Author: admin

Don’t ask me no more questions! Don’t give me no more assignments! Don’t even look my way!  This is how I have been feeling lately.  It’s like I woke up one day and realized that I’m so tired of putting my life on hold, because of what I feel or think someone else may feel or think about me. When God saved me from breast cancer thirty-four years ago, He did not do that so that I would operate from a place of fear. Every day that He wakes me up is another opportunity to get it right and be a blessing to people who cross my pathway.  When I operate in fear the world does not get my best gift.  If I allow what others feel or think to dictate my moves, then I have given them control of my destiny.  The same thing is true for you and your dreams.

There are people waiting for you to show up and bring what God has placed inside you to help them reach their fullest potential in life.  But you can’t do that if your device (mind, body, spirit) is cluttered with unnecessary documents (other people’s problems, pain, dysfunctions).  Don’t allow anyone to stifle your flame or water down the little spark that continues to pop up.  You know the moment that you start to slack off.  There is something deep down in your spirit that doesn’t feel right. That’s your internal warning signal!  Suddenly you catch yourself and get back in gear just as the adrenaline takes over and you feel your momentum kick in.  It feels good now that unnecessary stuff has been removed from your device.  You have found your safe place and is now flowing in God’s goodness as though you are watching your life on a movie screen. Slowly you feel the Lord’s breath take over and His guidance becomes ever so clear as you surrender to His voice.  This familiar space feels good and life is back to some form of normalcy.  Your storage device has been cleared!  Go be great and create the life that God has ordained for you!

I don’t know if it’s age or attitude, but I have noticed that I no longer rush to get anywhere these days.  Most of the time when I am driving I know that the people behind me wonder if I am taking a Sunday stroll on a Monday.  Thank God that I am fortunate enough to work part-time and really don’t have to be there early.  When I do have to go places early in the morning, I find myself in a world that is very unfamiliar to me.  People try to run me over even in the right lane, when they can very well go around me.  It makes me wonder if everybody left home late for their appointments.  I always allow extra time for wherever I’m scheduled to be; at least 15 minutes.  I think it’s unfair to get on the highway at the last minute and jeopardize everyone else’s life for your failure to leave home on time.  Maybe it’s just me or maybe it’s old age.  I used to be in a hurry, but even then I still gave myself extra time in case of emergency.  Most times I’d end up arriving early instead.  We spend so much time trying to find the easy way out and the quickest route.  Have you ever intentionally taken the long way home just because the view was better or different?  Why not visit the shopping center on the other side of town rather than the one three blocks away?  You may be surprised at the different items at the same price.  Not to mention Dollar Tree; that’s my favorite store.  No matter what city I find myself I always find a Dollar Tree.  There are so many items that are unique to each state.

Do you have your future all mapped out as well?  Did you allow any room for sightseeing?  Are you willing to take the road less traveled and see where it takes you?  They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  Somebody needs to tell my GPS system that.  I looked up an address yesterday on Google, Waze, and Mapquest and got three different routes.  I will end up using Mapquest because it was the most familiar with the least stops along the way.  So go ahead and take the long way home today.  Stay in the right lane and let the fast drivers go by while you enjoy the beauty of God’s creation.  I know I will, because there are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Make Your Day User-Friendly!  There may be times when you go to a website or you use a certain type of computer software, and you find it very hard to navigate in order to get to where you want to go.  After a few clicks with no real accomplishment you end up leaving the site and searching somewhere else.  Don’t be like that website!  Let’s not make it hard for people by being unapproachable and difficult to get along with.  Stop asking folks to jump through hoops just to show up in your world.  Why not be the place where everyone feels comfortable coming to you because they know they will leave your presence with a smile and a extra pep in their step.  It doesn’t take a lot to genuinely care about another.  We need to learn how to accept each other’s differences rather than judge and compare.  Everyone is a combination of where they came from, what they were taught, and most of all what they ultimately believe to be true for themselves.  Even with all that said, at any moment either one of us could wind up on “skid row.”  There but for the grace of God go I!  We tend to think that people with more money have less problems, but not so much.  How many times have you heard about someone who had money but was so depressed that they took their own lives?  No one fully understands how the brain works and what could cause such a drastic change in perspective.

I am the type of person who truly lives beneath my means.  I find joy in the simplest things and it doesn’t take much to make me happy.  Whether I have a dime or a dollar I am the same person.  I try to make other people’s day better even if I’m not having a good day.  In doing that, the universe returns my smile and I continue to give it away again.  Life is full of so many great moments to love and laugh.  So go ahead and make your day user-friendly!

Hopes, not hurts should shape your future.  We all can find some area in our lives where we wish we had done things differently.  What if?  What if I had stayed in that relationship”  What if I had taken my usual route to work rather than go the scenic route?  Maybe I would have avoided the accident.  What if I had finished college rather than getting married?  WHAT IF?  Let’s not play this game of what if!  Every choice you made, every person that you met, and every challenge that you lived through has made you the person that you are today.  I like who I am!  I love my beautiful daughters; one conceived at age seventeen and another at age thirty-two.  Do I wish I was still married to the husband I had at age seventeen?  No I do not, but she would not be here if I had not met and married her father.

Some of us spend so much time looking back we cannot get a glimpse of our future.  It’s okay to hope for something better in life, but do we have to hold onto our hurt in order to have hope?  The future is full of whatever we choose to bring into our lives.  What you focus on tends to appear in your life.  We see what we seek.  A lot of times our indecisiveness creates the very situation that we are trying to avoid.  To make no decision is a decision in and of itself.  We think just because we ignore something it will go away.  No matter how much you hate the fact that you cannot make ends meet, hating it will not change it.  Your energy should be focused on what you can realistically do at this moment to decrease the negative impact that your lack of income will have on your life.  Even though life throws you a foul ball, that does not give you the right to step out of the game, especially if others are depending on you.  We all would like to have a “Bail Out.”  You need to be your own “Bail Out!”

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985, I promised God that I would share my story for as long as He allowed me to live.  I saw myself living pass the five year mark that the doctors said would remove my concerns about dying.  Now I truly wake up every day doing what I love, writing, traveling, and speaking in a way that encourages others to live beyond their wildest expectations. You will have it when you see yourself with it!

Your life should be a series of pivotal moments that remind you of your strength and endurance. In times of quiet and reflection  little things will pop up and put a smile on your face.  It can happen when you least expect it but also when you need it the most.  I left my comfortable life style in Richmond, Virginia and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2009 with a brand new car that I had not made the first payment on, and a job offer, which ended two weeks later when I got sick. In spite of that, and becoming homeless two months afterwards, I still saw myself with a brighter future.  Although I didn’t have all the details I knew it was time to change my mind set in order to change my circumstances.   Fast forward to ten years later where I am currently living in Charleston, SC, retired, debt-free, working part-time at Chic-Fil-A as a hostess, along with my continued passion of writing, traveling and speaking.  As a hostess at Chic-Fil-A, I am given the wonderful opportunity to share my beautiful smile and my joy for serving others.  As an author and motivational speaker I am constantly writing, speaking, networking, blogging, creating content for my on-line business and organizing events and opportunities for others to share their passion.  You will have it when you see yourself with it!

He who hesitates is probably right!  We have so many thoughts during the day and most of them are fleeting.  Have you ever had the same thought over and over again but for some reason you couldn’t seem to act on it no matter how many times it showed up in your mind?  What is it that makes us hesitate?  Is it intuition or the spirit?  Do we somehow feel that a thought is not worthwhile unless it continues to circle around our brain?  Hesitation can be good at times, however some things require that right now moment.  For me I’m more comfortable acting on my thoughts when they simply won’t leave me alone.  It’s usually when I can’t get something out of my head that I tend to act.  However, there are some thoughts that I write down the minute I think them just in case I need to go back at a later date when I’m better prepared to tackle it.  And of course, some thoughts get thrown out completely even if they’re wrtten down.   I think writers always have pen and paper handy because they never know when the greatest thought may materialize that will make a miraculous difference in their world or someone else’s.

Every journey starts with the first step. No matter how much we try there is no way to get to the top without taking the first step and doing the necessary work required to take the second and third step.  How many times have you seen a friend or foe succeed in an area where you feel you are qualified, and you wonder how they got there so fast?  You start questioning your methods and motives.  You ask yourself what can I do differently to speed up the process.  Well, to be honest, there is nothing that you can do differently because the teacher will not show up until the student is ready.

If you have a Facebook account then you probably noticed over the years and heard people talking about how they keep changing their algorithms. Basically what they are referring to is a set of calculations Facebook uses to decide what content you see.  It all boils down to showing you posts that they think you will interact with through likes, comments, and shares, based on your previous actions on similar posts.  This was also done to cut down on posts that were negative or geared to a particular set of beliefs, which inflamed people’s sensibilities.  Unfortunately, life has no algorithms. What you see every day is going to hit your feed in the order that it happens.  There are no shortcuts or ways to adjust life to have what you want show up.  It would be nice if we could change the feed based on likes, comments, or shared experiences.  With an ever changing world it’s impossible to count on similar circumstances turning out the same as last time.  Even those people who share similar challenges with you don’t always act in the manner that you anticipate.  We are all fighting our individual battles although it’s hidden most of the time.  You get to choose what you post on Facebook, but not what shows up in real life.  Real life happens whether someone is scrolling or not, because life has no algorithms!