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!

Awaken The Sleeper, With 20/20 Focus and Vision

 

Revised 11/14/2021

Vision tells us our destination.  It doesn’t tell us how to get there, it just tells us how we will know when we arrive.  Focus is what helps up to do the work to arrive at the destination that vision has uncovered in our heart.  Focus is the road to the destination.  If we don’t have a vision we can’t have a destination. Without focus, we will find ourselves asleep wandering lost in the forest. We will just keep going in circles back to where we started. Lost, dazed and confused.

If you look back at the last two year’s – did you follow your vision or did you go in circles?

Without focus you travel down the road forgetting where you came from.  The journey becomes the destination in a twisted sort of way.  You will find yourself trying to fill a bottomless hole by acquiring more of everything.  To possess things which promise to make you whole, but which instead create an insatiable appetite for more and more.  Without focus life becomes a merry go round that never stops.

“When you are clear on your vision, it will pull you forward and out of bed in the morning” – Sean McCabe

We have all heard the story of the person who worked at a job for 30 years, retires and gets the gold watch.  Then after a short while of sitting at home with nothing to do, they die.  They never uncovered their life purpose, their reason for living.  They dragged themselves out of bed each day and went to a job that didn’t fulfill them.  They never discovered the reason they were born.  Instead they punched a time clock day after day, month after month, until the years fled.  They never found their way out of the forest.

Awaken the sleeper

The only way to find that vision, your life purpose is to look for it.  It is deep inside your heart.  It is connected to the things that you love to do.  It’s not about something that happens in some distant future.  It is about the quality of choices you are making in your life this moment.  It’s about what you choose to see, to perceive, to feel and what you choose to do in this moment of time.  The choices that push you to engage in life at its deepest meaning for you.  It changes who you are NOW.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.  Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens” – Carl Jung

It’s a funny thing when one day you wake up to your vision.  You might have been wandering in circles for years, looking for that one special person or that title at work that said “I have arrived!”.  You might have worked your fingers to the bone for years to find elusive fame and fortune.  Whatever you thought was the answer to that longing deep in your heart, once you had it, you discovered it wasn’t it.  It was just another circle in the forest.  Then one day it happens.  You finally realize it isn’t outside of you.  It’s not a person, a career, money in the bank, a dream house or car.  It is something inside of you that is calling you home.

Usually what wakes you up is being disillusioned, disappointed, that feeling you have hit rock bottom.  Too many bad decisions and failed plans.  When you stop fighting the uphill battle, give up and give in – when you are in that spot of finally understanding what it means to “let go and let God” it finally happens.  Your heart feels calm, whole and centered.  Your soul comes alive and feels truly safe for the first time because finally we are listening to the inner voice.

Listening with your heart and soul

Your vision becomes clear as you climb a high tree and see the way out of the forest of lost causes.  You understand the connections to what has happened in your life and how each trial and tribulation, each circle around the forest was teaching you something vital that you needed to learn.  Peace with your past, present and future permeates your bones.  You see far off the destination your soul is leading you to.  You realize the importance of the journey.

The journey has places where you became confused as to what the right choice was – at the same time that confusion is where you learned something new that stretched your comfort zone.  The journey was where you were betrayed and broken by someone you thought loved you and would never hurt you – at the same time it was how you learned to heal your heart.  The journey lead to lots of frustration as you tried and failed, over and over to learn something critical to your dreams – at the same time those frustrations lead to more authentic decisions based on your own judgment and not someone else’s.

Make the right choice

Even the parts of the journey where the sadness was a deep pit of despair, you learned to listen the heart, hear the words of wisdom of the soul and recover your happiness and joy.

2022 can be your year of focus, and vision.  With the global pandemic, most people have lost focus.  Their vision has dimmed.  It seems like every time we think that we are moving past the masks and restrictions, this virus mutates into something else.

Instead of waiting for whatever “normal” is going to be and then settling into a new vision, it is time to just do it anyway.  Some of your plans will fail dramatically, and you will learn something.  Some of them be will duds that don’t even get lift off before they came crashing down – and that’s ok.  Plans to go in one direction, will actually come about 180 degrees to go in another direction – which seems wrong but will be exactly right.

• Look for the self sabotage.
• Look for the places where you missed the road signs to turn left or right.
• Look for where you missed the detours.
• Look for where you got lost.

Now program your GPS system with your updated vision.  Get clear about what it is you want to feel and be open to the feeling and not how or what is going to get you there.  Look for signs, clues, and ask for directions.  Don’t give up on your dreams.  Listen to the voice in your heart and soul.  Get back on track to where you are supposed to be.

Be fearless

Have a vision  

Get inspired

Believe in yourself

Always hustle

Stay determined

Stay focused

Stay motivated

Keep pushing

Be happy

Get out there, own the day

Create your own personalized dream map, claim your own unique goals of change and transformation; refine them into goal crushing gremlins; and finally, to truly understand what your motivation around those goals is all about.

 

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.

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.

20/20 Vision For A Well Lived Life

 

Revised 1/30/2020

“A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision” – Eric Ries

All around the world people make plans.  They set goals.  They build on their dreams.  Every year brings you some of the same goals and maybe this year you have a few new ones.  For the majority of us that is as good as it gets.  Why?

Because sometime in January or February or maybe even March your willpower begins to fade out.  You slow down.  You procrastinate and put it off for next month (this is me – lol).  You tell yourself what’s the hurry?  I have all year to get this done.

What if this year you do something unique?  What if you pivot instead?

“You can only succeed.  You cannot fail.  Failure is impossible …, an illusion…, Nothing.  Everything moves the human story…, forward.  Everything advances you on your journey” – Neal Donald Walsh

Thinking back to secondary education (Jr. High, High School or College) did you get your assignments done when they were assigned or when they were due?  How many late nights cram sessions did you have to do to finish a paper that you had weeks to complete but waited until the last minute?

The majority of us were late night crammers.  And that is one of the things that leads us to fail in our dreams. resolutions, goals, and plans.  Not fail as in we can’t do it but fail as in, we decide to quit trying to do it.

When you make your goals with the intention of accomplishing them within 12 months, you will delude yourself that you have plenty of time until there isn’t any time, and then you will quit.  Why?

You are out of integrity with your life

Because unlike school when you would have failed a class and then been grounded by a parent, you are only lying to yourself.

The problem with lying to yourself though, is that you are then out of integrity with yourself, and it plays out in your life over and over again.  Every time you say you are going to do something, that negative voice will say – “yeah right – you know that you are not really going to accomplish this, so why waste any time or effort in pretending.”

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe.  Otherwise, why else even be here” – Steve Jobs

This year what if instead of a 1-year plan, why don’t you do something different?  Do a weekly plan.  You choose how many weeks you want to plan for.  12 weeks is sufficient to work in a new positive habit.  For most goals it gives you enough time to plan out how to accomplish it.  If the goal needs more than 12 weeks such as education, plan out major steps that can be accomplished within 12 weeks.

Ready?

Get out your pencil and three pieces of paper for this exercise.  I want you to limit yourself to three goals.  Write one goal on each sheet of paper.

“How does the WHY relation to the vision” – Simon Sinek

Now write down some steps that would need to happen in order for you to accomplish your goal.  As an example, you might want to go back to school to get a degree for a change in your career or to help you advance further in your degree.  Since this is probably more than 1 year, plan out 3 steps that can be accomplished within the chosen number of weeks.

• You must also write down the WHY this goal is important to you.
• What dream is it helping you accomplish?
• How do you feel about that dream?
• What emotions does it create deep inside of you?
• What is the importance of it to you – not anyone else?

If it isn’t pulling you to complete it, it’s not really your goal.  Keep digging until you reach that place where the dream hooks you.  Then do the following step.

• #1 – find three colleges that you would like to attend.
• #2 – Look up the website and download information on the classes required to get your degree.
• #3 – Call and talk to an admissions officer about your plans.

Only list three steps that can be accomplished within the chosen timeframe.  Your goals should always be driven to your life purpose.  To move forward into who you are meant to be, who you are becoming.  Otherwise, it is just wasting your time, effort and money.

Always check in with our inner guidance system and follow where that is leading us.  There will always be some positive emotions, some connection – it will lead us if we get quiet and listen and feel for it.

“The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.  Don’t settle” – Steve Jobs

For a budget goal, you could plan out goals for each pay period.  Weekly, biweekly, monthly – according to the time frame your paychecks arrive.

• #1 – spreadsheet with lines completed for each bill that is due within the pay period.  List the name of the bill, date due, amount due, balance due.  List the net income after taxes.  Deduct all payments to arrive at a balance left after paying all of the bills.
• #2 – Determine your goals – saving money for vacations; for a big purchase such as a car or home; rainy day fund; education fund for your children; etc…,
• #3 – Goals for zero debt – what debts to payoff first, second, etc…,

Continue in a similar manner for your third goal.  What is so cool about this pivot is that you can play with it to see what number of weeks works for you.  The budget goal for example will continue all year long.  You will have accomplishments for each time period that you are working through.  Celebrate each milestone – it is what fuels you to the next milestone and gets you over the disappointments when life happens and creates havoc in accomplishing our dreams.

“If the challenge we face doesn’t scare us, then it’s probably not that important” – Simon Sinek

I know that if someone gives me something I may or may not make the time to actually do the work.   So, take a second and think about what I wrote up above.  Did you take out paper and pencil or did you just read through it thinking that you would come back later and do it?

What I also know about myself is that if someone takes the time to work with me through the material, I get some action and forward momentum started. I will answer the questions and get my brain thinking and planning.  So, take this small first step for 2020 and let’s create something personally designed just for you!

Commit to your dreams.  Travel down a clear path to your date with destiny.

Do You Have The Courage To Fulfill Your Dreams?

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough”  – Unknown

It takes determination when you are knocked down to get back up, but it is only when we have been knocked down that courage enters.  It takes courage to face the failure.  It takes courage to try it one more time.  It takes courage to find failure once more in your face daring you to try again.

Is it failure or part of the divine plan?

In life many things don’t happen the way we plan them.  In a lot of cases what seems like failure is actually part of the divine plan.  Years ago I walked away from a pretty secure job because I was promised the opportunity for advancement at another company.  I took on the responsibility of completing a manual of guidelines for the new company because the person they had hired for it wasn’t getting it done.  I had never written anything before other than papers for school.  I figured that I could simply expand that knowledge into something new and I did.

Then shortly afterwards the market turned and I was laid off.  Because the market had slowed down in Southern California, there weren’t  any jobs available and we ended up having to relocate back to the Seattle area for me to find employment.  I had berated myself for leaving the previous company; for believing the owner of that new company; for the market turndown.  I had beat myself up pretty badly.

An interesting thing happened in Seattle.  The Savings and Loan I was hired to work for hired me in the advanced position I wanted.  The S&L needed a servicing manual and I had the experience to write it.  I was also hired to teach a course for loan processing and underwriting at South Seattle Community College and Renton Voc-Tech.  All things I wouldn’t have had the courage or opportunity to reach for if I hadn’t made that job change back in California.

I believe it was all part of divine planning.  Can you think of such examples in your own life?  Times when what you planned shifted and changed into what you thought was failure, but was actually part of the plan all along?

Of Caterpillars and leaps of faith

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”  – Eleanor Roosevelt

It is in seeing the beauty of your dreams that you are able to get back up after you have failed.  Finding your life purpose and then bringing it out into the world isn’t an easy journey.  While your soul will not give up, your mind is constantly entreating you to give up.  Seek the peace of sleep.  Take it easy.

“You get in life what you have the courage to ask for”  – Oprah

It’s a constant tug of war between mind and spirit.  When your soul is inspired it sets you on fire.  You find yourself doing things you never would have dreamed it was possible to do.  Every negative thought your mind produces is shot down.  Like the caterpillar you have the push to transform beyond any understanding.

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall hoping to transform it into a door”  – Coco Chanel

Like the caterpillar you learn new skills, building a space in which to transform.  That is what goals and dreams are all about – change and transformation.

You have this yearning to be something different from what you are currently being.  You have these feelings that you can’t really put words to.  You just know that you have to do it.  Can you imagine the caterpillar building a chrysalis and then standing back and judging it as not being good enough?  That the caterpillar would just turn away and forget the whole transformation thing?

The caterpillar doesn’t care that he has never built anything before.  He doesn’t care if it isn’t the perfect shape, or on the wrong branch.  He doesn’t care if the wind is blowing it sideways and maybe today isn’t the best day to complete it.  He is so involved, that he has gone so far out of his comfort zone, it isn’t even in the same town or state.

He is so involved with using these skills – skills that he didn’t even know he was capable of learning, that he is taking a huge leap of faith.  A leap of faith that what he has built, is what it is supposed to look like and feel like.  He trusts his divine inner guidance and forges ahead.  He trusts that what he is becoming will allow him to transform his outer being in such a way that he will fly.

Where does such trust come from?

• It’s in the realization that everyone else is just as scared as you are.
• It’s in the realization that everyone fails.  Falls down.
• It’s in the realization that at the moment you have a choice – to quit or remember WHY you are trying in the first place.
• It’s in the realization that fulfilling a dream means that you are striving to do things you think you cannot do.

You know down deep in your heart and soul that you will never regret giving everything you have to accomplish your dreams.  You know that giving your best effort and then digging down to bring up that tiny bit of extra you didn’t know you were capable of will be worth the cost.  How do you know this?

“The women whom I love and admire for their strength and grace did not get that way because shit worked out.  They got that way because shit went wrong, and they handled it.  They handled it in a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, but they handled it.  Those women are my superheroes”  – Elizabeth Gilbert

Because you see everywhere examples of where other people have done just that.  They worked stuff out, no matter the cost.  It’s not a one size fits all world.  It’s through trial and error that we work stuff out.  You have a secret weapon.  You figured out that in every single change, rather than judging it as good or bad, you see the possibilities rather than the problem.

That’s what the loss of a job in Southern California and the wonderful opportunities that opened up in Seattle taught me.  In every single change, there is a long hallway.  A hallway with all of these doors of possibility open and inviting you to step through.  That is where is courage comes into play – stepping through the door and into the possibilities.

Launch Yourself on Every Wave

 

Life, like surfing, is all about wave selection and balance. Never let the best waves in life pass you by. Ride it now before it’s too late – Kiteboardstuff.com

I believe that your dreams, your true dreams, are given to you at birth.  That you are designed to grow and stretch beyond what you think you are capable of.

That you were given heroes journeys to push you to accomplish the dreams.  That those dreams are what make you passionate and give you a life of purpose.

I think of people who are adventurers and broke open new journeys you didn’t even know you could go on.  People like the Wright Brothers, who pioneered the ability to fly.  Pilots like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart who created and broke records in pioneering flight.  Amelia Earhart said, “What do dreams know of boundaries?”

She had true unfaltering determination and pushed her limits.  She said, “when you fail, your failure must be but a challenge to others”.  I love the concept of my failures actually serving as something positive – to challenge others to succeed in their own dreams.

You don’t get into something to test the waters.  You get into things to make waves – Rituals

Every year there are new tech companies that are creating a new cutting-edge business or disrupting an industry.  Right now, someone is launching themselves in trying to fulfill a dream they never thought they could accomplish.  The really critical thing is to not give up on your dream as being too far beyond your capability to accomplish.

When someone decided one day that they wanted to be a mountain climber, they didn’t just walk out the door and climb a mountain.

• They got training in how to use the equipment
• They got training both in the body and the mind, to equip them for the journey.
• They started with small mountains and worked their way up to the bigger ones.
• They joined a club with others who like that sport, becoming a member of a team.
• They fell down, got back up and fell down again and again, until they started reaching mastery.

It is done step by step, day by day, year by year.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance – Alan Watts

You have to grow and expand your comfort zone again and again.  You have to have the trust that you deserve to fulfill the dream.  You work hard to get the skills that are necessary to make it happen.  You learn to trust yourself and your team.

Change is part of the dance of your life.  You learn to trust the dream as it shifts, changes and transforms too.

Sometimes as you are moving towards the dream, it is like driving through fog.  All you can see is the next 10 feet in front of you.  You travel towards what you see and as you travel, you see farther and farther.  You might see what you thought was a mailbox on the side of road shift into something else as you get clearer eyesight.

This is because your brains will take what little you can see or decipher, and basically guess at what you are seeing based on past knowledge. But as you get more clarity by pursuing the dream it seems to shift its shape into something totally different.

It’s not so much that the dream is changing as it is that you are getting a better understanding about what the dream really is.  Each problem that you encounter and solve changes you.  Each change brings the dream into more clarity.

You begin to realize that there are 50 different ways you can achieve your dream.  That your expectations around the dream are what is really changing, not the dream itself.  You begin to truly imagine the possibilities of the dream.

The big waves in life might come from outside of you, but the ability to ride them comes from inside of you – from your character strengths – Fatima Doman

Over and over again you can see the concept of “as above, so below”.

The teaching of the tree of your life reaching high into the heavens and deep below the surface with the roots.  Life is not lived in one direction only.  If you are reaching only for the sky and neglect your roots, the imbalance in your life may create temporary success, but will inevitably fall over.  And if you only feed the roots and neglect reaching for the heavens, then you won’t produce anything positive in your life.

It is the combination of inner and outer growth that leads to true lasting success.

I love the concept of “together we are an ocean”.  If you are interested, I can help you learn how to create your own personalized dream map, claim your own unique goals of change and transformation; refine them into goal crushing gremlins; and finally, to truly understand what your motivation around those goals is all about.

It’s not just about writing some words on a piece of paper that says in 30 days I will . . . ,   It’s not just about creating a vision board with pretty pictures of our dream house, vacations, our dream body or $1M in our bank account, and then waiting for the “magic” to draw in what we want in our lives.

You need to brainstorm your way to make your dreams a reality.  To map out your detours around your own unique self-sabotaging obstacles, and finally be able to fully implement your plan.

What I know for sure is that you will hit walls of failure, fatigue.  At some point you will get that feeling that “Life happens to you”, when it really is happening for you.  It will feel like when you are getting hit with a sledgehammer.  It helps to have a few tricks up your sleeves to handle those times, so that they just create slowdowns.  Just don’t give up and stop completely.

As a kid did you ever play the game Red Light/Green Light?  You had someone who called out Red Light for Stop and Green Light for Go.  The goal was to reach the finish line first.  Let’s change that game just a little. 

On The Journey Of Self Transformation, You Need A Map

Imagining what we want next year is a far more powerful way to face the future than imaging what we fear – Marianne Williamson

Part of the process of planning out your dreams, goals, and visions of a better life is looking back to see what you have done so far.

Where is your comfort zone today?

What growth to it happened last year?

Part of my own growth for this coming year is taking the pilot program I created and turning it into a teachable course.  I have a card deck that I created that needs to be completed so that it can be sold to help support the cost of this website.  I know what needs to be done, but there is this underlying fear that it isn’t something that you will value as my readers.  I also believe that this is my year to break free of that fear.

I believe that you already know what needs to be done for your life in this year – that the questions you ask yourself, already have answers deep inside of you.  That those answers have been waiting for you to be able to accept them as truths, and that timing is everything.  If you are reading this then I believe that the time for you is now.

I believe that sometimes you need someone else to ask the questions that will send you searching for your own personal truths. The door is waiting for you to open it, and sometimes you just need to hear the invitation one more time.  That time is now.

Part of the process of self-transformation is learning more about who you are.  That person deep down inside of you.

• How many times have you created limitations about what you are capable of?

• How many times have those limiting beliefs created self-sabotage in your life?

• How many times have you been pulled back from transforming your life by the chains of your comfort zone?

• How many times has something that seemed to be what you wanted, pulled you out of growth and transformation?  Like the caterpillar that keeps finding the perfect leaf to consume, and delays making that chrysalis to become the butterfly?

• It all comes back to you and your beliefs around the possibilities – take the leap of faith.

In order to think or live differently, you need to understand your own life patterns.

When I received the scholarship application answers for the pilot program I ran, it revealed some common patterns.

• Almost everyone had thought in the past twelve months about making big life changes – such as moving some place new to them; finding a different job. This indicated that they were unhappy enough in their life to contemplate changing everything.
• A vast majority wanted a better life in order to give back something good to the world.  I loved this, because even though they had some pretty big issues they were dealing with in their lives, they wanted something better not only for themselves, but to help others too.
• They wanted to be better spouses, parents, better people.  These are all roles that we play in our lives.
• Some of the applicants had just completed or were going through a divorce.  When you have a major transition take place in your life, like a death, divorce, or job loss, it becomes a time to take stock of who you are and where you are going.  Many times, these transitions take away the thing you thought you were.  When the kids leave for college, how do you transition to an empty nester?  When you retire from your job, who are you now?
• Around 50% of those who responded had problems in the past or were working towards sobriety and ending addictions.  That is not only living with the label of addict, but also a load of personal issues to work through because most who have some sort of addiction used it as a coping mechanism for their life.

The answers to the questions told me that most of us are looking to make big changes in our lives.  We just need a little help to get started, and a little motivation to keep going so that fears stop us.

Life presents you with so many decisions.

A lot of times,

the answers are right in front of you.  

It’s not just about writing some words on a piece of paper.  It’s not just about creating a vision board and then waiting for the “magic” to draw in what you want in your life.  You need to brainstorm your way, map out the detours around the obstacles, and fully implement your plan.

What I know for sure is that you will hit walls of failure, fatigue.  Life happens not to you, but for you.  I know that sometimes it feels like you are getting hit with a sledgehammer.  It helps to have a few tricks up your sleeves.  To be able to handle them so that they just create slowdowns when the rain or snow is coming down so hard and fast, you can’t see.  And maybe a few detours around washed out roads or bridges.

Just don’t give up and stop completely.   In the movie Star Man with Jeff Bridges there is a line about yellow lights when they are driving down the road.  “Starman: I watched you very carefully. Red light, stop; green light, go; yellow light, go very fast.”

Message me if you want to “yellow light” your own life map, or just need help with a roadblock or how to find the right detour.

It’s Not Just About Chasing A Dream, It’s About Catching It Too

 

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it.  The time will pass anyway – Earl Nightingale

On your birthday and at the beginning of each new year you take a look at both the time that has passed, and what time might yet be available to you.

• You think of the dreams you have that haven’t come true yet.
• You wonder if you have what it takes to get them done.
• You might even judge yourself of not being worthy of them coming true.

I firmly believe that if God has planted something in your heart to do, then you must have the ability to do it.  At the same time, you might wonder if he’s really, really sure you can do it, because it feels like it is just out of reach.  You might wonder “who am I” to go after something that big.  Fears creep in all sorts of shapes and sizes to prevent the dreams from being fulfilled.

My son was visiting with his wife and a little dog.  They took in a rescue dog.  He’s named after the pirate in the movie The Goonies – “One-Eyed Willie” because before they got him, he had lost an eye.

Willie loves cheese.  My son will hold up a piece of cheese and Willie will jump up to get it.  He will hold it up just out of Willie’s “normal” jumping ability and it is amazing how high that little dog will jump for his cheese.  At first you think he can’t do it, but he is determined and somehow, he gets just a little bit higher and grabs his cheese.  We all cheer for him.

When you are pursuing a dream, it has to be something just out of reach.  Otherwise, it isn’t something that stretches you.  It must be something that you aren’t sure how to do or what to do to make it happen.  Like Willie, if you want it bad enough, you will find that little bit of extra strength and leap up just high enough to grab “your cheese” (dream) and pull it down into reality.

Take a moment and write this out for yourself (taken from the program DO IT SCARED with my own additions) fill in the blanks at the end of each sentence.

Every year millions of people make New Year’s Resolutions or Goals.  If you have ever joined a gym, you see it happen year after year.  The goal of weight loss or physical fitness of some sort is made, and the gyms are all packed in January.  In February they begin losing a few people.  In March a few more and by April the gym is back to what is normal attendance.

Why do we make goals each year that after a few months fall by the wayside?  And what can you do to make this year different?

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable – Christopher Reeves

I don’t think it is just a matter of being or having something you truly desire.  And it isn’t just a matter of will power.  Or attitude.  Or a million other words that mean essentially the same thing as motivation.  It is more complicated than that.

• Some of it is planning.
• Some of it is accountability.
• Some of it is getting past the feeling of overwhelm.  You have so much on your list of what needs to be done, or what you may not even know how to do.
• Some of it is getting past feeling frustrated when you seem to be stuck in the mud and can’t make any progress.

So many other little negative reasons, stop signs, or caution lights that add up to another year, in which you didn’t make any or very little progress towards your dreams.

Create a vision that is crisp and clear.  A perfect clarity for both the near distance and far into the future.  To build on your foundation of living a better life, whatever that means to you personally.  A year where you can make progress each month and celebrate what you are accomplishing.

A dream written down with a date becomes a goal.  A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan.  A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true – unexpectedlydomestic.com

In pursuit of that, take the paragraph that you wrote out above and chose three words that will create three big hairy audacious goals for this year.

Rather than just talking about how to fill in a bunch of answers and creating a goal plan with steps, I would love to invite you to contact me via messenger.

• Learn how to claim your goals.
• Learn how to refine them.
• Learn how to understand what your motivation around those goals is about.

It’s not just about you writing some words on a piece of paper.  It’s also about brainstorming your way, mapping out the detours around the obstacles to fully implement your plan.

What I know for sure is that we all hit walls of failure, fatigue, and flat tires.  It helps us to have a few tricks up our sleeves to handle them so that they just create slowdowns and maybe a few detours, but not letting anything stop you completely.

It’s Not Just About Chasing A Dream, It’s About Catching It Too – Part One

 

Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.

– Sumner Redstone

If you have been following our posts for some time, you probably know the story of why I started writing my blog.  My nephew Carl was murdered in a random act of gang violence, literally walking through the park at the wrong time.  As you can imagine, this took a toll on our family.  In addition to grieving over his death, I was concerned about my sister making it through this tragedy.  I started writing through my own grief for both of them on my personal Facebook page and it took on a life of its own.

Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement.

– Matt Biondi

After a couple of years I created LemonadeMakers – because when life gives you lemons, you need to make lemonade.  At least I did.   Every part of life is full of choices.  You can choose to hide in the negative or dig for the positive.  Sometimes it seems like we don’t have a choice, but we always do.  It feels like we are so sunk down into the mud, that mud is all we can see.  We then miss the dry ground, the doors that we could open.  The chance for a different choice or response, to what is happening.

All I knew was that I had to bring something good and positive and life affirming to the table for myself and my family.  Then as I cleaned the mud off of me, I saw the need to bring this to others, because we are all going through something.  Maybe not as tragic or violent as my nephews murder, or maybe something even more so.  So a dream was born that just maybe I could help others, inspire them to make their own brand of lemonade.

Love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning.

– Carol Dweck

As LemonadeMakers has grown, so have I.  It has challenged me to work on my writing skills.  Believe me, I have heard from many readers when the grammar is incorrect, or the misspelling made it through spellcheck.  I think I have proof read something 10 times, and then I am reading an old post and see something that I missed.  It has helped me grow a thicker skin, and let go of the need for perfection and so many other lessons.

Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

– Joshua J. Marine

2019 has come to an end and I wanted to talk about how you keep going, growing, and expanding your comfort zone from day to day.  In 2019 my birth father died and I had to let go of the dream I have had for over 55 years – that some day he would call me and tell me how much he loved me and wanted to be a part of my life.

I have been caring for my bonus father (I don’t like the step part of any label, as though it is less than the real thing) and his health has been steadily deteriorating this year and he has been in and out of the hospital.  He is starting to lose brain function and it breaks my heart.

This August we found out that my husband of 46 years has prostrate cancer.  It is outside of the prostrate and so surgery isn’t an option and he is starting radiation therapy.  He was a long haul truck driver, so he had to retire a little sooner than we were planning on.

The entire year I have been working month to month, each month waiting to hear if this is the month I get laid off work.  I have worked for the bank for 15 years and they keep extending the lay off, and they also keep telling me it is coming.

Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success.

– Arianna Huffington

When you add this year up, it has pretty much sucked.  I am sharing this with all of you for a couple of reasons.  I know that I am not the only one that had things go sideways in her life this year.  I think it helps when you know you are not alone in walking and sometimes crawling through life’s storms.  I also wanted to share with all of you some of the great things that happened this year, the times when the storm clouds parted and the sun shined for a brief moment reminding me that storms don’t last forever.

Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. But it is the ability to resist or use failure that often leads to greater success.

– J.K. Rowling

I stepped out and made a video about “Catching the Perfect Wave”.  I tried to do a couple of webinars, which failed dramatically with no one or only a couple of people attending.  I discovered my own way of doing things, rather than just following in someone else’s steps of how things should be done.  I learned a lot and really expanded my comfort zone around talking and teaching with groups of people.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal; It is the courage to continue that counts.

– Winston Churchill

I created a pilot program about transforming your life.  It centered on the first ring of the Transformational Life Compass, which is all about the labels we live our lives around, the archetypes in our personalities and how to see how we are sometimes our own worst enemy in self sabotaging our life.  We granted scholarships to 22 people and while everyone didn’t show up and some didn’t finish – I think it was a great success.  The full program will start in February and I am really excited about the life transformations it is going to create to those brave enough to come and join us.

Important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning.

– Carol Dweck

I think  that 2020 is going to be a turning point year for a lot of us.  I love the thought of 20/20 vision, focus that is crisp and clear.  The ability to see both near and far without fog distorting the images.  So how do we take all of the lessons of 2019, the good, bad and ugly experiences and build on that foundation something even better?

The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

– Michelle Obama

For the start of the year, to give us all 20/20 insight and vision of what we can accomplish in this brand new year, I am designing a workshop.  It will give all of us working together the tools of how to plan out the new year.  What to do when the lemons start falling off the tree and hitting us in the head.

There is a military proverb that says something like “in war the battle plans only survive until the battle begins”.  Every year we make goals or resolutions to make changes in our life.  It might be for health, or education, a better job, working on our marriage, raising children, buying our first home and so on.  Those goals or dreams seem to survive the first month or two of the year and then they morph into something unachievable and unrecognizable.

There are no limits to what you can accomplish, except the limits you place on your own thinking.

– Brian Tracy

With everything going on with my job, my husband, and my dad, I could put my dreams for the next step for LemonadeMakers on hold.  I could put my entire 20/20 focus on these very important personal things in my life.  I could just let LemonadeMakers struggle along until my personal life got easier.  I put my writing on hold for too many years.  I refused to do that in 2019, and I won’t do that in 2020.  I am in a marathon and there comes a point in running where if you keep going, you break through into a new level.  I want to share with you how I did this in 2019 and how I plan on it in 2020.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

  – Eleanor Roosevelt

So stay tuned tomorrow for Part Two, to read about some of the tools I use and that you can use too – I can’t wait to share everything with you!