There’s only one you.
At times, you may be filled with self-doubt. Fear might step in to block you on your path to success. You may think you’re not good enough, smart enough, strong enough or whatever “enough” is to do what you really, really want to do.
Do it anyway.
Yes, you may stumble, you may fall, you may “fail”… but the journey becomes the lesson and the lesson becomes the gift.
And the gift to the world is you. There’s only one you.
Shine in your own way.
I remember the day John Denver’s plane crashed.
I was sitting in the family room nursing my newborn son, occasionally glancing at the news on TV. Suddenly John Denver’s smiling face appeared. It took a moment for the captioned words to register.
“…Plane crash…Monterey Bay…dead…”
I sat there in complete shock.
No, no, nooooo.
My parents introduced me to John Denver’s music in 1971 when the Poems, Prayers, and Promises album was released. I instantly loved his music. Every song told a story and I love stories.
In elementary school, I began losing my hearing but I still loved music. As long as I had the lyrics to read I could follow the words.
Shortly after I became pregnant with my first son I attended a concert in Indiana with my mom, my sister, and my friend Sue. When we arrived, I asked the concert manager to give John a letter. I told him how much his music meant to me. This was the first concert of his that I would experience his music with sign language interpreters (I became deaf from a barefoot water ski fall as a teen.) I asked if we could meet him after the concert.
We had front row seats and the music was amazing–a much smaller theater than the stadium concerts when I was a kid. John Denver acknowledged the interpreters and he sang to us.
At the very end, John mentioned that he received letters and he very much wanted to meet his fans but he had to get on the road to the next gig.
Seeing the remnants of his plane floating in the water made me realize that there would never be another chance to hear him play on stage ever again.
A line from one of his songs came to mind:
“The moment and hand is the only thing we really own.”
For many years, I crafted New Year’s resolutions that were forgotten by mid-February. I started off each year with good intentions, but I soon settled into the same old routine–and then meandered through life until the next eve of celebration jostled me into making new resolutions yet again.
A few years ago I attended Debra Poneman’s Yes to Success workshop. During one of the activities, Debra handed out a large poster board with a space to write 100 things to be, do, or have in your lifetime. We didn’t have enough time to list 100 items, but I dubbed this my “Life List” and continued to add to it.
Jack Canfield, founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul books, has a similar list that he crafts his life around: 101 Lifetime Goals.
One of the things on my list was to be published in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book.
Now, there’s something very powerful that happens when you write down an item in your Life List: you set an intention in motion.
Yet, without daily nurturing and action, the best intentions can remained buried if you allow other distractions to take over.
A few months after the Yes to Success workshop, I realized I was not taking any action toward actually getting published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul book. So right then and there, I went to the website, scanned the list of potential topics, and wrote an essay. A few weeks later, I had a chapter published in the Chicken Soup for the Soul Find Your Happiness book.
Intention, without action, remains a wish.
My husband and I crafted a list together and one of the items we wrote down was to take a trip to Austria. We weren’t sure how it was possible, as money was tight for us at the time. Yet today, I’m writing this from a hotel in Salzburg. One of my mentors, Janet Attwood, author of The Passion Test, taught me to focus on the “what” of what you want, for the “how” will take care of itself. The key is to remain open to possibilities and opportunities that show up in your life.
If you do not have a Life List, today is a great day to start one. Grab a spiral notebook, a blank journal, or several pieces of paper and sit down in a soothing place. Turn off all distractions and make sure you cannot be disturbed.
Write from the heart. One hundred things to experience.
Begin now.
Keep the list where you can access it every day.
And every single day, do something with the list in mind. Even if it’s just ten minutes of researching, making a phone call, or doing something new–every time you act, you are either getting closer to what you want or further away. Choose wisely.
My mom didn’t want a funeral. She didn’t even want a memorial service.
Mom was battling congestive heart failure. You can live a long time with this condition and no one really knows how fast or slow it can progress. And my mom was tough. Resilient. Persistent. She battled through every symptom with aggravation at first, then grit.
She was in and out of the hospital so many times the last two years that it became her routine. Last summer, we thought we were coming close to losing her. She couldn’t walk and was very weak.
But Mom wasn’t ready to let go of this life–she still had some living to do. Heck, she had just moved into a new house in Nashville and she was going to enjoy it. So she got herself out of the hospital bed and began walking with a walker again. She was doing so well at one point that she could get around the house on her own.
Then the final downward spiral began quickly. This time, we sensed it was real. A sprint towards the end. My brother and I got in the car and drove to Missouri to pick up my sister. One brother flew in. Another drove in. For the first time, all six of us were together, including a brother who was adopted at birth.
Three months, the staff at the hospital said. In my heart, I knew they were wrong. My mom wasn’t even moving. The fluid had taken over her body. We brought her home and arranged for nursing care three times a week.
When the hospice nurse arrived, we asked her that blunt question: How much time is left?
There’s a fine line that hospice nurses must walk–the line between hope and reality. Very gently, she let us know that time was dwindling and we must enjoy what we could.
So we gave Mom a living memorial. It wasn’t planned. The process simply unfolded each day. We flooded the house with food, people, and memories. We watched old family videos. We cooked her favorite foods. We sang songs. We celebrated her life.
And we cried.
Through it all, something magical was happening. Mom was happy. It was a beautiful thing to see her smiling each day, surrounded by love.
Then at two in the morning, she told my daughter, “I’m going to die.”
Two hours later, she fell into a coma and the next day, she took her last breath surrounded by her family.
Some of us struggled with Mom’s wishes to leave earth without a final service in her honor, but instead, she left us the amazing gift of all of us together during her the last days of her life.
A few years ago I began sharing pictures I took during my “Meditation Moments”throughout the day. I shared them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I put a collection of them together in a book: Living with Passion.
“It’s not meditation if you’re stopping to get your camera out,” my daughter teased me. (At least I think she was being light-hearted about it…)
The pictures served a purpose. Not only was I getting my personal meditative time in throughout the day, but I was also noticing beauty everywhere.
Nature restores. The fresh air, the color, the varying textures–all of those things come together to change the energy within us.
A wonderful thing began to happen: other people began sharing their “Meditation Moments.”
Meditation is about being in the now and transcending it. It’s about gratitude. It’s recognizing the beauty of the moment and knowing that’s all you own in that very moment.
“But I’m too busy! I don’t have time for this stuff!”
I get it.
But you know what that means?
You probably need it more than anyone else.
There’s an old Zen saying, “You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes everyday – unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.”
“I want to write a book.”
As a Passion Mentor, this dream comes up frequently when I ask people what their big dream is. Or their plan for the next year. Or the next five. Or their legacy.
It always surprises me how long people have been carrying their dreams inside. I get it. I wanted to write a book when I was eleven. I sat down at my dad’s typewriter and pounded out my first story.
Then I procrastinated for many years.
The excuses bubbled up:
I’m not ready.
I don’t have enough experience.
I need to practice writing more.
I don’t know where to begin.
I don’t have time.
and the mother of them all:
Who am I to write a book?
That last one reminds me of Marianne Williamson’s famous quote: “We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”
I spent a lot of years putting off writing a book for the mythical “Someday.” You know that day; the one when the moon and the planets all align and I could magically sit down and produce a book.
There’s a song by Billy Joel that haunted me throughout my college years, “James.” In the middle of my first year in graduate school, I wanted to quit. I just knew I was going down the wrong road. Three times, I came close to pulling the plug on my education. Three times, friends gave me every rational reason why I should stick it out.
And many times, a line from “James” ran through my head and blasting through the speakers in my apartment:
“When will you write your masterpiece?”
Someday.
And the song would repeat.
James…do you like your life,
Can you find release,
And will you ever change
Will you ever write your masterpiece.
Are you still in school
Living up to expectations…James…
You were so relied upon, everybody knows how hard you tried-
Hey…just look at what a job you’ve done,
Carrying the weight of family pride.
James…you’ve been well behaved,
You’ve been working so hard
But will you always stay
Someone else’s dream of who you are.
Do what’s good for you, or you’re not good for anybody…James.
I had come too far down a path to quit. There was no way I could make money from writing. I had already taken a journalism class and struggled my way through it. I couldn’t do interviews because no one knew I was hard of hearing and I wasn’t going to admit it. So I failed at being a poor imitation of a person who could hear.
Fast forward many, many years later…
What changed?
I started writing.
I wrote small articles. Blog posts. Magazine articles. Newspaper articles. Chicken Soup for the Soul.
When I finally decided to write my first book, I got up at five in the morning while holding down a more-than-full-time job, raising a family, caring for a dying parent, and volunteering for a non-profit.
So when people come to me for advice on how to begin living their dreams, there’s a process:
Identify your dream.
Write it down.
Begin.
If you don’t follow this process, you’ll likely drift through one day, then the next, then the next…until several years have gone by and your dreams are still sitting on the shelf. If you continually wait until the time “is right,” eventually you’re going to run out of time.
And that book you have inside of you, it will never be in your hands.
Put aside the excuses. Put aside the time constraints. Put aside the self-esteem hurdles.
Start writing. Anything. You can pound out a couple of words in ten-minute spurts if that’s all the time you have in the day.
You will encounter critics. It’s part of the process. I can still remember the scathing words of a well-meaning friend who tried to change my writing style. “You’re too casual. You write like you talk. It should be more formal.”
Writing like someone else is like putting on a too-tight coat and attempting to button it up. Let the authentic you shine through. James Patterson has some great advice: “Focus on the story, not the sentence.”
Here’s the thing: done is better than perfect. I have seen many first drafts of published authors who showed their first pieces of work in workshops. Three-ring binders. Stapled papers. Tiny books that grew into bestsellers during second editions.
Never forget, Stephen King’s first draft of “Carrie” went into the garbage. His wife fished out the papers and encouraged him to continue. Thirty rejections later, King received an offer of a $2,500 advance. The book was later sold for $400,000 and made into a movie.
Even great writers throw away drafts that they think are nothing but…garbage.
So, that dream you have of writing a book?
Start.
My oldest kiddo, David, was often on “hurricane cycle” when he was young. He would bounce from one activity to the next (like his Mom??) and leave a path of destruction in his wake. I once put the baby down for a nap and left David and Lauren parked in front of the TV so I could quickly go to the bathroom. When I came out, I found the two of them drawing wavy lines on the kitchen wall. In a matter of seconds, David had grabbed some crayons off the counter and coerced his sister into coloring the wall. The artwork stayed on the wall for over a year–because neither the hubby nor I could muster up enough energy to paint over the crayon.
One evening, David was a Category Five on the hurricane scale and my patience was long gone. David and Lauren were fighting over toys and neither of them would sit on the couch long enough for me to breastfeed the baby. Steven was colicky and wouldn’t stop crying. I was tense, crabby, and just plain tired. I was just trying to survive long enough until the hubby arrived home so I could hand off the kid duties to him.
Joe walked in with a smile that soon disappeared from his face as he surveyed the toys strewn everywhere, the lunch dishes still on the table, and the once-folded laundry now overturned on the floor.
“Bad day?”
I shot him a look.
“Why don’t you go take a bath and relax,” he suggested. “I’ll watch the kids.”
After a hurried dinner, I filled the bathtub up and went to grab towels from the other bathroom. As I walked back in, my eyes caught something floating in the bathtub and David standing near the tub.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
I dropped the towel and scooped out the brand new book that I was so looking forward to reading. With a heavy sigh, I sat on the toilet and tried to dry off the book.
I started to cry. It was all just too much. Mothering three kids just two years apart in age had finally taken its toll and everything came crashing down on me at that moment. The tears poured out. Just then, David came over, climbed in my lap and started hugging me. He gave me a kiss.
“I love you Mommy.” He hugged me again.
My eyes went back to the book and I saw the title more clearly.
“Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”
I started to laugh.
Alternating between tears and laughter, I smiled at the irony of the whole thing.
It is now years later– the little boy has grown into a young man who graduated from college and is living on his own. I still have the book with the warped pages stuck together. It’s a reminder of that hectic time of three kids under the age of four–when I thought the day would never end and I’d never have a minute to myself. Today, two of the kids have moved out and the youngest one is about to graduate. How quickly the time flies.
Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Life goes by in an instant. The little stuff that you unintentionally blow up into big stuff will likely not matter years from now. Pick your battles carefully. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
And remember to laugh in the process.
“Do you want to take a ride on a seaplane?”
The text came from my friend Gordy, a seaplane pilot who does flying lessons in Florida.
“Heck, yeah!”
And that’s how I found myself flying over glassy lakes on a beautiful February morning.
But the story really begins six years ago when I heard a voice out of the blue.
“Write Keith’s book.”
“Keith,” was Keith St. Onge, a two-time World Barefoot Champion. I had just met the guy and took two barefoot water skiing lessons from him.
So I said “yes” to that voice and we spent two years writing a book together. The book, Gliding Soles, Lessons from a Life on Water is endorsed by Dave Ramsey, Dan Miller, Tom Ziglar, and Glen Plake. At first glance, you might dismiss the book because of the barefoot water skiing, but then you would be missing out on some amazing life lessons. (And the digital version is just $1.99–go dive into a few chapters and see for yourself.)
In the process of saying that first yes, I met hundreds and hundreds of barefoot water skiers from all over the world and have skied in many different places.
And saying “yes” lead me to Gordy and that beautiful day in the air. And yes, that’s Gordy holding a copy of Gliding Soles below.
So take a good look at the next opportunity that comes along in your life to say, “YES.”
Don’t over-analyze. Your mind will probably come up with 101 reasons for “no.” Go with your gut feeling.
If you’re a muddled mess –be still. It’s in the quiet stillness that you find your clearest answers.
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I have size 9 double wide feet.
For many years while growing up, I hated my feet. I dreaded going shoe shopping as nothing ever fit. I always had to “break in” shoes. This meant enduring a painful fit until the leather finally (hopefully!) loosened up. High heels were a nightmare because the wide fit usually meant my heels would swim in the back. I learned to shuffle along in heels–not a graceful site at formal events.
When I first returned to barefooting, one of the World Champs took one look at my feet and said, “Those aren’t feet–those are flippers!”
At first, the old feelings of embarrassment began to creep up, but then I thought, wait a minute, that’s an ASSET in this sport!
The other World Champ later told me, “Your feet are good for backwards barefooting.”
He was right. I’m much more comfortable barefooting backwards on one foot than going forwards. For many barefoot skiers, it’s the other way around.
I’m sharing this to challenge you to reframe your struggles, dislikes, and adversities into gifts.
How can you reframe something to see it in a positive way? Look for the blessing. Change your story. Create new thoughts around your challenges.
Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Bless someone with a card from YOU: www.cardsanywhere.com
At the age of 44, I thought I was old.
I felt old.
I wasn’t looking forward to the years ahead. Aches. Pains. Wrinkles. Medicines. It seemed like everyone around me was slowing down and just going through the motions of each day, coasting until they could reach retirement. And for some, retirement simply meant they could watch their television programs anytime they wanted to.
So there I sat on my 44th birthday with tears running down my face, thinking that the best years of life had passed me by. I missed the carefree days of my youth spent gliding across the water on the soles of my feet. I had tried barefoot water skiing the day before my birthday, with dismal results. My feet, I reasoned, were truly hung up to dry.
Until an “Old Lady” changed my life.
My husband sent me a link to a TODAY Show segment featuring Judy Myers, a 66-year-old competitive barefoot water skier. I sat there and watched the TODAY Show over and over. The passion that I saw on Judy’s face reminded me of the feelings I had when I was a teen. I loved barefoot water skiing.
I got in touch with Judy and she invited me to Florida to learn how to barefoot water ski again. In the process, I gained a mentor and a friend. Judy taught me some great lessons that apply to life; lessons that I put together in a new book, Outside the Wake, How an “Old Lady” Taught Me to Live.
At the age of 44, I thought life was a downward slide of life becoming less and less, and I was afraid that the best years of life were behind me.
Judy taught me the opposite: the best years of life can be whatever you want them to be. You don’t have to accept growing older–you can choose to grow BOLDER instead.
Grab a copy and find out for yourself: Outside the Wake
