Panda Saves Two Border Collies!

Thanksgiving is something I hear about a lot. I haven’t been in Canada for many years for our Thanksgiving there which lands in October and I don’t have family here to celebrate with so I basically don’t do anything with the day. Today is a first for me to have my birthday fall on any Thanksgiving. I’m sure it’s met up with past American dates, but I wasn’t here then. So, that is pretty cool.

I think I may hold the world’s record for most birthday wishes; thank you ever so much! It was my friend Phil who promised me that one day I have more than just him as a friend. I pouted and said I wasn’t very hopeful and was perfectly fine with his friendship. I did express to him all the times in my life where someone would leave or die and I would be alone again. He promised that wouldn’t be my life and he was right. I feel extremely loved by many people. It was hard at the time to think about even leaving my bed far less meet anyone else.

Back to Thanksgiving; what am I thankful for? Friends. Of course I am thankful for my family, but friends choose to have me in their life and this is the best part of friendship. I am thankful for my relationship with the Creator and for the journey I have been on because I feel like as I get older, I am becoming more content with life and the struggles aren’t making me resist, but I have found the wave to ride. Life isn’t perfect, but my attitude has been marinating. ;)

I have a feel good story to share. Yesterday, 2 Border Collies at a Manhattan Shelter were saved from their Death Row. There are many stories like this where dogs find their forever homes and so many owners who have given them a new ‘leash’ on life as the saying goes. I was touched by the efforts of the people involved though in this particular case and I will tell you why.

I found it was a focused effort by compassionate people. I witnessed a huge thread on FB of people coming together to make it happen. One person in particular who you guys might know; Anja (she has the Border Collie named Panda (There is a picture of Panda with her signed Stever CD on my myspace page…she’s fantastic) Anja didn’t forward the entire list of dogs who were going to be euthanized that day. As a Border Collie owner she focused her attention on the same breed. She will tell you she wasn’t responsible for making it happen, but the same mentality of focusing the energy works. She asked me to forward the stories to people I knew. I decided instead of forwarding it to the whole list, I would send it to people I knew in NY. The idea is to target the audience you want to reach. This is good for obvious reasons, but I believe it does one thing. It stops people from becoming desensitized.

People know Anja and her dog Panda the Border Collie, therefore she can speak with a certain amount of authority when she talks about the welfare of Border Collies. I’ve been following Panda’s story and pictures for a long time now. (Poster Pup, perhaps?) People who feel connected to her and Panda will listen to her. I did! Then, I felt strongly that she knew what she was talking about, so I forwarded the two dogs to the appropriate New York people I knew. I didn’t make it happen, a lady came forward on FB and took the one dog and someone else was able to at least get the second dog out of the no-kill zone and to an intermediate place. Both dogs were supposed to be destroyed yesterday and they are both safe.

This whole thing is an example of how people can make things happen by focusing their energy and talking about topics they are an authority on. It is the best way to effectively make change happen. I find too many issues today are a melting pot designed to be fed to desensitized people and it’s not working.
Anja made a bunch of really good connections yesterday and feels a new calling in her life and THAT is the best part of what happened as far as I am concerned.

Each of us has our own thing we are either passionate about or an authority on. I really would encourage you that if you want to make a difference, to focus your energy on what you know, what you are called to do and what you are good at because in that you too could feel the overwhelming enlightenment that Anja feels today after finding her calling in life. She woke up today I am sure with a sense of purpose and value.

Too many people try to chase a big dream they saw on TV and aren’t good at it, don’t feel connected to it and don’t connect with an audience because the audience doesn’t see them as knowing anything about the topic they are ‘trying out’. Do you remember me doing a blog a long time ago about a woman who baked her way out of foreclosure? She was good at making pies, so she started selling them. Now she’s gone on to save her house and is growing a healthy business. She took what she was good at, what she loved to do and what she was an authority on and she has found her calling by being able to inspire and share her story!

I believe each of us should look for the joy in our life, the thing we know a lot about and the gifts we have and channel them towards the greater good, not the greater bank account, the greater good.

Wondering if the name Panda helps the cause, after all, the news seems to love sharing Panda stories,

Karen :)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~Dalai Lama

What is Trapping You?

In one of my relationships, I probably stayed for three years too long. (it may have been more, but hey who’s counting?) If you know what this feels like, you’ll understand what I mean by the ‘shifting percentage’. It’s where things start out at 100% good and it starts a steady decline at a certain rate per year. At some point it’s about 50% good, 50% bad which is the teetering time where you apply the old song, ‘Should I stay or Should I go?’. For me, those last 3 years declined well under 0. It’s where it becomes not just 100% bad, but seems to scrape underneath the fingernails for extra dirt.

My counselor at that time was the one who set me on the right track. He’d ask why I hadn’t left yet. My answer was simple, "I can’t afford to."
When we discussed my career plans and the job I was doing at the time, he’d asked why I hadn’t moved on to do music fulltime. It was the same response, "I can’t afford to."

He wondered why I couldn’t afford to leave the bad relationship and if I stayed why I couldn’t afford to take the leap in my career. My answer (which was a surprise to me to) was, "I guess it’s not only money that is trapping me."

He told me he was big on making lists. I have a successful uncle who coincidentally at that time told me how lists not only saved his life, but saved his sleep also. I now try to make a list every night before bed of what I need to accomplish the next day and then I go to bed. I promise to not take anything that is on that list to sleep with me so my rest is uninterrupted by my own thoughts.

He explained to me that leaving a bad relationship (as long as it isn’t abusive) sometimes works better if you have a game plan. So that’s what I did. I made a list of daily things I needed to accomplish and a list of long-term goals and shorter-term goals to get me there. One of the things he couldn’t believe was that my partner had a personal bank account, but that my bank account was joint. He encouraged me to start one for myself. So I opened an account with a pitiful $10. I looked at my book they gave me and was exasperated at how small the amount was and how it seemed I would never make any kind of move with that. But what he did was teach me how to put every extra dollar lying around into the account suggesting too many people won’t make a deposit unless it’s large.

My bank book makes me laugh. If you look in it, you’ll see $5 deposits in it. The idea was that I didn’t touch it. I could have saved it at home in a sock, but that didn’t feel the same as seeing the climbing total. I enjoyed watching it inch up that I actually started looking for coins to roll up and take to the bank, sifting through the laundry pockets, wherever I could find it. It also kept my mind focused, as measly as that sounds.
The idea behind doing this was two-fold. It kept my mind occupied on something tangible and it gave me some independence. My counselor explained that even if I ended up staying in the relationship and it all worked out, everyone should be saving this way no matter what. I never realized how I was frittering away the dollars and cents. So it was a good lesson in money management.

His concern he said was that many people are trapped in bad relationships, they get in a brutal fight and then abruptly leave with no game plan. They are basically standing in the middle of the street with a bag in hand. Then the tears pour torrentially and they really want to give up. It’s like insult to injury to have to start over with nothing.

So, I did find out money was trapping me in the relationship, but what I found out was the bigger trap was my own daily thoughts and how I allocated them. I had accumulated a large account of negative energy. When we are upset by our situation, it’s so simple (and often understandable) that we wallow in self-pity on top of our already tumultuous relationship. It’s simply not helpful. I was trapped by my brain spending time thinking about nostalgic years prior to the rough time and I wasn’t thinking clearly.

My lists taught me to get my brain back into some mode of operation again. I applied the term, "flying under the radar" to my life. It became my new approach. Flying under the radar was where I began biting my tongue and biding my time (which some of you may recognize from the Funeral Mute song) I kept focused on the biggest thing trapping me-my own sadness. Once I figured this out, I gained a new focus which ended up leading to my new life. I applied it in all areas. I allocated more time each day to my choice career while still logically keeping the job that I was also trapped in but paid. Basically all parts of my life started the climb back out of hell and the percentages got back up to where they were. Why should I expect that something that declined over years should take minutes to fix itself? I just tried to keep an eye on the daily accomplishments and it was a lot less overwhelming.

The human brain has a tendency to stir thoughts like a chili in a slow cooker. You almost don’t recognize any one part of it anymore by the time it’s cooked! But putting a pen to paper can keep a person centered. It did me anyways. Understanding what was trapping me was the first step in prying open the teeth of it. It wasn’t just money, it was my own desperation.

Focus and clarity I think sometimes are a special gift….or in many cases we just have to learn them.

Much love on you!
Karen :)

"Patience is the ability to count down before you blast off." ~ Author Unknown