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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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?
Most of us are in what Joseph Campbell calls “Sleepy Land”. We get so bound up in the day to day details of living that we fall asleep to our purpose. “The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, “Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there, and so it starts.”
Then one day it happens. We notice that we are missing something. We want more. We wake up to the fact that “more” is not more money; it is not a better job; or house, or car. It is elusive, and we may not know what “it” is, but we begin to figure out what “it” isn’t. It is our birthright, and it is what takes our life from “normal” to “greatness”.
We wake up to the fact that we have the potential to do better and be better in how we live our lives, both for ourselves and for others.
We wake up to the fact that we have this intense desire to be socially active and impact the lives of others in some monumental way. Especially in those areas where we have lived through hell and come out the other side of.
We wake up to the fact that we are in fact searching. We are searching for a community of souls that is like us. We are searching for mentors and leaders to learn how to navigate this new place of being. That can help us with the tools we need to develop our gifts and skills, and assist us with understanding just how big our purpose is.
We wake up to the fact that we want our life to have meaning, and that this means we want to positively impact the lives of others.
Men like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson figured out what that was for them. And while they had all of the things that people think will make them happy, it was the “more” they woke up to, that actually brought them to greatness. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” Martin Buber. They may have started out after all of the material things, but they ended up with the “more”.
Joseph Campbell said , “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” This something else is transcendence. Transcendence happens when we “reclaim the visionary, the utopian, the dream of the better or happier world” – when everything that we touch becomes a prayer.
So how do we discover what it is? We have to walk out the door of the safe comfortable space we have created for ourselves, and we have to walk down that path to the unknown. We have to enter the dark forest. You have to embark on the Hero’s journey. It is how you discover the vast resources that reside within you. A hero’s journey – finding the edge of your unknown forest, and entering into the heart of darkness.
What do you find there? You explore the caves of the past and you wake up to the dreams of the future. You let go of the life of existence, of “go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed and repeat over and over again”.
Traveling down into the depths of the abyss we recover treasures of life. We recover the dreams we let die; we see that the stories that we have told ourselves about past hurts are not entirely true. We become excavator’s and dig up the bones of the past, and let them blow away like dust on the winds of healing. We see that most of the problems in our life have been mirrors being held up to us, but we were too blind or too scared to acknowledge the truth. By exploring the darkness we become enlightened.
We become curious, our mind opens up to new ideas. Changes begin as we see new worlds to explore that have lain beneath the normalcy of our past life. We see possibilities instead of complications. We wonder. We release. We transform. We heal and become whole for the first time.
We realize that although we were damaged, we survived and that makes us dangerous. Because we now know how to not only survive, we know how to become whole again. We become those that Rumi spoke about when he said, “the wound is the place where the light enters you.” We become both a mentor and a teacher for ourselves.
Being a mentor to oneself with love, light, grace and compassion. Being a teacher to yourself with rage, darkness, fear, and judgment. We are both, and both are required for the heroes journey. Speaking love to overcome rage, speaking light to overcome darkness, speaking grace to overcome fear and speaking compassion to overcome judgment.
“I guess that’s the thing about a hero’s journey. You might not start out a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to.” Kami Garcia
Check out our current event page, to see when our next webinar is scheduled and join us in learning more about not only the Heroes Journey, but about the entire process of transforming our lives. See Lemonademakers.org/events
We Are Stronger Than We Know
When the butterfly has completed its change, the last step is to break through the chrysalis and unfurl its wings. Once they are dry, it is time to fly.
There is a story about how if you help the butterfly out of its coverings, it is crippled. This is because it needs to complete its growth through the releasing of its casing. If you enlarge the hole it creates, it deforms the wings. The same… is true for us. It is the persistant beating-pushing-stretching of the wings that breaks open the casing and allows the butterfly to fly free. The Grand Canyon was carved out of rock by water, persistence is a powerful thing.
Sometimes life’s struggles are to help us realize that we need to grow stronger to complete our journey. Being courageous requires us to be vulnerable. It is a sign of strength when we put ourselves out there. You can’t really experience life, if you live without risking failure. The reality is that the strongest people feel the pain of change, they understand it, and they accept it as part of the growth process. They realize as Thomas Monson said, “Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.”
A meme I collected said:
It will hurt.
It will take time.
It will require dedication.
It will require willpower.
You will need to make healthy decisions.
It requires sacrifice.
You will need to push your body to its max.
There will be temptation.
But, I promise you, when you reach your goal, it’s worth it.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Looking at history, I think this quote best describes what we know of Anne Frank, who still believed even after the things she experienced, that the world is filled with good people.
When struggles happen to us we have a choice, they can define us or refine us. For Anne they refined her. Those who become defined by their struggles are true victims. They can’t move past the horrible thing that happened. They encase themselves with what happened and choose safety out of fear. They stop growing, becoming deformed inside, until they learn to “let it go”. To break out of the casing and unfurl their wings.
The best advice comes from Bob Marley, “Being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure.” You take a chance of being wounded by living this way, but as Ernest Hemingway said, “The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.”
Awaken To Your Soul’s Destiny
It took me years to find the magic of self transformation. Each transformation I go through, awakens me a little more. It is a personal and sacred journey each time. Each time I get curious about something, I know that my soul is sending me a new message to wake up. It’s time to make another transformation, another change, another shift in my life.
I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.
– Joshua Graham
I now know that I no longer have to walk through the dark night of the soul, to transform my life. I think about the experiences in my past, and what I learned going through each experience of death and rebirth. It is the death of something that needs to be released, something that no longer serves me but rather belongs to the old sleepwalking me. It is the rebirth of the real me. The parts of me that I hid deep within. It could be something about myself that I disowned as a child. It could be the dream that I was told wasn’t possible coming back to life. It is the realization that I am whatever I choose to become.
I realized that strong souls are forged living through the fires of hell. That the fire itself is healing, The fires may feel like they are consuming us, but they are refining us. They burn off the false truths that we cling to. Like false messiahs they promised they would keep us afloat, but it was all illusion. They were shown to be false prophets of our subconscious, seeking to keep our souls bound, unmoving in chains. The fires consume the false beliefs, freeing our souls rise up from the ashes like the phoenix. We rise up with wings of faith and soar into a brightly shining divine destiny.
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
– Charles Bukowski
While I prefer to live the rest of my life, proactively seeking transformation, I can still honor the forges of hell for the deep truths that they provided. I am climbing up to the top of the next mountain summit, to view the next horizon of transformation. Within each new transformation, there is a pattern that reappears in every persons life. This pattern weaves itself through the tapestry of our life. In one corner we have the scene of our home and family life. In another section of the tapestry we find our employment or career. In another scene we see the health of our physical body, while another reflects the health of our spiritual body.
In all these scenes there is a common thread that winds through. For myself, for years it was the fear of being seen. What is so interesting is that I discovered this thread came from my mother and was actually her own pattern. When I realized that it didn’t belong to me, it was as though the thread dissolved, and could no longer be located in my life tapestry. We all have threads in our tapestry that don’t belong to us. They belong to friends and family. We need to pull and release these threads back to their true owners.
Other common threads or patterns in the tapestry are my own. My fears, which hold me back. They are like the loose hairs that thread and wind themselves into your laundry. The fears wind around and through the patterns of the cloth. Have you ever taken a item of clothing out of the dryer only to find stray hairs wound into the fabric of your clothes? It isn’t part of the material, but it somehow has wound itself into the material. When you pull on it, it will break, but it is really hard to get all of the hair out of the material. That is what these patterns of fear are like. We pull at them, and break them up. But there always seems to be a part of them still there.
I have a need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.
– William Lloyd Garrison
There are also “not enough” threads which are the spaces were the material creates these little pills – the thread gathers into these little knobs, which affect the look of the item. They are formed from abrasions in day to day life. Places where we felt judged, not appreciated, ill-used. These “not enough” threads get created from stories we have told ourselves all of our lives. These stories, although we would swear are true, are in fact illusions. When we get curious and start examining why we are rubbing our life the wrong way, we are able to shift these stories. When patterns are broken, we transform the chaos into new beliefs. Beliefs of being strong minded; strong souled; strong bodied; and strong hearted. An awakened soul.
The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
The reason people awaken when they do, is because they have finally stopped agreeing to things that insult their soul. They wake up to the fact that they are no longer owned by the desires outside the body, but have awakened to their true nature. Their heart is on fire, and they burn off the chains that have been holding them in place.
Be true to life by being true to your purpose. As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power.
– Eckhart Tolle
We are in fact spiritual beings, that are awakening to our purpose in becoming human. We turn inward to remember why we are here and what we came to do.
Go, knock at the door of your own heart.
– Rumi
That is where you start looking for your answers. Enlightenment is a destructive process because we have to let go of things, stories really, that we have told our sleeping selves were true. With each awakening we leave behind something or someone. It takes courage to tear down the stone walls that we built to keep ourselves asleep. Those stones were hidden deep within us, like unseen anchors they held us in place. With enlightenment, we begin cutting through the iron chains with a sacred energy that comes through our divine connection. Heating up the links until they snap apart, setting us free.
It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self discovery, rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.
– Marianne Williamson
By realizing who we are at our deepest level, we find our personal genius. That unique gift that the divine gave us, is like the fingerprint of our soul. No one else has the same personal genius that we have. Each personal genius is required to fulfill their life purpose and ignite their passions into action. We are all like individual puzzle pieces sent to the earth to fulfill a divine purpose. That we why some of us feel the force of Rumi’s words, “do not go back to sleep.” Because the world is waiting on each of us to fulfill our divine purpose.
This Universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.
– Rumi
Transformation, is a process. If we fail to involve all of the steps in the process, what we end up with is temporary change. We change for a few weeks, or maybe a few months, but eventually the rubber band of will power will snap and we will return to the previous habits and lifestyle. Change is temporary. Transformation is required to truly shift our life, our DNA, into a totally new being. With each one of us that awakens, our gifts bring us one step closer to universal peace and harmony.
Behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.
– Paulo Coelho
So be curious, and take that first step down the path to awaken. Then be curious and take the next step to enlightenment. Then be curious and take the next step to transformation. Then be curious and take the next step to the next horizon. Then be curious and awaken just a little more. Get curious and become even more enlightened and transformed again and again.
The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.
– Joy J Golliver
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Can Life Be A Daring Adventure?
I have had on my desk for several years a large rock on which is inscribed, “It is not the destination, It is the journey”. We think that accomplishing our big dreams or goals in life is the point. But really that isn’t true. There will always be a new destination, dream or goal. It is who you become on the way to the destination. Every daring adventure is really all about the transformation.
Our brains will try to convince us not to go on the daring adventures. It will insist that we have limitations. It will try to close us off from transforming our life. It tries to convince us that transformation will affect our very survival, that we can’t exceed the boundaries that it deems by logic to be safe and secure for us.
Getting our brain and heart to effectively communicate is a difficult process for most of us. Take the analogy of the shoreline here in the photo. The sand is the logic of the brain. The waves the emotions of the heart. There is a point when the waves come up against the sand and they blend together. That is the space that we are looking for, in having this internal conversation between the logical brain and the emotional heart.. That moment of overlap in which the different perspectives can be viewed. A unity of understanding can be achieved in that moment of overlap, when the two meet energetically – the influence of chaos from the emotions with the logical rigid mind, which is demanding that we stick to the known rules and do not go exploring.
This is one of the things that we will be exploring in our upcoming seminar on “Living A Transformational Life”. There is a wide difference of meaning between change and transformation. When we change our lives, the majority of times it just doesn’t last. We go on a diet, lose the 20 lbs and then less than a year later, the 20 lbs has crept back on. Change is primarily achieved with willpower. The problem with will power is that it is short lived. At some point the rubber band that we have stretched out snaps back or breaks. Then we are back to square one in the changes we had made.
Transformation on the other hand, alters us to the point that we no longer have the option to return back to what we were before. Once the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis it can’t return to the caterpillar’s body, no matter how much it might want to. The transformation process has altered the DNA and physical form. There is no way to return to that old body.
Some of the concepts that we will be exploring with the webinar are the acronym of FACES, being: Flexible, Adaptable, Coherent (resilient), Energized and Stable. It is about creating opportunities in the sea of potential, and seeing the potentialities on the plains of possibility. About movement, about flow, and the charge of being truly alive. It is about collaboration through creating harmonies out of differences. Like the waves upon the sand, we will come together honoring the differences in our lives. We will be linking the brain and heart together to create something new and different for each of us.
Is your life a daring adventure? Come to our webinar and learn how to disolve the boundaries that have imprisioned you off from your heart and souls desires. Listen to the words of William Ward:
“The adventure of life is to learn.
The goal of life is to grow.
The nature of life is to change.
The challenge of life is to overcome.
The essence of life is to care.
The secret of life is to dare.
The beauty of life is to give.
The joy of life is to love.”
Ask yourself some great questions: Where are you now? How do you feel about it? Where do you want to go? How would you like to get there? In what manner are you now traveling there? What steps can I take?
Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere – MLK Jr.
“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth” – William Faulkner
Kym Worthy is a true Lemonademaker. She inspires me because she truly makes a difference. She changed not just her local county that she worked in, she really changed cities around the entire United States. She was like water. She went around obstacles, she broke up boulders in her way, she flooded the media, she stormed through anyone and anything standing in her way and got justice for rape victims who had been waiting for it for as long as 30 years. She is my hero.
“There be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protect” – Elie Wiesel
Her story starts back in 2009 when she was an assistant DA with Wayne County in Michigan. In the summer of 2009, Rob Spada who worked in her office was taking a tour with local police through an evidence warehouse. Passing by rows upon rows of white cardboard boxes he asked what they were. He was told they were rape kits. When he pulled down four random boxes he discovered that they were all unprocessed rape kits – 11,341 kits, some more than 30 years old (statute of limitations is 20 years).
In the past half-dozen years, backlogs of untested rape kits have been discovered in Memphis, 12,000; Cleveland, nearly 4,000; Tulsa, 3,783; Milwaukee, 2,655; Dallas, 4,144; San Diego, 2,873; Miami, 2,900; Honolulu, 1,500. Smaller cities are not immune, either. Kansas City, Missouri, had 1,324 backlogged kits; Tempe, Arizona, more than 500; Flint, Michigan, 246.
“When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty” – Unknown
Rob Spada contacted Kym Worthy in his office and told her what he had found. She first wrote to then Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans requesting a meeting to discuss how to proceed. When she didn’t get a response, she wrote Chief Evans again, adding, “It is imperative that your Department move on this as soon as possible.” Again, nothing.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” – Desmond Tutu
Not one to stop at no answer, the story was leaked to the newpaper resulting in “Rape Evidence Shelved?” as the front page of the Detroit Free Press on September 22, 2009. Worthy put together a plan for her office to take the lead on testing the kits, but then Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, who controlled her budget, shot it down. The county simply couldn’t afford it, he said, and it was really a problem for city hall and the police, not the county.
Kym is not a woman who takes no for an answer. What she did next was to spearhead a national movement for reform. In May 2010, at the invitation of U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), she testified about the backlog before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. Later that year, the research arm of the Department of Justice gave Worthy and her partner agencies a grant to test 400 random kits, to provide a statistically significant snapshot of what was at stake, and then in April 2011, the agency followed up with a $1.5 million grant to address the backlog.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” – Unknown
To test all of them, Worthy estimated she’d need about $17 million (the lab work ran $1,000 to $1,500 per kit). On top of that, she intended to investigate every single case, even those that didn’t end up having meaningful forensic evidence. But she had only three sex-crime investigators on her staff, the police department had as few as six.
“One person can stop a great injustice. One person can be a voice for truth. One person’s kindness can save a life” – Nicky Gumbel
The nonprofit Detroit Crime Commission—which, on behalf of Worthy’s office, had negotiated the cost of testing down to $490 per kit—joined with the Michigan Women’s Foundation to launch what organizers believe was the first-ever crowdfunded campaign for a government program, called Enough SAID (Sexual Assault in Detroit).
“An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation” – Mary McCarthy
They received donations from everyone and everywhere. A local canasta club started donating the pot from its weekly game; the Galentine’s Book Club kicked in $525. In October 2015, a coalition of African American businesswomen held a fundraiser that leveraged the rivalry between the University of Michigan and Michigan State football teams to net more than $30,000. Sheryl Sandberg donated an unsolicited $25,000 to the cause. To date, Enough SAID has raised $1.5 million in private contributions. by the beginning of 2016, $8 million had been allocated to Enough SAID by public bodies ranging from the state attorney general’s office to the Michigan legislature.
Worthy didn’t just rustle up money; she also transformed the “entire culture of law enforcement,” as her deputy Spada puts it. In his 20-plus years at the prosecutor’s office, he says, “I’ve seen a change in how police approach sexual assault victims. That’s been brought about by Kym, in how she attacked the problem and let it be known publicly that society had certain kinds of assumptions about what a victim would act like or be like.”
“If you look at any other group of people suffering injustice, women are always in the worst situation within that group” – Salma Hayek
Worthy also has spearheaded the push for concrete legal and procedural reforms. Michigan law, enacted in 2014, requires that rape kits move through each level of law enforcement according to a mandated timeline—three months from start to finish—and both police and healthcare professionals must notify victims about their right to obtain information about their own kits.
“The time is always right to do what is right” – Martin Luther King Jr.
I believe that Kurt Cobain stated the problem of rape many years ago. Kurt Cobain said, “Rape is one of the most terrible crimes on earth and it happens every few minutes. The problem with groups who deal with rape is that they try to educate women about how to defend themselves. What really needs to be done is teaching men not to rape. Go to the source and start there.“
See the full article which includes ones rape victims story of getting justice 15 years later. This story was first published by Elle and I found it with an article in NationSwell.
Do you see in your own life where injustices were tolerated by yourself and others? Be inspired for follow in Kym’s footsteps. She got creative. She raised awareness. She didn’t let the matter go away. Even though her journey took years to complete, she stayed true to her vision and her conscience.
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.
Commit To Your Dreams!
I invite you to join us on March 7th for a purposeful gathering. Our intention is to create moments of life-changing conversation on how to make 2020 the year of achievement.
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 2020 goals are already stalling, get recharged and refocused. Learn how to RISE UP to success. Join us for a gathering that no one will forget.
Never Doubt Yourself
In 1952 Florence Chadwick, who had swum the English Channel, tried to swim from Catalina Island to the California coastline. After about 15 hours a thick fog set in and she didn’t think that she could make it. After another hour she asked to be pulled into the boat, giving up. She found out she had stopped one mile from her destination. She later swam the Catalina Channel several times. To face the doubt down, you just have to keep going.
When she looked at how far she had left to go in her imagination, (since the fog prohibited her from seeing the coastline in front of her) it was easy to get discouraged and quit. When you want to quit you start thinking and saying ” I have given all I have”. “No one could do more”. “This far is good enough”. “This is all I can take or handle”.
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
Something important was discovered in the experiment of the biosphere, in regards to trees. When they first planted the trees they were really excited to see the growth of the trees and how healthy they seemed. But what they discovered was that without the winds creating resistance for the trees as they grew, their root systems were very shallow and they couldn’t support their upward growth. They all eventually fell down because the roots couldn’t hold the tree upright. The same is true for us.
Have you seen the death crawl scene in the movie, “Facing the Giants”? The high school football player is blindfolded so that he can’t see. Then another player is placed on the football players back. He has to crawl on his hands and knees with the weight of that player. The purpose of the blindfold is so that he can’t see how far he has gone. When you can see how far you have gone, the tendency is to discount it. You start looking for reasons to quit, because it is too hard. It epitomizes the strength that you have hidden inside of you. The strength you hide from yourself, so that you don’t know that it’s even there.
“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what” – Harper Lee
When you see a big goal way down the field and what you have to go through to get there, your mind will start in with the negative chatter. Your mind will find a million reasons, perfect logical reasons, why you can’t do it. All words describing how it is impossible. Your friends and family will probably jump on the bandwagon saying that you would be crazy to even attempt it. Why start something doomed to failure?
In the movie, when the football player goes past the 50 yard line the coach gets excited. Like a good coach he sees that the player has the strength to go further. He starts crawling in front of him, saying 10 more steps, 10 more steps until the player collapses saying he can’t go farther and it must be that he is at the 50-yard line. In fact, he is in the end zone and just carried another player on his back the entire football field. Something that everyone, the coach, the other players and the boy would have said was impossible.
“Sometimes it is not the lack of ability, but the lack of confidence that prevents us from achieving what we really want. Sometimes it’s doable, but self-doubt makes it impossible” – QuotesEmpire.com
You have amazing strength inside of you. You need to carry inside yourself something inspirational that feeds your soul and spirit to keep going. It could be a past victory. There are many inspirational movies, Rudy, The Rocky Series, this film and I am sure you have your own list that you could continue with. It could be looking at the miles you have already traveled. It could be the story of a family member. Everyone needs the positive thinking of “I Can”, “I Will”, “I AM”, to shove aside the doubts and keep going forward into the end zone.
Next time you’re stressed, take a step back, inhale and laugh. There is something about the breath that can disconnect you from strong emotions. The old adage, count to 10 works for this reason.
- Think before you speak.
- You can take back a thought, you can’t unspeak the words.
- Remember who you are and why you are here.
- You’re never given anything in this world that you cannot handle.
- Even when it feels like you have been broken, you are still ok.
- Be strong, be flexible, love yourself and have compassion for yourself and others.
- Always remember to just keep moving forward, – it is always just 10 more steps.
- Like Dory in “Finding Nemo”, in the face of adversity, just keep swimming.
- Don’t stop until you reach the finish line.
“Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go, just remember how far you have come. Remember everything you have faced, all the battles you have won, and all the fears you have overcome” – Unknown
What gives us the courage to keep trying and stretching? It has to do with your ability to change and transform. It has to do with your attitude and definitions are around what transformation really means.
“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?” – Lao Tzu
See the death crawl video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUKoKQlEC4
What Holds You Back From Success?
- What makes a person go after what they want?
- How do you figure out what “that” is?
- What does courage have to do with it?
- What does it mean to live safely?
It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you’re not. – Denis Waitley
This is such a profound quote – “You” are what holds you back.
You hold ourselves back, because you doubt yourself in some manner.
When LemonadeMakers was born, it was in response to the murder of my nephew. His death altered the course of my life. My life until that moment, was being lived completely in the safety zone. I have a nice corporate job, which I had worked years to obtain. I was successful in my career and was earning six figures. Then everything changed. Carl’s death started me questioning what I was really doing with my life.
Was I making a real difference to anyone?
The answer was while I had a comfortable lifestyle, and had accomplished all of the goals I set for myself, the truth was that I had not made a real difference in the world. I realized that I had played my life safe. I realized that if I died tomorrow, while my friends and family might miss me, the world wouldn’t realize I was gone.
The grand vision of LemonadeMakers is a reality T.V. show, in which we follow the transformations of “normal” people in each of our hometowns, who are out in the world to make a difference. I had no idea how to bring this dream into being. I had a 34 year career in the financial industry and was successful in that field. I had no connections with anyone in the entertainment industry. I didn’t know of anyone in my own community who I could use as my first show. I had no followers.
I didn’t have the anything in my life, to make something like that happen. Like Denis said, what was holding me back, was what I didn’t think I was – a person who could make a sizzle reel and sell a T.V producer into making LemonadeMaers a reality T.V. show.
What I knew is I needed to become the person who could.
A person who could attract and build a community of followers, who would want to watch this show. A person who could locate the local community heroes to film their stories. A person who could get introductions to the people in Hollywood that would say yes to this show.
For years I have dreamed of going to Petra in Jordan. I have books and magazines that talk about the site. For whatever reason, this site speaks to me more than any other place that I could visit in the world. Why haven’t I went there?
Because it is still a poster on the wall. Because it is a someday dream. Because that dream is not yet coming from within me. LemonadeMakers comes from within me. It is like the air I breathe. It is something that I work at every single day. It is vital to my being alive. It is my divine purpose. It is my souls calling.
This vision taught me to let go of who I thought I was.
I thought that climbing the corporate ladder and earning six figures would make me happy. It was what I was taught from an earlier age, to have a successful career.
For years I was the introvert that was invisible. I hated being in crowds. I never knew how to introduce myself to strangers and have a conversation. I was comfortable being the fly on the wall that listened to what others had to say. All of that has changed. I let go of this need to not be seen. Now I can step out on a stage of 600 – 700 people and talk for an hour about LemonadeMakers and see my vision take root in their hearts.
This vision made me realize that the corporate job I had put so much value in, was not what I really wanted my life to be about. I have discovered hidden treasures that were buried deep within me. I discovered that I can write about what is important to me, and that my writing strikes a chord in many people. Somehow my reaction to Carl’s murder recalibrated my inner compass. I had a new direction and a better destination.
I have made some mistakes in investing with a partnership that didn’t work out. Having everything go as planned isn’t a learning experience. It doesn’t change or transform you. What I discovered about myself through that mistake was worth the price of admission, because I saw how I was still trying to play it safe by riding along on the coattails of the other business.
I discovered that the notion of being invisible was still playing a part in my life through this partnership. Sometimes this journey has felt like I’m going to die, that it will never happen, that I’m not capable of being that person. But every time those negative emotions poke their head out, I go back to curiosity. I go back to wondering what the gift is I am not seeing yet. And I start digging to expose it.
I have transformed again, and once again the wind is lifting my wings to a new experience of growth and change. Transformation is an ongoing learning experience. It is the journey of self discovery. It is the understanding that change is not something to be scared of or to be avoided. It is a natural part of your journey and the whole reason for having a destination.
I have discovered how important curiosity, anticipation, and expectation are to having fun with change and transformation.
Your journey will be different than mine. What is the same however, is that whatever your journey uncovers is a gift. Every roadblock. Every detour. Every storm, flood, earthquake, and tidal wave leaves behind a gift if you are willing to be curious. It all boils down to “What are you doing to improve your life?”
So get excited over discovering in the debris left behind, the treasure it has exposes. Your real life begins –
- When you believe in intuition.
- When you trust in your intuition.
- When you act from the space of imagination.
Life’s Storms
Revised 5/13/2019
I wrote this poem on a Sunday (see it at the bottom). It had been banging around in my head for a while wanting to be released. So, I took some quiet time while everyone was asleep and let it out. The entire poem is printed at the end of the post.
There is no growth without change. You’ve got to let go of some old stuff. And that can hurt. Often when I’m in the most pain, I realize it’s coming from my trying to control everything. Or resisting the changes that come with the progress. But you see that light . . ., that beautiful next level . . ., and that’s what you have to focus on – Ali Brown
I found the quote by Ali after I wrote the poem and was struck by how much of what I am trying to express in the poem is in her quote.
You have to release what no longer serves you. That could be the story that you have been telling yourself that holds you in chains of fear about success and failure. It could be the story that you tell yourself that you are not capable of being more. The stories you could be telling yourself go on and on. They are varied and unending, depending on what your life has been about so far.
This control is when you stand up on the ship of your own destiny and release the anchor holding you to your stories. You drop the weight that holds you in place. You open to the winds of change. You drop all of the baggage of blaming the world for where you are at this moment in time. You decide to take your control back – control of how you think, how you react.
You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass – Thimber Hawkeye
It takes a lot of courage to stand up to the storm of fears and doubts. To realize that as you set sail on your ship, that there will be those who you leave behind, because they are still chained to their own stories.
When I thought deeply about this I thought of Pompeii. The volcano was going to erupt. It had been giving signs of the coming destruction for months. The people who were awake and listening, left the island behind. But so many of the people didn’t believe what they were seeing on a day-to-day basis. And they left fleeing to safety too late.
I am sure that they fully believed the lies they were telling themselves, the false stories about how safety lay in staying – not in fleeing with nothing to their names, to untold dangers. No, for them staying was the only smart thing to do.
You, however, face your fears of not knowing how you will steer the ship, or even where the next safe harbor will be. You have the courage to face the fears of the unknown, to face the lies that you told yourself and make the right decision – to face and live through the changes that are coming.
There comes a time when you just have to listen to the music of your soul and set sail to the unknown. And so the journey begins.
Life’s Storms
Storms without a name whip the seas into a fury, winds screaming through torrents of rain.
Waves crashing against the shore, bring in lost and forgotten debris.
Stand tall on the deck of your ship, as the birds scatter beneath the howling winds,
Let it blow away what no longer serves you.
You feel the backlash of empty words with no truth, the shadows are winning.
No sunlight, every battle lost, and shadow is winning. No rescue.
The lack of love, the hunger for life is insatiable, an open mouth that wails to be fed.
You can’t undo what has been done, it doesn’t serve you.
Thunder rolls and lightning flashes exposing what still needs to be released.
Let it go out the door, don’t run after it as if falls off the deck and into the sea.
Feel the weight of the past, as the sounds of the anchor being lifted vibrate through your body,
The anchor being lifted from the bottom of the sea, the sound of your journey echoing onward.
Change, the anchor of our soul, it both drops into the sea, and is pulled back up into the ship,
Change moves us ever forward on the journey, unearthing the destination clue by clue, star by star.
Change reveals the next adventure, the next treasure that we are seeking,
Change reveals the next harbor in which to rest our soul
Bright morning stars, as day breaks open the dawn releasing the light, as it climbs the clear sky,
Light breezes blow as it fills the sails, with the dust blown clear, we see what has been done.
Every color sparkles as it plays upon the sea, as we awaken, transformed once more,
We hear the music of our soul, whispering as the journey begins again, echoing ever onward.