Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, 'Press on,' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
--Calvin Coolidge
Monday, March 15, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Quotes That Resonate
Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them - Anonymous
Nuff said.
Nuff said.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Little Things!
"It's Friday! It's Friday! It's the end of the week!" This is a little ditty I sing to Mason when I wake him up on Friday mornings. It's become somewhat of a ritual and I hope something he looks forward to. Do you have little things like this in your family? Tell me!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Anticipation!
I won Bon Jovi tickets last week...actually, I won three pair of Bon Jovi tickets last week, three tries, three wins! That is Intentional Winning but better than winning the tickets was anticipating the show. I was so excited, I could think of little else. The reality is, I love this band and Dave and I don't get out as much as we'd like to. Winning tickets was the perfect excuse to plan a night out.I believe that anticipating something is more than half the fun of actually doing it. I looked up the set list on the bands web site, I shared with my family and friends that I was going to the concert, I bought new makeup, and planned what I would wear. Dave made dinner plans for us and arranged for a sitter for Mason. We talked excitedly about what time we would leave and who would be opening the show. All the while I facebooked and tweeted the count down to Bon Jovi.
The night arrived and dinner was wonderful, our energy was high and finally we were at the arena. So did all this anticipation exceed the fun of the event itself? No way! I danced, cheered, and sang every single song. It could happen that the anticipation overrides the fun of the actual event, but you get to choose if that happens. I had as much fun as I expected to have and maybe a little more! Anyone who was at that show who didn't have a good time, made that choice!
Jon Bon Jovi and the band still deliver. They played for nearly two hours, mixed up the old with the new and tossed in some of the lesser known songs (to the general public, fans like me know ALL the songs!), and even did different arrangements of some of their hits. After more than 25 years, these guys still love what they do, do it well, and are the epitome of Rock Stars! If you have an opportunity to see Bon Jovi on tour, go! Win your tickets if you want or buy them, you won't be sorry, the show is worth every penny!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Quote's That Resonate
Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't.
- A student in Warren G. Tracy's class, entrepreneur
Wow! No kidding. Define, "few." Laughing! What do you think? What are you doing today to live the rest of you life the way you dream about?
- A student in Warren G. Tracy's class, entrepreneur
Wow! No kidding. Define, "few." Laughing! What do you think? What are you doing today to live the rest of you life the way you dream about?
Friday, February 26, 2010
The Heart Of Intentional Winning In Life
There isn't much that reminds you what's important than a 6 year old playing in the rain.
Do you remember playing in the rain as a child? I do! It didn't matter that it was cold, or that the water in the gutters was dirty, there was just something magical about playing in the rain. Add to the joy a rainbow and you've got an experience you're not soon to forget! Heck, it's been 37 years since I was a 6 year old girl playing in the rain and seeing Mason today, well, it makes me feel like I am that same 6 year old girl all over again!
The heart of Intentional Winning in Life is being happy, truly happy from the bottom of your heart. When you feel joy, you emit a vibration that brings joy from everything you do. Seeing happiness in something as simple as playing in the rain is just one little piece of the big picture that makes up your happy life!
Do you remember playing in the rain as a child? I do! It didn't matter that it was cold, or that the water in the gutters was dirty, there was just something magical about playing in the rain. Add to the joy a rainbow and you've got an experience you're not soon to forget! Heck, it's been 37 years since I was a 6 year old girl playing in the rain and seeing Mason today, well, it makes me feel like I am that same 6 year old girl all over again!
The heart of Intentional Winning in Life is being happy, truly happy from the bottom of your heart. When you feel joy, you emit a vibration that brings joy from everything you do. Seeing happiness in something as simple as playing in the rain is just one little piece of the big picture that makes up your happy life!
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Viktor Frankl Told Me To, "Drop It."
From guest Amie Chilson:
This morning I sat on the Ventura boardwalk curb with my feet in the sand, journal on my lap, and watched surfers glide on baby waves in the beautiful Pacific Ocean. I needed to write, needed to cry, and desperately needed to release my pent-up anger and frustration that I’d been carrying for the last two weeks.
Fresh were the wounds of my recent move, where my professional moving company took negligent and scandalous care of our belongings by overcharging, classic bait n switch, “losing” irreplaceable memorabilia, damaging and destroying 75% of our possessions, and downright stealing certain things, one of which was our $450 Stainless Steel Sonoma BBQ Grill. The fight I would have to take to them for vindication required exhausting time and money; neither of which I had extra to donate at the moment as I got back on my feet in a new city.
I’d been robbed six times in the past at varying degrees, and every time that gut-wrenching feeling of violation is like taking a punch to the stomach. It hurts a lot and will knock the wind out of ya. As I pondered the meaning of abundance and being able to replace many of the belongings someday, the hate welled up and toppled over my eyelids in the form of tears at the feeling of helplessness. Bad people had planned to take advantage of me, and they continue doing so to others. I wanted to punish them.
At my side was a book I’d grabbed to bring with me to the beach for post-run meditation. When I had thrown it in the car with my running gear and journal, it hadn’t crossed my mind why that exact book ended up with me at the beach; it had not been a conscious decision. Now I wiped the tears from my eyes, focused on it and gasped. Sitting next to me was Viktor Frankl’s, “Man’s Search For Meaning”, a tattered and yellowing paperback copy that had altered the way I viewed life, purpose and suffering.
Frankl was a Jewish Author-Psychiatrist who endured the Nazi death camps during World War II. He watched all his possessions, including life’s work manuscript, stripped from him, and his entire family and wife, excepting his sister, perish in the camps and sent to the gas ovens. Through this life-changing account of absolute injustice, hunger and cruelty, he volunteers himself as his own experiment to examine suffering and the true meaning of existence. He boils life down to the very essence, and while not even having control of his own naked and starving body, he still is responsible for the thoughts he thinks and how he chooses to perceive life; Exist with hate, apathy and anger for the horrific misery he and his family/friends and Jewish people undergo, or find meaning in what most perceived as senseless suffering.
At that moment I started laughing on the beach, which caused nearby dosing homeless guys to pick up their heads and give me a half glance. I couldn’t have scripted better irony than this! Here I was, a blessed woman in my prime, my brand new house minutes from beautiful beaches and living a charmed life; I was crying over my lost barbeque when courageous people like Viktor Frankl had endured such suffering! As I gazed at his face on the book I could hear his words to me, “Let it go, Amie,” and I agreed with him.
One of my favorite spiritual leaders is Lester Levenson, and he said, “Peace is non resistance, complete acceptance, identification with the all, with everyone, everything.” I had been resisting like a crazy woman and hurting myself in the meanwhile, and what came with it was more negativity, tension and bad news. We all know what you resist persists…and I was so ready to live in peace.
Was it possible I set up this lesson for myself so I could learn to let go, release, and not be attached to anything? My beliefs take me down the road of reincarnation and pre-ordaining (not pre-destination, as free will is sacred) opportunities and signs along the way in life to evolve as a human being through the contrast of good and bad experiences. If so, ouch! My soul must be a little dense learning and re-learning through remedial courses this time around…
Buddha says, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” My un-checked emotions had taken me over and I lost awareness of how it affected everything I was doing and being.
It caused me to contemplate the last 24 months of my whirlwind life, and as I did so I realized I had already let go of so many things: unhealthy friendships, poor business relationships, two companies of which I poured my lifeblood into, a network that took me 10 years to build, credit/cash, and family members who passed away. Letting go = freedom. Attachments and aversions = pain. What do I want to feel? Like Frankl learned in the Nazi concentration camps… your mind is the only place you can find freedom, it is not in our external situations.
“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” -- Viktor Frankl
With the sun on my face and healing seabreeze in the air, every wave the surfers caught and rode, a little more of my anger was released with each and went out with the tide. I choose to be free.
Much Gratitude,
Amie Chilson
Visionary. Teacher. Fearless Leader.
NuSkin Enterprises
408-605-6085 cell
This morning I sat on the Ventura boardwalk curb with my feet in the sand, journal on my lap, and watched surfers glide on baby waves in the beautiful Pacific Ocean. I needed to write, needed to cry, and desperately needed to release my pent-up anger and frustration that I’d been carrying for the last two weeks.
Fresh were the wounds of my recent move, where my professional moving company took negligent and scandalous care of our belongings by overcharging, classic bait n switch, “losing” irreplaceable memorabilia, damaging and destroying 75% of our possessions, and downright stealing certain things, one of which was our $450 Stainless Steel Sonoma BBQ Grill. The fight I would have to take to them for vindication required exhausting time and money; neither of which I had extra to donate at the moment as I got back on my feet in a new city.
I’d been robbed six times in the past at varying degrees, and every time that gut-wrenching feeling of violation is like taking a punch to the stomach. It hurts a lot and will knock the wind out of ya. As I pondered the meaning of abundance and being able to replace many of the belongings someday, the hate welled up and toppled over my eyelids in the form of tears at the feeling of helplessness. Bad people had planned to take advantage of me, and they continue doing so to others. I wanted to punish them.
At my side was a book I’d grabbed to bring with me to the beach for post-run meditation. When I had thrown it in the car with my running gear and journal, it hadn’t crossed my mind why that exact book ended up with me at the beach; it had not been a conscious decision. Now I wiped the tears from my eyes, focused on it and gasped. Sitting next to me was Viktor Frankl’s, “Man’s Search For Meaning”, a tattered and yellowing paperback copy that had altered the way I viewed life, purpose and suffering.
Frankl was a Jewish Author-Psychiatrist who endured the Nazi death camps during World War II. He watched all his possessions, including life’s work manuscript, stripped from him, and his entire family and wife, excepting his sister, perish in the camps and sent to the gas ovens. Through this life-changing account of absolute injustice, hunger and cruelty, he volunteers himself as his own experiment to examine suffering and the true meaning of existence. He boils life down to the very essence, and while not even having control of his own naked and starving body, he still is responsible for the thoughts he thinks and how he chooses to perceive life; Exist with hate, apathy and anger for the horrific misery he and his family/friends and Jewish people undergo, or find meaning in what most perceived as senseless suffering.
At that moment I started laughing on the beach, which caused nearby dosing homeless guys to pick up their heads and give me a half glance. I couldn’t have scripted better irony than this! Here I was, a blessed woman in my prime, my brand new house minutes from beautiful beaches and living a charmed life; I was crying over my lost barbeque when courageous people like Viktor Frankl had endured such suffering! As I gazed at his face on the book I could hear his words to me, “Let it go, Amie,” and I agreed with him.
One of my favorite spiritual leaders is Lester Levenson, and he said, “Peace is non resistance, complete acceptance, identification with the all, with everyone, everything.” I had been resisting like a crazy woman and hurting myself in the meanwhile, and what came with it was more negativity, tension and bad news. We all know what you resist persists…and I was so ready to live in peace.
Was it possible I set up this lesson for myself so I could learn to let go, release, and not be attached to anything? My beliefs take me down the road of reincarnation and pre-ordaining (not pre-destination, as free will is sacred) opportunities and signs along the way in life to evolve as a human being through the contrast of good and bad experiences. If so, ouch! My soul must be a little dense learning and re-learning through remedial courses this time around…
Buddha says, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” My un-checked emotions had taken me over and I lost awareness of how it affected everything I was doing and being.
It caused me to contemplate the last 24 months of my whirlwind life, and as I did so I realized I had already let go of so many things: unhealthy friendships, poor business relationships, two companies of which I poured my lifeblood into, a network that took me 10 years to build, credit/cash, and family members who passed away. Letting go = freedom. Attachments and aversions = pain. What do I want to feel? Like Frankl learned in the Nazi concentration camps… your mind is the only place you can find freedom, it is not in our external situations.
“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” -- Viktor Frankl
With the sun on my face and healing seabreeze in the air, every wave the surfers caught and rode, a little more of my anger was released with each and went out with the tide. I choose to be free.
Much Gratitude,
Amie Chilson
Visionary. Teacher. Fearless Leader.
NuSkin Enterprises
408-605-6085 cell
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