What Do You Know?

Here's a thought for you to ponder that may also mess with your mind for a day, or two, or ten....

I only know that I do not really know anything. And since I do not really know anything, I am free to choose what it is I know.

Just think about it.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Because some days you just have to choose to be happy! If you're having one of those days, here's something that will help to put a smile on your face and one in your heart where it counts most.

Courtesy of Bobby McFerrin: Don't Worry, Be Happy!

                               

Dance like nobody's watching. Love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening. Live like it's heaven on earth.

Edgy? Moi?!

I took a personality test today. Someone sent it to me via email and since there wasn't much else for me to do given there's about a foot plus of snow on the ground outside and no buses are running, I figured why not. (Then again, snow angels are always fun!)

I find personality assessments to be useful tools for understanding my psyche. I am careful to not let them limit me in any way, yet I appreciate any tool that can help me grow and become more of who I want to become. I have found that personality tests offer helpful guidance along those lines. I've used them to gain insight about how I make decisions or process information. I've also used them to help me assess the types of learning or work environments I'm best suited for, or even the best career options. I remember taking one such test about two years ago—required for my job—that provided insight into how I work as part of team. One aspect of my character it aptly identified is that I don't tolerate fools well. Needless to say, I'm no longer at that job!

Anyhoo... today's test was a bit more fun. It identified your five dominant personality traits—the ones that stand out to others when they get to know you. After answering about 20 questions, here are mine:

Edgy, experimental, open-minded, artistic, and intuitive.

Edgy? What a curious word to describe me. I had to look it up. One definition reads: tense, nervous, irritable. Another reads: at the forefront of a trend; experimental or avant-garde.

According to the Free Dictionary, edgy can also mean: Having a sharp or biting edge: an edgy wit; or daring, provocative, and trend-setting.

The Urban Dictionary defines edgy as the act of thinking that one is cool. And among the many synonyms I found for edgy were these: cutting-edge, on-the-edge, fringe, avant-garde, innovative, original, offbeat; gritty.

Edgy? Well, if by edgy, this assessment means cool, cutting-edge, avant-garde, trend-setting, or just plain original, I'm totally okay with being that. In fact, I intend to fully embrace and explore my edginess. Why the heck not? After all, it's the cutting-edge people who have dared to create their own style and their own rules, who have had the biggest impact on the world.

I Declare—2016 My Year of Abundance

to declare (v) - say something in a solemn and emphatic manner; acknowledge possession of; to make known or state clearly, especially in explicit or formal terms; to manifest, reveal, show; to proclaim.

It's 13 days into 2016, and while I set a clear intention on day one about the type of year I desired to experience, I think I need to shake things up a bit by openly declaring what I would like to transpire this year. To quote Joel Osteen: "You've got to send your words out in the direction you want your life to go."

So, I am sending my words forth into cyberspace and the universe:

I emphatically declare that this year, 2016, is my year of abundance! I will live the promise of an abundant life in every possible area. I aim to experience abundant joy, abundant peace, abundant love, abundant laughter, abundant health, and abundant wealth! I will take inspired action in the direction of my dreams, seek wise counsel, express gratitude daily, and be amazed at how heaven moves on my behalf. This year will be my best ever.

And yours too. Just declare it, and watch all of heaven move to make it so!


"...when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." - From The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Don't Quit

I love synchronicities. They feel like signs from God/the Universe that are saying "Hey, I'm listening to the very thoughts of your heart."

In case you're not familiar with the term, synchronicity is a concept first coined by psychiatrist Carl Jung to describe events that seem meaningfully related yet have no causal relationship. For example, you're thinking of a song you haven't heard in eons, and moments later when you jump in the car and turn on your radio, that exact song is playing.

Well, just yesterday I was thinking about the poem "Don't Quit," which I read for the first time about 15 years ago. I was actually going to search for it to post on my blog, but then became distracted by other things I needed to do.

Today I'm reading an online article about some new scientific breakthrough that promises to change lives, and in the related posts section at the very end of the article there's a link to the "Don't Quit" poem. How very cool. Especially, since I'm not all certain how it ranked as being related to the article I was reading. Even cooler... I click on the link and it takes me to a beautifully produced video featuring the poem. Every image and the music seem to perfectly represent the poet's intent.

So, if by chance 2016 isn't starting off quite as you had hoped, or maybe you just need a little extra push to keep those resolutions, watch this video and be inspired. Keep tissue handy.


 

Fighting to Hold On

I'm pretty sure I may have mentioned at least once on this blog that my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's like dementia a few years ago. I'm pretty certain that I've also noted that he was an ordained minister and the pastor of a church for nearly 50 years. Well on last night at about 12:22 a.m.—technically this morning—for reasons I'm not certain, my father began preaching a sermon in his sleep. I heard this as I sat in the guest bedroom of my parents' home working on yesterday's post, and suddenly I was inspired to write another.

The theme of my father's sermon seemed to be "Hold on, pay day is coming after a while," as those words came across quite clearly from across the hall.

Given the recent events of my own life about which I was still feeling some anxiety, the message was duly appreciated and received. For those not familiar with Pentecostal, Charismatic or Evangelical traditions, "pay day is coming after a while" was a common teaching among these branches of Christianity during my father's early years as a minister, I'm told. The idea is that if you keep the faith and continue in your good works, you will be richly rewarded someday while here on earth, or at least in the "sweet by-and-by." While my understanding of God has evolved as to no longer believe in a God who rewards and punishes us along the level of Santa Claus, which I believe speaks more to how we treat ourselves and each other, the idea of imminent blessings sounded very reassuring to me.

The entire moment lasted only about 20 minutes, which is about an eighth of the time that one of my father's sermons would have typically lasted during his peak years. I can't begin to know what prompted his midnight mini sermon. Perhaps, he was speaking out of a dream. Yet I would have to say it was a very powerfully delivered message. I heard in his voice the same force, the same strength of conviction, the same cadence that I'd come to expect on a Sunday morning. It was all so curious and strange and bittersweet.

Just six years ago, I remember thinking as I watched my father speak one Sunday that he may very well leave here like Moses—full of strength and days. Already in his mid-80s then, he preached as hard that day as I had seen him preach 20 years prior, still with handkerchief in hand to wipe the sweat dripping from his brow. And then slowly at first, and then more and more rapidly, his mind begin to deteriorate. The Bible verses that once came to him so easily, even the most obscure of passages, he struggled to recall. In fact, he fights now to hold on to the memory of the names of his children and grandchildren, the place where he grew up and where he now lives, what he ate for breakfast or dinner, or how to fasten the belt on his pants (my father was also once a licensed tailor). He fights most, with all he has in him, to hold onto to the memory of his own name—his sense of self and beingness, his "I am."

It's ironic and heartbreaking that after years of instilling in me and my siblings the absolute necessity of pursuing knowledge for it's own sake because "no one can ever take from you what you have in your mind," it is exactly that he fights to hold onto: the lifetime of knowledge in his mind of all he has experienced, learned, discovered, and accomplished.

Perhaps that is what prompted my father's mini sermon after midnight—it was a message to himself to "hold on."

Keep fighting dad! I believe that we are all stronger than we know. While you may not leave here like Moses, at the very least you'll be able to say like Paul: "I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith."

Universe Show Me a Model T?

During the last few weeks of 2015, I was dealing with some family, health, and financial challenges that at times felt difficult to overcome. In fact, if you had been a fly on the wall in my home, you would have seen me on some nights curled up in bed in the fetal position, sobbing.

I prayed and meditated and went inward as much as possible desperate to find some vestige of inner strength and faith that I was certain was still in me. Some days, I just plain shouted at the universe, God, the angels. When none of this seemed to get me back to calm, I decided to seek out some external motivation, something to push me to keep going. Well, I found it in a YouTube video posted by a motivational speaker I never heard of before who suggested that if you simply ask the universe to show you something beautiful, it will. First, as a reminder that you are not alone as the universe always hears and supports you. Second, as a way to reset your focus on the beauty that is around you.

Every morning, beginning just a few days before Christmas, I've asked the universe to show me something beautiful and unexpected. Every day, it's delivered: A treetop angel with multi-colored wings, a lovely picture of an angel a friend painted for her mother, yellow tulips in winter, a rainbow outside the window of the bus I was riding. There were so many things, I wish I'd written them down.

My New Year's Day Model T Sighting

So, on the first day of 2016, I decided to up the ante and ask to see something extraordinary and unexpected—something that I would know without a doubt the universe sent for me—because, quite frankly, I still really needed the boost. I never would have guessed an ordinary trip to the 7-Eleven for coffee would be the place where I'd find my extraordinary surprise. Yet, there it sat in the little parking lot right in front of me and several equally startled onlookers—A Model T Ford. How wonderfully awesome!

And why do I think the universe delivered this "just for me?" First, it was my second trip to the 7-Eleven that day when I had only intended to go once. Second, seeing a functioning Model T in my neighborhood is not an every day occurrence (seeing a broken down one is not even an every day occurrence). In fact, I can't recall the last time I spotted an authentic Model T being driven along the streets. Third, I used to collect miniatures of old cars—among them a Model T, of course—that I hoped to give to my son one day. I gave part of the collection to my dad; the other to my grand nephew. Finally, one of the first things I see every morning when I awake is a quote by Henry Ford, the Model T's creator, posted on my closet door: "I want it; I'll have it." (Maybe this should be my mantra for 2016.)

While I don't agree with his politics or personal prejudices, I do appreciate Ford's "never give up" spirit after having read a number of biographies about him. Despite the failure of his first two companies, Ford remained determined to follow his passion to create an automobile that would transform the then very new industry, and he did exactly that. More than a century later, the company he founded is still thriving and he is considered one of America's foremost industrialists.

In his book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill tells the story of how the Ford Motor Company created the V8 engine. When Ford presented his idea for the new engine to his engineers, they informed him it would be impossible to build. After he told them to "produce it anyway," they worked on making the engine for a year and were still not able to produce what Ford wanted. When informed of their failed efforts, his response was, "Go right ahead. I want it; I'll have it." So the engineers continued with their work and, as if by magic, the V8 engine was born.

“Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again; this time more intelligently,” Ford is quoted as having once said.

Begin again, more intelligently. Sounds like the perfect plan for moving forward into 2016—more determined and more focused to follow my own bliss and live the life of my dreams even if it requires me to shed a few more tears. After all, if Henry Ford had given up, I might never have experienced the joy of riding around in my SUV singing "I'm in love with car, oh yeah."

Here are a few more of my favorite quotes from Henry Ford:

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty." (This deserves its own blog post!)

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't—you're right. Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right."

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Remember, whatever it is you are seeking is seeking you. Keep moving forward and you're sure to meet somewhere in the middle.