Encourage others.  Believe in them.  Appreciate them.  See God in everyone.

Dr. Norris Chumley

If you’ve been following my posts of late you know I’m doing exercises and activities from “Ask and It’s Given” By Esther and Jerry Hicks and Abraham. This past week I saw one of my visualization box wishes become reality.  To help you understand lets go back about  six weeks.  Six weeks ago I was following the press trip of a writer I’ve come to enjoy.  Her website is Almostfearless.com  She gave up her corporate life and became a travel nomad writing and blogging her way around the world with her husband and dogs in tow.  I receive her travel updates via email and in early November she was headed out for a  six day press trip to write about Belieze, courtesy of Belieze Tourism.

When I saw her post about the trip I said aloud, ” I want to do that. I want to take a press trip like that.” Along with my statement were physical pictures and travel brochures of places in the caribbean I would like to visit.  All of this was inside my visualization box which I see daily on my living room stand. Let me also be clear,  I’ve spent the last two years blogging for a travel website and have spent ten years of my life traveling and working overseas. So it wasn’t just a whim that had me saying I want to take a press trip. I’ve done the ground work. I have the skills and I have the knowledge to write and travel alone. I was simply asking the universe to help me manifest an opportunity to put my skills in the forefront as a traveler and writer.

Just over one month later I was contacted by the writer whose travel website I write for. She offered me an opportunity to travel as part of  a press trip to the caribbean.  After thinking  10.5 seconds I said I’m 98% sure I can go, I will get back to you in the morning with a final answer. Of course that answer was YES! Are you kidding me?  No writer who loves to travel is going to say no to an opportunity to travel and write about their experience. So within six weeks of my desire to manifest a press trip I was preparing to head out on my own caribbean press trip. Life is pretty amazing!

I departed on Dec 16th for four amazing, adventurous days on the caribbean island of Aruba. I know it was a combination of belief, manifestation, divine support, years of writing, blogging and traveling that created this amazing opportunity. It was powerful and awe inspiring to see this moment manifest in my life. It is the realization of one dream and a start to a whole series of dreams. I am blessed, I am grateful and I am thrilled to be at this place in my life. It feels like a beautiful, spiritual gift. I see these exercises working in my life. I hope you will be inspired to use them in your own life.  Namaste

If you would like to follow my posts from Aruba you can find them @ wanderlustandlipstick.com/hammmockinparadise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMOMgQCRAqM

Beach Photo Credit: Lisa Overman

Life is joy, love, challenge, choices and change. We all want to feel loved, cherished and desired. It’s part of the nature of our soul to need love. We want to feel the warmth, closeness and the delight of loving and being loved. Relationships are a gift and a challenge to walk each day. No matter what relationship you choose you will find moments that transform you with the depth of their love, the fear, the frustration and the sheer joy and commitment of loving another soul. This is no easy walk, it’s a baptism of fire. No matter who we are, who we love, who we feel drawn to in our life the fact remains we are changed and challenged by commitment in the best and worst ways. For certain life will become about WE rather than me. It will feel at times like a series of compromises, which challenge your very being. We all think we are flexible until we’re faced with the needs and desires of another soul. Then we come to realize maybe we aren’t as easy and flexible as we imagined.

Passion comes from the depth of our being. Passion moves us, makes our soul dance and sing. We live our lives passionately: wanting to do good with our life and our love. We believe passionately and sometimes our challenges fill us with the conviction of peace and the reality of compromise. No relationship will be easy or painless, but the depth of our love and passion will make it worthwhile and make us willing to walk the walk with hope, love and joy. These after all are the gifts of life and love.

My dolphin experience with Echelle

There is so much to be said for reaching my forties. I really no longer give a fig about what people think of my life or life choices. I am by far the happiest I have ever been with myself and my life. I have healed and I’m now capable of inspiring others to heal. I’m free of the pain I spent many years feeling and have moved beyond the suffocating grief I lived through.

Being forty six gives me a certain freedom, I choose how I spend my time, energy and life. I strive each day to create good through my writing and my website, but I also strive to feel joy and contentment in my every day experiences. I love what I do, I love creating a healing space for people to enjoy, read and be inspired by. This is my life’s work and that feels more amazing than anything else; to have reached my forties and know exactly what I’m meant to be doing. It is the most divine feeling. I feel inspired, motivated and thrilled to be doing this work. I know my experiences and stories can guide others through their own journey of healing. That is a gift, to reach the other side of pain and loss and feel I can use it for something useful, something deeply uplifting. I feel grateful.

I believe when we reach our forties we view our life differently, we refocus on what we really want in our life, rather than what we think we are supposed to have in our life. We make time for ourselves, for those we love and we treasure every day, knowing that life can be short and we better play part of every day. Time doesn’t move backwards, it moves forward and as I explore this year of being forty six sometimes it flies by and I wonder if I’ve treasured each moments enough.

Life is good, I hope as you read this you will consider your own life. Are you feeling inspired? What can you do in your own life to add joy and contentment? Are you doing something you love doing? If not find a few hours a week and make it all yours. Life is full of choices. Make yours all they can be. Make them uplifting. Namaste

Today I came across this website, through a Gratitude email I receive each day. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to share it. Enjoy and check out the website at the link above.

WOW: Wish Only Well
WOW is living in your highest ideals and believing in yourself. It’s appreciating and respecting the diversity and magnificence of life, realizing that you are a link in the chain of life. The chain will be as weak or as strong as you.

Believe in the power of faith, hope and love. Contribute to life in your own special way and celebrate the renaissance of the human spirit!

Be a messenger of hope! Give WOW a new meaning: Wish Only Well.

Say WOW, smile…and pass it on!

Indian Shores Beach Gratitude By: Lisa Overman

It would just be words that are meaningless if people thought I had no similar experiences in my own life of this struggle in our trying financial times. I have been juggling the bills of these two houses for two years, alone. The moments of fear, anxiety and stress have been great. But my determination to find a way through the dark moments brought me to a place of grace and gratitude, where I realized my focus on gratitude was making a shift in my life. It can certainly make a difference in the lives of others in similar situations. No, it doesn’t happen over night. It is not a magic bullet to make all our problems go away. What it is, is a gentle shift in our thinking, our experiences, when we realize even in the struggles that we have things to be grateful for.

Okay, I admit there are moments when I’m not in gratitude, when I’m in fear. There are moments when the anxiety overcomes me and I feel like I can’t breathe from the stress. What gratitude has shown me is that I can shift my life with a grateful attitude. It has brought a gentle flow of abundance to my life. Several times now money has flowed to me that I needed greatly at that time. It doesn’t happen every time, and no matter how great or how small the abundance that comes, I focus my energy and my prayers saying thank you to spirit for providing each gift of abundance. I repeat my thanks and I find it shifts both my mood and my experience. I feel more uplifted living like this. I also find more blessed moments coming my way and find myself focused much more in an attitude of gratitude.

Clouds By Dareha Photo Flickr

Gratitude is our best asset in times of challenge. When we feel overwhelmed with what is expected of us, with our ability to provide for ourselves and our family staying grateful for what we’ve already created and accomplished is very important. Gratitude aligns our us with our spirit, gratitude lifts our energy and shifts our body energy to a dimension of universal love that best serves our body, life and spirit.

It isn’t complicated, simply put it means awake with grateful thoughts for what you already have in your life. The person you love, the family you draw near, the bills you’ve been able to pay, the car you drive, the house or apartment you’ve made your own. Focus a thought of deep gratitude for each gift of your life. Spirit likes a grateful attitude. Living in gratitude daily shifts your energy in such a way as to draw more good into your life.

I know in these tough times it isn’t always easy to be grateful. I too have hours when I feel less grateful than I should. At times I allow fear or challenge to overcome me. My constant and remaining struggle of paying for two houses, when one hasn’t sold has me at times feeling as if I’m being drown by it all. It is truly overwhelming. What I’ve learned through my own challenge is that gratitude really really works.

The other day I was feeling quite grateful for money that spirit provided me with in an unexpected way. It wasn’t a lot, but I was grateful. I focused my thoughts over that afternoon in gratitude. Thanking spirit for providing me another small means of support. Interestingly the next day after focusing on gratitude and really thanking spirit for what I had received, more abundance came my way, nearly doubling the amount I had received the day before. It was a moment of realizing gratitude is key, gratitude is the shift our attitude needs to bring more abundance to our lives. Gratitude is key in shifting a life, your life, any life. Live and work in gratitude. Find ten minutes when you wake up and before you go to sleep to focus your thoughts on what you are grateful for. Each day allow that list to grow, thinking of all you truly have to be grateful for. Namaste.

We use our strength and belief in ourselves when things feel like they’re crumbling, or challenging us. With that foundation nourishing us we are strong enough to say, “this is the path and I will remain focused. I know that I’m in the midst of challenge and change but I can do this. That is not always easy to say. Sometimes it feels easier to move off the path to do something different, something that fullfills us in the short term.

Nourishment and support may not appear from those around you. Even those you love the deepest may not understand your experences and situation. In those times it is best to go within, to recognize that not everyone sees things in the same fashion. Perceptions can be very different and the only thing you can do is release your need for exterior support.

This is when nourishment and support from within are key. We each have abilities and gifts and we create an inner belief in our selves and our skills. In the rough moments and days of challenge, refocus on your self, on your skills and begin to create the conditions you personally need to feel successful. Take it one step at a time and remember the flower. Use that inner foundation of strength to branch out as you feel ready and capable.

Good Morning Dareha Photo

An attitude of daily gratitude shifts the energy of your spirit and your body. It opens a place within you that allows opportunity and abundance to flow through you. Recognizing your joy and gratitude helps to shift your life. Morning prayers upon awakening of thanks and appreciation for your life are a beautiful way to transform your day.

Dareha Photo

Refocusing through the day in gratitude is an essential part of the plan. This helps shift your mind away from scattered thoughts to thinking beautiful thoughts for each situation and thing you give thanks for and allows you to hold gratitude in your mind. This is clarifying. Gratitude is an attitude, it shifts your energy, it opens you to new things.

Photo Credit: Flickr By: Fensterbme

As I prepare to ring in the New Year there is much to contemplate. I think of my 2008 experiences and what life has brought me. I contemplate where I am, where I have come from and what comes next with the start of a new year.

There has been much to be grateful for in 2008. Many wonderful moments have filled my 2008, with a wonderful man in my life and a website I’m deeply proud of. I’ve reached a place of loving my life and being truly at peace with the direction my life is taking as a writer and healer. At moments there have been big doses of challenge with a house for sale, a relationship, and getting my website going in the direction I desire, while continuing to work toward a published book. There are moments that I really have to go within. When I have to refocus my energy in gratitude. In the darkest moments I try to reflect on what I have survived, what I have healed and how grateful I am to have reached this place of healing in my life.

2008 has been a blessed year for me in so many ways, I feel grateful every day for the life I have, for the gifts I have been given. I know an attitude of gratitude is the way to go. That isn’t always easy, but I focus and refocus as I need to, because I find when I focus on the gratitude and the good in my life I feel so much better. I feel energized and I feel supported by spirit at those times.

As I begin 2009 I will keep my attitude focused on gratitude and make time to contemplate, pray and meditate. I know making time for my spirit and my spiritual practices is the way to go. I have a great life. I wake up every day grateful, feeling very blessed. As I go to sleep tonight, knowing I will awake to a new year I will say a prayer of thanks for what 2008 has brought me and look forward with anticipation of all I can create with the dawning of a new year. May each of your lives be filled with love and the blessings of a New Year!