Do you accept the gift?

The Practice:
Receive generosity.

Why?

Life gives to each one of us in so many ways.

For starters, there’s the bounty of the senses – including chocolate chip cookies, jasmine, sunsets, wind singing through pine trees, and just getting your back scratched.

We live in a time when breakthroughs are sought to prevent or reverse aging. For the longest time aging itself, although a universal process, was a deep mystery. There is no gene for aging, and nothing is completely predictable, because no two people age alike, not even identical twins.

Everyone on the planet is either operating from their peace or from their pain. When you trace everything you can’t stand about the world back to its origin, you’ll find pain. 

When I look at the people I grew up with, they didn’t know any better. Were they bad people? No, they just didn’t have a choice. Society wasn’t constructed for them to thrive, the system wasn’t constructed for them to get ahead. People in states of survival make choices that don’t make any sense to other people who aren’t surviving. 

Many of us take our families for granted even though it is the biggest source of happiness and peace in our lives. If you feel like you should boost the time you spend with your kids, spouse or parents, there are many ideas on how you can spend that time productively. Here are a few best ideas that will make your family time unforgettable: 

Cook and eat together

The habit of having at least one meal together a day will change your family dynamic for the better. This meal can be either breakfast or dinner if you can’t have lunch together because of work or school. Use this time to share your feelings and thoughts, offer encouraging words, discuss your day and share a lot of laughs. If you have time, you can prepare weekend meals together. Gather interesting new recipes, buy groceries and do your best to recreate meals around the world. This is a great opportunity to learn about different cultures and foods and expand your menu. 

I've Been Thinking...

I cannot help but think of my own mother. In fact, I’ve been thinking about her all week. I’ve even been talking to her all week. Yes, I have. Even though she has been gone more than a decade, I still turn to her for guidance. 

Some years ago it was considered a secret that explaining the universe had reached a dead end. Only the most informed scientists talked about it, but eventually a major shift occurred, and the public caught on. Instead of a Theory of Everything, which had been the holy grail of physics, a state of confusion, conflicting theories, advanced mathematics, and wild out-of-the-box speculations defined the mess that had come about. No one could say where space, time, matter, and energy came from, and they still can’t.

Throughout my four-plus decades of working as an internationally renowned leader in personal development, I have connected and collaborated with thousands of business owners who have turned to me for advice on how to take their businesses to the next level. 

Many of these entrepreneurs have been graduates of my popular Train the Trainer program, and are eager to start attracting clients and grow a business as a certified Canfield Success Principles coach. 

The demonstration of our good is evident through the laws of life which are always working.We have the ability to demonstrate and measure our good by being able to see and create what we desire. Many people do not believe they can have what they desire; therefore, they do not ask for what they truly want.They believe that to gain their desires they must rely upon themselves and their limited resources rather than asking God.We say in Unity,“we ask what and leave the how up to God.” How big is our demonstration? How big is our belief and how strong is our faith in God?

Words—no matter how intangible they seem—hold so much meaning. 

Because of words, we can tell our stories, share our dreams, and mouth our aspirations. They can spark a revolution and inspire people to push for a meaningful cause. 

At the same time, words are powerful enough to become weapons of negativity. They can hurt, alienate, and discriminate. Words can become too hateful and judgmental, that is why we should use them mindfully. 

Stress is toxic to our health, contributing to heart disease, depression, and many other physical and mental ailments. Research shows that mindfulness meditation is a powerful tool to help reduce anxiety, depression, and stress! The stress-reducing power of mindfulness is amplified when we combine it with self-compassion.

Life is a movie and William Shakespeare was right when he wrote that all of the world is a stage and all the men and women are merely players. Writers have keen observation and they observe life. Comedians do the same, observing human behavior. 

With so much advice on personal finance out there, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. I know from my own experience that my view on personal finance has shifted substantially since college. I’m grateful to now be able to impart this knowledge with my clients and with you!

A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a friend or loved one, tell the story of how someone helped you rise and land.

This is from my book of poems in progress, The Tone in the Center of the Bell.

This Uncertain Moment Is Your Gift | Maria Delivers Commencement Address to University of Michigan

Good morning, Michigan! I’m really excited to be here today in the Big House to celebrate YOU, the class of 2022!

Now, let me be honest: I initially said no to the invitation to be your speaker. I said I had a scheduling conflict, and that I was already planning to be here next weekend for my son Christopher’s graduation. He was part of the class of 2020, the only class in Michigan history to not have a graduation ceremony. Thank you, Covid! But now, finally, his class will have their own moment to shine right here next Saturday!

There is a creative state of confusion that is incredibly special: bewilderment. Ordinary confusion bothers us because people find it hard to live with uncertainty. Stress is increased if you don’t know what’s going to happen next. But instead of being an anxious state like ordinary confusion, bewilderment is the exact opposite: it leads to creativity, wonder and awe. If you are really bewildered, you will experience bliss.

Hello Dear Friends, Cultural Creatives & Seekers Everywhere,

As a Professor in the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine, I taught medical students the conventional insights of The Central Dogma, the notion referred to in the biological curriculum as Genetic Determinism. This is the belief that genes “control” our biological traits, including our anatomy, our behavioral and our emotional traits.” Simply, our lives are “programmed” in the DNA (genes) we acquired from our parents at conception.

While that was the conventional story in the classroom, my research on stem cells in 1967 revealed an alternative reality. The clonal cell culture studies showed that genetically identical cells grown in chemically different culture media (their “environment”) expressed different developmental fates. The research emphasized that Environment controls genes!!! Twenty-three years later, science officially recognized this new awareness as the revolutionary new scientific field of Epigenetics. Epigenetic science emphasizes the role of “Nurture” over Nature.

As far as we know, we did not choose our genes; we cannot change our genes if we don’t like their traits; and on top of that, we are taught that genes turn on-and-off by themselves. For example, when people say that a cancer gene (oncogene) turns “on,” they are emphasizing the idea that genes make decisions that control our fate. Genetic determinism states that genes “control” our lives and we cannot in turn “control” our genes … we are powerless victims of our heredity. This leads to the notion that cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc., “runs” in families because of inherited genes. With this belief, Nature, not Nurture, controls our life experiences.

“A human body is a “skin-covered” culture dish, containing about 50 trillion cells growing in the original culture medium, our blood. Relevance: It does not make a difference if a cell is grown in a plastic culture dish or a skin covered culture dish, genetic activity and behavior are controlled by the chemistry of the laboratory’s culture medium or the body’s blood.

Aha! The final insight is that blood chemistry is controlled by the brain serving as an information processor that translates images from the mind into complementary, gene-regulating chemistry in the blood. Hormones, neuropeptides, growth factors and molecules of emotion represent blood-borne factors that control genes and behavior.

A fundamental principle of quantum physics is that consciousness creates the character of our lives. How’s that working out for you ? … are you manifesting Heaven-on-Earth ? Very few are. The reason is that programs in the subconscious mind control our behavior around 95% of the day , acting as an “autopilot” when the creative conscious mind is engaged in thought. Problems arise because greater than 50% of subconscious behavioral programs represent disempowering, self-sabotaging, and limiting beliefs, which obviously, when engaged, undermine our wishes and desires.

Big conclusion. The upside is that Epigenetics reveals that we are not victims but are actually masters of our genetics. The downside for most of the world’s population is that they are still victims, not of their genome, but of the programs in their mind. The creative (self) conscious mind provides for our wishes, desires, and aspirations, while the subconscious mind is a “hard-drive” engaging behavioral programs derived from instincts, life experiences and knowledge provided by parents, teachers, and spiritual leaders.

The good news is that to thrive into the future, we don’t need to alter our genetics … it’s a lot easier than that. All we have to do is rewrite limiting self-conscious beliefs that prevent us from experiencing our wishes and desires. Armed with the empowering knowledge of the role of “self” in manifesting life’s desires, individuals will gain the “self-empowerment” that will enable them to heal the planet and provide for a healthy, sustainable civilization.

Please support our evolution by spreading this “Good News"

It was a natural transition to intentionally connect with the love, light and guidance of my soul. The connection allows me to both see and feel the love and wisdom of my truth. I become infused with this powerful energy that helps me heal and make wise choices. This practice has allowed my soul to show me my highest vibrational path of this life.

We each have free will and a gazillion choices. With that being said, just for a second, imagine if you were guided to choose a life that offers the greatest love and happiness.

Today, let’s talk about the Law of Attraction. It’s been sitting in my mind and in my heart because so many people struggle with the Law of Attraction. They want to manifest all these things in their life, and yet they have this fear that if I say something, if I think something for too long, then I’m going to create that thing in my life. For example, if I worry about or I say out loud something like “I’m feeling not well” or “I’m not feeling great” – then I don’t want to say it out loud. I don’t want to talk about it. And I don’t want to put energy towards it.

I get that idea of not wanting to put energy towards things. I totally get it. I don’t want you to put energy towards it either. But when you have a thought or a feeling or you are taking an action and you are in a place where you are not you and it is a low vibration, you are creating resistance towards the fear in the first place. So, you just make it bigger. So, when we think about Law of Attraction, we think about the things that we are bringing to our lives. We’re focusing on either they’re kind of rooted in love, or they’re rooted in fear, right? If they’re rooted in fear and you have a thought like, “oh, I’m never going to be able to do blah, blah, blah.” Right? “Never going to make it to whatever it is you think you need to make it to.” So, I’m never going to make it to blah, blah, blah … and you have that thought, but you say, “Oh my God, I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to tell people. I don’t want to feel it.” – most of the time it is I don’t want to feel it, right? So, then what we do is we just keep pushing it down. We just keep pushing it down. We just keep pushing it down. And when you push that down, it gets bigger. The resistance of it makes it bigger. It makes it stronger. So, you’ve got to remember that those negative thoughts, those fear-based thoughts … they’re just thoughts. But when you try to hide them, when you try to push them down, when you try to ignore them or deny them, they are going to get bigger just because of the energy resistance.