So you purposed in your heart it is time to change.

It is time to do something. And you are going to do whatever it takes, or so you thought! Now you are wondering…do I really want this that bad? Is it really worth it?

All my friends know about this caterpillar thing. How I killed the prospective butterflies and kept the weeds…so much for transparency. Then, having learned my lesson, I publicly proclaimed that I would no longer care more about the appearance of my front flower bed and would allow the caterpillars to eat to their hearts content knowing all along that the leaves on my bushes would grow back…they did last time…and that I would be the butterfly benefactor.

However, because I killed those nasty pests last time…I did not fully appreciate how bad the front garden would look. They have been eating my bushes for about 6 weeks and they’re huge! Last week I was having a party…a friend suggested I put a sign up front, “Feeding in Progress.” It has been a tremendous joke.

So I am struggling. I mean when are they going to do this cocoon thing anyway? Do I really want to go the distance? Herein lies the power of Weight Watchers, AA and all groups that provide true accountability…it doesn’t matter whether I feel like it or not today…I will persevere. I have shared this story with all sorts of audiences…hundreds of people. It doesn’t matter how messy and unattractive this growth process is…the caterpillars stay…at least until they become butterflies.

<— Weeds #1: Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
<— Weeds #2: The Bugs are Back!

Popularity: 61% [?]

I have always had a thing for plants. There is something therapeutic about the process of working and growing things. A number of years ago I realized that not only do flowers bloom according to seasons, but so do weeds. Right now we have the long and slender stemmed yellow flowered weed. The leaves are somewhat fuzzy like a Gerber daisy and they pull out of the ground fairly easily when you get tired of the disruption to your golf course green. Next comes a similar purple flower with a tall slender stalk.

The leaves are quite different, much narrower, and prolific and stand up higher; but again these pull out fairly easily and make great bouquets for small children wanting to please their mother.

”So what,” you are wondering. I just reach over and pull the weeds out, it isn’t a big deal. However, all weeds are not created equal! After these come another much closer to the ground. They look like small roses, tolerate extreme heat and little rain, thriving even when all the grass has given up. Just try just pulling these out…good luck. Just as there are seasons in the plant world, so there are seasons in my life. As much as I work towards life balance, there are periods of time when there will be an abundance of opportunities.

When we moved into our new house several years ago we chose to clear the back portion of our property ourselves wanting to create a lush Florida friendly yard…our version of Sunken Gardens.

The first year I had mixed results. We had these beautiful lavender flowers on a stalk that somewhat resembled a sunflower. Going for the natural look, I left them excited about the beauty that was already available on my developing sanctuary. However when the black and yellow caterpillars began to strip my “snow on the mountain” down to bare stems, I have to say I wasn’t near as tolerant, spraying them with incredibly toxic substances and celebrating as they dropped off.

The funny thing is that the lavender flowers turned into these horrible stickers. (Have you ever just wanted to throw the clothes away rather than face the tedious chore of trying to get those things off?) And the bugs that I eliminated were the larvae for the butterflies I had wanted to attract. I had gotten so caught up in the ugliness of stripped plants; I had eliminated my opportunities to see the beauty that could have come.

The funny thing about weeds is that what one person might consider a weed, another person might plant. And where some gardeners hate and spray for insects others plant to attract them.   Yet what defines something as prized or rejected is not necessarily the thing itself, but the viewer.

Weeds #2: The Bugs Are Back! —>

Popularity: 47% [?]

When I work with my clients, I have the opportunity to bring clarity and focus into their lives. However, what is frequently apparent is that no matter how great I do that with others…it is extremely difficult to do for myself. There is an old saying “You can’t see the forest for the trees”.

Well, I am incredibly fortunate to have phenomenal coaches, counselors and accountability people in my life…however there was this one thing that had been nagging at me for a couple months. I had all this material; I was wading through it, but just couldn’t seem to find a common thread…voila…an hour with a friend earlier this week made it all seem so simple and so obviously apparent.

If you don’t have someone in your life who can give you objective feedback from a point of some expertise…find someone who does it well, whatever it is. Spend time with them; give them permission to give you feedback and to hold you accountable to follow through on your discussion.

Life changes when I do!

Joy Beyond Freedom is a Journey!

Popularity: 23% [?]

What resource do you have in common with the wealthiest person on the planet?

What quality do you share with the fastest runner in the world?

What gift do you possess that every successful artist requires?

…TIME…

At my High school reunion a wise friend said to me “20 years equalizes many things.”

Every day the clock strikes Midnight, and a new day begins.  Each person has the next 24 hours to call today, that won’t change.  The way we spend those hours and minutes is what separates us from each other.  No matter how we try, the day is the day. Time cannot be saved for tomorrow, it cannot be traded among friends, and once it is gone, it is gone! Ask yourself “At the end of the day, will I be frustrated with the way I spent my day, or will I be satisfied that it was a day well spent?”

Some people believe you only need to go faster to make “it” happen. They’re wrong.  Fractured families, stress induced disease, and mental breakdowns, are at the end of that road.  What can we do?

Take it one action step at a time. First identify priorities, and then focus your goals to reflect those priorities.  If this is done on a regular basis, when you ask yourself “was today a good day?” you will have a measuring stick.  Remember Bill Gates, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa, have accomplished great things, with the same 24 hours that you and I have.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Time is the one thing that when it is gone, it is gone. No amount of wishing or praying will bring back yesterday. Each moment that goes by, is gone….into history. We each have a history, a series of moments that have passed, and we each have a future of moments to come…how many moments none of us know. We each exist in a time called the present; this is the NOW between what has gone by and what is to come.

I can’t live in the past or change one moment of it, and neither can I live in the future. Although intellectually that all makes sense, what I know in my brain may not be truth for my heart. Sometimes I am so busy scurrying towards the future I miss NOW. I miss the beauty of the Florida sun shining on Tampa Bay. So I am working and I don’t have the day off to go play in it, that doesn’t mean I cease to recognize its existence.

Or maybe the pain in my past has been so great that each day I wake with it right in front of me. The wounds still so fresh, that each person I talk to reminds me of my pain. Although time presents me with a tomorrow, I cannot see mine for the yesterday in which I live.

Great achievements come from men and women who understand living in Now. There may be pain in my past, but that is my history not my future. My future may be bright, but it is not NOW. My TIME is MY LIFE. This is it. I do not get a do over for this time around. This is not dress rehearsal. The curtain is up and the show continues whether I choose to run off the stage or not. So I will look at my history, my experience of yesterday to help me plan for tomorrow. But I will choose to be present…I will choose to live in today.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Joy…Beyond Freedom is really about the journey, specifically the journey that I have personally been on and how that relates to others. Freedom has many meanings as there are people to define it.

Many contemplate freedom as some incredible destination. But beyond freedom, what then? The journey is about enjoying the trip to freedom, about the changes we make along the way, and about “what then”. What happens when we get there and what comes next?

“It’s about change!”

Popularity: 26% [?]

Waiting, waiting, waiting! It seems that no matter where we are in life, we are waiting for something. We wait in lines of traffic, lines at the grocery store, and on hold listening to “and we will be back in a moment”. We wait for birthdays, holidays, raises, promotions and even divorce. Children are waiting to grow up. Singles are waiting to get married. Couples wait to have children and then wish that those children would grow up so mom and dad could get a little break…if we could just bypass the waiting and get to the prize we would.

In a culture that gets microseconds faster daily, many times we can, so we do, bypass the wait. We drive-up, drive through, and instant message. Cutting and copying our way through life, we fast forward through commercials to find that all our time saving devices still leave us short at the end of the day. For although old-fashioned oatmeal only takes 3 minutes in the microwave and will maintain blood sugar levels for hours, we go for the short lived instant version.

Always wanting what’s in front of us, we race through life. Running, then waiting, then running again. Then one day when we wake up, we realize that a good portion of life has passed, and what we waited so long for never actually arrived. We discover that what we wanted was really somewhere along the roadside “back there”. In our “direct route” we missed a turn. No GPS recalculated our life telling us to make a u-turn at the next available intersection.

Old people remembering what it was to be young, married couples forever trying to recapture the thrill and romance of the courtship and parents replaying bittersweet memories of baby drool and cries in the night as they all remember how often they were too busy.

A winner is not made at the end of the race. It is days and weeks and even years of daily routines. The end of the race only reflects the winning. The secret of the winner lies in his daily routine and so does the secret of all success. Crossing the line first does not guarantee a victory.

Life is in the Living! Live it with Intent!

Popularity: 24% [?]

This view is only a few minutes from my door. Yet myself and many, many others often get so caught up in our daily activites that we take for granted what others my save for a lifetime to visit.

Imagine you went on vacation…where would you go and what would you see…in your own backyard?

Popularity: 30% [?]