Sometimes receiving is really nothing more than giving.

I’ve had issues with receiving. Maybe because growing up there wasn’t much to receive. Maybe that fostered the feelings of unworthiness which destined me to be more of a giver than a receiver.

Age has brought with it enough worldly success where I’ve been able to purchase the things I’ve wanted to purchase when I’ve wanted to purchase them. Trust me, nothing extravigant. But it felt more comfortable buying the book or CD for myself than receiving it as a gift.

When Father’s Day or my birthday rolled around, I simply and politely told the wife and kids I really didn’t want any presents. I already have what I need. No need to make a fuss or to spend your money on me. I was content with what I already had, and I’d gotten to a point where material things really weren’t that important to me.

LOVE & GRATITUDE While noble in my intentions of teaching my children of how unimportant material things really are, I can’t help but think my actions were undermining my intentions to teach them one of life’s most valuable lessons.

Life is a celebration.

Underneath what we may call mundane and ordinary, life is to be celebrated. I know I play a very important role in the lives of my kids. But I now feel that my saying “no, thank you” to their request to celebrate the important days of my life shows them that perhaps life isn’t really a celebration after all.

In denying a willingness to receive, I was denying my kids a chance to joyously express their love and gratitude toward someone as important as I am in their lives.

Expressing love and gratitude is something I never want to see them suppress.

RECEIVING THE LOVE I’d been treating God the same way I’d been treating my kids. God wants to celebrate all the days of my life, and shower me with the most amazing gifts. Gifts in the form of all the talents, gifts, and abilities I have been given. “Thanks, God, but it’s really no big deal,” had been my response. “No need to make a fuss.”

The wiser version of me has become quite comfortable in my role as a receiver. I’ve become fuss-worthy, with both my kids and God. I know how important it is to let those who love you shower you with their love. It’s all a part of a circular celebration, to love and to be loved.

Love and gratitude are to be expressed, never repressed, and I’m no longer getting in the way.

So now, it’s a big deal. Birthdays, Father’s Day, and all the days of our lives. Any material gifts are secondary to the greatest gift of all…

Love.

Let those who love you love you.

It’s a great day to be you!

Happiness. I’ve sought after it like a bounty hunter. But just when you think you’ve found it, quite often it slips through your fingers…

There is an iconic scene in the film “Rocky 2” where Rocky’s trainer challenges him to catch a chicken running around him in an enclosed area. The lesson was to teach Rocky some agility in the ring, but in watching this physically powerful fighter struggle to catch the little chicken, it reminded me of how often we struggle to grasp our own peace, our own happiness. Even if it’s right at our own feet.

Happiness is fluid, even slippery. It ebbs and flows. Or maybe that’s just what we’ve made it out to be. How often do we make happiness Continue reading “Happiness, Rocky Balboa, and the Elusive Chicken” →

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them” 
 — Denis Waitley

I’m really not one for resolutions. I am, though, a huge fan of evolution. Personal evolution. Growing. Expanding. Fulfilling.

My greatest periods of personal growth have come in those enlightened difficult moments when I realized I could make a different choice, where what was didn’t have to be the way it had to be.

My hope for you and for me in the coming year is to remember we are fully empowered to make the choices we need to make to get us where we want to be in life. We need not remain standing where we’ve always stood, physically or emotionally.

The blank slate of 2014 is in front of us, and life is easy when its full of successes and victories. But it’s when the world lets you down and spits in your face, that’s when you need to remind yourselves what happens next is really up to you. Don’t let yourself down in those moments when the world lets you down.

That sounds like a resolution, doesn’t it?

Here’s wishing you your best year ever.

It’s a great day to be you!

 

thanks to Laurenzana Press for the quotation inspiration.

 

You often hear about God’s unconditional love and patience, but there are times when I look back on my life I would have understood if He would have just turned away, gave me the finger, and found something better to do with His time.

I’m sure many of the lessons I’ve needed to learn on my spiritual path would have taken far less time if not for me being blessed with an inquisitive, often spiritually untrusting mind. And I’ve come to see this as a blessing, while a younger version of me only saw it as a punishment, a frustrating curse.

The clues to what I’ve needed to learn on my journey have usually shown up gift wrapped in frustration and anger. Ever clever, it’s just God’s way of getting my attention.

Continue reading “Sometimes God Just Needs To Lock You In The Closet” →

Life was a lot simpler when I used to suck my thumb. No worries, no doubt, nothing to insure. But when a young life needed some soothing, one mouth and a little thumb worked their pacifying magic.

Unfortunately, society frowns upon adults resorting to the same tactic.

As adults, we have many ways of soothing ourselves when life gets the better of us. Comfort foods and retail therapy. Perhaps drugs and alcohol when the meatloaf and the new pair of boots you didn’t really need don’t do the trick.

So much of what we turn to in times of emotional discomfort lies outside of us in hopes the external will somehow placate the internal.

My personal quest towards pacifying my own insecurities and uncertainties always leads me back to myself. It’s a lesson I’ve learned and re-learned, and I suspect life will make it necessary to re-learn it yet again.

The lesson is glorious in it’s simplicity; inside of each of us is a peace, a divine peace. And when we reconnect to who we really are, we are reconnecting with that divine peace.

The thumb sucking infant’s peace is self-contained. Just the child’s mouth and a thumb. For us, the good news is our peace is already resting within us as well.

Life can be cruel if we let it. Blind hopes and misguided expectations eventually distort our vision of our truest self as we entrust our self-worth and value to a material world and it’s ever-fluid definition of happiness.

That doesn’t leave much time for peace.

Our ability to self-soothe requires us to stop periodically and reflect upon our own divinity, to remember who it is we really are.  Our thoughts, not our thumbs, can bring us back in alignment with that divinity. Each of us is divine creation embodied with a unique collection of talents, gifts, and abilities to offer to the world. Creation is inherently peaceful, and embracing this divine tranquility is the ultimate source of lasting comfort and peace.

Much more enjoyable than sucking your thumb.

It’s a great day to be you!

I’m sure God appreciates all the thank you’s He gets for Fridays. But how often does He get thanked for giving you the other six days of the week?

Including Monday?

Many never get overly excited about Monday. It’s the anti-Friday. It’s the start of doing what we have to do in order to do what we want to do come Friday at 5.

I guess that’s one way of looking at it.

One of the greatest lessons you can learn in life is understanding you get to decide what it is you see. You can see Monday, or any day, as a necessary evil, as something just to get through. Or you can see each sunrise as a blessing and be grateful for the opportunities contained within each new day.

Even if that new day is a Monday.

What will you see today?

It’s a great day to be you!

Logically, it makes perfect sense. If it’s broken then fix it.

But sometimes logic isn’t that easy, especially if what is broken is you.

Yes, we are creatures of habits, both good and bad. Habits are old friends who can unintentionally define you, often imperfect but comfortably familiar.

Changing a habit is a big idea requiring a big first step. That big first step is to commit to the change, to allow yourself to move beyond what you know is holding you back.

It’s sounds like a lot of work. Unfamiliar work. Unfamiliar is fraught with uncertainty, and it’s in this uncertainty where the best intentions simply remain intentions, added to the list of things often talked about but never brought to life.

Sometimes it’s just easier to keep punching yourself in the head. Sometimes it’s just more comfortable to accept your own delusional self-imposed self-limitations than to do anything about them.

What holds us back is what always hold us back. It’s the usual habitual suspects; doubt, fear, and unworthiness. Not much good happens if you don’t think it could happen and you’re afraid what would happen if it did and if it did happen you wouldn’t think you deserved it.

The longer we buy into any idea, the more we come to accept it as truth. The idea hardens and solidifies into our reality. It works for doubt, fear, and unworthiness.

The good news is it also works for love, abundance, and happiness.

What would happen if we embraced different ideas, the ideas which empower and uplift, ideas which reconnect us to our own divine perfection? What if we bought into the Truth of our unlimited and expansive nature? What if we bought into the Truth in which we are all worthy in the eyes of our Creator?

We’re where we are because we’ve thought ourselves here. Where we go from here has a great deal to do with where we expect to be. The very process which got us where we are is the same process which can take us to where we want to be.

Your thoughts can hold you up or hold you back.

What are you thinking?

It’s a great day to be you!

All we see is their beauty, their stunning colors, their perfect symmetry. But equally as beautiful is the process.

It looks like a lot of work, becoming a butterfly. From caterpillar to chrysalis to finally butterfly, it is an amazing transformation, an incredible metamorphosis.

Caterpillars become butterflies because they are supposed to. It’s their natural progression. They really don’t have a choice.

For us, our evolution is voluntary. We don’t have to become anything other than what we already are. We get to decide if we will ever become the butterfly we were created to become.

Our molting is optional.

It’s much easier remaining a caterpillar. We often take great comfort embracing what is known, even if what is known falls far short of what we know could be. Personal evolution sounds quite daunting.

A butterfly’s beauty is their way of screaming for our attention in hopes that we’ll see more than just the physical.

When I see a butterfly, I often reflect on my own evolution. When I look beyond the gentle fluttering of wings I am reminded that evolution is a process, a series of successive stages, each with its own time frame, each requiring my awareness and my patience. From here I can allow my life to unfold. It’s amazing where awareness and patience will take you if you let it.

A butterfly is the culmination of an evolutionary process. For us, though, our evolution has no end. Our evolution is not about a culmination, it’s more about the process of allowing ourselves to listen to those inner soulful voices guiding us on our own evolving journey.

We are all born caterpillars, all butterflies in waiting, standing on the threshold of fulfilling our greatest purpose.

Listen to the butterflies.

Embrace your evolution.

It’s a great day to be you!

It was always a difficult day for me, report card day. That was always the day I got serious about school, but at that point it was too late. Grades were in, and the long walk home from school was never quite long enough. I had to show up at some point and await the consequences of my doing just enough just to get by.

My disinterest in school really came down to me questioning the importance of school in the first place. I knew it was important, but was it really that important? What I lacked was the big picture where I could somehow discern the significance in the seemingly insignificant.

Sometimes life doesn’t provide us with the big picture. Sometimes, though, we simply don’t see it. Lacking a clear focus, the significant can easily become insignificant. Success rates usually plunge when one half of the mind is trying to solve a problem while the other half is questioning the importance of the problem in the first place.

So what do you do when there is no map, no compass, no landmark ahead in the distance?

You show up anyway.

Our very fluid world creates both opportunities and obstacles, often unexpectedly. Big pictures become suddenly distorted. But so much of life comes down to showing up and seeing the significance of what lies in front of you, even if you feel it isn’t.

The significance of life is in the moments which it is made of. Ours is a choice as to what we will do with them. We can focus on lack and lament what is wrong or missing. Or we can show up and embrace the opportunity of what is right in front of us, learn all this moment has to teach us, and trust this is part of a Bigger Picture revealing itself on it’s own divine time frame.

It’s your life. Which do you chose?

It’s a great day to be you!

There is something about New. New is exciting and fresh. A welcome escape from the predictability of what already is.

Not that long ago, what already is was once new itself. But time has a way of making the extraordinary quite ordinary, and we again hunger for the Next Big Thing.

I’m a big fan of New. I’m a big fan of innovation, expansion, and evolution. Often, though, I wonder if our cultural obsession with the Next Big Thing is really more about distracting ourselves from our own perceived shortcomings of what we think is missing in our own lives.

My greatest moments are when I can look at my life and rediscover a sense of humble amazement for all the good I already have in my life. To find contentment and joy in what already is.

Continue reading “When Life Loses It’s New Car Smell” →