Empowering Your Mind

Jeff and I celebrated our fourteenth anniversary by painting the walls surrounding our flat roof after a pricey repair. What a fun weekend. We baked in the heat reflecting from the roof and were sore for days afterwards from all the bending. We postponed our anniversary dinner until the next weekend, when we did have a wonderful time.

This past month, I gave a presentation to the Tempe Charter Chapter of the American Business Women’s Association. I really enjoyed the meeting and the members. They’ve got great spirit and creativity.

I also began facilitating another Tobacco-Cessation class. This one is huge, filled to overflowing. I think it’s great that so many people are dedicated to improving their health.

“Your value to your company is in direct ratio to your being sold on the idea of the company and having faith in that idea.”  From “The Science of Successful Living” by Raymond Charles Barker

As I read this quote, I realized how far our country’s businesses have traveled from this idea. Employees must trust their company, know that it has integrity and stand behind their promises to be fully effective. Business is about people, serving customers and cultivating productive employees, not the bottom line.

In recent years, business, companies, and most employers have treated their employees as cogs in a machine, interchangeable and dispensable. It’s an attitude that’s destroying people’s regard for business. I know of too many people who have been lied to by employers just to temporarily fill a spot, or who have wanted their employees to lie to get more business.

One situation was an organization that offered older employees a retirement package if they would take early retirement. It included paying for their health insurance. Many took the bait, and a couple of years later, the organization decided not to pay for the insurance. Talk about bait and switch.

Employees now consider they’re there just for what they can get, because they don’t believe they have any worth to managers or employers. When this kind of distrust, dislike and wariness prevails in a work environment, it signals a sickness and toxicity in our business culture. This model of business is doomed to fail because it only respects the bottom line, and the end justifies the means.

The one bright spot I see is that of an up and coming model of a Purpose-Driven Life or being a Conscious or Collaborative Entrepreneur. This is a business owner who chooses to have integrity, wants to change the world and uses their business as a path of spiritual growth. This model will be self-sustaining because it recognizes the value of everyone.

motivation, productivity

My oldest and dearest friend’s mother passed away today. When I was growing up, they lived down the street and were a fixture in my life. She and my folks spent Friday nights playing Mah Jongg while my friend and I tiptoed to watch them around corners.

Since neither family had relatives nearby, we spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together. She would cook the turkey, mashed potatoes and some of the other fixings, while my folks would bring green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, fruit salad and pumpkin pie. The evening would always end with a Mah Jongg game.

She loved making crafts, and I still have some of the things she made. Our families would go to the drive-in movie together. She also included me in events that I wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. Crab fishing, going to a Lipizzaner Stallion show, taking me to a movie that became iconic for me, among other things.

I don’t mean to place her on a pedestal, because she was far from perfect. Her moods were legendary and unpredictable. But it’s sad, not only for her family, but to know that another door has closed on a part of my history, too.

Jeff and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Renaissance Festival in Apache Junction, Arizona. I think this is our fourteenth year to do so. It’s a flight from the everyday to a fantasy land of humor, fun and frolicking. Here are some of the photos Jeff took with his new digital camera. He was in hog heaven with it.

This is a comedy duo, Don Juan and Miguel, who entertain with sword  fighting and whips. We make sure we always see one of their shows. Miguel is holding pasta in his mouth in this bit. Notice the pieces of flying pasta that Don Juan has cut with his whip.

This gentleman is Adam Crack, who holds the Guinness World Record for the most whip cracks in one minute. Here he’s preforming with flaming whips.

And no Renaissance Faire would be complete without jousting.

This is a picture of me in my old dress, the one my mother made for me in 1996.

And here is my own Renaissance man, Jeff.  HUZZAH! You can find more photos of the Faire on his blog, The Creative’s Corner.

I’ve been working on projects, some professional, some personal. One of the personal projects has been to sew a new costume for the Renaissance Festival that Jeff and I attend annually. My mother, a dress designer and seamstress extraordinaire (among her many talents), designed and made my original dress in 1996. It’s beginning to show its age.

I’d bought a pattern several years ago, and this year decided to take my courage in both hands and embark on this adventure, the first big sewing project I’ve attempted without my mother’s expert guidance. And I have to say, I succeeded. I know she would be proud of me and the result. Now I have two costumes to wear, one for each day that we attend the Faire.

P.S. The colorful fabric belts I’m wearing are inkle belts that I made years ago. The white thing hanging from my right hip is a purse/bag that Jeff and I designed on the fly. I like the design, but it’s too big.

Last week, I had a day of disappointments. First, a package that I was eagerly awaiting went missing at the post office when I went to pick it up. Somehow, they’d misplaced it. They took my phone number, saying they’d call when they found it.

Second, a teleseminar that I was really looking forward to was postponed due to unforeseen circumstances. They postponed it a week. However, that means I can’t attend the teleseminar live since I have clients that day. I can still get the audio of the call, but I’d wanted to be on the call in case I’d had any questions.

When I learned of the teleseminar postponement, I decided to bless the circumstances. “Something good is going to come out of this,” I said as I slammed a cabinet door. And it did. Someone from the post office called to say the missing package had been found. The time they called was what would have been ten minutes into the teleseminar. If I’d been on that call, I wouldn’t have gotten that package for at least another couple of days.

All in all, everything worked out, though not in the way I would have wished. For a second time that day, I drove back to the post office and picked up the package. But at least I got it, and I will be able to listen to the content of the teleseminar. The whole situation could have turned out much worse. It’s just another reminder to me to bless each seeming disappointing or upsetting circumstance. That gives the Universe and the subconscious mind direction to bring something good from it.

personal growth, personal development

I just discovered that today is the anniversary of both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday. Two men, ahead of their time, who had such an impact on the United States and the world, share the day they were born.

And they have more similarities than simply their birthday. They both lost their mother’s early in life, suffered from depression, religious doubt, had a strained relationship with their fathers, lost children (which wasn’t so unusual in those days), and struggled with finding their careers until their thirties.

Their decisions, ideas and insights completely changed the world they lived in. I wonder at the synchronicity that had these two revolutionary men, born in separate countries on the same day with so much in common.

This past month, I’ve had several opportunities that have fallen into my lap, only to evaporate at the last second. It’s been highly frustrating. In the last one, even as I was upset at the apparent loss, I made the conscious decision to bless the situation, and affirm that something better would show up in its place. And it did. I discovered something that was better suited for my purposes.

I know many people are suffering through the challenge of had economic times. However, consider changing your attitude from one of resistance and fear, to blessing the situation and knowing that you’ll be guided to what is for your Highest Good and abundance. It’s a tough concept to work with, but it gives your creative mind the instruction to seek something better for you.

inspiration

I just passed the first anniversary of moving from the house I lived in for over twenty-five years in rural area near Sedona, Arizona. Throughout those years, because of the remoteness, I dealt with numerous challenges. Our rough dirt road dipped through a dry wash that would fill when it rained and prevent us from fording it. We had a fireplace that was our primary source of heat. Over the years, I carried dozens of cords of wood up steps into the house.

Another quirk of the area was that the electricity would fail out occasionally, from thunderstorms, a truck knocking over a power pole, or a squirrel getting up close and personal with a transformer. When that happened, of course, there was no heating (other than our fireplace) or cooling, and none of the conveniences of modern life that we’re accustomed to.

What was even more difficult was when the water stopped flowing. We were on a community well that had various problems. Twice it went dry, and our community had to dig a deeper well each time. For many of those years, the circuit breaker that allowed the electric current to power the pump would overload, and would switch off. As soon as the water tank went dry, our house, being high on the hill, was one of the first to become aware of that fact. Being without electricity is annoying, but being without water is upsetting. Our contemporary houses have no ability to compensate for no water, short of trucking it in.

Now that I’m living in a modern house, with central air conditioning and heating, living on a paved road, within walking distance of grocery stores, I’m finding life much easier. One of the lessons I learned from those years in rural Arizona was to be thankful for the most basic of modern conveniences. Things that most people take for granted, I’m grateful for. Being able to just turn up the heat, drive to my destination without worrying about whether the water in the wash is too high for me to leave, have water on demand and without worry is such a gift.

I no longer have to be on guard because at any moment something I counted on will be gone and I’ll have to make adjustments or alternative plans. And although I loved that area and my life there, I’m finding it enjoyable to put my energy into moving forward, rather than just trying to overcome the struggle.