Tag: The Seeds of Success

Do It Twice

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It’s ridiculous how many times I’ve written, “I’m tired but…”, this year. Penzu sent me a journaling memory that was written a year ago and it started with those words. I’m trying to pause pushing myself through tired.

In my 20’s I acquired an over achiever mindset, so by the time I hit my 30’s I had a successful business and did speaking engagements to teach others the secret to success. In my 40’s life changed, or maybe I did. What looked like a successful life was a very large house empty of the most important thing to me. Happiness. At the age of 49, I blew up my life and hit restart.

I still tend to push myself to over achieve at everything I do, but I’m well into my 50’s now. I have a friend who is younger than me and we Marco Polo almost everyday. She get’s so excited about a new idea or venture she wants to partake in, and I smile and Marco Polo her back with encouragement and an experience from my past of something similar. She’s tells me, “I think you’ve done everything at least twice.”

Ah, but lovely, there’s so much more I’m still willing to do. Our maturity is our ticket to spend less time with job/work, and more time in meaningful work, or simply choose to take on everything in a more meaningful way.

My friend sent a Marco Polo recently with an idea that reflects her heart of gold. I need to Marco Polo her in response because it’s obvious God had a hand in lining everything up. That’s what success looks like for me today. When our preparedness meets His timing, and that will entail laying our heart and hand to something a whole lot more than twice.

Sow Some Seeds (Part 5)

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Can you imagine if God handed us the book of our life?

We could see from start to finish what our lives would entail. What we would achieve, and when we would die? That would be awful! It would take the will to live out of life, and there would be no mystery to our path. God is big, and so are His plans Thankfully, He prepares us by giving a little each day.

Here are today’s seeds:

I will work convinced that nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. To do anything today that is truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can.

I will face the world with goals set for this day, but they will be attainable ones, not the vague, impossible variety declared by those who make a career of failure. I realize that you always try me a little first, to see what I would do with a lot.

I will never hide my talents. If I am silent, I am forgotten, if I do not advance, I will fall back. If I walk away from any challenge today, my self-esteem will be forever scarred, and if I cease to grow, even a little, I will become smaller. I reject the stationary position because it is always the beginning of the end.

When my daughter becomes discouraged about achieving a goal, I tell her, “If you want it badly enough, nothing can stop you.” It’s not easy, and if it was, everyone would do it. There is no failure. We learn in the midst of trying. If it looks hard, get excited! It’s the hard stuff that makes us better.

A challenge equals promotion, so give it a little wink, and walk right through it like the mighty warrior you were made to be.

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Sow Some Seeds (Part 2)

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What jumped out at you in yesterday’s post?

Besides being grateful each time my eyes open to a new day, there is one part that leaps off the page. “I am prepared at last to make you proud of me.” At 53, I’m as prepared as I’ll ever be! God never quits, even when I do.

Here are today’s seeds:

I will not fret the future. My success and happiness does not depend on straining to see what lurks dimly on the horizon, but to do, this day, what lies clearly at hand.

Worry is future thinking. Stay in today.

I will treasure this day, for it is all I have. I know that’s it’s rushing hours cannot be accumulated or stored, like precious grain, for future use.

I will live as all good actors do when they are on stage-only in the moment. I cannot perform at my best today by regretting my previous act’s mistakes or worrying about the scene to come.

I will embrace today’s difficult tasks, take off my coat, and make dust in the world. I will remember that the more productive I am, the less harm I am apt to suffer, the tastier will be my food, the sweeter my sleep, and the better satisfied I will be with my place in the world.

I will free myself today from slavery to the clock and calendar. Although I will plan this day in order to conserve my steps and energy, I will begin to measure my life in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not seasons.

Be productive, not just busy. Embrace what is in front of you that needs to be done. Be a finisher. There is not a lot on my calendar. It mainly holds my daughter’s schedule because I love seeing each new day for what it is. New!