Another year has come and gone. It’s always such an exciting time of welcoming in the new and saying goodbye to the past. We set New Year resolutions of making our lives better in the New Year. We decide to exercise more, lose weight, find a new job, find love, etc., etc., etc.
 
For a few days, or a few weeks, we are ecstatic about our new found reality, until ‘reality’ sets in. Our perceived reality is the beginning of the end. You have a ‘bad’ day or ‘fall off the wagon’ or any other term of perceived failure and you lose your focus. It was a New Year resolution, not a one day resolution, so you’ve failed. Why keep trying?
 
You keep trying because you are completely worth it! You find the courage, the compassion, and the motivation because you deserve it! You lose the fear of lack, disappointment, and the unknown because there is only one of YOU this world knows and the world needs you to flourish. Each moment you have the opportunity to shift into creating your dreams and desires rather than worrying about failing and fear. Each moment you choose how to move forward with laughter or with tears. Each moment you can choose to forgive or to be mad. Each moment you can choose to be a victor or be a victim. Each moment you can choose to live in gratitude for what is or complain on what is not. Each moment you can choose to be lost or to be found. So lose your New Year resolutions and find your ‘for today I will live my best self’.
 

Affirmation: I find grace and gratitude in each experience.

(S)he Said:  

“Stand still. The trees ahead and the bush beside you are not lost.” ~ Albert Einstein
 

“In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.”  ~ Anne Sophie Swetchine
 

“The worst bankruptcy in the world is the person who has lost his enthusiasm.”  ~ H.W. Arnold
 

“The very man who has argued you down, will sometimes be found years later, to have been influenced by what you said.” ~ C.S. Lewis

“I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.” ~ Amy Tan

“Much more happiness is to be found in the world than gloomy eyes discover.” ~ Friedrich Nietsche

Soulful Links:

You Found Me ~ The Fray

Now That I Found You ~ Alison Krauss

Lost ~Coldplay

For the next week I invite you to:

Lose fear, self doubt, worry, anger, and any negative feeling that holds you back from your greatness.
 
Find all of your great qualities and cherish them
 
Find your passion, dream big, give big, and love big.
 
Mostly, my wish for you is to realize that each day provides you the opportunity to lose limiting beliefs and finding opportunity for you to live the life of your dreams.
 
Until next time, I wish you all a Happy New Day!

Keep living big, loving big, and laughing along the journey.
~Carol
 
Looking for a way to stay focused on Living Life Fulfilled? Make sure to surround yourself with people who lift you up, inspire you, support you, and simply love to laugh and have fun.

I love the holiday season. Whether you celebrate Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, all of them, or simply celebrate being alive, people are often in a kinder loving mood. Wouldn’t it be great to carry that feeling throughout the rest of the year? Wouldn’t it be great to have peace on earth?

The thought of peace on earth makes me giddy, yet it also can be overwhelming. With so much conflict in the world, how can there be peace on earth? Peace on earth doesn’t have to be overwhelming at all. Peace on earth starts with you. It starts with you choosing daily to be your best self who is loving, kind, giving, compassionate, friendly, and allowing. Peace on earth starts in your personal life as you choose to be peaceful to yourself, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your neighbors, your city, your country, your globe. Peace on earth begins when the conversation is centered on what is going right in the world rather than perpetuating stories of conflict and lack. Peace on earth starts person to person, home to home, city to city, and country to country. Peace on earth starts when you appreciate diversity rather than fear it. Peace on earth starts the moment you choose peaceful thoughts.

 AFFIRMATION: I am peaceful

(S)he Said: 

“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.”  ~ Peace Pilgrim

 “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”  ~ Jimi Hendrix

 “Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.” ~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

 “Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.”  ~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy

 Soulful Links:

Peace on Earth ~ U2

 Peace Train ~ Cat Stevens

 Peace of Mind ~ Boston

For the next week I invite you to choose peace on earth by:

Focusing on the good in your life and emulating it for others

Being grateful for diversity as the world would be bland without it

Loving you, loving life, and loving others

Engaging in conversations of peace over war, pro over protest, right over wrong, and love over fear

Being aware when you start to feed conflicting thoughts to what you want in your life and shift to a space of gentleness, love, and compassion

Mostly, I wish you a week filled of peaceful hearts. Choose to think of love, compassion, appreciation, forgiveness rather than fear. Choose to change conversations of war/terror/poor economy to a conversation of hope and allowing. Choose to be peaceful with yourself if you are going through a contrasting experience to what you want knowing this too is a learning experience to grow from. Choose to be at peace with yourself, with life, and with others.

Until next time, Please Enjoy A Calm Environment by creating Peace.

Keep living big, loving big, and laughing along the journey.
~Carol
 
Looking for a way to stay focused on Living Life Fulfilled? Make sure to surround yourself with people who lift you up, inspire you, support you, and simply love to laugh and have fun.

Can you believe that another year is nearing an end? It’s that time of year that we reflect on the past and look forward to the future. Many of us have New Year resolutions and as soon as we think them, we wonder what day, week, or month we’ll break them. Perhaps we put too much pressure on ourselves by saying this year we won’t do x, y, z. Rather than resolving yourself to do, to be, to earn, to lose, to…to…to, how about stepping back and just allow yourself to be in the moment. I don’t think I’ve ever kept a resolution that had a year-long plan attached to it. But a one-month resolution went to two months, three months, and eventually lasted for years.

So as you enjoy the remainder of the year, start planting ideas of love, happiness, peace, growth, abundance, enlightenment, and absolute joy into your consciousness for the next month, next week, or frankly just the next couple days if you are in a challenging place right now. As you plant your seeds, nurture them with happiness and positive focus, watch them grow, and keep in mind that you are a part of a magnificent garden called the universe. Perhaps you are a flower in a beautifully manicured urban garden, or you are a wild flower alongside the vast highways, maybe a single stem sitting along a creek. Wherever your roots are planted, you are part of that particular scenic environment. The other flowers are more radiant as they bask in your energy. The other plants, animals, (humans) exist along side of us as we share this time in space. We each have the ability to nurture those around us – often without even knowing we are doing so simply by our fragrant scent of happiness. So as you plant your personal seeds and enjoy watching them grow, open your eyes to the grandness around you. Love and appreciate the whole. Share your sunshine and water when others are in need and I guarantee it will be shared with you on a gloomy dry day.

AFFIRMATION: Each day I grow into my highest vision of myself.

(S)he Said:

 ”The first principle of success is desire – knowing what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed.”  ~ Robert Collier

  ”The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.” ~ George Elliot

 “If we are growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.” ~ John Maxwell

 “There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder.”

~Ronald Reagan

 Soulful Links:

 Secret Garden ~ Bruce Springsteen

 Whose Garden Was This? ~ John Denver

 Rose Garden ~ Lynn Anderson

For the next week I invite you to: 

Plant seeds of your dreams and desires and allow them to grow. See your life as a garden by nurturing what is important to you and removing the prickly weeds; but make sure they are prickly as although dandelions are called weeds, they sure are pretty in a field of dandelions.

As you nurture what is important, truly get into the feeling of what makes it important to you.

As you remove the prickly weeds, understand why they no longer suit your new garden, yet appreciate them for showing you contrast so you can better cultivate your personal garden.

EnJOY your garden and see all the beautiful gardens around you. Perhaps add a flower or two from another’s garden to yours. And if you see prickly weeds in someone else’s garden, realize it is for them to pick out if they want. For you, it’s just a reminder of what doesn’t work in your garden, but maybe it’s their dandelion.

Mostly, I invite you to enjoy today as today is the seeds you planted of yesterdays gone by. Nurture and believe in your garden and all of your tomorrows will be as beautiful as today.

Until next week, throw caution to the wind (which will carry your seeds further) and start planting your perfect garden in winter.

Keep living big, loving big, and laughing along the journey.
~Carol
 
Looking for a way to stay focused on Living Life Fulfilled? Make sure to surround yourself with people who lift you up, inspire you, support you, and simply love to laugh and have fun.