Ray of Sunshine: Beautiful Music

Listen to the song of your heart. Bless others with its beautiful music.

Blessings for your day and week. Spread sunshine. Be the light.

Ray of Sunshine: Fill Your Heart with Love

Fill your mind and heart with love. The fruits of your efforts will make this world a better, kinder place.

Blessings for your day and week. Spread sunshine. Be the light.

Ray of Sunshine: Follow Your Heart

Listen to the still, small voice inside of you. You hold all that you need to follow your heart.

Blessings for your day and week. Spread sunshine. Be the light.

Ray of Sunshine: Unexpected Places

Sometimes, while you're busy planning your life, you find your heart in unexpected places.

Blessings for your day and week. Spread sunshine. Be the light.

Sunday Sunshine: Nudges

We all have seasons in our lives—not the seasons of the year necessarily, but those times when we can feel that a shift is happening, a change is needed and a time of newness is calling to us.

Those nudges you feel are real. We would be wise to listen to them. They are the language of your wise inner self.

Is it time for you to consider new experiences, new places, new insights, new people, new opportunities?

As spring gives way to summer, in what direction is your heart calling you? Even a slight change can reinvigorate your life.

Today, this week: Always listen carefully to those nudges.

Sunday Sunshine: Listen to Your Heart

We look for signals all around us -- something we read, something someone says -- but you hold a tremendous source of wisdom deep inside of you, accessible to you at any time. Some may call it the voice of God or Spirit, while others may call it the force of guardian angels, while even others call it simply Intuition.

Access that wisdom as you make decisions, both large and small. That wisdom rarely screams in your ear, however. Instead, it's subtle, quiet, a whisper, almost nothing more than a nudge. 

Pay attention to those nudges and tap into the wisdom that will never let you down.

Today, this week: Listen carefully to the subtle messages of your heart. It always gives you clear direction.

Sunday Sunshine: Build a Bridge, Be a Bridge

While hiking in a verdant, natural area, we suddenly encountered a bright yellow sign emblazoned with the word "bridge" in bold, black capital letters.

Surely, the sign informed hikers and cross-country skiers of an upcoming bridge, but the sign also made me think about the ways we can be bridges, too.

When we choose to be a bridge of love and understanding, we create a safe place for respectful conversation. We serve as a sign to others of a safe crossing for differing ideas and perspectives. We invite others who may think, speak or live differently than we do to be our teachers. We encourage the expansion of our own knowledge and understanding.

Choose to listen with an open mind and heart and invite others to respectfully share their thoughts, their perspectives, their experiences and their talents. Soon the chasms of misunderstanding and fear will be gone. In their place, we will find bridges forming in all directions.

Today, this week: Listen with an open mind and heart. Build bridges of love, respect and understanding. 

Sunday Sunshine: Listen with your Heart

We're constantly told that we're a divided country. The messaging we receive all around us seems to encourage that division rather than unity.

Divisions fade away when you actively listen with not only your ears, but also your heart. 

You become new when you open yourself to new perspectives.

What might you learn about yourself and others if you listened with your whole being? 

What might you learn about yourself and others if you listened with your heart? 

Our minds put all kinds of filters in front of us through which we tend to absorb new information. As our minds construct and reinforce those filters based on memory and judgment, we can lose grasp on opportunities right in front of us for greater understanding and loving responses. 

When you listen with your heart, the lens through which you feel the world becomes one of love.

Today, this week: Listen with your heart.

Sunday Sunshine: Embrace your Inner Wisdom

We human beings tend to rely on our wonderful brains. We were blessed to be given them, but our brains aren't the only source of our understanding or our wisdom.

Go a little deeper to find the source of your truth. Look to your heart. There is the source of your inner wisdom.

When you feel something in your heart, it's different from when you think with your brain. Your brain will filter information, use your memory to paint a picture of your today and even project judgments on your tomorrows.

When you listen to the subtle messages of your heart, you can trust that it won't lead you astray or betray your best interests with its filters and its file drawers of information from the past.

Today, this week: Embrace your inner wisdom. Trust its wise messages meant just for you.

Sunday Sunshine: Connect with Your Heart

There are times when the path seems shrouded in fog, a needed decision just out of reach. What to do? What direction is the right direction?

Take a moment to grow silent, to grow still. When you intentionally empty the din from your head and allow yourself to relax, the answers come. The more you apply pressure and add to your stress by hearing only the chatter in your head, the harder it is to hear the answer that is right for you, the one that is based on possibility instead of fear.

Short-circuit that judgmental, fear-based chatter in your head and listen more deeply to the wisdom of your heart. 

Today, this week: When the way seems unclear, grow silent and still, and connect with the messages from the heart.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: The Call of the Heart

We all have seasons in our lives—not the seasons of the year necessarily, but those times when we can feel that a shift is happening, a change is needed and a time of newness is calling to us.

We would be wise to listen to those nudges. Is it time for you to consider new experiences, new places, new insights, new people, new opportunities?

As summer gives way to autumn, in what direction is your heart calling you?

Even a slight change can reinvigorate your life.

Today, this week: Listen carefully to the call of your heart.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: Follow Your Heart

The din can be loud. It can be deafening. 

Advice, suggestions, recommendations. Fears, worries, doubts. 

How does one take in so much information and still be able to make a decision that feels right?

Grow silent. 

Listen to that still, small voice inside of you. It will guide you, just as a street sign tells you where to turn. 

You hold the answers. Reach within and you'll find that the answers are waiting for you.

Today, this week: Follow your heart. It won’t let you down.


For more thoughts about following your heart, check out my book, Find Your Heart, Follow Your Heart: Get to the Heart of What Matters and Create Your Abundant, Authentic, Joyful Life, available in hardcover, softcover and e-book formats from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Balboa Press and other fine retailers. Perfect for Mother's Day and Graduation gift giving.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: Remain Open and Anticipate

The day is new, the air is fresh and there are opportunities just waiting for you!

We often find our hearts in unexpected places. There are signs all around you. Look for them. Listen for them. Remain open to the possibilities.

Be positive! Anticipate good things and they will come—perhaps not as you planned—but even better!

Listen to the Wind

I was in search of an answer, so I cast my question out into the universe. While taking a walk later that day, the answer came, a mystifying "Listen to the wind." What? Listen to the wind? What did it mean to listen to the wind? Perplexed by this mysterious message, I researched it online and found it was the first phrase in a Native American proverb: "Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows." With each subsequent walk, I started out by saying the proverb and then I intentionally silenced the incessant and often unhelpful chatter in my head. I allowed the wind to talk to me. At about the same time, I started finding heart-shaped stones in my path. I felt as if the Native American proverb's wise words were being directed at me. I was becoming quiet so the silence could speak to me. I was listening to the wind so it could talk to me. I was finding heart stones so I could know what was deep in my own heart. Listening to the wind has become a regular activity ever since that day when I received the message to do so. I haven't talked about it much with others, so it came as a surprise when, recently, our 85-year-old neighbor said she likes to listen to the wind. We were deep in conversation about the magnificent eruption of spring, from the fragrances of the season to the song of the birds to the beauty of the early spring wildflowers blooming in the woods next to her home. As one well attuned to nature's subtleties, my neighbor knows to listen to the wind. It does talk, if we make the time to become calm, silence our internal chatter and put our hearts in a place of attention and intention. Then, and only then, will we hear the wisdom of the wind. Listen. It talks.