A reason to love trees

As I look out my window this morning, there's a beautiful site. The leaves from a huge oak tree fall silently to the ground...These leaves, gorgeous in their reddish hues...tired and lifeless cover the grass, giving evidence that the fall season is upon us. The tree itself looks eerily different too. She's slimmed down quite a bit since it started to shed its leaves. There are no squirrels or chipmunks jumping about on her branches. She kind of looks as if she's taken a beating. But she's also still and firm. Where everything else around her is swaying too and fro, she's immovable. She's survived the loss of her leaves, and is now fighting for new life to be birthed from her branches. I've always felt like a tree. I've lost some, most, and even all of the leaves from my branches in past winters. But I've always recovered and new life has always sprang from my branches when the clouds lifted. There is one difference now than what was present before. That difference is now that I realize it happening, I can watch it materialize and be in awe of the power that makes it so.

Grab onto opportunity now!

When you think of the word opportunity, what you see? Is there something that you've always wanted to do, but the time wasn't right? Somewhere you wanted to go, or something you wanted to say to someone? What if I told you that you do have the opportunity to tell a person how you really feel, or go where you really wanted to go right now!? Would you take the opportunity, or would you say that something ELSE has to happen in order before you make your move?

I am a person who once thought this way, and most of the people around me do too!  I had a shift in my thinking, and now the opportunity for me to do something right is always perfect!  Now is the best time to tell a person you love them, now is the perfect time to say good job to someone, now is the perfect time to be truthful, encouraging, charismatic, uplifting, financially responsible and everything else that you can think of!

Do the things that you would never do, get outside of your comfort zone!  If you do it for a good reason and with GOOD intention good things will happen!  What's even better is that if you do GREAT things for the good of others (and yourself), then GREAT things will happen too.  The thing is, you have to TAKE the opportunity, that you've always had to do them. Forget about your current situation, don't worry about the money...sever your emotional attachment to things, and pursue all good opportunity from a place of love and faithfulness, and you can't go wrong!  

The thing to remember to is that taking opportunity and doing bad with it, will also yield bad results.  And sometimes the effects of a good opportunity may yield results that seem bad at first.  You need these experiences, so that they can teach you to be faithful and steadfast to the journey, more than anything else.  And even if you get bad results, opportunity is there to turn them around and MAKE them good!  

Finally, the only thing that keeps opportunity from working at all, is a person not even lifting up to grab a hold of it.  So let's make today about that.  Looking opportunity square in the face, and saying, "I am going to take you, and do great!"  Opportunity is the only way to live the life you want to live!  This link is a great way to do it!  So what are you waiting for!? Grab Your Success Now!

You can find the Savior in your work!

As children we dream, and we often dream really big!  We aspire to do great things or to help a lot of people.  If we believe that we don't have enough as children, then we tend to hope for having enormous wealth in our adult lives.  Some of us will even begin to map out a way as children to live our dreams.

But as we get older and it is necessary for us to take on responsibility, we can start to become disconnected to what's really important and as a result, we lose the memory of the dreams we had as children.  Our minds become so cluttered with things of only surface importance and we can even forget how to dream.  While in this dreamless state, we often do one of two things: Either we become so complacent that we simply settle for the life we have (though subconsciously it's not the one we want), or two we get restless enough about our situation to make a change.

I have found myself representing both groups in the past. Being a part of the latter group is what changed my life for the better. The biggest dissatisfaction that I had with my life way back then was that I wanted to work for myself. I wanted to be able to live life on my terms all the time. My biggest fear was that without a job where I depended on someone else to write my paycheck, I would wind up with nothing, being forgotten by the world. Until one day, while working at the worst job I have ever had, it hit me! All of the anguish I had while working there was a lot of work! I was tired all the time. I didn't still didn't have all the things I wanted, and there was nothing that the company I worked for was going to do to change that. Those were my problems, not theirs.

I was able to rationalize with myself and say, "Hmm...if you are going to work hard for someone, let it be for yourself!  What do the people in charge here have that you don't have or can't get?"  I took a giant leap of faith, and here I sit.  A successful business owner, working way successfully through a multitude of projects.  I am now happy to get to bed late at night, and can rise early in the morning refreshed, because I decided to go out and do what I love.  We get so caught up focusing on the results of something, that we never realize what a wonderful journey we took to get there!  Sure, I have made mistakes and will undoubtedly make more...its okay...because I am doing what I love to do it doesn't feel like work...and even if it did, it sure still beats the heck out of "working hard" with anguish and disgust for someone who doesn't appreciate it.  As long as you remember that you can take God on your journey, wherever you choose to go- you will find that arriving at the destination is not nearly as enjoyable as is being touched in a powerful way by our Lord and Savior because you "worked" to get there.