Tag Archives: motivation

Part 8: May Day- Time for a Mid-Year Check-Up

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Continued from Part 7:  Success and Money Are Spiritual Matters           http://wp.me/ppImQ-rV

What are Your Gifts and How Can You Best Serve?

Life has a way (if you let it) to allow you to drift aimlessly.  But at the same time if we take charge, we can immediately get back on course.  If this were your last day, week, month, or year, what would you be doing differently?  Figure out what that is and DO IT!  May Day, May Day!  Don’t you know that your earthly journey has finality?  It will end without prior notice.

You are here for a reason and need to make figuring out what that reason is your priority.  To begin that journey of certitude, service, and fulfillment, you must first figure what gifts you have and how you can serve the world best by using those gifts.  Are you a potential artist, scientist, craftsperson, single, author, parent, or business owner with a talent or dream that fulfills you or inspires others?

What You Do Matters- To Somebody You Are the World

How many of your goals that you set this year have you accomplished?  What about last year, the year before, or even ten years ago?  You are an important cog in the wheel of life.  What you do or don’t do matters and matters a lot. Just like the rippling effect of a pebble is felt across a pond, so does your contribution affect an untold number of people you may not even know.  Reflect on the poet Heather Cortez’s words, “To the world you might be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.”

Click to continue to Part 9: Life Tests Us to Protect Us http://wp.me/ppImQ-sG

c) 2010, Barbara S. Talley- All Rights Reserved

Barbara Talley is a keynote speaker, author of six books, and trainer on value-based living themes.  She also offers Effective Communication, Diversity, Leadership, Time Management, and Goal Setting workshops.  Visit her at www.thepoetspeaks.com or contact her at 301-428-4831.  You may email her at Barbara@ThePoetSpeaks.com.

Part 9: May Day- Life’s Tests Perfect Us

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Continued from Part 8: Mid-Year Checkup,  http://wp.me/ppImQ-sv

Are you dissipating so much of your energy fighting fires and just plain surviving that there is no fire or energy left to pursue those goals that bring passion and meaning to your life?

Are you overwhelmed by seemingly competing priorities?  Or maybe you’re looking at a career transition and just don’t know what to do next.  Maybe the transition was a choice or maybe it was forced on you.  Perhaps, your life or values have changed dramatically because your children have left home, you have health problems, have recently divorced or widowed, or have lost your job or someone special in your life.  Some have an even different challenge, they’ve spent so much of their lives working that they haven’t had the time to pursue a relationship or family.  We’ve all got our own burdens to bare.  No one escapes the  tests.  But, the tests perfect some and destroy others.

Life Tests Us to Protect Us

Many of you, like me, have been thrust into the sandwich generation and find yourselves taking care of parents and kids simultaneously while trying to work full-time.  Or, maybe you just don’t feel valued or appreciated and are not passionate about anything anymore.  It’s understandable to get depressed or feel down when so much seems to be out of your control.  Just remember that life constantly tests us in order to perfect us and we can’t have growth or a testimony without these tests.  We were not created to go it alone.  Be open and expectant because someone out there has exactly what you need and you have what someone else needs to progress to the next step in their journey.

Support Comes Naturally When You Get Serious!

How can you realistically and honestly expect others to believe in you and support your endeavors when you have not demonstrated by your persistent and faithful action, enthusiasm, commitment, and focus that you truly believe in your own dreams.

Faith attracts others while desperation and doubt detract.  The Creator, His Messengers, the universe, teachers, friends, mentors, angels, and even strangers are ready to help you if you would only ask and believe. Inspiration and enthusiasm come naturally when you get serious about your goals and are doing something about them.  Realizing that your amazing destiny is within your reach is of the utmost urgency; so stake your claim now.  The world is in desperate need of the contribution that you alone were created and destined to offer.

To continue to Part 10: The Wisdom of  Wil Smith, click here- http://wp.me/ppImQ-sQ

c) 2010, Barbara S. Talley- All Rights Reserved

Barbara Talley is a keynote speaker, author of six books, and trainer on value-based living themes.  She also offers Effective Communication, Diversity, Leadership, Time Management, and Goal Setting workshops.  Visit her at www.thepoetspeaks.com or contact her at 301-428-4831.  You may email her at Barbara@ThePoetSpeaks.com.

Part 10: May Day- Seven Wonderful Wisdom Quotes From Will Smith

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From Wikipedia Public Domain

Continued from Part 9: Life Tests Us  To Perfect Us.  http://wp.me/ppImQ-sG

In reviewing videos, bios, and books on some great motivators this month, I happened across some videos of Will Smith.  And while my initial goal was to focus on a certain era, I was so impressed with some of his wisdom that I had to share it with you.  You know him as a comedian, actor, and musician, but check him out as the motivator.  In the following quotes, Will Smith speaks on, Talent and Skill, Being Realistic, Making a Choice, Focus, Fear, Preparedness, and Protecting Your Dreams.

1. Talent and Skill

“The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams …  There is no easy way around it. No matter how talented you are, your talent is going to fail you if you are not skilled.   If you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day, you’ll never be able to communicate with people the way you want.”  “Talent, you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.”

2. Being Realistic

“Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.  Why would you be realistic?  What’s the point of being realistic?  I’m going to do it.  It’s done!  It’s already done the second I decide to do it.  It’s done.  Now we just have to wait for yall to see it.”

3. Making a Choice

“There’s a redemptive power that making a choice has.  Rather than feeling like you’re an effect to all the things that are happening.  Make a choice. Just decide, what’s it going to be, who you’re going to be, how you’re going to do it?  Just decide and from that point the universe is going to get out of your way.”

4. Focus

“I realize that to have the level of success that I want to it’s difficult to spread it out and do multiple things. It takes such a desperate obsessive focus.  You’ve got to focus with all your fiber, your heart, and all of your creativity.”

“You don’t have to have a Plan B because it distracts from Plan A.”

5. Fear

“I’m motivated by fear.  I hate being scared to do something.  I think what developed in my early days is that I started attacking things I was afraid of.  You can’t be scared to die for the truth.”

6. Preparedness

“Stay ready and you don’t have to get ready.”

7. Protect Your Dreams (from the Movie, ‘Pursuit of Happyness’) 

“Don’t ever let somebody tell you, you can’t do something, not even me.  You got a dream, you got to protect it.  People who can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you, you can’t do it.  You want something, go get it. Period!”

Barbara Talley is a keynote speaker, author of six books, and trainer on value-based living themes.  She also offers Effective Communication, Diversity, Leadership, Time Management, and Goal Setting workshops.  Visit her at www.thepoetspeaks.com or contact her at 301-428-4831.  You may email her at Barbara@ThePoetSpeaks.com.

May Health Chronicles- The Importance of Hope

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What do naysayers, toxic people, and insensitive people have in common with weeds?

Answer: They choke the life out of living things.

“Just make her comfortable,” the cold, emotionless doctor said to us in front of my 83 year old step-mom after giving her only about 5 minutes of his time. “She won’t get any better you know. She’ll never be like she used to be.  She’s got kidney problems and her heart is operating only at 10%.  I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

He didn’t even look or speak directly to her, instead focused his remarks to my sister and I.  I looked over at my step mom and watched as her spirit dropped.  She looked so sad… and hopeless!

You see, she still believed whatever the doctors told her.  For the next few days she barely ate.  This culminated into a trip to the emergency room two days before her 84th birthday. We tried to cheer her up while waiting for the test results by talking about her birthday to come.  “If I make it,” she replied doubtfully.  “Of course you’ll make it,” I said encouragingly.

The emergency room doctor was different.  He told her she would be fine and that she could go home.  “Everything looks good,” he said cheerfully.  “Nothing has changed from your earlier records.  You haven’t gotten any better, but you haven’t gotten any worse.” He patted her on her shoulders attentively while looking directly at her and said, “Take care of yourself now.” She smiled happily and said, “I will!”

Now her heart was still functioning at 10%.  She still had a bad cold and she is still on dialysis.  But, she perked up.  It was all in the presentation.  This doctor seemed to care.  She now had hope.  We celebrated her 84th birthday on May 24, 2010.  She made it!

The following timeless quote of John Maxwell reinforces the importance of caring, “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

We’re talking about a human life here.  And hope is just as important for dreamers with vision.  Haven’t we been told that without a vision, the people perish?   Vision and hope keep people going.  They keep people alive.  They keep the seeds of your dreams alive.  Seeds are your ideas, dreams, or wishes that spark a desire in you to act and give you hope, purpose, and joy.  Weeds are the people in your life that purposefully or unknowingly douse the fire of your dreams.  Protect your dreams, for they only have you to depend on.

In conclusion, I’d like to end with some words from one of Yolanda Adam’s songs, Don’t Give Up. “Keep the dream alive don’t let it die.  If something deep inside keeps inspiring you to try, don’t stop.  And never give up.  Don’t ever give up on you.  No, don’t give up!”

Part 1: What Are You On?

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“Shush”

“Slow down!”

“Calm down!”

“Indoor voice!”

“What are you on?”

As a child, I was always being shushed, told to be quiet, or to “turn it down a notch.”  In order to fit in I had to walk on eggshells to comply or continually justify myself to others.  Have you ever had those questions directed to you? Have you ever asked them of others? Even though we have been admonished spiritually to “judge not so that we may not be judged,” some do it arrogantly and with a sense of entitlement.  And most do it regularly, instinctively, and harshly.  Too often the question, “What are you on?” or its variations were asked judgmentally or negatively of me, as if there were something “wrong” with me for being so “energized.” Or, the implications were even worse implying that I had to be “on something” or oblivious to reality to be so keyed up or overly happy.

I’m High on Life, Are You?

Other times the question was asked almost enviously, in the context of, “I wish I had an ounce of your energy, drive, or passion.”  To some, I guess I was too strong of a wind that upset the status quo.  To others thankfully, I was and am like a refreshing breeze inspiring movement, change, and energy.  If I am not reserved, quiet, or calm, I must be “on something”… right? Surely I must not be aware of all the painful, unhappy, and wrongs going on in the world. For the record I do not drink alcohol, smoke anything, take any drugs (prescription or otherwise), or even drink caffeinated coffee or soda. I have a natural high.  I’m high on life.

So instead of me thinking something was wrong with me, the correct question should have been, “What’s…

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Barbara Talley is a keynote speaker, author of six books, and trainer on value-based living themes.  She also offers Effective Communication, Diversity, Leadership, Time Management, and Goal Setting workshops.  Visit her at www.thepoetspeaks.com or contact her at 301-428-4831.  You may email her at Barbara@ThePoetSpeaks.com