From Raise Your Verbal Vibration, the third min-e-book™ in the Raise Your Vibration series.
1. If this were your last day, what would you want to be experiencing? How often do we spend our days recounting our hurts, how we were wronged, what we don’t have, what is stressing us, and how we were disappointed? Choose instead in every moment to experience joy, love, happiness, laughter, connection, and creativity. 2. Pain comes from expecting a dog to be a cat. A dog is going to be a dog. Accept people for who and how they are, not who and how you want them to be. In doing so, both of you will find release,…
It never hurts to say "I love you". We know this. But did we also know that we can help each other grow by learning to say "thank you" as well? When we take a little time out for gratitude, we can accomplish miracles in our lives. We can connect ourselves to the inherent genius of our human heritage. We usher in new life, new hope, each time we thank someone else for their contributions to thought and to excellence; each time we let someone else's achievements shine inside of our own dear accomplishment sphere. Whenever we acknowledge greatness in…
The most important piece of wisdom I wish to share with humanity is that on the grand scheme of things, what matters is how you treat one another, beginning with yourself. How you treat yourself gives others permission to treat you the same way, for we are all each other's mirrors. If it weren't for our outer mirrors, then we might not see ourselves as clearly when times are tough. Our quality of life could become more worthy and meaningful if we all practiced compassion. Compassion begins at home. You need to be gentle with yourself, reward yourself when due,…
More and more, gratitude is being acknowledged as an amazing power for good and healing in many different areas of existence –from medicine and positive psychology to gardening and education. It is absolutely impossible, I repeat, impossible, to entertain a deep feeling of gratitude and the least trace of negativity. They totally exclude each other just as light annihilates darkness. Have you ever seen a candle of darkness (??!!) extinguish light? But the smallest candle will bring light to the deepest underground cavern. Such is the power of gratitude to your heart and soul. My daily bedside book – I…
Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday as it serves as a reminder of the importance of gratitude. Since 1621, our ancestors in the United States have been celebrating Thanksgiving. Historically, throughout Europe, festivals were held after the harvest to give thanks and celebrate together as a community. Native Americans also celebrated the harvest season. We continue the tradition today nearly 400 years later, but for most of us, when we hear the word Thanksgiving, we usually think of turkey and stuffing, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, football and gatherings with family and friends. We all know that Thanksgiving…
The ultimate success has nothing to do with money... Or career. It's not the car you drive. The size of your home. The gold and diamonds you collected. The ultimate success has nothing to do with material accomplishment and gain. It has nothing to do with anything outside of you. The ultimate success is to feel joy exactly where you are right now. No matter what your external life looks like. No matter your situation. The ultimate joy is to be complete and whole in this very moment. No matter who you are or where you are or why you…
Welcoming means accepting yourself exactly as you are and also accepting life exactly as it unfolds. It is the ability to allow all of it, including all the parts of yourself and your life that you don’t like, and letting it all flow without getting hooked into the stories created by your mind. Welcoming is not trying to make your life any different than it is. Easier said than done, right? I know it's not always easy to welcome and accept life, especially your challenges, because you have been conditioned to continuously judge yourself and others. This is the inner voice…
My eyesight, or lack thereof, has always taught me lessons. Back in 2008 and in my recent book, From Type A to Type Me: How to Stop “Doing” Life and Start Living It, I shared my experiences of having poor eyesight before receiving my first glasses. I learned a lot about myself through my microscopic view of the world due to my near-sightedness. Then, once I had the right glasses, I began to see the beauty and interconnectedness of the world. Now my eyes are ready to teach me the next lesson. A few years back I received Lasik surgery. For…
How would your life change if you trusted that your challenges are a part of your journey home – back to yourself and back to Life – instead of feeling that your challenges are here because you have done something wrong or you are being punished or God fell asleep on the job? What would happen if your illness, your difficult relationship, your demanding boss, your compulsions, and maybe even your troublesome dog were showing up in your life to help you heal? The healing you long for comes when you discover how to play the warmer, warmer/colder, colder game. Remember that…
With the return of my son’s cancer, I have had lots of opportunities to be with fear and despair. Sharing this journey with my son has taken me to a deeper level of presence than I have ever known. My body has been a very dear friend throughout this fierce process, especially my belly and my breath. Whenever I am caught in the fear-based mind, sometimes all I can do is soften my belly and allow a deeper breath. The belly is one of the best biofeedback mechanisms we have. If it is tight, we are up in our…
We all created a finely-crafted survival system to bury or numb our pain when we were young. We had to, as it was absolutely necessary for survival. Life was too scary, and we didn’t have the skills to meet ourselves in our hearts. Our survival system can include compulsions, such as drug and alcohol abuse, shopping, work, sex, the Internet, busyness, self-judgment, and chronic worry. I think about all of those years that I shut down the pain with food, drugs and alcohol. In one year alone, I gained 97 pounds. I would have died of the pain if I…
Every morning I sit outside on my high-floor terrace in South Florida, sip my coffee, and read an uplifting pamphlet or two. Then I write out my day’s schedule. Too often, despite the uplifting material, I start worrying about this client or that deadline or the seemingly endless list of tasks on the schedule. And my quiet time erodes into anxiety. The activity that’s supposed to help me ease into the day with a positive outlook has the opposite effect. Instead of returning to my home office refreshed and ready to work, I’m drained and irritable. As I kept noticing…
The willingness to meet whatever is showing up in our lives takes courage. Did you know that the root for the word courage means “of the heart”? It takes an open heart and deep compassion to see all of the conditioned stories in our heads that keep us separate from life. It takes courage to see them, love them and, under that gaze of compassion, allow them to evaporate like the summer fog when it is touched by the morning sun. I have been experiencing a lot of pain in my back and leg for quite some time now. …
I’m in Las Vegas for a few days, taking a speaker’s training workshop with the incomparable, Les Brown. As I was walking to our conference room this morning, I had to walk through the casino. I’m not a gambler, rarely walk through casinos, and I felt like I was experiencing sensory overload on this short walk. There were slot machines everywhere, and at each, someone was already aimlessly feeding its voracious appetite. The vast majority of the folks there were over 70, obese, smoking, drinking (in the morning!) and looked haggard and defeated by life. Perhaps they'd been gambling all…
I recently came across one of my favorite poems, My Brilliant Image, by the fourteenth century Persian Poet, Hafiz: One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow. I wish I could show you The Infinite Incandescence That has cast my brilliant image! I wish I could show you, When you are lonely or in darkness, The astonishing Light Of your own Being! Hafiz is telling us that the astonishing light, the brilliance of our own being, is already with us. We are filled with great light that permeates everything. Brian Swimme, Evolutionary Philosopher and Co-Collaborator of the documentary…
Often times, our days get ahead of us and by the time night falls, we cannot even remember what we did or how the hours passed by so quickly. Here are some ways you can catch yourself from running blindly through your day like a tornado, missing everything, so that you can live fully and with intention. Set intentions. This may sound silly, but the way in which you wake will determine much of your day. When you open your eyes (before anyone - human or companion animal - notices you are awake), take a few moments to pay attention to…
