Be prepared for every opportunity!

It never ceases to amaze me that Eli can be in a dead sleep, and I mean poke him in the side and make sure he's still breathing type of sleep, but the moment he hears his leash, he is at the door ready to go. I am always amazed by this because there is never any hesitation. No, "I need a minute to wake up please". He's just always ready. His 'always ready to go attitute' is an important one, so I wanted to start with it.

It really should be no surprise that sometimes opportunity comes when we aren't expecting it. Being unprepared should never be an excuse for not taking advantage of good oportunities. I've been a victum of this in the past and I can tell you it really stinks when you realize you've missed an opportunity. You run through all those 'what if's and 'I could have" scenerio's in your head and sometimes, start to really beat yourself up over it. You have to be prepared to take advantage of the oppotunities when they come along. No more excuses on why you missed it. No more complaints about what could have been. Just preparation and readiness for anything that might come along.
This first lesson has really played out in my life over and over again and I'm happy to say that there are very specific opportunities that I did take advantage of that completely shaped my life. I'm sure you've had those too. Moments that completely alter the course of you and your life for ever. I'm betting if you thought hard, you could come up with 2 or 3 significant events that changed everything for you.

Over the next few week's, I'll tell you about a few of my life changing moments, and trust me when I say, they were game changers for me. The first happened when I was 11 years old. I'm not sure if many of you remember in elementary school when the band teacher came into class to talk about joining the band. They had a bunch of instruments, talked about how great it is, and I was hooked. But something happened between the time that they got me excited about it and they actual audition. I let my fear of failure and my shyness get in my way. I had convinced myself that I wasn't going to make it so there was no point in trying.  More about this story next week!

We all have this self talk that can help us or hurt us. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. It's the little things that we say to ourself. I think self talk is generally what seperates highly successful people from those who either never reach their full potential or never actually try anything. Positive self talk creates opportunity. Negative self talk prevents us from taking advantage of opportunity. I've always struggled with negative self talk for a variety of reasons and on this particular day, it nearly cost me everything about my life that I love today.  As we get more into this lesson, we'll discover why this is so important!

So the Journey Begins!

I'm what I would consider a "life long learner". I've always believed that, if you're really paying attention to the world around you, you can learn lessons from anyone, anything, or anywhere. How often do you really look at the world around you? I mean really look? Have you ever stopped to watch people? Things? Events? Everything has the potential to be a life lesson, if you're just paying close attention.


My life lessons for the last several years, have come from a very unexpected source, my dog Eli.
Eli is a  4 and a half year old German Shepperd who quite honestly is a bit quirky. Don't get me wrong, he is extremely intelligent, but he's a little different when it comes to his personality. He's pretty large, which will be important later in our conversation. He's really my big baby boy. He can frustrate me at times but he can also bring a smile to my face in an instance.


As he's matured over the last few years, I've noticed that he has been teaching me really great lessons about life. I started sharing these lessons with some people, and discovered that they held potential insight for others as well.  I started a book about these lessons a few years ago and quite frankly it's taken me far longer to complete than I had hoped.  So this blog is my attempt and beginning to share these lessons to a larger audience as I work to complete the book.


I look forward to sharing Eli's wisdom and the knowledge I have gained just by having him in my life!  We'll be sharing this journey together so I encourage you to share your experiences on this blog as well!