Some powerlessness comes from external factors that are beyond our control (the holocaust is an extreme example of this) people stripped of dignity and all rights and treated in ways inconceivable to the human mind.

Some powerlessness, however, is learned behavior. For example, a child who grew up in an abusive family, might grow up, leave home, get married and successfully run their own business, yet still feel powerless. This learned thinking (i.e. everyone but ME is in control of me), although no longer true, feels very true to the person living it.

Breaking out of this cycle isn’t easy, but it’s possible. And it begins by learning that you count. You have the right to be in charge of your own life. You have the power to make decisions that are best for you. You have the right to ask for what you need, and to express how you feel.

You do matter. And you can make a difference in your life. It’s possible to take the reins back and steer your life in the direction you want it to go.

When a person, who once felt like the world ran them, begins to experience the feelings of power, whole new horizons open up before them. They realize they don’t have to be a victim anymore! What they think and feel does matter. They have the opportunity to change course and change their minds. They aren’t just a tiny boat being thrashed to and fro on a big scary ocean, no! They’re the captain of a big luxury cruise liner and have their destination in sights and are steering the boat exactly where they want to go.

We might not be able to control every aspect of our lives, and I’m not suggesting that we try. But, we can influence the circumstances in our lives, plot our course and make decisions that are best for us. We don’t have to give our power to someone else. It’s ours! So don’t feel guilty for taking some power back and learning how to steer your life in the direction of your dreams.

“How you perceive yourself determines what you think you are able to do and that determines in turn what you will try. So the self-concept has a tremendous effect upon the intelligence of the individual.”
–Arthur W. Combs

I have to stay focused on hope and possibilities because I am easily saddened when faced with the reality of my condition.

Having said that, it is what it is. I choose not to focus on the loss.

I have defined a new reality.

This reality is awesome! Whether or  not I’m able to live my life the way I planned, (and I’m working every day to learn to walk again,)  I will continue on this journey! This life is exciting and fun!

Jodie Thompson and Kimberly Castleberry have created Profit Being You, a membership community that has a free tier where you can join to get the support and education to create success online!

Everyone can succeed online, whether or not you have limiting medical conditions. I enjoy helping people recognize success.

Very soon Profit Being You is joining forces with Tribe Syndication Alliance. Now is the time to join for free!

So many of you reading this post, have already joined PBY and TSA! I’d love to hear how you discovered this entire community online!  For you who haven’t, click here Profit Being You and join PBY for free!

Talking to Tom made me remember where I was back in Jun 2005. It was then that I realized I had to define my new reality.  I want to share what I’ve learned.

I have learned many things on my journey.  A very important piece of advice came from my physical therapist at the beginning of my MS journey. She told me to keep the knowledge of MS in the back of my mind, always taking care of myself, but not putting it in the front of my mind where all the focus is.     

I’m not saying to stuff it down inside with all the other junk that we’ve emotionally  stuffed inside over the years. 

You probably all know the grieving process. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is famous for her understanding of grief. She identified 5 stages:
1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance

During my MS Journey, living through the 5 stages of grief, I learned many things. One of the first things I learned is that every person is extremely valuable. 

No matter what our circumstances are, we possess unlimited potential. 

I began to understand that we must learn to be honest with ourselves and feel the emotional pain.

I started to comprehend that we can reprogram our minds and truly love ourselves. I began to internalize that we all deserve prosperity.

I was actively learning these lessons and  when I admitted to myself that this MS experience was really a bag of gold and my gold was “enlightenment”,  I didn’t understand why I wasn’t healed.

I was realizing in today’s society, death is viewed as a failure of the medical profession, or with this new understanding of the Law of Attraction, a failure in ourselves. 
 
Dying can be our finest hour, or our most terrible.  Regardless, it is our own personal experience and our ultimate challenge.  How we deal with this experience is entirely in our hands… not in the hands of the doctors, our family or our friends.  This is our experience and we must take control.
 
Barbara Karnes  said about dying “We need to try to heal ourselves in whichever way we feel inwardly directed.  For some it will be conventional treatment, for others it will be alternative methods, and for still others it will be an innate sense of knowing that no treatment is the best treatment.  Whatever your choice, know that disease is one of the ways our spirit chooses to leave our body.  At some point it’s all right to say, “I quit!”  You’ll know when that time comes by how tired you are of living.  Sometimes it’s just too hard to keep on living.”
Recognizing Elizabeth’s book about grieving was written for terminally ill patients, acceptance of death was the end result.

I had accepted my life as I was experiencing it.  The life-expectancy is not severely diminished with Multiple Sclerosis, it is often the quality of life that is affected.  And I had done as Elizabeth encourages us to do, accept death.

Five years ago, I wrote in my journal, “OK, Here it is in a nut shell – I’ve gone thru the five steps in the grief process but I was totally stuck in the emotion of it all.  I didn’t know there was a “next step.”  My friend, Susie Morgan, helped me see. Susie said “It’s time to define ‘your new reality’ – then invest in it.” 

You know, I needed to figure out what I can do, what I want to do, and do it!”

Then I understood my physical therapist’s advice. I must put the disease in the back of my mind, not in the front.  When Susie suggested that I define my new reality – I understood.   I took Elizabeth’s advice and mourned the loss of life as I had expected, then began to identify my new reality.  

I then experienced a miracle.  I feel I was given a second chance.

With this second chance, just as Susie helped me to see, I began to define my new reality – then invest in it.”  You know, I needed to figure out what I can do, what I want to do, and do it!” 

That’s what led me here, online.

I’ve found an entire community of people who love to work from home either due to illness or by choice.  I’ve partnered with an amazing organization that I can truly get behind.  I’ve learned how I can have it all!  I have identified my new reality, something that I can do, that I enjoy doing, and a place where I help others along the way.  My new reality is wonderful!

Tell me what your reality is!  I’d love to hear!

Now it’s time to put all this work into action.

Create a To-Do List. To-Do Lists are prioritized lists of all the tasks that you need to carry out, starting with the most important.

As I said, my organization technique is the basically the same that I learned with the Franklin planner in the ‘80’s.  It has the computer-age advantages with Mind Tools.  You can read and implement it from the Mind Tools website.

It is worth the time it takes to get organized.  Time spent with this activity will truly enable you to reach higher heights no matter what your ‘end goal’ is. 

This system took me through a successful college carrier and through raising eight children. Now I’m using it to succeed in online marketing. 

It’s taken me a few months to transition from pencil and paper to a keyboard and word document but when I did, it was liberating! 

And it saves time!!  A friend of mine, Louise Steiner wrote a post on Time Management and it compliments my ideas of To-do lists! 

To be able to store my list on my PC desktop where it is MUCH more orderly, is wonderful!  I have simply created a ‘word’ document entitled ‘Personal To-Do List’ and written everything I needed to get done. 

To do that, you simply:
open a new page in Word,
Write the title on the top of the page, I wrote “Personal To-Do List” then “enter”
click “Table”
in the drop-down menu click, select “Insert” 
then click “Table”.
On Number of columns: 1
Number of rows: 35
OK

I’ve written everything I need to do on the list.  Each morning I review the list of my tasks for the day. It’s easy to copy and paste items, moving them to the top of the list, showing  importance or urgency (if you need a new line, simply go back to Table and click. On the drop down menu hover over insert, then you’ll see where you can add rows above or below).

As I’m working through my goals and a thought or idea pops into my mind, I simply open my list and write it down.  When I complete the goal, I can delete it. 

I have a ‘publisher’ spread sheet for various items that I need remembered. When I have completed a task, I’ll write the details at the assigned spot on my spread sheet to remember.   At the end of every day, I review my list, making changes where necessary and click Save! 
 
I would love to hear how you manage your to-do lists!  And I’m curious to know how and when you figured it out!!

With those pre-computer-day skills, I’ve lived an organized life.  Now that I’m blogging, I’ve found the words already printed out on Mind Tools a free resource for organization skills.  It’s not surprising that 30 years later, the information is the same. 

Its important to start our goal creation by envisioning where we’d like to be in 10 years and you’ve probably already done that with a dream board.
Then to put our dreams on paper in general terms. Now it’s time to break it down, scrutinize our general goals. 

Using the general goals you’ve already written, set a 1-year plan, 6-month plan, and a 1-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.

Back in my Franklin/ college days I planned life-time goals (you know, the ones that cover 10 years of your life.) Now, 30 years later, I’m writing new goals for this chapter of my life, marketing online.

Goal setting is a life long project that needs daily attention. 

Goal Setting Tips

The following general guidelines from Mind Tools help to set effective goals:
• State each goal as a positive statement: Get in the habit of expressing your goals positively – “implement this technique well’ is a much better goal than ‘Don’t make this stupid mistake.’

• Be specific: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.

• Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.

• Write goals down: This helps you focus.

• Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.

• Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite disappointing to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control! If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.

• Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. As you learn and grow, you’ll recognize how much to expect of your time, adjust your goals accordingly.
Mindtools. Has a clever mnemoic-

SMART Goals:
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:

• S Specific
• M Measurable
• A Attainable
• R Relevant
• T Time-bound

For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!

Goal setting works!  Tomorrow we’ll put it all together and talk about our daily To-Do list.

Have you mastered the skill of setting goals?  I’m curious if you used the Franklin Planner when it was first introduced in the early ‘80s?

 ”People with goals succeed because they know where they are going. It’s as simple as that.” Earl Nightingale

By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You’ll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.

Properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you’ll find that your self-confidence builds quickly.

Positive self-esteem is formed as we experience success.

My good friend, Brent Huntington, talks about two types of Goals: Give up and Get up

Give Up Goals are the goals to stop doing something, stop overeating, quit smoking, stop yelling at the kids, quit using the credit card, and the list goes on.

Get Up Goals are the goals we want to add to our lives, start valuing self, begin treating our spouse the way they deserve, start a business, or begin earning more money.

Today we’re going to talk about Get Up Goals -

Get Up Goals Are a Driving Force

Goal setting techniques are used by successful people everywhere. Goals give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. With your goals, you will acquire the knowledge and help you need to organize your time and resources in order to get the most out of life.

By setting clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievements. When documenting, you’ll see progress in short order. These accomplishments might have previously seemed impossible.

Starting to Set Up ‘Get Up’ Goals

Step One: Dream – dream-  Now that you have identified your dreams, and they are set and captured in picture form in general terms, on your dream board, the next step is to indentify, categorize, write.
Step Two:  Categorize – identify and write down your Dream Goals. Make a list that gives an overall picture of where you want to be in this life.

Step Three: Baby Steps – break these down into the smaller and smaller goals that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Broken down into baby steps, for each goal makes it doable -

Step Four: Action – start working to achieve your goals.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, write a list of areas that are important to you.  Here are the general areas that are important to me, choose areas that are important to you. Set goals in some of these categories or in categories of your own, things that are important to you, we’ll go in greater detail a little later.  I like to use my PC because as I add to my list, I don’t have to re-write.

Spirituality/ Attitude – Take some time and for serious introspection. What do you want to be like? Discover what is important to you.

Relationships – Do you want a spouse?  What do you want your marriage to look like? Do you want children? What kind of parent do you want to be?

Career – What do you want to do to support yourself financially?  It’s true~ do what you love and the money will follow!  What do you love?

Financial- What is a comfortable amount of money to live on? Not how much do you think you could make, but how much do you want – remember these are your Dream Goals.

Physical – What state of health and fitness do you want to achieve? Are you hoping to stay fit as you age?  What goals do you have to set to achieve that state of health?

Recreation – What do you like to do for fun?  Make sure you set goals that are for yourself, for your enjoyment.

Service – You have so much to give to others, how do you dream of helping others?

As you complete your Broad Range of Dream Goals written on paper, you can start to break them down into a do-able form. 
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about ways to do just that, break down our goals into smaller ones.  I store my GOALS on my Desk Top so I have easy access to them.  You’ll see the importance of this when we discuss the Baby Steps tomorrow!

Get your paper and pencils out (or your typing fingers in action) and Have a Grand and Productive Day!

“Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.”

Mindtools is a wonderful site with hundreds of free resources to help you with your goal setting and career building.

It all starts with a dream.

Turn dreams into goals – goals turn into plans- plans turn into reality.

 The process of life planning begins with the simple exercise of trying to imagine where and what you would like to be on a specific date from today.

Think of your ideal life 10 years from now.

What would you like to have accomplished;

What would you like to be able to do;

What sort of person would you like to be;

What kind of relationships would you like to have with your friends, with your family, with yourself;

Where would you like to be spiritually;

What sort of environment would you like to be in at home, at work??

Create a “Dream Board,” a collage or collection of what you dream of in your future.

First: Get a large poster board, glue or two sided tape, and scissors.

Second: Collect pictures from magazines, pictures that show where you want to be, what you want to look like, what you want to have or how you want to feel. Paste them on the poster board and have fun with this!

Third: Get a picture of yourself that you really like, and paste it in the middle of the board so you see yourself surrounded by your dreams!

Fourth: Place the Dream Board in a visible place, above your desk, or on your bulletin board. Some place where you will see it every day. Take a few minutes at the beginning of every morning and again every night to keep your dreams in the front of your mind. Identifying your dreams is the first step in making your dreams come true!

Go wild! Have fun with it! The sky is the limit, it’s your dreams!

Have you already created your Dream Board? If not, now is a good time to create. Dream big and make it happen!

Another mistake. I made another mistake! I messed up my Google analytics account. Don’t ask me how. I had been getting such comfort in watching my numbers grow over the months of blogging. Not to have that comfort is really sad, and it’s all my fault! I’m stressedl!

I asked Kimberly for help and she said, “Sorry hun, I don’t have time right now, I encourage you to do something that you can do (like write a post) and not worry about something that you don’t know how to fix.”

Laughter! Laughter, I need laughter! And laughter really is the best medicine!   Thinking about posting these funny stories makes me feel good!

There is fun and laughter in everything! I am amazed at how my feelings have changed just thinking of funny experiences –

Funny Teen-age Story
On my first trip to California, I was a young girl of 18 years with long blond hair, a thin waistline and, unfortunately, a lip full of cold sores. As I was strutting down the boardwalk at Venice Beach admiring all of the buff bodies, I self-consciously covered up my mouth. As I paused, looking at the jewelry in a vendor’s case, a muscle-bound young man came up to the counter to help me. “Oh no, I thought putting my hand even more securely in front of my mouth “he’s going to see my lips!” Without looking directly at his face I could see in my peripheral vision that he was one of those huge body-builder types. To my horror, I heard him ask “Are those cold sores on your lips?” “Shoot,” I thought, “He saw!” While avoiding eye contact I heard him say, “Here, try this cream, it will really help!” and I felt him putting the cream on my mouth. As I looked up into his deep blue eyes I saw an attractively contoured face, beautiful golden hair, a silky smooth complexion… and a lip full of cold sores!

Funny MS Story
I have a walker that I can sit on, when I’m too tired to walk. Brady, my teenage son, was pushing me on the walker like a wheel chair only I’m facing backwards, (it looks really silly and is embarrassing.) One time we were at the airport in California, we were running behind to catch our plane.

We caught a moving sidewalk to feel ‘bionic’ – dananana…When we stepped onto the moving sidewalk we picked up speed …dananana…. As we know in every airport there are tons of people, which were right behind us! The walker took up the width of the entire sidewalk but that was OK because he was still pushing me, so we were going very fast. When we got to the end Brady slowed down to prevent me from tumbling backwards. But what he didn’t realize there was a bump from the transition plate to transfer from the moving sidewalk to the solid floor. The wheels came to an abrupt halt, which surprised us both.

Realizing that I’m stuck, I attempted to stand up forgetting I’m on a moving sidewalk (because I couldn’t feel the motion) resulting in my feet getting pulled under the walker, backwards. In the attempt to saving myself while Brady leaned over to assess the situation, completely oblivious to the people behind us, I grabbed the moving handrail…dananana… which caused me to start twisting as I was getting pulled under my walker, I attempted to call for help, which came out as a moan. Brady realizing that I was in distress looked behind him, saw the people! They had caught up with us, and started walking backwards but were still RIGHT THERE, and there were more coming.

With more people approaching, Brady started to become uneasy. In the back of the crowd, he could see a man pushing an elderly man in a wheel chair approaching fast. I was still getting sucked under and twisted and calling for help. The man pushing the wheel chair then yelled MOOVE not realizing my condition, caused Brady to panic. I don’t know how he did it, Brady doesn’t remember either, somehow he swooped around and lifted me and my walker off the end just in time for the crowd and the man with the wheel chair to blow by like a bursting damn!

Now feeling human, being safe on solid ground, we couldn’t help but laugh. As we continued to laugh the crowd was reassured of our well being. Brady remembers the ‘wheelchair pusher’ scowling as he passed. It was just one of those times when it’s so intense, if everyone’s ok, it’s hilarious. And to this day, it still remains the funniest, most intense MS experience of my life! Brady and I laughed to the point of tears as we wrote this story.

You’d have to be there to get the full affect …dananana…

I’m good at a lot of things after hard work, like being a good parent. That didn’t happen over night. I started learning,  reading, and practicing 25 years ago. And I made many mistakes.

Why do I forget that and expect to know everything about blogging right now?  Kimberly, thank you for your patience in teaching, just like a parent!

That’s enough, I can go to sleep now, I feel better~ Laughter really is the best medicine!

I’d love to hear your funny stories! Tell me in the comments below then we can all enjoy them!

I’ve taken control of my eating and am following Ivy Larson’s Gold Cost Cure. Ivy claims her MS was cured with the food she chose.

Even following Ivy’s diet, I was still feeling the effects of Multiple Sclerosis.

My friend, Darlene Davis suggested Elaine Delack’s Prokarin patch. I studied the information and decided to give it a try, using the ‘Patch’ everyday. Prokarin is not one of the MS society’s drugs of preference. My alternative doctor, Dr. Vincent, prescribed it for me. 

I’ve been using the patch for about 5 months and I’m feeling better than I’ve felt for 10 years!  I feel energetic and excited about life! 

I’m not able to walk everywhere I used to be able to, but I want to! I’ll work hard, and I will someday!  I’m grateful that I feel so well! 

Elaine Delack has a great story~ she’s an impressive lady! I’m grateful she created this wonderful alternative for us to try!

I know from experience that one drug or supplement doesn’t work for everyone.  I’ve tried almost all of the drugs that are endorsed by the  MS society. Some worked for a while then my body build up resistance.

I’ve tried many alternative treatments also.  I waited until I tried everything else before I did bee venom therapy.   I was scared thinking of a bunch of bee stings- who wouldn’t be? (no pun intended) When I received 20 stings 3 times a week I knew why! I know Bee venom helps some people, all it did for me was give me a two hour adrenalin boost. That was definitely not worth the pain!

One good thing, I became great friends with Suzanne!  She’s like me~is not afraid of honey bees, or setting them on me to provide the sting!

I tease about  MS being a popular disease to have right now.  Prokarin is really helping.  I want to get the word out for anyone who wants to give it a try!

It will be fun to see what my future has in store!   

Mom, you can follow my progress here with my monthly updates!

Leave a comment below if you, or someone you know has MS. Then pass this information on to them!   I know I always like to hear what’s out there!

PS. I’m doing my exercises 6 days a week!

Double Gas Mileage, no pollution, no alteration needed

PATENT APPROVED!!!

Will work on vehicles right now.

No Vehicle alterations needed.

3 Choices:

1. Additive. Put 5oz in regular 20 gal tank of gas in any fuel burning vehicle. It will give you 5-25 more miles to the gallon and cut pollution down by 1/3.
2. Future Haul. Pure Future Haul. Run any gasoline vehicle No pollution.
3. Diesel Future Haul. 90% Pollution reduction only 2% petroleum products.

PATENT APPROVED!!!

The Department of Energy in Washington D.C. has tested this fuel on abt. 30,000 vehicles.

Q. So this fuel creates no pollution and vehicles that use it get between double and triple the gas mileage they were with unleaded gas?

A. Yes and Pure Future Hall no pollution, Diesel 10% pollution

Q. As far as the vehicle goes, do I have to install any new equipment or parts to run this fuel?

A. No run it as the car it, no special filters, no alterations of the vehicles have to be made. FutureHaul will not cause any damage to diesel engines, will run through diesel like any other high quality diesel fuel.

Q. Will FutureHaul fuel run anything that uses unleaded fuel and leaded fuel?

A. Yes, Motorcycles, lawn mower, snow blowers, anything that burns gas.

PATENT APROVED!!

These fuels use between 9-12 ounces of oil to make 1 gallon of fuel.
Current gasoline needs 2.1 gallons of Oil to make 1 gallon.

Mike is looking for an industry to produce FutureHaul at large scale.

News Agencies:

All news agencies who would like to schedule an interview and test these
world changing fuels please contact:

Mike R Church
CEO, Future Haul LLC
mike.church@futurehaul-llc.com

Isn’t it exciting to see History in the Making? I wonder how long it will take for the paten to be purchased and FutureHaul produced!