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Know
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THIS WEEK'S ISSUE From the Inside Out...
BE the World One never knows what The Universe has in store for us. Personally, I believe that IT IS ALL GOOD ... though we may have to spend some time in reflection to discover how many blessings in disguise have resulted in the evolution of our soul. ~ Chelle Thompson, Editor
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From the Inside Out
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SOUL
SURFER is a moving account of the thirteen-year-old
surfer girl who lost her arm in a shark attack but never lost
her faith — and of her triumphant return to competitive
surfing. Written with passion and insight, and filled with
thrilling moments of the sport Bethany has come to personify,
this is a portrait of American heroism that will captivate
readers of all ages. It is a story of girl power and spiritual
grit that shows that the body is no more essential to surfing
— perhaps even less so — than the soul. Now, in
Soul Surfer, this extraordinary fourteen-year-old recounts
her incredible, harrowing story in her own unforgettable voice.
By Bethany Hamilton |
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As a life coach, I often hear people say they lack motivation – in fact, the “motivation discussion” is almost a ritual with my new clients. You really want something, in fact you almost need it, but you just don’t have the drive to get to it. As a result, you blame yourself; you get stuck in your disappointment, your guilt, or your frustration – further and further away from your goal. But why are we not always driven enough to meet our objectives in the first place? Is it that we are not sufficiently determined? Or maybe we are not tough and strong enough? The way I see things, motivation is akin to the sap that runs in the tree: it keeps the tree alive – in fact, it’s essential to it – but it’s useless if the tree (our objective) is rooted in poor, unhealthy grounds. It’s not our motivation that makes the objective real, it’s the other way around: when our goals are healthy, the drive to take action flows naturally. When our goals are unhealthy, we have to push ourselves all along the path to “success” – and we don’t even feel like celebrating at the end (when we do get there). So what is an “unhealthy” objective? It’s an objective we hold for the wrong reasons, or with the wrong attitude: it’s rooted in poor grounds. It’s not that we should not lose weight; it’s just that we decided to do so because we don’t like (let alone love) ourselves and we think that will patch the problem. It’s not that we should not start this new business; it’s just that we are dead afraid of failure. And there’s nothing wrong with studying law, it’s just that we do so only to honor our (deceased) father’s values and wishes. There are many factors that can literally kill our motivation at its roots, but weakness certainly isn’t one of them. The real motivation inhibitors go more along this line: - Our objective is not a real priority (Going to the gym, when you have three children to take care of) - We feel our objective is inaccessible (A brand-new Volvo when we can’t afford a Toyota) - Our objective was inspired or chosen by someone else (That law degree…Or maybe your partner wants you to stop smoking) - Our objective is motivated by self-rejection rather than self-respect (Very frequent, and always overlooked. People trying to lose weight often experience that) - Our objective is a strong “should”, or a vibrant “must”; but not a “want” (It would be appropriate to be in better terms with the other members of our family, but we are too resentful about past events to really change anything) - We are afraid of success, afraid of failure. Afraid of something (We are conflicted about our objective, we have mixed motives – even if we are not aware of them) - Our objective is not in alignment with our true self (Looking for a job in a field that doesn’t feel right to us) - Some part of us doesn’t want to reach our objective, for some reasons (We know that when we do reach our goal, we’ll have to do or experience something that repulses us) - We feel overwhelmed by all the actions we have to take (we have a hard time taking one small step at a time) - A recent failure makes us feel powerless, etc. When we start looking at this, we realize that the results we get (or do not get) are an accurate reflection of what we deeply think, and feel. We do not experience in life what we hope for, but rather what we think we deserve, what we expect, what we are the most confident in. That’s how we create. We will not feel much motivation for a goal that is incongruent with our profound beliefs and thoughts – as idyllic as this goal may be. Motivation isn’t about toughness and strength – it’s about alignment. It’s not necessarily about wanting something very badly… but more about wanting something completely. When we lack motivation, some part of us is saying, “I don’t want to reach that goal – it doesn’t serve me”. Maybe it’s time to change our objective… maybe we need to look inward and take care of other things first (see the list above). Or maybe we just need to take a deep breath, relax, and listen to the wind for a while… About
the Author: Marie-Pier Charron, life coach, is founder of Implosions,
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Far Horizons ECLIPSE AT
CAPPADOCIA
Cappadocia
(Kapadokya) is Persian for the "land of beautiful horses."
It is an enchanting open-air museum and an unparalleled example
of the common cultural heritage of humanity. Cappadocia, Turkey,
is in the middle of a once active volcanic region. At the time
when the Anatolia region was completing its geographical evolution,
these volcanic eruptions were so strong that the lava in some
places was up to 100 meters thick. Over many millions of years,
volcanoes, wind, rain and ice sculpted what we now know as Cappadocia.
As the land eroded, the basalt stones remained and formed conical
structures sometimes reaching as high as 45 meters. The local
people called these unique Peribacalari rock formations
"Fairy Chimneys", a name that has endured throughout
the ages. If nature was the first artist to arrange the decor,
it was Anatolian man who over the centuries carved the rocks and
built houses, churches and over 120 underground cities. The largest
of these, Ozkonak, once had a population of 60,000. The canyon
formed by the Melendiz stream, which has pierced its way through
the rocks, is called the Ihlara Valley. In this 14-km long valley
there are 105 churches and 4535 houses. Cappadocia defies description.
You have to go there and bathe in its atmosphere, colors and luminance
to experience the wonder.
In
addition, the "Eat Well Guide" is a
free, online directory of farms, stores, restaurants and online
outlets in the US and Canada. Consumers simply enter their zip
code to find local products that were raised sustainably, including
no antibiotics, no added hormones, pasture raised, grass fed
and organic. (Contributed by Jim in Galena,
Illinois)
COMPUTER-EASE "Disk
Cleanup" |
YOUR
Thoughts & Feelings
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"NIGHT
OF THE LIVING CHOCOLATES" I love Halloween. It reminds me of my happy childhood days as a student at Wampus Elementary School in Armonk, N.Y., when we youngsters used to celebrate Halloween by making decorations out of construction paper and that white paste that you could eat. This is also how we celebrated Columbus Day, Washington's Birthday, Lincoln's Birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, New Year's, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Armistice Day, Flag Day, Arbor Day, Thursday, etc. We brought these decorations home to our parents, who by federal law, were required to attach them to the refrigerator with magnets. That was a wonderful, carefree time in which to be a youngster or construction-paper salesperson. But it all ended suddenly one day — I'll never forget it — when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, called "Sputnik" (which is Russian for 'Little Sput'). Immediately all the grown-ups in America became hysterical about losing the Space Race, which led to a paranoid insecurity about our educational system, expressed in anguished newspaper headlines asking, "WHY AREN'T OUR KIDS LEARNING IN SCHOOL?" I wanted to answer, "BECAUSE ALL WE EVER DO IS MAKE DECORATIONS OUT OF CONSTRUCTION PAPER," but I couldn't, because my mouth was full of paste. But getting back to Halloween: It's still one of the most fun holidays of the year, as well as one of the most traditional, tracing its origins back more than 2,000 years to the Druids, an ancient religious cult that constructed Stonehenge as well as most of the public toilets in England. The Druids believed that one night each year, at the end of October, the souls of the dead returned to the world of the living and roamed from house to house costumed as Power Rangers. And thus it is that to this day, youngsters come to our door on Halloween night shouting: "Trick or treat!" According to tradition, if we don't give the youngsters a 'treat', their parents will 'sue' us. That's why most of us traditionally prepare for Halloween by going to the supermarket and purchasing approximately eight metric tons of miniature candy bars, which we dump into a big bowl by the door, ready to hand out to the hordes of trick-or-treaters. The irony, of course, is that there ARE no hordes of trick-or-treaters, not any more. We in the news media make darned sure of that. Every year we publish dozens of helpful consumer-advice articles, cheerfully reminding parents of the dangers posed by traffic, perverts, poisoned candy, and many other Halloween hazards that parents would never think of if we didn't remind them ("Have fun, but remember that this year more than 17,000 Americans will die bobbing for apples"). The result is that many children aren't allowed to go trick-or-treating, and the ones who ARE allowed out come to your house no later than 4:30 p.m., wearing reflective tape on their Power Rangers costumes and trailed at close range by their parents, who watch you suspiciously and regard whatever candy you hand out as though it were unsolicited mail from the Unabomber. So for most of Halloween, your doorbell is quiet. This means that you pass the long night alone, hour after hour, just you and the miniature candy bars. After a while they start calling seductively to you from their bowl in their squeaky little voices: "Hey, Big Boy!" they call. "We're going to waste over here!" As the evening wears on they become increasingly brazen. Eventually they crawl across the floor, climb up your body, unwrap themselves and force themselves bodily into your mouth. There's no use hiding in the bathroom, because they'll just crawl under the door and tie you up with dental floss and threaten to squeeze toothpaste in your eye unless you eat them. At least that's what they do to me. By the end of the night my blood has the same sugar content as Yoo-Hoo. But eating huge amounts of candy allegedly purchased for youngsters is only part of the Halloween tradition. The other part is buying a pumpkin and carving it to make a 'jack-o'-lantern', which sits on your front porch, a festive symbol of the age-old truth — first discovered by the Druids — that there is no practical use for pumpkins. I'd give you more details, but right now I need to do something about these tiny Milky Ways crawling up my legs. ~By
Dave Barry, Miami Herald Columnist (October 27, 1996)
ARCHIVES:..
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Fascinating
Facts
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College professor and author Lee Ryan Miller recently shared the following article for Inspiration Line readers. The theme fits well with this week's story about Bethany Hamilton. "Who You Are Speaks Louder to Me Than Anything You Can Say" is from Lee's book Teaching Amidst the Neon Palm Trees ... "At the beginning of my 8:00 a.m. class one Monday at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, I cheerfully asked my students how their weekend had been. One young man said that his weekend had not been very good. He’d had his wisdom teeth extracted. The young man then proceeded to ask me why I always seemed to be so cheerful. His question reminded me of something I'd read somewhere before: 'Every morning when you get up, you have a choice about how you want to approach life that day,' I said to the young man. 'I choose to be cheerful. Let me give you an example,' I continued. The other sixty students in the class ceased their chatter and began to listen to our conversation. “In addition to teaching here at UNLV, I also teach out at the community college in Henderson, about seventeen miles down the freeway from where I live. One day a few weeks ago I drove those seventeen miles to Henderson. I exited the freeway and turned onto College Drive. I only had to drive another quarter-mile down the road to the college. But just then my car died. I tried to start it again, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. So I put my flashers on, grabbed my books, and marched down the road to the college. As soon as I got there I called AAA and asked them to send a tow truck. The secretary in the Provost's office asked me what had happened. ‘This is my lucky day,’ I replied, smiling. “‘Your car breaks down and today is your lucky day?’ She was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’ “‘I live seventeen miles from here.’ I replied. ‘My car could have broken down anywhere along the freeway. It didn't. Instead, it broke down in the perfect place: off the freeway, within walking distance of here. I'm still able to teach my class, and I've been able to arrange for the tow truck to meet me after class. If my car was meant to break down today, it couldn't have been arranged in a more convenient fashion.’ “The secretary's eyes opened wide, and then she smiled. I smiled back and headed for class. So ended my story to the students in my economics class at UNLV. I scanned the sixty faces in the lecture hall. Despite the early hour, no one seemed to be asleep. Somehow, my story had touched them. Or maybe it wasn't the story at all. In fact, it had all started with a student's observation that I was cheerful. A wise man once said, 'Who you are speaks louder to me than anything you can say.' I suppose it must be so." www.LeeRyanMiller.com
Joyful
Blessings,
HOW
YOU CAN MAKE A CONSCIOUS CONTRIBUTION IN THE WORLD |
Thompson
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COPYRIGHT
NOTICE: All articles and images shown are believed to be public
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