Saturday, December 2, 2017

You are the student, kids are the teachers

You are the student, kids are the teachers


Isn’t it strange that we have children, and we think we are the teacher and they are the student?

Now, with grandchildren I am finally starting to understand and appreciate children. They are the teachers, and we are the students.

We all come into this earthly life with fully functioning bodies that regulate themselves. We come with a brain, knowing, and doing.  We come for a reason and a purpose. Once here, the purpose is in our subconscious and it is hidden from our conscious mind. 

We are innocent, open, and loving. 

Then we are taught how we are to live, act, react, and the prejudices that we are to hold. Yes, what we are taught as children are not always the correct teachings. 

We come open and pure, and we are poisoned by the good intentions of our families who were brought up the same way by their parents. We inherit what our parents inherited from their parents. 

Now, finally, being of grandparent age, I can look at a young child and marvel.  Taking the time, watching, listening, and talking to them I realize all the lessons they have to offer. 

For example kids;
are loving of all people
show their emotions
are open
live in the now
are engaged
keep trying until they accomplish something
know how to get what they want
know how to handle people
know how to obtain the desired reaction
know when to eat and sleep
don’t hold grudges or resentments

Yes, kids know so much that we did not teach them. But, if we watch them closely, they live a better life than most adults. They do not carry prejudices, they do not hold grudges, and they keep going, and keep moving on. 

Yes, kids come to teach adults, come to bring us back to our roots, to who we are, and who we should be. 


Want to live a better life?  Be a kid!

You Have Value


You Have Value


Certain odd moments, and odd comments by people, will prove to you that you have value, far more value than you realized. 

I wrote a newsletter for 10 years and stopped on the 10th anniversary. Unexpectedly, a person I was with, expressed that I had value and how he missed the messages in my newsletter.  WOW.   He missed my messages.  He followed them for ten years. 

There are two lessons here:

  1. Know you have value

2. Express to others their value to you

We go about life doing our jobs and our duties. Yet, we can easily slide into the opinion that it doesn’t matter and no one cares. Yet, they do care, and they rarely tell us so. 

Recently, I met a teacher of many years who told me she started a new school year, and she had a girl with the same last name of a man who was not a model student when he was in her class years ago. She asked the girl her father’s name. Yes, she said, ‘my dad said you were his teacher.’

A few days later the girl appeared with a letter the teacher had written to her father’s parents thirty years earlier expressing displeasure with their son. He had kept the letter and now, by way of his daughter, returned it to the teacher with no note of why he was returning it. 

She waited for him to show up at parent teacher night. He never came. She wondered. Two days before the end of school she looked up and he was in the doorway to her classroom holding a plant. 

He wanted to tell her she was the best teacher he ever had and how much she meant to him. 

In telling me the story she said, ‘that’s why I am a teacher’. Truly, rarely do we have the pleasure of knowing the lives we touch and those we help. 

Use your value and share your value with others. You may not realize how much value you have. But, others do, and they so appreciate you sharing it with them. 

Make sure you tell people how much you value them. 

Everyone has value. Even YOU! 





Guaranteed - Your are going to Die

Guaranteed - You are going to Die


Death is guaranteed. Yet, there is no death. 

Death is simply the transfer from the physical to the non-physical.  You close your eyes in the physical and open them in the non-physical. 

We will die a physical death, and we will continue our non-physical being. We are a non-physical spirit that occupies a physical body for a period of time. 

Why are we ‘born’, and why do we ‘die’? It’s simple: we enter the physical life for the experience and to learn something, or to assist someone else in their learning. When the task is accomplished, we go back to the non-physical. 

We already know we are here for a limited time. While it is said our time of death is determined at our birth, we have no conscious knowledge of it. 

Yet, for some of us, our actions leading up to our death indicate, on some level, we know it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it’s unconscious, and we are not aware of why we are doing what we are doing in advance. It’s only after the fact, when those left review the action of the deceased, they can see actions that lead up to the death. Some clean up messes, some have long overdue conversations, some visit family. 

Have you ever just known to do something, just did it, and then, looking back, you realized someone was guiding you? I’ll bet you have. I know a number of circumstances where, left to my own devices, it would not have turned out well. Yet, for some unknown reason I did the right thing and avoided a disaster. 

Once, while operating my boat, I suddenly realized we were headed for a shoal (shallow water) and I was able to alter course before I ran aground. Another time, I fell in a rubber raft and someone, somehow guided my hand to support my weight and avoid my falling in the water.  Both times I quickly realized someone was with me, someone was guiding me. 

No, we are not alone. Those who have died, who are now in the non-physical are still connected to us. Yes, they are guiding us as needed. Rarely are we aware of it. Yet, reflect on your life and you’ll be able to see where a loved one who is now in the non-physical was protecting you. 

It should be heartwarming to know they are still with us, and we with them. We too will enter the non-physical and then the veil of secrets and differences will be lifted, and we will better understand. 

Yet, with faith and belief, we can know it now. 





Monday, April 3, 2017

SAIL AWAY

Sail away. 

Cast off the lines that hold you, leave the harbor, head out to sea, sail, sail, sail. 

Let go, move, move forward, onward, and upward. 

Chart your course, going forward, going towards, looking forward to the adventure of it all. Looking forward to knowing the unknown, to growing with new experiences, new challenges, and new dangers to overcome. 

Chart your course for your first intended port of call. It may happen or it may not. something might change, and something will change. Go with the flow. Embrace the adventure, knowing you will get to where you are meant to be, and you will experience what you are meant to experience along the way. 

What you do and what you experience is and was created for you. Created as part of your life lessons, learning that you will need to put to use to carry you forward in your quest for life, for living, and for serving. 

Sailing away releases you from what has been holding you back. The further you sail the more distant the memory is. Eventually, it is a mere recollection.  Your mind is occupied with the now,  what is ahead of you rather than the history of where you have been. 

You can’t change where you have been, and you can’t live where you have been. You can change the feeling and thoughts associated with where you have been. You can use them for the benefit of where you are going and what you are doing now.   Yes, that works. 

Sailing away creates an adventure.  It gives you the opportunity to choose your course, to focus on the course, the planning, and the execution of it.  It eliminates time wasted on the past. It’s forward looking, empowering, and enabling. 

To move forward, to advance, and to accomplish new goals, you have to make room, you have to have time and space. Your world is always full.  You need to let go, to cast off, to make space so that the new can enter. 

Let go of what no longer works. Let go of relationships that have outlived their value to you and the other person. Let go of those tasks, meetings, and perceived obligations that add no value for you.   IF they don’t add value for you, they don’t add value for the other person either. 

You can’t move forward living in the past. You can’t move forward without focus, a plan, and action.  NOW is the time for that plan and that action. 

As you sail away, let go of your old baggage. Be free. Be open. Be willing.  Make room. Expand, grow, and reach out. 

Who bothers you, who are you estranged from, yet they still occupy a big space in your mind and time spent thinking about them?  Now, remember a similar person from ten years ago. I bet you had forgotten all about them and that particular situation. 

In most all situations the one who so bothers us now will fade from our memory and lose their grip on our thoughts over time. Then, gone, we look back and wonder why we had spent so much time on them before. It’s embarrassing.  Yes, it is. 

Yet, we do it again and again.     When a relationship did not work, or got off course, let it go, don’t let it occupy your mind. Move on, cast off from the relationship.  Cast off and move towards the new adventure.  


As you move forth the old issues will pass out of sight and then out of your mind. New and more important things are now filling your mind.  New things that can carry you forth, new thoughts that add value and create life itself.   

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

My Life Is.....


What is your life? 

You life is not what happens to you it’s, how you respond to what happens to you. Life happens to all of us.  Some recover and get back on track and some just let life’s whims take over. 

Here’s life:

GREAT
I’m good looking
I’m thin
I’m smart
I’m popular
I’ve a great job
I make a lot of money
I have an expensive sports car
I have a condo in the best neighborhood with a great view
I take expensive wonderful vacations
I know a lot of people who want to be me


AWFUL
I’m almost ugly
I’m overweight
I had poor grades in school and never went to college
I don’t have any friends
I’m in a dead end boring job
My car is an old clunker I’m embarrassed of
My apartment is a third floor walk up
My vacation is a ‘staycation’
Nobody wants to be me

A TRAGEDY
My parents died at a young age
My significant other has a life threatening disease
I’m disabled
I need an operation
My employer went bankrupt
I did not get a college degree when I had the chance
My expenses exceed my income
Fire burnt my house down
My car was stolen

Guess what? Your life is what you make of it!

Yes, you make your life. You envision it, and you live to the vision. When the vision is not working due to external situations, it’s up to you as to how you react to the situation and get back on course, back to the life you envision. 

Remember the positive little boy on Christmas morning that found a pile of sh—? He knew that meant there was a pony close by for him!

We are as good looking as we believe we are. We can work with the body given us and improve it, or we can let it go. Looks are subjective as is what the correct weight is.  All of the items above can be good or bad. If bad, there  can be good, if they spur you to action. 


Often the awful, unthinkable things that happen to us are messages and may well become an inspiration to change. We may well look back on those events years later and realize the positive change they made in our lives. 



Why do some people, people who are unremarkable to you, become so successful? Because they think they can, they ‘fake it’ until they make it.  Remember, if they can do it, you can do it. 

OFF COURSE



My course changed abruptly. 

We flew to Vail - Beaver Creek for a week of skiing. While we stayed at Beaver Creek I mentioned I’d like to spend  two days at Vail. 

Guess why I was able to spend two days at Vail? 

It ended up that my two days at Vail were spent there as a a patient in the hospital. The extent of my skiing was watching the skiers from my hospital window. I would have never guessed I’d end up in the hospital. I never guessed my first day of skiing, a great day, was going to be my last day of great skiing. 

I was released the night before my flight back to RI and I am fine. No worries. While I could not ski, I was able to make use of the time for other priorities. Sure, I was not happy to give up the skiing, but I was happy to eliminate the pain, recover, and work on other projects while in the hospital. 

Too many people do not plan the course of their lives, just going where the wind takes them, or where the family wants them. Yet, most people spend more time planning a vacation than planning their lives. So, a vacation that gets off course is a big deal, a catastrophe. No, it’s not a catastrophe, it’s life. 

We are like boats at sea. We are always being knocked off course, and we are always adjusting back to course. That’s life.  It’s how we handle what it thrown at us. It’s how we get back on course that counts. 

Think about your life and what has thrown you off course, or what could have thrown you off course. For example:

Not being accepted at the school/college of your choice
Flunking out of school/college

Your significant  other terminating your relationship

Not being hired for the job you desire
Being fired from your job
Being demoted
Not being promoted
employer tranfers

not earning the money you need to enjoy the lifestyle you desire

Having to move to an area you do not enjoy

Medical issues
illness
physical limitations
divorce
death

Family issues, spouse, parents, kids 

There are many things that can easily throw us off course. It’s in your reaction, the handling of the issue that creates the difference. 

React as positive as possible. If you are one of the ones who believes everything happens for a purpose, think about the purpose, and then move forward. If you do not believe things happen for a purpose, you can still react as positively as possible. 

Reflect on what has thrown you off course in the past that, at the time, seemed tragic. Yet, looking back you saw the value, the opportunity offered and the benefit of being thrown off course. Sometimes being thrown off course has created a better, more rewarding, course for your life.