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The Recipe for Serendipity

January 18, 2015 By ssherayko Leave a Comment

Have you ever had the feeling of serendipity? By definition, it is a gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for. I’m wondering if the definition is missing something. I think we experience serendipity when we want something and find it in unexpected places.

I started thinking about this when Noah St. John sent out a recent email in which he outlined the positive benefits that people experience as soon as they start working with his book Afformations: The Miracle of Positive Self-Talk. And I agreed with him. I had experienced exactly what he described – a brighter outlook, a fabulous job promotion, more joy in my daily life, and new opportunities opening up before me. What was most fabulous was that his technique was so simple that it did not feel as if I had to work harder to get the results I wanted.

All of that equates to the feeling of serendipity. In my case, it felt like I was in a rags to riches movie. I talk about it in my book Rainbows Over Ruins – how we went from the landslide that destroyed our home to a lovely ranch, how our business opportunities grew, and how we discovered that the switch from our default mindset of negativity to one of positive self-talk opened up the creative thought process for both of us in an amazingly short period of time. On many occasions, I felt as if someone was holding my hand and moving puzzle pieces into place at just the right time. Call it faith, call them miracles, or call them God-winks or God-shots.

What I have found is that people resonate with such stories. To others, I became an example of someone who has not only survived a catastrophe but thrived using a positive thought process. Somewhere in my story, my readers found the hope and promise that if they do what I did, they will experience release from pain, fear and anxiety as they transform their lives. When you are feeling unhappy, are struggling, leading a life of quiet desperation or just stuck where you are without any idea of how you will get out of a situation, it really helps to hear that other people have gotten through it all, and to see that the curious chain of events that led someone else to overcome crisis, obstacles and challenges can also apply in your own life. It’s inspirational. Their response is, of course, what inspires me. There is something magical in seeing other people find hope that they can learn how their Inner Self can lead them from where they are to where to where they want to be.

This is not meant sound other worldly as such even though it feels like it. Rather, this is said with an awareness that scientific research now shows that the brain can be re-trained. If you catch one of John Assaraf’s Brain-a-thons, you’ll see that there are now studies that demonstrate that we do not have to controlled by survival oriented, primitive brain reactions any longer. We can take a more proactive stance by learning how to coordinate what we call the Inner and Outer aspects of mind.

Mine is but one story. There are so many others. I like to hear about other people who are using their similar experiences in ways that bring them serendipity. It helps me work with creative people who desire more out of life, helping them let go of the negative thought habits that stop them so they can see unimagined opportunities unfold before them. I’m looking for stories now that I can share with you, and if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. We’re all on the road to bigger and better experiences coming from unexpected places.

To Your Success,

Susan

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: afformations, brain-a-thon, challenges, creative thought process, crisis, faith, get unstuck, God-shots, God-winks, Inner Self, inspiration, John Assaraf, joy, miracles, Noah St. John, obstacles, opportunity, positive self-talk, Rainbows Over Ruins, serendipity

NOW ABOUT THOSE RESOLUTIONS

January 2, 2015 By ssherayko Leave a Comment

It’s that time of the year and my email inbox is filled with messages from folks in the self-improvement field telling me how to keep to my resolutions or choose another word like “commit” or a word other than resolutions. They are hitting a nerve. We want to do whatever we can to avoid what we believe is the inevitable sense of failure when we do not keep our resolutions.

If you’ve been following my posts throughout December, I think you’ll agree that I’ve been suggesting something similar all month: Pre-pave the New Year by determining your goals before the holiday rush.

With the holiday weekend here, now is a great time to settle down in front of the TV with movies or sports on the tube as background noise. No, that’s not my recommendation because it’s distracting, however, what I’m about to describe could take a while and I want you to enjoy it.

I want you to take those notes you made about your dreams and goals for 2015, put them in front of you and start to make a plan for how you are going to achieve them. Most of us are really good at making the first list of resolutions. We may even add extra language – I intend to lose 40 pounds; I intend to work out every day. However, we fail to provide some really critical information.

Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to work out? Do you have a result like a promotion you want to receive? Do you have a targeted event to attend? Goals are easier to achieve when you have a date in mind to achieve your goal – such as losing weight before your high school reunion or your big family wedding. It is also easier to evaluate if your goals are realistic when you attach a date to it. If you feel overwhelmed when you add a target time frame to your resolution, chances are that you need to break your resolution into smaller steps.

Are you being specific enough? Can I measure signs of my success? I may say that I want to make 2015 the best year ever, but what would have to happen for me to recognize that I have reached that goal by December 31st?

Are you overwhelmed just looking at your list? Which of your goals/resolutions are really important? There may be a few on your master list of goals that would be nice, but you don’t have a great deal of passion about them. So go ahead, take your list and reorder it according to your priorities.

Are you ready? Go make, edit and prioritize your list now before you get distracted.

Clue to potential failure number 1: If you find your head filling with negative self-talk, write down what you are telling yourself on a separate piece of paper. Mark Waldman calls it your C.R.A.P. sheet. You are acknowledging the negative while honoring your brain’s concern for your well-being. That seems to satisfy the sense of self-preservation, allowing you to explore possibilities instead of stopping you.

When we continue, we’ll identify the next steps to take your goals to the next level.

To Your Success,

Susan

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: achieve your goal, deadline, dreams, goals, negative self-talk, overwhelmed, plan, possibilities, pre-pave, priorities, resolutions, results, time frame, why

Money and Opportunity are Everywhere

December 28, 2014 By ssherayko Leave a Comment

A young acquaintance recently posted on Facebook that she has been going through some challenging times. She and the man in her life have been focused on getting their financial lives in order, but as chance would have it, they have their eggs in a controversial basket – making an honest living providing Uber services. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, something did and now they have to rebuild their finances again. This young woman came to mind this morning because of a question she put out into the universe: Who would hire a woman so far along in her pregnancy? I might have passed over this comment, however, there’s an important teaching moment in this.

You see, you and I, in fact, everyone has a negative mental default setting. Until we take the time to retrain our brains, they automatically go there whenever we face something new and unknown, or out of our comfort zone. It stops most of us from ever taking any risks or examining potential ideas that could bring a positive change into our lives.

Now, I’m not saying that there are plenty of employers looking to hire someone who is about to go on maternity leave. Rather, I am suggesting that she might recognize that she is going to a negative place without exploring what she could do to keep her financial life on track over the next 6 months or so. That would give her enough time to have the baby and a comfortable period with her new child before she decides what she wants to do next.

If you are in this kind of a position, the key question to ask is what product or service can I provide that is of value to others? What do I like to do – that I can do part time or at home – that others need? What am I willing to do just to have an income for the next 6 months? Are friends or neighbors telling me about something or are there classified ads in the free penny saver newspapers? Is there something online?

Put aside all your negative thoughts about money and work while you allow yourself to recognize that money and opportunity are everywhere if your eyes are open to see and your ears open to hear.

When I was facing economic challenges, I gave myself permission to take any kind of work I could that would bring an immediate source of income requiring no start up fees. For a very brief period of time, I provided telemarketing services for an hourly minimum wage, paid weekly. It wasn’t much, but it gave me money for food and gasoline in my car which then gave me enough to travel for other opportunities.

These jobs exist in any number of places. Think back to the women who provided simple services to people in town to earn money for their families. At the most basic, they might take in laundry, mend clothes, babysit, open a boarding house and provide personal services running errands for friends and neighbors for a fee. Now that we have phones and Internet, we are able to do so much more – telemarketing, network marketing and Internet marketing. You can open a virtual store from home and there are virtual job options like elance.com and fiverr.com where you can use your skills from the comfort of home to help someone else.

Who knows? The uncomfortable situation that caused you to explore these possibilities might be the beginning of a whole new line of work that is much more lucrative and pleasant that working for someone else. It is certainly gives you more options than collecting the small amounts available through government assistance.

The New Year is almost upon us. If you are looking for extra or any income, take these few days to think about it. Look at yourself. If money and opportunity are everywhere, how can you take advantage of that?

And while you’re at it, let’s develop a new, more positive thought routine for 2015.

To Your Success,

Susan

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: change, create opportunity, elance, fiverr, marketing, mental default setting, money, opportunity, positive thought routine, retrain brain, value

Dinner is “et” and the dishes are done

December 26, 2014 By ssherayko Leave a Comment

Funny how once the holiday dinner is completed, we have so little on our calendar that “has” to be done.  So it’s been a great opportunity to take my own suggestion and ponder my intentions for the coming year.  I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time.

I’m extremely grateful for all the positive things that happened this year and my long term goals are well spelled out.  The questions for me as I reach this point come from Mark Waldman and John Assaraf at Praxis Now.  Here is the big one — if I want to keep working toward my “big” long term goal, what do I want to accomplish this year?  That’s followed immediately by — In order to accomplish that, what do I need to do this month? It’s a form of reverse engineering, forcing you to think in ever smaller bits of a project until you reach something you can do today.

On a day like this, there isn’t a great deal I’d like to do, but I have a few small projects that are lingering.  They may not seem very important, but they drag down my creative energies by ignoring them.  So this is my hour to focus on just what I can do right now.  They are all interrelated.

One of my goals has been to create a new website based on my book.   It’s taken quite some time to get it ready for prime time – and this week it went live!   Appropriate applause and fireworks are appreciated.   If you’d like to give it a test drive, go to www.rainbowsoverruins.com and please let me know if all the bugs aren’t out of the system yet.  It’s amazing how many bells and whistles can go into a functioning website.

Next, with the site ready, the URL needed to be added to my author page on Amazon.  So just before starting to write this post, that task was checked off my To Do list.

Last but not least, it’s time to test out the new WordPress plugin that allows me to post directly from the new website.  It won’t be clear how it is working until this post is completed and posted.  The unknown of it all is what makes me nervous about using new technologies.  Will all the features prevously set up remain or will they be lost in the transition?  Will blog posts get lost? Will I still be able to post from WordPress directly?  It reminds me of years past when we were all afraid we would blow up the computer if we hit the wrong key.

We’ll know soon enough.  If all is successful, three chores will be checked as accomplished, making room for me to focus on larger goals for the coming year.  That’s the way of it.  In the long run, we achieve success one step at a time, one day at a time.

May your intentions around your goals make their way to paper – along with your why – so that you can hit the ground running as the new year begins.

To your success,

Susan

 

Filed Under: Blog

Five Steps to Help Rebuild After a Mudslide

December 19, 2014 By wdcteam Leave a Comment

This coming February, it will be 10 years since a mudslide swept through out home and changed our lives dramatically. Once again, mudslides fill the news in the wake of heavy storms after years of drought and fire damage. The plants that hold our soil to the surface of rocks have been destroyed and with their loss, people face serious challenges as well.

In a matter of moments, our lives as we have known them are swept away.   It is hard to believe as we survey so much loss and destruction around us that we are standing at the edge of a creative opportunity that will enable us to not only survive, but thrive.

It is a process that can take considerable time. Having lived through it, perhaps these suggestions will prove helpful now:

  1. Find help. Although you will have to do this on your own, you cannot do it alone. In the immediate aftermath, you will need to take care of your safety and shelter before everything else. Seek out those who can assist in your rescue and recovery. You want a support system to get you through the profound grief, fear and shock that immediately follow a disaster, as well as resources to rescue what you can.

Peter and I found our church to be our strength during this most difficult time. Members put us up, helped us find temporary homes for our animals, and helped us rescue our belongings and get them to a storage facility. They prayed with us, cried with us and gave us the emotional strength to carry on.

  1. As soon as possible, begin to focus on what you want The recovery process takes time. Knowing what you want provides a mental anchor to which you can return regularly as you work through each step.

Peter and I knew we wanted a home and space for our family of animals – horses, dogs, cat, bird and fish. We were able to focus first on everyone’s safety, then places to live in the immediate time period. During that time, friends from church permitted us to use rooms, pipe corrals and other storage places until we could get on our feet. It took about 6 weeks to find an independent rental home and another 1 ½ years before we found a new permanent home.

  1. Once you have your focus on your desired results, your goal, you can begin to examine where you want to go and identify the resources you have to move toward it. One of the big surprises for me was that this does not happen overnight. More is swept away in a mudslide than your physical possessions. Over an extended period of time, you will go through stages of looking at physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of your life that have been affected. I found that taking an inventory of these various aspects enabled me to examine what was and was not working in our lives up to that date and then recover, rebuild and recreate what we desired with our goal ever before us.
  1. In the immediate aftermath, your surrounding circumstances may not give you any reason to believe in a brighter future. However, you can create one. You can use your natural skills and abilities to yield even better results than you had before.

I found I could do this by learning more about the mind. Current scientific research finds that the default position of the brain is to fall into negative beliefs of loss, despair and hopelessness, and the litany of “it won’t work, it can’t be done.” We are all familiar with this voice in our head when we are feeling down and out.

So the best thing you can do for yourself is to cultivate the habit of positive possibility thinking using affirmations and Afformations. I used these along with neuro-emotional work with a chiropractor, myofascial therapy with an occupational therapist, hypnosis and guided imagery.   The most powerful work I did to maintain my mental and emotional health throughout this time period involved asking positive questions, journaling, meditation and centered prayer.

My book, Rainbows Over Ruins is a story of recovering, rebuilding and recreating after such a disaster. If you would like to read about someone who has been there and gotten through it, pick up a copy. It’s available on Amazon.

Wherever you find yourself today, know that if I can do it, you can too. You can get past these losses by keeping your goals in front of you as you work through the process step by step. If you have questions, reach out to me. I am open to helping you think through your steps to recovery. May you find as I did that deep within every crisis lie the seeds of infinite opportunity.

To Your Success,

Susan

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: afformations, find help, Focus, goals, inventory, mudslide, opportunity, power of the mind, questions, Rainbows Over Ruins, rebuild, recover, recovery process, recreate, survive, thrive

The Key to Developing Persistance

December 19, 2014 By wdcteam Leave a Comment

Tenacity. It is a quality that develops when you are fixed upon your purpose. It’s a necessary quality to have when you are trying something challenging or that will take considerable time to achieve. Tenacity implies that you will do whatever it takes to accomplish your vision and reach your goals.   It involves persistence, determination and perseverance, all strong words that support the theories of success.

Regular students of success philosophies are familiar with the writings and stories about persistence. Napoleon Hill gave us the often used quote: Anything the human mind can conceive and believe, when organized around a purpose and a plan, can be achieved. All too often, the organization phrase is left out in common usage, yet it is the key to achievement. Knowing your purpose and developing a plan that you can follow with persistence yields the prize.

Bob Proctor, the success coach commonly known from his appearance in the movie The Secret, began his successful pursuits when he studied the words of Napoleon Hill and owned them through his actions.   He went from $4,000 a year income as a fireman to over $100,000 within a year. He built multiple, highly successful janitorial services using the principles of success before moving into the personal development field. To this day, Proctor devotes one month a year re-reading one specific chapter every day. It is the chapter on persistence.

Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich is filled with stories of perseverance. An entire chapter is devoted to persistence. Greg Reid and Sharon Lechter picked up on one of those stories as they wrote Three Feet from Gold, the tale of a young man who gave up his pursuit of a vein of gold, only to have the new owner find it three feet from where he had stopped. Greg has gone on to write extensively on this quality of persistence – stickiness.

Hill is clear on one point. The ability to develop determination and the self-discipline to pursue our goals begins with purpose. A couple weeks ago, I suggested that you might find this a great time to plan for your New Year’s resolutions so that you could build them around your goals. Such planning constitutes a great strategy session that improves your chance of achieving goals because you attach them to your purpose and the big “Why” behind the actions you choose to take.

If you are going through this process, you may want to ask a few questions of yourself. What is it about your goal that resonates deep within you? Call it passion. Call it purpose. Why does it fill you with enthusiasm and drive? Why does it stick with you even when you experience obstacles? The answer is extremely important to your ability to maintain the pressure that moves you along the path to your greatest desires.

And if you are unclear about your purpose, one of your resolutions may be to identify your purpose this year. A good place to start might be to observe yourself. What are you drawn to? What do you study or watch? Who are your friends? Who are your heroes and heroines? Where do you like to go? What things do you want? If money is your big goal, ask yourself why? What does money mean to you? What feelings come up when you think about having money? How will you use it? If you had all the money you currently dream about having, what would your life look like? As you go through these questions, a pattern of feelings will emerge around the things you have in your current lifestyle and the ones you would like to have.   How will you feel when you have them?

Purpose brings a sense of direction. Purpose brings passion. Passion brings tenacity and the ability to stick to it. The emotions you feel when you sense movement toward that which you desire brings such joy and well-being. Take the time this season to align with how you envision your dreams and draw the road map that appears to take you to them. With this in hand, may you find all the tenacity you require to not only keep your New Year’s resolutions, but also move steadily toward your goals.

To Your Success,

Susan

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: achieve, actions, believe, Bob Proctor, conceive, determination, goals, Greg Reid, Napoleon Hill, organize, perseverance, persistance, plan, purpose, questions, resolutions, self-discipline, Sharon Lechter, strategy, tenacity, Think and Grow Rich, why

Going Viral with Appreciation

November 29, 2014 By ssherayko Leave a Comment

Did you feel it? My inbox and social media sites have been filled with expressions of gratitude as we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the States.

Since the publication of Rainbows Over Ruins, I often hear from people who have been inspired by my story. After all, if I can survive the after effects of a landslide, and go on to thrive, others can hold onto the possibility that they can too – in all areas of life. They can use the road map I have shared in order to come to understand the power of their minds and retrain their thinking. They can start to grasp the creative process.

Still, when you are in the midst of a crisis, where do you begin? I used to ask myself, how do people pull themselves up by the bootstraps when they have no boots? And the answer was to imagine the boots. It may be a little too simplistic, but imagination is one of the great powers of the mind. Over time, I’ve found that our imagination yields richer results when we open its treasures with an attitude of gratitude and appreciation.

So how do we start? How do we express a sense of appreciation when we are at a low ebb in our emotional life? Here it is. Take the time to appreciate one thing in your life that makes you feel better, brings joy or a hint of well-being every day.

There is an immediate shift in the energy you are putting out. The new energies are closer to what you want to be feeling. The magnetism of that improved frequency draws more of the same. The more you do it, the more you attract.

One of the cornerstones of my meditative work is to express gratitude. I have been following someone’s suggestion that I look for 10 things every day for which I am thankful. Sometimes I have to stretch to think of so many things, but I focus on this feeling as it opens me to new and wonderful ideas during the rest of the day. It does not matter what it may be – a moment of rest and relaxation, sunshine, rain, food, shelter, loved ones, being greeted by a happy pet, solitude, friendship, a new inspired thought, a surprise gift, the opportunity to give to others, goals achieved, the ability to work toward my goals, the connection to consciousness and on and on. The key is to express your appreciation every day.

So what are you happy for today? What are you grateful for? What do you appreciate? If you are looking for an action step to improve your life, grab a pen, pencil or crayon and memorialize it in your journal or drawing pad – even on the back of a napkin. And keep doing it. If you’d like to spread the sense of appreciation to others, send me a comment, make a You-tube video, let the people who serve you know that they are appreciated. Let’s keep the feeling of Thanksgiving going. Let’s go viral with the feeling of appreciation.

May you share your love in the form of appreciation to all around you today.

To Your Success,

Susan

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Action, appreciation, creative process, crisis, feelings, Focus, goals, gratitude, imagination, landslide, one thing, power of the mind, Rainbows Over Ruins, success, Thanksgiving, thrive

5 STEPS TO PLAN YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS NOW

November 22, 2014 By ssherayko Leave a Comment

No doubt about it, the holidays are in full swing in my life. Home and Family has just taped the Holiday Special which will air on Hallmark Channel Monday evening, November 24th at 8:00pm E/7p Central. We had over 40 guests on the show ranging from our daily hosts and family members to stars from Hallmark movies and American Idol, Acro Army and Aria. We cook and DIY, sing and break bread with one another in a wonderful celebration. Tune in if you can. We had a great deal of fun pulling this together for you.

On a more personal note, the holidays remind me to take a fresh look at my personal goals for the coming season and my New Year’s resolutions. It’s been a fabulous year and I am extremely grateful for the sense of joy and accomplishment I feel. If I were to create a blessings tree, I’d weave in thoughts of my book Rainbows Over Ruins, the foreword so generously written by Noah St. John, Noah’s live conferences, our appearance on the show to discuss the power of afformations, Home and Family’s second Daytime Emmy nomination, a most wonderful birthday celebration with good friends, family visits, hiring assistants, my virtual blog tour and being asked to be a guest blogger on CoffeyTalk.com.

Ironically, in the midst of all this, I felt a sense of completion. The activities that filled my spring and summer continue, however, the milestone map I had originally created to guide me along the path to publish had done its job. The next steps on the map were too vague and all encompassing. The result was that I felt a lack of forward momentum. I was confused about the specific actions that needed to be taken.

When this happens after an intense flurry of activity, we need to do some strategic planning on inner levels and work from the inside out. What’s that entail?

  1. Sit down and think about your vision of your dream project. Appreciate anything in your daily life that supports your vision. Challenge yourself to find 10 examples each day.
  2. Holding your vision, allow a movie to play across your mind. Ask yourself questions. If you achieve your dreams, what will it look and feel like? Why is it important to you? What are some potential strategies you might pursue? What could the next steps and levels be?
  3. Choosing from a variety of techniques, allow yourself to be guided to deeper subconscious levels. These techniques can range from contemplation, meditation, sitting for ideas, centered prayer, hypnosis, guided imagery, to quantum jumps. The technique is less important than the result – achieving a deeper state where your conscious mind is more still.
  4. Once you return to normal consciousness, be sure to write down any ideas you received. They may be clues to your options, specific ways to find resources and research, as well as descriptions of how to “chunk down” or “step out” a specific milestone you are seeking to achieve. Start to take these actions as soon as you can.
  5. As you go back to regular activity, be mindful about what is showing up around you. Next steps tend to emerge out of your daily activities or, as Thomas Troward suggested, they proceed in an orderly fashion from that which has gone before.

Things do show up around you, often from unexpected places. For instance, the other day I had a conversation with a friend who has been working with me on the show since it began. He revealed that it was not easy to grasp my grand dream, because he could not see how to receive any potential return on investment. I would have to be able to communicate that before he would consider taking action.

Wow! What a wakeup call! My ability to communicate my vision held a key to my success. My idea could be inspiring, however, it would be important to demonstrate to others how they get their money back (i.e., return on investment) or see a different return that helps them achieve their personal goals (such as seeing potential improvement in their own lives or the lives of others). This perspective shared by a friend raised my awareness that whether we are marketing to a client, pitching to a buyer or a financier, we need to know enough to tailor our presentation to their Why before they can see its value to them and take the action we are requesting.

This insight from a random conversation contributes to my strategic planning as I pursue my next steps to create presentations and content. I firmly believe that no matter the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we can use the power of our minds to improve them. My task is to get the message out. This year’s New Year’s resolutions will reflect these next steps that support my goals.

If you can make the time to do some inner strategic planning around your goals, by the time New Year’s rolls around, you may have created resolutions that support them as well. They are the kind of resolutions we are all more likely to pursue until they are achieved, no matter what.

I hope you will take some time to define your strategic New Year’s resolutions. If so, we’re going to have another fabulous year, all together.

To Your Success,

Susan

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: afformations, goals, Hallmark Channel, Home and Family, inside out, milestone map, New Year's Resolutions, Noah St. John, Rainbows Over Ruins, return on investment, strategic planning, subconscious mind, value, why

Coffeytalk is about Gratitude this month

November 11, 2014 By ssherayko Leave a Comment

If you can find a few minutes to relax this month, drop by for some Coffeytalk.  Quite naturally, our theme for November  is gratitude.  I’m sharing my thoughts on how you can spike the holidays with an attitude of gratitude.

Here’s where to find it: http://www.coffeytalk.com/Susan-Sherayko/

Filed Under: Blog

Sprinkling a Bit of Holiday Spirit

November 9, 2014 By ssherayko Leave a Comment

In the mood for a family friendly, feel good holiday movie? May I suggest Hallmark Channel’s NorthPole premiering at 8/7C on Saturday night, November 15th.. I attended the screening for Hallmark Channel’s latest holiday original and had a grand time.

Bailee Madison and Max Charles star. They set out to save the town of NorthPole when a lack of holiday spirit threatens. The film is a feel good example of how a few people working together can make a big difference in the world.

I’m not sure if you are in the throes of preparing for the holidays, but we’re smack dab in the middle of it at Home and Family. All the scary decorations in Dave Lowe’s Halloween masterpiece are down and we are preparing for our big primetime Holiday Special, scheduled for the evening of November 24th.

Before then and throughout December, cast and crew are lining up the music, movement, crafts, food and stories that will bring the magic of the holidays to life. Dave has drawn another beautiful sketch of how the house will look when all the lights are up and other holiday elements come together. What I enjoy the most is the creative thought process involved in pulling this all together. It draws upon the ideas and feelings of so many people as they remember their own holiday experiences.

I’m still thinking about what I want to do at home to evoke memories of the holidays in my hometown: football and fall colors for Thanksgiving, the annual Christmas parade, complete with Santa and Mrs. Claus, and holiday concerts galore. The season culminated as we went to Christmas services, hung stockings by the fireplace, decorated the tree and set out a plate of cookies and milk for Santa, wishing we could stay up to see his arrival. Of course, we never did. Instead, at first light of day, I would creep into my parents’ room to ask them to get up. One of them would go first and then let us know when it was okay to go time to go downstairs as well. I always remember how beautiful the tree was with the colored lights lit. There was something so magical about it all.

Even when I was a mother myself, my father led the annual discussion about Santa Claus. He never allowed me to stop believing — for Dad felt the very spirit of Christmas was embodied in the love and open generosity Santa brought to each family year in and year out.

It did not matter how much was spent. We could make them ourselves or save our pennies for an ideal gift. Even if we were short on funds, we could offer a handwritten note with a promise to make breakfast or provide a service. The important thing was that we thought to give a gift to someone else.

Just as the March girls of Little Women would bring baskets of food to neighbors, we would participate in making up the annual Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for those less fortunate. Love radiated throughout the community as random acts of kindness were given to others. And Joy! As we sang together, worked together for a common goal, and appreciated our blessings. I feel better just thinking about the ways we can show our mutual appreciation for our loved ones, friends, colleagues and communities. That’s the message of Northpole and one I hope we can embrace this season and sprinkle a bit of the holiday spirit to all.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: creativity, gratitude, Hallmark Channel, holiday spirit, Home and Family, Northpole, Santa Claus

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Testimonials

Testimonials

  • “Calm, Serenity, Wisdom, Patience, Empathy. These are the characteristics that I think of, when I think of you. Throughout our relationship, you have always “shared only and freely” with me. You have never been judgmental (of anyone really) or unkind with words. Your ability to take in all the information surrounding a situation, process it in a kind, loving and logical way and then interpret the information back in such a way that I feel that I too can learn and grow from the experience, whether it was mine or not. Susan, I believe that you are a conduit, maybe not the right word…a channel…o.k. I laymen’s terms, you are the glue that holds us all together. If I were ever in a crisis…I’d want you to be with me more than anyone I know.”

    Toni Casala
    Owner, Children in Film
  • “A modern-day Siddhartha. Rainbows Over Ruins walks you through a spiritual journey that is not focused on the ‘out there’ but more on the ‘in here.’ How do we transition from one phase of our lives while allowing ourselves to grow from what we have learned from the past? Susan helps you help yourself.”

    Wileen Charles
    Founder, Starseed Foundation
  • “Susan uses her whole brain when crafting solutions. She knows how to visualize the result she wants and then build the structure to support the dream. She constantly prods people who are stuck in one way of seeing something into realizing new paths to take up the mountains of success. Now she is willing to share her unique approach to creating success systems with people who are ready to go the next level in their business and personal lives. I would sign up for her seminars and coaching program quickly because once the word gets out the waiting list is going to be long. I can’t think of anyone else I would trust more with creating the logistics for launching a new endeavor. Susan knows how to create successful enterprises and she is willing to coach you to your next success.”

    Kate Maxwell
    Hypnotist, Spiritual Life Coach
  • “I love working with Susan because she has an amazing ability to help me gain clarity and focus about the possibilities that surround me. Susan is so skilled and supportive that her faith in my abilities has transformed my thinking and now I know the action steps I want to take with certainty and enthusiasm.”

    Susan Prime
    Prime Coaching, U.K.

TransformativeU

TransformativeU

TransformativeU offers online courses created for students and seekers on the path to self-realization and transformation. Our international roster of instructors are all experts in their fields.

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