Fall Down Seven Times Get Up Eight

Do you have a memory vault?

You know a place where you store memories?  Some people have photo albums.  Some people have little memory boxes they put things in.  I shall use a whole house!

That's what one of my friends suggested as I get ready to move.  My lease has been terminated and I need to move.  I am so very grateful that I was able to continue to be here as I figured out what I was going to do...but now I must be out by April 30th. 

After I think 15 years it will be quite a change.  I told someone last night that after all these years I may still find myself pulling in the driveway!  She said."Just smile and pretend you were pulling in to turn around!"  Yes...there is a fine solution for everything! LOL

And considering this house a memory vault is another fine solution.  I am going to leave lots of memories here.  I do not want to carry hurt and angry forward.  I spent almost 3 years here dealing with post traumatic stress.  There was a lot of fear connected with that.  I plan to leave that here too.

This house has been my refugee.  My safe spot. But the energy and memories it holds are better left behind.  Better sealed up when I lock the door for the final time.

I shall be getting a new start...and it's time for this little house to have one too. 

A fine solution for both of us.

 

 

I am dancing on the top of a pin!

That's what it feels like...and some days I am more graceful than others.

Yesterday... not a too graceful day.  Today I will be better.

There is something very unsettling about having your world upended.  For some folks the sheer adventure of it may cause great excitement...for others sheer panic.  I am somewhere in the middle.

I believe there are lessons in everything that happens to you.  I also believe that you need to be grateful for those lessons or you are bound to experience them again in another form. 

Heh Universe...I AM GRATEFUL.  No need for a repeat!

Did that sound genuine enough?!

I have found a new place to live...I am grateful.  I have two part time jobs again....I am grateful.  I have a step by step business plan ready for as Alexis Neely in her Money Map to Freedom Program calls..my great work...I am grateful. 

I am coming to terms with being betrayed and disrespected by the person I thought was the love of my life...I am grateful. 

I am blessed with the support of a group of people who have literally had my back through all of this...I am grateful.  I have learned to ask for and receive their help...I am so very grateful.

I am clearer every day and getting closer to claiming more space for myself.  Just yet it feels like I am dancing on the head of a pin.

May I do it today with grace and continued gratitude.

Don't take your body parts for granted.

Nope...don't.  No matter what we should always take time to thank our bodies every day for being such a lovely container for our spirit. Do I? No...I honestly have not but I am adding it to my daily practice.

My feet are doing a tremendous job for me.  I don't think I have ever really appreciated them.  Kind of took them for granted.  Which actually is pretty amazing being that I know people who have lost their feet or their feet simply do not work.  But me...just took them for granted.

Little size 5 1/2 things that hang out at the end of my legs.  But they are so much more!  They get me where I want to go. They support me.  They are my very connection to the earth.

I don't take them for granted anymore. Over the last year I have been on my feet for very long hours at a stretch. Last summer my feet hurt so much they woke me up with the pain they were feeling.  Kind of had that experience last night again. It again reminded me that we should not take what we have for granted.

Whether it's our feet, hands, eyes, ears or any other delightful part that makes up our bodies...we need to say thank you and take the very best care of it that we can.

And Saturday morning seems like the perfect time for that reminder for all of us.

Ask...Trust...Follow. It works. Yes it does.

My new mantra is ASK...TRUST...FOLLOW.  It's my game plan for moving forward.  It's what I am living.

You ask for what you need.  You trust it will appear in your life and you follow any pings of intuition you have.  You do your part and the universe or whoever you believe in will do their part. 

Life is not about having things delivered to you on a platter...no matter how cute the platter is! Not that I would not enjoy that kind of system..it's just not how things really work. I tried that! Dang...no luck.

I need to find a new place to live.  My lease has been terminated.  I am profoundly grateful that I have been able to stay in my place for the past couple of months while I have been finding my footing...but I need to be out by April 30th.

Panic..sheer panic.  When you have no clue things emerge.  My new mantra came out of my cluelessness.  When you are so sure like I was..only to have things implode...you start to question lots of things. So I went back to basics...Ask...Trust...Follow.

So I said I have a wonderful, open home.  I said it out loud. I wrote it down.  I declared my intention and I started telling people I needed a new place to live.  I was at one of our local banks last Thursday.  I told several people there that I needed to find a new place to live and if they heard of anything...please let me know.

I was walking out of the bank door.  I was out the door when I had a sense to go back and talk to one one person I had not talked with. I stopped and thought..."What I am out the door?!."  But I have made this commitment to trust and follow. 

So I turned around and went up to the desk of a woman I had not talked with.  I told her I needed a new place to live and if she heard of anything to please let me know.  She was quiet for a moment and then said that her son has a house he bought from his grandmother!  She said he was fixing it up and did not know what he was going to do yet.  I gave her my card and asked her to have him call me if it was going to be available.

And guess what?  He called me and...it is!!!!  And I met with him and I got it!  Pumpkin and I will have a home.  I am working on getting the money I need to move forward.  I will ask people to help me one more time and then I will ask people to help me move.  I will Ask and Trust.

It's not about asking for a hand out...it's about asking for a hand up. And up I am.

Like my friend said, "You asked for a new life." And my friends -  I am getting it. 

I am getting it by Asking...Trusting...Following. I am proof it works.  You can be too.

 

My new mantra...ask...trust...follow.

I was riding with a friend of mine the other day and I told her my writing here is committed to the process...the process between "my life has imploded and now my life is fabulous".  You know the space in between that seems like a mystery.

You read about people who say they were broke...in any number of ways (spiritually, financially)  and then their life turns around and it's fabulous.  Great!  But how the heck did that happen? !

I am your guide through the process!  It's not always an easy process and lord knows it's not always pretty...but it's mine and it's honest.  It is getting me to a life that feels fabulous again...and I am hoping it lights the way for you too.

As you know I thought I was on my way to a fabulous life in January and it imploded all around me. I gave up everything...my jobs, my home...everything to move to be with a man I have loved for a long time.  He then abandoned me without a word.  I cannot even go back to the feeling of pain surrounding that.

I was surrounded by a circle of support that literally held me up when I could not find my footing. I am blessed by them beyond words.

One of them said to me this past week...."You said you were headed to a new life...looks like you got it!"  Good lord she is right!  My life being turned upside down is giving me an opportunity to deal with some things I might not have otherwise.  I thought those things would be good to explore over the next couple of posts.

The first thing is my new mantra...ASK...TRUST...FOLLOW.

ASK...you have to know what you want.  Even if you want the world to stop spinning you need to ask for that.

Who do you ask?  Well who do you believe in?  I am not telling you who or what you should believe in but I know for me...to have faith in someone or something bigger than me has always been a part of my life. I mediate and pray every morning and I do the same at night...or at least I try too. :)  Since December there have been days when I have meditated and prayed as soon as I woke up and fell asleep doing the same only to wake up in the morning still seeming to be doing it.  In that meditation and prayer I ask for what I need.  Even like I said...even if I was asking that the world just stopped spinn'.

Then I worked at TRUST.  Trusting that what I asked for would be provided.  Blind trust, total trust.  You know when you don't have a flipping clue ... sometimes all you have is trust.  I have trusted that I would be shown the way. 

And then I have FOLLOWED. I am paying attention.  I am listing to that little voice inside of me.  And I am following it.  I am living in the moment wide wake and paying attention.  You cannot expect what you want to be delivered to you in a pizza box.  You have to go out and get it.  But first you have to ask for it.  Then you trust it's out there and then you follow the clues. 

ASK...TRUST...FOLLOW.

It's how I just found my new home...next time I will tell you about it.

The #1 Dream Barrier? And the answer is...

Tah..dah...You!

You already knew that didn't you?! Deep down you knew that...admit it.  When we are quiet with ourselves we know.  It's not our parents, our partners, the moon or the economy.  The biggest barrier to getting our dreams is us.

We say we want things then we give up.  We get discouraged.  We get disappointed.  We get knocked on our butts. (more than once) Folks don't understand us.  Folks don't support us. It may all be true. 

But sometimes in my clearest moments I think that it is just the universe testing us to see how badly we really want it.  How badly.  And if we don't want it that badly maybe we don't deserve it anyway.  It has been my experience that fabulous things just don't happen...they happen when you work towards them.

And sometimes it takes a lot...

I just thought of this...do people who want to climb mountains take a helicopter to the top?  Ah no.  They climb up every foot.  They do it one step at a time.  When they reach the peak.  They survey the view and they feel the sheer joy of success.  And then you know what.  After that they usually find another mountain to climb.

It's the same with us...one step at a time.  If we keep that peak within sight we may slow down to rest along the way. Everyone else may turn back or say what's the point? But we knoiw...we know to our depths that it's the view once we get to the top that makes it worth while and probably all the things we encounter along the way. 

Let's promise each other we will keep climbing.  Rest when we need to but keep climbing all the same.  I believe the view when we reach what we say we want will be breathtaking. :)  I believe that...I really do.

 

Dream busters. Know any?

They could be all around you!  They are the ones who say, "What are you thinking?!" They are people that you share your dream with that just don't get it. 

Sometimes they think they are protecting you from getting hurt...at least that's what they tell themselves.  Sometimes they have failed to go after what they wanted so they aren't interested in watching someone they know go beyond where they were afraid to go.

If you put up the vision board you made yesterday (or is it still a work in progress?) they would be the first to make fun of it.  Sometimes it's that obvious and sometimes it's a quieter kind of un-support.

I lived with someone years ago and when he saw the magazines I read he made fun of them all the time.  When I talked about what I wanted to do there were always little jabs...meant as constructive criticism in his mind I am sure but I never asked for that.

When you tell someone about your dreams for your life the first thing you are NOT looking for is someone to tear them apart.

So what do you do if you live with someone like that?  First of all you keep your vision board to yourself.  Make a smaller version you can keep in a book that you can look at.  Nothing wrong with being adaptable!  Your vision board is not meant to create conflict in your life. Something that you feel you need to defend.  It's meant to inspire you.  And you can be inspired in a smaller version for now.

Then seek out people like you and connect with them.  No one in my family is interested in doing what I am working on.  They don't understand it. So I reach out to people who do.  I was listening to a webinar last week where the woman leading it said her father still doesn't get what she does.  She makes 7 figures a year.  He tells his friends according to her that he doesn't know what she does but she must be good at it!  You may be in that boat too.  Apparently there are a lot of us!  :)

So do not look for support where you know you won't find it.  Willing people to support you just doesn't work.  Go find like minded people...the internet is such a gift for that.  There are people just like you...they are out there. Why here I am! See..now you know one...and you build your support network from there.

Next time...the biggest barrier to your dream.  You may already know but I will confirm it for you.

Your dreams...you gotta see them to believe them!

Dreams that is.  You must see them.  Either in your mind's eye or in some form you can actually look at.

If we are talking about holding on to our dreams...you must have something to hold on to.

So what are your dreams?  What are you working for?  What do they look like?  Visualization is a powerful tool.  Done once a day...for me in the morning...works. You close your eyes and see what you want in the fullest picture possible. Colors, shapes, smells, your emotions of having what you see...all of it.

Visualization helps focus my attention on what I say I want and what I am working towards.  The hard part with that is if I have a stressful day or am feeling overwhelmed...then it's harder to tune that picture in.

That's why I am a BIG fan of vision boards! A vision board contains pictures and sayings that illustrate what you want.

You can make one for yourself.  I like getting that 3 sided cardboard that kids use for science projects. You can pick that up at an office supply store for under $5.00. Some people use bulletin boards. Some use a large picture frame.  Whatever surface you choose to use is fine. 

Then you gather pictures that represent things you want. Things you want, places you want to visit.  Magazines are great sources. Have some glue, markers, a scissors and I like a dash ...okay maybe more than a dash of spray glitter to top it off! (Who knew there was glitter spray?!)

Your vision board doesn't have to just be about "things"...maybe you want good health.  Find pictures of people who look happy and who look like they have good health.  Honestly one of my goals is to have my dental work done...I know...quite exciting...but for me it is.  So what do I have on my vision board?  Smiles...lots and lots of them.

That's one place where my dreams live...right there with glue, glitter and lots of color! (Did you expect less?) A vision board could be a great place for yours to live too. 

Once you are finished...then you hang your vision board where you can see it.  Consider it a parking place for your dreams. Right there any time you want to take them out for a spin...which happens every time you look at them.

Now what if you live with someone who is not supportive of you and your dreams?  Ah, we will cover that tomorrow!

In the mean time check out the spray glitter! :) Cool...very cool because after all shouldn't your world be sparkling?

Where do your dreams live?

I love the movie The Astronaut Farmer.  Love it!  It is the story of a farmer who wants to build a rocket and fly into space.  At one point in the movie he says, "This is where dreams live."

So here is my question for you...where do your dreams live?  Where in you do you hold them?  Are they close to the surface so you can feel them and work towards them every day? Or are they buried deep within you? How often do they see the light of day?

It's easy to lose a grip on them.  Real easy...some days mine are front and center and then because of everything that I am dealing with right now they slip away a bit. I bet the same thing happens to you.

Over the next several posts I will give us both some tips.  Tips so that when someone says, "Where do your dreams live?" We will be able to say..."Right here...would you like to meet them!" :)

 

And then there was silence...

I like silence.  I think noise and chatter are overrated.  I like silence.

Silence outwardly does not mean silence inwardly.  When there is silence outside...you have a better  chance to hear what is going on inside.

And some days...like today...that is more than enough.