Order your very own Stay Strong T-Shirt Today!!!

If you are interested in ordering your very own "Stay Strong" t-Shirt, shoot me an email at dfnyc66@aol.com today!  Use it as a daily reminder to yourself and to others who will read the message every time you wear it out!!!

They are only $10 and they come in Grey or Navy Blue --- S, M, L or XL  ---send me your size and color preference today!!

Limited amount of these shirts currently exist!!

Thanks and Stay Strong!!!

Daily Inspiration

Love and kindness are the very basis of society.  If we lose these feelings, the survival of humanity will be endangered.
~ Dalai Lama

This quote is so very true!  Our peace and happiness really rests on the kindness we experience and exercise in this world on a day to day basis.

Kindness is all that matters in our interactions and kindness is one of the most powerful influences we can exert on our fellow human beings and our pets!

When someone is kind to you or to your children it is such an amazing thing that is truly becomes a spiritual event!!

Act kind to all you encounter and you will see you days, weeks, months and entire lives transformed from where you are today - it is THAT powerful indeed!!

Try it -- you have nothing to lose and EVERYTHING to gain!

Stay Strong!!

Never Stop Believing!!! Never Stop Driving to your Goals!!!

As I waited on a telephone hold this morning, this song came on. Despite the fact that I have heard this song 50,000 times over my lifetime, I was deeply moved this morning by the lyrics. It was as if I was listening to it for the first time!

I think of my own daily struggles with life, trying to find meaning and value and do the right thing for our families and ourselves, and this song really sums up the Source of Strength we all need in our battles!

I view this song from not only the voice of friends and family who you know are right there in the thick of these battles with you - Always --- but also from a Spiritual perspective!

THIS is what is meant by Faith in whomever you believe in spiritually! THIS is what I picture God, or Jesus or Buddha, or Allah, or Virgin Mary, or especially the Holy Spirit communicating to us every morning, day and night!

This is what we need to hear and know and TRULY BELIEVE!!  There is ALWAYS someone there along side us during the times of solitude, when we feel defeated, beaten up, in despair and Hopeless, lonely and troubled!!

I strive to be this person on this earth for my friends and family and often fall woefully short due to my own shortcomings and human frailties - BUT I feel the pendulum shifting as we speak and I know with my prayers for Guidance and Strength and Courage, I WILL be a better bridge and source of strength for all whom I know are in NEED of it today!

For those of you whom I have failed, I apologize -- and WILL make it up to you~!~!

The time is NOW for YOU to be that bridge and shelter as well! 

Despite all YOU have going on in your lives, there is someone who needs you and whom you can ASSIST TODAY!! 

You ARE NOT hopeless - you ARE NOT Powerless -- YOU CAN DO IT  --- starting today!!!

Believe it and it will be Truth! 

I believe in You!! 

Now it is your turn!!!!

Read the amazingly beautiful words below and BELIEVE that there is someone PROMISING you this type of protection and shelter and STRENGTH!!! 

Because there truly is if you BELIEVE there is!!!

Stay Strong!!

A Bridge over Troubled Waters

When you're weary



Feeling small


When tears are in your eyes


I will dry them all






I'm on your side


When times get rough


And friends just can't be found


Like a bridge over troubled water


I will lay me down


Like a bridge over troubled water


I will lay me down






When you're down and out


When you're on the street


When evening falls so hard


I will comfort you






I'll take your part


When darkness comes


And pain is all around


Like a bridge over troubled water


I will lay me down


Like a bridge over troubled water


I will lay me down






Sail on Silver Girl,


Sail on by


Your time has come to shine


All your dreams are on their way






See how they shine


If you need a friend


I'm sailing right behind


Like a bridge over troubled water


I will ease your mind


Like a bridge over troubled water


I will ease your mind

Daily Inspiration

One kind word can warm three winter months.
~ Japanese Proverb

Daily Inspiration

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
~ Leo Tolstoy

Daily Inspiration

Daily Inspiration

Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.

~ Buddha

Quotes to Stay Strong, Heal, and to Prosper.....

"Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest to us."
- Meister Eckhart

"Do not fear mistakes -there are none."
- Miles Davis

"Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage."
- Claude M. Bristol

"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in the life has a purpose."
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Desire, ask, believe, receive."
-Stella Terrill Mann

"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger."
- Albert Camus

"Eliminate something superfluous from your life. Break a habit. Do something that makes you feel insecure."
- Piero Ferrucci

"Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually."
- Ellen Caddy

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be WHO you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want."
- Margaret Young

Stay Strong!!

Give Thanks and Remember....

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which read:

"I am Blind, Please Help."

There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat.

He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words.

He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words he had written.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.

That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came by to see how tihngs were.

The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning?  What did you write?"

The man said, "I only wrote the Truth. I said what you said but in a different way. I wrote,

'Today is a Beautiful Day but I cannot see it."

Both signs told people that the boy was blind, but the second sign reminded people that they were so fortunate to have their eyesight and should count their blessings.

Is it any wonder that the second sign was more effective?

Moral of the Story?  Give Thanks to God for what you have TODAY!

Be Creative. Be Innovative.  Think differently and positively.

When life gives you 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile!

Face your past without regret and handle your present with confidence. 

Prepare for the future without Fear!

Remember, the most beautiful thing in the world is to see someone smiling  - and it is even more beautiful knowing that you are the reason behind it!!

Keep the Faith and Stay Strong!

- Source Unknown

Book Recommendation~~ You NEED this book Now!!!!

Once again my Brother-in-Law Tim comes up huge in the book recommendation arena and turns me on to a tremendously inspirational book called "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.

See a review here:

Amazon.com Review



With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity.


This book links creativity to spirituality by showing how to connect with the creative energies of the universe, and has, in the four years since its publication, spawned a remarkable number of support groups for artists dedicated to practicing the exercises it contains.


I just started this book and I have to tell you, it has already made an immediate impact on my perspective, outlook, mood, and outlook on life!  The Morning Pages writing exercise is an amazingly catharctic way to start your day and to flush out your mind and internalization system of negastive thoughts.  Like a plugged drain, this exercise chips away and erodes the emotional "blockages" that are normally cluttering your mind and distracting us from our inner light and creativity!

I am very excited by this book and the lessons it imparts - and will follow up with more as I finish reading the book.

In the meantime, do yourself a favor - "artist" or not - pick up this book today and start writing as it instructs!!   We are all "Creators" and this book will help us in any creation at all --- BUY IT NOW!!

Buy it used here:

http://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-Spiritual-Creativity-ARTISTS/dp/B001TKYOL6/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285098079&sr=1-7

A Q&A with Malcolm Gladwell on his book, "The Tipping Point"

The TIPPING POINT
published on:

http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html

q&a with Malcolm Gladwell....


What is the Tipping Point?


1. What is The Tipping Point about?




It's a book about change. In particular, it's a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does. For example, why did crime drop so dramatically in New York City in the mid-1990's? How does a novel written by an unknown author end up as national bestseller? Why do teens smoke in greater and greater numbers, when every single person in the country knows that cigarettes kill? Why is word-of-mouth so powerful? What makes TV shows like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? I think the answer to all those questions is the same. It's that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us.



2. What does it mean to think about life as an epidemic? Why does thinking in terms of epidemics change the way we view the world?



Because epidemics behave in a very unusual and counterintuitive way. Think, for a moment, about an epidemic of measles in a kindergarten class. One child brings in the virus. It spreads to every other child in the class in a matter of days. And then, within a week or so, it completely dies out and none of the children will ever get measles again. That's typical behavior for epidemics: they can blow up and then die out really quickly, and even the smallest change -- like one child with a virus -- can get them started. My argument is that it is also the way that change often happens in the rest of the world. Things can happen all at once, and little changes can make a huge difference. That's a little bit counterintuitive. As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect. And when there isn't -- when crime drops dramatically in New York for no apparent reason, or when a movie made on a shoestring budget ends up making hundreds of millions of dollars -- we're surprised. I'm saying, don't be surprised. This is the way social epidemics work.



3. Where did you get the idea for the book?



Before I went to work for The New Yorker, I was a reporter for the Washington Post and I covered the AIDS epidemic. And one of the things that struck me as I learned more and more about HIV was how strange epidemics were. If you talk to the people who study epidemics--epidemiologists--you realize that they have a strikingly different way of looking at the world. They don't share the assumptions the rest of us have about how and why change happens. The word "Tipping Point", for example, comes from the world of epidemiology. It's the name given to that moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. It's the boiling point. It's the moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards. AIDS tipped in 1982, when it went from a rare disease affecting a few gay men to a worldwide epidemic. Crime in New York City tipped in the mid 1990's, when the murder rate suddenly plummeted. When I heard that phrase for the first time I remember thinking--wow. What if everything has a Tipping Point? Wouldn't it be cool to try and look for Tipping Points in business, or in social policy, or in advertising or in any number of other nonmedical areas?



4. Why do you think the epidemic example is so relevant for other kinds of change? Is it just that it's an unusual and interesting way to think about the world?



No. I think it's much more than that, because once you start to understand this pattern you start to see it everywhere. I'm convinced that ideas and behaviors and new products move through a population very much like a disease does. This isn't just a metaphor, in other words. I'm talking about a very literal analogy. One of the things I explore in the book is that ideas can be contagious in exactly the same way that a virus is. One chapter, for example, deals with the very strange epidemic of teenage suicide in the South Pacific islands of Micronesia. In the 1970's and 1980's, Micronesia had teen suicide rates ten times higher than anywhere else in the world. Teenagers were literally being infected with the suicide bug, and one after another they were killing themselves in exactly the same way under exactly the same circumstances. We like to use words like contagiousness and infectiousness just to apply to the medical realm. But I assure you that after you read about what happened in Micronesia you'll be convinced that behavior can be transmitted from one person to another as easily as the flu or the measles can. In fact, I don't think you have to go to Micronesia to see this pattern in action. Isn't this the explanation for the current epidemic of teen smoking in this country? And what about the rash of mass shootings we're facing at the moment--from Columbine through the Atlanta stockbroker through the neo-Nazi in Los Angeles?



5. Are you talking about the idea of memes, that has become so popular in academic circles recently?



It's very similar. A meme is a idea that behaves like a virus--that moves through a population, taking hold in each person it infects. I must say, though, that I don't much like that term. The thing that bothers me about the discussion of memes is that no one ever tries to define exactly what they are, and what makes a meme so contagious. I mean, you can put a virus under a microscope and point to all the genes on its surface that are responsible for making it so dangerous. So what happens when you look at an infectious idea under a microscope? I have a chapter where I try to do that. I use the example of children's television shows like Sesame Street and the new Nickelodeon program called Blues Clues. Both those are examples of shows that started learning epidemics in preschoolers, that turned kids onto reading and "infected" them with literacy. We sometimes think of Sesame Street as purely the result of the creative genius of people like Jim Henson and Frank Oz. But the truth is that it is carefully and painstaking engineered, down to the smallest details. There's a wonderful story, in fact, about the particular scientific reason for the creation of Big Bird. It's very funny. But I won't spoil it for you.



6. How would you classify The Tipping Point? Is it a science book?



I like to think of it as an intellectual adventure story. It draws from psychology and sociology and epidemiology, and uses examples from the worlds of business and education and fashion and media. If I had to draw an analogy to another book, I'd say it was like Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, in the sense that it takes theories and ideas from the social sciences and shows how they can have real relevance to our lives. There's a whole section of the book devoted to explaining the phenomenon of word of mouth, for example. I think that word of mouth is something created by three very rare and special psychological types, whom I call Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. I profile three people who I think embody those types, and then I use the example of Paul Revere and his midnight ride to point out the subtle characteristics of this kind of social epidemic. So just in that chapter there is a little bit of sociology, a little of psychology and a little bit of history, all in aid of explaining a very common but mysterious phenomenon that we deal with every day. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not sure that this book fits into any one category. That's why I call it an adventure story. I think it will appeal to anyone who wants to understand the world around them in a different way. I think it can give the reader an advantage--a new set of tools. Of course, I also think they'll be in for a very fun ride.



7. What do you hope readers will take away from the book?



One of the things I'd like to do is to show people how to start "positive" epidemics of their own. The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and it can spread very, very quickly. That makes it something of obvious and enormous interest to everyone from educators trying to reach students, to businesses trying to spread the word about their product, or for that matter to anyone who's trying to create a change with limited resources. The book has a number of case studies of people who have successfully started epidemics--an advertising agency, for example, and a breast cancer activist. I think they are really fascinating. I also take a pressing social issue, teenage smoking, and break it down and analyze what an epidemic approach to solving that problem would look like. The point is that by the end of the book I think the reader will have a clear idea of what starting an epidemic actually takes. This is not an abstract, academic book. It's very practical. And it's very hopeful. It's brain software.



Beyond that, I think that The Tipping Point is a way of making sense of the world, because I'm not sure that the world always makes as much sense to us as we would hope. I spent a great deal of time in the book talking about the way our minds work--and the peculiar and sometimes problematic ways in which our brains process information. Our intuitions, as humans, aren't always very good. Changes that happen really suddenly, on the strength of the most minor of input, can be deeply confusing. People who understand The Tipping Point, I think, have a way of decoding the world around them.

Be Not Afraid

Life is not easy!!

It is full of challenges and tribulations and hurdles and obstacles, disappointments, failures, anxieties, and the fear of the unknown!!

This is Life unfortunately!! 

But on the flip side, Life is full of wonderful things as well. 

We often miss these beautiful aspects of life as we wade in the daily toils of our lives and only when it is too late do we look back on what we missed!

Do not let this happen to you!!

We all have the ability to rise above the daily struggles and place our eyes on the larger meaning of life - and we OWE it to ourselves to do this on a daily basis!!!!

Whether it is when you lay your head on your pillow, wake up at dawn, on the train, in the car, at your desk, or during some down time in your day - TAKE THE MOMEMT to reflect on what your life is SUPPOSED to be!!

Do not let FEAR - our biggest inhibitor of progress, peace and happiness- interfere in what God has intended us to experience!

We all strive for a life of ease and luxury!  Well, guess what -- I do not believe that is why we were put on thie Earth! 

I believe we were put here to struggle, to grow and develop through challenges, hard times, and difficulties!

I also believe we were put here to ASSIST others in THEIR struggles and challenges as part of our GROWTH as Human beings!!

Therefore, when life has you on the ropes and down for the count - do not QUIT, do not lament and take a woe is me approach!!

Instead, EMBRACE the challenge!!  Change your perspective on this!!

FOCUS on the solutions and the ways in which you can CHANGE your situation for the better!

None of us is chained to our current situations - no matter how bleak or dire it appears!  We ALL have the ability to rise above the mire of our daily troubles and build a better, improved life!!!

First step is to put Fear aside!  Fear is a useless emotion for us, as is Worry and Anxiety!!!  Every minute wasted on fear and worry is a minute of time we will never get back!!

Step 2 is to Visualize what is is you want from your life!!!  Actually close your eyes and if you could watch a movie, in the future, of the life you WANT to be living, imagine and watch it transpire in front of you!!  Be as engrossed in it, as detailed as possible -- and that will bring you closer to that goal!!

Our minds are amazing  - and powerful beyond belief --- and they can be programmed (and re-programmed) to take us anywhere we want to go!!  It takes some effort, but the reward is well worth it!!

Mother Theresa is a perfect example of someone who threw herself into other's struggles and always seemed at Peace and Happy - despite living a life many of us would view as difficult and sacrificial!!

Take Control and Seize your opportunities!

Most importantly -- Have FAITH that you are being guided in this life and that there is so much more awaiting all of us when this journey is complete!!

Stay Strong!!