Live As You Wish

Are you living the life you long to live? If not, why not? Yes, there are certainly valid reasons—raising children, significant debt, poor health—why your options may be limited.

But chances are that the brick wall you see in front of you might just tip over with a good shove. The question is, Are you so passionate about living your dream that you are willing to accept whatever consequences await you on the other side of that wall?

Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying.
Christian Furchtegott Gellert

For instance, if you are more interested in doing than having, perhaps it’s time to move into a smaller space to reduce your monthly overhead. If that appeals to you, what’s stopping you from following through?

If you want to travel the world, why aren’t you

Joel Theisen: Helping Seniors Age Well and Live Well

Joel Theisen

I was very impressed with Joel Theisen when I interviewed jim for an article in Twin Cities Business magazine. I interview lots of businesspeople and entrepreneurs and Joel stood out as someone who was doing what he was doing because he sincerely cared about people and wanted to help them. That kind of authenticity and genuineness is all too rare and it comes through loud and clear. Here’s the profile that resulted.

JOEL THEISEN OF AGEWELL HOME CARE

While working for a large national home care company in the ’90s, registered nurse Joel Theisen decided there was a better way to care for seniors. His growing frustration with the wait-till-it’s broken-then-fix-it mentality of the healthcare industry only added to his resolve. In 2004, Theisen raised seed money from family and close friends to launch Edina-based AgeWell Home Care LLC, a company devoted to keeping seniors healthy and living independently.

In Theisen’s view, health involves

Get Off the Train!

Who among us has not found ourselves in a job that drains our soul, in an activity that no longer serves us, or in a relationship that has clipped our wings instead of enabling us to soar? Yet instead of ending what needs to end, our fear of the unknown and (often) misguided sense of obligation keeps us tethered to that which saps our strength and blocks our enjoyment of life.

The hard truth is that no matter how determined you are, you cannot keep a situation that has already begun to unravel from unraveling. Your intentions may be pure, you may expend enormous amounts of energy scrambling to maintain the status quo, but you might as well be

Mary Hayes Grieco: The Eight Steps of Forgiveness

MARY HAYES GRIECO INTERVIEW (1 OF 2)

Mary Hayes Grieco

Mary Hayes Grieco is a respected spiritual teacher in the Twin Cities. She is the author of Be A Light: Illumined Essays for Times Like These, and the director of The Midwest Institute for Forgiveness Training. She has been teaching her practical step-by-step method of forgiveness for twenty years.

Click here to visit Mary’s website.

Click here to

Lori Schneider Climbs Ever Higher!

LORI SCHNEIDER INTERVIEW (1 OF 2)

Lori Schneider

On May 23, 2009, Lori Schneider became the first person in the world with multiple sclerosis to summit Mount Everest. Lori is also the first person with MS to complete the “Seven Summits” by scaling the highest peak on each continent. My first video interview with Lori was in October 2009. Since then, all sorts of exciting things have been happening for Lori, including a feature article in the January 2010 issue of  Guideposts magazine.

Click here to read Guideposts Editor-in-Chief Edward Grinnan‘s May 15, 2009 blog post about Lori.

Click here to watch my first video interview with Lori.

Click here to read about Lori’s inspiring Leap of Faith expedition to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in July 2011 with thirteen other women and men with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s Disease.

Click here to order Lori’s books, EVEREST: Climbing Beyond Our Limits and On Top of the Bottom of the World. By purchasing these books you will be helping raise funds for the Empowerment Through Adventure Scholarship Fund, which

A Hopeless End or Endless Hope?

Every event has a purpose; sometimes you get to see the reason, sometimes you don’t. Unplug from the need to know why something happened and trust that behind the event is a message of divine love and empowerment.

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination—but the combination is locked up in the safe.
Peter DeVries

Train yourself to look beyond the illusory “negative” aspects of events to discover the divinely directed lessons embedded within.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Confucius

The beauty of reframing even the most challenging of moments as a gift is

“I Have a Dream!”

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR,’S
“I HAVE A DREAM” SPEECH

For as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve been aware of Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s “I Have a Dream” speech, but I had never watched it or read in in its entirety. I should not have waited so long to do so. It’s a speech that every American would do well to listen to every so often.

The video may be in black and white and it may be nearly fifty years old, but in so many ways it is timeless. From our vantage point in 2010, knowing how history would unfold, the video is both chilling and soul-stirring. What a different place this world might be had King lived.

Click here to read a behind-the-scenes account of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Here is the text of King’s speech, given on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom political rally. The speech was a defining moment of the Civil Rights Movement.

I HAVE A DREAM

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of

What Does Your Self-Portrait Reveal?

Before a painter puts a brush to his canvas he sees his picture mentally. It is the mental concept that he externalizes with the help of paint and canvas. If you think of yourself in terms of a painting, what do you see? How do you appear to yourself? Is the picture one you think worth painting? You are what you think you are. You create yourself in the image you hold in your mind.
Thomas Dreier

What do you see when you imagine yourself gazing at your self-portrait? Do you see a smiling, vibrant friend to all or a

Learn, Baby, Learn!

I’ve always enjoyed learning but over the last couple of years, my thirst for knowledge has become insatiable. It’s a direct result, I believe, of a growing humility and a recognition that the more I learn, the more I learn that there’s more to learn than I could ever possibly learn!

I can finally relate to Japanese Zen priest Shunryu Suzuki-roshi‘s writings about those who have “the beginner’s mind.” Such a person has a mind fertile for limitless learning and growth and is eager to master every new challenge that comes along.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to take a timeout from life and

Seeking a Soulmate

Finding the right romantic partner can calm your restless spirit and splash vibrant color over your black-and-white world.

Your ideal partner is patiently waiting until you learn to see and appreciate the beauty and perfection within yourself. Self-acceptance is a prerequisite to a healthy relationship. After all, if you do not love yourself, how can you expect anyone else to?

We must be our own before we can be another’s.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your search for a beloved will be more successful if, instead of trying to find the right person, you

Time Is a Circus

When I was eight years old, it felt like childhood would last forever

When I was young, time was a kindly relative, showering me with an endless supply of gifts, and many a day was happily wasted.

Most of us spend our lives as if we had another one in the bank.
Ben Irwin

Today, I view marking time as a crime; every day fairly bursts with the urgency to advance the work I came here to do.

Time is a circus always packing up and moving away.
Ben Hecht

On one hand, I wonder how much

Big Drop . . . Small Drop . . . Tiny Drop . . .

This very cool video from Discovery Channel shows in slow motion what happens when a drop of water hits a pool of water. Since we can’t

There Will Come a Day

There will come a day when you will no longer be able to dance. So kick up your heels, laugh with abandon, and give your body up to the heavenly music that even now bursts forth from your soul in celebratory song.

There will come a day when the troubles that now occupy your mind will seem as insignificant as the whisper of the wind. So close your eyes and view today’s challenges through

Boredom Is Unacceptable!

It startles me to hear people complain that they are bored. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to feel that way. There are books to read, thoughts to think, conversations to have!

When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
Eric Hoffer

Are you expecting life to constantly entertain you? That’s your job! Seize the moment and make something of it!

The amount of satisfaction you get from life depends largely on your own ingenuity, self-sufficiency and resourcefulness. People who wait around for life to supply their satisfaction usually find boredom instead.
Dr. William Menninger

As I wrote in an earlier post, I don’t want one hour to go by

The Trucker and the Soap Girl

John and Marcie Dombrock on their wedding day

I

‘m a sucker for fairy-tale romances that last forever and hearken back to a simpler time. After interviewing Marcie Dombrock, I wrote this account of her marriage to John, her knight in shining armor. I know all you hopeless romantics out there will enjoy it!

THE TRUCKER AND THE SOAP GIRL

Seventeen-year-old Marcie Phillips and Frances Welch, her friend across the street, were fed up with being jolted awake by the trucker who was renting a room in the Jensen house next to where Frances lived. The trucker’s post-midnight arrivals were announced by a very loud motor that kept running to keep the engine cool. On Halloween, the two girls exacted their revenge—they soaped the windows of the trucker’s car, then scurried away giggling.

Marcie would not have the last laugh. Seven months later, the trucker attended services at the church across the street, the same church where Marcie’s family lived in the basement by virtue of her parents being church janitors. The trucker took a fancy to the cute girl singing in the choir and asked Kenny Jensen, who was a friend of Buddy, the cute girl’s brother, to pass along a message. “So Kenny came over one day and said to Buddy, ‘John wants to meet your sister,’” Marcie remembers. “And they were both pretty disgusted about that.”

A meeting was arranged at a Ladies’ Aid sale and supper at the church. John Dombrock bought a brand new suit, complete with new socks, shoes and underwear for the occasion. It wasn’t new for long. “One of the ladies in the church poured coffee all over his brand new suit,” Marcie says. “I felt so bad for him.”

She also felt bad for herself, having immediately recognized John as the

Spare No Effort of Your Wings

Last week, I had a nice Skype video-conversation with Jackie Rose Helpern, a friend I had met through Twitter. I was very impressed when she said that when she decides to do something, whether it’s a trip to Antarctica or spending a semester in the Philippines, it never occurs to her that she won’t be able to do it.

I’ve always felt the same way. Years ago, when I wanted to be a writer, I just assumed that I would eventually get there. Unfortunately, I was pretty clueless and had no plan. But even though I screwed up time and time again, I did eventually get to where I wanted to go.

I can’t imagine living any other way. When life calls me, I follow wherever it leads me. I love encouraging other people to pursue their dreams, too. So I was very happy to hear Jackie Rose speak with such confidence about trusting her intuition and enthusiastically embarking on one adventure after another.

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
Ayn Rand

What especially impressed me is that Jackie Rose is