Gratitude, Prosperity & Positive Overload?

When I first became aware that what I thought seemed to materialize in my life,  I was quite nonchalant about it.  In my way of thinking it was just something I had chosen for myself and eventually, whether with my action or not, it seemed to always show up and usually just when I was able to accept it into my life with ease and gratefulness.  It never occurred to me that this didn't seem to happen to everyone.  I didn't realize that perhaps I was a bit more unique (odd?) than my friends who neither believed in what I believed in and didn't believe that what they thought could impact their lives in both negative and positive ways.

Believe and it can be

My very first experience with the "Believe, Conceive, Achieve" experience of today was way back when I was about 16.  While walking along a road with my cousin one day, we happened to pass a house where a bunch of guys were outside working.  One guy had his shirt off and was nicely tanned, with blondish brown hair.  I'd never met the guy before and knew nothing about him but I pointed to him and said to my cousin, "Someday, I'm going to marry that guy!"  She laughed of course, not taking me seriously and actually I don't think I was serious either...but a year later I met this fellow at a New Years Eve party and we hit it off.  Of course I think the long hair and John Lennon glasses may have had something to do with my attraction to him. Two weeks later though he seemed to lose interest so as I always did, I said goodbye, see you around, let's still be friends.  Two years later he met me at a dance  and two years after that, we were married.

After we had been married for about 6 years we decided on a spur of the moment to move to another city that was about 2 hours from where we had built our home.  With no job prospects in that city and no idea why we were really moving we went to the city for a trip to visit relatives.  While there we drove by a set of octagon high rise buildings and I pointed to one of the buildings and said, "One day we're going to live there."  Just prior to our moving to the city, we saw a job advertised in the paper.  We applied for it and ended up getting it.  It was for a couple to take over the Resident Manager duties at the very high rise I had pointed to and said we would live in.  We lived on the 18th floor of that building and boy was the view fabulous!

Then, several months later, as we drove by a building that housed a local Cable company, I pointed to the building and told my husband, "Someday I'm going to work there!" Of course he laughed, as did I.  Oddly enough within 4 weeks I was indeed working there.  I remained there for a few years until one day I decided I wanted to get hired by a local Embassy.  Of course, by now you know how that went...yes, I was hired by the Embassy of my choice and remained with them for several years.

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Do you allow the cream to rise to the top?

I've always had a problem accepting a compliment as a compliment. It's in part due to my childhood which was for the most part unremarkable but which, on occasion seemed to dip into a rather hollow pit. These pits were usually during periods of time when my mother, whom I firmly believe suffered from Bi-Polar, would rage against me for something I had failed to accomplish to her standards. As a perfectionist, it was rare that my child-like attempts would ever reach the level of acceptance that she often demanded and expected from others. It was often difficult  to understand what my mother truly expected from me. More often than not, I failed to meet let alone exceed her expectations and this would more often than not lead to criticism rather than compliments.

On the other side of the coin was my father who was never at a loss for words when it came to praising a person's attempts no matter how weak or how poorly completed. I remember clearly the day that he completed work on a vehicle that he was planning to sell. I had just gotten my learners permit and was thrilled when he asked me to move the car from one spot in the driveway to another. (My father had incredible belief and trust in his children, even if it meant more work for him!)  My error came when I paid attention to a friend who, to be fair, sincerely believed she was helping to  guide me as I backed the car up. The only problem was that she hadn't taken into consideration the fact that there was a big wooden lawn chair between the car and the garage!  Of course, neither had I.  I backed right into the chair and solidly squashed it against the side of the car that my father had carefully fixed, painted and polished and up against the garage wall.

As he came out to survey the damage  I fully expected my father to send me to my room without any outside ventures for quite some time. Instead, he turned to me, his 6 foot 5inch frame towering over me and his gentle voice falling softly on my ears and said, "Well, it's a lot less damage than I thought it would be. Did you happen to learn anything from this?" To which I quickly responded, "I learned to look myself before I move a car!"

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Bull or waiter...which method leads you to your goals?

Off the top I'll say that I am a "waiter" most times when it comes to decisions I've made to move forward on something and a roadblock or a period of stagnate non-movement develops.  I've long since realized that in my personal experience if I bulldoze ahead trying to make something work for me, it usually doesn't get me very far except on the frustration scale.

Some people believe that when you are faced with opposition or delays, frustrations or roadblocks, that's an indication that you are meant to burrow forward because your direction is meant to be and working to get there is par for the course.

I take the stance in a totally opposite direction and fully believe that resistance to a direction we want to follow means that all things, steps, people or opportunities related to the goal I want to pursue is not yet fully in place or "on board" if you will.  I use to bash my way through these delays and blocks only to find myself losing interest and believing that the direction I was trying to go wasn't meant to be followed and I'd veer off and go in another direction or abandon the idea/goal or attempts to move on something, all together.


The lesson I learned that changed my mind

Back in 2004 we were butting our heads against the wall as we tried to locate living accommodations in a small city about 2 hours from where we now live.  Every house, every apartment, every person that we approached was very receptive and eager to arrange for us to move into their property.  We had moved to this small city a few years earlier and had decided to rent a home for a year or so before heading back to the city we'd just come from.  That year or so turned into over 3 years and as we waited for an employment opportunity to show up for my husband, we decided that we would remain where we were and rent another property on a month to month basis as the house we had been renting from a relative was now sold.

As April 5, 2004 came closer and closer we began to worry that we may not have any luck obtaining housing.  Every home that we had looked at resulted in the people who owned them not getting back to us.  Finally one day I told my husband, "Let's stop trying to push ahead with something that maybe isn't meant to be.  Let's just sit still for a bit and find out if something is coming toward us that is meant to be but that just isn't in place yet."  I was becoming convinced that something wonderful this way comes and all we had to do was show a little patience until everything regarding it was in place so that it would be able to move and we could then grasp it...whatever "it" was.

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Are you fearful or fearless?

I have a good friend whom I met online at another site we visited frequently.  We discovered that we both had an interest in positive thinking and when I wrote a review on a book called "The Secret" it was then that we began our friendship.

Over the months I've come to know my friend as someone who is not only a considerate, selfless and giving individual but he is also someone who doesn't allow the world to keep him down for long.  He's had his share of pit stops in life and the one thing I admire most about him is that when he's having a tough day, you would never know it.

Today I discovered that Pat (my friend) has been quite busy and I'm very excited for him and  the progress he has made in just these past months since I've known him.  Early in our friendship Pat would continually claim that he was not "computer savvy" and his most beneficial attribute was his voice, which he lends quite well to podcasts that we've done.

Well...over the past little while it appears that Pat has shed his non-computer savvy ways and has taken a pro-active step toward sharing his passion for cooking/grilling and has been doing a bang up job bringing his interests to the Net.

I'm a firm believer in the fact that once we begin sharing something that we enjoy, have an interest and/or a passion in we  find ourselves immersed within it and surrounded by others who also enjoy similar things.  Our ideas, our efforts and our interests seem to take on a life of their own, moving us in directions that we may never have expected to be traversing.


Fear of an unknown path is the Stumbler

Of the many of us who are out here there is a large number of people who just don't believe they can attain the success, the goals or the desires they wish for.  Instead, they allow themselves to remain where they are on the portion of the path of life they feel most comfortable with, afraid to move forward for fear that they will fail, be hurt, lose something or someone and worst of all, leave the comfort of what they know for the discomfort of the unknown.

Believe it or not, the fear that is felt when something new or foreign is presented to us, is something that has been inherent in us since a very early age in our life.  Our sub-conscious has a comfortable relationship with our fears - these fears are known to it and thus we are confronted with the doubts, thoughts and hold backs that our sub-conscious "knows" is best for us.

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Are you willing to take Detours?

"A stepping-stone can be a stumbling block if we can't see it until after we have tripped over it."                                                                                                                ~Cullen Hightower

Someone asked me this past weekend "How can you be so positive about everything?" to which I responded as I always do, "How can you not be!"  The conversation went silent but not awkwardly so, as my sister-in-law mulled this over for a bit.


We were headed to the Casino which was over 2 hours from our home and in another Province.  Neither of us had traveled the road before and so for good measure, we brought along two GPS systems and we both had cell phones.  Mine being a smart phone also had access to Google's Latitude and was also equipped with a GPS system.  Overkill?  Yes, perhaps, but you have to understand that when I and my sister-in-law do things together, more often than not, even without trying, we can get ourselves into some pretty interesting, if not laughable situations.  We decided we didn't want to take any chances getting lost and wandering around for ridiculous amounts of time trying to figure our way to or from  a location we'd never been to before.

The drive to the Casino, which is  located in a beautiful, scenic area of the Laurentian Mountains, was breathtaking.  Quaint, very Swiss looking and the people were quite friendly and very accommodating.  We had a fabulous time, won a little money, had a great meal at a Buffet and just before it began to get dark we decided it was time to head back home.


Not even 20 minutes into the trip back we realized we weren't headed in the same direction we'd taken to arrive at our destination.  As the road grew less even and  began to narrow considerably our "oh, oh" meters were trying to process whether or not we should turn around and go back to the ski village we'd just left and try our departure again.  My sister-in-law's GPS was apparently malfunctioning and although I asked if she wanted to use mine she declined.

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The Subconscious - Secret weapon for personal change?

More and more of us have become interested in personal development.  There has been a surge to begin a  quest to transform  into individuals who are not only successful, but who are also content, joyful, spiritual and in harmony with the world and the people around us.

The problem  is in the sheer magnitude of information in the form of books, websites, videos and social network sites that seem to carry a few similarities but also just as many incongruities.  It is these incongruities that tend to confuse many of us.  Which train of thought is the best?  Can we be certain that the one we follow will indeed be the one that is beneficial to us and to our goals?

To this dilemma I have to say that each of us has within us a voice that often directs us (or tries) toward the best solution that matches our personality, our interests and our goals.  Yet, too many of us forget to listen to this inner voice or "gut instinct" as it's also known.  We tend to push this aside and choose to follow those trends that seem to be the most popular at the time.  The one that has the most followers, the most exposure or the highest level of interest represented by "celebrities" or other well known individuals.


Where should we really begin?

I believe that we should begin our inner journey to self discovery and development by turning within and exploring our emotions, reactions to various events in our life and our progress as it pertains to the road map we have both consciously and unconsciously laid out for ourselves. 

Something that each and every one of us has in common are two fears which each of us has been born with and those two fears are:  the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.  Verifying this is quite simple.  We need only observe an infant and there reaction when they are picked up.  Their little fists are clenched and their arms and/or legs may extend outward and shake as though startled.  This represents their fear of falling.  This same reaction can be observed if for instance a book falls unexpectedly to the floor with a loud thud.  The infant again reacts by extending their arms and legs and perhaps crying.  These are the only two fears everyone of us comes into this world with.

All other fears:  the fear of insects, birds, flying, high places, snakes, enclosed spaces, the dark, etc., are all learned fears that we have subconsciously tucked away and can recall without effort as the need arises.

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