Rohn on Planning

I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change.

Jim Rohn
Author and Speaker

Own your Power

One of the biggest secrets to success is operating inside your strength zone but outside of your comfort zone.

Ralph Heath
Celebrating Failure : The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big

Throw out the Map

There are times in our lives when we are caught in a hurricane. Relentlessly thrown about by demands of caring for others and forgetting our own tears because someone needs us more.

This week, two friends shared their stories with me. One keeping a family together due to a profound loss, the other keeping herself upright because of a job loss. Two stories, but both friends cast adrift in to the unknown. Sometimes all you can do is throw out the map and know that you will eventually find your way.

And as a friend all you can do is offer a few words of encouragement and listen. And know that Love will hold us Up when we need it.

Napoleon Hill on Building

Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act on building the life you desire. 

Napoleon Hill 1883-1970, Author

Finding Love in unusual places

If you are in a committed relationship, it is inevitable that someone at some point someone will ask you “how did you meet?” Of course, there is no simple answer to this very complicated question.

If you carried a “list” either on paper or in your head. You invariably checked off items as you blind-dated, 7-minute dated, or “smiled” on numerous internet dating sites. You kept an eye out for him as you did your groceries (does he eat vegetables?), walked outdoors (can he keep up with you?), or popped in to a bookstore (oh please let him be a reader!).

But if you were fortunate like me, you crossed paths, perhaps when you weren’t really watching for it. When you both know yourself and know what you were looking for, the Universe has no choice but to respond!

And then as each moment passed, you realized that you had found a “keeper”. Our true match should come with total surprise and ease. What I need in a relationship might not be what you need and hence you have to be patient.

And then one day there was the unexpected gift of organic chocolate bars while on a business trip.

And never, never being late to pick me up.

Of listening to my long, rambling stories, and remembering my friends’ names.

Opening car doors and giving me his arm on the icy parking lot.

And with each of these, he stole a little piece of my heart.

But the clincher was in what he didn’t do; how he used his time and energy in ways that fit with how I had chosen to live my life.

For me, some of the magic words were, “No, I don’t golf; never could understand the point of endlessly chasing a ball”. Don’t get me wrong, I have golfed, once. I wore shorts and matching top with a jaunty hat, I looked fantastic but my aim was terrible and I ended up giggling for 9 holes. So for me, a golfer would not do. When my special someone said that zigzagging for several hours searching for an errant ball was not his cup of tea, I was hooked (that is golf talk).

We’ve done a lot of new things together since, but not once have we golfed!

 Happy Anniversary Sweetie. Thank goodness for running and yoga, and the forces that brought us together.

Thank your special someone today for loving you! At which moment in time did you fall unequivocally in Love?

Fading Shots

He touched the tip of his burning cigarette

To the pattern on my dress.

(how stupid was that?)

We howled with laughter

Because the circle matched the diameter of the center of a flower.

How intoxicated with new lust we were.

Although there are no reasons

For the foolish path I followed him down.

I was so innocent in the era of free love, sit-ins and dancing in the park

But I wasn’t brave and Singapore Slings were the strongest thing

That passed my lips.

We lived in a small downstairs apartment

Where all we could see was the bottom third of each passerby

When the grass grew too long outside the window

All we saw were knees.

We were so much in love

And knew nothing about each other

And that is how we built our wobbly relationship.

Now those photographs sit in a plastic zip-lock bag

Of Birthdays past, pain and jabs of betrayal, years gone by

Snapshots of our growing dissent and shadows.

Finding a Brand New Me

It took about one nanosecond to get used to stepping off the plane into a green world of budding trees and flower displays on the sidewalk!

Smelling the salt in the air was a definite treat when you come from a city that is framed by mountains on one side and prairie on the other. It is March, in our heads, not sitting-outside-weather yet but how quickly we could forget our hats and gloves.

We watched an elderly man unpack his tin-foiled wrapped lunch, spoon his soup from his thermos and sit on a park bench to feed the gulls and other assorted birds.  How envious we were of the locals who thought nothing of running/walking/strolling in their shorts. The climate in Vancouver rocks!

We also got to see Alicia Keys, who performed her Brand New Me at Rogers Arena.

We were able to leave our winter selves behind, if just for a weekend and discover our warm weather selves.

Finding a Brand New Me however, is not as easily done. It takes hard work, commitment and belief. Pat yourself on the back and recognize what you have accomplished if you have discovered a New You.

Changing is not for the faint of heart, because Finding Yourself is not something you stumble across, it is a journey of deliberate intent.

26 Characters and so many Words

Each time I think I will stop writing, I feel an incredible sadness. For if I stop, how will all these thoughts and ideas be released to the world. Hence, I continue. Some days it is a bit of a struggle, some days so many words float around in my brain, I feel like I can barely stop. 

Notebooks and journals abound, in trunks and cedar chests, in cupboards and on coffee tables; not one of them tells me to stop. And if I don’t write, who will speak my words? Does anyone else see the world as I do? I would not be Me if I did not write, or go to yoga, or walk in a marathon.

Who would you be if you didn't do what makes your heart sing? (Tweet This)

Banff, AB.

Thank goodness none of these great writers…stopped.

Herman Wouk, (The Caine Mutiny/Marjorie Morningstar) has finished his latest at age 97. The Lawgiver

Alice Munro, now 86 (wrote Thanks for the Ride when she was 22) Dear Life was produced at 81.

Alan Bradley (Speaking From Among The Bones), at 74 signed on to deliver 5 more books.

Like these ageless authors and their sometimes ageless characters, perhaps writing will keep me young. For me, there is hardly anything more fascinating than a blank page.

Your Bliss might come from something else; the touch of fabric, the feel of a paintbrush, or the quiet of a mountain top. Who would create the garment, paint the picture or climb the sought after peak, if not for you?

I write these words to remind you that there is only one YOU! Don't deprive the world by holding back. (Tweet This)
 

Nido on the Starting Line

Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.

Nido Qubein
Author and Speaker

on Nothing

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - 

just sitting and looking at the sea, 

or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, 

or waves rippling on a pond, 

a flickering candle or children playing in the park?

Ralph Marston

When did we lose our fascination for the ordinary day to day occurrences? Be still and listen for there is magic in the everyday. Allow it to enter your heart and be brave enough to share it with those around you. 

The 23 hour day

In less than one week, Daylight Saving Time begins! For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomena, it signifies when our clocks “spring forward” one hour which allows us one more hour of daylight each day.

Our winter has been unceremoniously unexciting, in spite of the weekend snow”dump” that we received. Perhaps, my life is so full and rich right now that I scarcely noticed the leaving for work in the dark and returning in the dark months (November-February) that have passed. Spring-ing forward is also thankfully the harbinger of well… actually Spring! We are deceived sometimes by the arrival of warmer weather in our late winter, but always stay hopeful because surely the snow won’t last at this time of year. We Canadians are an optimistic bunch! 

The loss of that one hour however always makes me think, even though I know that we will gain it back in the Fall, when our clocks Fall-back. (It is a little complicated, I admit.) Although we have experienced this change of timing every year of our lives in this northern climate, it still instigates conversations of “Will it be darker when I leave for work at 8am or brighter?” Daylight Savings Time is a holdover of when folks toiled in the fields and needed more daylight to tend to their crops, and was later endorsed as a fuel saving technique, it’s brighter and warmer = less consumption. 

Another Spring-ing forward makes me think of what I should be doing with that hour that I am losing. I am long past the stage of my life when I would go to bed an hour earlier so that I have enough sleep, and I certainly won’t fit in “the hour I will lose” doing cleaning, laundry or some other less fulfilling task(!). I will spend my 23 hours on Saturday to the fullest and have a big cup of coffee on Sunday morning if I am short of sleep. (Just to clarify the clocks “spring forward” at 2am, when I will no doubt be in the middle of a deep sleep regardless of how wonderful my day was on Saturday.)

What would you do less of in a 23 hour day?