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Posts from the ‘Abundance’ Category

Aug 30

On Alert

“Every day is a gift from God. Learn to focus on the Giver and enjoy the gift!” – Joyce Meyer

“Opportunities present themselves every day – to everyone. You just have to be alert and ready to act.” – Marc Ostrofsky

Be on alert
Find the squirrel in the tree
The brilliance in the bounty of summer bloom
The regreening of grass from fresh rain
The gentleness in your thoughts
The compassion in your heart
The empathy in your words
The kindness in your actions
Build, create, praise
Be on alert
Your life is happening today.

“Great effort is required to arrest decay and restore vigor. One must exercise proper deliberation, plan carefully before making a move, and be alert in guarding against relapse following a renaissance.” – Horace

Aug 25

No Small Acts

“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” —Mother Teresa

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.” —Scott Adams

Never underestimate the power of thoughts and words
Go beyond yourself and encourage others
If you want to change the world, you can today in small acts
Be kind, smile, greet a stranger, call a friend, text encouraging words to a family member
Put aside opinion, judgment and righteousness and be a good human being
We are not called to be doers, busy, efficiently checking off tasks
We are called to be light, peace and joy
Get your mind off yourself, being offended, being owed anything, comparison and counting
It’s a trap that keeps you stuck, shrinks your world
Be generous and suddenly you become rich
What will you leave behind on the path you walk today?
Seeds or weeds
Brighten someone’s day and the sun shines on both

“That is what compassion does. It challenges our assumptions, our sense of self-limitation, worthlessness, of not having a place in the world, our feelings of loneliness and estrangement. These are narrow, constrictive states of mind. As we develop compassion, our hearts open.” —Sharon Salzberg

Aug 24

Your All

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller

May the ink run dry in your pen as you write the story of your life
Pouring it all out
Filling blank spaces with poetry, curiosity and messy imperfection
Words of praise
Thoughts of gratitude
Actions of generosity
Show up, participate, give it your all!
Game on.

“Be curious, not judgmental.” – Walt Whitman

Aug 18

Framing and Shaping

“Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.” – Victor Hugo
“Life is a moving, breathing thing. We have to be willing to constantly evolve. Perfection is constant transformation.” – Nia Peeples

“Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.” – Victor Hugo

What and how we frame our circumstances, relationships and self in it all defines our daily experience, outlook and attitude. If we focus on what’s missing, on the past, on what’s next, we miss the gift of what is already present and woven in this moment. Cease counting and comparing to gratitude and transformation, moving from controlling and scarcity to framing and shaping.

Optimism, abundance and hope are principles, anchors, ways of living that pull you through difficulties and amplify wonderful seasons. There’s an ebb and flow, up and down, seasons and spinning and meaning in it all. Turmoil, change and transitions lead to transformations, new beginnings and growth. Don’t get caught in the mechanics of life at the expense of experiencing the magic of life.

Frame and shape the material of what is available now. Create something new from the ingredients that you have in and surrounding you in this day. How you approach, frame and shape your daily life is yours alone so do your job, your purpose and answer your own calling.

While in the middle and murkiness, live rooted in the unfailing hope and optimism of new beginnings, transformation and promise of possibilities fulfilled in due time. Let nothing steal your joy. Frame and shape each day armed with gratitude, grace and light.

“The great solution to all human problems is individual inner transformation.” – Vernon Howard

Aug 11

Break Trail

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” – Confucius

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Veer off trail, explore, wander
Fresh footprints on new land
Crisp air
Bathe and splash in beauty abound
Abundant possibilities
Take the path less traveled
Seize this day.

 

Aug 8

Holy Ordinary

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” — Henry Miller

“Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted–a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.” — Rabbi Harold Kushner

It’s been a dry desert-like summer. Two mornings waking to soaking rain is sweet music. It is greening up the grass, softening the earth, clearing the smoky air from fires in Canada. We appreciate and value things more when they are absent. Gratitude invites us to live life in “real-time” when we are in the midst of it, not in memory.

“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present — love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure — the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.” –Sarah Ban Breathnach

Daily gratitude brings our blessings that we take for granted or pass by looking for the next thing to the forefront, center stage. Don’t just count your blessings, experience them fully in the moment. Commit to a daily gratitude practice and begin the adventure of abundance, ease and joy. Saying “thank you” throughout this day is a good start.

“You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.” — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Aug 7

Still Points

“I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods.” – Georg Trakl

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”― T.S. Eliot

Stand still in body, mind and spirit
From the hustle and hurry of somewhere else
Allow ease in from quiet reflection
To the awareness that somewhere, some day is now
Pause long enough to see blessings already present
If gifts available in this moment are unseen, how will you ever recognize more?
Depth rather than shallow width
Stop counting and start receiving what is
Abundance beyond measure
Separate your being from circumstances so as not to be bound by them
Let gratitude, awareness and attention be your guide
Go from doing to accepting, to acknowledging, to praise
Receive, accept, absorb
Close your eyes, create still points and simply say “thank you”

“So Joseph stored up the grain in such abundance-like the sand of the sea-that he stopped measuring it; it was beyond measure.”-Genesis 41:49

Aug 3

Under Your Roof

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” – Barbara Kingsolver

We make plans, set goals, do the work. Often, we don’t end up where we aimed for or we do and it’s not what we think it should be. Detours, delays, wrong turns are all apart of the trip. If we focus only on the destination, we miss the journey. Hindsight shows how it is all woven together, the path is clear over the shoulder. Going forward to new destinations requires trust, permeability and malleability.

Reignite your imagination, jumpstart wonder and learn how to dream again. Broaden your horizon with optimism rather than narrow and shallow it with rearview mirror thinking. Go into each new day into unknowing and inquiry, look for patterns and new connections in what is already present and available today. Hope, joy and enthusiasm – fuel for the journey, even to places and spaces not in our plans.

“Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.” – Elie Wiesel

Jul 29

Deliberately

“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”― Khalil Gibran

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”― Henry David Thoreau

Shed the chaos
Tune out the noise
Narrow to go deeper
Plant seeds
Prune dead branches
Transcend the nonessential
Define your essential
Go there
Live deliberately.

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”― Greg Mckeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Jul 28

Will and Wings

“Over and over, we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open—not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live.”― Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.”― Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

When things get heavy, lay them down, even if but for a moment;
Worry left behind dissolves on its own;
Allow light in, a breeze to cool the room;
Gratitude reveals blessings amidst burdens;
No rules or boundaries;
Dream big, deep and wide;
Pursue with rigor;
Let your imagination off leash to run free and with abandon;
Rest on the shore of life and then enter the tide again;
The ebb and flow;
Give into radical joy;
Will and wings;
Defy gravity, take flight.

“Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we’ve spun, the tasks we’ve assumed, the problems we have to solve. They’ll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.”― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

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