The Struggle

I was inspired by this article and wished to share it with you.

The Struggle

What do butterflies have in common with the human spirit? Meet Maggie, a middle aged wife and mother who was about to find out.

Maggie wasn't rich like a millionaire or poor in a manner of being homeless. She was living an average comfortable life. It was made even better when a beautiful baby girl came her way. Maggie and her husband made sure their daughter had her needs met and they were still able to take a yearly vacation by the beach.

Maggie was a partner in her husband's business. They both had a different set of duties which kept everything in balance. One day a devastating blow came to her husband's business, and over a three year period the business dropped out of site. Her husband had to totally reinvent himself and was yearning to fulfill a dream with a new vocation. She was happy for him and supported him fully, but still the money was not coming in.

Maggie began to feel guilty that she wasn't contributing with any kind of income. It had been a long time since she had worked outside the home and had to work for someone else. Needless to say she was scared but still had faith that everything would be OK. She began job hunting and found it somewhat difficult in filling out applications, especially the part asking for job references. Keep in mind that she was self-employed with her husband for almost 20 years. It felt as though that didn't count for anything as she was never called for an interview.

At the time she was job hunting her mom became more ill than she had been and ended up in the hospital for a week. Once Maggie's mom returned home she became her mom's helper one day a week. She did the shopping, changed sheets, vacuumed and did other things that her mother was not able to do anymore. Of course her mom would pay her for her time and labor but she still felt she needed to find another source of income.

One of the first applications she had filled out finally came through. She passed the interview with flying colors and was told she was "exactly" what they were looking for. Although it was only part time it was exactly what she wanted. It was important for her to be home when her daughter arrived home from school. She was told they would be in touch when the schedule was ready. Knowing she had the job made her feel contented and productive again.

Within a few weeks though, she received an e-mail saying that the company had changed the job into a full time position and she was not qualified. Maggie was devastated. She felt betrayed and felt she had been lied to. That evening she was alone as her husband and daughter had gone out for the night. She welcomed the aloneness and wanted to drown her sorrows in a hot tub of bubbles.

As she knew she would, she began to cry, softly at first just from the sheer pain of being rejected. Three long years of struggle had finally caught up with her. Then she became angry; angry at everything from the circumstances that got her there, to God himself. She cried harder and yelled, "What do you want me to do?" She really felt that God had abandoned her.

When she was able to cry no more, she became exhausted and gave up. It was at that moment that a silent idea came to her to offer other elderly people home care assistance.

Using another talent for computers she printed off some flyers and cards and distributed them to her church, grocery stores and even placed a small ad in the newspaper. Within a week she had procured two new clients.

Now, even though she's not a CEO of a major company or a power player she feels happy and productive again. So, had God really abandoned her? Let's look at nature for the lessons and the answer.

Before a butterfly can emerge out of it's chrysalis it has to go through a lot of struggling. Yes, struggling. Each time it lunges out to escape, acids are being removed from its wings. If someone were to come along and break the chrysalis open for it then the butterfly would die from those acids. In essence the struggle is necessary for the butterfly to survive. Then in the stillness, when the struggle is over, the butterfly can come out and share its beauty with the world.
We as humans are not any different. There are times that we need to struggle, to rid ourselves of the acids that make up sadness, fear, and anger. It is only at this time when we are exhausted and still that we begin to hear the Universe whisper to us.

Tony Masiello, © 2006

Tony Masiello is a Speaker, Author and Consultant. You can learn about is e-book, Whispers From The Universe at: www.whispersfromtheuniverse.com or visit Tony's website at: www.universalinsight.com

What's the Plan? -or- 3 Critical Components to Include in Your Goal Plan

"A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline."
--Harvey Mackay

We all have had dreams at one point in our life.

Some of us have chosen to allow our dreams to fade to avoid the disappointment of potentially not reaching them.

Others continue to dream, but don't take action on them, either hoping they'll just show up, or not knowing how to take action on them.

And even others take those dreams and turn them into goals, all with the simple action of making a plan.

Taking a dream and turning it into a goal by creating a plan is important, and there are some very important aspects to include in your plan if you want to succeed.

Here are 3 critical components that you will want to include in your goal plans:

1. Accountability - Whether it's to a mastermind or a coach, there must be accountability for taking the necessary actions.

2. Support Systems - There are things in place which support you through the lower energy portions of your goal plan. Perhaps it's actions that are more difficult. Or perhaps it's a unexpected set-back. No matter what it is, with a support system in place, you can keep the momentum going through to completion.

3. Milestones and Celebrations - Throughout the Plan there are milestones or achievement markers. It's those places in the plan where certain aspects are completed. Each of those milestones includes a celebration or reward. This again supports you to keep momentum and excitement as you achieve each step in your goal plan.

As you outline your goals and the steps to achieve them, be sure to include these 3 critical components. You will more than triple your chances of success in achieving your goals. Guaranteed.

~*~*~*~

Velma Gallant is an Author, Speaker, Trainer and Abundance Coach. She's a co-author in a best-selling book series with Mark Victor Hansen, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer called "Wake Up Live the Life you Love: Finding Personal Freedom". Velma is the creator of Living Abundant Joy where she interviewed 19 outrageously successful speakers, marketers and coaches on Abundance. She publishes a weekly e-newsletter called "Welcome Changes", which reaches over 45 countries around the world. Velma coaches entrepreneurs and business people to be abundantly successful in both business and life. You can visit Velma's website at http://www.WelcomeChanges.com, or reach her by email at velma@welcomechanges.com.

Taking Chances

"Behold the turtle: He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out."
James Bryant Conant

Do you hold back from exploring new ideas and activities?

Do you automatically go for what you already know and are comfortable with?

Do you stay in your safety or comfort zone?

The thing about hanging out in safety zones is that you will never receive more than what you already have.

Do you desire more freedom and joy in your life?

Your desires are not going to make their way into your life if you continue doing the same safe things.

Have you ever heard it mentioned before that you can't expect different results if you keep doing the same things?

This definitely applies to taking chances.

Other ways to put it is stretching yourself, stepping outside of your comfort zone, or stepping outside of your box.

I personally like to refer to it as stretching my comfort zone. It feels better to me.

Fear can often hold us captive if we think about stepping out of that comfort zone completely. Yet if you think about, stretching a bit doesn't feel as big or overwhelming.

Here is an example from my own experience. I'm moving into more public speaking and mini-workshops. I've been stretching towards this for a while.

It started out with attending teleseminars, and speaking up from time to time. Next, I interviewed someone else over the telephone. They did most of the talking, but I asked the questions. I did more interviews, held my own one hour teleclasses, moved onto being interviewed, longer telecourses, radio shows, etc. Each action stretched me just a little bit more. And now I'm ready to go live!

I like to use a visual of a balloon.

When you take a balloon out of the package, it's hard to blow up. You may pull on it to stretch it and make it easier to blow up. Once you let the air out (kind of like setbacks), the next time you blow it up, it's easier. Each time the air gets let out and you blow it up, it gets easier and easier to do so.

Each time you stretch your comfort zone, it gets easier. You build your confidence. You give yourself more successes to build on.

Are you considering adding a new aspect to your business?

Are you thinking about starting a business so you can leave your J.O.B.?

What would it take for you to get started?

What would it take for you to commit to stretching yourself, even just a little bit?

Don't wait anymore. Get started now.

You can do it!

~*~*~*~

Velma Gallant is an Author, Speaker, Trainer and Abundance Coach. She's a co-author in a best-selling book series with Mark Victor Hansen, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer called "Wake Up Live the Life you Love: Finding Personal Freedom". Velma is the creator of Living Abundant Joy where she interviewed 19 outrageously successful speakers, marketers and coaches on Abundance. She publishes a weekly e-newsletter called "Welcome Changes", which reaches over 45 countries around the world. Velma coaches entrepreneurs and business people to be abundantly successful in both business and life. You can visit Velma's website at http://www.WelcomeChanges.com, or reach her by email at velma@welcomechanges.com.

Baby Steps

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."
-- Mark Twain

Many use Goals to move forward in life, yet there are many that have given up using Goals all together.

Why?

Sometimes it's because once the goal is set, looking at what needs to be accomplished to achieve the goal puts them into overwhelm.

Sometimes it's because the goal isn't achieved quickly enough.

Whatever the reason, there are many great people out there who haven't discovered their greatness because they stop setting goals.

It is important to set goals, but it's also important to put a support system in place to help you keep your momentum.

One of the really important parts of goal setting, and it can be applied to other areas of your life is Baby Steps.

Baby Steps can be used in two ways.

First, and most obviously, it's breaking your goal down into smaller, more manageable pieces. You may even want to set sub-goals to move your way to your ultimate goal.

Why is this important?

It helps to prevent you from moving into overwhelm. It can be like putting blinders on or using tunnel vision as you move forward.

If achieving your goal requires that you learn something new, Baby Steps is very important again.

What I mean by this is giving yourself permission to do things one step at a time, and allowing yourself to fall down too.

As a baby learns to walk, it starts out as a crawl. He pulls himself up on the coffee table. Soon he's furniture surfing! This process goes until he takes his first step, then two, then five. All the while the little guy is falling on his bum. It doesn't take long, though, before he's beaming from ear to ear as he toddles to one of his parents.

Do we get angry with the baby when he falls? No!

Do we berate him if it takes more than two or three tries before he starts to walk? No!

Do we tell him he'll never make it because he crawls rather than moving straight from rolling over to walking? No!

So why is that we, as adults, expect ourselves to learn something new immediately?

Where did the permission to practice go?

Do you have some goals you've put up on the shelf that if you looked deep inside you still want to achieve?

Are you ready to give yourself to take the baby steps required to achieve your goals?

Reach up there and grab that goal again. It's time you rediscovered your greatness.

You truly are magnificent.

~*~*~*~

Velma Gallant is an Author, Speaker, Trainer and Abundance Coach. She's a co-author in a best-selling book series with Mark Victor Hansen, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer called "Wake Up Live the Life you Love: Finding Personal Freedom". Velma is the creator of Living Abundant Joy where she interviewed 19 outrageously successful speakers, marketers and coaches on Abundance. She publishes a weekly e-newsletter called "Welcome Changes", which reaches over 45 countries around the world. Velma coaches entrepreneurs and business people to be abundantly successful in both business and life. You can visit Velma's website at http://www.WelcomeChanges.com, or reach her by email at velma@welcomechanges.com.

Who do you hang with?

"Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
--Mark Twain

Monitoring who you spend your time with is as important as monitoring where your thoughts are.

What you focus on an the emotion behind it is what you bring to you.

How do you feel when someone belittles your ambitions?

How does it change your focus?

I'd guess it makes you feel not quite so good about your ambitions, and changes your focus to what's not quite right with your ambitions.

Have you ever heard that you should spend your time with people who are where you want to be?

I think the quote above speaks to that very clearly. If you spend your time with people who are abundant, and living a life of freedom and joy, they'll make you feel like you can live that life too. They will keep their eyes on the possibilities with you.

Sometimes, though, the people in your life may be the ones who belittle, and they are still important people in your life. They may be family. They may be life-long friends. What do you do then?

It's very simple. You get to choose who you share your ambitions (intentions/desires) with.

You can choose not to share those ambitions with them, so there is no opening for them to belittle.

Save your ambitions (intentions/desires) for those who will hold the vision with you.

Don't feel you have to eliminate these small people from your life completely. That's truly not necessary.

What is necessary is that you include more of those people who are living the life you dream of, and see your greatness.

Take some time to choose who you'll spend most of your time and energy with. Choose people that make you feel great. You deserve it!

~*~*~*~

Velma Gallant is an Author, Speaker, Trainer and Abundance Coach. She's a co-author in a best-selling book series with Mark Victor Hansen, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer called "Wake Up Live the Life you Love: Finding Personal Freedom". Velma is the creator of Living Abundant Joy where she interviewed 19 outrageously successful speakers, marketers and coaches on Abundance. She publishes a weekly e-newsletter called "Welcome Changes", which reaches over 45 countries around the world. Velma coaches entrepreneurs and business people to be abundantly successful in both business and life. You can visit Velma's website at http://www.WelcomeChanges.com, or reach her by email at velma@welcomechanges.com.

Don't Worry About Thinking Positive

You've been playing with Law of Attraction. You know that your thoughts create your experience. The only thing is, you've been experiencing some in-your-face challenges lately.

Likely your first thought is "think positive". You try hard to feel good about whatever it is that's bothering you, and it's pretty much impossible.

Don't worry about thinking positive. There is obviously a lot of emotion involved, and it's all OK.

Yes, the law of attraction does state that what you focus on and the emotion behind it is what you bring to you, but here's a little trick for ya.

You can focus on something that's a "vibrational match" to what you want.

What that really means is that your only job is to feel good. If it doesn't feel good to focus on this situation, find something else to put your attention on that does feel good.

Babystep your way to feeling good. What's one thing you can do to feel just a little bit better?

Have you ever noticed that when you or someone you know is stressed, they have the cleanest floor? For some reason, getting down there and scrubbing takes your mind off of whatever has got you uptight. You may not be right up there dancing, but you are feeling better. You've shifted from feeling bad to feeling neutral. A definitely movement up the emotional scale.

There's nothing wrong with keeping yourself busy to take your mind off of things. Your real job is to feel good. There's nothing in the "rule book" that says you have to force yourself to feel good about something you just don't feel good about right now.

~*~*~

Velma Gallant is an Author, Speaker, Trainer and Abundance Coach. She's a co-author in a best-selling book series with Mark Victor Hansen, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer called "Wake Up Live the Life you Love: Finding Personal Freedom". Velma is the creator of Living Abundant Joy where she interviewed 19 outrageously successful speakers, marketers and coaches on Abundance. She publishes a weekly e-newsletter called "Welcome Changes", which reaches over 45 countries around the world. Velma coaches entrepreneurs and business people to be abundantly successful in both business and life. You can visit Velma's website at http://www.WelcomeChanges.com, or reach her by email at velma@welcomechanges.com.

Hello...How are you? Have you been OK?

It's been a very long while since I posted here, and I've been missing this place!

The last six or so months have been very busy, but in truth, it's been a good busy.

We've had birthday celebrations for our whole family, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Christmas since the last time I posted here.

I've been doing a lot of learning and exploring too.

Oh! And I have a new hobby as well! I've always been fascinated with Crystals, but never took more than a cursory look at the hobby. I've got quite a beautiful crystal collection now. I've taken a crystal workshop. I've begun looking at playing with crystal beads too.

At the end of January we finally were able to see the fertility doctor. We've been trying to add a second child to our family for well over two years. We're not getting any younger here, so we thought we'd check into getting some professional help. ;-)

I've been exploring a few new programs, and reading some really great books lately too. I'll put some "reviews" here in a bit.

OK...that's it for now. I better head back to the action steps I've outlined for today! I've already finished my meditation this morning, and I'm about 1/3 through my list. So doing pretty good!

Have an absolutely fantastic day. Hope you pop by again soon!

Warmly,

Velma