The Blind Side Chance

"Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish." - Ovid

There is an old song titled "Take A Chance" by the group ABBA. It is a song that delivers a plain and simple message. It says what each of us want in life and that is to be given the chance to prove ourselves.

Love, school, sports or work but each of us want that chance to be given.

There was a movie a few years back based upon the book titled Blind Side by Michael Lewis. It was an Oscar nominated film that earned Sandra Bullock the Oscar's Best Actress award in 2010.

If you have not yet read the book or watched the movie, SPOILER ALERT.

This story can make a pessimist declare the family had motive for taking in this poor kid because they were a family depicted as very driven. The husband and wife were Ole Miss University graduates who saw possibility in developing a sports talented kid for the "Rebels".

What better way to give back to your alma mater.

If you believe that is what happenend, then you miss out on the great story that truly took place. When Michael Oher was noticed "on a snowy November day in 2002, ...a 16-year-old Oher walking in 3 inches of snow wearing shorts, a T-shirt and tennis shoes, they had no idea he was one of America's most gifted athletes." In th families eyes, he was a child in need who was basically raising himself.

His single-parent mother had bounced in and out of his life due to drug addiction. His grades were hanging on by a thread, living a life on the edge that could have fallen in either direction. I leave the story with this fact, Michael Oher is doing just fine today.

You may wonder what it this has to do with you or me.

Does it mean we should go driving down the streets looking for someone to take in? Should we be looking to save someone like Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy? No, that is not my point to all of this. It means to do what your heart is telling you to do. Just as the Tuohy family did, they saw a need and acted upon it.

Do not let a fleeting chance pass by what your hearts is telling you.

There are many needs in life which pass us by each day. There are those fleeting moments in your mind that you should have done something. I am not here to describe those needs in life, but to suggest that you to act upon them. Do not let it pass by, the chance to impact the life of someone else. An unexpected meal to a young couple, a car ride home from the grocery store for someone carrying bags or other random acts of kindness.

Let your heart guide you.

The kindness you show today will circle back around eventually to you. All it requires is taking a chance.

Stay inspired my friends!

Mend The Broken Bridge

"He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven." - Thomas Fuller

Some years ago, my life had taken a pretty painful turn for me. After twenty years I lost my marriage which was very painful and gut wrenching to say the least for me. There is a great verse from a song by the group Elbow which goes, "I must have been working the ropes, when your hand slipped from mine."

During this time period, I went through an awful lot of anguish, anger, and angst. I said and did not say a lot of things and could feel myself letting the situation consume me. I was at a point of either spiraling downward into a cold river below me or rebuilding my bridge to something far greater.

My life appeared pretty much like an old bridge that no one would buy, if even for a dollar. I could choose to let the pain tear apart that bridge or begin a process to rebuild it and strengthen it.

What started the process was forgiveness.

I wrote in one of my books titled CHANGED LIVES about the experience and I am continue to work on that bridge. This past weekend I did some further repair by opening up a conversation with some of the people I had bitterly wanted nothing to do for what had occurred.

And my bridge is looking a whole lot better. As I exercise more forgiveness, I am able to pass over my bridge more safely.

Why foregiveness though?

As Mary J. Maciejewski wrote, "...the choice not to forgive but instead to cling to anger, bitterness and resentment, can cripple us. Those negative emotions are powerful and destructive, and as long as we hold on to them, they will escalate and keep us trapped in the past"

It really does a number on us no matter how hard we try to push it to the back of our mind. Forgiving someone doesn't mean you have to face the other person and say the words. What it means is you have to face yourself and allow forgiveness to take place.

Doing all of this will help free you from external forces having this hold on your life. Those are the external forces which are destroying your bridge to a greater life. They cripple you from repairing or building a sound and stable structure, keeping you bound by past hurt.

You have control over how you choose to deal with the pain.

However bad or horrible it may have been, you stand on one side of a deep chasm while your future lay on the other. A broken down, ramshackle bridge lay before you. It now becomes your choice to allow forgiveness into your life. It is then when the process of rebuilding your bridge really begins.

Find it within yourself to forgive others, then forgive yourself.

A broken bridge can be mended so that a greater life can be reached. Start rebuilding it now. And stay inspired my friends.

Confidence To Move Forward

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." - Henry David Thoreau

A few years ago I was traveling on business with quite a few meetings at many different locations in the Redmond, Washington area. You can probably guess at which company and by doing so, probably understand how large their campus is. There are buildings spreading over a large part of Bellevue and Redmond, Washington and something on the order of forty some thousand people (on these campuses alone).

Still can't guess which one?

It does not matter, only to know that getting from one building to another meant figuring out where things were and getting there as quickly as possible. I would find one building, a place to park, get inside, do my one hour presentation then rush off to the next location.

My goal was to see as many groups as possible and get my message out in front of them. This can never be done unless you have a clear goal and direction in mind. In my case, I had printed out each of the meetings and information surrounding them.

It was about preparation to confidently push in the direction of my goal.

It is the same for me as it is for you. Without choosing a direction and confidently going towards it, achieving goals will be difficult. Certainly the hardest part can be moving at all. And choosing to change is scary as it pulls us from what is our comfort zone.

Once we do decide to change our lives, we need to move with confidence in the direction we have set forth for ourselves. Don't be afraid that the direction might be wrong. You can correct your course as you move. As you gain momentum, your confidence will be strengthened.

Obstacles become smaller and reality of your goal will come in view.

So move with confidence in the direction of your dreams. Eventually you will find the treasure of your dream is right in front of you, within reach, a reality.

Stay inspired my friends!

The Wear Level Of Negativity

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” - Wayne Dyer

As described by National Geographic, erosion is the act in which earth is worn away, often by water, wind, or ice. A similar process, weathering, breaks down or dissolves rock, weakening it or turning it into tiny fragments.

In our daily life, negativity is the weathering which breaks down our lives. It changes the way we view and approach our daily lives in mostly destructive ways. Until we are worn down with only tiny fragments of support left.

Eventually the imbalance causes us to fall.

In an article written by Rick Riddle titled 6 Signs Your Subconcious Negativity Is Sabotaging Your Well-Being, he states, "This is the power of your subconscious. It has been programmed with either positive or negative thoughts, put there by you, and it will bubble up to affect you in any current situation."

He writes that we fill ourselves with negative thoughts in six distinct ways.

1. Black and White Thinking
2. Your Moods Change Significantly and Often
3. You Adopt Some Bad habits
4. You Consistently Speak and Think About the Past or the Future
5. You Have Worries, Anxieties and Fears
6. You are Judgmental of Self and Others

Can you see the traps these six habits can create the view of nothing will ever go your way. These thoughts fill your head and you begin to respond to every event in a negative fashion with little hope of changing the circumstance.

Changing your perspective, changing your response, changing your attitude will change everything.

Stay inspired my friends!