.  But those failures or mistakes can actually provide vital information.  Another coat of confidence coats that grain of sand.

If you understand that every experience is in fact a learning tool, it will in turn build more confidence.  Slowly those fears of failure turn into hope that you haven’t bit off more than you can chew.  Hope provides even more confidence and slowly the uncertainly disappears.  Your grain of sand has become a pearl of wisdom and dreams being fulfilled.

What is Shaping your Future – Fears or Hope?

“When it rains look for rainbows.  When it’s dark look for stars” – Unknown

Always look for the reasons to smile.  My sister and I were talking earlier about the Covid-19 and how the enforcement of staying at home has been affecting people.  A friend of hers back east has lost three friends to suicide in the past few weeks.  It has certainly been a trying experience for a lot of married couples.  Jada Pinkett Smith was talking about her marriage to Will Smith and how she has now realized that she doesn’t really “know” her husband at all, even after 25 years.   She says that she goes straight to “fight” and that isn’t an option when you are forced to remain at home under quarantine.  They are choosing to  “go through some stuff” and become best friends again.

It is raining right now.  Are you looking for rainbows?  When the darkness comes into your head and heart, do you look for the stars?  Again look back at the cover photo – are you choosing to see the beautiful green meadow with the sun shining through the fog – or, are you choosing to just see the rain and the darkness of your life’s current event. When you look back at the cover photo do you only see the reflection of the death of everything in it?

Don’t be afraid of your fears.  They are a sign post telling you that something is coming into your life that is going to change everything.  Instead of feeling a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, imagine that your fear is in fact anticipation.  The anticipation of opening that oyster to find a beautiful pearl just waiting for you to pluck it up and wear it proudly.

Never let fears stop you from pursuing your dreams.  Don’t let your fears of what might happen, mean that you don’t make anything happen.  Come join us for our next Zoom call.  Bring all of those creative “hope” juices to the table and let’s see what we can make.

Living From A Place of Surrender

“A crisis creates the opportunity to dip deep into the reservoirs of our very being, to rise to levels of confidence, strength, and resolve that otherwise we didn’t think we possessed” – Jon M Huntsman Sr.

Crisis gives you the opportunity to get unstuck.  To actually get up and do something more.  To open up the door to bigger things in your life.  A crisis gives you the keys to open the cage of mediocrity.  It gives you the opportunity to discover:

• If you are really committed or just interested?
• Do you want to be the hero, or the person who stands there and thinks, “somebody should do something”?
• Are you ready to choose extraordinary?

When you have a crisis in your life, no matter what kind of crisis it is, there is always hope.  From the space of hope and faith, you can choose to turn it into an open door of opportunity.  The danger comes when instead, you are experiencing a closed door of suffering.

“Sometimes our lives have to be completely shaken up, changed, and rearranged to relocate us to the place we’re meant to be” – Quotes & Thoughts

One of the lessons you can learn in times of crisis is the wisdom of not knowing. Daniel Boorstin said, “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”  In order to make the best decision in a time of crisis you have to let go of what you think of as normal.  Normal doesn’t work in times of crisis.  By adopting the wisdom of not knowing you will be better equipped to navigate the changes that the crisis will make as it passes through your life.

“In times of crisis, it’s always better to hop out rather than staying stuck in the chaotic life.  At such times, one must form a steadfast resolution to live liberated, whatever be the situation” = Unfathomed Liberal Words

Times of crisis require you to be more open, curious, flexible, and expansive.  Openness is a key that opens doors to learning new ways to do things.  It opens the door to creativity.  When you allow fears to keep you in contraction and frozen, you are experiencing the closed door of suffering.  It takes courage to keep the door open.  To forget what you think you know, so that new knowledge can be accepted and adapted to what is needed in times of crisis.

Look at what this current crisis is engendering around medical supplies.  Everyone is making face masks and shields and discovering better ways to protect the front line doctors and nurses during this pandemic.  Scientists are working hard in finding a vaccine.  When this crisis has ended the things learned will help millions of people in the future to be better prepared for the next pandemic.

“It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature.  Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment” = Bram Stoker, Dracula

Resilience is a key factor when in times of crisis.  Resilience is what allows you to use the crisis in your personal growth.  When you are in times of personal struggle, it becomes somehow easier to let go of the things that are no longer serving you.  For example, you might have things that you have held on to from an emotional attachment, but they don’t serve you in any way.  They just take up space in the “closet”.  Resilience gives you the space to do the inside work.

“The time of crisis is a bell to adaptation.  The time of crisis is the one, when your growth is the fastest.  The time of crisis teaches you not to sweat away, the next time it appears” – IshitaG.

Doing the inner work is what opens up the space for grace and clarity.  When you are seated in the space of grace, you are seated in your soul.  The outside world can continue to be in turmoil, but if you are seated in your soul, it no longer impacts you in the same way.  From the “breath of acceptance” you can acknowledge what is wrong and starting working on adapting what you already know.  You can figure out how to blend in the concept of being open for learning and the concept of approaching that space from a state of clarity.  You will intuitively know what is now most important.

“A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry.  It gives a chance, an opportunity, to choose well or to choose badly” – Desmond TuTu

In times of crisis you have a choice to not react to all of the negativity.

• For every negative thought you have, replace it with three positive thoughts.  It’s a great practice and if you are consistent, it will make a dramatic shift to a more positive life.
• Create some new mantras around positive thoughts you want to embody in your life.
• Relax and let go of the negativity, both mentally and physically.  Practice tightening a muscle group and then relaxing it.  Do this for your whole body.  As you relax each group, you settle further into a deep relaxation.

When you make these practices part of your life, you not only improve your inner state, you impact your health too.  When your inner state is in a place of grace and clarity, it gives you the space to deal with whatever is happening in your outer world.  You grant yourself the gift of moving forward with courage instead of hiding in fear and contraction.  You make better decisions when your inner space is in a place of peace and harmony.  Remember that you always have a choice – you can impact your outer world, or you can be impacted by it.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.  Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less” –Elephantontheroad.com

All of my favorite books and movies have some things in common.  The characters are all curious.  They want to understand how and why things are the way they are.  They are courageous and not afraid to do the hard things.  Because of these two things their characters grow in meaningful ways.  This is a time in your life for you to be both curious and courageous.  Open the doors to resilience and allow the space of “not knowing”.  Start learning what is needed to grow your inner self in this time of crisis.  Times of crisis gives you fertile soil.  It is the best ground to grow from. Do not let this opportunity pass you by.

Choose To Live By Your Choices, Not Chance

 

365 days a year LemonadeMakers posts a blog about something positive and potentially life changing.  I write about my own life, the struggles I’ve had and the struggles I am in the middle of.  I write about the beliefs I’ve come to adopt.  I write a lot about change and transformation.

“You and you alone make the decision as to how you view the experiences in your life and it’s important to know who you are; not to judge, not to focus on your flaws and imperfections, but to discover who you want to be and decide if you’re living by choice or chance” – Live Purposefully Now

It started with my nephews murder and my writing myself out of a dark time.  Right now we are all dealing with some aspect of the Covid-19 in our lives as well as the “normal” life lemons that show up for all of us.

“Choice is the most powerful tool we have.  Everything boils down to choice.  We exist in a field of infinite possibilities.  Every choice we make shuts an infinite number of doors and opens an infinite number of doors.  At any point we can change the direction of our lives by a simple choice.  It is all in our hands, our hearts, and our minds” – tinybuddha.com

LemonadeMakers just recently hit the milestone of 100,000 likes/follows on our page.  In connection with that milestone I asked for some comments about how LemonadeMakers has impacted your lives.  Some of you responded and it made us so happy to see that LemonadeMakers was able to have a positive impact for you.

Just three of the many comments received:

• “I started following this page . . ,  It brought hope, inspiration, power to have control of my life again.”
• “You have encouraged me on many levels. From story to questions, you have made me think and feel. I love that you are constantly improving and sharing the moments in life that seem vulnerable yet they strengthen you.”
• “I have drawn inspiration for the day from many of your posts and have tried to make several of them a habit of my daily practice . . , much to my personal joyfulness (and hopefully, others around me as well).”

“Every morning you have two choices:  Continue to sleep with dreams or, Wake up and chase your dreams.  The choice is yours . . ,”  – Unknown

“Life isn’t always easy.  I struggle day to day.  But I choose to live life to the fullest and keep reminding myself that I am stronger than anything that stands in my way”  – Tanya Masse

I have been thinking about how while we have reached this 100,000 milestone, most of the people who have become fans don’t see our posts.  On an average day less than 2,000 people see our posts reflected in their daily feed.  I get complaints from both friends, relatives, and fans that Facebook doesn’t show LemonadeMakers on their news feed.  LemonadeMakers wants to support you during the struggles of your daily life.  In order to support more positivity in your life, here is how you can make sure that Facebook is reflecting LemonadeMakers in your newsfeed.

• If you’re not seeing any LemonadeMaker posts, go to our page and leave likes and comments on a few recent posts.
• Next go to your Facebook page. I’m going to show you how to edit your news feed for your mobile phone, since that is the most common way LemonadeMakers read our posts.

To edit your News Feed preferences on your phone:

• Tap the 3 lines at bottom right corner of the Facebook app.
• Scroll down to Settings & Privacy.
• Tap Settings.
• Scroll way down to News Feed Settings.
• Tap News Feed Preferences.
• Tap Prioritize who you see first
• When you start to scroll down the icons for your friends, family etc. . , a search button will display
• You can simply touch the icon/face and a star button is attached to the photo.

(I suggest at this point you type in LemonadeMakers, because if you are like me you have hundreds of friends and pages you have liked over the years).  You are limited to 30 picks for prioritizing who you are seeing first.

Your selections aren’t ranked #1, #2, etc.   It is random how it comes up.

Notifications:  If you really don’t want to miss LemonadeMakers posts, you can get notified each time we post.

• Click on notifications settings
• Go down the Pages you follow
• You can turn on/off allow notifications
• You can turn on/off to receive it as a Push
• You can turn on/off to receive it as a Email
• You can turn on/off to receive it as a SMS

Please note that we do post more than one post a day, so if notifications annoy you, don’t activate this.

On the Facebook mobile application on the bottom right hand part of the screen is a little bell – if you click on the bell it takes you to all of your notifications.  You will see not only a LemonadeMakers notification, but any friend requests, birthdays and people who are asking you to like their pages.  That way you can find us really easy if you missed our posts when they popped up.

Hopefully this helps you stay connected with us.  Another way to stay connected is our monthly Zoom call.  Click in the box below to register.  We have a lot of fun conversation.  I bring some ideas and everyone has the opportunity to join in the conversation or to just sit back, relax and listen.

“It’s not circumstance.  It’s not chance.  It’s the choice we make that determines the destiny of life”  – RVM

 

Start Walking, Be Aware, Watch For Possibilities

“It is not the perfection of one’s life but the direction of a life that provides evidence of regeneration”  = John Macarthur

My mother had this habit of saying that she was working on “getting it all together”.  One day I found this cute little card and I had to buy it for her.  It had the picture of a tall filing cabinet with the drawers partially open.  There were files half way out of the cabinet with the papers spilling out of them.  In one of the filing cabinets was a mouse going through the files looking for something.  The caption read “I finally got it all together, but I forgot where I put it.”

“Happiness is not perfection.  It’s looking past imperfection and see the beauty of life” – Surbhi Bhosie

Your life will not be fully lived if you are waiting on getting “all of your ducks in a row.”  You have to begin where you are.  Like the momma duck you need to starting walking and have faith that the ducks will line up behind of you.  There is a joke about how when you finally got your ducks all in row, you’ll discover that they’re not even your ducks!  It isn’t about perfection.  It’s about creating something, anything that gets your closer to your dreams and goals.

Never Turn Away

It has been said, “If you want to get your ducks in a row, you must first get your head above water.”  We are living in a world that is becoming hard to recognize as anything normal.  If you work in sports, entertainment, retail, the restaurant industry, the travel industry – you may have lost your income.  You may still be employed but working from home with children driving you to distraction.  You may be caring for elderly parents terrified that they will get this virus.  In one week you have decided that being a couch potato and binging on T.V. isn’t as relaxing as it sounds.

“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect, it simply means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections” – Iliketoquote.com

So with everything in your life going sideways or upside down, how do you find beauty in a world that feels like it is breaking apart?  By creating beauty in the world, wherever you find yourself.  There is an artist that did this magnificent beadwork on canvas, and then she tore it to explose of the beauty hidden underneath.  When you find yourself feeling broken, remember to look for the beauty in the brokeness.

“I realized that to be more alive I had to be less afraid.  So I did it.  I lost my fear and gained my whole life” – Mantraband.com

In mosaics there is great beauty by taking the broken pieces and creating a new piece of art.  It tells a story.  Instead of throwing away the broken things in your life, look for ways to incorporate them into a new meaning.  Don’t abandon your dreams and goals for 2020.  Just look for new creative ways to keep growing your comfort zone and reveal the beauty of hidden possibilities and potential.

Focus

“The road remains wide open while your dreams are alive, only fear can block the way” – Fratley

What is it that you are currently focusing on?  That is the direction you will find yourself heading.  Years ago I was driving home from work one night.  I saw that the car coming towards me had wandered into my lane.  I quickly steered my vehicle off onto the shoulder of the road.   The driver of the oncoming car continued crossing over into my direction.  I could not get out of his way and he hit the side of my vehicle on the drivers side just past the passenger door.  My vehicle was bouncing back and forth, from side to side.  For a moment I thought I was going to roll the vehicle over.

I was sitting in my car, trying to calm my heart down and he came running back to my car.  He kept repeating over and over how sorry he was.  Apparently he was looking at the concrete wall that had been built into the hillside of a new subdivision and was not paying attention to where he was steering.  When you look off to the side of the road, you will unconsciously steer in the direction that you are looking.  By the time he realized he was going to hit me it was too late.  He had not only left his lane, he had crossed completely through my lane and hit me off the road on the shoulder.

 

That is why focus is so important.  It is so easy to swing the pendulum from one side to the other and not be grounded in the present.   If you are too far to the right you might ask yourself:

What is running through your mind as the hamster wheel endlessly spins?  Is it negative mind talk or positive “I can do this” thoughts?  Have you basically already surrendered your life to fear and anxiety? Instead of listening to the minds endless list of “I can’t because thoughts”  what if you turned the sentence around to view it with curiosity – “how can I?”

• I can’t do this because . . . , change to: I wonder how I could do this?
• I can never get anything right . . , change to: I wonder why I think I can’t get anything right?  When did I start thinking that?
• I won’t ever be good enough . . , change to: What is my definition of “good enough”?  Where did I get that definition?  If my best friend or my child told me that sentence what would be my response back to them?  Why don’t I say that to myself?
• Someone will always be better than me . . . , Change to:  answer back  “so what?”  “Who cares?”  I am better than someone and someone else is better than me.

Just Go For It!

“Life is a balance of holding on and letting go” – Rumi

Right now there is a lot of things that you can’t control.  Right now there is a lot of unknowns about what is going to happen next.  The world is shifting and transforming right in front of you.  Instead of feeling like running around and screaming “the world is falling” what if you just got still?  If you just took a deep breath in and let it out slowly over and over until your mind quiets down?  What if you sat in the space of learning to live between effort and surrender?

Something important to remember is that before you try to balance anything, you need to make sure that you are on firm ground.  A steady foundation.  Ask yourself, what do I need to stay grounded, in touch, in love, connected and emotionally balanced in this moment?  You are not going to find it outside yourself.  Look within, to find it.

What if you just looked at what to let go of – all of the cursed unknowns in your life right this moment, and just surrendered them.  What if you got into the space of curiosity – of wonder  – of imagination?  What if you rethought/restructured what dream needs to take flight and just went for it right now?

Put your trust in your higher power.  Embrace change.  Embrace life.  Expand instead of contract.   There is tremendous power in your dreams.  Use it to take flight.   Start by recognizing your “super powers”, your talents and then find ways to serve others by using them.  Do great work even in trying times.

Turning a Corner

There is an old curse that people used to say, according to various fiction writers.  “May you live in interesting times.”  It was meant to imply that you would live in times of great change and unrest.  You might be wondering if you are today, this moment, living in interesting times.  If you are, how do you “aim true”?

In thinking about this I wonder if you are in fact living in a time of great shifting and upheaval.  Think of the change in a landscape after a volcano has blown its top.  We used to live outside of Seattle, WA and I remember going camping, hiking and fishing around Mt. Saint Helens.  When the mountain had its huge eruption, the landscape totally changed.  You would walk down the same path as before, only it wasn’t the same.  The eruption changed the landscape into something surreal.

Are you experiencing changes on a personal level, such as going to a grocery store with a list of items that you can’t find?  For those few items you do find, are you being limited by the store as to how many items you can purchase?

Turning A Corner In WW II

One of the things I love to do is get curious about patterns and shifts in life.  During WW II all of the men went off to war.  This left factories without workers and so many women were called upon to join the workforce to keep the machines running.  It was a time of great upheavals and shifts.  When the men came home they expected the women to go back home to the kitchen.  Women had stood in the place of their husbands or boyfriends and worked a fulfilling job for several years – as well as keeping care of the home and children.  Many of them didn’t want to go back home into their old roles as solely a wife or mother.  They felt that they could be more than that, and wanted it to continue.

Overnight it seemed that the roles of a man and woman had shifted.  They had turned a corner and it wasn’t possible to just go back to the way it was.  It’s taken a long time for those roles to continue shifting and solidifying into true equality.  It is still going on to some extent.

It feels like you may be about to have a similar experience of what happened to the workforce during WW II.  What if the result of this virus is that you are about to experience a “turning of the corner” moment, in multiple ways of how you used to live your life?

“Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is” – Unknown

Is This The End Of The World As We’ve Known It?

Malls have been slowly dying for the past 10 years or so.  Is this the end of malls?

Working from home has been moving one step forward, two back for a few years.  Where I work it wasn’t encouraged.  It was well tolerated for a few years, but lately they had decided they wouldn’t approve it for fulltime employees who wanted to shift from the office to home any longer.  Now of course for those states on lockdown everyone who can work from home is.  If this home lockdown truly continues for a couple of months, will businesses have turned a corner and begin abandoning commercial multistoried office buildings?  Will working from home become the “norm” of the future?

Has the virus killed ISP data caps?  Internet providers have been lifting the data caps due to everyone being at home and using the internet – both for work and entertainment.  Once you have given something away for free, it is very hard to put the genie back into the bottle.  It becomes a negative experience for your customers and they will go to someone who is still not capping their online connections.

What if we have just “turned the corner” for movie theaters?  You see Disney and several other companies releasing the movies to either buying the movie or streaming it and paying to view it.  If this was to continue there would be need to be a drastic change to how much it cost to make a movie in order for the industry to survive.  Would the mega dollars paid to the big stars go away?  Would movies become all computer generated, with voices being the only real part of the movie?

What about the million dollar contracts for sports stars if the big arenas were no longer deemed safe?

Once you start down the rabbit hole of wondering, there is no telling where you might end up.  The world is full of patterns.  The patterns continue until they transform, collapse or end.  When you are in the middle of a pattern that is in transition, it is really hard to recognize what is happening.  Even if you recognize that a pattern shift is being played out, it is really hard to determine where it is going.  It is impossible to guess how fast or slow the change will be, or how much it will impact you.  You just know that transformation is in motion.

If you go back to the caterpillar to butterfly analogy you are inside the chrysalis and you are still just goo.  Until you break free of the chrysalis you won’t know what it is that you have transformed into.  You won’t know the true impact on your life.  What corner(s) have you just turned that you can never go back from?  It is like one of those pictures that you can connect the dots on.  It is only after the transformation has been completed that you can see what you have transformed into.

How Do You Aim True?

I feel  like there is an elephant trying to go through a door and it has gotten itself stuck.  On the other side of the door is a brand new world to explore.  I can get glimpses to see that it is a new world.  I can’t however know how much of a change has actually occurred.

Will we all be working from home and will commercial real estate transform all of those buildings into housing?  What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

Will the majority of people order groceries and have home delivery?  Will grocery stores become more of a shipping facility than a store where you walk down the aisles and buy more than you planned on because of impulse buying? What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

Will drones become the future of deliveries?  Will self driving cars that self sanitize become the way of getting from point A to point B if you do have to leave home? What would that mean for your goals that you are aiming for in your life?

All questions and answers can be discussed and explored – but nothing will be truly known until the elephant clears the doorway.  Even then it will take time to fully realize that the corner has been completely turned.  Before you can see how much the new direction impacts your life.

What you have in this moment though is the ability to be curious.  To explore, not with a depressing attitude that the world is changing and you want it to remain the same.  But with a curiosity that says, “I wonder what happens next?”  “Do I aim high or low with my life goals and dreams?”

I  Wonder What Happens Next?

I firmly believe that there are going to be some great opportunities when we clear that doorway – when we turn that corner.  You can make guesses.  You can get curious and talk with others – but only from the perspective of good things are about to happen.  This isn’t said to try and make light of the health and economic devastations that are happening.  It is said to let you know that you don’t have to let fear take over your life.

You can’t control everything that is happening, or is about to happen.  You can take the recommended steps to protect the health of yourself and your family.  But once you have taken those steps – then go back into curiosity.  Go back into wonder.  Stay in the positive emotions of love, joy, happiness.  Tell fear that it is in quarantine.  Don’t let it out to take over your life.

Come and join our conversation on April 4th.  Let’s talk about whatever is showing up for you and how you can turn the corner on fear and change your relationship with it.  Let’s talk about your dreams and goals and how you can still be proactive in bringing them into reality.  This isn’t the time to go into retraction with your life.  It is instead the right time, to proactively take whatever positive steps you can to keep moving forward.  To keep expanding the love, joy, happiness, curiosity in your life.

The Light Is In You

 

“Know what sparks the light in you, then use that light to illuminate the world” – Oprah

Inside of you is a box of matches.  Each of the matchsticks is a gift that you have to Illuminate the world with.  Striking the match enables you to bring light to some sort of darkness in the world.  The darkness is filled with all of the problems in society we face today.

Each time you light one of your matchsticks, you can see some small part of what is hiding in the darkness. Your light will always shine on something that you can help to change in the world.

If you are brave enough, you strike a match and get curious about the secrets that are hiding in the darkness. Inside of every one of society’s problems lies the seed of the answer to what must be changed.

Those seeds are germinated with your passion.  In order for change to happen, it requires that you strike a match, get curious, and get creative about how to illuminate the possibilities within the seeds.  Trust your heart and your calling will light the way.

“To be a star, you must walk your own path, shine your own light and don’t be afraid of the darkness, that’s when a star shines the brightest” – Joel Brown

In times of hardship the automatic reflex is to contract, when in fact you need to expand. You feel that life is shutting you out. That failure is condemning you. Life is unfair, so you wail and kick your feet in frustration. You just want to dig a hole and disappear into it forever. Yet this is the exact time you must open your hands to receive.

Receiving isn’t just allowing someone to help you.  It is also saying yes to yourself; to risk; to higher potential; to new adventures. Opening doors to new opportunities. Learning about yourself.  Life is all about understanding something you’ve known about your entire life – in a new way. Be willing to be a beginner again, for a whole new world of opportunities is just waiting for you.

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lit the flame within us” – Albert Schweitzer

Somedays it feels like you just can’t motivate yourself to get out of bed.  You’re exhausted from beating your head against the obstacles in your life.  There are dark shadows obscuring your ability to see what needs to be done.  You try to strike a new match to get clarity and nothing happens.  You try another match.  Then you try a new area to strike the match.

Sometimes you will need to your light to be rekindled from someone else’s light, and sometimes you can help to illuminate their light source.  That is the importance of being part of a tribe.  Connect to others who are shining their lights to change themselves and thereby change the world.

Instead of just being preoccupied with your problems, you open your heart to the adventures and obstacles of their journey, and your own journey becomes illuminated.

“Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock” –  James Baldwin

Steven Pressfield stated in “The Art of War”, that most of us have two lives; the lives we live and the lives we are capable of living.

Many times the worst danger you face is your own uncertainty that what the light is revealing is something that you can face and deal with. Curiosity may have opened the door, but what you find may still feel like it is going to kill you.

Truth will both refine you and define you. It measures you. It takes caution and understanding to know what to do with the truth of who you are.  To accept who you have been in the past.  To be in awe of who you are revealing yourself to be today.

Part of the search for understanding who you came here to be, is to understand that change is how you grow those seeds which will crush the obstacles in your path.  Spirit understands whatever adversity you face, is also an opportunity. That when you embrace change, change also embraces you.

“Illumination is nothing if you do not share it with anyone.  Illumination is about spreading light across entire nations.  It’s about wearing that crown that shines like the sun on your head, and getting other minds to synergize with yours” – Suzy Kassem

If you have a vision but no plan, then you have a pipe dream. If you have a vision and a focused plan but lack action, then you’ll have a lot of frustration.  This is because you won’t achieve momentum when some days you take action, and some days you don’t. It makes it impossible for you to know what’s working and what isn’t.

If you are not intentional about what you say yes to, and what you say no to, then every day will control you and nothing will get done.

That’s where illumination comes in.  That’s where striking your match comes in.  You need to learn how to keep your lamp lit.  You need to learn how to strike your matches and use those divine gifts with purpose to not only shift and change your world, but the entire world.  Find your spark and light up those matches!

Are You Pushing Your Limits?

“Bravery is not the absence of fear.  Bravery is feeling the fear, the doubt, the insecurity, and deciding that something else is more important”  – Mark Manson

Every year we commit ourselves to making changes in our lives.  We may or may not call them goals, or new years resolutions.  The thing is that we all change, whether it is on purpose or it just happens.  Those changes can happen in uncontrolled chaos, or from being committed to something vitally important.  Whether change happens to us or for us, it is up to us to make those decisions, day by day & moment by moment.

“I wish for the same thing I’ve hoped for since the beginning.  I wish for a life so brave, so unpredictable, so full of unexpected joys and unforgettable love that no box could possible contain all my memories.  Such a life won’t be perfect.  It’ll be something better.  It’ll be my own paradise”  – Patti Smith

I think that the one thing all of humanity can agree on, is wanting a happy life.  It may look different depending on our age, our sexual preference, our religion, our culture, our politics – but it is still desiring joy and happiness in our lives, and our families lives.  Each decision that we make in this regard comes from us following those things mentioned above.  The funny thing is, the personal definition of what constitutes all of those things  — may not be authentic to who we are at a soul level.  A lot of them come from following someone else’s value system.  Our parents, our teachers, our mentors or the society that we associate with.  As they say in Texas, “that dog don’t hunt”.

It’s not perfect, It’s a work in progress

“Finding the passion and purpose in your life is a trial-by-fire process.  You don’t simply wake up one day and become happy doing one thing forever and ever.  It’s a constant work-in-progress”  – Mark Manson

It’s kind of funny how we have this notion in our head that if we are able to make this one change or answer this one soul searching question about our life, that it will be a one and done thing.  That somehow one thing changing would make us happy forever.  There is no one-size-fits-all for anything in life.  This is because growth is a constantly changing who we are.  What makes us happy today in this moment is fleeting.  This is because in life, you literally cannot pass this way again.  Everything is changing and so this moment in time doesn’t last, it doesn’t repeat itself.  Progress is change.

“Passion will move men beyond themselves, beyond their shortcomings, beyond their failures” – Joseph Campbell

What I love about figuring out how to accomplish my desires is the concept of failure as an ending.  When you are on your way to someplace that you’ve never been before, even with a navigation system you sometimes end up on a dead end.  Just this past week I had a doctors visit and they had moved their office.  So I am following the directions on the navigation system in my car and I end up at a dead end.  Thankfully there were some security guards talking next to this gate to the high school who knew where I needed to go.

“Believe in yourself and all that you are.  Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle”  – Christian D Larson

Reaching a dead end, my journey to the doctors office had failed.  I didn’t just turn around and go back home.  I sought new directions.  It’s the same thing with whatever our current life goals are.  If you reach a road block, a dead end, the bridge is out – you shouldn’t just quit trying to get to where your passion is leading you.  You should try something else.  You should go in a new direction to the same destination.

New Directions required –

BE different to MAKE a DIFFERENCE

“If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world”  – Elaine Dalton

A big part of being able to make the changes in your life that you desire, is a healthy self esteem.  It is how you bring your life into soul alignment.  It is living a life in integrity to your soul’s purpose.  What your true values are deep inside of you.  Without going through a process of determining what belongs to your soul – and what was adopted from outside of you from an deep seated need to belong – you can’t make true lasting changes in your life.  You can make temporary changes from will power, but it will not result in the personal transformation that you desire.

“Don’t give in to your fears.  If you do you won’t be able to talk to your heart”  – Paulo Coelho

If you don’t want to continue falling back into old patterns and habits you need to learn a new way to facilitate your life changes.  To learn a process that helps you to spot the patterns as they begin again to interfere in your passions and desires for change.  As you increase your awareness, you will find those old patterns hold less power and control over your life.  They began from a desire to keep us safe.  But as you grow and change in life, those patterns become out-grown, outdated.  They need to be released.  That can only happen by your developing awareness of why you created them and how your subconscious is trying to avoid the risk of standing out and being different.

This year you have some dreams that you are working on. You have some goals that you are struggling with. It might be that you are ready to break out of your comfort zone. To go to that next level in your life. To realize your full potential in your job/career; your personal relationships; your health; financial or spiritual goals. Don’t let them go.

Do something different, join us on March 7th and find a new direction to fulfilling your dreams, goals and commitments.

Brand New Ending?

 

What I love about life is the ability to always make a change.  To do something different.  To be someone different.  It’s all about choice.

There are many people who look at their lives and decide they have no choices.  That life is somehow against them.  That they can’t be any different.  It is the excuse of people who feel hopeless and helpless.  But the reality is that you do get to decide how you are going to live your life.

Is this the life

you want to live?

There comes a point where it all becomes too much.  When we get too tired to fight anymore.  So, we give up.  That’s when the real work begins.  To find hope where there seems to be absolutely none at all – Christina Yang

When you are in the middle of life’s storms it may seem like all of the trees have been blown over.  The roots were just not strong enough to keep the tree anchored in the soil.  The homes around you may have suffered extreme damage and become uninhabitable.  They weren’t maintained or strong enough to survive the hurricane force winds.  When every structure you have created in your life has been ripped apart – what then?

That is the moment to notice that you are still here.  You may not be standing; you may have been knocked down.  But you are not out.  It is in this moment of realizing that you have survived that you can take stock of your life.  Because it is in this moment you learn that you were strong enough to survive.  That you get to decide what happens next.

Is this the person you want to be?

Are these the relationships you want in your life?

Is this the job/career you desire?

Is this the BEST YOU CAN BE?

Can you be stronger?

Kinder?

More Compassionate?

I’m sure that you have heard the saying “let go and let God”.  It is one of my constant reminders to myself.  It feels like letting go is easy.  It’s sort of like handing over the trouble to someone else to handle.  It relieves you of the responsibility of fighting for how you want things to turn out.

At the same time, it is human to keep the comfort zone the same.  So, while you are busy telling yourself that you have let go, you are in fact fighting to keep things the same.

How do you know if you’re fighting to keep it?  By noticing that you haven’t really moved on.  You have the same furniture in your comfort zone, you just moved it around.  In order to have a real change in your life, no matter how painful it is, you have to let it all go and move on.  You need to have a moving sale, “all must go”.  You have to donate that old furniture and get new furniture.  It’s the only way we can continue to grow.

Letting go is a release.  If you have the balloons all stacked up and tied together, they aren’t going anywhere.  It’s when you untie all of the balloons and let them go one by one.  It’s when you let the wind take up each balloon and blow it across the sky until you can’t see it anymore – that’s when you have really let it go.  What you are letting go of is not the dream itself, but the version of the dream you were trying to fulfill.

I think it is human to have some really deep-seated desires, beliefs, wishes that you know aren’t ever really going to happen.  You were raised to believe in fairy tales, in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, in the white knight in shining armor that was going to sweep in and rescue you.  You told yourself they weren’t real.  You thought you had released them.  Then something in life happens, and you realize you are still holding out for that forgotten dream.

It’s that kind of faith, in realities not yet beheld, that keeps us going.  And once in a while something comes into your life that gives you hope.   The hope that just maybe that thing you are still hoping for, fighting for, might just come true.  That you are going to turn the corner and have your breath taken away by the surprise of how it shows up.

The best thing in life is to go ahead with all your plans and your dreams, to embrace life and to live life everyday with passion, to lose and still keep the faith and to win while being grateful.  All of this because the world belongs to those who dare to go after what they want.  And because life is really too short to be insignificant – Charlie Chaplin

I think that sometimes we don’t see it, because we are demanding that it to show up in a certain way.  When in reality it has been in front of us all along.  It’s like the love story when the boy or girl is looking at someone as being their soul mate, when in reality the best friend they’ve had their entire life is the one.  They didn’t see what they already had.

New Endings

I think that is what new endings are all about.  To realize that the fairy tale is just slightly different than what you have been looking for.  That the dream is here right in front of you, just waiting for you to see it in its disguise.  Waiting for you to realize you’ve had your own keys all along.

This year you have some dreams that you are working on.  You have some goals that you are struggling with.  It might be that you are ready to break out of your comfort zone.  To go to that next level in your life.  To realize your full potential in your job/career; your personal relationships; your health; financial or spiritual goals.

Life changes when you realize you have the keys to your happiness in your own hands.  Don’t let them go.

Message us for more ideas on how to do this.

Will 2022 Be The Year Your Dreams Become Reality?

 

Updated 11/14/2021

We are just about 1 1/2 months until the new year.  It is the perfect time to do a year end review of 2021.  Did you make some new years resolutions, goals, plans for 2021?  How did you grow and make progress, and what have you overcome in this year?

Some people will make goals that are giving something up for a limited time or forever.  Lent is a religious practice that does this.

Some people will make goals to bring something new into their life.

What you discover every single year is that change is hard.  And if that change is motivated by will power alone, it will not last.

“In order to save myself, I must destroy first the me I was told to be” – The Dreamer

So how are you doing on those goals, plans and intentions to change?

What is your definition of progress?

Having 20/20 vision means that you have done the work to see the connections to what you have decided to change and where you are going with your dreams in this new year.  You have spent the time to map out the new year so that you can make some actual progress towards those dreams, instead of letting fears and excuses stall your journey.

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

Instead of hiding who you are, be bold and step out into the world proclaiming “I am here”.  Stop hiding your dreams, thinking that way no one can destroy them any further. Learn to trust your heart and listen to it. Give up on settling for what is possible, and demand your part in the dance of life.

“Ten years from now, make sure you can say that you chose your life, you didn’t settle for it” – Unknown

There is only one way to truly know who you are deep down inside. You have to get in touch with your own soul. You need to be by yourself, and sit with yourself, and just listen. Looking back at your life, find the places where you were really happy. Find the things that are so easy for you to do, that others find hard or impossible. Trace back all of the threads that have your name engraved upon them. Start picking out and removing all of the threads that are not you. Look for the gold and silver pieces and toss out the dross. Now look for the patterns that are left.

It is never too late to be who you were meant to be

The threads of genius that are all you, can now be taken up and made into whatever pattern you want. It is never too late to be who you were meant to be.  When you make this journey deep into your soul, you will discover that your life can only change by completely shaking it up.   You need to remove what doesn’t belong and then figure out how to rearrange what does. It is an individual journey that defines who you are. You can only discover your truth by looking for it down deep within and then integrating it into your life. 20/20 vision is a lifetime adventure. This journey is for you alone. Embrace it and live it fully.

“To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.” – Deepak Chopra

So, how do you make this the year that you transform your life?  You do it by finding the pattern that you fit into.  If you were to read everything about changing your life with new years resolutions, goals and plans that has been published just this month you might find it overwhelming.  Everyone has different ideas about what works.  What they really mean is what worked for them.

It’s an individual journey, one size does not fit all

What I have found is that it is really all about making the connections to what I am taking away or adding to my life purpose.  I pick what sounds right deep inside of me and leave the rest behind.  When I do this, it becomes an infinity loop of expanding energy to keep doing the work.  I want to share this process with you, so that you too can be like Goldilocks and find the pieces that fit just right.

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth” – Ram Dass

It’s an individual journey and one size does not fit all.  Making your dream a reality isn’t easy.  It is sort of like having a puzzle that has the same picture that others have, but your puzzle pieces are cut slightly different.  You are missing some pieces and so you discover that they are not inter-changeable.  Some pieces might fit, but others won’t.  So you have to go to a lot of different puzzles to find the missing pieces that will fit.  It’s a risk because each piece that doesn’t really fit, becomes a failure on your part.

“. . . it’s a life’s journey of finding ourselves, finding our power, and living for yourself, not for everyone else . . . ” – Mariska Hargitay

If you don’t take the risks, make the changes and transform your life, then your destiny will not be fulfilled.   In order to make this a little easier I would love to share with you what I have found.  It’s a method of taking bits and pieces from all different methods of change and transformation and creating a pattern that allows me to plug in things that work for me.

You decide what methods of change work for you

This isn’t just about a vision board or an accountability partner.  It isn’t just about will power or a positive attitude.  Make 2022 be the year that you don’t get overwhelmed and quit.  That this time frustration doesn’t get you stuck in the mud of “it’s just isn’t working” and you give up.  It’s about getting past the negative mind talk and making real progress towards your dreams.  It is about getting on the road of good intentions and actually getting somewhere.

• You discover for yourself the answers to the questions you didn’t know you were asking.
• You look into your soul for your own individual answers, your threads.
• You discern if the puzzle piece fits exactly or not.
• You take what belongs and leave the rest behind.

What I know for sure is that we all hit walls of failure, fatigue, and flat tires. It helps to have a few tricks up your sleeves to handle them.  Then they just create slowdowns and maybe a few detours, but don’t stop you completely.

Make this your year of shift, change and transformation.  Get 2022 vision, insight and find your missing puzzle pieces.  Complete your own puzzle and see the full picture of who you are becoming.

Don’t Let Something Amazing Pass You By

“Sometimes, thing don’t go as planned.  Life doesn’t always go the way you hope it will.  You can’t plan everything.  Life takes you where it wants to – you’re pretty much just along for the ride!  Just breathe – Re-Evaluate – Step out of the box – Forgive – Be grateful.”  – Namala Lakesh

I believe in plans.  But I also believe in being flexible.  I believe in taking stock and making constant adjustments.  It’s like a sailboat.  You are subject to winds and currents, but with the rudder and sails, you have the ability to maneuver into the direction you want to go.  Which is why I love the way I plan out my month and year.  I make plans and then as life happens I see where I need to make adjustments.  To re-evaluate what is really most important in the current time and space to accomplish.  That’s why I am sharing this system with all of you.  It works!

“She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her away, she adjusted her sails.”  – Elizabeth Edwards

Sometimes things happen in the reverse order of your expectations.  The patience comes in because you automatically put expectations on the plans.  You visualize them out step by step, and then life happens.  You lose you job, the promised promotion and/or raise doesn’t materialize.  Someone close to you is faced with a critical medical diagnosis.  The money you had planned for vacation now has to go to put in new plumbing.  In short, life happens.  You need to adjust your sails.

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you.  If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up.  Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”  – Michael Jordan

Sometimes obstacles are like the monsters under the bed.  You hear a noise.  Your imagination runs wild.  Your heartbeat goes out of control.  Suddenly you are screaming.  And it was all in your head.  Other times they are legitimate.  I remember one of the contestants in America’s Got Talent had been a singer, then tragedy struck.  She went deaf from a medical condition.  She stopped singing and gave up her career.

“Our life doesn’t always turn out the way we planned, but sometimes that’s because what we planned wasn’t suppose to be our life.”  – Gdonell

Mandy said in an interview, “I made the mistake of associating my entire identity with one single dream, and when that dream died, I very much felt like I died. I became a husk of a person for awhile.”

“Life doesn’t always go according to plan.  Sometimes heading in a new direction can be scary until you realize you’re headed toward a new and exciting destination.”  – Susan Cole

Then she got an electric tuner and spent 10 hours learning to sing each note perfectly.  “I couldn’t believe it”, she says, “My perfect pitch and muscle memory all came together.”  Mandy Harvey.

“If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore.”  – Michele Ruiz

Then one day she decided to stop fighting against her dreams and start fighting for them.  She began writing her own songs and singing again.  She discovered that this real obstacle could be overcome.  She discovered that a big chunk of the real obstacle was in her own mind. Singing a song she composed she got sent straight through to the finals on America’s Got Talent.  She finished fourth.

“You don’t always need a plan.  Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, and let go and see what happens.”  – Mandy Hale

If you take a good honest look at your life so far, you will see times where what you had planned fell apart – and that it was a good thing.  You underestimated what you were are capable of. You made plans that were far too limiting in regards to your potential.  When you let go of the expectation of the plan, and how it should go – and instead learned to feel your way with intuition, amazing things happened.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”  – Joseph Campbell

You discover hidden talents.  You uncover better ways to expand your comfort zones.  So when the path you are walking on changes direction, don’t be afraid to keep going.  When the sign says “dead end” don’t be afraid to go off the path and create your own.  When the wind blows you backwards, grab a tree and hold on.  When life challenges you to sit it out, get up and fight to keep moving forward.

“If we can just let go and trust that things will work out the way they’re supposed to, without trying to control the outcomes, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully.  The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself.”  – Goldie Hawn

LemonadeMakers is hosting a monthly free class on goals, resolutions, plans – whatever you want to call your means of change and transformation in your life.  We discuss on a live Zoom call what is happening that is working and not working.  Ideas to try to get us motivated to change and transform our lives.  Where we might re-evaluate our plans.  How to adjust our sails.

We invite you to join with us the first Saturday of every month.  The next class registration is opening today.  Come join us!  Click on the box to register now.

Breathe In The Love

Updated 2/01/2020

2020, in the month April it was the 10-year anniversary of my nephew murder.  He would have been 29 years old last month.  It’s hard to process everything that has happened as a consequence of that happening in our family.  My sister has more good days than bad, but she is still and will probably always be stuck in her loss.  My life has shifted so much I don’t think I am even in the time zone.  The ripples of his death will keep moving as long as someone reads this blog about our loss.

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…, ” – Terry Pratchett

Out of every great tragedy there comes the hidden blessings.  One of the blessings I received after my nephew’s murder was someone who was able to take the grief and loss that I felt and turn it into something beautiful and full of hope.  I wrote a poem purging myself of the intense waves of grief.  Writing is how I make sense of the senseless, it is how I can remain sane, when the crazy is calling my name.  So when my nephew was murdered, I wrote a poem about what I was going through.

“Writing is like breathing, it’s possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what” – Julia Cameron

I encourage anyone going through difficult times to write it out.  I think that it releases the poison, that would corrupt our souls.  In pain, we hold our breath.  Writing helps us to start breathing again.  To realize that we can still have a chance for a better and happier life.

“When we focus our energy towards constructing a passionate meaningful life, we are tossing a pebble into the world, creating a beautiful ripple effect of inspiration.  When one person follows a dream, tries something new or takes a daring leap, everyone nearby feels that energy and before too long they are making their own daring leaps and inspiring yet another circle” – Christine Mason Miller

I will print my poem at the end of this.  While I was able to process my way through the grief, it still felt a little dark.  The gift that this stranger was able to give me, was taking this poem and my story, and creating this beautiful song from it.  It took away the darkness in my poem and transmuted it into light.

I reached for this poem when someone else I love is having their own dark night of the soul.  We all need to remember that even though there are dark nights, they can be transmuted into something beautiful.

“Only in the darkness, can you see the stars” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I think that we all have those days, when the sky turns black, with no sunlight or starlight to shine upon us.  We think that God has turned his back on us.  We feel the intense emotions that threaten to drown us.  As I say in my poem, sometimes the sorrow burns us alive.

“Some days our grief appears as small manageable ripples.  Other days it completely crashes over us without any warning.  These are the days you need to be able to sit, reflect and remember; and not feel guilty in doing so” – Just Over the Rainbow Bridge

Sometimes it’s okay if the only thing that we can accomplish in a day, is to simply breathe.  Breathing in the love, turns the storm into a calmer sea.  The sun rises again.  As the poem ends, we can breathe again.  We can breathe in the love, grace, forgiveness, joy and hope and manifest it back into the world.

I hope you enjoy the song.  We had it created especially for LemonadeMakers.

“We all die.  The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will” – Chuck Palahniuk

Carl’s Poem

Yesterday you were so alive riding the oceans waves, yes, life was so simple and innocent

But now your soul has left behind your flesh, and your bones lie there just an empty cage

Help me, I can’t breathe as this news fractures my life, I am so unsafe, I just can’t balance

And grief engulfs me, and anger rages, and I just can’t breathe.

 

I can’t breathe from hearing the news on T.V or reading the printed pages of your murder

I feel the thunderous storm of emotions pass through me as lightning strikes my heart

The senselessness of your passing, the gunshots of a stranger who tore our lives asunder

And so, I grieve, and the sorrow burns as it drowns me, and I can’t breathe.

 

The hours pass into days as I stumble down this long road breathing with heavy sighs

The days spent in crying, and the primal screams of the dark nights merge into numbing weeks

Yet storm clouds break up as I begin to see the healing of the rainbow’s blessings

And so, I grieve, and I begin to breathe, I breathe love.

 

Life carries on with unending support of love that is surrounding me and protecting me

Forgiveness is the answer, so I move past the limitations of grief, rage, and sorrow

To live in limitless love, light and joy, and my heart-lines align to the universal love

And so, I breathe love, and I add grace, I breathe, I breathe grace.

 

Love from Carl’s heart washes through me, cleansing and healing every part of my body

A warm wave it ignites an inner fire of transformation that love is the ultimate expression of grace

It illuminates the greater vision for my life to emerge from within me, a graceful unfolding,

And so, I breathe love and grace, and I add forgiveness, I breathe, I breathe forgiveness.

 

I release the need to blame you Carl, myself, or anyone else for your ending,

I release fears grip on my soul, and I choose to walk this path with love

I have experienced a grace inspired event that challenged me, and I have awakened

And so, I breathe love, grace, forgiveness, and I add joy, I breathe, I breathe joy.

 

Grace has opened a door whose light illuminates my next step as I step out of the darkness

I share this, your gift to the world, that love is the ultimate expression of grace

As I practice this belief, practice will yield to insight, which yields to embodiment, which yields to manifestation.

And so, I breathe love, grace, forgiveness, joy, and I add hope, I breathe, I breathe hope.

 

As I breathe love, grace, forgiveness, joy and hope, life becomes a celebration again

And as I let my light shine, I unconsciously give others the permission to do the same

I will live like there is not tomorrow, I will live like there was no yesterday

I will breathe, I will breathe love, grace, forgiveness, joy and hope and manifest it out into the world.