Living Life Inside Out – The Book

The day I’ve been waiting for is almost here … the books have been shipped. UPDATE: And they are here!

 

While waiting there are a few things I need to do to get beaglebirdpress.com ready so that mail order requests can be taken care of quickly. Hopefully that will be up and running before the books arrive.

It’s an exciting time as a vision and dream is coming true. And it’s also a time for new things as I set out to market my work to the world so that I can recoup what I’ve spent and hopefully turn my dream into a bestseller.

UPDATE: Go here to purchase your copy now.

Starting Over

“Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose — not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.”
—Anne Sullivan

Each of us has been down a road before that we thought was going to be a rewarding and fulfilling journey, one which we knew was the right path. And while we were on that road we were happy and grateful, and probably relieved because we finally got there.

And then something happened. It didn’t work. We failed, it failed. It doesn’t really matter. What matters in the end is that we don’t give up and never try again.

We can start over. We can begin our day over. We can start a new job when one doesn’t work out. We can go back to school if we didn’t get the degree we sought. We can begin the diet and exercise program once more. We can try another relationship if ours ends in a breakup or divorce. We can start over. It’s the doing that brings success.

It hurts to not find success, especially when we thought we finally had arrived at a place we wanted to be, only to have it pulled away. But we do grow from unsuccessful attempts at things.

There’s the old saying that when God closes a door He opens a window. And really there are lots of opportunities for us in this world. We just need to remain open to them and not close ourselves off when we feel hurt, disappointed, and defeated.

People will lie. They will promise us things in business and in our personal lives that they never intend to give, or maybe they aren’t capable of giving what they promise. We can’t be responsible for the shortcomings of others. What we can do is keep beginning, and failing if that’s what happens, and one day we may truly be on that road we just thought we were on before.

None of us wants to be the person who isn’t honest and true to others; the one who promises what we can’t give or misrepresents who we are. And most likely the people who treat us that way don’t mean to be dishonest and hurtful either. We ought to always beware of carrying our baggage into the future lest we become that way.

But even when others do us wrong, or fate doesn’t give us what we want at a particular time, we can start again.

Failure breeds strength; starting over is the beginning of success.

Go Easy on Yourself

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”
—Mark Victor Hansen

No matter what areas of our lives we are working on, it’s important to be gentle and loving with ourselves as we grow and change. Sometimes we make mistakes or take wrong turns on our journey, but that does not mean we are failures and should stop proceeding.

Perhaps those things we view as wrong turns or mistakes are actually parts of the journey that we’ll look back on and cherish for the lessons they taught us. Most importantly we ought to be kind to ourselves when we are experiencing growth, change, grief, or even stagnation. Beating ourselves up never gets us anywhere healthy, it just gets us beat up.

Many of us will be hard on ourselves because while we made a decision that we’re proud of, we berate ourselves because it took us so long, instead of focusing on the fact that we did it.

When we’re grieving a loss we must understand that it takes whatever time it takes to get through the pain and we need to be gentle and loving with ourselves as we work our way through it.

Sometimes we get stuck in a place in our lives where we’re straddling a fence over what to do next. We may want to make a career change, but we have reasons why we don’t fully put our energy into looking for a new job. Maybe we have fear. Perhaps we are concerned about change. Whatever the reasons, if we are unhappy with something whether it’s a job or a relationship, it’s important to our growth to face the fears and hop over the obstacles to get where we want to go. And we can never do that if we are not kind and loving with ourselves during the process.

We can be our own best friend or our own worst enemy. It is our choice to make. Just remember that when something is loved and nurtured it grows and heals. And that’s a gift we can give ourselves as we work through our own issues.

Growth and healing occur more quickly in a loving environment.

Knowing the Answers

“If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything.”
—Win Borden

Everything we do in life involves a certain amount of risk and it’s very rare, if it happens at all, that we know for certain that what we are doing is the right thing.

Starting or leaving a job; beginning a love relationship or ending one; making a move across the country or staying in our comfort zone at home; or going back to college are just a few of the big decisions we face in life, but there are numerous smaller choices we must make every day.

What happens if we make a decision and it turns out to be “wrong” for us? Most likely we have learned something from it. And if we were careful in moving forward with our decision it’s unlikely that it’s going to be impossible to recover from it. What’s important is not moving into any big change too suddenly unless it’s thrust upon us by nature. We must take our time and go through each process with as much knowledge as we can ascertain.

Maybe the event in question is something that God put before us because it’s time for us to move on from where we are. Perhaps we can’t really grow anymore where we are and need to broaden our horizons. And it might be the lesson we learn is to be happy and content with what we’ve got by staying right in or where we are at the moment because sometimes we just don’t realize how good what we have is.

We just don’t always know what the right choice is. What we need to do is pray about the big decisions, the small ones, and every one in between. Our answers will come as they should if we allow ourselves to hear them. The answer is probably already there just waiting on us to find it.

To grow is to continue to step out of our comfort zones.

We Are Who We Make

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”
—Thomas S. Szasz

As we go through the days of our lives we are on a journey that offers many choices. It is our challenge and responsibility to determine which route to take when we hit that “Y” in the road.

We meet new people and we wonder if that person is worth investing time and energy in; is there something long-term we wish to carry on with that person. We hear about a job somewhere that interests us and we start to consider if that’s an option we wish to pursue. Or perhaps it’s time to end something and we aren’t sure what to do.

We create our own world. Sometimes we want more; sometimes we are content to stay where we are in our safety and security whether or not we are happy. And often we fear making that move, taking the next step, making changes, and taking risks in order to create something more for ourselves.

We can always keep in mind that even if we move forward into something new and that fails to be what we want or we are not successful in our endeavor life goes on and surely we have gained new knowledge and insight about life and ourselves. We’ve created more of us; more wisdom, knowledge, insight, and possibly self-love.

In order to create who we wish to be, we must take these chances. It’s difficult sometimes because we’ve been jaded and hurt in our lives over relationships, business dealings, jobs, family issues, and other things. But each one of those things taught us something about who and what we are and made us who we are today.

We can take these chances when opportunities arise knowing that even if whatever it is ends in failure we gave it our best shot, we’ve taken a chance on life and love, and we don’t have to crawl in a hole and hide from the world.

Take that chance on the next thing that comes along. You’re strong enough.

Relationships Need a Foundation

“Fine friendship requires duration rather than fitful intensity.”
—Aristotle

Often when we first meet someone we are attracted to either for friendship or a love relationship, we make the mistake of moving too quickly and end up finding the end of the relationship rather than something long lasting.

When building any kind of relationship we need to form a strong foundation so when conflict occurs we still have something to work with. Building that foundation takes time, honesty, openness, getting to know each other’s boundaries, and trust. We can never truly know someone in a matter of days or weeks and if we move too quickly we may end up in a place with someone that we don’t want to be, such as living together or married even.

Any new relationship is exciting, if not we would never make new friends or life partners. But if we don’t take it slow and easy it will fizzle out before we even get to know the other person. People are rarely what we think they are upon first meeting. That’s not always a bad thing sometimes people have much better qualities than we think upon first impression.

If we take our time in getting to know someone by listening and watching we will find true friends. We have time to see if what they say is really what they do. Actions always speak louder that words and people often don’t match the two.

Give relationships the time and energy to be real.

Live the Possibilities

“Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world — making the most of one’s best.”
—Harry Emerson Fosdick

We — all of us — have things that we could use as excuses to never do anything with our lives. We have fears, limitations, pasts, hurt, anger … you name it we have an excuse for every situation if we choose to live our lives that way.

But those of us who choose to be the best we can be, to make the most of our lives, know that those excuses will limit us and hold us back from taking the risks living life presents. We can use the excuses. We can if those are the limits we wish to put on ourselves, but if we choose to move boldly forward we must put them aside one by one and forge on with our heads held high into the unknown world of taking risks.

The risks I mention aren’t dangerous risks. They are courageous things we do so that our lives are what they were meant to be. It means we use our God given talents despite what our circumstances say we can or cannot do.

One simple example is going back to college. Some of us decided later in life to finish a degree we started earlier, or to start and finish one from the beginning. We may have had to borrow money to do this, or we may have had to dip into savings. Either way, we took a risk to get what we wanted. We may have used our financial limitations as an excuse for years before taking the risk, but most likely it paid off for us either with a better job or in the way we felt about ourselves.

Limiting ourselves by our handicaps gets us nowhere. Living our lives thinking of the possibilities of what we can do, and attempting the things that we feel led to do, will not only fulfill us, but will offer the world our gifts and talents.

Don’t let handicaps limit your possibilities.

Repeating Messages

“Life will teach you the lessons it is up to you to learn them.”
—Unknown

When we keep getting the same message from different sources that’s a clear sign that our Higher Power is trying to tell us something, especially when that message comes from the places we least expect it.

If the message to love keeps being offered up to you, love more. If forgiveness is what you are hearing, time to forgive. If you see the message to work on your spirituality, do that. Sometimes God has to keep telling us to do something.

The message may start out small and from one source until we keep ignoring it and it ends up like a drumbeat in our head we hear it so much. We hear it from people, we see it in the books we read, we get the message in church or at a recovery meeting.

It takes what it takes for each of us to move into a new area of growth, or to work on something we haven’t spent much time on, or to return to the same old “thorn in our side” issue once again.

We most likely will still be sent the “problems” and messages to work on the areas we need to work on until we do something about them. Life, God, the Universe, whoever is your higher power will move you to action.

Listen to the messages and heal.

Letting Go of the Good

“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”
—Robert Frost

Letting go doesn’t always mean giving up the bad stuff or things that are wrong for us; it can also mean letting go of someone or something we care for deeply. Just as parents have to let go of their children as they grow in order for the child to become independent, we too must let people go sometimes so that we may move forward in our growth or they in theirs.

Sometimes we let go of a relationship and it changes into a different type of relationship than what it was when we moved on. And at other times it’s a final farewell. If we are growing in our lives we will encounter lots of these moving on times. Some people we meet will become lifelong friends we keep in touch with, others will be in our hearts and thoughts only, and yet others we leave behind will soon be forgotten.

It takes great courage to walk away from something that isn’t bad for us, but we know it’s time to move on — in order to continue to grow we must let go. At times we must be gently pushed from the nest if we are in a nurturing relationship that has reached its potential. Or maybe we are the nurturer who must gently let our baby birds fly off into their own growth and wide open worlds.

It can be scary to make the leap of faith in these endings. It can hurt as badly as breaking up with a romantic love. Endings bring beginnings, but we don’t usually know what that beginning is until we have closed the door on that which we are leaving. It will come though, the next thing, the next person, growth.

Letting go of a good thing is difficult; the outcome is determined by what’s meant to be.

Stop Fear with Action

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”
—Amelia Earhart

Fear can be a paralyzing thing in our lives. Many times it’s simply fear that keeps us from moving forward with an idea or goal. We fear failure and we fear success. We fear what others will think about what we do, we fear an outcome that may differ from our goal.

Without challenging our fears and moving forward we will never accomplish much. If we have ever faced a fear and walked through it to the other side, we can use that as a guide, an example of how it is possible to face our own fears however real or imagined they may be.

Fear can be experienced when faced with beginnings as well as endings. Sometimes we are in a relationship, job, or situation that requires great strength to walk away from or end. We can have as much, or more, fear in endings as we have when we have a dream of starting something new.

If it’s time to move on we can face our fears and make a plan. Just as we sit down and plan starting a business, or family, or anything new, we can sit down and plan an ending to something. Write down the plan. Pray about it. Talk it over with someone. Take action.

Don’t let fear paralyze you into staying in a bad situation. Don’t let fear stop you from the beginning you dream of in starting something new either.

In every ending is a beginning; don’t let fear stop either.