Success

How does one define success?

When I wrote the book “Living Life Inside Out” I didn’t have plans for it to be a bestseller, although that would be wonderful. But the decision to write it was never about money or success.

I wrote it to share my journey with others in hopes that it might help them. I also have relied on books like mine to help me along the way for many years.

Once I decided to self-publish a lot of decisions had to be made about quantity, costs, who to contract to print it, and so forth. This is where success could be placed on a dollar amount.

My initial goal was to recoup my costs by selling half of my original order. That was the easy part, really. I managed to make back what I had spent after just a couple of months of having the finished product in hand.

Having met my initial goal is a successful step, but I do have higher goals. I truly believe my book can help others and I want it in as many hands as possible. I was touched recently when a friend who is a senior in high school bought the book for her boyfriend who is a freshman in college. Her mother had bought her one and she liked it enough to buy it for him. That’s what I want for my book, whether it ever makes it big or not, I want it to help people enough that they want to share it.

I don’t know when or if I would ever feel like this is it as far as calling it a success. However, something happened recently that caused me to feel a little more official as an author. The Central Arkansas Library System purchased two of the books. They can be found at www.cals.org. There’s just something about being part of the library that gives credibility, at least in my mind.

I have very few childhood memories although I can remember going to the library in downtown Little Rock to check out books. I remember the stairs that led up to the children’s books and carrying armloads of them to check out.
Now if someone wants to read my book without having to spend any money, they can do it in central Arkansas.

It’s just one brick in my wall of success.

Life Has Changed for the Better

My life is still turned upside down, sort of.

I held another snake the other day.

On Sunday I went hiking — all day — and the yard needs to be cut, the house is filthy, and I’m working the next 11 days in a row and then leaving town for a few days, and I’m not worried about any of it.

What has happened to me?

Did you catch that? I held another snake. Yikes. Not a big deal, you might think. For me it is.

What’s happening, what happened to me? Did I finally figure out I’m not that big of a deal? Did I realize just how little control I have on the world and that I don’t have to keep all the plates spinning?

I keep up with high profile murder and missing person cases. I think I started that with Jon Benet Ramsey, or I might have picked up on that later while reading online about another case. I remember a lot about the O.J. Simpson case. I remember where I was when I heard that Laci Peterson was missing. When Elizabeth Smart was found I was online on a crime forum typing in how she wouldn’t be found when I heard it on the news in the background.

Now there’s the Caylee Anthony case. A reality television show that nobody could have dreamed of. That poor little girl was murdered and thrown out like trash and her mother, Casey Anthony, in jail accused of killing her, rants to her parents that she’s lost everything and she does not mean her daughter.

I don’t like drama in my life. Maybe that’s why these high-profile cases attract my attention. I can watch the crazy drama and not have to live it.

There are so many things and situations that I’m grateful to not have experienced. I’ve had my excitement, I hope. I’ve had drama. I’ve lived on the edge and almost died. I like calm now.

I stopped in the woods Sunday while hiking so I could just listen. There was a stream flowing visible for at least half of the four-and-a-half mile hike. It made a beautiful sound. Sometimes I heard leaves rustling and prayed it wasn’t a rattlesnake.

My life is simplified of late.

For the past several months I’ve been working two jobs and trying to find time to promote my book. I’m no longer on a partial layoff; I’ve had all of my hours restored, so any time I work at the second job it’s extra income.

It’s been tough and it has changed me. The worry and stress about what might be has been bad. But here I am on the other side of that, at least this time around, this recession.

Life is good.

In other news: I sold another book internationally this weekend. This one is headed to France.

The books will make wonderful Christmas presents. It’s always fun to get a new book to start on January 1 and follow through the year.

Look for the Good

I realized something about myself recently, a trait that isn’t pretty and one which I hope to change.

For the most part it seems I see the bad in people. I can trace this back to things and people in my life and blame it on that, however I won’t change if I do, so I choose to move forward and not make excuses. I want to see the good first and foremost.

It’s so easy to turn against a person, to see things from our own vantage point, and sometimes with negative input from others. If enough people tell us that a person is a failure of sorts, or a problem, whatever it may be, we start to believe it.

I watched the movie “Doubt” for the second time recently. I won’t give away the ending, but in the movie the nun who leads the school accuses the priest of doing something inappropriate with a male student. She sees the bad in the priest. The nun has black and white thinking, she is certain that she’s right. And he can do nothing right in her opinion including how much sugar he uses in his tea, the length of his nails, and so on. You get the point.  

When we only see the bad, when that’s what leads us, rather than finding the good first (and always) it’s easy to be led down the wrong path.

My eyes were opened to this whole concept when I found that I had developed a negative attitude about someone who once had an important place in my life. I only heard one side of the story: the negative side. And I heard it a lot. As we all know there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.

I walked in this person’s shoes just long enough to get it, to realize what a mistake I had made.

I encountered the beast firsthand, the same monster that had been attacking this person. That’s when all the pieces fell together … sort of, although it was anything but immediate.

If you haven’t walked in someone else’s shoes, you won’t know where they have been, what their struggles are, why they behave in a particular way, and especially how they feel.

But if you face the same monster as another it opens up a whole other side. It gives you knowledge that is missing when you only hear the negative about someone.

You may wonder about this beast, monster to which I refer. It’s comparable to watching a bear play from your picnic table. The cute bear you see is like Winnie-the-Poo. He eats honey and seems sweet and loveable. But he’s not Winnie-the Poo. He’s actually a very real bear who is just who he is, but you don’t want to be in his path when he’s angry, or have him mad at you, because that’s when he becomes a monster, a beast that is unrelenting and will take whoever he must in his path to get what he wants.

When the monster first attacked me I didn’t see outside of myself, it was all about me and my pain. But through the grace of God I was given insight via a conversation or two and the light bulb came on with a very high wattage.

It was a knowing that you know that you know moment. Having faced the wrath of the beast, I knew exactly why others behave as they do having experienced it too. It makes perfect sense.

So here I am a while later having made amends where necessary for any part I played in the monster’s game. I learned so much. I feel like a load has been lifted off my shoulders and the world shines more brightly.

Now I have the opportunity to carry this knowledge and wisdom with me into the future. I hope I do. I pray that I don’t forget the lesson of seeing both sides before making a judgment.

I hope I see the good first and always.

Lying Is Not Okay

Someone told me recently that lying is okay. In fact, I was informed that sometimes you have to lie, and that everybody does it.

Really, I thought?  It does seem that telling the truth has become almost a thing of the past in some circles.

I won’t say that I never tell a lie. I think it may be a fact that most people do lie occasionally, especially white lies, but to claim that “everybody does it” and that it is okay is beyond my realm of understanding.

Just imagine if you taught your children that it was okay to lie either by direct teaching or simply showing them that is how things work by your actions. Do you think one day one of your children might say that his or her parent lies all the time? It happens.

Do as I say, not as I do, will not work when we are dealing with children or even adults who look to us as models of behavior. One never knows who is watching and who is emulating our behavior.

We all have a responsibility to do the right thing. I have been really surprised of late by some people who would boast of their love of God, of how good they are at living the Christian life, but who also have turned their backs on what Jesus would instruct them to do, and how he would act.

I’m not trying to judge, but once again the Christian teaching that I am getting from observation has turned me against organized religion so much that I may never attend church again.

When people celebrate that folks are not attending church by blaming it on what another person did or did not do, the message they are supposedly trying to portray is buried in the insanity of the behavior. Rather than reaching out to pull the flock back in, they laugh and virtually high five to cheer about how “right they are” even though they didn’t get their way.

Is “being right” to a Christian more important than “living right?” I often think about the question that emerged a few years ago on bracelets: WWJD? (What would Jesus do?)  If you don’t get your way is it okay to behave in a way that Jesus would frown on?

I think God might not be smiling down on this behavior.

For now, I’m done with trying to follow those who supposedly lead in the Christian faith. This includes all of the politicians who preach the gospel and wage the sin behind closed doors.

I’m going to look into some other beliefs and find which one I believe that MY God would want me involved in.

The following was written many years ago. I challenge those reading here to truly take it to heart. If you follow the crowd and side with those folks even when they are wrong, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror.

The Man In The Glass
— Anonymous
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The fellow whose verdict counts most in you life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

You may be like Jack Horner and chisel a plum
And think you’re a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

He’s the fellow to please-never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear to the end.
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.