The Front Row of Your Life

I've never seen a u-haul behind a hearse. The only thing you take with you when you're gone is what you leave behind. We are slapped when we come into this world and they shovel dirt on us in the end. This is our life, everyone's life. These are the bookends of life. But what really matters is what goes on in the middle that we are passionate people, that we are caring people. That we LIVE!

The people I've been privileged to watch succeed have intensity about them. They demand everything from themselves. They show up every day, in fact every moment, and they are accountable to themselves. Everything they do has a hard statement, and they know when to stop. Very impressive!!

Real beauty is found in oneself, that's the tranquil beach, the beautiful sunset. It's not a location, the location is YOU. To travel is to travel inward to unleash Gods gifts deposited in you. That's the ultimate vacation.

Turn your weaknesses into your strengths. Success is failure turned inside out. We need to find a deeper meaning in life. Our duty is to tap into those notes that resonate in us all. Not to sleep walk through life, like an outpatient program; but to strike a chord in life that will vibrate in eternity.

We can't catch kindness in a net or a gun. When kindness is given to you, it's by choice. One must adopt an attitude of gratitude.

We can become prisoners of self. One must dig tunnels; escape one's own mind. We get just this one life. We have to stop doing time. But live lives like we planned. No matter where we are, how old, we can always reach our dreams, adopt new hopes, correct mistakes, and heal from heartbreaks.

All your life you're going to be judged, what matters is keeping your soul intact and making work that matters. We have to stop telling people what we are going to do, what we have not yet accomplished, and tell them instead what we have accomplished. Only in this way can we be accountable for our actions. You are not accountable for achievements you have not yet reached, but you are what you have accomplished.

It's when we stop forcing it ... trying to impress, that we really shine through; we start having strong people like us, just fall into our laps - and those that are weak are empowered by the tone of our voice. Get off your knees and DO. A word without action is death. One has to stop sitting in the back, waiting. Come to the front, the front row of life, a joyful life.

My mother told me at a very young age, "We are placed on this planet to help others. Go out and help others." So, it is by her words that I try to shape and reshape my life. Yes, each day we will be challenged by indifferent people and for the most part it isn't their fault.  But we must remain true to our deepest VALUES.

Life is a 24/7 celebration of the word itself (existence). So maybe one needs to replace the word "fun" (a word created by media to keep you down, to bait you, to sell you things, tell you what you need) to the word "joyful."

Maybe we could be way happier if we lived a life that from each waking day till sleep time is joyful. You get but one life. We are each only given one shot at getting it right in the long run. Find something you are passionate about and you'll start to bring joy to yourself and all others in your life.

I challenge you to RISE UP and live your best life and touch as many lives as possible. You may touch 10 people, and those 10 people may touch a 100. Think of the number of people those 100 people can touch.

Gracias

Twitter: @huntlya

Beautiful Scars

We all have experienced scars at some point in our lives. These scars may have either been physical or emotional; scars that caused us to bleed so badly, some of which it took us years to heal and some we are yet to recover from. These wounds leave in our heart a mark that reminds us of the painful experience we went through. Scar can leave lasting effects in people’s minds, mostly caused by personal misfortune or unpleasant experience. 

We smile on the outside, but are broken on the inside.  We are playing a role; acting like something on the outside that we are not on the inside. We feed others but are starved ourselves, we are surrounded by people yet we are lonely, we make others happy but we are sad, and the question I ask is: how on earth is it possible to give what we don’t have? Only you know to what extent your public success masks your private failures. 

Beautiful scars…. We all have a breaking point in life.  We all have been broken. And the struggle with life is not allow an experience become a definition where we define ourselves by what happened to us. Too many people are living their destiny based on what other people called them. Thus, they live their lives at the expense of other people’s judgment/perception about them.

 Most people are struggling, trying to overcome hurtful words said to them by people closest to their hearts. And sadly, some of these cutting words were said to them by their parents. Somewhere in their heart, there is a cut, and each time they are reminded of those spiteful words, the cut in their heart gets deeper.

What do you do when you as a lady didn’t get what you should have got when you should have gotten it? And now you have to hide the fact that you don’t have what other ladies have because your parents didn’t do what they should have done when it was time to do it, and now you are a grown up lady hurting with a girl’s problem. And it wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t such a personal problem. I mean it’s alright to have to a problem that you can go public with, but what do you do when you have a scar that must remain private?

When you don’t get what you should have got when you were a boy, it is so much more painful to have to go back as a man and try to fix a boy problem. Your childhood problem is about to mess up your manhood promise.

What do you do when you are fine enough to get married but you do not have the skill sets to be a wife? What do you do when your situation outgrows your skill sets and now you are in a position for which you have not been prepped? 

 Sometimes we do not have the skills to go along with where life has brought us. What then do we do when our skill sets don’t match our situation? What do you do when you work in a Job and they ask you to prepare a power point presentation and you do not know how to operate the computer? You knew how to talk your way into the job but you don’t know how to perform the function that the job requires. 

And the problem with many of us is we spend so much effort, emotion, and time speaking to God about our weakness and history when God is trying to talk to us about our future.

You must come to the point in your life where you begin to realize that there are some stuff God will cut away from your life; some stuff you thought you would never loose, but it has to go for what he’s going to do next in your life. He will cut away what his standing between you and your real destiny and purpose. And until you can go through the process of pain, you may never be able to obtain the promise.  Painful scar it is, but beautiful still.

Beautiful Scars…. They hurt us, but ultimately, the pain is for our own good.

Gracias

Feelings of the HEART

Haha! I know you all have missed me. Sorry about the silence.  The messages, phone calls, tweets and bb pings I received show me you guys really care about my writings. I really appreciate your concern.  I decided to take a break in order to refill my inspirational tank. Lately, I have been doing a lot of readings and I’m just about to finish reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki titled Rich Dad Poor Dad. If you haven’t read this book, I would encourage you to please get a copy. Rich Dad Poor Dad is a life changing book.

So let’s go into business. Today, I decided I’m going to share a personal story of mine. It’s perhaps the most painful experience I had while growing up. For some reason, I wouldn’t go so deep into details.  However, if you are careful enough, you would leave with one or two lessons after reading this article.

So, I encourage you to read this piece with your eyes, mind, and heart wide open. Look in-between the lines for the lessons. Treasures aren’t found on the surface, you’ve got to dig deep for them.

Several years ago, I experienced what is perhaps the most powerful force on earth. Such a force is what everyone, regardless of status, race, educational background and financial capabilities can’t stand when hit by it. It’s so powerful that without it we are nothing.  It’s called LOVE. Yes! I fell in love with a very beautiful girl. Back then, she was everything to me. My world revolved around her.  

Walking down the hall, I heard someone wailing in the class room. I peeped to see who it was, lo and behold; it was the girl that most guys detested and wouldn’t want to have anything to do with because of how proud she was. Just like every other guy, I hated her, but this was past 5pm in the evening and everyone had gone home and I just couldn’t leave her alone in that empty class. Not allowing the hatred I had for her to get in the way, I walked up to her, and without saying a word; I embraced her and allowed her cry while leaning on my left shoulder. I understand that sometimes, people don’t need words when they grieve; they just want someone who can be silent and help them face the reality of their powerlessness. 

She was going through a very tough period in her life and I stepped in to be a friend. As time went by, our friendship grew stronger. We would share with each other things that we didn’t want others to know about us. We both lost friends because it was all about ‘us’ and no one else. We were inseparable. There was never a time we were apart from each other for 1 hour except when we had to say goodbye for the day. For long, we remained friends. But when you really love someone you just can’t be their friend. We both grew to love each other. 

We both made crazy sacrifices for each other and would spend a great deal of time planning our future together. It was such a beautiful experience.  The more time we spent together, the more we became part of each other. Our hearts became so united that the only reason I saw the next day was because her heart didn’t stop beating. 

 Gradually, an unusual fear began to grow within me; the fear that someday, my heart would be broken. On the outside, I would act as thou all is well, but deep down within me there was a civil war going on. How do I reconcile both love and fear? How do I enjoy the moment without letting the fear of tomorrow get in the way? It was challenging finding answers to questions as such.  Fear got in the way and somehow our relationship began to go sour. To cut the long story short, one thing led to another and she told me it was best we go our separate ways. My greatest fear became a reality. My heart was broken.  I was so devastated and for weeks I went without eating solid food. 

For years, I carried this scar in my heart and I just couldn’t open up to love.  Then, I began realizing that the struggle begins not when people surround us, but rather when they forsake us. It is then we begin to discover our own identity and self-worth. It took 5 years to heal from such a traumatic experience.

 Emotional pain is to the spirit what physical pain is to the body. Pain warns that something in our body is not healed. In the same way, when pain feels our hearts, we know that we have an area where healing or restoration is needed.

We need a private place of honesty. We need to be honest with ourselves. We need a place where we can sit down, reflect and mourn. However, we must be careful not to mourn over the past longer than necessary.  After the funeral, there is always a burial. The burial separates the survivor from the deceased. So we must come to a place of separation and decide to move on. 

The greatest tragedy is that most of us keep our pain active. Consequently, our power is never activated because our past remains unresolved.  We must allow the process of healing to take us far beyond bitterness into a resolution that releases us from the prison of depression and sets us free.

God’s healing process makes us free to taste life again, free to trust again, and free to live without the restrictive force of threatening fears. Someone may say, “I don’t want to trust again.” That is only because you are not healed. To never trust again is to live on the pinnacle of a tower. You are safe from life’s threatening grasp, but you are so detached from life that you soon lose consciousness of people, places, dates and events. You become locked into a time warp. You always talk about the past because you stopped living years ago. Listen to your speech. You discuss the past as if it were the present because the past has stolen the present right out of your hand! You’ve got to take it back. 

Could it be possible that there are those around you who want to be part of your life, now that you have chosen to go through the healing process and stop dwelling on what didn’t work out?

Put your seat belt on, get into the driver seat of your life and move on.

Gracias