Day 28 – Do things worth doing #30dreamdays

WHY do it?  Because you CAN.  Because you WANT to.

I’m not advocating doing anything just because you can or want to but there are some things that are worth doing and we stop ourselves thinking…why am I doing this?  What purpose does this serve? Don’t I have TONS of other things I SHOULD be doing?   The answer to that last one is ALWAYS YES.

However, even though there are tons of other things I should be doing, sometimes doing what I SIMPLY can and want to do IS the thing I SHOULD most be doing.  Sometimes I need to do that thing just for me.  Just because I want to.  Just because it is worth doing.

When I realize that my energy, passion and motivation are on a rhythmic ebb  & flow…I MUST add things into my day that I simply do because I can and want to.  Sometimes those things will be wildly productive in their own right.  Most times, those things won’t.   But those things are THE THINGS that refuel my energy, stir my passion and spark my motivation…and get the flow going.

Do the things that fuel your energy, stir your passion and spark your motivation.   If you need a good reason I simply say…Life is harder when you don’t.

(Image Credit)

Advertisement

Day 20 – Excessive Generosity #30dreamdays

My husband & I believe in tithing and we also try to give above and beyond our tithe.  We recently went through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU) and Legacy Journey and got a really good perspective on giving.

I love Dave Ramsey’s message that says:  “If you will live like no one else, then later you get to LIVE like no one else!”  He repeats this many times throughout the FPU class and the quote frequently ends with “later you get to LIVE and GIVE like no one else!”  I like that one better.

I dream of a day when I am so blessed that I can live off 10% of my income and give 90% of it away.  I can’t take it with me, can I?  And if you haven’t noticed, I am passionate about a lot of things and would love to help make big differences in the movements that are advancing the causes I believe in.

I want to be a social-entrepreneur like Jeff Shinabarger,  author of More or Less: Choosing a Lifestyle of Excessive Generosity and founder of Plywood People among other creative charitable endeavors.   I also admire Dale Partridge, the 28 year old entrepreneur & CEO of Sevenly.  I could go on and on, but you get the point…I hope.

However, I would also love to be able to secretly bless random people.  You know, like the single mom at church who you know is struggling.  Or the college student who is working hard and taking loans just trying to position themselves to be successful in the future.  Or what about the elderly woman you know living alone on a small social security check.   We all know people like these.

For now I will commit to reading Jeff’s More or Less book and figuring out in my own life right now “what is enough?”

Day 14 – Living the Dream #30dreamdays

I have to say that this 30 Dream Days Challenge is getting me to realize that even though I sometimes focus on what I don’t have or what I haven’t achieved yet, I really am living a dream already.  I have everything and everyone I need.

In 2002 I was a single lady living just outside NYC.  I had grown up in Queens, then lived in Manhattan and had bought my first co-op apartment in Rockville Centre, Long Island.  I sold that one to move next door into a bigger unit and things were good.  I had a “great job” and I owned my own place and car (or at least a significant portion of…the bank owned the rest).   I had finally graduated college by going at night and my 15 year old sister was living with me to go to a better high school than John Adams back in Queens.

Then I met Chris and everything changed.  He was so charming and like no one I’d ever met.  So I fell in love.  Hard.  I got laid off from my job (by my request to save someone else’s job) and sold my place and moved to Connecticut.  Chris & I were married on 4/12/03.

[Link to youtube video of my wedding song – A little Rumba, anyone?]

Chris was a single dad of 3 kids when we met. Krista was 6, Aaron was 5 and Faith was 4.  I fell in love with those 3 even harder.  They welcomed me into their lives and we became a family.

For anyone who knows my husband & I, we are determined to use our marriage to inspire others.  We have encountered some rough years but we made it through and now we travel around presenting marriage seminars for Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage determined to spread hope and eliminate divorce.

I have learned so much by being a wife and mother.  I really had no idea what love was before these 4 people made me part of their family.  I loved my mom and my sisters.  I loved my dad and still miss him even though he died when I was 10.  But it was through the relationships with my husband and my kids that the LOVE of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 became so very real to me.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.  – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Living and loving like that is the dream of a lifetime.  It was the dream of my 20’s, probably even my teens.  It has not come easy.  Love like this is frequently a 2 way street, but not always.  Because I am not always patient and kind.  I am sometimes self-seeking and easily angered (usually when I am stressed an exhausted but notice that these caveats aren’t in the verse).  How can I ever “learn” my way out of this existence?  I can’t learn my way out.  I have to love and be loved out of it.

This family and life of mine doesn’t look exactly like I thought it would, but it feels so much better than I could have predicted.

So as I continue to dream of my future, I have this amazing love surrounding me.  I know it can and will grow stronger as the years go by.  I also know that it is exceedingly abundantly above all that I could ask or think.  And so even though I believe in the power of dreams, I believe the Power of God is greater than that.  I’m blessed because I can have my dreams and God too.  For my brothers and sisters out there who do not have an earthly love like mine, if you have God…you have Faith and Hope and Love.   Deep loneliness is like manure  to the heart, preparing it for true love…but stinky nonetheless.  Prepare your heart.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. – 1 Corinthians 13:13

Day 9 – Walk by Faith #30dreamdays

In January 2011 I completed an exercise that asked for My Big Dream and said have fun with it!  I went looking for this document during this 30 Dream Days Challenge to see what I wrote.

MY BIG DREAM (as of January 2011)

Write a #1 Bestseller (or many) while traveling the world “aimlessly” for at least a year.  Aimlessly really means led by God, so aimless to me but divinely destined and revealed to me as needed.  Now that’s what I call adventure!

It’s a bit fuzzy but that’s me on the right. I don’t do thrill type adventure well as you can see.

Writing a book is still one of my dreams, probably still the biggest as I know it would be a major undertaking.

For me, the part that has become easier over these last few years is the aimless and divinely destined part.   It is a walk by faith.

I don’t need to know every detail of where I am going, I just need to know the next step.  I am confident that when I take that step, I will know the next step after that because my perspective has changed, and I can see things differently from that new vantage point.

Too many people are scared to make mistakes or think the bottom will fall out of their whole life.   They get stuck.

I have had some rough patches but my faith in God and His love for me has grown so strong that I operate as if the whole world is stacked in my favor.

I also know that no matter what happens to me God can redeem it for my benefit and for the benefit of others.

Consider the quote I chose.  How many of you would have chosen Helen Keller’s circumstances willingly?  Her life was redeemed and she overcame her circumstances.  And now people like you and me get to be inspired by this story.

I have a theory that we can not truly appreciate goodness unless we have experienced tragedies, bad circumstances etc.  So I choose to be grateful even for the negative things in my life because those things allow me to appreciate the good things that eventually come even more.

With this kind of faith, it is easy to take the next step and trust that I will recognize the steps that lie ahead.  I continue to get better at it daily.   And without getting stuck in fear I am able to enjoy the adventure and make incredible forward progress…and so I will write a book (or more) one day.  Since I’m a recovering perfectionist, I no longer care if it is a #1 Bestseller…just that it impacts some people’s lives for the better.

Inspiration: Seth Godin

Seth Godin
best selling author

Having decided to start my own 30 Dream Days Challenge on 8/28/13, I have repeatedly and for extended periods of time thought about the people who have pushed me to this point.  I use the word push because while they are inspirational no doubt, their mission is transparent and it is movement.  So I believe Seth Godin wouldn’t mind me calling him pushy 😉

I read somewhere recently on a blog about the power of writing fanmail (it was probably on Seth’s blog but I can’t be sure).  I have never been known to be a person to write thank you notes and have always wished (or dreamed?) that I was better at it.    I can fix that!  Tada…Fanmail Blog Post!

Why did I choose Seth Godin first?

Because he is the only blogger I have read daily.   I’ve been reading his blog daily for about 10 months, more or less.   I’ve also read a few of his books (all on Audible because I love that he narrates his own books).   And so it is Seth Godin more than any other person (aside from God) who has PUSHED me to whimsically pursue 30 days of dreaming publicly believing that I…Nicole Colter…a wife, mom, and lowly business owner in Eastern CT could start a Movement of Dreamers.   Visionary Dreamers like Reverand Martin Luther King, Jr.

Who AM I to think I could do this?

I’m glad you ask.  The best way I can answer that is to refer you to my favorite quote from Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, Our presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson

If you are not following Seth’s blog, your loss.   As for me, it is one of the first things I do in the morning, EVERY morning.

Thanks Seth!

Trending: #quotes

Because this is impossible to read, I’ve copied the text into this blog post

I posted the photo to the right on my personal Facebook page just now with the comment:  Foreshadowing…

I only decided to look for my own Facebook quotes when I was writing my first Inspiration post (will publish that later today) and I needed to access the Marianne Williamson quote.  So I went to my own Facebook quotes and realized how telling these quotes really were, especially since I had already decided on my Day 6 Dream which was born out of watching Randy Pausch’s last lecture today for the first time in 4 years.

So here are ALL of the quotes currently on my Facebook About Me page:

The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people. –Randy Pausch

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, Our presence automatically liberates others. —Marianne Williamson

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” ~Henry David Thoreau

“Don’t be pushed by your problems, be led by your dreams.” ~proverb

4 Quotes…that’s all she wrote

So this post is called Trending because the quotes we share or make our own in our About pages and profiles, they speak volumes about who we are or where we are at this moment.   And it is a bit of a case of which came first, the quote or the result?  In my case, I think it is both.

I just started leading a Life Group at my church and I am excited to start examining our lives and where we are going and letting others KNOW me on a deeper level.  I originally wrote that sentence as “getting to know each other on a deeper level” and then I realized I can only control what I do.  I can only choose to let myself be seen.  I can’t control whether I can really see anyone else.  They control that.  I just pray that by being so transparent, I “unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

#BKNOWN