Making a decision is empowering. It gives us ownership. It gives us clarity. It gives us authority.
Too often we skirt around really committing to something. We fear being wrong. We fear failing. We fear being confronted. Or we fear being disliked.
If we give into that fear, we lack real power and energy in our lives. We let things get muddled up in our heads and we’re always second guessing everything.
Courage often emerges after stumbling through a wilderness.
Wilderness brings about need, and great need widens the eye. It slows time and allows contemplation to buzz about, drilling deep holes into the heart’s locked parts.
We are vulnerable in the wilderness. We question and we groan and we look for answers where before we never even looked. Wilderness opens our eye wider and grows our hearts bigger. It deepens the soul.
My mom and dad
This coming Wednesday, October 30, 2013, will mark eight years since my mother died from cancer. While I miss her more now than ever and would have loved more time with her, I am so grateful for the 25 years I did have with her. What a gift.
She was incredible. Always smiling, always engaging, and always taking an interest in others and building them up. Not to mention, she nearly always had a delectable something in the oven like meatloaf and potatoes or chocolate chip cookies, making our Pennsylvania farm house smell amazing!
One of the biggest struggles I have is coming to the end of the day and feeling discontent with what I accomplished, or how I lived my day. I often find myself worrying that I didn’t do enough, or didn’t do the right things. This is discouraging and, I realize, a poor way to end my day.
I know that unless I fill my day with the things that are purposeful and meaningful and take me in the direction I want to go, it will still feel empty at the end. I just struggle with putting a system in place to accomplish just that.
A little compliment can make a big impression on someone. It doesn’t take much, just a kind word, an observation, a word of encouragement. Those little things will brighten someone’s day and make them remember you for a longtime afterward.
Claudia and I are in the process of selling our house and we’ve had quite a few realtors come through and show the house to their clients.
Normally the way it works is we get the house all straightened up by doing things like putting all the toys away, clearing the extra appliances off the kitchen counter, and turning all the lights on to make it show well. Then, we leave so the prospective buyers can take their time looking at the house.
This is a repost of the very first post I wrote here 2 years ago. It is always amazing to see the changes which spring forth from a purpose filled journey! 😉 Here is to CHANGE embraced!
(To read the comments on the original post go here.)
But…
I don’t feel ready yet…I want more time. I want time to change before I need to change. And actually I sometimes don’t WANT to change at all, I just want to be changed already. I just want to press one of those little reset buttons…It’s gotta be here somewhere!
But darn it if life doesn’t work that way.
We were designed to change, move, always forward, onward…one day ends and a new begins, it never stops, always changing. A new sunrise at a slightly different time than the day before, the clouds of yesterday are nothing like the ones today, every thunderstorm is different, every leaf on a tree, every human eye color. Even our very own skin changes each day, shedding the old skin of yesterday, making way for new skin.
So why is it so hard for me to change when everything else about my whole world is constantly changing?
It’s easier just to think about it…to write about it than to live it. Living it takes action on my part. And I really actually enjoy being lazy. Its easier to live the life that other people think I should be living than to pave my own path.
Learning from positive role models is definitely a good thing, however there is great value in learning from anti-role models as well. Rather than needing to make all the mistakes ourselves, we can observe the mistakes of others and learn from those.
Don’t misunderstand me, I am blessed to have plenty of great positive role models in my life. Not to mention, I have an amazing group of friends and family as well. However, there are still people I come in contact with everyday who are not living the life I want to live.
The book of Proverbs talks a lot about wise and foolish people. And it is clear that we want to be counted among the wise. The tricky part is many of us think we are acting wise, when we are actually acting foolish. We can really head fake ourselves!
Look through the list below and think about how you communicate with and relate to the people around you. Think about your actions up until this point.
Reading books and blogs and listening to podcasts has had a powerful impact on my life over the past few years. All the new thoughts, ideas, and real-life stories have helped me think in new ways and take often scary action in new directions.
Here’s the thing. I know I’m not the only one. Claudia and I hear from countless people who say will say things like, “Everything started to change when I started listening to that podcast.” Or, “That book (or blog) had a profound impact on me and helped me realize I could do it too.”
Did you know your brain can learn 7 facts per second, every second, for the rest of your life and still not be one bit overloaded?! In 1968, Pyotr Anokhin of Moscow demonstrated that the minimum number of potential thought patterns the average brain can make is the number 1 followed by 10.5 million kilometers of typewritten zeros!!!
Hardly any of us use our minds to their true capacity. In fact, most people try to numb their minds because they feel restless and unhappy. They don’t like their lives, but are too lazy or fearful to do anything about it.
On a normal day 4 years ago, my husband Michael and I realized we weren’t living the life we wanted to live. We were living a boring life! So, on a hot weekend in July, we started a new life.
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