The Road to Lifestyle

Happy Sunday! I created this soccer ball last night for a friend's son. He enjoys soccer and his favorite color is blue... It still needs to go through the "flattening" stage as you can see the card is a bit bowed. I usually prefer to give it a night to dry so that the glue doesn't come squirting out from beneath the hole punches. The flattening stage is a very sophisticated process. I find the biggest, heaviest, English Lit books I have and sandwich the piece in between. :) Kind of sounds like something Willy Wonka would do! All for now!

As I was reading Chris Gardner's book, Start Where You Are: Life Lessons in Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, I was reminded of a memory. Chris said he is often asked "how it was possible to start a business in Chicago in the competitive business environment of Wall Street with only ten grand of capital going in." Per Chris, he "didn't know it couldn't be done" and furthermore "ignorance is bliss." I agree... Years ago my squadron had a formation for physical fitness several times a week. On one of these occasions we gathered in a parking lot in order to stretch and do push-ups etc. They asked us to "get down" and do as many push-ups as we could do. I pumped out 72... People were amazed. They asked, "How did you do so many push-ups?" My answer, "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be able to." Apparently most women piqued around 40 push-ups or so. As Jim Rohn once mused, "How tall w...

Rather than suggest it would be nice for me to spend an afternoon in a safe environment that would help me cultivate my mind, what she said was, 'The public library is the most dangerous place in the world." The most dangerous place in the world? Why was that? "Because," she explained to me, "you can go in there and learn how to do anything." - Chris Gardner quoting his mother, Bettye Jean Triplett , from Start Where You Are: Life Lessons in Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

A few weeks ago I watched the movie Secretariat and as is my habit after being inspired, enlightened, or utterly confused by a movie I "Googled" it to learn more about this Thoroughbred's amazing story. To be honest, as soon as my husband said he was going to rent the movie I told him, "We've already seen that movie... it was called Seabiscuit !" I thought all horse movies were the same... not so! Secretariat was the 9 th US Triple Crown Champion in 1973. He won the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. To this day he still holds the Kentucky Derby track record of 1:59 2/5. During this race he was actually accelerating during each quarter mile of this one and a quarter mile race! Secretariat also finished The Belmont Stakes way ahead of the pack. He won by 31 lengths and to this day holds the record for the fastest 1.5 miles on dirt finishing in 2:24 flat. But of all the accolades he received none is more astonishing than the gif...

Dear Potential Recruit, Something you said yesterday and something you did recently have been weighing on my mind. I just wanted to share my thoughts with you. First off, yesterday you had mentioned that if you were not successful or perhaps if you did not see the outcome you had anticipated you would be “disappointed.” To that I must let you know that part of being successful is learning to discipline your disappointment and beyond that is realizing that “Failure is your teacher. Regret is your enemy.” Most people think that failure is on one side of the equation, success on the other, and that they are in the middle. But it doesn’t work that way. You must blast through failure in order to achieve success… failure is an integral part of the process. Furthermore, “There’s a big difference between what’s lost by not trying and what’s lost by not succeeding.” Secondly, when you filled out the recruiting sheet you annotated the following in the income categories: Income la...

Laura to New Agent: Here's the thing... more times than I can count things that people said could not be done come to pass... you just have to talk to the person that can make it happen... better yet, BE the person that can make it happen... ANYTHING is possible... I believe that with every fiber of my being... Miracles happen every day... You just have to believe... join me in the world of possiblity Mr. New Agent! The water is perfect over here! :) New Agent: I believe :)

"Boy, I've done so much, with so little for so long, that I can do anything with nothing." - Chris Gardner quoting his mother, Bettye Jean Triplett from Start Where You Are: Life Lessons in Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

"Whatever you are - Be a good one." - A. Lincoln

"God did not create us to be a reservoir that only collects. He created us to be a river that's constantly flowing." - Joel Osteen