IN MY LIFE THERE HAVE BEEN MANY THINGS THAT I HAVE DONE, OFTEN AT MY OWN EXPENSE, THAT WHEN QUESTIONED BY OTHERS I HAVE JUST HAD TO SAY, “I DON’T KNOW WHY, I JUST KNOW I NEED TO DO THIS.”
The beauty is that further along the pathway it becomes completely evident to me why I needed to do them as they were the stepping stones in the pathway that has led me to be the person that I am today, doing the things that I am doing.
What this has taught me is to value every experience, sucking the marrow out of life and being grateful for the many wonderful opportunities that have graced my life.
I just wanted to encourage you that sometimes what on the surface looks like it has nothing to offer you in the way of tangible benefits, yet you feel drawn to the opportunity, that it may have hidden treasure and that those around you may question you and you may not have an answer to give them immmediately.
If I stopped writing back when the first person questioned my ability or my use of my time I would never be feature writing for a national magazine now. And if I had questioned writing for that magazine for no payment immediately, I would never have gotten the opportunity to get my name known in the writing world. And if I had never started the Pearls Women’s Magazine project, I would never have gotten my foot in the door at the National Women’s Magazine. And if I’d listened to those that were questioning the value of giving my time to develop Pearls, all those people who read the magazine and their lives were changed in some positive way would never have happened.
SOMETIMES RISKS ARE ESSENTIAL IF WE WANT TO FIND THE HIDDEN TREASURE.
I think you get my picture. You just never know when what you are doing has a positive spin off for others or for your own destiny, even if it is painful and a negative experience at the time.
There is a verse in the Bible that I love and brings me comfort. It says, “All things work together for the good…”
You may not understand which thread you are sewing with at this time in your life, but you are creating a rich tapestry and one day you will get to see it from the top side down, not just the underside up. Keep sewing!
By Hayley Solich
http://thecreaticians.com
Copywriter – Feature Writer – Website Designer – Graphic Artist
I was on Twitter chatting with a friend and I told her about my daughter and something she had said when she was a young child. She’d drawn a picture of the family but her younger sister was missing from the picture. When asked where she was, she replied with a very serious face, “She’s still in the pencil, silly.” We all erupted in laughter because she was such a funny little thing.
degree is the author of “You can totally screw up as a mom and still raise great kids!”
She says, “I managed years of teaching, doing therapy and psychological evaluations, and engaging in developmental research. I wrote some textbooks, got married, had a son, got divorced and through it all kept playing sports and keeping my sense of humor and of the absurd. [Which was sorely needed at times as I practiced law in the area of child abuse and neglect.]“
She also goes on to say that if she, a fully qualified psychologist with all her years of practical and theoretical experience, can make mistakes, why are you expecting yourself to be the perfect parent?
Lynn writes a completely practical, at times very insightful, expose of life as a parent and addresses the questions for which most parents are desperate for reassurance and answers.
Her wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of service, her humour and candidness are worth far more than the cost of this e-book.
Highly recommended as an easy read with tools that will help you to discover the answers to those questions that are most pressing in relation to parenting.
Purchase your copy of the e-book now.
I have recently learned the power of positive affirmations. As they say, we are what we think. Sometimes we need to reprogram our brain to undo the damage that years of negative thinking and experiences has created.
Check out this set of affirmation CDs, Click Here! or listen to the samples of my own affirmation music under the retail therapy page.
I also have available some affirmation music, specifically designed to help you get motivated, to get your backside out of that chair and up and exercising. Check it out under the Retail Therapy tab.
Recently, in a large city in France, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said, “This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?”
A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.
To Whom It May Concern,
Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans.) They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp.They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia .
Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans.
They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world. Mermaids don’t exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don’t have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? Just look at them … where is IT? Therefore, they don’t have kids either.Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells fish store?
The choice is perfectly clear to me: I want to be a whale.
P..S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends.
With time, we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room, it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren’t heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy.
Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good grief, look how smart I am!¨
If you want to build a house, a wall, anything at all really, they say that the quality of the finished product is all in the preparation and laying a solid foundation.
How often in life do we get an idea and want to run off, 100 miles an hour, in the direction the idea is taking us but without any real preparation?
Over my 42 years of life I have learned one simple wisdom. To sit on my ideas and wait to see if they are seeds of greatness. For if I run off after every idea, I will not have the energy or resources when it most counts. It is far better for me to conserve myself, that the impact of what I do may be far greater, than to spread myself too thinly on the ground and not do anything well
I guess it all comes back to my favourite concept at the moment – the word focus. Focus means to concentrate on a particular thing or an aspect of that thing and to clear your vision. How many of us need to clear our vision, so that we can have maximum impact in our lives?
If you are chasing your tail, chasing after the prize but not really feeling like you are achieving anything of worth because you are running off in all different directions, my advice is to stop and listen to your heart. If you still your soul, you will hear clearly what you are meant to be doing.
Conserving your resources by focusing your energies in a particular direction, allows you to have more to work with when it really counts. Like a race horse, it is critical to harness the raw energy and to channel it into running the race at the right time, rather than jump starting out of the blocks.
Take the time to lay a solid foundation for whatever you do. This is achieved by researching your idea thoroughly, by not being pressured into jumping before you have all the information and a clear idea of the direction you are wanting to jump and by setting clear goals so you know what you want to achieve. You don’t have to have the whole picture to start something, but it does help if you have a detailed analysis of the part of the picture that you do have, as this will help you to attract and identify the missing pieces when they eventually arrive.
To focus is to love yourself, for when you narrow your options you limit the amount of stress that exists in your world and give yourself the opportunity to master whatever it is you are putting your hand to.
Remember, masters get paid a whole load more than jack-of-all-trades do! It pays to become a master.
I don’t know if you have had the time to really sit down and ponder what the word focus means or how it affects us in our lives. Allow me to fill you in on my focus journey, because I’ve literally spent hours consumed by this subject!
Focus, according to the encarta dictionary, means to pay particular attention to something or part of something or to clear your vision.
There are so many parallels to our lives that it is truly amazing how simple yet profound this one word can be to us.
I want to introduce you to the concept of the “Kaleidoscope Effect” and how I began to focus on focus. If you look at a kaleidoscope, it is made up of different parts. First there are coloured beads. To me these represents the opportunities, the giftings and abilities, the knowledge and understanding of life that we have. There are also mirrors. These are the reflectors or the feedback that life gives us. There is a hole in the bottom that lets in shafts of light and these are the moments of enlightenment when we experience a shift in our understanding.
The kaleidoscope is dependent upon the placement of the mirrors and the light coming in reflecting off them for the image to be created.
In our lives, we are dependent upon the view that we see of ourselves and our world and the enlightenment of our minds to determine the image of what our life is going to be like.
At times we can be like a kaleidoscope, between shutters, and we need an external force to be a catalyst for change, turning the focus to create a new image.
The beauty of focus in our lives is that it allows us to have clarity of vision. Like living in a house that has clutter, when we declutter our lives, we breath a sigh of relief because we are no longer distracted by things that annoy us.
If we shift the view of our lives, we change our world.
For example, if I am living with my family of six in a one bedroom apartment in Australia I may feel impoverished. However, if I consider my situation in comparison to someone living on a rubbish dump or humpy in India, how I feel about my situation is altered. So too, when we shift the view of our world and take the focus away from things that rob us of energy and place it onto the things that energise us, our world view changes. If you’d like to know more about this subject of focus, contact me now.
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