About Me

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Kennebunkport, Maine, United States
I’ve had to learn to live life on the positive side. If I can do it, I know anyone can. My goal here is to share my experiences, have others share their's and together we can help and encourage each other to be better people. As we all know, success in life takes effort, a change in behavior and the realization that you have to do both to succeed. Maybe you are one of the millions of people who begin every year saying, “This year is going to be different. This year I’m going to make my dreams come true”. If you do not prepare and change your actions from your current path for the upcoming year, do you really believe you will end up at a different destination than last year? What if we did it together, supporting each other on a daily basis. I hope you'll join the journey of finding positive light in an ever negative world.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Ask And You Shall Receive

Sometimes when you least expect it, a person, event or circumstance appears to you with the intent to change the entire course of your life. This may happen to you more than once in your life. Perhaps you’ve even ignored it in the past and didn’t listen to the message being sent to you. Sometimes we ask for help from above, and when we don’t get the answer we’re looking for, we ask again. “Please, show me the answer”…“Sorry, please show me the answer, that wasn’t what I was looking for”. I have asked and asked again. One day after asking for a sign (again), I heard a voice in my head say, “You wanted an answer, I sent you an answer, now you have to listen and start acting”. Of course I knew exactly what it meant. So I did it. I listened and took a big leap on blind faith; listened and just trusted that this was everything I was looking for. And it was; it is.

You shouldn’t expect an easy answer when faced with adversity or change. You just won’t find one. Approach it with an expectation of having to put forth considerable effort in order to construct meaningful changes in your life. After all, do you really want to chance your current situation? What can you do today to change your tomorrow for the better?

If you are constantly overlooking the messages being sent to you on the answers you seek, you are most likely missing out on something amazing.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Fear is a four letter word

There was a period of time in my life when I was afraid to walk to the mailbox. Literally. I would virtually have a panic attack and wouldn’t be able to breathe just walking from my house to the mailbox. God forbid I had to drive the mile to the school to pick one of my kids. I cried a lot and wondered where I had gone. This wasn’t me, this wasn’t my life. What the heck happened to the girl I was 10 or 15 years ago. I was going to take off and go to college out of state, be successful and someday president of my own company. I would be physically ill if I left the house by myself. At first it wasn’t everywhere, it started by having a panic attack in the grocery store, then I didn’t go there anymore; then another in a different store, I didn’t go there again either. Every time I had a panic attack, I would avoid the location of where I was at the time of the attack, so not to cause it to happen again. Pretty soon, I started worrying that I would have an attack, so I wouldn’t go anywhere by myself. I was afraid of losing control of myself in front of others.

There came a point in time when I decided that things needed to change. I wanted my life back and I needed to do something about it. I felt like I was going crazy. It wasn’t easy and I was very scared. I began by forcing myself to go out to the mailbox. I hated it, but I did it, because I knew deep down that the only way to get over my fear would be to face it head on. I started to venture out away from home more. Instead of going to the little beach where I felt safe and had had no panic attacks, I went to the big beach with all the people. When the small steps started going well, I decided to take on the big challenges. I remember the night that Biddeford Youth Hockey held its annual board meeting. They were looking for a fundraising director. I decided this was going to make or break me. I remember telling myself “You are going to do this whether you like it or not”. I was terrified. I got almost there, and decided, I don’t really HAVE to do this. I can turn around and go home and no body will know. Well, I knew. That was the biggest problem of all. So I drove to the meeting, throwing up a few times along the way and became the fundraising director and proceeded to have a great hockey season and year. Once I made the decision to move forward with my life, other opportunities began to present themselves. I received a call from a friend who was hiring an analyst in her department. This would mean I would have to actually drive 40 minutes to work every day?! So I did it. And it was horrible for the first couple of months. But I did it. I made a decision to not let my fear run my life. I decided to run my life. I decided to tell my body and myself who was boss and how I was going to run the show.

That was so many years ago. Fear comes in different shapes and sizes and afflictions. But the cure is all the same. Taking control over your mind and telling yourself you must do something. Once you are successful at a certain task, it is a building block to the next step. You will literally be able to pull yourself out of what seems like an impossible situation into what you envision for yourself. To this day, I still have to remind myself of this fact. That I can chose to fear or chose to live life the way I want to. But it is all up to me.

"Fear cannot exist in the presence of faith ... Fear only exists because you feel that you are not in control. Give up the need to be in control, take a leap in faith and fear will vanish as the mists in the morning sun." author unknown