From the category archives:

Inspiration

words of wisdom

Meeting myself where I am

Inspiration by Bill

Mon­day was a long week­end here in Canada, and it was a beau­ti­ful one – warm, sunny, and smelling of spring. A friend called me up and armed with cam­era and sketch­book, we walked down to Vic­to­ria Park, a pub­lic park that runs along the edge of the har­bour. It’s pretty big, so you can wan­der around for quite a while.

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Interruption Notice…Dear World

Inspiration by Bill

Dear World:

We, the United States of Amer­ica , your top qual­ity sup­plier of the ideals of lib­erty and democ­racy, would like to apol­o­gize for our 2001–2008 inter­rup­tion in ser­vice. The tech­ni­cal fault that led to this eight-year ser­vice out­age has been located, and the soft­ware respon­si­ble was replaced Novem­ber 4th. Early tests of the newly installed pro­gram indi­cate that we are now oper­at­ing cor­rectly, and we expect it to be fully func­tional on Jan­u­ary 20. We apol­o­gize for any incon­ve­nience caused by the out­age. We look for­ward to resum­ing full ser­vice and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

The United States of America

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On lessons learned and the importance of living in the present

Inspiration by Bill

Some of you may know that over ten yeas ago I was diag­nosed with Rheuma­toid Arthri­tis (RA) which is a dis­ease that causes the immune sys­tem to sud­denly go into over­drive by attack­ing the body. Peri­od­i­cally and unpre­dictably Flare occurs not only caus­ing extreme pain ( I know com­bat vets who have been wounded and take a bul­let wound over a flare) and depend­ing of the area affected minor to extreme dis­abil­ity. This is not your grand­moth­ers arthri­tis whichit oten gets con­fused with…it is in the same cat­e­gory as Lupis and MS.

So you may ask what does this have to do with the price of beer on Sun­day? Well, when I was first diag­nosed I was work­ing as pot­ter (in addi­tion to pho­tog­ra­phy) and I quickly learned that I had to stay in the present and focus on get­ting done what I needed to get done one day at a time. I could never know if I would be phys­i­cally able to do some­thing the fol­low­ing day. I kept up with this approach to life, prac­tic­ing a num­ber of med­i­ta­tive tech­niques to keep me grounded and focused.

It took a year or so to find the right com­bi­na­tion of drugs and alter­na­tive treat­ments mostly acupunc­ture and Tai Chi and Qui Gong, once the right combo started work­ing I con­tinue for some time to fol­low my mind­full­ness strate­gies. How­ever, after a cou­ple of years Flare free or at least only minor flares I started for­get­ting about what it was like before re-mission.

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Yes WE can…Co-Create a Vision!

Inspiration by Bill

Last night bear­ing wit­ness to yet another amaz­ing shift I was struck by gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences, dif­fer­ences in see­ing the world, dif­fer­ences in self con­fi­dence, dif­fer­ences in turn­ing dreams into real­ity. You see my gen­er­a­tion ( boomer) like so many before us grew up not know­ing that it was pos­si­ble to fol­low your dream, that suc­cess was only defined in terms of money, only interms of left brained lin­ear think­ing. Except for the lucky few of us most were repeat­edly warned that “you have to be prac­ti­cal” or “you need to get a real job” and even those of us who had sup­port­ive teach­ers and men­tors were con­stantly reminded of the futil­ity of our dreams. Watch­ing the young and old faces in the audi­ence last night I felt blessed to see the energy of the young re-igniting the fad­ing dreams of the old, with each “…yes we can!” I noticed also the unspo­ken appre­ci­a­tion of the newer gen­er­a­tions for the work and foun­da­tions put in place with blood, sweat and tears. I saw a genereation that no longer seemed to worry about “…being prac­ti­cal” because they knew the impor­tance of being true to them­selves, they knew their paths were self cre­ated and self navigated…there was a belief and energy present I have only seen glimpses of in my life time.

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Invite beauty to remind us of hope

ArtWorks by Brenna

Hope and Beauty

“it is an eth­i­cal oblig­a­tion to search for hope.” Tony Kurshner

“When we awaken to the call of beauty, we become aware of new ways of being
in the world.” John O’Donohue

These times bring us great oppor­tu­nity, because search­ing for hope
is not an abstract, feel good idea. It is basic to our survival.

Hold­ing hope opens our hearts to pos­si­bil­ity, we touch our basic
cre­ativ­ity and that leads us to solu­tions. Art­mak­ing is basi­cally prob­lem
solv­ing, with the artist’s hand leav­ing her map of explo­ration on the way
to find­ing her unique expression.

Enter beauty. More than ever we need beauty’s touch. Beauty’s
pres­ence deep­ens our human expe­ri­ence, calls to us on a soul level.
Beauty knows beauty, and like hope moves us and inspires us to act
from our higher self.

Here, right now, all around, are artists — who just by being here are
embrac­ing hope —and with what we have all cre­ated, we are adding
beauty to the world.

So let us invite beauty into our lives and be reminded to look for hope!

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Monday’s inspiration

Inspiration by Bill

How often have you been pre­sented with an oppor­tu­nity that you weren’t sure of? How often have you waited in inde­ci­sion only to have the oppor­tu­nity dis­ap­pear because it required some trust in your­self, in your intu­ition, or you were afraid you couldn’t do it per­fectly? Very often in life oppor­tu­nity presents itself as a chal­lenge for our devel­op­ment and sub­se­quent ven­ture into another level of our lives. It is the uni­verse acknowl­edg­ing our com­ple­tion of one stage and invit­ing us to take the next step in our own development.

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Today’s thought from Napoleon Hill

Inspiration by Bill

THOSE WHO WILL NOT TAKE A CHANCE SELDOM HAVE ONE THRUST UPON THEM

Suc­cess always involves risk. You must take a chance by invest­ing your time, money, and effort. It pays to be thought­ful and delib­er­ate in your analy­ses of oppor­tu­ni­ties, but don’t let timid­ity hold you back. Because you have worked hard to develop those things you must risk, it is nat­ural for you to place a high value on them. But what use are they if you do not put them to use? You will rec­og­nize oppor­tu­nity only to the extent that you are will­ing to con­sider risk­ing your time, money, and effort. Being con­fi­dent gives you the courage to face risk and act when oppor­tu­nity arises. No one on earth is going to force suc­cess upon you; you will find it only to the degree that you actively seek it out.

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