Posted 10/28/18
When you experience heartache or heartbreak, do you connect with other people, or insulate and isolate yourself AWAY from others?
Sometimes, when we’re already hurt and feeling vulnerable, we’re so consumed with pain that’s all we can see. We just want the pain to stop.
We may pull away from other people because we want to protect ourselves from being hurt even more…we build walls around ourselves in the hope that no more pain can reach us.
Unfortunately, building walls of protection around yourself actually serves to hold your pain in and prolong it.
Stay open and available to life and to others, and the pain can pass…the hurts can heal.
Remember…“sharing lightens the load…”?
That applies to our emotional burdens too!
We can feel alone in our pain. But, EVERYONE’s had hurt in their lives. EVERYONE experiences loss.
We’re not the only one ever hurt. We are not an isolated case, or a special victim.
Our hurts can actually be a bridge to connect with others.
Each experience shapes us, adds to who we are, and what we have to contribute to the world.
Don’t allow your heartaches to make you shrivel up.
Use your pain to expand you…to stretch you beyond yourself, and help you connect with others.
Allow others to show you their kindness.
Use your hurts to help you connect with, understand, and be there for others that have also been hurt.
Keep love, kindness, compassion, and connection flowing…and pain cannot last!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 10/21/18
When you say you “can’t live without” someone or something, that makes you a parasite…living off the energy of others.
The problem is…parasites eventually kill their hosts by draining them of their life-sustaining components.
So, once you have drained your host of all their energy and they have nothing left to give you, what then?
Be a complete and whole individual, interacting with others, not using them.
Be someone who contributes and gives to others too, rather than only taking from people.
You can do it…it’s easier than you think.
You have all the basic ingredients you need already inside you…just polish and develop them.
Who you are inside is GREAT…let that shine!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 9/30/18
Do you spend more time lamenting and whining over the loss of something instead of celebrating having had or experiencing it at all?
You know…you go somewhere on a trip or vacation, and you LOVE the place and the time you spent there.
You have a beloved pet for years that dies.
A loved one dies.
A job you loved ends.
You move away from a home you loved.
After these, or other similar ‘losses’, what do you spend your time and energy focused on?
Do you bask in gratitude for having had that treasured experience, place, or person in your life?
Do you look around you with an open heart to see what other, new wonderful experience/person is coming to your life next?
Or, do you wallow in self-pity that that person, place, or experience is gone…sure that you’ll never be happy again?
What happens when you take the sad, self-pity route?:
- you negate and virtually erase all the wonderful moments and good things that came from that experience.
- you take a positive experience and stain it with negative emotions.
- you close your life off to other good things that are available to you.
Rather than flushing your wonderful loves and experiences into a cesspool of bitterness and ‘poor-me’, you can:
- celebrate the positive experiences and joys you got to have while that was in your life.
- keep your treasured memories in the forefront of your mind, rather than loss
- keep your heart and mind open so more wonderful people and experiences can come into your life
- bring the joys and greatness from those experiences into your daily life wherever possible…keep the wonderful things going and growing! Be a source of joy and love for others!
Of course, it can be sad when something we love leaves our life, the truth is…it never really leaves your life forever. Things live on in our memories and the actions we take.
So celebrate what you have loved and lost! At least you had it in your life. Feel blessed, and honor the memory by talking and acting with love and joy.
Would you really rather live your life with no love or joy, in order to avoid the sadness of losing something you love?
More love is always available for you…it’s up to you!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 9/16/18
When you take care of yourself, you’re taking care of others too.
That is because what you practice, you perfect…you become skilled at.
How you treat yourself the majority of the time determines the skill set you will use to treat others.
When you’re critical and negative about your life, your choices, your ‘self’, you’re critical and negative about others too.
When you nurture yourself, you learn how to help nurture others.
When you treat yourself with grace, love, patience, humor, honor, compassion,…those qualities are now present and primed for you to bring to your interactions with others.
If you don’t practice them with yourself, you won’t have the skill and proficiency to use them with others.
A horse that is starved, neglected, weak cannot carry you on your journey.
And, similarly, if you don’t care for and nurture your own well-being – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually - you can’t successfully accomplish your journey, or adequately help others.
This doesn’t mean have a pity party, make excuses for yourself, give yourself a pass on bad behavior, or ignore the needs of others.
This is about learning what you need in order to be your “best” self, and how to meet that need.
This is about understanding that underneath all the other “stuff”, you already are a wonderful, amazing, loving being!
Focus on breathing life into that ‘self’, shining it up and letting the connected, compassionate, aware part of you lead your way in life.
When you shine that love light, everything around you will glow with that light too!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 8/5/18
Think of your focus as being an air pump.
Every time you focus on or think about something, you pump air into it, inflating it and making it bigger.
Why focus solely on the negative?
What do you want more of in your life?
Focus on that.
Pump air into that.
Make that bigger in your life.
You focus on ‘oh, this horrible thing happened’…
Why not focus on ‘I was supported and I made it through’?
What will you let define your life?
The accident, the event…or the support, protection, guidance, lesson and survival?
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 7/29/18
An ugly attitude will always ruin a pretty face.
There are many things we do in an effort to look good to others.
How we style our hair. How we dress. If we wear make-up or jewelry.
The home we have. Where we live.
The work we do.
Volunteering / giving to charity.
Who we date / marry.
The list goes on and on….
But, in order to look your best, you must start within…true beauty, success, and riches come from inside you.
No matter what you do on the outside, you will never look good if you’re filled with hate and anger.
Thoughtfulness, respect, kindness, compassion give you beauty and power that will shine beyond anything you can create.
Try it…you’ll love who you see in the mirror!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 7/22/18
Suffering is not holding you, you are holding suffering. – (Buddha)
Like it or not, you continue to suffer because you hold on to it.
I, for one, am tired of holding on to the suffering.
It’s exhausting…and painful.
What if you let go of suffering?
What if you choose not to suffer anymore?
You can’t control life…you can only dance with it.
So, quit brooding and suffering because life took a turn you didn’t approve, and keep dancing…!
When you stop resisting, you’ll find new steps to dance…
…steps you couldn’t see while blinded by disappointment, and clinging to what ‘should be’.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 7/15/18
Lack of action in a new direction will keep you where you are!
If you don’t want to take action to create the life you dream of, you don’t have to!
That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But, be honest about it. Say it out loud.
When you have that thought ‘I should do (something that will take me closer to my dream)’, but instead you eat, or watch TV, or do any other wasteful activity rather than take that action on fulfilling your dream, just say out loud:
‘I choose this life. I choose my misery. I want my misery. I don’t want to change it. I want to keep my life exactly as it is.’
It’s truly fine…Just be honest about it.
Whether or not you think you are…you are actually choosing your life to be exactly as it is.
That put’s a different spin on it, doesn’t it?
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 7/8/18
You can’t end up with happiness if you don’t have happiness during the process.
And why only end with happiness? Why not experience happiness all your life?
When you have happiness, it gives an entirely different relationship to your life, your path, your journey, and what’s possible.
As Jim Rohn said, “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future, it is something you design for the present.”
And YOU CAN design and create happiness in your life.
There is always something to be grateful and happy for in your life…like the future you’re creating!!
See it, be the person right now that you envision yourself to be, take steps to make it a reality every day, and start living the happiness you see in your future right now!
Don’t put off happiness, start being happy in your life right now.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 7/1/18
Throw your concerns and issues down the path ahead of you.
If they’re truly meant for you, they’ll be waiting for you as you make your way along your journey.
When you encounter them again, you’ll have more wisdom and experience to handle them.
However, you will also find that you’ll never see most of them again.
We carry so many burdens around for such a long time, only to eventually discover they either aren’t OUR issues, OR they aren’t a burden at all when the time for them came.
So, lighten your load…toss away all the issues and concerns you’re carrying that don’t need to be addressed or resolved RIGHT NOW, or by you...
Then, follow your path, walk your journey mindful of only what this moment requires and offers.
See what you find along the way, which you wouldn’t have been able to see while carrying and balancing a load of burdens, concerns, and fears.
Your hands, your heart, and your mind will now be free and open to take hold of what is available to you along the way.
You may discover as you look back later that some of the issues you feared, never came to be!
So why carry them on your back all those unnecessary days and miles?
Free yourself up!
Throw your concerns and issues down.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 6/24/18
“When you’re arguing with a fool, make sure he isn’t doing the same thing!”
That quote applies to us all.
You don’t have to be stupid or uneducated to be a fool in an argument…
…just mis-informed.
How many times have you learned information that had you change an opinion you held?
How many times did you learn later that you had jumped to the wrong conclusion?
Now…how many times do you stop to ask questions to verify the data on which your opinion is based is accurate BEFORE you jump to speaking?
If you’re like most people…never.
That’s all it would take to prevent so many arguments, hurt feelings, icy silences, and ugly moments…
…Just a few minutes to ask some clarifying questions FIRST.
Having good relationships is worth a few minutes of effort to prevent an argument.
That investment of a few minutes will pay you back enormous benefit.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 6/17/18
When we say ‘I’m happy’, we’re typically reporting on how we feel in that moment…usually related to the circumstances of life we’re experiencing right then.
But…what if happiness is more than that?
What if happiness is WHO WE ARE…WHAT WE’RE MADE OF?!?!
What would life be like then?
We ‘define’ ourselves all the time…we declare what our citizenship is, our race, our religion, our sexuality, our profession, our family status, our height,…
When we do that, we’re defining ourselves and our relationship to the world.
When you say ‘I am (something)’, you’re also saying ‘and I’m not all the other options in that category’.
Whether you define yourself as a lawyer or an artist, that is what you share with the world. That is how you interact with the world…from that starting point of who you “are”.
If you relate to happiness as what you’re made of…who you are…rather than a temporary feeling or emotion, you wouldn’t wait for external circumstances to line up in order to give you a feeling of happiness.
You would be BRINGING the happiness. You would be creating happiness. Happiness would show up wherever you are, because that is who you have declared yourself to be…you can’t help it…it’s who you are and you can’t be anything else!
Rather than REPORTING on your temporary and fleeting feelings (I feel happy),
DECLARE that HAPPINESS is WHO YOU ARE & WHAT YOU’RE MADE OF…I AM happy…I AM happiness!!!
And watch your world shift…!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 6/10/18
Have you ever ridden one of those computerized exercise bicycles?
The ones that put you through alternating intervals of climbing a hill…then resting…then climbing a hill…then resting?
When you’re riding it, you don’t see the process as something wrong with the bicycle or the program.
They are designed to do that…put us through periods of hard work and rest, hard work and rest.
This is what is supposed to happen.
Maybe we can look at life that way, rather than assuming there’s a problem or that we’ve failed in some way whenever the ‘peddling’ of life gets tough…
Maybe there is no problem…maybe, just like the exer-cycle program, it’s only a period of challenge.
And, just as those intervals of challenge on the exer-cycle strengthen us physically, the periods of challenge in our lives tone and strengthen us also!
After all… all easy coasting only happens when you’re going downhill!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 6/3/18
There is a gap between the theory or desire for something, and the realization of it…and I’ve found myself lying face-down in that gap many times.
We can’t always jump the gap in one leap. Yet, I always want instant results, instant completion, instant finished product.
But, if I put all the ingredients for a stew together, and sat down to eat it immediately while all the ingredients were still raw, it would NOT taste good!
The ingredients need to cook for some time before they become the savory stew you envision.
The same is true sometimes with our dreams and visions.
Some require more than one step, and we must take each step, one at a time. As frustrating as that may be when you can see the end result in your mind.
You must follow the steps of a recipe in order to have the delicious meal you desire.
And, you must enact all the steps in the ‘recipe’ of your vision in order to have your dreams realized.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 5/20/18
Do you wrestle with your life?
Struggling to force things and people to be the way YOU think they should be?
Do you try to overpower opposition?
In order to overpower and force what you want to change, you have to be holding it firmly in your grip.
No wonder an issue won’t go away…it CAN’T…you’re holding on to it and keeping it close!!!
Let go. That’s all you have to do!
Be more like a matador.
Step out of the way, and let issues pass right on by.
A matador doesn’t try to wrestle and overpower the bull.
Grab hold and hang on to ONLY what you want to have in your life,
and the tools that will make those your reality.
Allow all the rest to pass on by.
Quit grabbing the bulls***…
You don’t win wrestling with bulls***!!!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 4/15/18
Life is like riding a bicycle.
When riding a bicycle, you have to maintain your balance in order to ride successfully.
Lean too far in either direction, and you’ll fall.
Sometimes you manage your balance automatically and unconsciously, and sometimes you must consciously navigate.
Life is like that too.
You must maintain balance between…
…work and rest,
…obligations and fun,
…caring for yourself and caring for others,
…looking within and looking at the world around you
…and many other issues
If you don’t maintain the proper balance, you will fall.
So, start noticing when you’re out of balance.
You can tell, because the ride is ROUGH!
Take measures to get back in balance.
When you’re in balance, you’ll enjoy the RIDE OF YOUR LIFE, and go farther than you ever dreamed of…
…with less effort!!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 4/1/18
Les Brown said “When life knocks you down, try to land on your back.”
When I read that quote, I realized if you’ll open your eyes, you might see things from a new perspective.
What you perceive as “failing” by falling, is actually an opportunity to see your life from a new angle.
When things don’t go as you planned, take a moment to look at what is actually there rather than what isn’t.
You may see a new perspective, new direction, new ideas you hadn’t seen before.
Then, you can rise to pursue those.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 3/25/18
What do you do when a pot on the stove starts to boil over?
You turn the heat down.
You don’t have to turn it off, just turn it down, and that will reduce the heat enough to prevent the boil-over catastrophe, yet allow your food to cook.
Well, the same is true for many issues is our lives.
When your life feels like it may start to boil over, you can control and prevent that from happening.
And, preventing the eruption of boiling over doesn’t necessarily mean you have to turn the heat off completely…just CHANGE your temperature setting.
You CAN control and reduce:
…your anger
…your participation
…your schedule
…your approach to the issue or people
…your insistence on YOUR way
Maybe you reduce the number of things you take on responsibility for or participate in. (Don’t worry…the world will keep turning!)
Maybe you reduce the amount of time you spend on certain activities or with certain people…!
You don’t always have to walk away entirely. Just change the time and circumstances to fit what you need.
Maybe you take a breath and ask yourself if you really need to be this angry about a situation…
Life doesn’t have to be all or nothing….boiling hot or no heat at all.
Just turn the heat down a few degrees at a time until you find the sweet spot for your life to work.
Where you’re productive and engaged, yet also joyous and tranquil.
Keep your eye on the pot, and adjust as needed!
The banquet of your life will taste sweeter!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 3/11/18
Everything in life doesn’t need to be compared, rated, or ranked.
The danger in rating and ranking things is in thinking that everything that isn’t ranked #1 is a loser or worthless.
This is simply not true.
Some of the Silver medalists in the recent Olympics were mere FRACTIONS of points or seconds behind the Gold medalists…a difference so small, we can’t even see it with the naked eye if they ran their races side by side. They aren’t “losers”…they’re Olympic medalists…among the best in the world!! And let’s face it…all the medalists are WAY better in their sport than the rest of the world. They would leave us in the dust. Some of them would be just a blur to me as they sped by me…
So…if you’re not ranked #1, should you never ski again? Never play tennis or basketball again?
It would be awful to live in a world with only the #1 rated “Best” of everything…
…eating only 1 food item for the rest of your life
…seeing only 1 color in the world
…hearing only 1 song forever
…hearing only 1 singer
…hearing only 1 instrument playing
…having only 1 flower
We need all the colors and instruments and notes to create a masterpiece!
And remember…each Gold medalist was ranked below #1 at some point…but they were allowed to continue and improve!
So quit worrying how you compare to others. It doesn’t matter!
You are the ONLY ‘YOU’ we have, so be the very BEST ‘you’ you can be!
No one can be ‘better’ at being you than you can!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 3/4/18
What if life is like a video game where you can choose the actions the character you control may take?
You can make them turn right or left, choose which doors they open, which ones they walk through.
All the possible actions you can have your video character take are already programmed into the game.
Depending on the action you direct the character to take, a different scene opens up on the screen.
If your character is in a hallway, and you have them open the door on the left, you will see whatever the room behind that door is. If you have your character open a door on the right side, you will see a different room.
What unfolds as the game progresses is determined by the actions you direct your character to take, but ALL the possibilities already exist in the code of the game.
If it isn’t written in the game code, your character can’t take that action, or create that result.
As far as the game is concerned, any choice you make for your character is just as valid as any other one. They just create a different path and possibly a different result is all.
What if we look at life that way? That all possible actions have already been ‘programmed’ into life, but our choices may end our game early and unsatisfyingly, or our choices can lead us to new and ever greater levels in life!!!
Looking at life this way allows us to interact with others with less criticism, judgement, and anger when their actions hurt us.
When you don’t forgive others, it’s like being mad at a video game for what was behind the door you selected, or being mad at a player for making the character in the video turn right instead of left.
All the choices are possible in the game.
The game doesn’t care.
Each choice just creates a different path, but all are possible and valid in the game.
Furthermore, the video game, just like life, continues on.
But when you’re stuck reliving that moment over and over, and you hold onto the bitterness of that past action, you aren’t fully present in the current actions of the game, and may not make the best decisions for your present and future path. Just like life…!
So realize when someone takes an action you disagree with, they are still taking one of the possible actions in life.
Stay in the present moment of the ‘game’.
Given that action, what scenes and scenarios are open to you to take now?
Start from right where you are to navigate your character back to the path that will lead you onward and upward.
And, as you rise in your journey, you may find the other players in your game start to make better choices!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 2/18/18
Until you consciously choose what you want to create for your life, you will unconsciously re-create the life/environment/relationships you grew up in.
If your parents were critical, you’ll become critical too, and/or choose that quality in your partner.
If you grew up in an environment of chaos and anger, you’ll re-create that in your adult life and relationships unless you become consciously aware of that, and decide to create something different.
This is because what you grow up with is what you think is normal in life. Even if it was mentally and emotionally hurtful for you, it’s all you know. It’s familiar.
You will continue to re-create your familiar and even painful past until you:
- recognize the issue
- realize other behavior is possible and available
- decide you want and deserve love and support
- consciously create and choose love and support so it becomes familiar, comfortable, and normal to you!
Wake up…choose love.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 2/11/18
Even in the darkest storm, the sun is still shining above it.
Sometimes we forget that.
No matter how dark and rough the storm, a pilot can always rise above it in his aircraft to find the light and tranquil air.
Be the pilot of your life. Rise above the storm.
Find the light and the calm.
In the calm, you’ll find peace.
In the light, you’ll find direction.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 2/4/18
When does subtraction create a greater result?
When you’re subtracting a negative.
Do this for your life.
Eliminate a negative quality, behavior, thought or habit from your life, and you will be enriched and enhanced.
By eliminating what diminishes you, you are greater than you were before.
Now, how do you grow from there? How do you create something greater from there?
To enhance your life, add other people to your thoughts, considerations, and plans.
When you and others are both in the equation of your life, the result you produce will be greater than anything you create by yourself and for yourself alone.
Subtract negativity and add other people and qualities to your life to gain greater results in happiness.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 1/28/18
The journey of your life will not be a straight road cut through flat and desolate terrain. Your journey through life will have bends and turns in it. Your path will go through hills and valleys, and will have varying landscapes at times lush and desolate at others.
Therefore, at any one point along the way of your journey, you cannot see your entire path. You can only see a piece of the future…the next step(s) for you to take.
Looking back, you may not be able to see where you started and realize how much ground you’ve covered. But, just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Think of a graph depicting activity over a period of time. If each point on the graph represented 5 years, a graph showing 50 years of activity may appear to be a straight line rise steadily upward, indicating consistent progress…always advancing, always improving. If, however, the graph charted every month in the 50 years, while the graph would start and end at the same heights, the line between the beginning and ending points would likely not be straight. Rather, it would show ups and downs along the way, revealing that the situation didn’t improve steadily every single month, day, or moment. But, it does show us that even when we experience a backslide, we can still be making progress overall…still better than we were before…still closer to our goal.
The difference lies in the perspective of what you’re measuring.
You need both perspectives to be whole.
You need to be able to see the details of immediate steps and stages, and you need to be able to view your journey from a higher perspective, and see your progress in the overall journey.
Like satellite images, as you pull back from seeing the details…faces, people, streets, and businesses involved…to a wider, more global image, you will see the neighborhood, then the city, then the state, etc.
As you view your journey from a wider perspective, you’ll see how far you’ve already traveled, and how much progress you’ve already made.
As you travel, remember:
- you can’t get anywhere unless you are in motion, taking action.
- it’s always easier to turn the wheels of your vehicle when it’s in motion than when you’re is standing still.
- if you’re trying to speed through the journey, you may miss a turn, skid off the road, or crash.
- at the proper rate of speed, you not only progress, you see the beauty, options, and signs along the way.
The same is true for your life.
Get behind the wheel of your life and start driving. Even if you don’t see your progress along the road right now, picture it from the view of the satellite, and know you’re on the right path going up, up, up!
Enjoy the view!
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.
Posted 1/21/18
When things seem dark or empty in your world…when you feel stuck in life…overwhelmed by problems or emotions…or unable to figure out how to get from where you are in life to where you want to be…when you can’t see how to turn things your way, what do you do?
How do you find your answers…your way to happiness?
Shine a light for someone else in their life.
When you turn a light on for them, your life is illuminated too…and the darkness disappears.
I Unlimited...helping you find your best self, and inner peace.