A safe harbor where beliefs are respected and kindness prevails.

Still Searching For Rainbows

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glassofrainbowWe are all being challenged at the moment to stay positive no matter how things appear around us. This attitude, this looking at the glass half full, is what will carry us through these times of change.

So, picture a glass half full, with a rainbow ending right in it!

Too Pollyanna for you? Well just try it. Get a photo of a rainbow and put it behind a glass of water, half full! What does that do for you…well at least it should be worth a chuckle! It would be even funnier if someone came in and caught you doing it…caught you looking for the rainbow in the half full glass!

I ask you to wonder, are we all a bit afraid to show optimism now? When so many have lost so much, all over the world? Perhaps just a little. Sometimes expressing optimism activates a tirade from someone you know, someone who you care about. Fear of that can perhaps cause us to be reluctant to express it.

If that is how you sometimes feel, then become a closet optimist on those days!

People will sense the positive energy coming from you. Even if you don’t share WORDS of optimism, if you spend a little time each morning thinking about:

  • Something you are grateful for in your life
  • Something you dream might happen to you (like winning the lottery!)
  • Appreciating what you have, not what you don’t have
  • Appreciating the friends that you do have (even if they are glass half empty people)
  • Appreciating the weather if it is good, or the farmers market if you can go, or the phone call you got from someone you wanted to talk to …

You get the idea. Then don’t share it with anyone but see if you light up the faces of the people you encounter during the day…even just a tiny little bit … just by emanating a slightly more positive energy. If they don’t smile when they see you, it may be something going on with them…you don’t always get a “sign” that you are shining positive energy. In fact, sometimes it can really irritate people to see you happy when they are not.

But do it anyway.

You may help that person without their realizing it. You may help them question why they are irritated with your happiness. You may shift their energy up just a tiny bit. You can’t be “positive” because you want proof that you are a good person. You just have to do it because it feels good to you and hopefully feels good to those you encounter during the day.

Keep it in the closet if you like, but open up the door just enough to let that rainbow in! Oh, and then drink the water!

I Saw A Shooting Star

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Fotolia_59785106_Subscription_Monthly_MI usually get up early in the morning to take our dogs outside for their morning constitution, and one morning this week I saw a shooting star! It shocked and delighted me! It had been many years since I had seen one. But more importantly, it reminded me that magical things could happen at any moment…when you least expect them!

The feeling it generated in me was awesome, and every time that I think of the experience since then, I get that same delightful feeling. The feeling you got as a child when you got your first puppy, or that toy you REALLY wanted. The feeling on Christmas morning when you went out into the living room and there were all those wondrous and beautifully wrapped packages. The first time you were old enough to realize how special it was to have a birthday cake made just for you.

You may have noticed that the world is shifting into a new reality where thoughts become things rather quickly. We have known for at least 2,000 years the how your thoughts affect your life. Well baby, multiply that times a thousand and that’s what’s happening now! So start expecting magical things to happen.

You can start by remembering and writing down each morning something from your past that seemed magical. We have all had those moments. You know that feeling, childlike delightful surprise. So take a brief moment each morning and remember one of those times in your life and write it down in your own little “Book of Miracles.” If you want to have one for every morning, you will start to think about it during the day for the next mornings note.

You may find images that remind you of something…like a vacation that turned out to be more fun that you had imagined. I remember one vacation to Hawaii with a group of friends that included a trip around the island by boat to snorkel. On the way back, we sat in the front of the boat and they served us Mai Ties. We started laughing, and then the water splashed us and we laughed even harder…more splashing, more laughing! I didn’t ever remember laughing that hard for that long! It felt SO GOOD to be so carefree, in such a beautiful place with such great friends. So I will put a photo of us on that boat ride in my “Book of Miracles.”

You might remember the first time you heard some music that sent you through the roof…get an image of that album cover…easy to do on iTunes…and put it in your Book. Better yet, download the music and put it on your phone so you can listen to it again.

You might remember the scent of a certain flower or fruit. Get a picture of that and find a page for it in your Book.

How about the first time you looked in the face of your newborn child. That’s a great one!

Build your Book for 30 days, and then look at it often. Flip it open randomly and the page you open to will be your “miracle reminder” for the day.

Your delight with life will start to manifest. Who knows, perhaps you will even see your own shooting star! I’m on the lookout myself!

An Opportunity To Walk My Talk!

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finished!A week ago today I was given a great opportunity to see if I could really live what I ask other people to do…that is to remain positive no matter WHAT life looks like around you. The day it started, I missed an important phone call and was as upset about that…so immediately made myself a cheeseburger! That showed me my emotional dependence on food for comfort. It was so obvious it was like watching a movie. I was upset about missing the phone call, but the real test was yet to come.

10 years ago I made a large outdoor mosaic table using the china that was my parents. They purchased the distinctive Blue Willow pattern right after WWII and we all grew up eating every meal off of those dishes. Mom also helped raise my brother’s children, so THAT whole generation ate many meals off these dishes too. When mom was finally moved to a facility for dementia, the remaining set was sort of a hodgepodge and no one wanted them. I decided the best way to “honor” all the meals mother prepared for us was to make this table.

It gave me an opportunity to remember the many meals we had as a family…always together…to be honest not always pleasant, but always together. There was one platter that we must have used to served corn on the cob hundreds of times. We would go down to the river where two sisters grew corn and pick it fresh, bring it home and it was on that platter within a couple of hours of being picked. I loved that platter and it is embedded in the table.

After years of being outside, through winters and summers, rain, freezing temperatures and triple digit heat, a few tiles had come loose. I needed to repair them for an upcoming event I am hosting, now just two weeks away. As I got into it, I discovered the whole piece of half inch plywood it was built on was disintegrating because I hadn’t sealed it when I first made the table! I immediately turned it over to pour resin on the bottom of the wood to stabilize it, but the next day when we lifted the table back upright, all of the tile remained on the ground…in various chunks and pieces! The wood on the top of the table was like powder so the tile was glued to nothing! EEEEEEEK!rebuildingdetail

Horror! Or not! Horror! Or not! I just decided right then and there that I wasn’t going to accept that it was ruined. I would repair it. I thought about posting the apparent disaster photos I took of it on Facebook, but realized that I would be giving energy to the problem, not to the solution…so I took photos but kept them in my phone, kept them to myself. And then I started to work. It was only a table after all, but filled with many memories and hours of work on my part. A friend’s adult daughter was in the hospital at the same time. She had been bitten by a brown recluse spider and developed blood poisoning and was fighting for her life. So this wasn’t as important as that, but it truly was important to me because of the sentimental value…and all the hours of work…and memories.

tilesongroundMany people have been watching things they thought were solid dissolve or disappear. People they thought would be with them for a long time are leaving the planet. Homes and jobs have been lost to the recession. Many limbs have been lost in war. People have been loosing things right and left. So I saw this as my “loss” learning experience and was so grateful that it was only a table, not a person or an arm or our home. I had the experience of watching something I thought was solid dissolve right before my eyes, like a rock turning to sand and escaping through my fingers AND I found the blessing in it, during it, all the way through it.

So with that true gratitude in my heart, I worked every day for a week, and now the table is back together. A little bumpy in places, but I decided that the tiles wanted to get out and play a little, change places, and then settle back down again! I never gave into being upset about it (except for missing that first phone call). Once I almost started to cry, but then again thought about how very lucky I am, and if I gave in, I might never get it back together again.

Not a Humpty Dumpty table this one.

I was also thankful that my business is slow at the moment (THAT was a big thing to not be upset about) because I didn’t have much else to do but work on the table! How perfect is that! And when more work does come, my energy, my “vibe” will be in a really good place, not in a place of loss.

This also reminds me of a story I was told many years ago, demonstrating how our thoughts have more power than matter. The story is about a person who has need of a desk, so goes and buys the desk and puts it in his workspace. There is a fire and the desk is burned to ashes. But the person still has in his mind the need for a desk…so goes and gets another one! The thought of a desk is stronger than the desk itself!

So next time you are in the middle of a “loss” experience, try to remember these stories, try to keep your attitude positive and your vibe high. You will be of more use to yourself and those around you…you can be the legs to the table…or desk…or what ever or whoever needs support.

Being given the opportunity to be a set of legs is a gift, an honorable one at that.finisheddetail

Remaining Calm During Madness

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How does one keep your vibration positive when it appears that there is madness all around you? You don’t want to look naïve to your coworkers, or like a Pollyanna to your family, or unsympathetic to a friend with a problem. And what is the value to YOU for staying positive?

Let me answer that last question first.

Fotolia_65720515_Subscription_Monthly_MThe value to you is to improve your own well-being. The better you feel, the less likely you are to get sick, or get in a car accident, or attract an argument with someone. The cells of your body actually respond to what you believe your life is like. If you think “My life is a disaster,” your cells will respond by not working properly, “knowing” that things are hopeless…that they are part of a losing team. I realize that sounds like a stretch, but more and more scientific types are finding this to be true. Researchers are creating tests to prove it so.

If instead you say “Life is good, I am healthy and all is well,” your cells will eat it right up! Energy food for the little guys and they LOVE it and will say “Oh good, I’m on a winning team so I will do my very best to work really well!”

Another important reason is to understand that how you are feeling will affect what happens around you. The “Law of Attraction” is becoming more and more accepted and it is hard to find anyone that has never heard of it. If you haven’t, it works like this…what ever you are thinking/believing, you are vibrating…and like vibrations will be attracted to you and you to them. Simple as that. It may be that you feel like a victim…so you will attract someone to victimize you. If you are depressed, you are likely to sit next to the most depressed person in any room you enter. So that is another reason to use whatever techniques you know about to improve your mood…to be more positive.

I am by no means saying you should “ignore” what is bothering you. You can’t stuff it away somewhere inside of you and pretend it isn’t there…because it will only fester and grow. What you CAN do is change your attitude about it. When there is this “thing” sitting there in the way of your happiness, instead of being depressed or sad about it, get to work figuring out how to get rid of it. If you can take that approach, you may have a new, fresh idea that you couldn’t see in your state of depression. Understand that the problem is OUTSIDE of you…it is not you.

The hard part, of course, is to know HOW to change your attitude, to change how you are feeling, or to minimize the importance of a perceived problem. Here are some things you can try.

  • Stop repeating your same sad story over and over. If something bad happened to you, it is NOT YOU. If you keep repeating it and repeating it, it BECOMES part of you. A good friend of mine and I came up with this technique: First acknowledge it, then release it, then focus on what you want. Adironnda says you can tell a story only three times, and that is it!       So choose your three times carefully and know that you are telling it to “let it go.”
  • Step back and look for the silver lining. If you look back at situations in your past, how often can you find a situation that looked like a road block while it was happening, but later ended up opening up a new and better opportunity for you. I ask you to just take a minute right now and think back about a particular situation that turned out that way for you. We have ALL had them and looking back at such stories helps us look for the good in any new situations we encounter.
  • Make time to have some fun. It can be as simple as stopping in to get an ice cream cone on the way home. Treat yourself to something special that you know makes you feel good. We have many touchstones from our childhood, so identify them and DO them.       If I really want to be comforted, I watch an old episode of “I Love Lucy.” It instantly erases the stress of “modern life” as we know it today. We know we can’t really go back there, and realistically don’t want to, but for 30 minutes, all the stress leaves my body/mind!
  • Learn to Meditate. Find time in your day, usually best at the very beginning of the day, to just sit in silence. There are so many programs out there today teaching people how to do it, and many of them are even free. If you decide that it is something you want to try, the right teacher or program WILL appear for you.       Someone will tell you about a program in conversation, or you will stumble across something on Facebook. It isn’t hard to learn and there have never been so many willing teachers.       It no longer needs to involve a specific religion or philosophy. Those days are long gone. It isn’t even mysterious! It is just a simple thing to learn to do to make your life better.

Print this list out and keep it somewhere. Then look at it again in a month and see if you actually tried any of these things, and if they helped. You have control of your own destiny…no one else. So what do you choose? I have worked on this my whole entire life and just now feel like I am actually starting to “live” it…so don’t be hard on yourself…there is no deadline.

Just keep trying. It is the ONLY way to get there!

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