Success is Not Overnight

Don’t Give Up Yet!

Actually, I’m an overnight success, but it took twenty years. ~Monty Hall

• When you see people who are successful it only looks like it happened overnight.
• You’re not seeing their failures and their false starts.
• You weren’t with them when no one believed in them or in what they were doing.
• You weren’t with them when they had to look in the eyes of family and friends who didn’t understand  exactly what they were doing.
• You weren’t with them when people asked: ‘Hey, what are you up to these days?”  and they knew that they really couldn’t talk about their stuff to certain people, because they wouldn’t get it or if they got it they would try to kill the idea with questions, doubts, and just how many ways this thing they were doing was “different”.

You Have To Be “Different” To Be a Success

Success only comes when you are true to yourself, in spite of who you are and in what others say.  It only comes when you ARE different.  When you are who you are – and are okay that “you’re different”.  When what you are doing is radical.  When it’s new.  When it hasn’t been done before.  When it hasn’t been done how you’re thinking about doing it.  It’s unique. It’s you.

Success only comes when  you believe strongly in what you are doing.  It only comes when you keep going regardless of what others may or may not think of what you’re doing.  It only comes when you’re okay with allowing things to play out.

Living A Everyday Mundane Life Just Doesn’t Cut It

There are 7.5 billion people in the world and many just live “everyday normal” lives that amount to not much but the daily routine of living.  Growing up, going to school, working, marrying, having children,eating, eating out, going to movies, sleeping,  going on vacation, retiring, playing sports, lounging around, entertaining themselves, enjoying holidays, and then-they-die.  They never really find their own path.  They never look for their own path.   Even those who find or think they might have found their path get caught up in living the mundane everyday life.  They have a flash of inspiration. They figure out what they’re good at.  They lose all sense of time when they engage in this activity or creative expression.  Then they don’t pursue it.  They miss their own deadlines.  They keep delaying the process of discovery and walking their path. They can’t let go of what is…the everyday normal stuff…to do what could be. They don’t give things a try because they are afraid of failure, afraid of looking stupid, afraid of things not working out – just afraid of being “different”, doing something “different” from what is  “normal”….and they look up and they’re still living just a mundane life.

Successful People Had The Same Doubts

Success comes to those who try and fail, maybe a hundred times.  But once you are a success people can never really see those failures, they only see what is in front of them – the successful person that – they watch on television, read their books, watch their movies, watch them play sports, see them at their businesses, see a piece of beauty in their artwork or walk into their corporate headquarters.

One day those successful people were afraid.  One day they were discouraged.  One day they didn’t think whatever they were working on was going to work out either.  One day they were alone developing whatever it was that brought them success, when others were seemingly having a good time (but in all actuality those other people were just living mundane lives…waking up, going to work, going on vacation…ect…).

One day those successful people were telling themselves that  it wasn’t going to work.  It could be better.  It could be branded differently.  Who did they think they were to keep on trying, BUT they overcame those days, and those thoughts, and just kept pushing on. They didn’t spend time living a mundane life.  They didn’t spend time entertaining themselves, or working for someone else, or working to keep up the pretenses that they had a good life – a good marriage, a good family, a good job, ect –  all the while knowing that they were really dead inside.

One day they just let all of those things go and pushed forward doing what they felt they needed to do, even if they failed, AGAIN.

Success only looks like it happened overnight, but it happened over MANY long nights, MANY sleepless nights, MANY lonely nights of knowing that no one really understood or cared about what they were doing or studying.

Finding the Right Track for the Remainder of Your Journey

Just know that we are all on a  journey.

It is an individual journey.

You have to find and take the journey for yourself.

When you get on the right track that’s for you then your journey starts to take off like a train you’ve been waiting for.  You know it because when you get on that track you don’t look back.  You know all those other tracks have led you to this one. You know you are still on a journey.

You know the way forward is unknown,  but it seems almost familiar.  The scenery is something that you’ve envisioned or experienced or thought out at some point in a waking state or a dreaming state or another place and time.  It just seems like: “Oh, this is familiar,  I found it,  I’ve been looking for this track and I finally found it.”

Then things start to just keep moving along and you look up and you’re successful.

Even before it actually manifests in your physical environment, you know you’re going to be successful if you stay on this track.

The Struggle Mind-Set Is Gone

People think it’s overnight and no matter how many times you try to tell your story (or embellish it) they don’t seem to hear it or believe the struggle that you went through because things are now effortlessly coming to you.

It’s’ even hard for you to believe your struggle story (did that really happen to me?, was that my childhood?, did I work there?, did I lose money on that idea?) because your mind has progressed to a place of such peace and alignment that you can’t believe you were so off track.

But you needed to be off track in order to know what being on the right track felt like.

You know that you needed to let go of things, people, ideas, concepts, places, and belief systems – that kept you stuck in the place that you knew you needed to leave.

It was not easy.

It was difficult.

Those decisions were hard.

You had to make them in order to let go of the struggle-type life and mindset. You knew it was not the right track for you, because you were honest with yourself.  You just have kept letting go (once you recognized that you needed to). Now you can see, or are in the future moment that you’ve only dreamed of. It even seems like it happened overnight to you…but you know that your success was not overnight…it just seems that way.

Success is Not Overnight…Keep Going

 

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 

~Soren Kiekegaard~

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Are you still asking yourself that same question that you were asked when you were in high school?

High School, that sure was a fun time. The joy of going to football games, hanging out with friends, going from class to class, dating, feeling weird most of the time, and trying to fit in.  (Even the so-called popular kids were feeling weird and trying to fit in.)  Think of all of those “decisions” that you had to make EVERYDAY in high school:

• You had to get up, either on your own or with the help of someone yelling five to six times for you to get out of bed.
• You had to find something to wear.  You had to be cool, of course, even if you only had a few cool clothes to mix and match.
• You had to get to school (by riding the bus, walking, or driving).
• You had to go through the day with other students, teachers, and administrators (you knew them just as principals).
• You had to make friends, keep friends, find friends, and try to be a friend.

The whole time you were wondering who was going to get on your nerves today, who was going to give you problems, and how you were going to deal with whatever would happen. On top of everything else going on, you had to do all of this schoolwork that really didn’t relate to anything going on in your real life. You had no idea what life after high school was all about.  You didn’t know what adulthood would mean.  All you knew was that going to school was what you HAD to do.  It was “your job”. You took all these classes, did the best you could, tried to have fun, and wanted to be popular and liked by others.  The whole time you were just trying to figure it all out. By the time you knew it, high school was almost over.  You had only a year or two left to go. People were now starting to ask you more frequently what you were going to do with your life. How on earth should you know? You were only 17 or 18 years old. What kind of question was that? They really were asking you like you were suppose to know!

Who knew what you were going to do with your L-I-F-E? 

YOU were supposed to know. 

Here is the really sad thing:  all of these “smart” people in your world really could not help you.  You were basically on your own in figuring it out.

What Did Others Think?

Of course, there are those parents and “loved ones” who knew EXACTLY what you should do because they wanted the best for you.  (Actually, it was them vicariously wanting to live through you. Now that they had some years behind them, made some wrong turns, they now thought THEY’D FINALLY figured it out. ) 

Well, you’d listened to them seemingly since the beginning of your time on earth, and YOU sure didn’t know what do.  You either did what they told you should do, or you did the very opposite of what they told you should do. No matter what choice you made, you begin to realize that in the end you had to figure this out for yourself.  No one could really make all the decisions for you.  

You started making decisions and pretty soon these decisions were becoming “YOUR LIFE”.

So now, where are you today? Maybe you need to make a turn, maybe you need to just stop.  Is today the day that you need to wake up and Just Quit doing what is not working?  What will your life look like if you keep doing what you’re doing?  Any regrets?  Are you happy?  Did you live YOUR LIFE or did you live somebody else’s?  Today, begin again, you can live the life you were born to live.  

It’s time to figure it out…finally…go on an adventure and search for…Who YOU Are? 

Just Quit Working for Someone Else

 

 

You can not discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. ~ Tibetan Proverb

Working for others goes hand in hand with working at a job that you know you need to Just Quit.

Most of us know that working for someone else is not going to really get us anywhere, but most of us are scared to make it on our own.

Why are we scared?

Usually there are two reasons:

1. We like the idea of a steady paycheck, and
2. We like the idea of going to the doctor.

It you don’t have a job working for someone else, then you may struggle to get paid and have health and life insurance.  (At least that’s how it is in the USA). Isn’t that really the bottom line?

Have you ever stopped to consider that every organization that has employees had to start at the beginning with an idea? Someone just decided that they would start one day. Someone had a good idea and decided to make that idea materialize and become a reality.

Let us dream…

Let us dream of you being the employer who provides the paycheck and the insurance. It might just be for you, but it could be for others as well.

This has to be possible because people are doing it everyday. Why can’t you be one of those people?  You can be that person. You might have to take it in stages.

You might have to figure out a plan and work the plan. It might take you two, five, or ten years.

You just have to start.  You just have to begin.  Just take the first step.

Name the business.  Type the business plan.  Get the business license.  Find the building.  Find the suppliers.  Get the quotes.  Work out the service you are going to provide.  Find the target market.  Design the presentation.  Find the warehouse.  Find out how much money it will take.

                  

What can you commit to doing today towards your business idea?

Do It. 

Just Start.

Then Keep Doing Something  (even if it’s a teeny, tiny something) EVERYDAY.

Solvitur Ambulando

“You can sort it out by walking”

 

There is something magical and meditative about walking,

especially if you do it daily.

 It becomes a necessity.

I ran across the above Latin saying  in the Meditation year book :

It means “you can sort it out by walking”.  

And you CAN sort it out by walking.  

Just walk it off.  

You’ll be amazed that when you allow yourself to truly experience the rhythmic and repetitive act of walking

it will steady your mind, and

you can sort it all out…

so Solvitur Ambulando…

Cartwheels of Joy

Release the Joy Inside

 

It is a really great feeling to WANT to do a cartwheel.

When joy bubbles up inside of you.. (and it will once you start letting go to let come)… you’ll feel like a kid again and want to do a cartwheel.

 Now, depending on how old you are, how much you weigh,  and what type of health insurance you have (or don’t have)  will determine if you will “actually” decide to do a cartwheel.   

But if you don’t or can’t do a cartwheel you can remember how you felt when you did or could do a cartwheel when you were younger.

You can smile and know that you’ve re-discovered that joy inside of yourself…that expressed itself by doing physical cartwheels.  

(To those of you who are still in your youth: DO LOTS OF CARTWHEELS and enjoy them!) 

May your mind whirl joyful cartwheels of creativity.

May your heart sing sweet lullabies of timelessness.

May your essence be the nectar of the open blossom of your joy.

May your spirit soar throughout the vast cathedral of your being.
                                                                                          – Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Just Quit Blowing Money

Are You Blowing Money?

• Is blowing money a problem for you?
• If you have money do you feel you need to spend it?
• Do you continue to shop and shop and shop and shop?
• How many clothes, shoes, knick knacks, electronics, and grown-folks toys do you really need?
• If you shop just for something to do, then you are in the danger zone.  That means that your credit cards are (about) at the limit, that your closets are overflowing, your garage needs cleaning, and you can’t dust all the stuff you own quick enough.
• Do you have more things than you’ll ever need?
• Do you have several sizes of clothes (small, medium, and large)?
• Do you buy the latest “must have” things that you see advertised?
• Do you shop for stress relief?
• Are you spending money that could be better spent, saved, or even invested?
• Before you buy anything else, ask yourself what it will be worth at your next yard sale or if you will need to advertise it online FOR FREE just to get rid of it.

Do You Need To JUST QUIT Blowing Money?

Just Quit Living on "E"

Living on Empty

Running on Empty

When you are accustomed to living on empty in your relationships, in your personal life, in your work life, financially, and in your head —  it’s hard to really come to terms when abundance starts to happen.

What abundance may look like  (it’s different for each of us) – you meet someone who is perfect for you, you get the job offer you’ve always wanted, and money starts to come from unexpected places.

 Then what happens?

You start to question it.

Is this person the right person?  Is this the right job?  Will I blow investing this money?   Will I screw this up?  Will this all turn to dust?  When is the rug going to be pulled from under me?  This can’t be happening to me? On and on goes your mind…the mind that’s use to Running on Empty.

You’ve  HOPED things were going to change.

You’ve  WANTED things to change.

Then things start changing and you wonder if you can trust it.

You’ve been Living on Empty for so long  (some people for all of their lives) this is what you think is normal.

Get Ready for a “New” Normal

When you stop being afraid of letting go of what is, who and what may NOT be for you – things that keep you off-balance –  then the UNIVERSE starts to work FOR YOU.  Things that ARE for you start coming to you — EFFORTLESSLY!

It is hard to accept this, if you’re not use to it.

It’s NEW.

It doesn’t seem Normal.

All this time you’ve been struggling trying to make this happen, or that happen, then you decide to just stop struggling.  Once you realize that life is not a struggle, the struggle is over , then everything starts to fall into place.

First – You Have To Let Go In Order For Abundance To Come

All of this alignment with abundance only happens when you are okay with letting go of control, letting go of people, letting go of things, of hoping, wishing and praying for what YOU think you want and who YOU think you want.

If it’s a struggle… if it ain’t working out…then it ain’t for you.  Let it go.  Just let it go.  Stop trying to make it work out.  Even though, technically,  things that CAN’T be sustained WILL end, you don’t have to wait for it to die a natural death…that could take YEARS! If it is a “real” struggle (that’s a clue for things to let go of), if it feels like putting a square block in a hole meant for a circle, then you need to start the process of letting it go once you realize that.

Second- Expect Your Mind to Freak You Out

When you let go, expect your mind to go into free fall and freak you out with FEAR about letting go of what or who you have in your life.  You’ll start thinking a bunch of negative thoughts about change, lost, holding on, keeping, at least you have this or that, don’t rock the boat, ect.

You have to let go first in order for things to start to change and for things to get in alignment in YOUR life.

You’ll find that somehow you’ve made it through something that seems like a tunnel.  It’s dark, It’s dank, It’s scary, It’s the unknown, It’s the abyss, and It seems like it will never end.  Then all of a sudden you wake up and you’re on the other side.  You’re through the tunnel.  Things have changed.  Things have worked out.  It’s AMAZING.  But in order to get through that tunnel you have to allow your mind to freak you out.  It will try to scare you into NOT letting go, but just allow it and go through that tunnel.

Third- Accept and Allow Abundance in Your Life

Expect things to improve and when they start to improve, ALLOW them to improve.

Don’t question it.  Don’t wonder if you deserve it.  You do. Why not you? Why can’t you be in a fantastic relationship?  (Someone who compliments you in every way – spiritually, emotionally, socially, financially and sexually). Why can’t your career  and job be one that you enjoy doing? (Something that uses your key talents and skills and that pays well.) Why can’t your business idea work out, be profitable and help the world out? (Even if  all the last 100 ideas you have had didn’t work out over the years — why not this one?). Why can’t you have money in the bank, savings, investments, nice rental property and be able to go and do what you want and need to do that requires money?

All of these abundance-minded things are there for you. (Abundance will mean different things to different people –  maybe abundance to you means living in cave reading books all day…whatever abundance means for you and to you then it’s there for you, but you have to expect it, accept it and allow it into your life)

NOW – Be Grateful

When your tank starts going from Empty to 1/3 of a tank to 1/2 of a  tank, to 3/4 of a tank to a FULL TANK — Just Be Grateful.  Know that you deserve it and that you are FINALLY in the flow of “your life”.

You are FINALLY living without Fear.

You are FINALLY living a FULL and FREE Life.