Beyond Your Walls

"Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances." - Wayne Dyer

The life we build around ourselves can be like walls built to imprison us. The life we think we are building might seem idyllic from the vantage point of being inside. But eventually the windows become dirtied from the outside, so we cover them with blinds. Not wishing to see the world through a soot covered window pane we close ourselves in even further.

The view is better if we just refuse to look outside.

The door through which we entered becomes hard to open as its hinges have rusted from lack of use. The locks gather dust until we no longer have the ability to insert or turn a key. The idea of even opening the door begins to fade from our mind.

We begin to judge the outside world in a critical manner.

Nothing beyond our walls is good enough to bring us forth. We shield ourselves from what we believe is an ever depressing world. Our view inside becomes old and outdated. The sameness of our inside life grows cold and stale.

What we fail to see is that our walls will eventually fall in on themselves. Without stepping outside to tend to the gardens, our life will be overrun by the tall weeds and encroaching vines which destroy our home.

We are meant to go beyond our walls.

When we step outside the walls of your own life you will find the garden is meant to be tended by you. The world beyond your private walls of existence is waiting for you to step into it.

Pull open the door to your life and walk through it.

Go BEYOND to a greater life of love for everything in the garden.

Stay inspired my friends!

Endless Ceiling

"Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you." - George Whitefield

Each of us have an ability to move beyond pain, grief or disappointment. We can move beyond the circumstance we find ourselves in. So much is possible if we just press forward and speak the future out loud to ourselves. We can find a way to see beyond what blocks our view.

We can get beyond what is holding us back.

There is an old story about a bedouin within his tent wondering how he would ever achieve all that he wanted. A friend told him to look up at the ceiling of his tent.

"What do you see" he asked the bedouin?

"All I see is the ceiling of my tent" responded the bedouin.

"Come out of the tent and see my ceiling" said the bedouin's friend. "What do you see?"

"I see no ceiling but a sky full of countless stars" replied the bedouin.

Exactly as the bedouin saw, your life has no ceiling above it.

The possibilities are as endless as the stars in the night sky. The paths you can choose are as vast as the eye can see. All it takes is moving beyond the present.

Do not let the past hold you firm in its grip. Break free to reach for a star or even the seemingly impossible.

Step out and look to the night sky. Find a star and begin your journey.

And stay inspired my friends.

Pushing an Elephant

“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.” -John Newton

The band R.E.M. released a song back in 1999 titled The Great Beyond. In it there was a line which went, "I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs, I'm tossing out punch lines that where never there". According to lead singer Michael Stipe, the song is "about attempting the impossible..."

Each day you get up, you have an opportunity to try the impossible. Each of us have different levels of achievement and it isn't about your 'impossibility' being any harder then my 'impossibility'. It is about what you believe you can do in your own life. To seek the impossible and achieve it. Know that we are not in a contest to see who had to work harder or who has the "larger elephant to push up the stairs." It is about you believing in your own abilities to push the largest elephant you can up those stairs. To achieve the greatest when others say it is impossible.

Focus on the impossible, be the visionary of your own life. Know that if you let go of yesterday, focus on today and be patient with what is coming tomorrow, you will have better success in accomplishing your dreams.

Stay inspired my friends.

Beyond Cedar Bluffs

"I dwell in possibility.." -Emily Dickinson

Each of us have some thing that we grew up with, some thing that we allow to hold us back from achieving greatness. Some say it is the hard streets of the inner city. A place where people believe that possibility can not exist beyond two or three blocks away.

The same can be said for a young boy living the gravel roads of farm country. A place where you can see as far as the eye can see. But it can be a place where you think possibility only exists just beyond the next corn field.

We tend to limit ourselves this way, believing that we can never escape our circumstances. Many times there are people trying to hold us back. People telling us we are not good enough.

I am here to tell you that you can get beyond the streets of your city neighborhood. You can get beyond the gravel roads of Cedar Bluffs. Those roads lead to new places filled with opportunity. They lead to a place where you can have a greater life.

In my own story, I love going home to where I grew up. It helped make me the person I am today. It is also the place where I learned there was much more beyond its country roads and grain elevators.

Find your way beyond whatever is holding you back. Don't forget those streets and country roads. But know that those same roads lead you to great success for your life.