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Posts tagged with “Purpose”

6 Tips to Find Your Bliss So You Can Follow It

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“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” ~Dalai Lama

I’m betting you’ve heard the advice to “follow your bliss.” While I find there to be much value in those words, I submit that this mindset can become a trap.

It’s not the bliss I have an issue with. It’s the part about following.

If you are going to follow your bliss, the supposition is that you already know what it is. Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. Yet.

When I was in my early twenties, my mother invited me to join …

Happiness Comes to Those Who Live Their Calling

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“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

I was on tour with a famous rock legend, Joe Walsh from the mega-successful seventies band, The Eagles.

We were riding around in one of those air brushed tour busses, living the party life and flying to exotic places. Staying in the finest hotels. Beautiful women hanging around the backstage door trying to get my attention.

You would think this would be a dream come true, right?

Here I was rubbing shoulders with people like Stevie Nicks, Willie Nelson, and The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and yet, …

Finding Your Special Thing: Connect with Your Passion

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“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

You know what it is; you’ve always known. Maybe it’s been just a shadow in the fog, or it’s crystal clear in amazing Technicolor before your eyes. Either way, it’s there, sometimes stinging you with a numb sense of denial, sometimes scratching at your skin like a bad case of poison sumac.

It’s existed since the day you arrived on earth with a cry and a gasp.You knew it already when you were small, when you drew pictures with crayons and finger paint, when you …

When Your Dreams Change: Let Your Values Guide You

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“It is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” ~Roy Disney

It has been four months now since I made the hardest decision of my life.

In the fourth grade, I made a pledge to work as much I had to until I became successful and moved the heck out of Ohio!

That commitment led me to graduate as valedictorian in high school and summa cum laude in college. However, it also resulted in missed recess (to do homework), missed parties (to research), and missed relationships (to study). Of course, I am not upset, …

When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed: Create a To-Live List

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“The only pressure I’m under is the pressure I’ve put on myself” ~Mark Messier

It was enough. I was lying in the bathtub with the water up to my nose when I realized that I couldn’t go on like I’d been going.

I had been working incredibly hard over the few months prior, so hard that I had forgotten why I was even doing it. And now that I was stressed out and exhausted, I was trying to remember.

That’s why I had escaped into the bathtub, without any books or magazines to distract me from myself.

I thought …

When the Pursuit of Greatness Does More Harm Than Good

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“Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.” ~Horace Mann

You’re destined for greatness. Don’t settle for mediocrity. You can be extraordinary.

Have you ever heard one of these motivating statements? I see them all the time around the web, and while I understand the intention, I sometimes have mixed feelings about the implication.

We all want to make a difference in the world. We all want to make some kind of impact, both to contribute to mankind and to feel that our lives mean something.

It’s a great, big world out there, and at times …

Make Your Life a Mission Not an Intermission

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“Make your life a mission, not an intermission.” ~Arnold H. Glasgow

My eyes fluttered open. I could see the sunshine pouring through my rose-colored curtains. For a few golden seconds, there was quiet, there was peace. Then I remembered, “You have an audition today. Two hours away from where you live!”

I spun around so quickly that I made myself into a human burrito stuck in my blankets. I grabbed my cell phone. Wow—I had woken up, naturally, two hours before I even had to leave for my audition.

I wrestled with my blanket, and when I finally released myself …

A Simple Process to Turn Fear into Power

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“You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.” ~Yogi Bhajan

Have you ever stopped to think about your definition of fear?

As my dear friend Mr. Webster states, fear is “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.”

Simply put, I disagree with this definition of fear.

My definition of fear goes something like this….

“An opportunity for self discovery and self growth; a well of untapped personal power and strength; the gateway from wishing and wanting to doing and being.”

Yes, fear can be …

7 Important Questions to Ask Yourself Today

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“What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.” ~Unknown

During the first week of July 2012, a storm left my little town and nearly one million other people in the Mid-Atlantic Region without electricity. The outage lasted eight days for Buffalo, Ohio, and we saw triple digits (F) each day.

I spent much of my free time in a hammock practicing my watching skills. I watched as I breathed in. I watched as I breathed out.

I watched thoughts pop up out of nowhere as I watched the leaves of two …

A Letter from Your Calling

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“Every calling is great when greatly pursued.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

It’s me. The one who keeps talking to you about that thing. That project. That possibility.

I know you think you couldn’t be the one for the job, but honestly, if you weren’t the one for the job, I wouldn’t have come to you with it.

I wouldn’t have come knocking at the door of your mind. I wouldn’t have come into your dreams, into your imagination, into your heart.

I wouldn’t have made it so compelling to think about me.

I wouldn’t have planted in you the frustration with …

Why We Need to Keep Growing: Lessons from Firewalking

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“Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.” ~Walter Anderson

I recently ran across a chat site called “Why Grow Up?” Their tagline reads:

“Why Grow Up? Why be responsible? Why act mature?

Why play by rules? Why eat healthy? Why sleep early?

Why become a doctor? Why this? WHY ME? WHY WHY WHY?”

I laughed aloud when I read that remembering something I had said 18 years ago to my husband, Jake: “I just want to retire and garden.”

I was tired of …

Embracing Uncertainty: The Future is Open, Not Empty

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“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it but to enable it.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A month ago, I was at a crossroads. I was unhappy with my job, I no longer wanted to be living at home, I was tired of being three states away from my boyfriend, and I was sick of feeling unfulfilled.

I knew change was coming, but what I did not know was that I was to be the catalyst.

I had moved back in with my parents after college, as I started the daunting task of job searching. I worked retail …

9 Powerful Life Lessons from Studying with a Monk

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“Doing your best means never stop trying.” ~Unknown

When I was 18 years old, I suffered from anxiety and stomach problems. A compassionate physician and practicing Buddhist referred me to a Taoist monk who specialized in meditation and martial arts. I ended up healing myself of anxiety and stomach issues by doing meditation, and went on a great journey of self-discovery.

Here are 9 lessons I learned while studying with a monk:

1. Keep trying until you get it right.

The most important life lesson I learned was trying something three times (maybe even four times) before you stop …

Start the Climb: Take One Purposeful Step

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“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.” ~H. Jackson Browne

When I close my eyes and ponder the dreams that I have, the hopes and wishes that I cradle in my heart, I wonder what has prevented me from reaching for and achieving them. Oh, I come up with a whole slew of excuses, sometimes disguised as “reasons.”

The seeker of my truth fires back with a rebuttal most of the time.

“It is better to attempt and fail than fail to make any attempt at all,” it says in response to …

Life Is Shaping Us Through Our Dreams

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“With ‘I’ eliminated, this is Nirvana, here and now.”  ~ Buddha

I remember when I started learning Spanish in college. I wanted to visit Spain. I had grand ideas about a romantic voyage. And yes, I had a foreign language credit to fill.

If you know the Spanish language at all, you know that the Spanish construction for pleasure is the reverse of our English language. In English, we say, “I like that.” But, in Spanish, we say “Me gusta” which translates as, “It pleases me.”

In other words, in English we are the actors, the subjects, who actively do …

What You Do Matters

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“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I used to refer to myself as a white crayon in the coloring box of life.

Have you ever wondered what purpose a white crayon serves? There are all of these other beautiful colors to be put to good use, but the white crayon just kind of sits there and tends to get overlooked.

That’s exactly how I felt. I felt like I was just merely existing and not serving any kind of purpose. And at the time, …

The World Needs You to Follow Your Inspiration

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“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.” ~Unknown

As I left the San Francisco head office of the clothing company I worked for, I felt anxious and scared. I knew, in the depth of my heart and soul, that I did not belong there and that I needed to do something about it.

Up until a year before then, I had thought I did. But then I met this new friend who was a very spiritual person. He talked to me about things like universal mind, energy, …

Getting Out of a Rut and Working on a Passion

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“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” – Charles R. Swindoll

For twenty-something me, a college drop-out utterly overwhelmed with choice and bewildered by unemployment, it can easily feel like a void of nothingness, so black and dense there is little point in considering a future beyond it.

I see friends studying Economics, English, and Engineering. They’ve joined their circus, and I haven’t even started yet. I’m behind, I’ll never catch-up; I’ll be the kid that got held up.

College has structure, solidity, a process, respect, certification, and a certain standing. …

When You’ve Lost Your Sense of Purpose

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 “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?” ~Mary Oliver

I was always the child with armfuls of books and big dreams. I wanted to be a writer. When the limit at the local library was six books, I borrowed all six, and then talked my sister into letting me borrow some of her weekly ration.

While I had many friends, most lived several minutes away, and public transportation wasn’t available. When I couldn’t arrange a sleepover, my sibling and my books were ever at the ready to play school.

My parents …

How to Achieve Unexpected Success

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“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Success.

A word defined by you and me.

Do not be manipulated by the definitions applied to that word by others. Choose your own definition.

Though I believe we all have the potential to succeed in reaching our dreams, I have found that success reaches to a far greater depth in our lives.

Whenever I hug my wife of 28 years and tell her that I love her, …