You’ve probably heard some variation of the “living the dash” sermon.  You know… the one about how our lives will eventually be reduced to two dates on a tombstone - one listing the date of our birth and one listing the date of our death - separated by a dash.  The idea is that we need to pack as much life as possible into that dash.

Well, I just came across a very simple and visually appealing version of that idea. Bonus: This version doesn’t mention that unfortunate “death” part.

Converse (the shoe company) has a very simple illustration of how powerful the present moment can be.  I’m quite ambivalent about their shoes, but I LOVE this message!  What are you waiting for? Go check it out!

WARNING:  If you see a link at the bottom for something called KISSINGWITHROSS.COM - don’t click it!  You’ve been warned and I cannot be held responsible for any mental anguish that results from ignoring my warning.

…And when I say motivation from “within” - I mean WITHIN!

Last week I had my annual check-up with the cardiology team.  These are not your standard cardiologists - these doctors are specially trained in dealing with adults with congenital heart conditions. (Public Service Announcement: If you, or someone you love, was born with any sort of heart defect [as 1 in 100 babies are], then you need to be sure that you are being followed by a congenital heart specialist - not just a regular cardiologist.  For more information contact the CCHA in Canada or the ACHA in the US)

I have been having annual checkups since I was born (except for the seven or eight years after receiving my ‘expiry date’ - you may have read about those years in my book).  One of the diagnostic tests that they almost always use during these checkups is called an echocardiogram.  It’s the same technology that they use on pregnant women to check the progress of the baby and it gives you a fascinating look inside the human body.

So I have had the privilege of being able to watch my own heart as it does its thing.  I’m guessing that I’ve probably seen this “live and in person” about 31 times. And I have a powerful video clip of my own heart that I keep on my BlackBerry (Ask me to see it the next time you meet me).  For me, watching my heart is like visiting with a wise old friend.

Now my heart bears little resemblance to yours.  (If you haven’t already listened to my heart - you can do that here.) All my life I have had cardiologists tell me that if someone were to intentionally build a heart the way mine is built - it would never function.  But mine does!  I know that I am a walking miracle!

And that humbling fact was brought home to me once again last week as I lay on my side watching my heart beating away - doing things that it’s not supposed to do.

As I reflected on this miracle in action, I felt a renewed sense of purpose and drive sweep over me.  “I’ve been given a tremendous gift here!  Who am I to squander it by living an ‘ordinary’ life?”

Isn’t that a powerful realization?

But you don’t have to have a freakish heart to tap into that same feeling. Your own body, whether young or old, healthy or not, is a miracle of nature!  You have the ability to turn food and drink into muscles and bones.  You pull oxygen out of the air and turn it into thoughts and dreams.  And all without any effort on your part!

You’re a miracle in action too!  So please tell me you’re not planning on living an ordinary life!  No matter what sort of live you’ve been living up to this point - it can all change now!  With the very next beat of your heart, you can decide to live your life on purpose.  And if you ever get discouraged or doubtful… put two fingers on your wrist, feel the driving rhythm of your pulse and tap into that motivation from within!

ENJOY NOW!

I just read a story from the New York Times about hospitals that use bracelets to advise staff of important patient conditions.  These include allergies, a risk of falling and the fact that the patient has indicated that they do not wish to be resuscitated.  This last category is causing all sorts of problems.

The article made me sad as I read about the debate over how to best indicate a patient’s wishes about their treatment choices. Some are uncomfortable with the idea of putting DNR (for Do Not Resuscitate) on someone’s wrist and feel that somehow “a white dove carrying an olive branch” (Seriously! I’m not making that up!) or “the initials A.N.D., for ‘allow natural death’,” are a better idea.  They even go so far as to say that it is a “gentler alternative”.  What??  A gentler alternative? Really?

I never cease to be puzzled and amused at how our Western culture tries to sanitize the concept of mortality and death. The very word “death” is a taboo.  When I was writing my first book, I wanted to use “death” in the title.  EVERYONE told me that I would be crazy to do this.

“You’d be crazy to do that!” they said. (Really, they did) “It will alienate people!  No one will look at a book with ‘death’ in the title! They’ll see that word and run the other way!”

I’m well aware of how our society reacts to this unfortunate fact of life (which is ultimately why I chose to call my book “What’s Your Expiry Date? Embrace Your Mortality - Live With Vitality“), but my question is: WHY?

Everyone dies.  No exceptions.  Saying that is not morbid, it’s just a fact of life.  We don’t get carried away by a white dove with an olive branch - our bodies just stop working.  So why do we run from the word?  Why do we hide from the concept?  Does ignoring and denying the inevitable really add to the quality of our lives? I want to hear from you on this one in the comments section.

Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, I am friends with Jose’ Micallef from Malta. (You can be my friend on Facebook too, my profile page is here.)

This morning I was looking at some amazing photos that Jose’ has on Facebook.  As soon as I saw them, I realized that I had to write a blog post about them, so I dropped him a note to ask if I could use them. He wrote back and told me that I was welcome to use the photos.  He also told me that there was a story behind them - and what a story it is!  So today, I will bring you Jose’s story.  Then, in my next blog entry,  I will give you the post that I was originally inspired to write when I saw these fantastic photos.

Here are the photos (Jose’ is the one in the white t-shirt) - Click on each one to see the larger photo):

And here’s the story behind them, as told by Jose’:

I was scared of heights. A couple of years ago the German girlfriend I had at the time took me sight seeing on top of Cologne cathedral. Going up the never ending stairs did not make me realize how high we were going as we had no windows around us. When we got to the top and realized the height, I simply froze, got hold of the wall behind me and was shaking with panic. Well it took her and some other tourist around 45 minutes to get me down. I went down the steps facing the wall and my girlfriend talking me about silly stuff to deviate my frightening thoughts.

Last year I started working on myself and getting my life in shape. One of the things I had to work on was the fear of heights. I was going to be in Hawaii for a conference regarding personal development and I decided to take action to defeat this fear of heights. I booked a skydive 5 weeks before the jump and from that day I created a mind movie where I saw myself boarding the plane with a smile and no fear and also watched myself jump off the aircraft with a big smile and screaming with joy having the time of my life. I went through this mind movie at least once a day till the jump and while doing so I said aloud to myself “I am going to skydive and am going to have fun”. Well, I jumped and it was a live performance of my mind movie and did not feel any fear for not even a fraction of a second. Now I know that with the right mind-set I can achieve what I want.

Do I have some powerful friends, or what?

Now I want you to consider doing three simple things:

1. Use the comments section below to tell us how you’ve overcome fears.

2. Forward this to any of your friends who are having difficulty facing their fears.

3. Join Jose’ and I on Facebook!

ENJOY NOW!

Wow!

I’ve just come across something incredibly powerful and I wanted to share it with you.  I’m not sure if it will have the same impact on you as it did on me, but I feel strongly that I need to share this new perspective with you.

I have just started going through an audio program called Abundance For Life - Trance Breaking, Wealth Making.  It’s done by Paul R. Scheele from Learning Strategies Corporation. This morning I was listening to the introductory CD while having breakfast.  In the CD, Paul talks about his background and about how he came to work in the field of personal development.  He relates the story of working for the summer, at the age of 19, in a hypnotherapy clinic. After the summer, he was asked to take over the therapist’s client load because she was ill.  As he became more and more adept at hypnosis techniques, he made a very powerful realization.  Here’s the gist of the story:

Paul was giving a demonstration  of hypnotic trances to a church youth group.  Essentially these are induced states of mind (“keep your eyes on the swinging watch…your eyelids are getting heavy”) that bypass our critical faculties and allow suggestions (“you no longer enjoy smoking”) to be more readily accepted by the mind.  In this particular demonstration he was giving,  he worked with a young man and suggested to him that his foot was glued to the floor.  Sure enough, the young man COULD NOT move his foot!  Next, Paul suggested to the boy that he had forgotten his own name and would not be able to recall it when asked.  As you can guess, the boy was completely unable to recall his name. When both of these trance demonstrations worked, Paul had a powerful realization:

Now at that moment, instead of thinking how powerful I was as a hypnotist, I immediately felt illuminated as if I was standing in a shaft of light from heaven.  I thought: “Oh my gosh! We’re doing this to ourselves all the time! We’re taking perfectly reasonable abilities - perfectly reasonable resources of mind and throwing them out, simply by accepting the suggestion that ‘I cannot’.”  Everyday normal human resources, human capabilities, vaporize - become impossible to access - simply by focusing the mind in a way that makes us believe that they are not available.

Isn’t that a powerful perspective?  Today, I want you to listen carefully to your own self-talk.  See if you can notice how many times you limit yourself.  Notice how often you glue your own feet to the floor.  Who’s really holding you back?

ENJOY NOW!

If you are interested in learning more about the Abundance for Life program, you can visit Learning Strategies Corporation’s website here.

Well, today is Monday.

Many people dread Monday because it means that the weekend is over and they have to go back to work.

After you look at this photo, ask yourself… is your Monday morning really as bad as this guy’s?  How much must he dread going to bed on Sunday night?

So…Is your job really all that bad?

Image from Flickr © All rights reserved. PC Virus

Wow!  You need to click on the picture and  look at this! (It will only take 30 seconds to read … but a lifetime to think about!)

I couldn’t have said it better myself!!

Take a long, hard look at those blobs.  Count them out and see where you are right now.

And then remember that 936 is just the statistical norm.  It’s not a number that you are guaranteed, owed or otherwise entitled to.

To further put this in perspective… last month Dave Freeman, the man who co-wrote 100 Things To Do Before You Die, died at the age of 47.  That, my friends, is only 564 blobs.