Blog Archives
Joy In Challenges
In order to live a full life you need to challenge yourself. Challenges in life are not always easy but if you find the joy in these challenges you will see a lot better outcome on the things you go after in your life.
I Am Different
I have had cellulitis for over a week now. I was stripped from my Alaskan cruise adventure but I had a great time when I was there. You will hear more about it soon! I am at home healing now; I have no desire to eat, watch tv, listen to music, read, do anything artsy, and I am struggling to write this even. My mind has given me no shortage of a thought process. I am thinking about EVERYTHING! I am grateful that I have learned to be more mature and productive with my thoughts at least.
The biggest thing I think about is my life. Who I was and the transition to I am and want to be. 3 years have gone by sense I saw the dark depths of my life for the 2nd time. Only this time I ran out. I climbed out with a plan. A plan for a better me? Taking risks that average people will never take. Some I succeeded some I failed. I stand and continue to move forward. I have harnessed a completely new life. There is no backup plan to my old life, the old me. Some people can’t handle the change; some people don’t understand the change and others could care less. I got away from those people. I may disappear into the beautiful and busy lives some of you have but when you think of me or reach out for me, my hand will always be right there!
Meeting new people has been slow but promising because the positive people I search for are being drawn to me little by little. Most of my time however has been spent pushing me to be this person I envision. Someone to inspire many with everything I do in life.
Everything happens for a reason right? Well I get the reason for cellulitis. I am moving too fast right now. I am conquering things and moving forward so easy and so fast and I am about to step into a new amazing wave of my life and I need to slow down. The Illness is forcing me to slow down. I don’t need to be an overnight motivational speaker but I do need to motivate this world as soon as I say I am ready. I have told my story time and again and I leave the heartache out of it yet people are still completely inspired with what I am trying to achieve. People stop and listen to the end and they have nothing but encouragement to share after that.
I am different, and I will make a difference!
Your Life Is A Masterpiece!
I think I will be able to finish one more book before months end! I am halfway through “The Carpenter,” by Jon Gordon and it has been an amazing story. It is about a carpenter that helps others not only with his exquisite cabinetry making skills but also with life success skills as well.
The main thing I have already taken away from reading “The Carpenter” is to do everything with gratitude and love. You have to be grateful for the steps to your goals and you need to give gratitude to those that touch your life all the way to the top. Most importantly you need to love what you are doing. You need to love everything. Your many success strategy toward any goal is to love everything on the way there. Every challenge, every step backward, and every fall you need to love just as much as the things that are easy to love about your successes.
This book really puts meaning to what I say in my “About Me” blog post, I am on a quest to love everything in life and I am doing just that! You need to take chances in life but you don’t live by chance alone. You live by love and you need to design your life to become a masterpiece. Take what you see as your main goal and put it in front of your life and then design the steps you need to take to get to that point. You are designing your own masterpiece in life.
I would like to last note a paragraph from “The Carpenter”:
“I see it differently,”said the carpenter. “I see you resting and learning. I see you getting stronger. I see you preparing for greater things so you can take your life and business to a higher level. Always remember that our biggest battle comes before our greatest victory. And I see great victories in your future.”
I certainly see great victories in my future, do you see them in yours?
Focus On Your Life
I have finished my first book this month called “Black Hole Focus”, by Isaiah Hankel PhD. So many great life changing ideas in this book and it is not ironic that the one thing I want to share with you involves the Ideas of focus.
Isaiah talks about the ideas of a black hole. It is not so much that things fall into a black hole and disappear but more so things fall into a black hole and change. In our lives we fall into holes and we do not disappear do we? The Idea behind change is to emerge from the holes in life changed for the better.
That was at the very beginning of the book and now I want to skip right to the end.
“Do it all. Have a whatever-it-takes mentality”, says Isaiah. He is right, go after everything you can in life. Learn as much as possible, not as fast as possible but as efficient as possible. There are those of us who have a focus on life that is too small, with that you are not giving your life much expectation to be amazing. On the other hand it is actually harmful to have to big of a focus as you give your life less time to really get to know the true potential. To add more value to your life you need to narrow your focus and you really will start to discover your purpose. That is what “Black Hole Focus” is all about, finding a more meaningful purpose to your life and all the whys to follow.
Your goals are important in life but you do not want too many at one time. What are your main goals, your biggest goals? Now focus on those and what it is going to take to achieve the big goals by using smaller goals to step your way to the top.
The new book I started reading is called “Everything Happens For A reason”, by Mira Kirshenbaum. It is a collection of stories that are explaining the meaning behind all the things, good and bad, that happen in your life.
Bottom line for today’s post is, go after everything you want in life. No matter if you succeed or fail, all your goals have a specific reason in your life. That’s enough motivation to push on and go after great things in your life. You have nothing to lose but the thought of not trying.
Meme Monday (Stick To Your Goals)
For April Health Month, I have made goals and I have been sticking to them and it has really shown success. Plainly put I am skinnier and much more positive, if that is even possible for me, to be more positive. Goals are my life and achieving them is what makes me happy. I will never be without a goal in mind, there is always something worth achieving out there!
Here is a short video of where I took the picture for my meme today
Please share your GOALS, CHALLENGES, and STORIES right here or on my Facebook page, and be sure to share my posts with your friends.
https://www.facebook.com/UPwithmarc
LIFE
Why am I here? I reach that point of pure inspiration and I have no idea how to explain it. My life struggles are merely a matter of opinion. Plenty of others have it far better or worse than I do. I continue to rise every morning in search of the unknown. Some days I have full confidence in where I want to be in my life, other days I wonder if I am insane. I get asked again and again the purpose of my blog, the purpose of my desire to be a motivational figure, and the purpose of my new life. All people, positively curious, want a fine tuned answer of where I am going. I don’t have an answer. We set goals and work towards them all the time, but sometimes there are bigger things in life then even your goals. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you just let life happen.
Sure I want to be a motivational speaker but have I narrowed down what I want to motivate people about? NO. Right now if I did that I would be narrowing my view, narrowing my life. This is a concept I finally understand. I remain open to catch everything. I talked a few times about heartbreak, but truthfully it is that heartbreak that has lead me to who I am today. Any negative opinions of my challenges, successes, and my journey just don’t matter anymore. If you can believe it I am transforming myself little by little into the most positive person I have ever known.
Sure, I make mistakes, big mistakes. You would to when you try to introduce your positivism in a negative world. The biggest thing I have thought about my whole life is how different I am from everyone, from my style all the way down to my thought process. I am nothing close to perfect but I am original.
Everything I do now in life carries great purpose. When I struggle to meet goals or even find love in my life I realize that there is a higher purpose that I have only begun to discover. I am grateful I have found this journey. I am grateful you have read this and I am grateful you are part of my journey. This journey is far from the beginning and far from over.
After a little over 2 weeks it is good to be back. For the month of March I will be doing 31 days of Gratitude. I will be posting one thing I am grateful for everyday on my Facebook Page. Be sure and check it out each day and I encourage you to write what you are grateful for in the comments below each day.
Never Give Up
It’s hard to wait. It’s hard to try over and over again without any good result. It’s hard to fail and not feel a little worse each time. How much can you take before it’s time to give up?
Most of my close friends and family can a test to how close to edge of life I have got. They have seen me fall hard, again and again. They have seen me ready to give up, ready to say I am done. They have seen me scream, cry, and beg the universe for an answer. All of us will literally stumble upon hard times. In fact if you have never faced a challenge that has pushed you to your limits, you have so much more of your life to experience yet.
As the sweat from my forehead beads into the tears of my face, the monster has arrived. I have fought the good fight that my journey may be over. My next destination is thru the thick fog and I have no idea what is inside there, or what lies on the other side. I’m going in and you better believe I am coming out the other side as a better person! This I do know. Every challenge I face makes me stronger more willing to face the next.
You know what the people I care about have never seen? They have never seen me stay down when I fall. They have never seen me stop when there is just so much more road to follow. They have never seen me make a goal and not go after it with everything I have got. Those I keep close to my heart have never seen me give up.
Don’t give up on your dreams and you goals it is not worth it. No matter how long that journey is, keep going. No matter how many times you have to try and try again, keep at it. When you fall get up and never stop. When you have to wait and there is nothing else you can do, you wait. Your goal is close by, your destination is right around the corner, that treasure you have been looking for all your life you are about to run right into, but the only way to see any of it is to never give up. NEVER GIVE UP.
Anyone that says life is easy is a fool. Anyone who wants to experience their full potential is going to stumble through the gates of victory out of breath with scraped knees. Carrying the satisfaction of making it is what strengthens everyone for the next seemingly impossible journey. Everything is possible in life but it takes a person willing to never give to get there.
RIGHT NOW!
It was the sign of my watch I wore on the cruise ship stopping that said it was time to go home, which also lead to my move to Florida. I just found my watch among my stuff again to my surprise it was working again. I take this as another sign that I am were I am supposed to be. I think my fate lies deeper in the sign that my watch is not just working again but at the exact time that it is right now! WHOA! I do not have a straight answer for this occurrence and perhaps here and now is where I need to keep my mind. Maybe it’s a sign that right now is what matters most in my life…right now is what matters most in all our lives! (Ask The Ocean)
Life is hard. You must find yourself before you find success or love. Even when you do find yourself that quest for what you want most in life still seems so far away. The pillars of life collapse all around you as you move forward. It’s when those pillars of life slam down right in front of you that makes you want to turn around. You can’t turn around. You are so far into your quest for a true life to live, that turning around seems just as impossible as moving forward. Stuck you search the skies above for answers, but the real answers lie within. Every answer worth receiving in life is inside your heart and soul. The real challenge is not discovering that it is in there, it is actually finding it once you know. Life will bring you to your knees and when it does you must close your eyes and release all doubt that exists within. Leave more room for the answers to live your life to the fullest. You will not find what you are looking for in a past life or the next, you will find everything within you RIGHT NOW!
Blow Your Own Mind
I visited my hometown area for Christmas and New Years in the Northwest parts of the Chicago area. Being a resident of Florida now and it being winter time I was anxious to see the snow again. Sense I booked my flight I hoped for snow for some time, and waited in controlled excitement for that day, just like I waited for my day at sea on my cruise vacation a few years ago. That day never came and as I flew back home that snow began to fall.
I felt weird on the way home and I told my mom and dad it was weird that I was flying home to what most people call a vacation spot, and where I came to visit was where I used to live. I landed in Florida only to hear my Father say the snow plow just went by and my Mother sends me pictures of the 4 inches of snow she got and it is still coming down. I missed what I really wanted to see by hours not even a whole day!
Should I be disappointed? NO! When you do something enough it becomes habit. On a journey to love everything in life you must take initiative to find the positives in the not so glamorous situations. Finding positives has become second nature to me. Yes I am from Illinois, snow is glamorous to me! Right off the bat anyone can conclude that I left just in time, without having any weather delays and I got home safely. I was sitting in my room in shorts and a t-shirt; thinking about the snow I was missing, I was sweating and it felt so hot here! I was antsy to look into my new Spanish-speaking program and my new Chakra set but my mind lays distracted by the snow I missed.
I took the time to figuring out what was going on in my head and I realized I wrote my answer to this issue of missing the snow, last Friday!
Variety Friday (purpose) “Finding your way means stepping away from something good for something better.”
I actually got a little teary eyed writing this because my life now has been full of inspiration and I have so much to be grateful for as a result. On more than one occasion I have succeeded in blowing my own mind. This was one of those times. These self discoveries are what taking your own path in life is all about. I shed no disappointment for not seeing more than a light dusting of snow when I left, but I do take pride in standing here in Florida, a resident for only about 6 months, and looking back up north with praise for what this world has given to me up to this point. There is more coming, there is always more coming if that is what you believe in. The snow is good but for my life the ocean is better.
Meme Monday ( Time)
It is such a cute baby picture of me, I just had to use it! I am very happy where I am now and were I am going.
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