Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated. Lou Holtz

One gorgeous weekday afternoon an older man jogged on a track around a football field at a local high school. As he jogged in circles, he noticed that the football team had begun running wind sprints up and down the field. The man decided that he’d continue running as long as the kids doing their sprints, so he ran, and the players ran. And then he ran some more, and they ran some more. Despite his significant exhaustion, he decided he’d push himself one more lap after which he stopped and leaned over in exhaustion, attempting to catch his breath from the hardest, longest workout he’d had in years. As he walked around the field to cool down and the players stumbled off the field from their grueling workout, one teen approached him and said, “Hey mister, I’m sure glad you stopped. The coach told us we had to run wind sprints as long you ran laps. We are all beat!”

Be careful what you set your criteria by. Don’t get caught up in an association with that which is not relevant to you. It’s easy making comparisons to all sorts of activities going on in the world that aren’t pertinent to you. Just because something’s caught your attention doesn’t mean it’s significant to what you are doing. It’s fun to find inspiring motivation; just be careful it doesn’t take you where you don’t want to go.

Spiritual Contemplation: Have you ever set your standards to something that was not applicable to your situation but somehow you made yourself feel it was? Where did it get you and what did you learn from that experience? Does the comparison serve you?

Affirmation: My inner guidance leads me!

Every head has its own headache.  Arab Proverb

Searching for the perfect flight on an online discount travel portal can be an unparalleled convenience or a mind-boggling frustration. It’s beautiful when it all comes together—and a complete aggravation when you’re left choosing between red-eyes or crack of dawn flights with multiple stops including one in the opposite direction of where you are headed. In addition, your travel time has been extended to a ridiculous number of hours at an exorbitant price for your non-convenience. You can rant, rave, and complain, to non-empathic agents at the airline counter, or whine to your friends. You might consider taking a car, boat, a private jet, or maybe even a camel, but at some point, you need to decide if it’s a go or no go. Your options may not be optimal, but it’s what’s being offered at that time and a choice must be made.

If instead you choose to perceive the Divine in this situation, you’ll find a miracle unfolding before you. The airline may not open a new route at the time you desire, but you might develop an appreciative attitude for not having to walk or take a horse if you attain a Spiritual realization around your airline experience. This awareness doesn’t have to be sought; it merely has to be recognized where you are. Its Omni-calming Presence is ever available and includes online or at the counter service.

Spiritual Contemplation: Listen for Spirit in the most challenging spots in your Life.

Affirmation: Wherever I am, Spirit is present!

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.  Rainer Maria Rilke

I love sitting on my porch where I look into the tops of the trees and down into a creek. I feel like I’m sitting out in the woods, when in fact I am living in a pretty populated, urban-like area. Lingering over morning coffee I can hear the traffic in the background, even an occasional private jet from the local airport. But what I notice is that because I am so open to the stillness of the trees and the peace of the creek, none of these things disturb me.

Letting in the parts of life that we love helps move us beyond resisting the things we don’t like. Resistance, unfortunately, only causes more of the same thing we are resisting. Resistance is like glue. It makes us more aware of it and actually puts us in a dynamic relationship with the very thing we’d like not to have or experience. So stop paying attention to the traffic, and start paying attention to the trees. It doesn’t mean the traffic will disappear—it means you’ll stop being in caught in tension with it. Miraculously it will fade from your awareness.

Spiritual Contemplation: What things in my life am I resisting, thereby holding in my awareness. What could I pay attention to instead?

Affirmation: I let go of all resistance to this particular thing. I turn and let the beauty, joy, and abundance of life in. I am at peace.

I believe that a life of integrity is the most fundamental source of personal worth.  Stephan Covey

Have you ever said yes to someone because you were afraid to say no, and then had to clean up a bigger mess later on? Maybe you allowed an inappropriate behavior of your child slip by while he was young, only to have it magnify and be extremely inappropriate as he got older. Ever take on a project that was way over your head and expertise only to have it blow up somewhere down the line and create a lot more damage than had you said no to it in the first place?

Everything that comes your way doesn’t have to be yours. If selling is not your thing, it’s a lot easier to say no to your friend’s multilevel marketing business than to have all sorts of hard feelings later on. If you know a relationship isn’t for you, whether business or pleasure, rather than dragging it on until an explosive ending gives you an out, say no now. Saying no allows you to say yes to other opportunities in your life. Saying no severs the energetic link to that which, for whatever reason, isn’t right. The Spiritual consciousness with its Infinite potential is obscured when you hold on to your head tripping instead of speaking your truth. Your time is valuable and sometimes to honor yourself and your projects, you need to say no to some of the requests of the world.

Spiritual Contemplation: Is there something in your life you need to say no to but you haven’t? It’s time to speak your truth. It’s best and honoring for all concerned.

Affirmation: I speak the truth from my heart!

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.  Constantin Stanislavski

A visit to the theater is a magical trip as you suspend your responsibilities of daily reality and enter a different paradigm for a journey through someone else’s creativity and lens of perception. For a few hours another person’s reality becomes your story and you are transported to a different dimension for a while. It’s as if a space vehicle has lifted the whole audience. The actors and musicians are the crew; the captain is the director, and you all are following by a map drawn by the playwright who’s put his story into three-dimensional storytelling.

Out of respect for life, what are you putting on in preparation for a greater reality? What thoughts are you willing to suspend for your emerging story to take you on a new kind of toe- tapping, heart-pounding journey into unknown realms? Are you able to trust Life as the director or do you feel you need to be in charge of your whole production? Are you up for an adventure to mysterious parts of your unexplored psyche? What hidden aspects of your personality would you like to delve into? Is it time for a new character to surface in your script? Begin today with a creative new perspective on your life.

Spiritual Contemplation: Take a trip to the theater and notice the stirring of feelings within: From choosing what to wear, to the anticipation of the drive to the show, what is coming up for you? What are you thinking as you are finding your seat, waiting for the exciting moment the curtain goes up, watching how it ends and sharing the high points during the conversation home?

Affirmation: I embrace my roles in life!

Silence is Spirit’s first language; everything else is a poor translation.  Father Thomas Keating

If you’ve ever felt the presence of Spirit, you no longer feel alone in the world. Having had that experience, you know you are not alone in facing the challenges in your life. This is a sense of freedom you could never know otherwise, because in this knowing, you are not dependent on human intervention to assist you through. The Divine hand may look like it’s working through someone or some agency, but that is just one of the Infinite channels through which Spirit is showing up in a relevant way in your life. The Presence goes before you to make the crooked ways straight. It also walks beside you, has your back covered, and paves the way for your experience. This is why a conscious realization of living, moving, and having your being in Spirit blesses you before you even know you have need of it.

So starting off your day in conscious connection with your Source not only can’t hurt, it makes the most sense as to how to greet every day of your life going forward. This is the sole purpose of meditation. Once the Divine experience is realized, you’ll be on the right track for the rest of your day. Your conscious intention establishes what you will manifest. You’ll come to know the joyous abundance that appropriately expresses as your life and you’ll more easily recognize the activity of the Divine having fun as you.

Spiritual Contemplation: Take time each morning of this week to consciously connect with Spirit before you get rolling with the day. After reading the daily inspiration, sit with it in the silence for ten minutes connecting you with something greater than the words. Viola – you are meditating

Affirmation: My morning time with Spirit is a priority in my day!

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.  Helen Keller

Have you ever watched a dog chase a cat alongside an invisible electric fence? He runs only so far, then stops rather than crossing that invisible line that would shock him. After having been repeatedly shocked for crossing it, he’s learned not to overstep the boundary in order to avoid any further pain. The conditioning element is so strong that even when the electric field has been turned off, the dog won’t step over it, no matter how much the cat teases and tantalizes him.

What invisible parameters have you been conditioned to accept? Where do you stop because of painful memories? What if the shocking current has been turned off and it’s only hurtful remembrances that are keeping you confined? Let go of being afraid of going too far. Crossing that line becomes imperative if you don’t want to live in your preconceived pen. Outside the familiar, you may slip and experience moments of pain after being fenced in for so long because you didn’t honor your explorative self. But your natural intuitive self will come alive again with its guidance once you return to listening to it instead of the controlling beliefs that held you back for so long.

Spiritual Contemplation: What beliefs of containment are keeping you from exploring new possibilities? Your visions of possibility are big because you are big. So step outside of what’s got you penned in because the world is waiting for your gifts to be discovered.

Affirmation: My vision is a portal to the other side of the fence!

Hope is a subtle illusion. Hope is good; it is better than despair, but it is a subtle illusion and is an unconscious compromise and has no part in an effective mental treatment.  Ernest Holmes

There is no place for hope in prayer; when it comes to prayer you must come from knowingness and certainty. You must trust, declare, proclaim, and affirm. Hope just doesn’t have the same kind of oomph or power. In the beginning, it wasn’t called the hope of Spirit—it was the word of SPirit? Hope doesn’t sound Omnipotent. Heck, it sounds wimpy. Spirit is definite and so your prayerful statements must be as well. Wondering and hoping if good may come of your sweet thoughts have no place in powerful declarations of spiritual truth.

In metaphysics there seem to be two very distinct branches of philosophy. One is the mental approach—the other is spiritual. In the mental realm, hope reflects the power of one’s mind over conditions. Alternatively, the spiritual approach is a spiritual realization that there is no power over anything because there is no otherness, and therefore hope is a totally irrelevant piece of the non-equation The Divine Presence opens your consciousness to the flow of abundant good when you open your awareness to Spirit and let It become manifest as you in both word and form.

Spiritual Contemplation: Where in your life do you need to trade in your hope for a knowing of the spiritual truth of the situation at hand?

Affirmation: I trade in my hope for a Divine Knowing!

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.   Albert Einstein

Remember the game where all the children skip around in a circle singing “Hi-Ho the Derry-O”? In the center is the kid called the “farmer,” who then picks his mate, who picks a child, who picks a dog, who picks a cat, and so on. The group in the center grows until only one kid remains on the outside—and “the cheese stands alone.” I couldn’t wait to outgrow that demoralizing game and the “pick me” mentality. But then came picking teams in gym class, and even more intense, then came dating, which put it on a whole new level of “pick me, pick me.”

It can take years before you realize that you don’t have to wait to be picked—that you are actually already “it,” and you get to do the choosing. You can now move beyond wanting to be acceptable to knowing you are acceptable now just as you are. You aren’t the cheese standing alone, and you no longer need to grumble about the other kids who are always “it” and get to select the best—because your abundant Good is always available to you too. Do you get it? All you need do is decide to tap into what’s in your heart, and it will enter your world. Stop waiting to be chosen and know you’ve already been chosen. The next move is yours. Hi-Ho the Derry-O . . . you’ll never stand alone.

Spiritual contemplation: Where in your life are you waiting for someone to choose you, or some situation to grace you with its benevolence rather than being the creator of your reality?

Affirmation: My life responds to my choices!