Failure Is Just A Part Of Growing

 

• What does the word “Risk” mean to you?
• Is it married to your fear(s) until death do you part?
• Does the phrase “course correct” imply to you that you’ve failed?
• Does the idea of “untapped potential” make you break out in hives?
• Do you avoid the “road less traveled”?

Fear makes almost everyone uncomfortable.  Fear is an integral part of risk; of going down the road less traveled; of even thinking of putting yourself into a situation where you would need to dive deep within to bring up some of that untapped potential.

But – if you are brave enough to get your friends to open up to the dreams they have, you will see some of their untapped potential being exposed to the light.

If you are brave enough to open up and share your own dreams, you will learn things about yourself that you didn’t know.

Risk is like a barometer to show you much courage you have allowed yourself to have.  You have extraordinary dreams that you would do in a heartbeat, if you could be guaranteed that you wouldn’t fail.

Courage will tell you that you have to let failure

be a normal part of putting action to your dreams.

I currently subscribe to an online newsletter called “The Profile” and it features Polina Marinova.  She is doing things a little differently.  She is doing deep dives on prominent figures and it is really interesting.

I wanted to share some of the things that one her profiles had to say about failure.  While this article pertained to pursuing a business, the lessons contained can be applied to any kind of change or transformation you are thinking about making in your life.

Click the link and check her out (you don’t have to subscribe, click and the part that says to check her out), she has both free and paid subscriptions.  (everything in quotes is from her article and reading her article inspired me to write this one).

“Failure is not the outcome – failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.” – Sara Blakely

Sara Blakely says that she is no stranger to failure.  She failed her LSAT tests ending her dream career as a trial attorney.  She had an interesting dad, who taught his children to celebrate failure.

When she was growing up, each person at the dining room table had to share their biggest failure for the week while they were eating dinner.  If they didn’t have one, her father would be disappointed, because that meant they hadn’t put themselves out there to do something impossible.  She learned from this that the only true failure is when you don’t try.

One night getting ready for a party she stumbled onto an idea for a gap in the fashion industry, and that began the creation process for Spanx.  She stated that she kept the idea to herself for a whole year while she worked behind the scenes, before she sought validation from friends and family.  By the time she told them about it;

• she had named her product,
• researched the market,
• patented it,
• created a prototype.

She knew that all of the negative comments about her idea would have killed it if she had talked about it immediately.  How many ideas have you had, where that happened to you?  Her advice?  Don’t seek validation from others until you’re ready with proof of concept.

It is common when an idea pops into your head to discount it.  Today while writing this blog, a neighbor was mowing his lawn, and the noise of the lawnmower was irritating me.  I said to my office partner that someone should invent a solar powered electric lawn mower.  It could be that someone has.  I don’t know.

I thought about it for a moment and said. “it could have a rechargeable battery that sits in the sun all week just waiting to be popped into the machine.  It would be quiet like an electric car, as well as being better for the environment.’  My car is a hybrid and when it is in full electric mode you can’t hear the engine.

Just think that both the lawn mower and the leaf blower could be quiet – I swear that there isn’t a zoom meeting that happened in the past year where someone wasn’t apologizing for the yard maintenance people and the noise in the background.

Now like Sara –

• I know nothing about getting something like that done.
• I know very little about solar power or engines.
• I am not mechanically inclined.
• I don’t know other things an inventor would commonly know.
• I have no connections or funding on how you would do this.

The only difference between Sara (with her initial lack of business, manufacturing, and fashion industry knowledge) and myself is the level of passion she had for it.  For me, this is just a wonderful idea that I am happy to give to someone else.  For her, it was an idea she was in love with.

“Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” – Sara Blakely

When you take fear out of the equation, it becomes easy to embrace the unknown. One of the keys to her success, is that she was a fashion outsider, and didn’t know how it was supposed to be done.  Her ignorance became her greatest asset.

“I had no idea how things were supposed to be done, and if you have no idea how something’s supposed to be done, I guarantee that you’ll end up being disruptive,” she said. When you are an outsider you see things in a different way, because you don’t know how it’s supposed to go.  Beginners mind always starts by asking the question “why” over and over again.

In 2000, Blakely used her $5,000 in savings to start her company, and by 2012, she was named the youngest self-made female billionaire.  Sara still owns 100% of Spanx because she never took on outside investors. She sees an opportunity in every failure or disappointment. “Spanx wouldn’t exist if I had aced the LSAT,” she says.

Take control of your mindset by immersing yourself with great books that teach you how to life a positive life.  Sara tells how her dad bought her the Wayne Dyer program called “How to Be a No-Limit Person”  when she was having a hard time with personal and financial issues.

Most of higher education teaches you what to think, Wayne Dyer taught her how to think.  A critical part of using failure to be successful, is that you have the ability to control your own thoughts and confront your self-doubt. “Now more than ever, your greatest weapon is your mindset,” says Sara.

I have followed Wayne Dyer for years.  I was privileged to see him at a conference.  The world lost a great wisdom teacher when he passed away.

“Success, to me, is finding the courage to live your fullest and biggest life.” – Sara Blakely

How about you?  Are you living life to your fullest potential?

As always, we are here to support you – to whisper words of encouragement – to celebrate each and every failure and success!

Choose Courage, Raise Your Anchor and Set Sail For The Unknown

 

“It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are” – E.E. Cummings

Are you really happy, or just comfortable?  Raising your anchor and leaving the comfort zone is the beginning of all change.  Courage comes into play when you have traveled far enough away that you lose sight of the shore.

All of a sudden fear will raise its head and start creating as much chaos as possible.  Fear knows that the more it churns the waters, the more likely you will panic and return to the safety of your comfort zone.

“We have to be honest about what we want and take risks rather than lie to ourselves and make excuses to stay in our comfort zone” – Roy T. Bennett

Have you ever watched “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”?  Part of the story line was about his relationship in life compared with his best friend.  His best friend was strongly anchored to his shoreline,  his comfort zone.  Ferris Bueller was all about challenging every rule or restriction in his life.  In the movie he says, “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

As soon as Ferris Bueller’s friend watched his dad’s prized auto go through the window and crash down the hillside, he realized how uncomfortable his comfort zone was.  He talked about the lack of relationship he had with his father, and how this crisis was going to force his dad to pay attention to him.

He was definitely coming outside of his comfort zone.  He was owning how much he needed to change his life and start living it instead of just existing in it.  He had to reach the space where remaining the same in his comfort zone had become untenable.  The space where it was scarier to remain in his comfort zone, than to change the relationship with his dad.

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are” – John Pierpont Morgan

Have you ever completely redecorated a room?  You might start with one piece that you find that really speaks to your heart and soul.  Then as time goes along, you are subconsciously looking for something that will tie into the theme that is being created in your head.  In your minds eye you might start out with a beautiful photo of sea turtles swimming underwater in the ocean.  Then you find a shelf made out of driftwood.  Then you find a frame with sea shells and some fish netting.  And so on.  Until one day you look around the room and it feels complete.  It feels like home.

“The woman I was yesterday introduced me to the woman I am today which makes me very excited about meeting the woman I will become tomorrow” – Unknown

When you are “redecorating” your life by stepping outside of your comfort zone, you will start with just one thing.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are throwing out what you have.

It could mean that it needs to be updated or repurposed in some way so that it now fits perfectly with how you are redesigning your life.  Maybe it needs a fresh coat of paint.  Maybe you saw something on a DIY show where they reconstructed an old dresser for a new use.

For example, why not take that anchor you were using to stay in your comfort zone, and use it to instead anchor in grace?  Grace is one of my favorite values in my own life.

“It’s not only moving that creates new starting points.  Sometimes all it takes is a subtle shift in perspective, an opening of the mind, an intentional pause and reset, or a new route to start to see new options and new possibilities” – Kristin Armstrong

What’s important, is to realize and really fully embrace, that imperfect action is better than no action. It is really easy to procrastinate getting started with something that is new and challenging.

I have the “perfectionist” trait of thinking that I just need some more information before I start. So I will research something new “to death”, finding myself going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole with google dragging me along to trail to “one more thing”.

I find the same thing when I am searching for the new photo for a quote for a post. I finally had to limit myself to searching five pages. If I haven’t found it by then, I reword my search criteria. Otherwise, I was searching down 20-30 pages and still not happy with the results.

“Every morning wake up and ask yourself, “What five little things must I achieve today for this to be valuable day?” – Robin Sharma

 

“It’s not about perfect.  It’s about effort.  And when you bring that effort every single day, that’s where transformation happens.  That’s how change occurs” – Jillian Michaels

When you’re ready to make a change in your life, excuses lose their effectiveness.  Excuses are thieves.  They steal away your time.  If you listen to them, you will fritter away your life until one day you wake up and that thing you were going to invent from that idea you had is on the market and someone else has become a millionaire from it.

Have a goal; schedule your time to put it into action; accept responsibility for what does and doesn’t work; then take more action, and keep taking more action until it is completed.

Consistency is what leads to success.  If you only practice an instrument once a month, you will never be a successful musician.  You need to be stingy with where you are spending your time.  Don’t spend it doing things that are not moving you forward in your journey.

Spend it doing the things that fill you up; things that move the needle.  Things that make you feel brilliant, powerful, beautiful and brave.

This is so important.  Share what you have overcome with others.  I have shared a lot about my nephews murder and how that changed my life.  I wanted everyone to know that you can move through the most heart wrenching pain and come out the other side thriving.

Share your story with others.  Share it with me.  Somewhere someone is staring at the mountain that they have to climb.  They are thinking they can’t do it.  Every loss creates a challenge through change.  It all starts with choice.  You can stay in the river and look at the mountain, and stare at it all day.

Or you can start walking.

Just remember that we are here to listen, to offer support, and share with you as you walk up and down your own mountains of loss and change in your life – as well as help you celebrate your bravery.

Living With Uncertainty

 

“Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don’t let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity” – R. I Fitzhenry

The uncertainty of life is what makes it so much fun.  Uncertainty is fundamental in nature.  It is a messy imperfection of life.  But it is also the adventure of choosing a path and not knowing where it goes.  It is the curiosity of going someplace new and imagining what you might discover about yourself in the process.

I love the thought of this idea of not even knowing we have wings until they are forced into opening up.  Unraveling feels so scary, like you are coming apart.  But unless you reach that moment, the wings do not unfurl.  They won’t appear until they are needed.

“It is how we embrace the uncertainty in our lives that leads to the great transformations of our souls” – Brandon A Dean

Has anyone ever said to you, “I don’t know how you do it” about something in your life?

• Juggling work, home and family – You pull up your big girl panties and just start dealing with each thing as it comes up, one thing at a time
• Taking care of an elderly parent – You embrace the challenge with love, faith and grit
• Caring for a child with special needs – You realize you can’t do everything yourself and you ask for help when you need it
• Going to school and working fulltime – You call those you can trust, to confide in regarding the obstacle you are currently climbing over and get encouragement to give it one more push
• Starting a new business – You meditate, seeking clarity and simplicity for your life’s ambitions
• Dealing with the grief of losing a baby – You go for a walk in the woods and connect with nature to recharge your batteries, let go of what no longer serves you, and embrace the pain with compassion for yourself

The answer lies in realizing that you can handle anything when you aren’t given a choice.  It defines who you are and who you are becoming, because every single choice is just that – a choice you make.

“Decisions are the endless uncertainties of  life that we’ll not know if they’re right until the very end, so do the best you can and hope its right” – Lily Collins

“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss” – Eric Roth

There is something called the Uncertainty principle.  It is part of quantum physics.  It says that in the world of small particles, one cannot measure the property of the particle, without interacting with it in some way, which creates an unavoidable uncertainty into the result.  Which means that the act of the observation of something, changes the thing irrevocably.

What this means in layman’s language is that the idea of a predictable future based on the choices you are making in this moment is impossible.  You can guess at probable outcomes of a choice.  Based on those probabilities, you can make flexible plans.

So for my choice of taking the “really lost” train track – there are a number of probabilities that would be reasons why the train isn’t going that way.

In the uncertainty principle for life, there is a grid for breaking down the complexity, volatility, ambiguity and risk of uncertainty.  Gaining clarity defuses some of the uncertainty in life.

Ambiguity is like a sunrise just cresting the horizon.  At first you can’t see clearly as everything still is shadowed.  But the more that light is reflected out from the sun as it reaches higher in the sky, the more that what was in the shadows can be clearly seen.  With ambiguity, gaining more knowledge about it creates clarity about it.

Clarity also breaks down the complexity of the subject, as you can clearly see where things connect and don’t connect.  The more you know, the easier it is to take volatility out of the equation.

“Clarity and simplicity are the antidotes to complexity and uncertainty” – General George Casey

Clarity starts with curiosity.  Being open to exploring the unknown.  It is the journey of self discovery of why you are here. Clarity comes with conviction and true originality.  It is experienced in the stillness of the soul.  Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus in breaking down the complexity.  The clarity of what your intentions are actually based on.

“Live your life as an exclamation, not as an explanation” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

It is about taking the train track that will infuse your life with action.  When you take a tea bag and put it in a cup of hot water, the hot water becomes infused with the tea in the bag and makes a cup of tea.  The longer the bag is left in the cup, the stronger the tea becomes.

Living your life as an exclamation point says that you aren’t sitting at home dreaming of making a choice on which track you are going to take.  It means you are making the choice by getting on the track and forging forward.  Put a period on the end of the choice.  The period says you are making something happen.

Be prepared to embrace change with each new step on your journey.  When the track ends, start laying new track.

“Enjoy the beauty of becoming.  When nothing is certain, anything is possible” – Mandy Hale

There is a Japanese Proverb that says, “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.”  This implies that you have some choice in the matter. Than if your mind focuses on other things than fear, that you can control how deep that fear is allowed to go.

There is such beauty in the creation process.  When I find the perfect quote and picture it gives me such joy.  No one achieves full mastery.  There is always another level to grow into.  And with each new level there will be failures, growth, and beauty.  So don’t wallow in the failures.  Don’t allow the failures to stop you.  Unfurl those wings and fly.

“Embrace uncertainty.  Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later”– Bob Goff

You are writing your life journey, page by page, day by day.  Sometimes in writing these blogs the title is the first thing I type.  Other times it is the last thing I type.  Don’t be afraid to make space for the unknown.  Sometimes the feeling needs to be explored before you can name it.  Life’s most precious gift is uncertainty.  Cherish it.  Life always unfolds perfectly if you let it.

Climb Every Mountain

“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving; we get stronger and more resilient” – Dr. Steve Maraboli

You have this vast reservoir of untapped potential.  The only way you discover it, is when life throws lemons at you.  That is when you learn to reach down deep inside to tap this reservoir.

Like pulling up a bucket in a deep well, you must bring up your hidden potential to the top.  As you go through life’s storms, you learn how to develop that potential into what is needed to reach the top of your destination.

As you journey down your road, you will start climbing the higher elevations in life.  You might have this idea that the hill you are climbing will get you to the top.  Then you reach the top of that hill, only to discover that you are still in the foothills.  You haven’t even started on the mountains waiting for you.

“She was unstoppable, not because she did not have failures or doubts, but because she continued on despite them” – Beau Taplin

This is where courage comes in.  The courage to continue despite the fears.  The foothills were testing your strength.  As you sit there looking up at a mountain, it would be perfectly normal to let fear take over and stop you in your tracks.

Your mind is getting busy at this point creating all of the possible means of falling down a mountain.  From instant death, to hitting a crevasse and breaking multiple bones as you fall deep within the earth.  Rolling down the mountain pass covered in snow, creating an avalanche that buries you alive.

Courage doesn’t make those fears your mind is making up go away.

• Courage tells you all of the reasons why this is the right thing to do.
• Courage tells you that you can take a guide or go with a group.
• Courage tells you that there are safety procedures that can be learned to protect you from falling to your death.
• Courage tells you what about your journey is more important than listening to fears death fantasies.

“Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up” – Mary Holloway

Part of resilience is based on compassion for yourself as well as others.  Compassion for yourself teaches you that failure is not fatal.  That when you have the courage to continue despite life’s setbacks, success will happen.

Every morning having the courage to get started again, is like being reborn.  A fresh start.  Each day what matters is what you do that day to continue towards your destination.

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful” – Joshua Marine

Part of the overcoming of challenges, is being able to organize your suffering, so that you only have to bear the pain that is absolutely necessary.  This allows you to not be overwhelmed by what is happening.

You begin to see the connections to what has happened, and how the lessons you are learning are actually needed for the balance of this journey.  When you approach life from this perspective, you understand that each challenge brings in an experience.

Each experience brings more maturity, skills, and values into your life.

“Strength does not come from winning.  Your struggles develop your strengths.  When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength” – Mahatma Gandhi

Sometimes the new reality seems to be two steps backwards.  You have choices as to how you handle that.

• You can rail against life, God, and the world.
• You can fight it tooth and nail and refuse to accept it.
• You can just sit on your butt and scream until the cows come home.
• Or you can accept it and figure out what your next step is.

What you do next is what matters most.  It’s the courage to continue, one step at a time, one day at a time.  It’s that next step forward.

“Some failure in life is inevitable.  It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default” – J.K. Rowling

You could probably write down a long list of failures in your life.  Some small and some so large they almost buried you under the grief and negative emotions of “not enough”.  You are not someone to sit around in sackcloth and ashes bemoaning the unfairness of life.

You are out there picking up courage wherever it can be found.  You realize how much worse your life would be, if you were home just sitting on the couch and not even trying.

“I’m not sure if resilience is ever achieved alone.  Experience allows us to learn from example.  But if we have someone who loves us – I don’t mean who indulges us, but who loves us enough to be our side – then it’s easier to grown resilience, to grow belief in self, to grow self-esteem.  And it’s self esteem that allows a person to stand up” – Maya Angelou

Every single failure should be proudly worn on a necklace as badges of courage.  You have towered over your circumstances each and every time.  Embrace the beauty that your life is reflecting.

Shine Your Light, Transform The Darkness

 

“Transformation is often more about unlearning then learning” – Richard Rohr

When you were a little child you started forming your values based on how you were raised.  As you grew older those values grew, changed and transformed based on your experience of life.  Those values influence what you focus on as being important.  They influence how you live your life.  They reflect the reality you perceive and the behaviors you demonstrate in the daily living of your life.

“A mistake is an accident.  Cheating and lying are not mistakes, they are intentional choices.  Stop hiding behind the word mistake when you get caught” – The Coach from Raise Your Mind

Being imperfect, you will make mistakes along the way.  You will make bad decisions, bad choices.  Some of those will be intentional based on your fears.  Some you won’t realize are intentional.  This is because your subconscious is self-sabotaging you due to its fear of what might happen if you do the right thing.

Your values if you have chosen them intentionally, will assist you in your life journey to achieve the goals you set for yourself. Your values will also excuse or accuse your bad decisions.  This is because your values can validate the difference between the simple wrong choice, and the times self-sabotage intentionally made that wrong choice.  It is up to you to try, or not try to do better in the future.

At first the goals we form are all education types of choices.

• Do you finish high school?
• Do you go to college or a technical school?
• What kind of career to you want?
• Do you want to get married and settle down to have a family?
• Do you want to travel and experience life and settle down later?
• Does life happen for you or to you?

Unforeseen tragedies can shift your values and focus, such as when my nephew was murdered.  Any kind of major unexpected life event can significantly transform your life.  In my case, LemonadeMakers was a direct result of my own life event.

“The Hero’s Journey is a concept to describe people’s self-perception when they are in a growth process” – Unknown

When life events cause you to question everything in your life, you have entered upon a Hero’s Journey.  It is common for fears to crop up.  Grief creates a whirlpool of emotions, you blame yourself for everything falling apart.  You question all of your life values as being incomplete, unstable, and not good enough.  You push feelings deep down inside of you.

“Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others choices make us” – Richie Norton

Transforming your life is a process with a lot of ups and downs.  Intentional living can help you to sort out what values you are keeping and what values you are letting go as they were adopted as habits from those you lived with.  What’s vitally critically important is that you stop standing in the ruins of your life.

Acknowledge the impact of what happened.  Make choices that mean something for you in your life and “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”.

• Choose to live by choice,, not by chance
• Choose to make changes, not excuses
• Choose to be motivated, not manipulated
• Choose to be useful, not used
• Choose to excel, not compete
• Choose to live with self esteem, not self pity
• Choose to listen to your inner voice of intuition, not the random opinion of others

“Transformation isn’t sweet and bright. It’s a dark and murky, painful pushing. An unraveling of the untruths you’ve carried in your body. A practice in facing your own created demons. A complete uprooting, before becoming” – Victoria Erickson

The thing that you fear the most isn’t powerful in and of itself. Your being in fear of it is what makes it seem powerful. Facing the truth instead of pushing it away, takes your power back from the fear.  The Hero’s Journey is a time of self reflection.

“I traded easy answers for honest questions.  Replaced being judgmental with open-hearted curiosity.  Stopped warring with myself and found peace with others.  I burned all the old maps and then discovered my true path” – John Mark Green

Run to whatever inside of you is hiding. Pay attention to what is triggering responses inside of you. Who or what is making you angry? What is triggering the arguments you are having with others? That is what you need to follow, to find the honest answers about what inside of you is calling out for transformation.

“It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that’s where transformation happens. That’s how change occurs” – Jillian Michaels

This can be viewed as a spiritual journey.  It is a path of recovery of those values that you should keep, and a time of personal growth for the new values that come from the release of past negative beliefs and actions you have uncovered in your transformation journey.  Through the struggle of uncovering the false beliefs and values in your life you gain strength to continue your journey.

“Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional” – Glenda Cloud

It is comparable to when the caterpillar has transformed into the butterfly in the chrysalis and is ready to break out and take flight.  There is first the struggle to break out of the chrysalis and then spread the wings to dry – this process strengthens the wings allowing the butterfly to gain the strength to actually fly.

The past couple of years has challenged all of us.  This has been an unforeseen tragedy for everyone.  There has been drastic changes in being forced to stay home.  Work from home.  Loss of income.  If you are a first responder the fear of contracting the virus, both for yourself and your loved ones.  Not being able to hold funerals for those loved ones that passed away.  Children staying home from school and being home schooled by parents.  So many challenges and struggles that will be continuing for some time in the future.  Just not knowing what’s next.

These challenges create a lot of frustration and other negative emotions.  It certainly impacts your values.

• How do you cope?
• How do make sure you have the “right” attitude for what comes up for you?
• How do you come out of this transformational fires burning away all that doesn’t belong (old values) to you?

In A State Of Divine Grace, I Can Move Forward Into A New Life

 

“Missing puzzle pieces do more than complete the puzzle.  They fill in an empty space” – Luanne Rice

Have you ever been working on a puzzle for days or weeks and you get to the end and there is one piece missing?  How did that make you feel?

Did you move furniture, sweep under cupboards, and generally take the room apart looking for that last piece to complete the picture?  Have you ever taken the extreme measure of taking a photo and sending it to the puzzle manufacturer to see if they can send you that missing piece?

If you found the missing piece underneath something, how excited were you to fit it into place?  It’s like a state of grace settles over you.  Calmness.  A feeling that all is right in the world in that moment.  The adrenaline settles down, the anxiety or frustration of lost hours of work dissipates.

Sometimes in life you will miss an opportunity.  You might not have recognized it, or maybe you were so busy with the chaos of life, that you totally didn’t see it.  Then when you do realize it, do you kick yourself over missing it?

Right now, you may feel like you did with the missing puzzle piece that you looked everywhere to find, that you are now an incomplete picture and everything you’ve been doing up until now is just a big waste of time and effort.

What is wonderful about opportunities in real life, is that there is always another new door just waiting to be opened.  I love the saying that “opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor” as it signifies how important it is to be looking for them.  You can’t find them if you are not looking for them.  Looking for opportunities within your dreams or aspirations are the perfect place to find them.

“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes then learn how to do it later” – Unknown

• What is the lens you look at life through?
• Does the thought of saying yes and not knowing how to do it make you scream “no, because what if I fail?”
• Are you willing to go all in?
• Are you willing to take a leap of faith?

Opportunities are supposed to grow you.  If you will only take on what you know 100% for sure you can do, where is the growth?

I always think of cats.  Some are a living example of grace.  They will stretch themselves out in leaping up a tree or a fence.  And whether they make it or land on the ground, they always land on their feet ready to try again.  Others are scaredy cats are always hiding, afraid of everything.

So which kind of cat are you?  The one taking the leap of faith, confident of landing on your feet? Or are you the one hiding under the bed shaking in terror, letting those scary opportunity pass you by?

“You walk in grace, or you walk in fear.  You can’t have it both ways”– Carlos Santana

When you are young, you think that you have all of the time in the world to explore a myriad of opportunities.  But this is an illusion.  Don’t waste time looking backwards.  You aren’t going that way.

Don’t waste time by constantly daydreaming about the future.  You haven’t arrived there yet, and when you do so many things will have happened between this moment and that future, that you won’t even recognize you have arrived.

You need to let go of what no longer serves you and live in the present moment, where the opportunities are.  You need to live in this present moment in order to make space for what is new to come in.  When you are not in resistance, the illusion of time “taking forever” is released. 

“To turn inward, to be courageous and trust our heart – to lean into our independent judgment – a brilliant opportunity we ignore too often” – Amy Jalapeno

In today’s world problems seem to be multiplying like bunny rabbits.

• You may be currently furloughed or laid off from work
• You are trying to home school children while trying to work from home
• You may be worried that your job is not coming back and the industry you work in is not looking good for future job opportunities
• Health issues from Covid-19
• Elderly family member currently in an extended care facility and you can’t visit them
• You may be about to graduate from college and job prospects are extremely limited
• Your employer is going out of business due to financial constraints

“The chaos doesn’t end, you kinda just become the calm”– Nikki Rowe

Grace changes everything.  It gives you the space to go inward and out of the chaos.  To reconnect with your heart and soul.  By leaning into intuition and independent judgment you begin to see a way forward.

I read a story that gives a great example of this.  Look at movie theaters.  Most people will not want to go into the closed space of a movie theater for several hours to watch a movie.  And while the day of the drive ins seemed to be past, they now have the opportunity to make a comeback.

In Germany an architect wanted to create the communal aspects of watching a movie as a group.  So, he launched Windows Flicks, which projects a movie on large exterior building walls.  People living in apartment complexes can watch through windows, patios, or balcony’s and drink a glass of wine and take in a movie while practicing social distancing.

What kinds of projects might you brainstorm for reinventions of businesses that may be facing extinction?  The architect in Germany is fundraising for the German cinema industry, so he was able to both provide a reinvention of watching a movie with others and supporting a business that needs to reinvent itself.

Any crisis can give you the opportunity to reinvent your life in some way – will you take a leap of faith, or hide under the bed scared?

I love this concept.  It takes a fire in your soul to put actions to your dreams.  To keep walking your sacred path to your destiny, even when it feels like the sky is falling.  Grace from the heart tempers this fire, so that it is the exact amount of heat to get your feet moving.  Grace changes everything.

And remember, you never have to walk alone.  Grace is always a step in front of you, and all you have to do is open your arms to receive it.

Self Awareness Is Key To Transformation

Your future dreams are being held in the gift of time.  When divine timing thinks you are ready, your dreams will unfold, one by one.

How can you make progress so that you can draw your dreams into reality?

You can stop thinking that ignoring your negative emotions will make them go away.  What happens instead is that they become buried deep within you and start roots.  Those roots manifest themselves in your being triggered every time someone else’s behavior mirrors that same emotion.  Each root becomes an anchor designed to hold you in place, which keeps you from growing into who you are capable of becoming.

At this point in your journey you are being given time to dig up all of those roots.  When you expose them to the light of day, they will shrivel up and turn to dust.  How do you expose them?

• By promoting healing immediately when others let you down, don’t meet your expectations, or are just mean and cruel
• By stopping yourself from becoming a victim or having victim mentality, and to instead embrace life as a safe place to grow and thrive
• By growing up and embracing your own personal identity, instead of hiding the real you away in fear of not being worthy
• By letting go of all of the things that are not true to you at your core being
• By unpacking the past and learning its lessons
• By resolving the past, in order to get past the “stories” you tell yourself subconsciously, and peeling back the layers to expose the truth
• By embracing yourself as being the powerful being you are.  Acknowledging that you can save yourself, just as you’re meant to

Encourage yourself by looking for what is working in your life at this moment.  What things can you be in the space of gratitude in your life right now?  Where do you see room for more of your potential to come out and shine?  Ask those who know and love you where your greatness is if you can’t see it for yourself.

Realize that it takes time to heal and go through all of the stages of grief.  The stages of grief don’t only apply to the loss of a loved one in death.  It also applies to divorce, loss of a job, most kinds of trauma, even to children leaving home to go off to college.  Take whatever time is required to unpack all of your baggage.

Understand what life lessons are there, and what needs to be let go of because it doesn’t serve you any longer.  It takes time to peel back all of the parts of you that don’t belong to you.  It takes time to expose and accept the parts of you that you have hidden away.  Your life can’t be transformed by waving a magic wand and poof you’ve changed.  It is changed step by step, bit by bit, day by day.

When life falls apart, you think that everything can be solved by just going home again. You think that “going home again” is about a place.  But it isn’t.  Those memories of home are all based on a time, which is in the past. It is why you cannot truly “go home again”. So this chasing of home is not about a place. “Going home again” is more about you chasing a feeling of love, security.  Something that you feel will help you cope with whatever life is currently throwing at you.

“Productivity is how you run away from yourself.  Creativity is how you become yourself”  – Brianna Wiest

When life throws you lemons, you think that you need to do something.  You just don’t know what that something is.  You think that you’re waiting for help. You think that if you ask everyone, someone will tell you what the right thing to do is. Even though, at the back of your mind, you already know what that is. So all that you’re really waiting for, is a time when you’re forced to do it.

When life has fractured you into pieces I want you to remember these things:

• Nothing about you is ugly.
• Beautiful things are made from life’s fires, where the heat cracks you open.
• Beautiful things are made from where you have cracked, letting the light of God shine through.
• Beautiful things are shaped from the parts of you that have fallen apart.  Don’t discard anything that’s lying on the floor.
• Beautiful things are discovered within you, all of those places where you are judging as not being good enough anymore.

Instead of judging yourself by all of your shortcomings or things you failed to do, why not instead let your life be defined by how much you are loved by others.  Repair your foundation in life, your core beliefs and values.  Rebuild and repair your cracked walls and ceilings, as represented by your archetype’s and the labels you identify yourself by.  Sweep up the broken glass and create a mosaic of your life with gold filling in the gaps, these represent windows that you look out of – how your see your world.  Remember you are made of beautiful things.

“You may not see it today or tomorrow, but you will look back in a few years and be absolutely perplexed and awed by how every little thing added up and brought you somewhere wonderful – or where you always wanted to be. You will be grateful that things didn’t work out the way you once wanted them to” – Brianna Wiest

Life is a journey.  There are patterns you will see as you travel to your many destinations.  Life is sometimes remarkable, sometimes terrible, sometimes strange and yet hauntingly beautiful.  Look for the surprises underneath the wrapping paper.  When the moments of despair happen (and they will happen) bring out all of your beautiful memories and hold them close.  Remind yourself that whatever is going wrong now, that this storm will also pass.

The first Saturday of every month we get together on Zoom to talk about our challenges, to encourage each other, and provide inspiration to continue on our individual journeys.  Join us for the next conversation and become even more inspired to reach out and pull your dreams into reality.

 

 

Choose To Live By Your Choices, Not Chance

 

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

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

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

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

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

Just three of the many comments received:

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

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

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

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

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

To edit your News Feed preferences on your phone:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Start Walking, Be Aware, Watch For Possibilities

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

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

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

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

Never Turn Away

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

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

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

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

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

Focus

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Just Go For It!

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

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

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

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

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

Turning a Corner

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

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

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

Turning A Corner In WW II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Do You Aim True?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I  Wonder What Happens Next?

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

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

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

Out of an Abundance of Caution

“Surround yourself with people that reflect who you want to be and how you want to feel, energies are contagious” – Rachel Wolchin

You are hearing these words a lot in todays media – “Out of an abundance of caution”.  It is almost always followed by something that is being cancelled or changing to an online streaming event.  The city of San Jose required that Tony Robbins cancel his upcoming event in March “Out of an abundance of caution”.  When you hear those words “out of an abundance of caution” how does it feel to the energy in your body?  Is is constrictive?  Restrictive?  Does it feel like the turtle pulling in his head and legs so that all you can see is a hard shell?

“Don’t adapt to the energy in the room.  Influence the energy in the room” – FabQuote.co

You have dreams, desires, and ambition for your life.  You have goals that you want to bring to fruition this week; this month; and this year.  When you live your life from that kind of positive energy, it attracts others who feel the same.  You experience movement, progress unlike the turtle who is motionless, hiding in his shell.  If you live your life from “an abundance of caution” what you will experience is being motionless, frozen in time and space.  It is important to surround yourself with people who not only live from a space of abundance, but an abundance that is expansive, not contractive.

“The more positive energy you have around you, the better you will feel about yourself” – Unknown

Words and music both have an energy that plays with your emotions.  I can listen to a sound track of almost any movie and immediately feel the emotions that they are creating.  If I have seen the movie I can see the scene itself.  Here is where someone was in danger – here is where they were really happy – here is where their heart was broken.  The words we hear also impact us emotionally.  Negative words will drain your energy and introduce fear into your spirit.  Fear itself is like a virus that will grow and take over your life if you are not aware of it being inside your energy field.  It contracts you just like that turtle to hide away.  To be safe.

“Stick with people who pull the magic out of you, not the madness” – Unknown

Instead be like the eagle.  When the storm breaks most birds fly to a safe tree branch to hide from the weather.  But not the eagle.  The eagle flies above the storm.  So be like an eagle and fly above the  madness you see happening around you.  Feel the positive energy of the eagle as you fly with it, above the madness of the storm and into the magic above it.  The magic happens when you attract other positive energy people around you, as you support each other reaching up into the heights.

Here is some good advice from Vex King to protect your positive energy:

• Avoid gossip and drama
• Let go of things you can’t control
• Avoid comparing yourself to others
• Keep your faith larger than your fears
• Don’t do anything that doesn’t feel right
• Don’t be afraid to spend some time alone
• Speak kindly to yourself and to other people
• Please yourself before trying to please others
• Stay away from people who drain your energy
• Ignore any opinions that don’t enhance your life

“Let me remind you:  Wherever your focus is directed that’s where your energy goes.  Whatever you allow in your space, you eventually become” – Overlyxclusive

So when the world goes mad, fly high above the madness.  Self direct your energy instead of letting it be manipulated by negative fearful people.  The media spreads the virus of fear, making everything “breaking news”.  Stop letting anyone else control your mind, your feelings, and emotions.  Remember what you focus on determines the reality that you are currently experiencing.  It is easy to let the negative mind take over with possible world ending scenarios that expand your fears until you can no longer think logically.  The secret is to focus on what builds up, not what tears down.

“She was unstoppable not because she did not have failures or doubts, but because she continued despite them” – Beau Taplin

So match your own personal energy to that you want to attract in your life.  Positive thoughts change your experience of life.  Every smile, every loving word, every kind action are reflections of who you are.   So dream BIG, stay FOCUSED, work HARD, be KIND.

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.