“If you wish for light, be ready to receive light.”  -Rumi

Years ago, when I had just begun this journey of creating the life I had longed for, a teacher gave me this affirmation, which I have been holding ever since- “I am a joyful, grateful, excellent receiver.” At the beginning, I remember how awkward the words felt in my throat, how foreign the idea of being an active receiver was to me....

I am capable of everything I dream of doing.

Believing in one’s own capacity is everything if you want to keep growing and learning. Facing the obstacles and challenges that come are part and parcel of the growth process is only sustainable if you truly do trust yourself and your capacity to stay in the game while you figure it out.

Good Clean Love is deep in the process of fulfilling its own...

“Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.” ~Robert Brault

I have been struggling with the big changes that are happening in my work. The idea of the change, which feels light years away is taking shape and bears little resemblance to the fantasy I imagined in my head, although it fulfills all the requirements that I set for the change. I didn’t figure in the...

“The future depends on what we do in the present.” ~ Gandhi

As I begin my third year of positivity quest, I am overcome with the success and changes that the discipline and practice of creating a positive relationship to life each and every day has harvested. I am getting more confident with my positivity and just like many of the books I have read suggested, I am witnessing how I am able to...

“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow men.” -Gandhi

We are basically good.  I trust this belief and try to live my life through this window of the world. All of my work on behalf of my beloved Positive Change Clubis my most recent training ground, and there are days when I lose sight of my mission. I question my sanity in the moments when it feels...

“All other love is extinguished by self-love; beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it.”  -Epicurus

I am not sure why I started with the most difficult of all affirmations to begin my book, and surely I am among many who read the words: “I love myself,” but can’t quite feel them.

There is something magical and unique about the felt experience of gratitude.  I have come to believe that  it is as close as we get in our daily lives to an ecstatic connection to the divine. Experiencing the goodness surrounding us viscerally with the practice of feeling gratitude awakens and opens our heart, while simultaneously creating the lightness of joy.

For many years, in fact for most of...

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”  -Buddha

It was about five months ago that I sat behind a table at our local high school recruiting kids to join the new Positive Charge club. Our mission was to design and landscape an interior courtyard at the school as a memorial to a pair of students who were lost in a tragic accident last year. These two boys were full of life and vibrant...

“Believing you have enough is the beginning of having enough.”

Every day in the in-between space of sleeping and waking, I repeat to myself, “I have enough money, resources and people to achieve my and Good Clean Love’s fullest potential.” I don’t start repeating this until I have awoken with a deep sense of gratitude about my life. I start with the easy and obvious – like feeling grateful for...

“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” – Meister Eckhart

I have never enjoyed the introductory class to anything. You know the class when they spend half the time telling you the rules and rather than doing whatever you are there to learn, the teacher goes on at length about what will be learned? While I understand that the beginning of a class sets the tone for what follows, it also...

Here is an affirmation that everyone can benefit from-

“I let go of past circumstances easily and painlessly.” This one takes practice, but the more I embrace it, the more I can easily slip into what is right in front of me and the less old stories impact my days. I have recently made a breakthrough in this space when a friend/ teacher shared with me how these old habitual mental patterns from the...

 “I let go of past circumstances easily and painlessly.”

I could use a few more instructional affirmations for this one. And I don’t think that I am the only one who gets stuck in the past. Our unresolved issues don’t just disappear with the circumstances, rather they take up residence somewhere in our body until we take the time and attention to listen to what aches in us. I have been dedicated...

Mastering the Art, Studying the Science and Discovering the Practice of Positivity, One day at a time…

This is probably the biggest new years resolution that I have ever undertaken but may also be the single most important commitment I have ever made in my life. I have been studying, reading and occasionally writing about the science of positive psychology for some time now. The data is pretty...

“Self trust is the first secret of success.”  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trusting what you know is the bedrock of befriending yourself.  Choosing the beliefs that ground you to your life is everything. Today, on my 53^rd birthday, as I consider what I know for sure…

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” -Zig Ziglar

I have achieved my goal of the positivity quest, which was to change my mind. It has been a long and well-documented climb of turning my sights and sensitivity towards a positive world view. Yet, here I stand, 365 days later with not only an extraordinary view of my life’s potential...

“This we can all bear witness to, living as we do plagued by unremitting anxiety. It becomes more and more imperative that the life of the spirit be avowed as the only firm basis upon to establish happiness and peace.”   -Dalai Lama

I have been studying the experience of anxiety lately, and thanks to arriving at day 327 of this positivity quest, I am able to be a reliable witness. I am not...

“So often times it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key.” ~The Eagles, “Already Gone”

Today I realized that the weakest link in my positivity quest turns out to be in how I talk, which is not a small hurdle, given that I talk a lot. Now that I am on the positivity quest, everyone around me feels free to point out the negativity that flows freely out of...

“Courage is a kind of salvation.” -Plato

Years ago I gave my son a children’s book about courage that illustrated the many small ways that we learn to find courage as we grow up. Everything from standing up and giving a speech in front of the class to saying goodbye to a close friend who is moving away. Starting new schools, new jobs, or new habits all take courage.

Endings take courage too. At...

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” -William James

I am finally ready to take the five hundred pages of this positivity quest and turn it into a book. The weight of all this thinking is impressive in my hands and I know that my life is on an entirely new trajectory for having done it. I am coming to the close of my second...

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” William James

Here I am over 100 days into this positivity quest and I find myself still reaching for the book that started it all, Barbara Fredrickson’s book Positivity. Whenever the weight of the world ignites my negativity bias, her book is the manual that helps me to re-think my...

“Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” Lewis B. Smedes

Some days it is hard to bear witness to the world we have made. The ongoing gush of petrol into ocean, the killing of peace activists on route to bring supplies,...

Today I begin my third edition of my positivity quest blog with a renewed commitment to daily writing as a vehicle for my awakening. This is the third new year that I have begun the year by committing my life to positivity. Having lost touch with the daily practice of writing as I learn in this last year has made me long to find my writing voice again in a way that will guide me to putting the...

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” -T.S. Eliot

It is one month to the day of my still surprising upset victory at the Willamette Angel Conference. Every day seems a new beginning to my business, which is in the process of re-invention. The angel conference has cast a bright light around this love business...