Choices, Chances, Changes

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

At some point in our childhood we start looking at trying and failing, as being a loser,  because we did not do it perfectly the first time we tried.   A baby learns how to roll over; then crawl; then walk.  A baby learns how to say words.  Think of any 1 – 2 year old and they do not pronounce each word perfectly.  I remember my boys saying truck, but the “T” blended with the “R” sounded like an “F” and peoples heads would turn when they said the word, like they were swearing.  My boys didn’t decide that because they couldn’t say the word perfectly the first time, that they would never attempt to say the word again.  A baby who stands up for the first time and then plops back down on their bum doesn’t decide that crawling is safer, so that is all they are going to do forever.

If you believe the doubts in your mind you won’t achieve the dreams in your heart.

  – Marinela Reka

A girlfriend and I were discussing this, and I thought that it must have something to do with peer pressure.  When we enter daycare or some other classroom experience and discover that some kids can do things better than we can.  At some point the comparison starts shutting us down.  We don’t want to risk the possibility of being wrong, so we don’t raise our hands when the teacher asks the class a question.  We put a label on not being perfect, as being a total failure.  In our minds we see kids with mean faces, laughing at us.  Or maybe we see our parents or teachers telling us that we are just stupid or dumb.  That we can’t learn anything.  That we will never be anything.

Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s a stepping stone to success.

  – Elli Stassinopoulos

What if we were to consciously try to change that meaning in our own head.  What if failure is part of success and something to be enjoyed?  Just as much as we celebrate crossing the finish line in a race as the winner, we were to celebrate crossing the finish line even 1 second faster than we had before, even if it was 100th place in the race? 

Winston Churchill had that kind of thinking.  I think that if he had been of a different mentality, WWII for England might have turned out differently.  One of my favorite quotes of his –

Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.

  –  Winston Churchill 

The reality of the situation is that each time we try something new, it is going to be full of things that we can do differently to be more successful the next time.  They say that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master of something.  So each time we do it, we are a little more successful.  We can look at what happened and determine what we can shift, take out, put it, tweak the next time to make it even better.

What makes someone talented successful?  Michael Jordon summed it up with,

I’ve never been afraid to fail.

    – Michael Jordon

We have to be willing to take the leap of faith off the cliff.  We may not land perfectly, but when we replay it in our mind, we can determine what we did, and what we can change.  Then we can go back up to the top and try it again. 

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.

  – Ken Robinson

Everything can be improved.  10,000 tries allows for an awful lot of improvements, step by step.  Step by step, we place each thing that didn’t work as the stones that we step on as we try it one more time.  Failures are part of the process of living a life that is worth living.  It is how we grow, by changing something and trying something new.  True success can only come from doing something new, failing at it and doing it again, just differently.

Never let success get to your head, and never let failure get to your heart.

  – unknown

Like the irritation to the oyster, which gets coated over and over again, each new thing we learn becomes a pearl of priceless beauty.  Can you look back at your life and say thank you, for the mistakes you made that taught you to laugh at yourself?  Those stories that felt painful at the time.  Now they are the funniest stories that you and your friends tell each other.  It always starts with, “Remember when I . . . ” and then ends with laughter.   

Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.

  –  Jack Canfield

How many opportunities in our life have we walked past, because we were afraid to try? There is nothing worse than a life that you didn’t even try to live.  That is where the true regrets in your life come from.  The things you did not do.

Love this quote (which didn’t have who wrote it, so unknown)

I AM STRONG

because I know my Weaknesses

I AM BEAUTIFUL

because I am aware of my Flaws

I AM FEARLESS

because  I learnt to recognize, illusion from Real

I AM WISE

because I learn from my Mistakes

I AM A LOVER

because I have felt Hate

and . . . ,

I CAN LAUGH

because I have known Sadness

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Listen To The Heart

What’s life without a little risk?

 – J.K. Rowling

Life is about taking risks.  Every choice is in reality a risk.  A risk of achieving something great and wonderful; a risk of failure; a risk of not doing or doing the right thing.  The great secret of the phrase, “taking a risk”, is that no matter what happens, we get something wonderful.  If we take a risk and it turns out just like we wanted, we are happy.  If we take a risk, and it doesn’t turn out well, we still have something wonderful from the experience, we have knowledge, experience, and the combination of those two things is wisdom.  We can then look at what we tried to do, remove a piece, tinker with it, add something new and try again.  The only way to truly fail, is to do nothing, to risk nothing.

And then there is the most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

 – Randy Komisar

Being wise beyond our fears, means recognizing that the true directions of the heart, require no words. There is simply a knowing inside. It just feels better, when we go in the direction of the heart. When you make the decision based on the hearts guidance, you feel the weight of the decision slide off your shoulders. There is no second guessing.

To live your greatest life, you must first become a leader within yourself.  Take charge of your life.  Begin attracting and manifesting all that you desire in life.

  – Sonia Ricotti

When you say the words out loud, that only your soul has dared to whisper to the heart, that is when miracles happen. The declaration, both verbal and written gives notice to the divine that you are listening. Listen to your dreams. That is when you open to the unexpected, and miracles happen.  When your mind and heart is too filled with the worlds noise, your dreams may be the only way that your souls whisper can be heard by the heart.

Let your heart be your guide on all things, but you have to listen closely because it speaks so softly.

 – John St. Augustine

Each whisper of the soul to your heart speaks of the next leg of your journey. There are times on your journey when experience and reason tell you not to follow that path. Your mind sees the risks and wants to play it safe. But you have to give it a try.  I’ve always loved the play on words – when you find yourself “now here” instead of “no where” is that moment of just being.  That moment of space of being fully conscious, because you have to be fully conscious to hear the whispers of your heart.

Sometimes, you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes, in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.

  – Unknown

When you don’t listen to the whispers of the soul to your heart, sooner or later, that whisper turns into a scream. When the whisper has turned to screaming in desperation, it is usually a sign that your life is about to shift into some sort of test. This comes about because instead of listening to your own heart, you are playing it safe.  Playing it safe, is being a diamond in the ruff.  A raw diamond looks a lot like common quartz, it is cloudy looking..  But cut it perfectly and shine it up, and everyone knows it is a diamond. We all have these exceptional qualities and potential.  But we are afraid to stand out from the crowd, and so we hide ourselves, even from ourselves.  Everybody wants to be a diamond, but very few are willing to get cut.

Take risks in your life.  If you win, you can lead.  If you lose, you can guide.

 – Swami Vivekananda

It is so easy to become focused on others instead of ourselves. We get pushed and pulled in all directions by our work, our friends and our families. When those that we are surrounded by see us listening to our heart, they get scared. Changes that you make in your life, will impact theirs. They are afraid of many things, but primarily that you may out grown them. That you will leave them behind.

The only difference between fear and excitement is your attitude about it.

  – Unknown

Don’t let their fears break your soul. They may try to expose your shadows, your imperfections, the things that lurk inside of you with feelings of shame or guilt.  They are just trying to stop you from listening to the heart. God has put into our hearts, an intuitive guidance system to guide us to what we need, the next step on our path. Follow that guidance. When you do, you will know it because your heart will be at peace. Even the most painful and difficult decisions are correct, if the heart is at peace with it.

Take charge of your choices.  Choose to look up, when life presses you down.  Choose to smile, when life frowns at you.  Choose victory, over defeat.

  – Unknown

Be wise beyond your fears ,and keep heading towards your glorious destiny.  If the dream keeps reappearing in your thoughts, go for it.  That is destiny calling you and it is always worth the price of admission.

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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!

Strong Women Value Themselves and Each Other

The devil whispered in my ear, “you’re not strong enough to withstand the storm.”  Today I whispered in the devil’s ear, “I am the storm”.

  – Unknown

We are all stronger than we know or think we are.  I come from a long line of strong pioneer women.  My great, great grandmother came across the Oregon Trail as a young girl.  The wagon train that her adopted family was part of was attacked by Indians.  She was adopted by the tribe and given to an Indian brave that she had two girls with.  One day a French Canadian trapper saw her and offered to take her back to the white people.  My great grandmother was hidden in an oak barrel for two days scared that if she made a sound she would be killed.  When she reached Oregon and the white people my great grandmother suffered the prejudice of being a half breed.  Her mothers tale was one of rescue, her tale was something else.

In my own life, my parents were divorced when I was four because my mother had an affair and became pregnant with another married mans child.  She moved us around a lot and it wasn’t until I was in high school that I went to the same school the entire grade.  She was married five times and had numerous other relationships looking for something outside of herself, to fill the hole within.  At one point when I was thirteen years old we were homeless because we had no where to go when her current relationship failed.  That was when I knew that my life would be different.  She taught me that you couldn’t find anything outside of yourself to fill the need you had inside.  It had to come from within.  Even though she made a lot of bad decisions, she was the strongest woman I have ever known.  I come from a long line of strong women.  This is what they taught me:

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

  – Nora Ephron

Strong women know that sometimes we just need to sit with the questions until a direction is clearly revealed.

Strong women can sit with another woman in the silence without needing to say anything to break the tension.

Strong women know that when another woman is venting she doesn’t want anything to be fixed, she just needs someone there to witness the removal of the splinter that is causing her pain.

Strong women know that they must make their own light. And if as it sometimes happens that their light goes out, another sister will be there to share hers, until we are strong enough to relight our own.

Strong women know that when the light goes out, we are facing the day, when we question everything. When something so tragic happens that all of our foundations crash into dust.

This is the day when we all circle around our sister as she faces her crisis of faith and reveals the doubts which will birth a new creation. This is the day when we nurture her. When each sister holds the soul of the other ,and whispers the words of transformation.

This is the day of transformation which strips away the old way of being. Rising like a phoenix from the fire, we are reborn, fully transformed. 

No longer trying to be what others want us to be, we accept “us” without reservations or restrictions.

Strong women know that when you stand strong for yourself, you are standing strong for all of us.  When this belief is fully understood and lived, incredible things happen.

We value who we are, no matter what anyone else thinks. 
We forgive ourselves completely. 
We trust ourselves wholeheartedly. 
We are brave enough to love ourselves just as we are, perfectly imperfect. 
We empower ourselves to fully embrace our intuition.
We begin to live our life being the wonderful creation we are.

We fully realize the power of being a goddess, and that nothing can hurt us or stop us, except us.

A strong women doesn’t hold back either the laughter or the tears, because both cleanse the soul.

A strong women doesn’t apologize for knowing how to be both soft and powerful.

A strong women in her essence, her entelechy, is a gift to herself, to her tribe, and to the world.

I choose to be kind because it makes me happy.  But I will defend my boundaries and my loved ones without hesitation.  Make no mistake:  I am fierce.

  – Nanea Hoffman

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

Things do not change.  We Change

 – Henry David Thoreau

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

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

 – Jason Mraz

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

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

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

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

  – William C. Hannan

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

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

  – Jodie Gale

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

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

  – John Mark Green

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

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

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

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

The best thing you could do is MASTER the chaos in you.  You are not thrown into the fire.  YOU ARE THE FIRE.

  – Mama Indigo

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

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

 – Dr. Steve Maraboli

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

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Listen To Your Heart, Hear The Music Of Your Soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Difficult Roads Lead to Beautiful Destinations

 The Spiritual Journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of Love

  – Marianne Williamson

Taking action with the collaboration of your life purpose and your personal genius together, is part of being able to listen to your souls voice.  This unique collaboration forms your souls fingerprint.  When you can see yourself from the souls perspective, you remember what your life’s purpose is.  You remember why you came to the earth.  Your personal genius is the gift(s) that God gave you to accomplish your life’s purpose with.  There is no one else in the world with your unique gifts and skills.  

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

  – Unknown

Your soul has been speaking to you through your heart since you were conceived.  You may in fact remember it from when you were a child, before someone convinced you not to listen to it.  They put you asleep, so that you wouldn’t hear it.  You woke up the moment that you decided that you were not going to allow your soul to be insulted any longer.  When you decided to stop listening to those lies, and accepted that you are a divine gift to this world.  You decided to stop just existing, you decided to start participating in life. 

The only limits you have are the limits you believe.

  –   Wayne Dyer

It is when this desire to fully live our lives awakens that we start to seek out more knowledge.  Many people will use prayer or meditation as a part of this process.  It helps to quiet the mind, so that the soul can be heard.  Have you ever had a thought or a dream about something that came true?  Have you ever thought about someone and then within minutes they called?  Have you ever had “Deja Vu”, that deep feeling that you have experienced something before, when you know that it has never happened before?  These are all soul communications.  Every experience adds to your personal growth.  We begin to release all of the false beliefs that held us in cages.  We  remove the barriers of judgment of those different from us, that kept people distant.  We become curious. 

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.

  –   Helen Keller

Now that you are conscious, your souls strong voice can lead you in your journey of transformation.  We are all born to be leaders, but sometimes we let life’s obstacles beat us down.  We need to learn to be resilient, and then help others to be resilient. What we learn is to stop trying to make things happen in a certain way that our mind has made up, and instead to let things unfold as they are supposed to.  We realize that we are on a divine timetable, not a human one.  We start to feel the connections to everyone and everything. There are lessons for us if we are willing to be still and watch them unfold in others peoples lives.  We see their troubles, their life patterns, their special gifts of the spirit.  When we can truly sift away all of the static of judgment away, we see them as God meant them to be.  It is so uplifting to see that, to be in that space.  It encourages us to try to be what God meant for us to be.

I think a spiritual journey is not so much a journey of discovery.  It’s a journey of recovery.  It’s a journey of uncovering your own inner nature. It’s already there.

  – Billy Corgan

Instead of being afraid and running our life from fears, we start shifting into that space of love more often.  We let the negative emotions pass through us with less hindrance.  We find that anger at the crazy or distracted driver ahead us sort of passes by like a cloud on a breezy summer day.  We are not seeking out conflict with others.  Those feelings of unrest and frustration that used to gather like a summer storm with thunder and lightning just break apart and disappear over the horizon.  We suddenly realize that those tiny frustrations with the kids, our spouse, that person who has the noisy habits at work – we suddenly realize that those negative emotions are less and less.   It is like the pressure that they were building up inside of us is just no longer there.  The itchy spot no longer is red, swollen, or angry looking.  It has faded away.

Spirituality can not be defined, but can be described as a journey to the center of the soul.

  – Perter Kemmsies

This doesn’t mean that we don’t have those days when we want to explode.  It is just that our attention is no longer constantly being grabbed by it.  We find ourselves dwelling more and more in the positive emotional vibrations.  We are all born to love everyone we meet.  Then fear is introduced to us, and we start being afraid of being hurt, being judged, being less than someone else.  So we protectively do that to others, to protect ourselves.  A spiritual awakening, or consciousness is stripping away those multitude of fears and putting the acceptance of love back into its place.  This is truly living in reality, because our journey has been to lead us back home to our purpose in being here now.

As with any journey, who you travel with can be more important than your destination.

  –  Unknown

The world has been waiting for you.  You are a catalyst to help others wake up, and become conscious of their life’s purpose.  To help them take action themselves.

We are spiritual beings on a physical journey . . .   There are no limitations, other than those that we impose upon ourselves.  Mastery is within our power – if we wish it to be.

  – Susan Barbara Apollon

This day, let us begin to live our purpose with passion, and give our sacred gifts to the world.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working.  To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

  – William James

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

Having Courage Is One Of The Six Impossible Things

“Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second”

 – Lewis Carroll

Life seems like that sometimes. I remember years ago that we were driving north on I-5 in Oregon and we had just crested the top of a hill around Roseberg. You could see quite a way in front of you as the road sloped down into a valley. Ahead of us was a semi-tractor trailer and he ran over something that looked like shiny metal in the road. Immediately his tires blew and he started swerving and then the whole rig tipped onto its side.

For a moment it was like slow motion.  I could see so many small details as the whole scene played out like a movie. Then whoosh, time sped back up and my husband was pulling off the road and running back to make sure the driver was ok. The driver was just shocked by what had happened. But for me, it was the weirdest experience of time I have ever had. It was like the rabbit said, forever came in just one second.

“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then”  – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love.  To postpone my dream no longer.  But do at last what I came here for and waste my heart on fear no more” – John O’Donohue

Courage is being in love with the anticipation of what comes next, even when we have no idea what that might be.

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?

Events

Make Your Life Extraordinary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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