Friday's Famous Quote

Here's another of my favorite expressions, said by one of the people I most respect in recent political history, Ronald Reagan.

My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose--somehow we win out.

Enjoy the rest of your work week and have a great pre-July 4th weekend! I'd love to hear your plans for seeing the best fireworks in your area next week, and if anyone knows the best place to see them here in the Denver area, let me know.

The Set of Your Sails

This week I've shared some of my favorite expressions, and today I want to share another: a poem by reknowned poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, of Janesville, Wisconsin.

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

I've never known much about Ms. Wilcox, but as I read about her on Wikipedia today, I discovered something else that strikes me as interesting. After her husband of 30 years, Robert, died, she was in great grief and was desperately hoping his spirit would communicate from the dead with her. She went to California to speak with a man named Max Heindel about it, and here's what she wrote about that meeting.

In talking with Max Heindel, the leader of the Rosicrucian Philosophy in California, he made very clear to me the effect of intense grief. Mr. Heindel assured me that I would come in touch with the spirit of my husband when I learned to control my sorrow. I replied that it seemed strange to me that an omnipotent God could not send a flash of his light into a suffering soul to bring its conviction when most needed.

"Did you ever stand beside a clear pool of water," asked Mr. Heindel, "and see the trees and skies repeated therein? And did you ever cast a stone into that pool and see it clouded and turmoiled, so it gave no reflection? Yet the skies and trees were waiting above to be reflected when the waters grew calm. So God and your husband's spirit wait to show themselves to you when the turbulence of sorrow is quieted."

What I find interesting are Mr. Heindel's words. Something worth thinking about today.

Thought for Wednesday

From Roger Horchow, the founder of The Horchow Collection, the first luxury mail-order catalog without a brick and morter presence, and a reknowned Broadway producer:

If you always order creme brulee, how will you ever discover your love for cannoli? The world is only as large (and delicious) or as small as you make it.

Let's shake it up a little and try some new things today.

Weird Sky

Last night the skies over Denver were really strange, and the color of the light was nearly orange. I took a few photos and will share them today.

It was kind of spooky, and I realize that the photos look like they need to be color-corrected, but it's actually accurate to the color. Notice how different the light is and the strange clouds in the sky.

Here's a joke submitted by Joy. Have fun and enjoy your day!

Once upon a time in a land far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle.

The frog hopped into the princess' lap and said: "Elegant Lady, I was once a handsome prince, until an evil witch cast a spell upon me. One kiss from you, however, and I will turn back into the dapper, young prince that I am and then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle with my mother, where you can prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children, and forever feel grateful and happy doing so."

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on lightly sauteed frog legs seasoned in a white wine and onion cream sauce, she chuckled and thought to herself: "I don't freakin' think so!!!"

A Jolt for Me

I'm still reading the Integrity book by Henry Cloud, and today I got a real jolt. As you know, my former employer still owes me about $7000 in back pay, and I've pretty much written it off, figuring I'll never see it.

Here's what jolted me this morning.

In all sorts of relationships, we see people's wakes being affected by the inability to let it go. If you are going to solve problems in your personal relationships or your business ones, then you have to be able to let things go. I do not mean do not face them, especially if they are ongoing. What I mean is that after they have been addressed and resolved, then let it go in terms of the negative, punitiv e emotion of it all. Grieve it and, dare we say, forgive. People thrive when they have faced an issue, made it right, and the other person can forgive them and move on. Forgive means to "cancel a debt." In other words, the person does not owe us anymore. No more wallowing, guilt, shame, reminders, or other things that get in the way of the future. If something has not been fixed or trust regained, that is one thing. But if it is fixed, put it behind you.

Here's the thing. I've moved on, but I realize I haven't forgiven. I know that the guy will never pay me, but when I think about it, I consider it a debt that is owed to me. In order to really move on, I'm going to have cancel the debt. Hard work lies ahead for me in this area, but I intend to cancel it and let it go. I hope you'll keep me accountable to this.

Something else occurred to me (again) while reading this: forgiveness isn't merely a concept associated with religion. It's a concept for all of the human experience. It brings the same results (peace of mind, release of pain or frustration, contentment, and more) to each person, regardless of religious affiliation or relationship with God.

How about you? Is there anything that you're hanging onto that needs to be confronted with love and integrity together? Or something that has already been confronted and now needs to be forgiven and let go? Let's work on it together. What do you say?

Good News

As seen in the Reader's Digest this month:

Folks who take regular naps lower their risk of dying from heart disease by 37%.

If that's not good news (and a good reason to take naps), I don't know what is.

Enjoy your weekend. :)

4real

Some strange things in the news today.

How about the LA gay rodeo? Some of the events were Goat Dressing (putting underwear on a goat), Dancing, and of course the usual Bull Riding. A dude named Doug who also has a drag persona named Winnie Bago competed in drag in the Wild Drag Race, then broke his pelvis while riding (as himself) a steer.

A two-headed rat snake named We died over the weekend. It attracted large crowds to see it at the World Aquarium in St. Louis, Missouri, during its 8 years of life. We had both male and female parts, and here's what I think is funny about the story: the Aquarium tried (unsuccessfully) to breed We with another two-headed snake last year and had plans to try again this summer. Can you imagine? What were they hoping for? A four-headed snake? What would they name that? We Two?

Did you hear about the New Zealand couple who wants to name their child 4real? For real. The couple decided on this illustrious name after seeing the sonogram and realizing the reality of their situation. The NZ government has opened negotiations with the couple after initially blocking their request.

Ok. If that didn't get you smiling, then a smile today is out of the question. If you want more of the strange, go to Yahoo Underground. Enjoy.

Lessons from Dove Chocolate

Found on the inside of a wrapper on a milk chocolate square:

Keep the promises you make to yourself.

A Maya Angelou quote for today:

"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back."

For the Cat Lovers

Talk to you tomorrow.

Good Question

Enjoy your weekend!

Lean Into Problems

In my reading in the Integrity book yesterday I read something else that was interesting. It was the concept of how integrated character deals with problems.

The author tells of a sign he saw many years ago in the "war room" of a major corporation. It read, "No problems, no profit." He went on to talk about how all of the really successful people he has worked with in his consulting business deal with problems.

He has found that those who actively embrace problems and tackle them as just one more problem to be solved, rather than avoiding them or even running from them, are the ones who profit. Not just financially, either, though that is usually a byproduct.

It's the mentality of leaning into problems, or facing into them that separates integrated character from underdeveloped character.

What do you think? Is he off base?

Hump Day Cartoon

Happy Wednesday!

Metabolizing Experiences

In my reading in the Integrity book yesterday, I read about how people with integrated character lose well.

The context around this is the business and personal ability to let go of something that isn't working well, grieve it, and move on.

The author talked about being sure to look back after letting go. That way we examine, understand, and learn from the reasons for the loss before jumping into a rebound business or personal situation.

He also talked about metabolizing experiences in the same way that our bodies metabolize food. Here's some of what he wrote that I found interesting.

Experience becomes our character...just as food becomes the cellular makeup of our bodies. You are your experience, in certain ways. It shapes you and forms you, metabolically. You take food in, then break it down into what is usable, and what is not. Your body takes the good part of the experience and keeps that to make new cells, energy, and the like. Then, what is not usable, it eliminates. If your metabolic processes are working well, you do this day in and day out. But, if they are not, either you tend not to be able to take what is good from the food, or you fail to eliminate well. Either way, you are getting unhealthy and unable to perform.

In metabolizing experience, the process can break down in the same way. Taking in the good parts of a losing experience means that we learn what we can from the experience and take that forward as new "cells" of our character, meaning wisdom. Also, through persevering and continuing to go forward and reengaging life, we develop strength, patience, hope, optimism, and a host of other important character traits that we will need to make things succeed. But if people have attitude problems in failure or loss, or continue to protest or blame, or even blame themselves, then they do not experience a lot of the things that a loss has to teach us. They just go forward to repeat it again, since they have not changed.

Similarly, if they cannot grieve it and let it go, they do not "eliminate" and are constipated and become toxic. We are designed to be able to grieve things (notice your tear ducts) and move past losses. When we do, we remain healthy. but that only comes through metabolizing the loss, taking what is good forward, and leaving what is useless or toxic behind.

I know that was long, but it was so meaningful to me that I had to share it all. The author takes it one step further in discussing really successful people by saying that the real high performers let go of things that are working, if they aren't the best things. Another topic for another day.

So, what do you think? Are you metabolizing your experiences, taking the good and eliminating the bad? I've struggled with this, but I can see how getting my experience metabolism working properly could really help in my life.

Weekends

Aren't you glad weekends were invented? I sure am.

We all use our weekends for a variety of things, whether for catching up on personal activities we didn't have time for during the work week, hanging out with friends and family, travel, shopping, running errands, working on the fix-it list around home, church activities, or just relaxing.

I'm glad that we have two days each week in which to do things other than our Monday through Friday work. I've been trying to get into the habit of taking one day off a week and not doing any work at all. With a new business starting up, that's going to be a challenge to maintain, I'm certain, but I believe it's so worth it to have one day into which no work enters.

Now we're back to another work week, and I'm glad of that too. I love weekends and what they bring, but I also like to work. I believe work is not only good for us, but it's necessary for our mental and physical well-being. I'm grateful to have work to do. I've been on the other side and while it sounds pretty great when we're overworked and overstressed, when it's prolonged it leads to mental and emotional deterioration, at least for me.

So here's to a new week. Have a great one!

On the Lookout for Silver Linings

Dorothy raised a good question in her comment yesterday about how to consistently look for silver linings in the clouds that pass over our lives.

I certainly don't have the answers, but I am willing to speculate a little.

I think the only way we can consistently look for and see the good things packaged in bad circumstances is to be open-mindedly conscious of looking for the good.

It seems to me that if we practice (just as with anything we want to be good at) looking for the good, we'll see it. The more we see it, the more of it we will see (kind of like when you're thinking of buying a specific car and suddenly you being "seeing" them everywhere).

Maybe that sounds too simplistic, but I really believe it comes right back to choices. This could be yet another instance of what I wrote about earlier this week. We can choose to look for and see the good, or we can choose to be passive recipients of bad things from those clouds--just letting the bad happen to us without recognizing any of the good (lessons, small blessings, misdirection from dangerous courses of action, etc.) and extracting that silver lining.

So that's my thought for one way to consistently see the silver lining. What do you think?

Enjoy your weekend and have try to make time for some of your favorite summertime joys.

Here are a few more we love: drive-in double-feature movies on weekend nights, falling asleep in a lounge chair by the pool, sitting in a warm hot tub on a cool evening, and watching our lab launch himself off the end of the dock after a tennis ball or stick.

Journeys and Cliffs

I came across this comic this morning, and it seems an appropriate sentiment as I launch my business.

The funny part of of this is every new experience feels like jumping off a cliff, but almost always the cliff turns out to be a 6-inch crack in the sidewalk or something else ridiculously small. When we look back, we wonder why it seemed so scary at the time.

That makes me think that really the only scary part is not knowing what's ahead. We can't ever change that, so I think all we can do is choose not to need to know what's ahead.

Maybe it's self-delusion, maybe it's a strong grasp on reality, I don't know. But I do know that my perspective about having to know what's ahead has changed over the past year or so.

So think about this: only real, stone and dirt cliffs are actually that high. The ones in our minds are usually more like speed bumps.

Thanks to Dorothy and Anonymous for posting yesterday. Dorothy brought up a good question that I'd like to address tomorrow, so if you have any pointers, please comment and I'll broach the subject of silver linings tomorrow.

Summertime Joys

Some pleasures, though small, are forever cherished.

My husband and I recently bought a grill (it's been several years since we had one) and we've been having so much fun rediscovering one of the simple joys of summer: cooking out.

Even hot dogs, not normally regulare fare for us, taste great! What is it about grilling that adds that fourth dimension to food?

Ok, so you're thinking "that's a silly thing to write about," but here's my point. There are so many little pleasures like grilled food in life. How many more am I taking for granted?

What if I chose to be more aware of my surroundings each day and actively noticed the tiny pleasures all around me? Things like a cool summer breeze, a comfortable couch, funky magnets that remind me of great trips with Tim, beautiful photos, a new phone.

Ok, so some of those are probably silly, but they give me pleasure. What if I let myself briefly but thoroughly enjoy each one of them? How much more pleased would I feel?

How about you? Want to join me? Let's notice the little things and make the choice to both notice and enjoy them.

Happy Wednesday.

Good Choices

One thing I've really learned in 2007 is the value of opening myself up to others for advice and perspective. I've known for years that that is the only way to identify the blind spots we have and begin to reduce their size, but had never arrived at a personal place where that was not too scary to do.

But here's the thing: Because I've done it, great things too numerous to count have taken place, and more are coming. I finally woke up! People really do want to help out when we demonstrate a sincere eagerness to learn. And when that eagerness is combined with willingness to listen, wonderful friendships are born and we gain the ability to recognize opportunities and also to act on them.

Thanks to those of you who have been patient with me all these years. Please continue to be candid with me and help me shrink that huge blind spot.

We know that life offers each of us the opportunity to make lots of choices. Sometimes we're overwhelmed by the sheer number available to us, and other times we long for more than one (often difficult) choice.

I believe that everything in life is a choice. We have choices to love or not to love, to work or not to work, to have a good attitude or bad, to eat out or cook at home, to live in cities or on farms, to behave with integrity or not, to live with conviction or not, and to believe or not believe.

Every day we make choices in several of these areas (and more), whether we're conscious of them or not. I want to make good choices more frequently. How about you?

To Continue or Not to Continue...

That's the question.

After much thought, I have decided to continue this blog.

Much has happened since I left for a week in Breckenridge. I went to a professional photography convention with the goal of determining whether photography could be a viable business. On Tuesday morning of that week I realized it could be and I knew finally how I could make it work.

Then, my job essentially fell through on Wednesday, and my employer still owes me nearly $7,000 in back pay (long story). That same day, my photo instructor asked me to speak to our class about website design and web stuff in general. That afternoon my website design business was born, and I left Breckenridge armed with a great plan and some great contacts.

My head is spinning a little from the whirlwind of the past two weeks, but I'm ready now to hit the ground running. Thanks to each of you who gave advice and were sounding boards in the past week. I appreciate you.

See you tomorrow.