BIG AND AWKWARD…

Take a minute and have a laugh! 🙂

LAUGHTER IS THE BEST WAY TO KEEP WARM

Right now in most of America, we are feeling the brunt of the Polar Vortex. That is just a fancy way to say, “It’s freezing!”

I am a firm believer one of the best ways to keep warm in this arctic turn is to laugh.

Please enjoy one of my new favorite comedians, Leanne Morgan.

This made my day!

I hope this video inspires you to make someone else’s day.

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE

I will be the first to say that I am a cat person.

I have a heart for felines for some reason.

As most of you know, I lost my cat of six years a few weeks ago.

I swore off pets. I said that it was going to be a long time if ever before I got another cat.

Sam will be gone three weeks this Saturday, and the house has be empty without him.

I was perusing adoption sites and found these two. Needless to say, I couldn’t resist.

Here are Jerry Lee & Lewis. We are starting a new chapter together.

I encourage you to rescue and adopt your next pet. This is the season of giving. Think about giving a dog or cat a good home.

LAID UP

 

As I stated last week, many exciting things happened during my absence from my blog.

In my time away from my blog, my first CD came out. 

It was a fun project. We recorded it in front of a packed standing room only crowd at the Rhinestone Wedding Chapel on historic Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee.  The Rhinestone Wedding Chapel is the only place in middle Tennessee you can have a Las Vegas style wedding.

This is the link.

LAID UP

Tell your friends! It would make a great gift as the holidays a quickly approaching.

The View from the Mountain

I just want to take a moment to salute Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is the last speech he gave in 1968. Each time I heart it, tears fill my eyes. We are not here to live solely for ourselves, but we are here to serve others.

Dr. King, I feel, epitomized what it meant to live beyond ourselves for the greater good and greater purpose.

Thank you, Dr. King, for laying pavers on the path of victory.

Great advice to make the world a happier place.

It’s rare to get good advice from a celebrity but this one is pretty good!

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The Best Lesson I Was Never Taught

People just need to be honest.

From birth to college, we encourage kids that they can be whatever they want to be. As a kid, I remember storybooks and TV shows and well-meaning adults telling me my dreams are limitless, and I could achieve it all. In college, they feed you the line that no matter your major, you can make no less than $100,000 year* pursuing it.

Somewhere along the way, with that repeated message of limitless possibility floating around in the universe, I became a dreamer. I believed that I could do anything, and anything could happen. As of a matter of fact, I still do.

In all of the above, failure is never mentioned. The fact that _____________ may not happen is never brought up. You are just left believing the dream.

The best lesson I was never taught was you will fail more than you succeed.

Anything is possible, and you are apt to have limitless success; none of that will be possible without failure. When you think about it, how would we know what success is if we did not know what failure was? We know what’s good because we know what’s bad.

When it comes to pursuing our dreams, we need to be realistic about failure. Failure needs to be acknowledged, but it does not have to be accepted.

No amount of success will come without a good amount of setbacks and stumbles. That’s why we, as dreamers, must be greater than our failure. Our failures and setbacks from our past must not be our last words.

I wish that we would be honest with kids. (I wish someone would have been honest with me and let me in on the secret.) Instead of telling children they can do anything, we need to tell them they can do anything regardless of the challenge. We need to be honest with ourselves when we have new ambitions. We need not forget the limitless possibilities that life holds because each set back and failure is just a set up for success.

(*-This is an exaggeration. J)

This was my fortune cookie the other night.

No Is Not An Acceptable Answer!

One of my New Years goals is to know when “no” is not the correct answer.

Despite being 6’5 and the size of a professional football player, I am scared of the word “no”. In the past, I have totally bypassed situations and didn’t go for certain goals because I was afraid that I was going to be told “No”.  I did not want to experience rejection.

“No” has never killed anyone. The ability to not take “no” as an answer is what separates great people from ordinary people.

So far this year, I have taken some chances. I have emailed and contacted people with ideas that I have been tossing around. Believe it or not I have gotten more yeses than nos.

It is so important to remember that “no” does not have to stop you.

“I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.” – Billy Joel

Is there anything stopping you?

THIS YEAR, I LIVE!

My New Year’s Resolution this year is simple. I have decided that I am going to live. I am done setting lofty 12-month goals that mean little or nothing in the grand scheme.

It seems the people that have the greatest desire to live and achieve are those that are dying, and no longer have the chance.

This year, instead of setting some huge unattainable 12-month goal, I am going to evaluate my life and really determine what’s important to me; not what others tell me is important.

Then, I’m going for it! Whatever “it” may be.

I refuse to be one of those people that have every excuse in the book of why things did not happen as they planned, or they have play the blame game for their circumstances.

I am going to breathe fresh air. I am going to stare in the night sky and take in every star. I am going to marvel at the grass’ green hue after the rain. I am going to take in the simple things.

With every input there is an output.

As I take in life, I am going to do my best to use my God given talent to give back in every capacity I can.

One of my favorite quotes is from Erma Bombeck, she says, “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”

I want to use up all that I have for the greater good.

I hope that you will do the same, and know what it means to truly live.