“Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.” — Margaret Cousins

 

It’s amazing how powerful our words can be. Simply expressing our gratitude for the people in our lives and for what they contribute reminds them of their value, of their true worth as a person.

This is also true when we express our gratitude for who it is we already are. When we take a moment and remind ourselves of our value and worth, sometimes the life we change is our own.

It’s a great day to be you!

You have a great deal in common with the Empire State Building.

If you choose to see it.

 

New York City inspires me. I don’t get there very often, but whenever I do the city never lets me down. I’ve come to love the scale and grandeur. It’s a place of great energy, a city of hope, possibilities, and dreams. The art, the architecture, the food, the ethnic diversity…all are a part of what makes this city breathe. It’s an amazing place.

Unless you’re like my friends who actually live there. They no longer see what I see.

Perhaps it’s just like anything else. After a while everything just becomes part of the background. The once-vibrant hues that at one time excited us gradually fade to grey. Too often we are surrounded by miracles, yet over time we no longer see anything miraculous.

New York has a lot to notice. The real inspiration, though, comes from actually noticing.

Right now in your immediate space there is a great deal to notice. And a great deal to be inspired about. It doesn’t matter if you’re standing in Times Square or if you’re standing in your living room.

There are many great things about us that we’ve allowed to fade into our own personal backgrounds. Simply because we tend to take ourselves for granted. We no longer see the greatness that lies within us. We no longer see all that we already are and all that we are capable of becoming.

Vibrant hues never really fade to grey; we just stop noticing their color. The vibrant hues that define us are right in front of us, as vibrant as they’ve always been, clearly visible if we allow ourselves a few precious moments to actually see them.

Don’t we owe it to ourselves to simply stop for just a moment to acknowledge and appreciate our own magnificence and significance…to allow ourselves to again be inspired by who it is we already are?

Your life is far too important to simply allow it to fade to grey.

It’s a great day to be you!

 

Rudolph took what society would call a flaw and turned it into his trademark, a defining characteristic.

He’s not alone. The world is full of famous people who did the exact same thing. Look what Cindy Crawford did with her facial mole. Listen to Bob Dylan sing. I’m certain that they were both told their “flaws” would never allow them to fit in, never allow them to be valuable. There would be “no reindeer games” for either of them. But like Rudolph, their “flaws” became their defining characteristics.

But is life really about fitting in to a predetermined profile? As kids we had no concept of fitting in. We just followed our hearts. Nothing was “flawed” because nothing was judged. As we got older, we started buying into the concept of fitting in, empowering the hierarchy of cool. There is no room for individual uniqueness when the goal is fitting in.

We live in a time of judgment where external expectations greatly influence how we evaluate the world around us. Including even how we look at ourselves. We compare everything to the template of how things/people are supposed to be and then judge accordingly.

When you look at you, do you see flaws or defining characteristics?

Within all of us is a beautiful voice, an expression of who we really are. Usually that voice is silenced because we fear that our abilities, dreams, or ambitions are just not good enough. When we decide to silence that voice, we silence our very soul.

Our unique voice was given to us for the sole purpose of bringing it to life and sharing it with the world. Our voice, our glorious gift, is a celebration of who we are, and who we are is above any external expectations or opinions.

It’s a matter of choice, really. We can either empower our perceived flaws or embrace that which defines us.

When you look at it this way it’s really not that hard of a choice, is it?

It’s a great day to be you!

Welcome to East Berlin, 1989. November 10th was the day after the Wall came down. A day filled with justifiable euphoria. But along with the excitement came an emotion that was very much unfamiliar in East Berlin.

Uncertainty.

Life in East Berlin had a great deal of certainty. Oppressive political regimes always do a “great” job of clearly defining responsibilities and expectations for their citizens. But with the collapse of the Wall, the responsibilities and expectations in place for 28 years collapsed as well. The rules suddenly changed and no one knew what the new rules were.

Uncertainty.

Fast forward to now…the Free World, 2011. So where did all the rules go? You know, the rules of how life was supposed to work. The Continue reading “East Berlin, Madonna, and the New Age of Uncertainty” →

Are you thankful for you?

Thanksgiving the holiday is a time when we pause and express our gratitude for all that we have in our lives. Family, friends, food, shelter, health, possessions and all the things that surround us.

But do you ever stop and give thanks for you?

Think for a moment about who you really are. You are a one-of-a-kind collection of talents, gifts, and abilities that the world has never seen before and will never see again. Within you is everything you’ll ever need to fulfill your divine purpose, including a strength and resilience that has and will continue to allow you to keep moving forward.

You have an unlimited opportunity to continually grow and expand, to become all that your soul is calling you to become. You have an infinite capacity to love and to feel, to touch and to experience all the greatness that resides so abundantly around you. And inside of you is an inextinguishable light which transcends all darkness, a beacon that guides you back home to your own sacred self.

We all do a great job finding what is “wrong” with us, what is missing, how we don’t measure up. We can be so cruel to ourselves when we forget our inherently precious nature. But when we remember who it is we really are we become far more patient, nurturing, and forgiving of ourselves.

Our ability to lovingly reconnect with our authentic self is yet another reason to be thankful for who we are.

Be thankful. For you.

It’s a great day to be you!

Hollywood surely hasn’t been good for the miracle business.

Blockbuster films become blockbusters because they blow away our expectations. It could be the script, it could be the actors, or it could be the special effects. But what ever it was, we thought it was just awesome. Blockbusters raise the bar of awesome. For the next movie to become a blockbuster it will need to exceed the higher standards of awesome set by the previous blockbuster. The new film may be just as great as the previous film. But “just as great” is seldom ever great enough. We need more awesome to get us excited; yesterday’s awesome just isn’t awesome anymore.

The “more awesome, please” thinking permeates our lives. Which is bad news for things like miracles.

Miracles, after a while, lose their luster. Time makes what was once extraordinary eventually ordinary. And once it becomes ordinary it becomes irrelevant, simply taken for granted. Surrounded by yesterday’s miracles we often fail to see anything miraculous.

The truth is miracles never lose their luster. They never stop being awesome. The only thing that actually changes is our vantage point. We are the ones that move beyond the miracles in front of us in search of that next something that will get us excited.

Nothing can ever diminish the magnificence of the miracles that are around us and within us.

Perhaps today is the perfect day to rediscover all the miracles in your life?

It’s a great day to be you!

“Forever trust in who we are, and nothing else matters…”

Trust is a funny thing.  As kids we learn to trust our parents.  We learn to trust our siblings. We learn to trust our friends.  But at what point do we learn to trust ourselves?

In our desire to be accepted, in our desire to fit in, in our desire to simply be happy, our focus will at times shift away from who we really are to who we think we really need to be.

But trusting in your self is simply listening to the real you. It’s listening to the inner voices of inspiration, the voice of God. The inner voices that are telling you that you are good enough exactly the way you are. Not worrying about the opinions and expectations others may have for you. Trusting yourself allows you to transcend any insecurity and doubt and allows you to fully become all that you were created to become. This is the real you, the natural you, the one created for greatness.

The one the world needs you to become.

Forever trust in who you are.

It’s a great day to be you!

 

(This quotes comes from James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich who are better known by their day jobs as lead vocalist and drummer, respectively, of the band Metallica. The above quote is from their 1991 song “Nothing Else Matters”.)

School trips require a signed parental consent form. Without my approval, my kids will not be allowed to get on the bus and travel to their education destination.

Asking permission is a good thing. For a class trip. But when it comes to our own lives, are we waiting for others to give us permission to become all that we really are?

Sometimes we’re the ones that don’t sign off on our own trip to our own fulfillment. Sometimes we empower others in our lives, giving them the pen and awaiting their signature before we feel comfortable becoming who we really want to become.

But what happens if they refuse to sign?

Unlike our children, no one needs to sign off on where it is we hope to go in our life. Others may express their reservations and concerns about our plans. They may even question our judgement. But the map to Greatness is in our hands. The only person we need permission from is ourself.

All that you need to become all that you already are is within you. Bringing you to life requires one simple decision to allow yourself to fully bloom, to bear all the fruit you were created to bear.

It’s a great day to be you!

My TV is always telling me that no matter how happy I think I am, I’d be much happier with whatever it was it was trying to sell me.

Marketers thrive on creating a sense that who I am and what I have just isn’t good enough. They construct a new standard, raise a higher expectation, and I simply don’t measure up. I must be incomplete. Unless, of couse, I buy what they’re selling. Then I’d be cool/beautiful/accepted.

The advertising world works to create an illusion that we are incomplete. Then they offer us the solution to the problem we didn’t even know we had. Pure genius, creating a disease just to sell us their cure. Retail therapy anyone? Why do they do this? Because it works. If you let it.

There’s no money to be made off of complete people, people who have reached the point in their lives where they understand and accept their innate complete nature. The message of “something is missing in your life” simply doesn’t resonate with people who know that nothing is really missing in the first place.

The greatest gift is to look inside and see that nothing is missing.

Because nothing is.

It’s a great day to be you!