A Day of Gratitude, A Life Grateful
November 27, 2008
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
`Denis Waitley
In the midst of great despair, at a time when I could find no light at the end of the dark tunnel that had become my complicated life, I discovered an amazing truth. No matter how dark, no matter how hopeless the world seemed, I could revive my state of happiness by focusing on gratitude and the people and things that I feel privileged and honored to have in my life.
I can be happy when I am grateful. No matter what circumstances befall me.
This morning as I sit alone in my silent home, coffee beside me as the sun peaks in the sky, I take the time to reflect on the joys of my life. Within the hour, I will rise from my meditations and I will start to prepare the stuffing for the Thanksgiving Turkey, and then the great bird itself and the rest of the meal. The table will be set with decorations and flowers and the family will come and this now silent home will be filled with the sounds of cheery conversation and children’s laughter.
I am grateful for this moment of peace as I begin this most precious of days. I am grateful for the family that will fill these walls soon. I hold family and friends to be among the most important gifts there could ever be, and in this area of life I have been abundantly blessed. When I think upon this one thing…my heart begins to overflow and I am welled up with more gratitude than my being can even hold.
I am grateful for the friends I have met here as I have made this pilgrimage into the on-line world of writing. A place I wasn’t even a part of at this time last year. I feel honored by so many helpful and kind friends who have lit the path for me and joined hands with me along the way. This community here and the others I have been a part of. Thank you for sharing this road with me.
I am grateful that in the midst of darkness in our world, I can still feel the hope. I can still look to the daily inspirations that come from everywhere if only we will seek them. They make themselves apparent and I can see, I can know, that somehow…somehow…life will turn out right.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is a day to express what we should be feeling and paying attention to EVERY DAY. I celebrate this day of gratitude by renewing my pledge to live a life more grateful.
A life that celebrates the daily gifts I am given. A life that gives back- in word and deed- with a grateful heart for all that had been done for me and those I love.
I can never repay all the beauty and love that has graced my life, it’s impossible. The more I try, the more it rains down around me. I have come to understand that it is one of the secrets of living a grateful life.
The more you are grateful, the more you will have to be grateful for.
I am grateful for my life. For all the love in it, for all of the people in it, all of the beauty and art in it and the amazing power of God to show up in everything-if only we are looking.
Happy Thanksgiving.
What are you grateful for today?
Collecting Courage
November 24, 2008
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
We are living in times where very few are feeling as if they are standing in very many “moments of comfort and convenience.” I’m sure if we took a poll, most would raise their hand to agree that there are many more “times of challenge and controversy” to deal with in their daily lives.
I have friends at this moment holding their breath, hoping and praying to hang on to their job. To say that it is taking courage just to face every day is an understatement for a lot of people walking in our midst. Maybe you? Somedays I know I can raise my hand.
Can you imagine how wealthy I would be if I could find a way to bottle up courage and sell it right here for $9.99 to everyone who wanted it?
I’m willing to bet it would sell for a whole lot more then that.
Sometimes it takes courage just to get out of bed and face another day. It takes courage to look in the mirror. Courage to look at the checkbook balance, the Visa bill, and the unpaid stack of medical bills piling up in the corner.
Courage to have that dreaded conversation. The one you have had SO many times in your mind, several different ways, with many imagined outcomes, but have never had the guts to have…face to face…for real.”
How do you get yourselves to continue on when all you want to do is hide under the bed?
What’s It All About?
When obstacles start to become the standard rather than the exception, it helps to know what you are fighting FOR. The first step in collecting courage is in having a clear, unwavering vision of what is most important to you to keep you on track.
You need to know WHAT you are fighting for. Then you need to remember the WHY. Is it the need to put food on the table? Is it that big hairy audacious dream that just won’t let you go? Given a strong enough, compelling enough reason to get out of bed, open the bills, or face that dreaded conversation, you will make it happen. You will find a way. You will SUMMON the courage from a place inside of you that you might not even know is there.
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
~Oriah Mountian Dreamer
Once you have summoned it, you have to find a way to sustain it. It’s one thing to summon up a moment of courage to achieve a great thing, or to rescue someone or something from an impending disaster. But what about those times when you need sustainable courage, ongoing power, faith and determination?
Where is it going to come from then?
From the very same place. From the vision. From the WHY that got you going in the first place. This is where many of us falter. We find our purpose, we pump up our courage, our strength, we sound the battle cry of “We shall overcome…” and then-
our courage dwindles away. We don’t have it anymore and we don’t know where it went.
It’s right where it always was.
In the WHY.
Keep your purpose clear and your path will be bright, your courage will guide you both day and night…
Sound simple?
It’s not. It takes daily discipline. Perhaps the one thing harder for most of us to find than courage. Committing to finding the time for a daily focus and renewal of looking at our goals, values and purposes.
John and I went away this weekend for a mini retreat. Just an overnight in a different location, a time to get alone together, listen to some good music and have time to talk uninterrupted and let our visions and dreams get some breathing room. It’s too easy to get caught up in the daily TO DO list and the drumbeat of EVERYDAY SYNDROME that keeps us moving along but not really “living” when you are in the thick of it all the time. Getting away from that daily pace helps to get you back to the WHY and the purpose behind what all the motion is about. I came back feeling more creative, more centered and feeling like with faith, we can do anything. I found my courage out there on the open road.
Maybe you can’t get in the car and drive away right now. Maybe it feels too hard to squeeze out even a few minutes of alone time to get focused. The holidays are among us and every moment feels priceless. It feels like any moments we take away from the task are counter-productive. However, it’s when time is at its busiest that we need to step back the most. Take those moments to get refocused on the “What are we doing all of this for?” “What is the big picture?” and “Why am I willing to put up with this struggle in the first place?”
Take a few moments to get renewed. Find your courage. It’s been there waiting for you all along.
How Clutter Blocks Success
November 18, 2008
The war against clutter is one I am battling constantly. It seems the moment I turn my back on it there is something else doing its darndest to start a pile somewhere, be it paper, clothes, toys, or simply that other catagory known as “what is this?”
“I don’t know”
“Where does it go?”
“I don’t know…”
I guess for the sake of conversation we’ll call it *STUFF*. I am constantly on the look- out for ideas and inspiration in fighting the clutter war.
My friend Christine Kane just wrote a very inspiring article in her ‘LiveCreative’ weekly ezine. She gave me permission to re-publish it here for you to enjoy. Thanks Christine, I need all the help I can get in this war and I KNOW I’m not alone!
The Year I Discovered How Clutter Blocks Success
~By Christine Kane
I looked at my phone in horror.
“You want me to what?” I said into it.
“It’s time, Christine. You’ve been talking about that basement for weeks now. It’s time to deal with it.”
I had been working with my coach for months at this point. And even though I had reached certain levels of success in my career, I kept getting stuck in the same old ruts. I was about to record my fourth CD, and I was ready to move to a higher level.
Thom was doing what good coaches do: listening carefully, seeing clearly - and of course, pushing me to take conscious action.
So, he encouraged me to start small and completely clear out the junk in my basement. Thirty minutes a day.
One section at a time. Building momentum as I went.
Each week, during our call, I’d report back on my progress.
Each week, I had a new reason why I simply could not let go of some clutter-y item.
“But I spent so much on it!” “I might need it someday!” “I could gain weight and need this again.” “I paid such a good price for it!”
To my credit, I did pretty well at letting go once Thom talked me through these old mindsets.
Then came the week I had to face one particularly significant section of the basement.
It was where I stored various pieces of furniture I had gotten at the Salvation Army and at local flea markets when I first began my songwriting career. A bookcase, a kitchen table, a dresser, and a few shelves. I no longer liked or used this furniture because my tastes totally changed. I had begun to cherish beauty and opulence in my surroundings. I wanted to fill my home only with items that I loved.
“So, Christine,” Thom asked. “Why don’t you want to let these things go?”
I was embarrassed. But I told him the truth. “Well, here’s the thing. If my music career doesn’t work out, I might need them one day. If I fail, and I don’t have any money, I might wish I had kept these things.”
Long pause.
“So, you’ll be on the street - but at least you’ll have that bookcase?”
I laughed.
Thom sighed. And what he said next has been a core lesson of creating my success and happiness.
He said that everything in our lives has energy. Everything has our thoughts and emotions embedded into it. Old furniture is no exception. In essence, what I was saying to the universe and to my subconscious, creative self was this:
I believe so deeply in my own failure that I’m holding onto physical things that represent that possibility. Every time I walk by these items in my basement, I will be reminded of my inevitable failure. Every moment I’m in my house, my subconscious will know that in the very foundation of my life (my basement), there are items that prove I don’t believe in my own success.
That week, I called Goodwill, and scheduled an appointment to have the old furniture taken away.
I’d love to report that I smiled and waved as the old clunky furniture was carried away. But the truth is I was terrified. I was letting go of my Plan B. I was saying to the Universe: “I thoroughly believe in my own success.”
I had never done that before in such a concrete way!
As I wrote earlier, I began recording my fourth CD “Rain & Mud & Wild & Green” as I was clearing out the basement. That CD went on to sell five times more than any of my other CD’s. It received rave reviews. Border’s Books featured it on a listening post that year, and named it the top CD of the year in my category.
Now, even though I know this success wasn’t ONLY about letting go of my old flea market furniture, I have become a firm believer that we each need to pay attention to the energy of the stuff that surrounds us. We need to pay attention to what we are telling our subconscious minds when we hold on.
Now you.
What are you holding onto? What thoughts and beliefs are you putting out into the Universe by clinging to it? Are you telling yourself you don’t believe in the inevitability of your own success and prosperity? Or that you don’t believe you can expand and create better things in your life?
Pick one thing - just one small thing - and let it go. Today!
Performer, songwriter, and creativity consultant Christine Kane publishes her ‘LiveCreative’ weekly ezine with more than 4,000 subscribers. If you want to be the artist of your life and create authentic and lasting success, you can sign up for a FRE*E subscription to LiveCreative at www.christinekane.com.
WANT TO SEE HUNDREDS MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Christine’s blog - Be Creative. Be Conscious. Be Courageous - at ChristineKane.com/blog.
Passionate Friends
November 13, 2008
The Longing
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare
to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
~From THE INVITATION, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
The words above jumped off the page of the book, THE INVITATION, that I am currently reading. Yes, I thought, I could have written this myself! This is exactly how I feel, all the time, when I go to parties, when I meet someone new, when I ask “How are you?”
What I really mean is, “What is your deepest desire?” “What do you yearn for in the darkest hours of the night when the clock is ticking and you think that no one is listening?
I get so weary of small talk. So weary of yammering on about this thing and that thing, and who got this and who made the latest ranking in the newest version of “Who’s the Best at Everything?”
But I never get tired of listening about what matters to your heart. What you care about, what you long for, what inspires you, what you are passionate about…so passionate in fact that you are willing to march forth and become more than your fear ever would allowed you to be before.
I’ll never tire of listening to your honest struggles or about how you wrestle the obstacles to the ground that stand between you and your passion, nor tire of helping and encouraging you to overcome your fears, nor will I shy away from supporting you when you become fragile and frightened and think that life has handed you more than you could possibly bear. I will listen, support, do my best to inspire, encourage and love.
I want passionate friendships. I want honest, heartfelt, supportive friends that can talk to each other about the deepest parts of their hearts and know that they will not face judgement, not incite ridicule, not endure rejection, but can rest in faith, knowing they are safe and sound in the arms of love.
When I say I am shy, I guess I mean that I am not really very good at small talk. I want deep talk. When there is just chatter, I don’t often know what to say. I melt into the wall and observe the motions, the little signals and I wonder…
What’s going on in there? How are you? What do you ache for? And do you dare to dream?
Shouting From the Roof Tops
November 12, 2008
IF you knew that you had the knowledge to change someone’s life for the better-would you do it?
IF you knew you had the information they needed to help them on their way-would you share it?
IF you knew that the education they were looking for was available for half-price for only a brief moment in time-would you tell them?
OR…would you quietly slip away and say, “It’s not my place, it’s not what I do here, probably everyone who wanted it, has it anyway, so its OK…
and then walk away…and maybe not help that ONE person who needs it, who has been trying so hard to make money in this crazy world of on-line writing, blogging, freelancing, in copywriting…or whatever dream they have been holding on to with all of their might.
Maybe that person IS making money. Maybe that person is working their fingers to the bone, careening toward physical illness and burn-out. Maybe they signed on to the dream and found out-too late-that all they did was walk away from a 9 to 5 job and sign on to a 24-hour nightmare that has no end. Maybe they find themselves drooling over their keyboard muttering “There has to be an easier way. There has to be a better way.”
There is.
Naomi Dunford’s ONLINE BUSINESS SCHOOL goes on sale today at noon pst. She can help you. I believe that with all my heart or I wouldn’t put my name to it. Or my checkbook-and I already did that. I believe in her so much that I jumped on this bandwagon during her pre-sale. She is worth it. But you don’t have to take my word for it, you can check her out yourself and if you don’t like it, she offers a full money back guarentee no questions asked.
The reason I am shouting from the rooftops today
Because the first 2000 people to buy ONLINE BUSINESS SCHOOL get it for half price. She is awesome like that. But she also e-mailed me late last night to let me in on the fact that three high-profile people are promoting it on their websites today. What that means is that after the first lucky 2000 get theirs for the discounted price of $197.00 the price will go up to $397.00. and I want my readers to have just as much of a chance as the high profile bloggers readers do.
After all..it’s only fair. 
I would like you to understand what kind of woman I would choose to promote here at LLI. I don’t do so lightly. I do so because she fits in with the values and beliefs and the core of what we are all about here. With all of her heart, she wants to make a difference in the lives of the people she serves. Will she make money if they buy her product? Yes. And so will LLI as a sponsor if you use our link up above to go there. But it isn’t her primary goal. And it isn’t ours. Her first and foremost value is helping people and making a difference and that’s what makes her so special.
Listen to her in her own words and see for yourself:
If you don’t have the money to buy my course, I’ve been there. To all of you who have emailed me privately telling me how much you wish you could afford it, how you’re going to try to find the money from somewhere, I am so, so, so grateful for your loyalty, but PLEASE DON’T BUY IT.
Take the two hundred bucks and put a few extra presents under the tree instead. Then go to Problogger and read the archives. (The 31 Days To Better Blogging Series’ are particularly good.) Take the 30 Day Challenge. Read Entrepreneur’s Journey. That’s how I learned it.
If you don’t have any money, watch my free stuff to get a little bit of income coming in before you start buying anybody’s info products or home study courses or ebooks. (As of today, the link for the free stuff is just the free stuff. By tomorrow it will be a sales page but all the content will be in there. You can go back as often as you want and I’m never going to take it down.)
~Naomi Dunford
This is the type of person I choose to promote. At the very, very least, do yourself a favor and read all the free stuff. She has a lot of it and it will help you.
However, if you can afford it, if you have a goal, and a vision of the kind of life you want to live and are in need of someone you can trust who has the business course already built that can take you step by step to the future you have been dreaming of, Online Business School is what you need. Naomi went from a struggling mother to a successful business owner making $200.000 a year. Sound good to you? I’ll let her tell you how she did that. It’s a great story. Don’t miss it.
Are you Planning for the Fog?
November 10, 2008
NOTE:
This is a rewrite of an article written back at the first LLI, Planning for the Fog, re-posted here today for all of our NaNoWriMo writers and everyone else needing a little extra encouragement as we prepare to enter the long stretch called the holidays.
Stand Up to Your Obstacles and Do Something About Them, You Will Find that They Haven’t Half the Strength You Thought They Have.
~Norman Vincent Peale
Obstacles.
Just when you thought you were getting somewhere…along comes some blip on the screen, some change in the plan, some unforeseen disaster that veers you off the course.
“Oh well…better luck next time…”
Many Monday morning diets have been blown a Tuesday goodbye kiss due to obstacles in the road. Many other well intended plans, started with enthusiasm and desire, lay dead in the path of these dreaded roadblocks.
What’s a person to do? You can’t plan for obstacles. Right? They just happen… They’re a random event. Luck of the draw….It’s not like it’s our fault or anything.
“Oh well…better luck next time…”
I’ll let you in on a secret that I have in my little bag of life’s lessons. You won’t have better luck next time. There is another obstacle coming. And another one after that. It’s this little thing they call LIFE…and…
The only thing that is going to make a difference next time is how prepared you are to deal with it.
The remarkable Florence Chadwick had already made a place for herself in history by being the first woman to swim the English Channel, when she made her decision to swim from Catalina Island to the California coast. This was a woman of proven persistence, goal-setting ability and driven excellence. There was every reason to believe in her ability to meet her next challenge.
On the 4th of July in 1952, as millions watched at home on national television and with family and crew by her side, Florence began her swim. The water was icy cold. Sharks hovered around her, being kept at bay by rifle shots fired from the crew supporting her. A deep, murky fog enveloped the water, rendering Florence unable to see anything in front of her.
Cheers and cries of support rang out from her family and the crew in the boats above, urging her to carry on, but all Florence could focus on was the fog that blinded her path. Defeated, she asked to be taken out of the water. It was the first time she had ever given in. The first time she had ever quit.
Later, from the comfort of the boat, Florence was dismayed to learn that she had given up only 1/2 mile from the shore of victory. When interviewed by a reporter, she told him that it wasn’t fatigue or cold water that had stopped her, but simply that she had lost sight of the vision in her mind, and had been blinded by the fog.
A short two months later, Florence Chadwick returned to try again. She was not lucky enough to have clear skies and visibility. The same obstacle of blinding fog also returned to challenge her once more. This time, Florence was prepared. She had rehearsed over and over in her mind what the end result would look like. She imagined the fog and how she would swim through it and keep her mind firmly focused on the goal. As she swam, she was able to remind herself that the fog did not change the end result; the shoreline was there whether she could see it or not. She just had to remain faithful to continue swimming and she would reach it.
This time Florence did reach the shore. Despite the fog, she swam there in a straight path and broke the all time speed record set before her by the men by two full hours!
Obstacles come. Always. Wearing one disguise or another, they step in our path to block the goal that we had set before us. Without a clear and carefully defined vision, it is hard to defeat them. Like a child’s monster in the closet, they appear to be overwhelming, frightening and larger than life.
More often than not, they don’t really exist the way we thought they did in our mind anyway. With rehearsed planning and focused vision, they can be reduced to a minor inconvenience, a lesson to be learned or sometimes even an opportunity that turns out to help us on our way.
The largest obstacle that we truly face is our own defeated attitudes.
When she was in kindergarten, my sister wrote a story.
I went into a cave and there was a bear! I tried to get out of the window but there wasn’t any. I tried to get out the door but the bear was blocking it. So, I sat down.
the end
The teacher wrote with her red pen, “And then what???”
This story was one of my first collections to be placed in the life’s lesson bag. And then what? What comes Next? How many times do we see an obstacle and then just sit down?
When you start to approach life from the angle that an obstacle is coming, so plan ahead…it isn’t the same as negative thinking. It’s being prepared. It’s making sure you have what you need in your suitcase to complete your journey. Thinking through in your mind, what types of things and experiences could possibly occur along the way and what you might need to do to stay focused and on plan.
It’s the constructive use of “What if?” instead of using it to worry and defeat us before we start.
It looks like this:
Finish these sentences for your goals and plans:
1. The end result of my goal looks like…..
2. The steps I need to take are…..
3. Possible obstacles that could stop me from reaching my goals are…
4. My plan for diffusing those obstacles is…..
5. The language I will use and the way it will look when I overcome the obstacles is…
Then, the more time you spend visualizing and seeing yourself succeeding in your mind, and overcoming those obstacles, actually rehearsing in your mind the language you would use, and actions that you would take to overcome those obstacles, the smaller and smaller those obstacles will be when they arrive. Your subconscious will already be engaged and know what to do.
Life happens. You won’t be able to predict and plan for everything. Some things are just learning experiences. Even an accomplished swimmer like Florence hadn’t planned for the fog the first time through. But she didn’t let it keep her out of the game either. She was back within a few months, mentally stronger, armed with knowledge and a better plan.
She won. So can you.
Obstacles are coming, are you planning ahead?
Walking Uphill Barefoot with no Shoes
November 6, 2008
At the ripe ol’ age of sixteen, I found myself in the precarious position of living in my own lovely pea green apartment with cockroach house guests and a brand new baby.
I had glady made that choice, stubbornly fighting off the other options that life had presented to me, believing with a faith that only youth can provide that I was fully capable of providing all things necessary for the health, welfare and love of my child as a single mother.
A sickly child with asthma and immune problems made that even more challenging. I spent many of those first nights watching her breath with concave lungs struggling for air inside a huge tented crib filled with pumped in air in the children’s ward at the hospital.
I had been a good student before I made the choice to be a mother instead. Still, a sophmore education and the label of high school drop out isn’t a winning combination on most high paying job applications. And should there be any school age kids reading this-let me take a moment out right now to say- Stay in School. The road I chose wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t easy, there weren’t any parties, very little time for fun, and even less time for sleep.
Although I love my daughter with all my heart, there are easier ways to get to where I am today.
However, when I sift back through my life and review the life lessons that I learned along the way, there is no doubt, that the biggest bag of lessons were gathered together in those early days. Lessons about survival, lessons about delayed gratification, lessons about compassion, forgiveness, budgeting, the value of a dollar, the importance of family and friends and the amazing gift of unconditional love.
There isn’t a single day of my life that I’m not pulling one or more of those early lessons out of the bag and applying them to my life still today. They are as important now, creeping up to age fifty as they were in the pea-green days of my youth. They are timeless and the basis for everything I believe in.
In the last several months, one of those lessons keeps drifting to my mind on a daily basis more than ever. The world’s constant obsession, fear and chatter about world recession, world depression, cut-backs, banckrupcies and daily crisis has many people ducking for cover. “Woe is the world so, therefore, woe is me” is the daily whine that everyone seems to be drinking.
Well, I don’t want to be a party-pooper but no thank you, I don’t want any.
Perhaps our newly- elected visionary will bring about the answers everyone is looking for. I hope so. But I haven’t been waiting for my Knight in Shining Armour to come and make my life all better and frankly neither should you.
ObamaVision or not, the road to success is still going to be paved with the sweat of our own hands. It always has been, and it always will be.
Why do I think this? Well, my daughter was born in 1977. Any of you who might remember the late seventies may remember long gas lines, embarrasing politics, interest rates that soared into double digit territory, stagnation ( a lovely word isn’t it?) and a host of other lovely things designed to scare the productivity right out of us.
And I was perfectly positioned to fall to the bottom of the barrel.
But I didn’t. I succeded. I beat the odds.
I went to beauty school during the mornings and I worked on getting a hairdresser’s license. When I got back home, I would spend some time with my daughter. In the evenings, I went to work at a hot dog shop, selling hot dogs. On the weekends, I worked at our family’s beauty shop, better learning the trade so I would be ready when I got out to hit the ground running. Soon, as my hours were piling up at school, my hot dog “career” was taking off. Yes, I could have settled for slinging the dogs in a bun and getting back home, but I took the time to learn how the business worked behind the scenes. I asked lots of questions. I read books on small business manegement. I figured things out. I came up with ideas. Within three months I was an assistant manager. Three months more, when the manager quit, I was promoted to manager and tripled my pay. On the weekends at our family’s shop, I asked more questions, I learned how to run the books, how all the products worked, what went with this…what went with that…How to do color, how to do specialized perms that most hairdressers didn’t know how to do. I read books and I didn’t settle for the information that beauty school had to teach me.
I didn’t have time to grow my business at a leisurely pace. I had a child depending on me.
Fast forward nine months. I graduated from beauty school, had my license, had developed relationships already at both the hot dog shop and the beauty shop and on the first week as a licensed hairdresser, I had a healthy clientele ready and waiting and a good income coming in as well as the manager’s job at the hot dog shop.
I had kept my budget to the same exact amount as it had been when I first moved in, so the extra money could go into savings and paying the medical bills, which I had worked out a monthly payment plan on. Fast forward another year and I took my GED and went to college. Quit the hot dog job, got a job tuturing other college kids in the school library which paid my tuition, became the manager at the salon and with a few years tripled the employees and the value of the company. Graduated from college, grew my management and sales skills into other positions that further increased my experiences and marketablity.
Oh, and I saved enough to buy a house at age 20, with interest rates at the cheap old rate of 18%.
Why am I sharing this story? Two reasons. One, to tell you that hard work and determination CAN pay off, even during times that look a lot more daunting than these.
The second is to mention that if the route I took sounds a little exhausting ( and trust me, it was) there is a MUCH EASIER WAY to get where you want to go in this day and age.
Keep in mind that I didn’t even own a car. I walked or finagled a ride to everywhere I went. There was no such thing as getting up in the morning and firing up your lap top to see what options were available.
Now there is. These days, I don’t have to work quite that hard at success. I turn on my computer, I read, I pay attention and I listen to the right people.
IF you were paying close attention to my story, maybe some of you caught that the common thread of reading, paying attention and listening to the right people was woven in to everything I did back then too, but then, I had to walk to get there. Now…I click on to Naomi Dunford’s free classes and thank my lucky stars I don’t have to “Walk Uphill without Shoes” like in the olden’ days to Canada to get the best advice there is for making a lot of money right from the comfort of my computer.
I’m heading over there now. Will you join me? It’s a heck of a lot easier on the feet! Click on her post and let her help you get where you want to go!
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Walking on the Moon
November 5, 2008
Last night, after dinner in the dining room and homework were all finished and tucked in for the night, our family did something we almost never do. In fact, it’s so rare, I can’t think back to the last time it happened.
We sat down as a family to watch live television. It won’t take a psychic to figure out what we were watching. It was the same thing on every single channel. We were watching the map of the United States of America change colors from grey and black to blue and red. We were watching the results of the 2008 election.
Not turning on the TV until almost 8:45 Chicago time meant that we had missed the slow part of the evening and enjoyed a peaceful quiet family night. We tuned in just as things got pretty exciting. I had my laptop humming along next to me, keeping track of incoming data and twitter while the family flipped channels on the tube. I would report to them and they would report to me. We would see how close mainstream TV and and the web were keeping up with each other. ( not too bad last night, I think.) It was fun.
Then, California and the west coast closed their polling places and everything hit the fan at once and Obama was immediately declared the winner before anyone could turn the lights out in the polling locations.
California, with Zero percent of the vote in had declared him the winner! IN AN INSTANT!
What an amazing world….
How fun was that! ?!?!
We let the kids stay up late, way past their bedtimes as we were all glued to the TV watching our political process in action. My youngest ones at home are 11 and 14. We all sat huddled together with the two dogs as John McCain came out and gave a very gracious and generous speech congratulating Senator, now President Elect Obama, on his victory. I felt proud of him once again, proud of his service, proud of him as an American and grateful for the olive branch that he extended across party lines to begin the process of uniting this country for the huge tasks ahead.
Then, Obama, President-elect Obama, entering the stage with Michelle, his two beautiful girls, (who my daughter referred to as the future “angels of the white house” ,) and the crowd of supporters, spanning out as far out into the distance as the cameras could reach.
It felt like we were witnessing a miracle. And as we listened, and as he spoke, weaving his words with the magic of hope, promise and vision, I saw in my children’s eyes a look that I remember from my own childhood so very long ago.
A recognition, that no matter what you you thought or believed hours ago, if you were a part of last night, you witnessed a life-shifting moment in our culture that changes everything. There was a ripple that began to spread and grow until it became a wave and then a tsunami and eventually was felt as a tremor the entire world over last night. You could feel it in the air, you could see it on the faces of those watching, in the posture of those listening, in the hearts of those believing.
A new day dawned this morning. A new day, with a new type of faith. People woke up feeling like they belong. Like they have a voice, like they matter. Like there is a banner shining brightly that says YES YOU CAN to their hopes, dreams, ambitions and needs that will not put them down, trample them to the ground or tell them no you can’t, you have no hope.
Was it always there? Probably yes. It just took a man with the belief in himself to show us the way.
My children will never forget last night. Neither will I. Before they went to bed, we talked about how some moments in history are just so special that they stay with you forever.
They asked me what the closest thing to this was for me in my childhood.
My answer was instant.
I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon.
I was nine years old. I sat huddled in front of an old snowy black and white TV screen with my entire family and several of our neighbors, all pressed close together to hear the garbled, scratchy sound. I remember the tight constricted feeling in my chest as he hovered over the spacecraft steps, the burning in my lungs as I finally gasped when he took that first step and I realized I had been holding my breath…maybe unknowingly terrified as a child that there WOULD be Martians or that he would spontaneously combust on impact with the ground. Then he took another step and touched ground and we witnessed that floaty anti-gravity walk that has become so famous now but that when seeing it for the very first time was nothing short of miraculous.
Then the words…ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT STEP FOR MANKIND…
I remember that moment, feeling as if I could burst from the pride of being an American. Burst from the exhilaration of the MIRACLE that was occurring before my very eyes. To think that …A KABILLION miles a way..a man was STEPPING and TALKING on the moon and it was coming to us LIVE on a snowy black and white TV in our living room was BEYOND any comprehension my nine year old brain could fathom.
Frankly, my almost fifty year old brain still struggles with it as well. But…we as a world are a little more jaded with our miracles these days…
Last night…was one of those moments again. One of those nights that in the somewhere distant future you will say…”I remember exactly where I was and exactly how I felt and…it was amazing.”
I could almost hear Neil Armstrong whispering in the background.
