Don’t feed me all the cliches today and the sugary sap. Give me honesty. Speak from your heart. That I can take.

Don’t quote me from your latest self-help book and regurgitate the contents. Tell me how you really feel and what your soul is saying.

Don’t fill my head with worn out words and platitudes. Fill my heart with meaning, substance, purpose, value.

Don’t judge me by your standards or their measure. Just hold me and love me and make me feel better.

Don’t tell me of things you’ve only read about.
Speak to me of things you know in your gut, so I can know them too.

Don’t offer me advice. I haven’t asked you for it.
Offer me a hand and a shoulder to cry on, when I need one.

Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.
Show me what is possible, and let me find my way.

Don’t regale me with your conquests and your victories.
Speak to me of heartbreak and of joy, of sadness and of glory.

Don’t deny me my emotions or rob me of my feelings.
Allow me the space to let them surface and move on.

Don’t hide your pain from me. Or your grief and sorrow.
Tell me how it felt and how you made it through.

Don’t try to fix me or change me or make me better.
Show me where I’m already shining and point the light there.

If you can do these things for me, you will have served me well.

Copyright ©2010 by Veronica Hay

Veronica Hay is an inspirational writer/author who provides support and resources to help you live a richer life. Visit her website at: www.insightsandinspirations.com – Veronica is also the publisher of  ”A Magazine of People and Possibilities” an inspirational, self help, holistic publication, in print for 21 years and online for 17 years at: www.peopleandpossibilities.com
Email: veronicamhay@gmail.com

What is your individual purpose? What would you like to be able to say is your legacy? I believe that each of us wants to find our purpose in life, our raison d’etre or reason for being. We need to have a motive to get out of bed in the morning. We want to feel alive and passionate about something. Something that makes a difference in the world. We are not alone in this and yet many of us are still searching for that purpose.

Purpose is much bigger than goals, yet we are advised in many of the self help and productivity books to set goals. However, If you are aligned with your purpose, the goals just fall into place.

I was friends with a fellow who set a goal to find the woman of his dreams, have a successful business and own his own beautiful home with a Mercedes Benz parked in the driveway, all by the age of forty. He did manage to achieve all of it and yet he admitted to me that none of it had brought him the peace and happiness that he had aspired to. He did not feel truly content or fulfilled and this really surprised and disappointed him. For him, these goals didn’t really come from the inside. They were simply based on what he thought he should do or have in order to look good and feel respected by his peers. They were more in alignment with what “society” tells us will make us happy than what our heart is saying. They came from the outside. Purpose has to come from the inside.

I was particularly touched by an email I received recently from a fellow who came across an interview I did several years ago with Dr. Leo Buscaglia, author and motivational speaker.

Dr. Buscaglia had an awakening to purpose moment while teaching at the University of Southern California when one of his most talented students committed suicide. As a result of that experience, Leo began a non-credit class he called “Love 1A” and he became known as the “Love Doctor”.

Of all the interviews I have done over the years, with people such as Dr. Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch etc, the one interview of which I have received the most feedback in the form of emails and letters is the one with Dr. Buscaglia. I will be forever grateful for Leo’s support and encouragement of my work and I was so honoured that he agreed to an interview, something he rarely did.

Sadly, Dr. Buscaglia passed away this month in 1998. Even though Leo has been gone now for 12 years, his legacy still lives on. So many of my readers have told me that they want to continue his work and make it a part of their own legacy of love.

For many of us, our awakening to purpose comes out of a major life crisis, a suicide in Leo’s case, a life threatening illness for Terry Fox, an active Canadian teenager involved in many sports. Terry was only 18 years old when he was diagnosed with bone cancer and forced to have his leg amputated in 1977.

While in hospital, Terry was so overcome by the suffering of other cancer patients, that he decided to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. He called his journey the “Marathon of Hope”.

Terry passed away also in this same month in 1981 at the tender age of 22. However, his legacy had only begun. Close to $500 million has been raised worldwide in Terry’s name for cancer research, through the annual Terry Fox Run, held across Canada and around the world.

You can feel purpose in someone’s heart, see the determination in their eyes and witness passion in their step. With purpose, nothing is impossible and no one can stand in the way. The Universe is on your side, cheering you on and rejoicing in your victory. With purpose, defeat is nonexistent as purpose itself is the triumph.

It is not necessary however, to experience a crisis to live on purpose. As Leo said to me in his interview: “It is not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.”

Being fully open, completely alive and intensely aware each day of where we could make a difference in someone’s life and in the world, that for me is purpose. One moment at a time, one day at a time. That is a life well lived. That is a legacy to be proud of. I think we can all think of someone, a teacher, a mentor, a friend or even a complete stranger, who made a real difference for us, perhaps even helped to turn our life around. They may not be famous or publicly celebrated but to us and probably many others, they are the unsung heroes.

We do not need to go out and find our purpose. If we are open to life, it will find us. However, we must be living consciously in order to do that.

Many of us are so caught up in the busyness of life, multitasking on our computers, running errands while talking on our cell phones, conducting business while walking our dogs, that we wouldn’t see a purpose moment if it hit us in the face. And sometimes it does just that. To give you an example, I myself was multitasking the other day, playing on my new iPad and working on my computer, totally lost in what I was doing and completely unaware of what was happening all around me. I was sitting at my desk very near my large balcony door and at precisely that moment a huge gust of wind came up and the drapes hit me in the face. I got the message. I laughed, became conscious once again, and attended to the matter at hand.

Where is life hitting you in the face? And are you ready now to wake up to your own unique and individual purpose?

I have been writing inspirational stories, poems and articles as far back as I can remember. I recall reading somewhere that a good way to uncover your true purpose in life is to remember the things you did as a child that you enjoyed the most, the things you seemed to do a lot of.
In thinking back to those innocent and seemingly carefree days, I remembered that every afternoon when my mother took a nap, I would lie down next to her on the bed and proceed to tell her a story. We had no books in the house in those days and so I would make up my own stories. I would tell her tales of faraway places, of kings and queens and castles. I would regale her with accounts of people who possessed magical powers and worlds where everything was perfect, beautiful, steadfast and true. They would always have happy endings.

Some days, I would make up inspiring poems. I can’t remember if they rhymed or not, but they always made my mother smile. When she was ready to get up, she would hug me and kiss me and tell me what a great little storyteller I was. Of course this only served to encourage my behavior and ensure my return the next afternoon.

It was not until many years later that I came to realize how unusual this scenario was. After all, I was the child and she was the mother.

Making people feel good was always important to me. It was my purpose, my passion. I was indeed born to be an uplifter. In my early jobs, people would visit me in my office and tell me their problems, share their dreams, and trust me with their secrets. In one of the companies that I worked for, it seemed like I spent more time engaged with the people that performing my actual job. My boss said nothing about it to me, possibly because he himself had an unspoken standing appointment with me every morning before our workday actually began. He would come into my office, sit back in the big, comfy, brown chair and proceed to recount to me the details of his life. I would simply listen, offer a few words of compassion, a nod of appreciation, a sigh of understanding, whatever was needed in the moment and he would be on his way, ready to begin his day, his step a little lighter than when he had arrived.

In later years, when I started my own business, I regularly had to stay late in the evenings in order to get some “REAL WORK” done, to make up for the long trail of constant visitors to my office, during the business day.

Looking back, I suppose that was my “REAL WORK” so to speak, in the eyes of the universe. Making a difference in other people’s lives. I was just masquerading as a senior buyer or magazine publisher, whatever the label called for.

I wonder how many there are of us who have been masquerading as something else while actually living our true purpose in whatever way that may be showing up for us. Today would be a good time to take a look at your own life and see where you may be doing just that without even realizing it. Take some time to really acknowledge it and feel good about what a real difference you may already be making in this world just by being you. Perhaps it is time now for you to take that purpose to an even deeper level.

You’ve taken all the abundance courses, read all the prosperity books, watched the latest and greatest inspirational movies, listened to all the motivational audios, and you’re still struggling.

Here are some possible reasons why. Perhaps you can relate to some of them.

1. You’re stuck in the “pay off”. What is the pay off for staying where you are now. I knew of a woman who complained constantly that her husband never paid any attention to her. She was diagnosed with cancer and all of a sudden her husband was at her side, tending to her every need. Shortly thereafter, she became cancer free and her husband went back to his old ways, much to her dismay. Months later, the cancer was back and so was her husband. My point: you may be saying that your desire is to be wealthy, but if wealth is not showing up in your life, then take a good look at “what is”. There may be some clues there as to why.

2. You’re afraid to hurt or lose someone you love. Who would you hurt / lose if you suddenly became rich? Would you be making more money than your parents did and would that offend or hurt them in some way? Would you be in an entirely different financial bracket from your friends and feel that they would resent you or even worse, abandon you?

3. You’re addicted to the drama. You complain about the struggle but you re-live it over and over again. Does it make you feel alive, on some level? A friend of mine recently became debt free and when I asked how that made him feel, he told me that he felt empty inside. No struggle, no drama, no reason for living. Unfortunately, that is true for many of us. How about you?

4. You still have feelings of “not good enough”. Have you ever felt like a small child standing outside of a candy store. You look in the window at all of that candy just waiting there to be devoured, but you don’t feel like you will ever be able to walk inside that door and take it. You see others going in and out of the candy store, but you feel it could never happen for you.

5. You feel safe “playing small”. Playing small is comfortable. Playing big would require you to move out of your comfort zone. It may require that you put yourself out there and that can be a scary thing. Are you ready to, as they say, feel the fear and do it anyway?

6. You believe that “money is bad and / or evil”. This belief is reinforced by the media at every turn. It would be hard to escape not feeling just a little like this. However, it may serve you well to remember that Mother Teresa created lots of money, without which she would not have been able to accomplish what she did and change the world. Think about that.

7. You “get in your own way”. You decide to move forward towards your dreams, you set some financial goals, you begin to feel hopeful, and then you sabotage yourself at every turn, with your thoughts, words and deeds, which are totally contrary to what you have chosen. The sad thing is that you probably don’t even realize that you are doing it.

And you are not quite sure how to change it.

Well, in order to help you do that, I would like to invite you to claim your free instant access to our Wealth Without Limits – Prosperity Series – Lesson 1, as well as many other goodies and bonuses when you visit HERE: You will find a free audio and video there for you to use as well.

From Veronica Hay – The Prosperity Poet and The Insights and Inspirations Hub

For today’s Inspirational Words…

I wrote this Prosperity Blessing after a number of people had written to me regarding their financial concerns and their dreams. I asked myself what were my wishes for these people and I came up with the following Prosperity Blessing. Since then, I have received tremendous response to this piece from all over the world. It is my hope that just by listening to this Prosperity Blessing today, your life will be truly uplifted.

Enjoy and please share it with everyone you know. Thank you for your kindness.

A PROSPERITY BLESSING

Watch this short (2 1/2 minute) video below:

Would YOU like to create more PROSPERITY in your life?
NEW! -- Prosperity Puzzle Pieces -- 30 Day Program -
Created by Veronica Hay, Author/Inspirational Magazine Publisher/Prosperity Poet
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Have a blessed and very prosperous day.
May there be a miracle in YOUR life today and may you have the EYES to see it.

Love and blessings, Veronica Hay veronicahay@telus.net

Stay tuned for more inspirational words and videos to come…

For today’s Inspirational Words…

A very meaningful quote by Maya Angelou

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

So, dear friends, how will YOU make someone FEEL today?

And just as important, how did someone else make you feel
recently, (good or bad) and did you SPEAK UP about it and tell them?

Just doing this one thing today, may free up a lot of stuck energy for you.

Enjoy and have a blessed and peaceful day.

From my heart to yours

Love and blessings, Veronica
veronicahay@telus.net

May there be a miracle in YOUR life today and may you have the EYES to see it.

Stay tuned for more inspirational words…

My favorite day of the year has always been Valentine’s Day. It didn’t matter if I was alone on that day or not, I still adored it. Valentine’s day for me is a celebration of love, love in its many forms, romantic love between a man and a woman, the never-ending love of family and dear friends, the enduring love between a parent and child, the abiding love between a human and their beloved pet, love of self and love shared with communities or the world.

In our society we seem to need an excuse to tell people how we feel about them, or show them with tokens of our affection. At Christmas, we exchange gifts and take time away from our busy schedules to be with the people who really matter in our lives. On Valentine’s day we are presented with yet another opportunity to open our hearts and share our souls. The marketplace makes it very easy for us to do that, presenting us with a cornucopia of delicacies and finery, from chocolates, to strawberries and whipped cream, to diamonds, singing teddy bear deliveries, and an abundance of greeting cards with just the right sentiment.

It matters not how you choose to serenade the ones you love on this auspicious occasion, what matters is that you do! Whether it be with a store bought treasure or a simple handmade delight, the form is not important, but the sentiment is! Valentine’s day gives you another opportunity to do something that comes naturally for you, as natural as breathing, and that is to BE love and to GIVE love. It is who you are and it is the only thing that really matters in the end.

I leave you with a Valentine Poem and my love…

A Table in a Restaurant on Valentine’s Day

I want to be a table, in a restaurant, on Valentine’s Day!

Think how glorious that would be,
And how many people would spend that special day with me.

What will they talk about? What will they say?
Will there be laughter and people at play?
What are their stories? How far have they come?
What will they tell me, the old and the young?

Will hearts open and tender souls touch?
Will there be magic that moves me so much?
Will there be secrets and sadness as well?
How much will they venture to be and to tell?

Will they remember this day gone before?
And where they were then, and now they want more?

And though they look different, with each changing place,
As the food and the wine, they’re invited to taste.

Each one is trying to do the same thing,
Whether in depth, or a casual fling.

Just for a moment to touch someone’s heart,

And feel loved by another before they do part.

Enjoy and have a Beautiful Valentine’s Day!
Love and blessings, Veronica veronicahay@telus.net

1. Make a list of all of the things you loved to do as a child. Do you have an especially happy memory of something you really enjoyed doing? Something that you were complimented on and felt extremely proud of.

2. What are your favorite kinds of books? Do you love romance novels, arts and crafts books, mystery stories, new age and metaphysical titles? If you are not sure, visit www.amazon.com and check out their classifications.

3. When you have some free time, how do you spend it? Alone or in the company of friends and family. Exploring the city or visiting the country.

4. What do people compliment you about? If you can’t think of anything, then simply ask a few of your closest friends and business associates what they appreciate about you, what they see as your strengths and talents. You may be very surprised by their answers. Asking a co-worker will give you a much different perspective than asking a family member but both have value in helping you uncover your brilliance.

5. What are you especially proud of having accomplished in your life? This doesn’t have to be about winning awards. It could just be about how you have reached out to offer a helping hand to someone who really needed it.

6. What qualities, talents, gifts do you admire in others? Make a list of the people in your world and beside each one, jot down their strong points and the things you love about them. Be sure to let them know as well and make their day.

7. If you had all the time in the world and money was no longer an issue, what would you really like to do? Imagine what your perfect day would look like from beginning to end. What would you have for breakfast? What is the view like when you open your drapes? How do you spend your afternoon, where, and with whom? How do you feel as you close your eyes at the end of your perfect day?

Doing this exercise will help you to get to know yourself a little better and give you more insight into wherever your true purpose lies.

“There is a giant asleep within every man. When the giant awakes, miracles happen.” ~ Frederick Faust

You came here for a reason. There is something that only YOU can do and the world is waiting for it.

I wish you Godspeed on your journey.

Love and blessings, Veronica Hay

(Stay tuned for more inspirational words to come…)

Would YOU like to create more PROSPERITY in your life in 2012?
NEW! – Prosperity Puzzle Pieces – 30 Day Program – by Veronica Hay
CLICK HERE For More Information and Introductory Special Discount

There are two things to aim at in life: first,
to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it.
Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
~ Logan Pearsall Smith

I recently overheard something that surprised me. I heard that people who win the lottery are happy for about 3 weeks. Yes! Only 3 weeks, and then they go back to their previous state of being, before they won the money. This really did surprise me. I thought that they would have been happy about something so amazing for much longer than 3 weeks.

Did you know that 90% of all people who win the lottery are broke within one year, and that most of those wish they had never won it in the first place?

I think the reason for this is, that anytime we try to change how we feel by using something outside of ourselves, like winning the lottery, or getting a new car or house, it never works. The resulting feelings of euphoria are often only fleeting. We cannot sustain them for very long. Perhaps, in some way, that is a good thing. It reminds us that happiness really does come from within and is available to us at any moment. True happiness has very little to do with what is happening on the outside, it is an inside job. Happiness is a choice. It is a state of BEING.

We can make the decision to BE happy for one day, when we wake up in the morning, every morning. We can find something that brings us great pleasure, like sitting outside in the garden under an old tree and listening to the birds sing, or watching the dog or cat play, and just savoring the moment. Happiness is always available to us. It is our natural state and we need only allow it in. At any moment, we can stop, take a deep breath, and remember who we really are, and why we came here, and that truly is to experience joy and the aliveness of being.

“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

So, dear heart, today, no matter what is going on in your life, take a few moments to breathe deeply and just decide to BE happy, whatever that means to you.

Would YOU like to create more PROSPERITY in your life in 2012?
NEW! – Prosperity Puzzle Pieces – 30 Day Program – by Veronica Hay
CLICK HERE For More Information and Introductory Special Discount

Think of something you would like to create or experience. I did not say try to manifest. I just said “think of something you would like to experience in your life.”

Gently let yourself imagine with the idea in your mind of
Wouldn’t it be nice if….

I’ll give you an example. Several years ago when I was living in Ontario, Canada, my then husband received a transfer to Calgary, Alberta. I had no idea what that province looked like but on the morning that I received the news I mentioned it to a fellow in my office and he told me that Calgary was a very lovely, clean city and that in certain areas one could very clearly see the beautiful Rocky mountains which were about 90 miles away from the city.

I remember going back to my desk and just sitting there and thinking very gently to myself, wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a place where we had a beautiful view of those mountains and I just closed my mind and imagined it for a few seconds and then I completely forgot about it.

And in spite of the fact that there was almost a zero vacancy rate in Calgary at that time so finding a decent place was almost impossible, let alone one with a great view, we ended up, through a miraculous series of events, having to make a 10 second decision on one place. When I walked in the door and over to the huge balcony window, there before me was a picture perfect view of the very majestic mountains I had envisioned for those few seconds in Ontario.

Simplicity at its best.

So, your only exercise for today is to simply say quietly to yourself…

Wouldn’t it be nice if…………………..and then imagine…

Copyright © by Veronica Hay – All Rights Reserved (email:veronicahay@telus.net)

Stay tuned for more inspirational words to come…