What Legacy Are You Creating Right Now?

It’s easy to see how some people create a legacy through how they live their lives, but are you aware of how you are doing this? Does a legacy have to be grand to count? Maybe what follows will answer that question.

Years back I watched a PBS series titled "Road Trip," where the narrator took his parents, who were in their eighties, around the United States in an RV. Sometimes when we observe others, we focus on the surface of what we see. So, what was under the surface in this instance?

The son revealed that his parents' first child was a daughter who did not live long. The four brothers grew up aware they'd had a sister and that their parents preferred not to speak about that loss. The son said he always wondered how their lives would have been different had their sister lived; that the factor of one, whether with us or gone from us, can have a profound effect.

In the final minutes of the last segment, the father sat peacefully at the end of a pier and looked out over a serene lake in a wooded area. In the voiceover for that scene, the son commented that his father was always ready to sing and laugh despite the fact he had buried a child, fought in a world war, lost his fortune and retirement twice, won over cancer, sustained a marriage for six decades, and with his wife raised four sons into good men. He said when his father left the earth no one would name a street after him or take special note of him in history. Yet, he left a quiet legacy that would affect several generations because of who he was and how he chose to live his life. The father’s factor of one touched and influenced every person he interacted with, most especially his family.

The father didn’t focus on creating a legacy; he focused on living in a way that made sense to him, especially when faced with life events and circumstances that had the potential to wear him down. He aimed to do and be the best he could, in light of whatever came his way. Some of us are aware of the legacy we create through how we live and what and how we contribute to others and life. Most of us never give our legacy a thought, which is fine. Such contemplation isn’t required in order for a legacy to be created; it’s created with or without that contemplation.

At this point, you may be thinking about moments from your past that you don’t feel good about. Anything from your past that you regret—let it go—it’s over. You can make better choices from this moment on. You know more and are more now than you were then. Yes, learn from those times, but let them go. Right now, in the moment you stand in, you can decide who you are and how you want to be and will be, from this time forward, aware that you leave an imprint. I recall something I was told by a music teacher way back when: even if you mess up in the middle of singing a song, as long as you end the song really well, that’s what people will mostly remember. Your life can be the same as a song. Your life is your song.

We all have occasion to feel overwhelmed by events. In such moments, we may temporarily forget our contribution to the bigger picture of our shared lives. We may forget that our own factor of one creates ripples at all times. On the positive side of this, we don’t always know when one seemingly simple gesture, word, or kindness on our part reaches into the heart of another and makes a significant difference. I venture to say this happens more often than we are aware of.

Legacy is about what we contribute while we’re here. It doesn’t have to be grand; it just has to come from our heart and authentic self. It may be as simple as the example we are to others, not that we are to overwhelm or burden ourselves with thoughts of this. Our example does not guarantee good or bad behavior from others. Each of us is, after all, responsible for who and how we are and what we choose. It’s ultimately about what we desire to see when we view ourselves in the mirror of our lives, not how others see us. However, in some respects, they will see us the way we see ourselves, as well as some of our aspects we are not necessarily conscious of.

Keep in mind that every moment of our time on this earth is a pebble dropped into a pond. We may be aware of how we affect those nearest to our center point and forget to be aware of how far the ripples may travel. Each of us creates a legacy, more often a fairly quiet one than not. But as with the quantum universe, the size of our legacy is irrelevant. Every ripple is significant in some measure, contributes to the whole. Every ripple is a relevant thread in the larger tapestry.

Perhaps from this moment on, we can remember that we are weavers and can seek to ensure that some of our threads are ones that endure the tests of time, integrity, and merit. It’s never too late to start now. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.    

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

What Am I Meant to Do in This Life?

Life Purpose: It’s a topic on the minds of many. It’s a question (and an industry) that’s like the siren’s song, luring us into its depths. What is this yearning really about?

I don’t think the question of life purpose is as deep as we make it out to be. I think what drives the question, frustrates, and confuses us about this is more about how we want to feel about ourselves than anything else, but we seem to miss that target more than we aim at and hit it. I think this is because we don’t know that it’s a real and worthy target. Nor do we want to feel guilty about or uncomfortable with our choices regarding this matter. Often, we convince ourselves there’s only One Right Choice, which scares the hell out of us. This choice isn’t supposed to be like choosing the red pill or the blue pill in The Matrix movie.

What led me to this topic was a thought process I was entertaining myself with, wondering why some people are more compelled to explore and move toward and into spiritual realization and some are more compelled toward financial and assets gain (legally or illegally attained), with little to no focus on spirituality. Is one path better or more valid than the other? I don’t have the wisdom of Source, so won’t even attempt to answer that question. In fact, it may be a useless question, like “why” often is. However, I have some thoughts about this that I’m comfortable sharing.

We know that one of the Universal Laws is Polarity. This means that everything has a duality about it, has its pair of opposites that are identical in nature but different in degree (e.g., hot and cold are polarities of temperature). The Law of Polarity is a mutable law, which means whatever goes on can be transcended. For example, there are positive and negative thoughts, but both are thoughts, and either of them can be shifted. If things are not going well, you can shift your thoughts so that you aren’t overwhelmed by your negative thoughts and can affirm Truths that lift you up. If things are going well, you can sabotage yourself with negative thinking. Polarity keeps momentum going so that stagnation doesn’t occur. We are meant to be stimulated into inner and or outer action by the polarities we experience.

Back to life purpose or what we’re meant to do in this life. What if your driving question is how to attain more money and stuff, and the spirituality aspect takes a backseat or isn’t even in the car? It’s possible you’re attuned to having a primarily physical-material experience in this lifetime—for your own soul’s purposes, whatever they may be. If this is your path, this driving force in your life is but a line on the abundance-prosperity polarity graph. Maybe it’s extreme for you and you must become or do become a millionaire or billionaire. Maybe it’s moderate. Maybe it’s low, at the other end of the spectrum. Perhaps along the way, or in your more mature years, your spiritual aspect quietly nudges you to ask how you, in your physical-material mindset, can contribute to your life and the lives of others, and how you (and maybe others) can evolve as a result. After all, you could be a generous, caring billionaire who does numerous large and small truly good works from the heart, and never consciously or deliberately entertain a spirituality-related thought in this lifetime.

What if your driving question is about how you can contribute to your life and the lives of others as well as have a deeply spiritual experience in a physical-material environment? This may lead you to shift back and forth between figuring out how to exist and evolve in both, for your own soul’s purposes. You may find yourself on the extreme end of this measuring stick and be the person who meditates in a cave and relies on others to bring food, water, and other supplies to you. Or you may feel that trying to do both materiality and spirituality creates contradictions within you—because you question the importance of doing what helps sustain you and your life versus pursuing or attaining spiritual realization. Your question about this may block the balance you can experience so that you have all you need in both areas. We see it all the time: the spirituality-based person who struggles to sustain his or her life. Not only is their struggle an inner one, but an outer one as well: there are people who question why such people charge for their services, and believe the services should be free or nominal because they are spiritual in nature. However, no one argues about fees with a plumber when they need one.

You might assess the two “paths” above as polarities, but both contribute to our unified experiences of life. We cannot all sit in caves, figuratively and or literally speaking. We cannot all focus solely on tangible and financial assets. Both materiality and spirituality are needed for life to flourish. Whichever one of these polarity paths you fit into at this time, we are all meant to process experiences and evolve in some measure as a result of them.

It’s up to each of us to figure out how we will express ourselves while here. And this may be in one way or a number of ways. But it is about what we enjoy, what we are good at, what we are interested in, short-term and or long-term, and what and how we contribute to a few or the many. And what we contribute may be in some large or grand way or through numerous small kindnesses that ripple outward in a returns-to-you and a pay-it-forward sort of way.

I’ve had a number of incarnations in this lifetime. I started out as a singer, winning awards and scholarships, and training for the opera. Then amid other make-a-living-based and life experiences, I became an artist in three mediums and did 600 pieces of art in 5 years. There were gallery showings with awards and where all my art sold, individual and corporate commissions, retail shops with sales, and a few individuals who collected my work. Then I got into writing and editing, with a stretch as a life empowerment coach thrown into the middle of this. These days, I balance my place in that second description above (physical-spiritual) by writing my weekly articles—like the one you’re reading now—and include them in my weekly newsletter that also highlights the spirituality-based works of guest experts each week. But the other thing I do, which helps sustain my life and my passion for words and the tapestries they weave, is services for writers, especially new writers. This work drives my bus! Simultaneous to this, I’m always increasing, expanding, and evolving my spiritual solidity and spiritual realization, which also drives my bus. I no longer question which one is to have more importance (I used to do that). I’ve landed in the flowering field of whole-beingness: Everything I do contributes something, in some way, to me and to others. I grasp the importance of both materiality and spirituality for this experience I’m having, just as one coin has two sides. I’ve become keenly aware that I cannot do one without affecting or influencing the other.

I share some of my own story so you can see that you can follow your path in your own way. You are meant to. Your path can lead you until the moment you’re ready to lead yourself and choose what it is you wish to do that fulfills you on all levels or on as many levels as possible for the moment or for a lifetime. What you are meant to do is find your bliss, as Joseph Campbell said. Only you know or can determine what that is. And it may not be in one way only. What you’re meant to do—your life purpose—is a feeling, not an action or a thing or a person. Find your feeling. It’s your song, your dance, your life. And it will influence whatever you choose to do and how you choose to express it.

One line of dialogue said by Professor Dumbledore to Harry Potter that always speaks to me is this: “It is not our abilities that show who we are, but our choices.” You can have stellar skills, talents, and abilities and waste them or be too afraid to explore and demonstrate them for your benefit and or the benefit of others. You can be great at what you do and also be an assoholic. You can do one thing or a number of things well that provides enough income to keep you surviving or thriving and also be a person others love, respect, trust, rely on, and want the company of. You can show people what you can do and you can show people who you are. Your choices will do that by default, anyway.

Rather than wondering so much about what you should be doing or showing others what you can do so you earn approval, focus more on who you want to be and show yourself, as well as others, who you really are. And if you make or have made choices you wish you hadn’t or regret, forgive yourself; decide to choose a better way if ever faced with a similar choice. You always have the choice to do and be better.

Stephen Covey said, "But until a person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise." What we are meant to do in this life is makes choices, preferably conscious ones rather than reactive ones; though, we usually (hopefully) realize at some point that this is part of our path we are here to travel. We can makes choices that support us or seemingly don’t. I say seemingly don’t, because sometimes you get where you’re going by traveling a back road rather than a superhighway. We can make choices that contribute to one or many others, or choices that detract. Choose to contribute in ways appropriate for you and for others. Sometimes what this means to you requires you to figure it out for yourself, but it’s a terrific form of GPS for a more satisfying life.

Choices are stepping stones on our path of experiences. The ones we choose to step on determine our destination. Whatever we choose, we live with the consequences or desired results of our choices. You might say that what you are meant to do is choose who you wish to be and be who you are meant to be, for your own purposes and based on how you intend to feel about yourself and your life, so that you align your choices with that. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.                   

          

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

What Personal Power Really Is

What does personal power mean to you? It’s something we all want more of, so maybe if we’re sure what it is, we’ll know where to go from there.

Personal Power can mean many things to us. Maybe you think it means better use of Law of Attraction, more money flowing more consistently in your direction, influence, self-confidence, and so forth; and, possibly, all of these and more. Whatever it means to you, what personal power really is, is as much a result as it is a means to desired results.

Here’s a nifty way to understand what personal power really is: Personal Power equals Effectiveness. And, we can do things that either expand or deplete how effective we are. I give you a few significant examples of each of these ways in a moment.

Something you may find helpful to keep in mind is that you can shift your focus from increasing your personal power to increasing your effectiveness. This applies to whatever personal power means to you. This perspective puts a different slant on how to expand your power; maybe this even makes it feel easier, doable, and less ambiguous. This pathway opens you to inspired ideas, and to pay attention to what works and creates improvements, rather than on what you judge as broken or on what you perceive as wrong with you.

Let’s look at ways you may deplete your effectiveness:

*Time, Energy, or Money is put towards something your heart really isn’t into.
*Make choices that are not in your best interest or are not appropriate for you.
*Thoughts, self-talk, and actions aren’t focused on desired results.
*Add steps that are not really needed to get desired results.
*Allow time-draining tasks then get used to engaging in time-draining activities.
*Focus is placed on too many goals or improvements at once, which results in being scattered or overwhelmed.
*Make disempowering choices, which makes making disempowering choices easier and easier, even if the results are undesired.
*Have a to-do list without priorities, direction, or purpose.
*Give time, energy, or money to anything that doesn’t provide a return in some measure, whether that’s of a spiritual, emotional, or tangible nature. This includes foods and beverages, people, volunteer work, studies, activities, etc.

Let’s look at ways you can enhance your effectiveness:

*Put time, energy, and money into what feels worthy to you and that your heart is into.
*Trust that consistent small improvements, rather than massive action, are more effective and lasting; understanding that the very thought of massive action may cause you to never get organized, much less get started.
*Plan and take some effective action every day.
*Recognize that although learning is an action and is effective, real effectiveness happens when you put what you learn into practice, and modify as needed.
*Exchange what slows or holds off desired results for what creates or moves toward desired results.

Although Personal Power can take many forms, three elements support it: time, energy, and money. When you deplete one, you deplete the other two. When you enhance one, you enhance the other two.

You have all the personal power you need. It’s a matter of directing it better and deliberately. Here’s how you can put this into practice: Pick an area of your life that you want to improve. Use the depleting and enhancing information offered here as a guide for one week. Look at ways you know are effective in a positive, productive way and use them. Try new ways on and see how they work, with no concept of failure involved, just research, testing, and assessment of results. Maybe pick one of the three elements to focus on: better time-usage choices, better choices that support your energy, or better money choices. Keep notes about how your actions on one element affect the other two. Notice how the three elements work as a team.

If you’re ready to increase your effectiveness, start at the inner level, especially with deliberately supportive self-talk and thinking; it will ripple outward into your life in ways you appreciate. Put improved effectiveness into practice, and enjoy feeling more personally powerful in your life.

Practice makes progress.
© Joyce Shafer
This week’s State of Appreciation is live! http://stateofappreciation.webs.com

The Power of a Firm Decision

Whatever you believe is involved in improvement or success, the power of a decision is key. It will help if you understand what this really means.

A firm decision is one without discord, or one that transmutes any discord that makes an appearance. A firm decision is made and a knowing exists—that, without doubt, what’s been decided will happen, even if you have no idea how, at the start. A knowing, faith, or belief supports firm decisions to become reality. Without a firm decision and belief, all you have is a wish. A firm decision has power, a wish doesn’t. This is because a firm decision has a level of clarity and focus about a desired result, even if aspects are unknown and are discovered and managed along the way.

If you’ve ever found yourself struggling in any area of your life, which is very different from facing and meeting challenges, it’s because a firm decision has not been made. If you think of times when you made a firm decision to do something—anything at all—you did whatever it took for however long it took to get it done, whether that’s de-clutter your closet that took a weekend or complete a course of study that took years.

Everything begins with an idea. The idea to, say, clear out your closet seems to move straight into the action of doing the task. But, there is a middle step: the firm decision. Many firm decisions happen quickly. They are often so subtle you don’t even recognize them as what they are. Firm decisions move you from inspired idea to productive action. Reflect on the most recent time this happened for you, even if it was to refill your coffee cup, and you did. Allow yourself to feel what that middle step—firm decision—felt like for you, so you become familiar with it.

I watched a brief video about The Reality Architects. They mentioned an elderly woman who, for decades, has won every contest she’s entered. I asked myself what had to be in place, at her inner level, for this to be her reality. My answer was a firm decision with no discord. Discord is a contrast that points out one or more doubts exist. How many buy lottery tickets or enter contests with some discord whispering doubt in their minds, and either silently or aloud state, even before the action is taken, “I knew I wouldn’t win”? How many times do we make what we believe is a firm decision, yet have in our minds some doubt that we’ll succeed, instead of a steadfast commitment to do so?

The discord aspect needs our attention, doesn’t it? You’ve made firm decisions before, without discord; and you’ve experienced desired results. Discord does not mean a firm decision wasn’t made. It does show us bumps and potholes on the inner road that we need to smooth out. Inner discord can be lack of confidence, which can be assisted by increasing competence. It can be flawed self-beliefs about what you deserve, or what you should want or should not want in life. These flawed beliefs may have been given to you by your family, friends, religion, culture, and from anyone who has intersected with your life since you were born.

When results seem to take a long time to arrive—and we aren’t witnessing real progress along the way that demonstrates we are moving in the right direction—it’s a good time to check in on the firmness of the original decision. This is where the feeling that goes with a firm decision comes in: if you don’t have that recognizable “knowing” or “belief” feeling, you need to revisit your decision, your belief level, or why you made the decision you did.

A firm decision is fueled by determination, even when challenges appear. Napoleon Hill, in his book Think and Grow Rich, uses the words—Definite Burning Desire. If you think about it, whether it’s to finally straighten a cluttered closet because the clutter has you exasperated or to pursue a certification or degree so you can practice something you feel passionate about, a definite, determined desire is there.

But, how many times, while growing up, did one or more people constructively instruct you about having a definite burning desire, what that might encompass, and what the rewards might be for acting on it? More than likely you were instructed to do what it took to fit into the mainstream, maybe even to be seen and not heard. If this has been your experience, it may have caused you to create to-do lists, but not Definite Burning Desires lists.

You may have heard “Name it and claim it,” but you may fear what others will think if you name and claim your definite burning desire, whether they’re still alive or not. You may even fear naming it, much less claiming it. The very idea may cause statements from the past to rush to mind like a storm wave onto the shore: Who do you think you are? What makes you think you’re so special? If you can’t do something right (perfectly the first time), don’t do it at all. Don’t risk it; go with a sure thing. That’s just stupid; no one will pay you for that! Why do you have to be different? What will people think? I’m sure you could add more statements you’ve heard from any number of people who didn’t know better than to repeat what they’d been told.

Sometimes, you make a firm decision, yet also find how you feel strengthens in firmness over time instead of feeling the “wallop of knowing” from the start you have at other times, like moving a dimmer light switch upward, gradually increasing the illumination. When this is your experience, you notice a shift in how you think about what you want and how determined you feel. You notice any discord that surfaces, but choose to focus more on what will work rather than what might not or hasn’t. Clarity about focused actions gradually sharpens as clarity about your desired result begins to take form. You seek more-specific information. You find that ideas about how to make your decision a reality increase in frequency—and in quality. You even begin to notice assistance coming to you from the universe, or whatever you call the creative source, through a variety of resources. You notice an increase in focused attention and a decrease in fretting.

A firm decision, even one that firms over time, is the “green light” to the creative source and to your own inner power source, to support you fully. A desired outcome realized is the result of a firm decision fueled by belief and unflinching determination. Could you benefit by putting this into practice more often… or right now?

Practice makes progress.
© Joyce Shafer
This week’s State of Appreciation is live! http://stateofappreciation.webs.com

Need to Amp Up Your Motivation and Commitment?

Can a simple statement really get you motivated to start, do, or improve something you’re putting off? Let’s find out.

Think of something you desire to be different, or feel challenged about following through on. See or feel it in your mind’s eye. Really connect with it. Now, say to yourself, gently and truthfully: “I can do better than this.”

First things first—remove any critical self-judgment from the picture right now. It isn’t useful.

Second, do you believe there’s some truth for you in the statement that you can do better than what you’re currently doing? Is there even one thing you can do differently that would get you closer to your targeted goal or dream, or make an improvement?

Third, watch out for two typical self-entrapments: You aim to start too big and you attempt to reach the outcome—or think you have to—without taking the steps.

Let’s say you don’t like how your body looks (or, use a current issue of your own). You might be tempted to do the following in this order:

1. Look in the mirror and not feel happy with what you see, and begin the verbal self-abuse. That’s always effective, right?
2. Say, “This Is It!”—plus, more verbal self-abuse.
3. Choose a stringent diet program and an exercise program not appropriate for you, or you start at too high a level (and you increase the verbal self-abuse).

I’m not going to keep going with the numbered steps, because how this example, or whatever you’ve started and stopped over the years (or never started), plays out (including creative endeavors) can be filled in by you as well as me. But maybe you feel, perhaps subconsciously, that the way to improve is to first punish (unsuitable, unsustainable diet and exercise programs—or whatever relates to your issue), rather than find what supports you, then start small and grow into it.

We live in an age of Instant: coffee, foods, information. It’s no wonder instant gratification tugs at us so forcefully. But some things, the really important or significant things in life, are usually not instant.

However, it isn’t just instant gratification you’re dealing with these days; you’re also bombarded with emails from people about their “instant” successes, results, or outcomes. When you aim at your targets, if you don’t mirror the so-said instant success of others—or what you believe you’re “supposed” to achieve, you feel like a failure.

Maybe you want to take the temperature of this in your own life. Many times, these people have their “instant” successes after quite a number of years (or hours, days, weeks) of effort that led to their “overnight” success. Some even tell you this, but that information is easy to ignore because you’re fixated on a big number (or whatever) flashing like a neon sign in your mind; and what it takes, or might, to achieve this is virtually ignored.

Tony Robbins said something to the effect that small improvements made daily create compounded enhancements. Don’t attempt or believe you have to attempt to produce the final outcome five minutes after you decide what it is. What do you really want to go for now, or next, that will improve one or more areas of your life? Write this down—writing it really does matter.

Whenever you start to be hard on yourself about any area of your life you’re not satisfied with, rather than giving yourself the verbal self-lashing you may do or perhaps giving up altogether, gently say to yourself, “I can do better than this.” Then take some action each day. Let your daily improvements weave your larger tapestry.

You are what you practice.
© Joyce Shafer

What Is Your Gift, and Do You Share It?

Your gift is what you do in your unique way. Ironically, you may do it so naturally, you don’t recognize it for what it is or realize what you might do with it.

Whatever you do in life, you can have a more joyful, meaningful experience if you shine the light on and share what is unique about you. We sometimes assume the way we do something is how everyone does it. This isn’t necessarily, and usually isn’t, the case. This is why something you do that you don’t think is very special or unique might be seen as very special or unique by someone else.

One of the fastest ways to identify or confirm this is to ask others. You can ask friends, family, clients, co-workers what they believe is unique about you. This is a good thing to do because you can pay attention to what their comments have in common.

I applied this to a friend of mine, a licensed therapist, who is highly skilled at what she does. What I perceive as natural for her is how she demonstrates the importance of including fun and humor in life, no matter what challenges may be happening. Not surprising is that she dreams of doing seminars, especially in corporate environments, to teach why appropriate humor and fun in the workplace are beneficial to well-being, creativity, and success. In her personal life, she lives what she desires to do. Yes, others do similar seminars; but she, especially with her background, could do it in a unique way.

You will benefit by asking this question of others, but you may have to work with the wording. I was told by one friend that she relies on me to tell her the truth, when she approaches me with a difficult challenge she’s having. Another friend said I help people feel good about themselves and about what they do, meaning that I support people when they struggle with an issue, and leave judgment out of the equation.

I looked at these two responses and recognized what was being said. I listen to people with more than my ears. I perceive what they don’t—stories they’re telling themselves, their limiting beliefs. I help them see what they’re missing because they’re too close to a situation or too used to it. I perceive the small bits and the bigger picture. I validate them. I help them shift something so they can move forward. And, I’ve always done this—in my unique way. I recall wishing in the early ‘90s, that there was a way I could do what I did so naturally, as a living. Then I read an article about a new field: life coaching. I felt like that old Reese’s candy commercial—the chocolate fell into the peanut butter, and a winning combination was created.

Sometimes it’s about what you do that you want to do in a unique way, but believe others would think something negative if you did it or, “Who would pay me to do that?!” Someone I know coached a divorce attorney who realized he didn’t like the bickering or nastiness some of his clients engaged in, especially when children were involved. He wanted to work solely with people who wanted peaceful divorces. He clarified his niche and was passionate about it. This allowed him to be clear about his services and ideal clients when he created his promotional materials. He never lacks clients. There was a ready market waiting for such an attorney—even if they weren’t aware of it.

If you love to make people laugh, does this mean your gift is less important than a heart surgeon’s skill? We know now about the healing qualities of laughter. If you’re able to make people laugh and ease the stings—or blows—that come into people’s lives, why wouldn’t you share that? Could you write articles, books, or Blogs in a way that changes people’s lives or entertains them in their preferred world of fiction? Could you combine your love of skydiving and spirituality to teach “flying at a whole new level”? This last one reminds you that you may have more than one gift and know you are happier if you can do some of each or find a way to merge them.

What might it cost you to identify your gift—that which is unique about you—and then share it—and, even be compensated for it? Will you have to confront negative beliefs about yourself? Give up some spare time or rearrange your routine to develop your plan and take action?

What will it cost you, personally, if you don’t do this? Will you deny your life’s purpose or see yourself as not deserving better life experiences? Will you remain in a self-imposed prison without bars, possibly based on someone else’s opinions or fears?

The real you—who you are—has a level of splendor within that can make a difference in your life and the lives of others, but only if you express it.

Focus+Meaning+Choice=Your Desired Experiences. Is it time to learn how to more effortlessly have desired experiences in life and business? Let the 4-week Reinvent Yourself coaching program or e-book of the program materials show you how. You Are More! Empowerment Coach and author Joyce Shafer (jls1422@yahoo.com)—Sign up now for the 4-week Valentine’s Coaching Special (sign-up deadline is Feb. 14/program starts when you sign up) or let the e-book guide you. Fall in Love with Your Life! Details at http://tinyurl.com/yljhw4b