Life is NOW, Live Your Moments

KJ is me.  It’s a nickname for myself.

It’s based on the first letters of my first and middle name….

(These are two large letters I got from Hobby Lobby and decorated for the pure fun of it!)

It hit me today, as I’ve been trying to really live in this day, in this moment as much as I can.  I’ve been trying to enjoy the simplicity of whatever moment I’m in and place myself squarely in the middle of it.  Because… Life is Now.

My mission is really living my moments

and therefore living my life!

It’s definitely an art and a consistent effort to be mindful of each day.  My days are numbered

and I am practicing the art of living each to it’s fullest.  I know it might sound cheesy or trite, but it’s very

profound to stop and consider your time and your life, down to how you appreciate it or if you

numbly wander through every day.

I no longer naively  believe…

that there will always be enough time to do the things I want or to enjoy

the people in my life, so I have to learn mind-full living and actually live in

each moment.

For me this has taken a good long while, but one thing I have really come to understand

and enjoy about being over 40 is that I am really starting to “get it” and be more of the Captain of my Ship

as opposed to one who is just going where ever the wind take them!

So these are the very moments that add up to be my Life…

Am I doing what I long to do?

Am I making progress towards my dreams?

Am I helping others along the way as well?

Am I making my world a better place?

Am I waiting for someday?

Well, something I am daily comely to understand better and better is…

My life is right NOW, I better live it!

Here’s to Deeper, Richer Moments,

KJ

Welcoming Beauty

Even the word beauty brings a smile to my face.

Who doesn’t love to soak up a beautiful photograph or piece of artwork or pause for a moment, awash in the warm, beautiful rays of the sun? Beauty isn’t necessary to life, but it sure does bathe my soul in comfort and awe each time I experience it.

I was reading today and ran across a lovely bit out of Barrie Davenport’s ebook called a Meaningful Life.

I have been reading a little bit daily for inspiration and encouragament.

You can find it yourself at…

Click to access MeaningfulLife-eBook.pdf

“Beauty is the quality that thrills the soul and makes life vibrant. But you
don’t know that until you invite beauty in to your life.
Beauty elevates us beyond the mundane or even the extraordinary. It
exists as an expression of something divine – whether in nature or human
inspiration. Like love, beauty isn’t fleeting, and its effects are cumulative.
It stirs your heart, your spirit and your intellect. The more you seek and
absorb it, the more profound and essential it becomes to you.
To incorporate beauty into your life, recognize and embrace the fulfillment
and connectedness it provides, and slow down long enough to savor
it. That’s hard to do in a fast-paced world complete with near instant
gratification. Like a fine wine or a great meal, beauty can’t be rushed.”

So today, even though it is rainy and gray outside, I am looking for the beauty around me.

I love to curl up in my cozy, warm bed with a intriguing book and the rain outside gives me a great excuse to do just that.  Maybe that’s the beauty hidden in my day.

See…it’s already working!

Simple Bliss ~ finding happiness in a chaotic world

Simple Bliss…

So where is it… the “good life”, the sweet spot, where is that proverbial place of happiness?

Some say it’s one of our basic rights as human beings….the pursuit of it anyways.  Is it out there or in here somewhere?  Will I run across it someday or is it a lifetime of searching?

I challenge that it is with you right this moment!

If you could stop the doing, stop the thinking, stop the should and shouldn’t-ing, I propose that you would find simple bliss right there beside you, waiting to show itself in it’s quiet beauty.

Simple: clean, mild, quiet, uncomplicated or light

Bliss: extreme happiness, delight, serenity, buoyancy

Quiet delight, Uncomplicated Serenity, it’s a place you find within, inspite of the turmoil or busyness the surrounds you. It’s being able to STOP, take a soft, deep breathe and RELAX your mind and soul for a moment.  Listen for that inner voice to remind you of all the beautiful, little things all around you.  The peace of a quiet moment, the wafting of a gentle breeze through the trees, the fact that you have breathe within you and a loved one beside you.

Quietly delighting in something small and making it a meaningful moment is the beginning of Simple Bliss.  I try to practice it daily and find that just stopping whatever you are doing and purposefully soaking up that very moment somehow grounds me and calms my soul.

Try it today, just once, just for a moment… and see if you can discover a place of Simple Bliss.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised that such a tiny act can profoundly change your mood and your mind.

Looking for Momentum

It’s a Sunday evening and I have to admit…I have totally neglected my blog for the past 25 days. That makes me feel badly, and then I have to ask myself why did I neglect it that long?

It mostly stems from the thought of “what’s the point?”, doubting myself and even more than that, just feeling overwhelmed at the learning curve I have when I look at how much I don’t know about blogging.

These are some of my thoughts, “Maybe I am doing it for the wrong reasons?”, ” Maybe I am just not dedicated enough?”.  Maybe… maybe I am just not sure.  But, I haven’t quit researching, reading other blogs and closing the learning gap, so I must still be in it, just not actively engaging in my blog.  I began to feel like I wasn’t sure that I was using the “right” thing, meaning WordPress.  There are so many to choose from and what if I’m putting all this effort into something that wasn’t right for me.   STOP! I tell myself, all those thoughts and questions are destroying my optimism and my motivation to keep moving forward.  So I stopped thinking and I started digging…looking for encouragement and help from others that are doing what I want to do.

I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter if it’s all “just” right, it matters that I’m doing something, taking action, practicing my writing, moving forward period.  I am still learning that failure is simply part of it and that it’s ok!

Failure is ok!

It doesn’t mean that I’m no good, that I will never succeed, that what I’m doing is worthless…it doesn’t mean any of that!  So, I’ve looked for encouragement and found it, I’ve talked to myself and said… “Let’s just keep doing it for the practice and just see where it goes.”, and then I read a blog post from http://www.chrisguillebeau.com yesterday that really encouraged me…

“So every day, I would focus on exactly that — creating something worth talking about, and then trying to get the word out wherever I could. Everything else is irrelevant, or at least subservient to those two strategies.

If you do that every day, then every day the work will get better and you’ll get better at promoting it. And sooner or later, momentum will kick in and you’ll be along for the ride with everyone else.”  Chris Guillebeau
So now I am back at it, encouraged, more knowledgeable and moving forward.  Thx Chris!

Savor the Flavor of Your Life

Savor the Flavor….

It’s been about a week since my last post and I don’t like going that long, but I have a valid reason. There was a death in the family, a car accident took the life of my daughter’s biological father last week and we have been in the throws of dealing with that death and the aftermath.

I know the picture of this post looks happy and colorful and may not seem to go with the theme of death,

but out of all of the sadness and pain over the past eight days I have gleaned a silver lining.  There is something about a death of someone closely connected to you that makes me want to live my life in a richer and more meaningful way.

This loss has snapped my reality into focus like nothing else ever has.  It has made me ponder and question so many things that I normally take for granted or even things that are just unpleasant to look at.  I’ve thot about my children, my loved ones, my time and how I use it, my purpose and what I will leave behind when it’s my time to go.

It’s made me want to savor the flavor of everyday I have, because my days…are numbered.

And I want to soak up, appreciate and make my time count, everyday count towards a meaningful existence and to leave some sort of positive, inspiring legacy when I am no longer here.  And that seems to be the next question, how will I do that, what does it look like?  I believe this blog is part of it, as writing it makes me take each day and harvest the lessons, thoughts and ideas from it and put it into a form, the written word, that can be passed on to others and hopefully bring hope, light and encouragement to all those who read it.

The sorrow has been real, still is very real.  I catch myself feeling so sad about the opportunities that will not be available for my daughter in the future, about how she and he were just beginning to know each other and make a real connection that they could build on.  But I know we have to come to terms with this tragic loss and somehow move forward and find a way to honor the memories and the life that was lived, somehow.

I don’t know all the answers to how this will happen or what it will look like yet, but I do that I can start, today, simply being thoroughly grateful for  each and every moment I have life and breathe in this body of clay and to look deeply for the little opportunities that cross my path daily to make my life, my family and my world a little better place because I am living in it.  I will savor the flavor…everyday.

 

Positive Energy attracts Positive Energy!

What have you been attracting in your life lately?

Is the energy around you positive or negative?  Are the people that you surround yourself with positive or negative?

It’s vitally important to your well-being and your success that you make sure you are inviting the right kind of energy into your life.  Everyday, you wake up, roll out of bed and are almost immediately confronted with all manner of things as you start your day.  How do you allow the good in and keep the bed out?

First line of defense is to be powerfully aware!

When you are Aware then you can Beware.   Be aware that you are in control of the gates of your mind and your heart and don’t go into auto pilot when dealing with the challenges that life throw at you.  Realize that you are in control of what goes into your eyes and your ears and consciously filter only what will help you succeed and make you a better person!  If the program on the T.V. doesn’t boost your confidence in yourself or in the world, turn it off.  If the people in your life aren’t going anywhere, chances are you aren’t either, find new friends.  If the thoughts going through your mind on a daily basis are negative, depressing or not conducive to being thankful, find a positive blog or book and begin retraining your mind.

It is possible, you can do it!  I did it in only a few short months and I believe you can to.

Try visiting WakeUpCloud.com or doing some meditation on all the things you have to be grateful for in your world.  The most important thing is to take a small step, do one simple action.  And then tonight, take another small step.  After one week, you will have taken many steps and you will be on your way to changing… yourself and your life.

The Juicy Fruits of My Labor

Another morning has come and I found myself once again warm in my bed in my pre-awake state of mind, mulling over ideas for this blog,  images of what I want my life to become and how to create streams of income for myself and my family.  It’s a good feeling to get up and be even mildly excited about the prospects of what the day will bring!

I have spent way too many days, mornings and evenings practically dreading my existence because I was so unhappy with the shape my life had taken.  Sadly, it wasn’t even that awful things were taking place in my life, just that I had no purpose or fulfilling work in my life that gave me that deep down motivation to get up and get moving. I couldn’t see the good things, the simple opportunities all around me , or that possibilities before me.  All I saw was bleakness, powerlessness and a gray future before me.

About six months ago, at the beginning of 2010,I did some pretty heavy soul work, discovered some inner children from a troubled past that I had to make peace with and also decided to start cultivating an attitude of gratitude.

You see, I had been focusing on what I didn’t have and couldn’t change for so long, that I had dug myself into a pit of depression and angry resentment!  It was a miserable existence I am here to tell you!!  But after clearing out some mental and emotional baggage and slowly starting to guide my thoughts and focus towards a more positive perspective, things began to shift.  Looking back it’s really amazing actually.  I’m not saying everything is coming up perfect daisies now, or that it was easy or overnight, cause it wasn’t.  But I can truly feel the change in my brain, the good endorphins are flowing more consistently and I have found HOPE once again.

Hope that I can be happy, hope that I am capable of creating the life I desire, hope that I can change my life.

Now I am beginning to taste the juicy fruit of my labor, and it makes me wonder what else I can accomplish when I set my mind to gratitude for what I have been given already and set my heart to dreaming about what things are possible in my near future.

Getting Rich….

Lately I’ve been doing alot of digging.

Inside myself that is, down deep…. I wanna know why I don’t currently have the life I want.  What is it that I’ve been doing all my life that is not working?!   So, I’ve set out to sort out, root out and figure out, what I’ve been doing that’s ineffective and what I need to change that will be more effective in getting me that things I want.

One of the main things I am focusing on is the ability to have wealth or the act of getting rich.

I live in America in the 21st century, I have access to the internet worldwide. I am smart, educated, good-hearted and still struggle to make ends meet every month!  Why is that?!

This is what I’m on a quest to find out.

I know there is a reason.  And I am starting to believe that one reason I don’t have the wealth, (which to me is freedom to go and do as I choose and also to help those around me), is that as I have started to study my beliefs and feelings about money, I am realizing that I was raised to believe that having or wanting wealth was wrong!   That is so crazy to me, but I believe it is true.  My parents, who are absolutely some of the most amazing people on the planet, somewhere along the way, instilled in me the belief that I shouldn’t go after money or wealth or that it was somehow a bad thing!

It wasn’t really something that was spoken out loud, at least that I remember, but something that was lived out before me as I grew up.

I still haven’t figured it all out, as I have just now begun to unearth these limiting beliefs deep down in my soul, but it’s been shocking for me to realize this truth.  So now I am striving to understand more thoroughly what these negatives feelings are towards gaining wealth and how that has affected me as I  work towards having the life I desire.

So that’s why I’m digging… I wanna know what I can do from here to get ride of those subtle, but terribly limiting beliefs from so long ago.

Is there help for me? lol

I do believe there is and one place I am going to start is by reprogramming my mind and retraining my thoughts when it comes to thinking and dealing with money, getting rich and gathering wealth.

One resource that has helped shed some great light on this for me is the book by Wallace Wattles called “The Science of Getting Rich”.  Google it and you can read it for free online.  The style of writing is a little peculiar, but there are so many golden nuggets of truth that it’s well worth it!

Here is a quote from the book that really spoke to me and is helping me to transform my mental perspective…

“Increase is what all men and women seek.  The desire for increase is inherent in all nature; it is the fundamental impulse of the Universe.   The normal desire for increased wealth is not an evil thing; it is simply the desire for more abundant; it is aspiration.”

So it’s not bad or evil to want riches or wealth.  It’s the spirit behind the desire that makes it good or bad.  What do you want to do with the increase of money?  I want to better myself, better my family and better the lives of all those whose paths cross with mine.

This whole stream of thought helps me feel so much better about these longings in my heart and I can start thinking more positively about getting rich and moving closer to the life I want!

The Door To My Life….

Its right there, can’t you see it.  It’s right in front of you, waiting for you to grab the handle, open and walk through.

 

So many times over the years I’ve wondered when it was going to be my time!?  When do I get to go after what I want for my life?  Who is going to help me reach my dreams and create the life I want?  Well, after many years of searching and waiting…no one came.  No one showed up to help, no one seemed to be interested enough to help me find my path.  How sad….

But, after months of journaling, looking at my life and trying to figure out where I went wrong, I finally figured it out.  The door had always been there, I just wanted someone else to open it for me.  My fears overshadowed the door, making it scary to move towards it and see what was inside.  But now I know…it’s ME, I’m the one who has to do it for myself and most likely, no one else will ever care enough, or have enough time to do it for me.

So I am taking my life into my own hands! It’s about time.  I want no regrets when its time for me to depart this world and the I have decided, Life’s Too Short to wait anymore!  So here I go….

It’s been maybe a week since I’ve posted.  Lots of doubts and why waste my time when no one’s reading my posts.  But as I am learning to do over the past weeks, I am doubting my doubts!  I enjoy putting my thoughts onto page, I enjoy plumbing the depths of myself and seeing what surfaces, so I will practice and getting putting one blogging foot in front of the other and I will make progress.

I must admit, last week, I took mostly the whole week off from blogging or reading about blogging or thinking about blogging.  Partly because I was sick and partly because I was totally overwhelmed by all the information I was trying to absorb. I actually felt at one point that I truly just wasn’t interested in long-term online stuff, I think I had burned myself out in one overloaded week on the internet!  But then, after taking that time off, I began to feel drawn back again.  So have been picking away at it some more this week.  I am trying to pace myself better and learning to take a break every hour and a half or so and doing something physical. That really helps!

One thing that I discovered, actually today while I was reading an e-book from wakeupcloud.com.  I discovered that it is my destiny to create the life that I want!  I know that probably sounds cheesy, but it really hit home for me and began to resonate in my mind.  I have always wanted a destiny, but thought that was for the famous movers and shakers throughout history.

This is a definition that I like for destiny:

The power that predetermine events.

Short and sweet, but truly, I am the power that can predetermine the events in my life.  Not that I can set everything in stone and make it all turn out perfect.  But I am the only one that holds the power to create the life I want!

I can’t create a universe, but I can, with my choices and actions, begin to create the kind of life I want to be living everyday for myself. You can do it too.

It begins with a little step and a small glimmer of hope.

I try to get up every morning and find a blog post that is encouraging and motivates me to take another action towards self improvement and financial freedom.  That’s what I want…to be the best I can be, to help others be the best they can be and to be financially free to do both whenever, wherever and however I choose!

Cleansing Mental Clutter

Good morning all,

Its a lovely Monday and I am fighting a head cold this morning, but intent on posting today.  Besides, I get to work from my comfy bed this sweet morning, so who am I to complain.

As I have progressed on this blogging journey I have read an enormous amount of information on blogs, internet marketing, web content and all manner of advice.  But I began to realize that I have to first confront the internal negative voices that love to give their unwelcome advice day and night.  I am fed up with it and so made a list of several thoughts that come to mind when I think about mental clutter and limiting beliefs etc.  Here are a few of things that my inner critic loves to throw at me as I contemplate doing something new…

– “I’ve waited to long to start and it may be too late!”

– “Life has passed me by.”

– “Nobody will want to hear what I think or have to say.”

– “Too many people are doing blogs and the like already, what I’m doing won’t matter.”

– “I will look foolish or stupid if I fail.”

– “All my hardwork and effort might amount to nothing!”

So, I utilized an online blog post, http://thinksimplenow.com/clarity/confusion, to give me some guidelines

on how to go about cleaning out these obstacles in my head and proceeded to take action.  I spent some time thinking about each one.  In her blog http://www.thinksimplenow.com, Tina suggests this method…

“Then clear your mind of the clutter, using one of these simple tools:

• Close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Spend a few minutes letting go of any tension in your body. Then visualize emptying your mind of the clutter and confusion, one source a time. Use whatever imagery works for you. You might imagine a beautiful rain, washing it away; a candle burning it up; or a raft carrying it away on a peaceful lake.
• Let these pages you’ve been writing on symbolize the mental clutter. Physically move the paper to a different part of the house. Then return to the original room, to a space metaphorically free of all those polluting influences. Then continue with step 2.
• Give the clutter a send off. Close your eyes and imagine bundling up the clutter (the shoulds, fears, etc.) and taking it to a fun or beautiful place where it can rest without bothering you. Maybe you take all the clutter to your favorite beach, or a camping spot, or the mall. (Sounds hokey, I know, but it works.)”

So, I closed my eyes and pictured myself standing along side a babbling brook and for each of the negative bits of mental clutter I pictured them written on a small piece of notebook paper.  I crumpled them up one at a time and sent them down the creek on a small sailboat made out of sticks.  (Maybe it does sound hokey, but I just went with it! lol)  So, that was my official send off for all those thoughts that I am banning from my mind.  It’s a first step, but like I say, at least it’s a step!

* Honest thot: Even as I write this, I feel like its cheesy, but I really am just practicing daily blogging and getting in the habit of putting it out there.  So bear with me as I learn and explore this new venue.