Hi everyone!
Hope you’re having a relaxing Sunday afternoon, enjoying your family and life. Each month I will begin publishing a post that provides HOPE. It’s my Sprinkle of Hope posts and I really believe Hope is not in short supply.
HOPE is the Positive Expectation of Good or what I like to call the Best Possible Scenario in any situation. But it is the one thing we need if we want to keep moving forward in the right direction in life. Hope is what Faith uses to create your life and without hope there is no progress or moving forward. If you struggle in life it’s because you need to re calibrate your HOPE. So I hope you enjoy these posts as much as I enjoy writing them!
Just last night I started watching the middle of the movie Impossible again right after the tsunami hit. It’s about a family that’s vacationing in Sri Lanka and they got hit with the tsunami that claimed the lives of thousands. I had watched part of it before and was moved to tears when the family found each other again after such a traumatic experience. I have two boys so I could imagine the elation of being reunited with your children. But when I saw it for the second time I “saw” it differently. I realized the mother was a doctor and the resort they stayed at was quite upscale. Obviously they were well-to-do but in the moment after the tsunami hit, everyone rich or poor, educated or uneducated, white, black, yellow, were all on the same level. The tsunami literally put everyone on the same plane in an instant.
In the moments after the tsunami hit it didn’t matter how much money you had, how much education you had, how famous you were, only one thing mattered: FAMILY. Those that were able to survive that catastrophe and find their loved ones were the richest ones. They may have lost their ipads and iphones, wallets and jewelry and their shoes may have been ruined but they were rich. They had the love of one another.
I’ve always placed my family as a priority. I’ve even changed jobs and positions because they were taking too much time away from my kids and hubby. I’ve always understood the responsibility of being a parent and have tried to live my life in a way that my boys can be proud of and follow. But for some reason watching that movie made me realize something I’d never truly realized before. I’d heard about it but I couldn’t make it mine because I perhaps couldn’t relate.
And that principle is this: The moment you realize you don’t need anything is the moment you begin to attract every good thing in your life.
I’ve always been pretty ambitious in life. Even when my alcoholic first grade teacher literally sat in her chair the whole year with a bottle of Pepto Bismol while we played with toys and colored in our coloring books I managed in 2nd grade to get skipped to a 3rd grade Reading and Math class. I couldn’t Read or do Math but thanks to Mrs. Suarez I got caught up and in the second grade a reading contest was announced. I instantly knew I was going to win. Instead of recess, I spent my time pouring through one book after another. The first person to read 100 books would be the winner. I don’t remember how long the contest ran, I just remember reading 100 books and winning.
I also beat everyone in my school at the Spelling Bee and went on to the district competition where nerves caused me to stumble over the spelling of a word and will not utter till this day (darn you B-A-N-Q-U-E-T!) and I was disqualified.
When I was in the 4th grade our class bully Dawn was the fastest runner. It seemed almost impossible to think that this short, shy Puerto Rican girl could beat the fastest girl in the school. I decided I wanted to beat her during Field Day that year. So, every day I’d go home and run up and down our hill on 5th street and literally train until I had boy calves..lol. Don’t ask me where I’d learned to do that, it was just something I did. Somehow I thought going up and down that hill would train me for the 4th grade Field Day race at Richardson Park Elementary and help me to beat her. I signed up for the last leg in the relay race earlier that week because I knew Dawn would be running in that position. When I finally got handed the baton, I took off! I didn’t know who was to the left or right of me, the only thing I thought about was getting to the finish line first. And I won! I was a pretty shy kid in school so to have been hoisted on shoulders and paraded about was a big deal for me.
David slew Goliath.
In 2010 I was laid off during a time my husband was already laid off and I suddenly felt like the world came to a standstill. I’d never been in that situation before so I knew that somehow my wrong-thinking had led me to that place. The situation looked impossible. We were both without work and had bills to pay and a small savings account. I endeavored to change the way I thought, to remove thoughts of worry, anxiety, shame, defeat from my mind to thoughts of peace, love, rest, courage and joy. Four months later I was working at my dream company as a Technical Instructor making more money than I’d made my whole life.
In 2014 I started this food blog and though I see it like raising another child, I take care of it, watch over it, want it to grow and blossom and bless as many people as possible, but I look forward to it getting more popular, attracting more visitors, getting more interaction and comments, see my photography improving. There is still so much to do, to learn, to achieve…. But……… I realized that I feel like I’ve been in some kind of competition my whole life. Trying to get better, trying to make more money, trying this, trying that. After watching that movie again I realized I don’t have to compete anymore, I don’t have to wait to achieve another level of success, I don’t need to wait until I have a million visitors per month to feel accomplished. Everything that I will ever need or want in life I ALREADY HAVE IT: GOD, LOVE AND FAMILY. That makes me rich, accomplished and successful right now. This is where I want to always be. I have arrived people. And though it is only a mindset that I have just begun to embrace, I am learning that THIS is what will attract anything good that I aspire to attract. Already knowing I have everything and am fully supplied is the SECRET TO LIFE. It is the same principle behind 2 Peter 3:
Beloved, I wish above all things that you prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.
Our souls hold the key to our prosperity. When your soul prospers, you prosper. Your soul is your mind, will and emotions. How does your soul prosper? By walking in the truth. By seeing with the eyes of abundance and love. Your soul prospers by having a consistent attitude of gratitude in all things. Because you cannot feel like you are lacking or missing out when you are consistently grateful. You’re not waiting until you achieve something to celebrate and enjoy life- you are living it, enjoying and like we say in Spanish, “sacandole el jugo” squeezing the juice out of Life.
Russell Simmons the fashion/media mogul, talked about this central principle in his book, SUPER RICH.
The peace one feels from the idea that you have everything you could ever want right now, creates an accelerated catalyst for prosperity on every level.
Believe it or not the book is really not about money at all which I was initially disappointed about when I read it in 2012. I was expecting a mogul’s guide to riches and instead it was a book about changing your thoughts or paradigm to one where lack was a foregone conclusion, where abundance was the ruling methodology and not one single idle thought entertained any lack at all.
It seems abstract to say the least, almost impossible. How can you focus on having everything if you live in the ghetto? Or how can you focus on being amply supplied when you clearly have no food or money to eat? But my friend, I’ve learned that’s the exact moment to plant those seeds of abundance in your mind because the ground is fertile and ready for you to yield its fruits of abundance, surplus and provision. You see being rich is not dependent on the number of zeros in your bank account. Being rich is the result of recognizing what you have been blessed with right now.
Well, I don’t have anything right now, you say. Really? I beg to differ. Are you breathing? Are you reading this post? That means you are alive, breathing, can read and your eyes are working- that’s a blessing! You used some electronic device to access this post right?-another blessing. You may even be the owner of that device- another blessing. Which also means you have internet access-blessing there. Which means either you can afford internet access or you can access it somehow-another blessing. Your hands may have typed a keyword search where you arrived at my page, so your hands work, fingers work and you can spell! Triple blessing. Just having access to the internet alone can literally transform your life. That’s a blessing that keeps on giving, really. You can learn so many things and put yourself in a position to be a bigger blessing.
You see this whole crazy idea of thinking you have made it, you don’t need anything, you have arrived before you actually have it, has an ulterior motive or catch-22. That is another SECRET. Why? Because the more you have, the more people you can help. That’s how God, our Heavenly Father created this system to work. Even people who start businesses for the wrong reasons or people that are totally driven by money still bless people along the way. Think about it. This dude starts a restaurant business to get rich, so he gets a loan (the bank prospers), he hires a construction crew (they make money, people get to pay their bills and take care of their families), hires an accountant, waiters, cooks and so on. No, he may not be motivated by the right instincts maybe his family suffers along the way, maybe his marriage struggles because he doesn’t spend enough time working on it but look how many people he still blessed. Even still you can have it all. You can be motivated properly by love and have all those things and take the time to spend with your family appreciating them and you will have successes, love and the respect of your family. See how it works?
So the moral of the story is two-fold : As you’re on this wonderful journey called life remember that this gift called family is really the most important thing and if you have that, you are already rich. If you embrace this idea you will have everything you could ever want out of life effortlessly. You won’t overwork yourself, you’ll take the time to enjoy life and your family with regular vacations, celebrate your successes with them. Then you will take those successes and bless countless people with them. That’s achieving the Impossible.