What makes you get up in the morning?  Is it your job or work?

Many people have lost their passion and zeal for living.  I was among them but I couldn’t let go of the hope and dream that there’s more to life than what I was experiencing.

In this video, you’ll see where passion comes from, how you can let it shine through the muddiness and fog of life.  Life can be exhilarating and liberating – even as we go through the struggles – the true test of passion.

This discussion was facilitated by one of our group members.  Viv, you did really well.  You asked great questions and what you did at the end helped to further gel our time together.  Thanks!

Assumption #5 – One day, I’ll be finished with recovery.

From 12 Christian Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy

Recovery. What exactly is it?

When you hear someone say, “I need a few days to recover from this bug” or…

“I hope to recover from depression one day”

What thoughts come to your mind?

I used to think of recovery as being done with, or getting better from, sickness, an undesirable condition or habit. This discussion introduced a much more useful and positive way of looking at recovery.

Here it is…recovery is basically finding or retrieving what was lost.

For example, in the emotional realm, it means taking back character traits that we’re missing – that for some reason were never imparted to us, never groomed into us, or trained into us.

Recovery is an aggressive word, full of action.

Which means when we make a mistake, we can re-program our mind to say, “What am I missing? What’s lost that I can find?”

Isn’t that a much more encouraging, empowering way to go about it than to think, “What’s wrong with me? Why did I do that again?”

Basically, if we subscribe to the thinking that one day we’ll “arrive” and be done with recovery, we’ll become disillusioned and despair sooner or later. As humans, we make progress and grow – and we’ll always be on this journey of learning and growing.

Hubby brought up a great point to the group…

We’re taught as Christians to “do our devotions.” You know you need to do it. But how do you reconcile with when you feel forced to do it?

If you think you’ll “arrive” at a certain level of spiritual maturity, and your time with the Lord is nothing but a time to check off your task – then you’ll have no desire to spend time with Him.

Find a different way to think about how you spend time with God. A huge part of the battle is in our thinking patterns.

Find a way to BE who you are, who you’re MADE TO BE, that you enjoy! Incorporate that into your time with the Lord.

If you love to sing, sing with Him. If you love to make journals, journal with Him. I love what Jenny’s doing with enjoying the process of journaling and incorporating art into her quiet time.

Guess what? It’s ok! We’re supposed to enjoy our quiet time with our Father.

Sincere we’ll always be on this journey of learning and growth, let’s find ways to enjoy the process and give thanks for whatever progress we see and whatever goals we accomplish.

I’m doing that with you right here on this blog, and loving it!

What about you?  What do you enjoy being and doing?

For some of us, the answers to those questions may not be all too clear, but…

Do you want to discover who you are and what you enjoy doing?  Then leave your comments or questions below and let’s talk about it some more…

When someone says something thoughtful and encouraging to you, don’t you feel uplifted?

I have the privilege to participate in a leadership community, and I must say, the encouragement and positive energy there is off-the-charts!  When you know that you’ll grow and progress and reach for your vision, is when you come alive.

Without a vision, people perish.

A vision can start with 1 person.  But it takes more than 1 person to bring a colossal vision to life.  It takes at least a close partnership…then a community to get behind it.

Why?  Vision is foundational for success in anything.  Success means different things to different people, and everyone wants to succeed in what they do – I don’t care what kind of religious teachings have distorted the biblical truth about success.

Success takes character & discipline, integrity and an active fight for your life.  Similar to Olympic athletes in training and competition.  Similar to soldiers in training and combat.  A thriving community of support exists for both.

When you’re willing to fight for something ’til you die, your vision comes alive and you truly live.

Here we go again!  Sharing with you the absolute best time our family’s had down in beautiful, quiet San Luis Obispo.

If you’ve discovered Jing – that is, www.JingProject.com, then you’ve got a great free way to do screen captures and videos. Now, when you do your first capture, you’ll find your video to be “widescreen”. Typically what this means is the video will span the whole width of your computer screen. You know what that means – people will have a hard time scrolling around to see all the content on your screen.

I’ve found instructions on how to re-size Jing videos. Basically how to make a video display smaller – to be embedded onto your blog or website.

Watch the video below for where to find these instructions.

I’m pleasantly surprised by the Show Your Best Blog Contest on The Colors Magazine. Remember how I entered that contest for January 2010 – how it was a challenge to my comfort zone?

The 2 winners’ blog posts are amazingly artistic and expressive!

I’m honored to have participated in the contest among such talented artistry. I’ve always been fond of art & music – though I claim no special talent in either. Just a real connection to those ways of expression.

But to be one of the special mentions is a clear delight! Knowing someone likes my brand of expression is a wondrous experience. A big thank you to Lena from The Colors Magazine. You author a delightful blog!

This week’s mindset is…creating a lasting legacy.

I was inspired by a webinar I attended last week on Legacy-Minded Leadership. The question arises: What kind of legacy do we want to leave?

What do our children get from our live example?

Love, kindness, generosity…
Vision, purpose, direction…

How does our town, our church, our community benefit from us?

Our ideas, service, encouragement…
Our funding, resources, leadership…

I’m convinced that developing a high level of character and discipline makes us more attuned to having a legacy-minded vision.

We’ve also got to have a plan for where all the money and resources we have will go.

I have a vision of people connecting soul to soul in safe communities around the world. Somewhere down the line, I see a non-profit life coaching & counseling organization for those who feel lost in the world with no one to talk to, who don’t have the funds or motivation to go see a therapist.

I don’t know exactly how this will look…I don’t know when this will be…it’s a small seed planted within my heart.

How about you? What kind of legacy would you like to leave?

I can’t believe it’s been 2 weeks since our mini-vacation to San Luis Obispo!  It feels like a month.

A memorable trip is not easily forgotten…

Here are some video clips of some fun things we did just at our hotel, Pismo Lighthouse Suites.

Here’s the recreation area – complete with putting greens, a giant chessboard, ping pong tables and a badminton court! The weather opened up to gorgeous sunny and we soaked it in…

Since we don’t vacation much, even this mini-vacation was a rare chance to do something different – like putting with Daddy!

Hey there!

Here’s a video of something thoughtful from my son’s preschool class for Valentine’s Day.  Such a special touch.

Enjoy!

Today I’m gonna spend some time praising my son.  He really surprised me with his cheerful good attitude in helping me.

I wonder if it started on Sunday afternoon…we had a small group over at our house for a discussion.  A new gal was coming but couldn’t get past our security gate.  One of our gals went down to help her and they both needed more help.  So my husband went down to help those 2 gals.

Well our son then asked me, “Mommy, where did Daddy go?”

Guess what rolled off my tongue?  “Daddy went to save the girls.”

Now as I’m told by my husband, you gotta be a man to understand the depth of this statement.  Within the heart of a man is the desire to go on an adventure & to save a maiden in distress.  (I got that from what Bryan shared from the book, “Wild At Heart” by John Eldredge.)

So today…here are the things my son did to “save me.”

Yesterday I wasn’t feeling well, and today I told him, “Mommy’s still a little sick, so I might need to sleep a little.  Is that ok?”

He said, “Yeah.  Mommy sleep on the sofa?  I’ll sit here and take care of Mommy.”

So I curled up on the sofa with my son at my feet.  He let me sleep for 30 minutes.  Then he asked, “Mommy, do you feel better?”

“Yes, I do.  Thank you, Nate.”

When time came to pick up my daughter from school, he put on his shoes without me asking him.  When I turned to go towards the garage, my son looked at me with a question in his eyes as he said, “Mommy?”

He was reminding me that I didn’t park in the garage, but in the outdoor parking area.

“Wow!  Thank you Nate – you saved Mommy from wasting time.”

For some reason, he was enjoying the book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle today.  He wanted me to read it to him over and over again.  After reading it for however many times, he said, “I want to stay in my cocoon with Mommy.”

I’m not sure what he meant by that, but it warmed my heart.