Oy, My Feet.

I had visions of filling up my free time walking a dog or two or pet sitting on the weekends and making a little extra money.  I found out something really important.

The dog walking business is not all it's cracked up to be.

You have to keep to schedules, walk for hours every day in good and bad weather, clean up after your dogs after every walk, stay cheery for the human parents, clean up messes if there are accidents in the house, dodge traffic, other dogs and unfriendly neighbors.

It's important to be trustworthy because everybody counts on you being there when you promised.  You need a back-up system in case something happens to you.  There's a lot of paperwork and key shuffling when you have several customers. You are needed day and night - there's morning walks, afternoon walks, bedtime walks, and in-between pee breaks.  You have to get out of bed early in the morning, go to someone else's house to walk and feed their dogs.  Then you have to stay up at night to go to someones else's house to walk their dog before bedtime.  Their bedtime - not yours.

You should know how to deal with difficult dogs.  You should be strong enough to handle difficult dogs.  You need to be patient with difficult dogs.

You really should be knowledgeable in doggy CPR, healthcare, and training.  

Like human children, every dog has their own issue and preference.  They might have health issues.  They might have personality problems.  They have fears, anxieties, weight problems, allergies, and favorite foods.  Some are food gobblers and will eat anything that fits in their mouths.  Some nibble and can spend all day eating a bowl of food.   Some like you.  Some don't.

Things get a lot more complicated if you offer other services. Grooming, over-night sitting, specialty treats, taxi services and weekly bed and breakfast services can add to your business, but make you seriously indispensable.  You end up working 16 hours a day and can never take a day off.

You need a good pair of walking shoes.  And hair resistant clothes.  And you can't worry about your own hair.  And you need a lot of poop-scoop bags. 

When I decided I wanted to try the business and supplement my income, I didn't realize how demanding tho job really was.  I was hoping to spend my days playing with other people's dogs and meeting interesting people, maybe lose a little weight with a few walks a day.

It's really hard work!

If you're considering supplementing your income with a little dog walking, I recommend working for someone else for a while first.  You may make only ten dollars an hour, but you'll get a good taste of what it takes to run a successful business.  You might decide, like I have, that you should try to be happy with a dog of your own and find another business that easier on the social life.

I'm still walking dogs, but it's become a way to explore a different avenue of pet care - Reiki.  I can become a Reiki practitioner and have access to some potential patients. It's my next new interest, and as you can tell from my previous posts that I have a lot of new interests.

Reiki promises to be the next big thing in pet care.  It's a Japanese healing technique that practitioners use to transfer universal energy through their palms to induce stress reduction and relaxation.  Even though it was developed for us humans, Reiki allows for self-healing and a state of equilibrium that works as well, maybe even better, for animals as it does for people. 

Yes, our pets get stressed.  And like with us, stress leads to health issues and emotional problems.  The difference between us and our pets is that our pets are more open to the energy flow of their environment.  Their ability to block or ignore environmental stressful situations is nothing like our

ability.  It's almost non-existent.  It makes them more susceptible to health disrupting negativity.  Reiki, which is as beneficial to the practitioner as the client, attracts a positive "life force" energy flow to help us heal ourselves. 

It's been a popular practice since the 1920's and I've known about it for years.  I can't believe it's taken me so long to decide to do it.  Even though my primary reason for learning it is to help animals,  I hope to make a daily practice that I can use to help me with my other new business, becoming a creative career counselor.

A whole new set of blogs to come.

Anyhoo,  if anyone out there is thinking dog walking may be a fun new career, think some more.  Be prepared for the hard work and dedication you're going to need.

Remember that those dogs are going to become dependent on you.  So will their parents.  Be ready.

And have a good pair of shoes.

Mark Romero, Musician Extraordinaire

We are energy.  We are magnificent expressions of a field of energy that is unlimited in it's potential - so says Mark Romero.

markromeromusic

With all of our modern technologies, our man-made chemicals, modified food, microwave signals, EMF producing products and more, we have interrupted our connection to that field of energy.  It's causing stress, compromising our health and well-being, and blocking our focus, intuition, and creativity.  The things we use every day are weakening us physically and mentally.  We've put ourselves into a state of disharmony because of our environment.

The good news is you can heal these connections with the right energy and audio frequencies.

Mark Romero

This is where Mark Romero comes in.  He has learned how to combine his natural healing ability with a little guitar playing to shift, energize and optimize your connection to the higher frequencies that can help you live a healthier, happier, and more productive life.

And he's pretty good!

Mark's music can raise your frequency above the frequencies of these energy blockers so that you no longer receive the lower frequency signals.  You bypass the unwanted signals and tune into the higher frequencies that reduce stress and benefit your health and life.  Your connection to the universe strengthens to allow you to heal your environment.  The music also cancels out the static that interferes with your thought patterns and is good for meditations and healing modalities like Reiki or a good massage.

I bought a set of his CD's and downloaded some MP3's.  I want to reduce my stress and nurture my creativity while listening to a nice tune.  Since I need to listen to Mark's music regularly I was happy that I liked his stuff - acoustic guitar with Latin, jazz, and classical rhythm.  While waiting for arrival of the CD's in the mail I found I could create a relaxed and happier atmosphere with the MP3's.  So far my favorite CD is "Beyond the Wall." 

The goal is to align with my highest good without effort; to attract and do things that transmit a high frequency because my frequency has shifted to the higher vibration.  The thing I like best about it is that I can play the CD's in my car and raise my vibration during rush hour.

It would be nice to make my trip to work a more enjoyable one.  I can't wait.

You can listen to some of his music on his website, markromeromusic.com.

He also partners with his wife, Dr. Lara Romero, in some guided meditation CD's to help you create positive shifts in your way of life.  Lara's smooth and calm voice guides you to relax and become receptive to Mark's energy boosts.  They make a great team.

Not to mention a cute couple.

Mark's motto is, "Change your energy, change your life!"

I agree wholeheartedly. 

Life Optimization Training

I passed my test!

I've been certified by Joe Rubino's Center for Personal Reinvention to be a life optimization coach.

Dr. Joe Rubino has a great program for self esteem elevation for adults and children, and I couldn't resist the chance to learn and grow.  Not to mention it was very affordable.

"Become a Certified Life Optimization Coach and Learn the Skills that Changes Lives!"

That's what I'm talking about.  Learning skills that changes lives.

Joe Rubino is the CEO of The Center for Personal Reinvention, a company that provides life-changing and success-enhancing books, audio programs, courses, and personal and business coaching to champion people to be their very best. He is an internationally acclaimed personal development trainer, a transformational success coach and best selling author of 9 books and 2 Audio sets on topics ranging from how to restore self-esteem, achieve business success, and maximize joy and fulfillment in life and productivity in business.

Joe's on a mission to impact the lives of 20 million people, so he created a system to teach people how to teach people to create a successful life. He even created a system for becoming a self-esteem coach for kids. 

I signed up, watched his videos, listened to his audios, read his transcripts and took his test.  Now I have a certificate to prove I learned something.  Just another step toward my bigger goal: becoming qualified to give advice to people.

Now I'm studying with Valerie Young to be a career coach. 

One of my biggest complaints has always been that I've lived a lot of years, accumulated tons of life experience, learned many skills and can do many things, yet I still don't know what to do when I grow up.  I have a job in television because it's where I was led to in my early twenties, and it seems I'm good at it so that's where I've stayed.  It's not necessarily where I want to be, especially since all of the fun has been squeezed out of the profession by money hungry corporate executives, yet I don't have any idea where I really do want to be.  I've found I'm not alone in this dilemma. 

This is where Valerie Young and her Profiting From Your Passions program comes in.  She specializes in helping people think outside the box and hone in to creating a career from what you are passionate about.  I thought this was such a great idea that I wanted to be a part of it.  I want to be a career coach, too.

So now I'm training with her system to be part of her coaching team.  I've just started the classes; I've committed to 3 days a week for the next two months in webinar training and I'm psyched to see what we'll do with the system.  I'd love to be able to help other people move on with their lives with a proven method, even if it's not mine.  Valerie's web site is www.changingcourse.com; her motto is, "Live life on purpose, work at what you love, follow your own road."  Words that rang true for me.

I'll let you know how it goes.  Maybe I'll learn something valuable to pass on to you guys.  This could be a start of a whole new and interesting year. 

Not to mention learning a whole lot of new things to write about.

Love Your Letters!

I saw a kind and gentle young lady on The Jeff Probst Show the other day, and she impressed me.  So much so I decided to check out her website and maybe join her cause.  Then I went to her blog site to find out more about this amazing person and read this:

"Hi.  My name is Hannah Brencher. I am 24 years old but I harbor a soul that is old & thick like the hands of Navajo grandmothers that swoop upward by the fire at night." She's in the business of broken hearts - her words.

Wow.

Hannah's cause is love letters.  That's right.  She likes writing love letters.  To strangers.  

She began writing them in 2010, when she moved to New York.  Feeling lonely and depressed, Hannah decided to pour out her feelings in letters and left them all over the city.  Addressed to no one in particular, she believed that every letter was meant for someone, and it was up to them to pick it up and read it.  It didn't take long for Hannah to realize what valuable gifts she was giving to these people, people she never met, and New York paid her generosity back by asking for more.  

So she started The World Needs More Love Letters and recruited her friends to help her write more love letters.  Soon she was getting requests from all over the world for her letters.  People everywhere need love, and love reading about how much they are loved, even when total strangers tell them they are loved.

Love is love.  And it makes the world go round.

I've always enjoyed giving people things.  Giving on the sly is especially invigorating; I'll leave a coin on the sidewalk where I know children like to play.  I'll smile at passersby when walking around town.  I'll crack open walnuts and leave them out for squirrels, or hang grapes out in the bushes for the birds.  I love to buy things for the neighbors and leave them on their porches.  Just to confuse them. 

The best gift I've found is greeting people when they walk in the door as if they were cute little puppies.  "Richard!" I squeal with a smile on my face. "Diana!" People love it because it makes them feel welcome and appreciated.  No matter how bad they feel before you greet them like that, they always walk away with a smile on their own face.  You should try it, it's great!

When Hannah told Jeff Probst that she started a web site because of the rising popularity of love-letter writing, my inner giver became intrigued and I decided to try this letter writing gig, so I looked into her site, www.moreloveletters.com to learn more. Then I signed up to receive love letter alerts, and checked out her starter kit to find out what I needed to do.  

It seems I'm better at giving things than writing love prose.  Practice makes perfect, though, so I'm going to gather my stationery and write.  This is fantastic - I get to use my pretty stationery - another good reason to write love letters!  

Hannah Brencher is changing the world one letter at a time, and I want to be a part of that.  Who knows, this might be my next favorite hobby!

My Brain Deserves Sugar

Sometimes I'll stop mid stride and stare into space.

I'm not having a stroke or a seizure, I didn't fall asleep or lose my mind - I just started thinking.

My brain has a tendency to work overtime.  I can be drying off after a shower, looking at apples in the grocery store, walking in the park or sitting here writing, and my motor skills come to a halt while my brain scans, files, accesses, and organizes information.  It's a real problem when I'm driving.  I have to stay in the moment while on the road or my foot relaxes from the accelerator and my car will slow down to a crawl before I notice that other drivers are getting irritated with me.

The mornings are the worst.  I get to thinking about my day, which turns into reevaluating the day before, and leads into thinking about new possibilities, then I wander down life is beautiful lane.  Before I know it I find myself standing naked in the bathroom holding my towel and staring at my bathtub and 10 minutes have disappeared.  Usually I'll wake up in the morning, look at the clock, decide to get up, turn over to stretch, start thinking about my next step - and when I blink a half an hour goes by.   Because this happens regularly, I have to give myself lots of extra prep time in the mornings so that I can get to work on time.

I'm a sugar addict.  I admit it.  I love my sugar.  I don't necessarily like sweet things - in fact if something is too sweet or is sugary without flavor, I won't want to eat or drink it; but I'm definitely a cookie, cake, and chocolate covered nut monster.  Because of my weight battle I try not to eat too much of it, but I have to sweeten my tea and cereal in the mornings and have a cookie for lunch if I want to stay in a good mood all day.

When I had my Access Bars run, I learned that this may not be a bad thing.  Apparently people who think a lot need sugar to keep the brain running smoothly.  Apparently when you crave sugar or salt you're supposed to listen to your body and go for it.  Sugar feeds the brain.  Salt helps your electromagnetic energy flow smoothly.

At least this is what they told me.

Even though I was glad to hear being a sugar addict wasn't all bad, I wondered about it for a while and decided to look into it.  It turns out that moderation and fiber is the key.  A high fructose diet (soda, pre-packaged baked goods, candy) is really bad for you in many ways, but a little fructose (fruit, vegetables) balanced with the right amount of fiber is good for you. 

Your brain, however, needs glucose, a sugar formed from eating carbohydrates.  You can still eat too much glucose, but the right food with the good carbs and fiber is what your brain needs most.  I can do a whole article about this, but think fruit, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. 

Mental activity requires a lot of fuel, and glucose travels through your bloodstream to fuel our brain power.  The key is to eat the right foods that have glucose and try not to eat too much, because too much can hinder your brain activity.

Sugar, the kind we make sweets from and sprinkle in our coffee, is sucrose and is made from sugar beets or sugar cane.  Sucrose, a carbohydrate, is also found in fruit, and is okay in moderation if eaten with a balanced diet.  You might think that because we use beets and sugarcane, nature's bounty, table sugar is good for you, but by the time we process the sugar crystals from nature's bounty we've completely stripped any food value from the sweetener.

You could use turbinado sugar, a less refined sugar from sugar cane.  Some say it's healthier than white sugar, but I like it because it adds a nice flavor to my tea and coffee.  It would be better to just eat beets and chew on the sugar cane.

So the tidbit I got about eating sugar for my brain was partially true - I just have to get it from a diet rich in fruit and vegetables.

The tidbit about salt - well here's what I found out:  Your body relies on electrolytes, which comes from sodium, potassium and chloride, and table salt is sodium chloride.  A Journal of the American Medical Association study showed people with the highest levels of sodium in their bodies lived longer than people with the lowest levels.  Too little sodium and your body and brain function suffers.  The planet is covered with salt - there is salt in everything, and the way we mine the salt from underground mines and sea water keeps it in it's natural state.  We don't have to process all of it's benefits out like we do with sugar.

When I thought about it, I realized that I've spent a lot of my life trying to keep my salt intake low - maybe that's my problem.  Maybe I'm  eating the wrong junk food.  I need to stay away from the brownies and eat my potato chips - and learn to like chewing on sugar cane. 

So even though my brain deserves sugar, I'm better off with salt.

I still have to have my cookie for lunch.

Go Pee in the Rain

Over the years, with all of my dogs, I developed a habit of getting up in the middle of the night to let them out to relieve themselves.  I figured that as long as I'm up because my own bladder has a call, I might as well take the extra step for the dogs.  I think they appreciated it, especially since I rewarded them with a treat when they came back to the house. 

I slept better afterwards knowing we were all more comfortable.  It also meant that I could take my time getting out of bed in the morning, and I hate rushing around after a good night's sleep.

I now have a puppy and I'm house and crate-training her.  She's doing pretty well with going outside to pee, but she refuses to go out in the rain and sometimes when it's dark outside, both of which happens a lot here in D.C. in the winter.  Even if I pick her up and carry her out to the yard, tell her to go pee and wait in the rain for something to happen, she'll refuse to do anything except find something to chew on.  Whether it's day or night, if she feels uncomfortable she looks around nervously, picks up a stick or a leaf and heads back to the house.  The result, of course, is that her bladder fills up and she ends up piddling on my carpet.

So now we have a plan.  If she relieves herself outside, she gets lots of positive validation and lots of free time in the house.  If she doesn't, she goes straight back to her crate.

Nine times out of ten, she refuses to pee.  Out of fear of the unfamiliar she'd rather stay in her crate and suffer with her full bladder.

I eventually realized that this was a good representation of what a lot of us humans do.  Instead of embracing new and unfamiliar experiences, we tend to retreat back into our boxes.  If we don't get the right encouragement or the right training when we're young we never learn to get past our fears and gain the courage to reap our rewards.  We have deep rooted belief systems that keep us from stepping out of our comfort zones.

It's hard to feel safe when facing the unknown.  We are wired to protect ourselves, even when it means living with pain because it's a condition we are already familiar with.  We already know how to deal with our pain.  We don't know if we can handle an unfamiliar experience.

I don't like to conquer my fears; it's more helpful to me to try to break through my fears.  I think of each fear as a door with an invisible deflector shield and a hard-to-step-over threshold that takes extra effort to cross.  The trick is to change my perspective.  The door can look pretty scary at first - overwhelming, repelling, and unfriendly - but if I can look at it as interesting, inviting and beautiful, the door becomes an entrance to a new adventure or at least an interesting opportunity.  Sometimes crossing that scary threshold takes a bit more psychological effort, but it's usually worth it.

 It's hard to get past our fears, but it can be done.  We need to adopt a mindset that invites us to trust our intuition and our ability to deal with anything that comes our way.  It helps to have a support system, something or someone that will back you up and cheer you on when you need to open a new door, but ultimately it's up to you.  You are the one who's exploring new territory, so you are the one who has to handle whatever shows up when you open that door.

My puppy may prefer to wait for those sunny, clear-weather days to squat in the yard, but I know with the right encouragement, en-courage-ment, I can help her get over her fear of wet grass and cold raindrops and empty her bladder.  I'm banking on her desire to get over her setbacks and live a fearless life of passion and joy, a life every puppy should live.

It's also a life every human should live.  Somehow we lost track of our ability to embrace our growth process.  For some reason we've used fear to achieve a feeling of safety and comfort.

Ask yourself what you really have to be afraid of.  I encourage you to open your door to relieve your pain and go pee in the rain.  You might learn to like it.

Run Your Access Bars

Have you found yourself bogged down with negative feelings, reacting badly to whatever buttons people around you are unconsciously pushing, or thinking things that are not healthy and uplifting?  Have you ever wondered why things seem to go bad when they should be going good - and probably actually are good when seen from someone else's point of view?  When you get up in the morning, do you look forward to your day, or do you anticipate struggling through to get to the end of it?

Gary Douglas discovered a way to lighten your load and is having fun sharing with the world.  He created Access Consciousness, a method of clearing your energy and healing your emotional wounds.

Think of your mind as a computer.  The memory of your computer can get clogged with unnecessary information and unwanted downloaded programs.  It slows down, does stuff you don't want it to do,  overheats and freezes up, and finally crashes from over-exhaustion.

All you had to do to avoid that crash is defragment and clear it's cookie and history cache.  It needs a regular tune up and maybe a memory boost to keep up with all of the new information you want to load into it.  Regular maintenance can make your computer live longer and work to it's full potential.

Think of your brain and body memory the same way.  You've lived lots of years and accumulated all sorts of information, soaked up your parent's memories and their parent's memories, and unconsciously held on to old emotions and reactions that no longer serve your present living situations.  You want to take in more and grow and change into the person you want but everything new gets pushed away because you have all of the old stuff claiming it's space.

You need to do for yourself what you'd do for your computer to keep it running smoothly and efficiently.  You need to defrag yourself.

This is where Access Consciousness come in.

Your head has 32 points of energy that connect through and around it to create  a grid of sorts that stores all of the information that you've accumulated.  When you connect these points, or "have your bars run," the information can be released or cleared, helping you let go of old emotions, unclog energetic blockages, or release anything interfering with who you want to be.   There's no judgement, no counseling, no need for even having to figure out what really needs to be "fixed".  All you need to do is connect these points with your fingers and let the energy flow. 

As you clear these bars on a regular basis, you begin to open the channels to recieve without guilt or obligation.  You basically stop blocking your ability to "go with the flow" and recieve what ever it is you need unconditionally.  Add the clearing statement to any negative thoughts you have, and you create a clear energy flow ready to download new and more positive energy into your body and space.

The clearing statement sounds a bit silly, but once you know what the acronyms stand for it becomes a logical way to state it. You identify a thought or belief that might be holding you back and decide to let it go, then say, "Right and wrong, good and bad, POD and POC, all 9, shorts, boys and beyonds."  If you want to find out what it means, go to Accessconsciousness.com to read all about it.

http://www.thriveforlifecoaching.com

Last month I met with Rhonda Burns, an Access Bars facilitator in my area, to see if I could clear my energy and free it up for all that I'm doing for myself these days.  I've been doing so much energy work lately I should be living a much improved or at least a different kind of life, but in reality my life is just the same as it was this time last year.  I wondered if I was unconsciously holding myself back.  When I found out about Access Bars I looked up the Access Consciousness website, found Rhonda, and made an appointment with her.

She described the process as a relaxing head message that took about an hour to complete.  Upbeat and vivacious, Rhonda made me feel comfortable in her home as I relaxed on her message table.  She said a few clearing statements and started to move my energy around through my feet and hands, and the rest of the hour was spent connecting energy points on my head to free up my flow.  By the end of the hour my brain was free-floating and I felt pretty happy.  I felt a little like I had just enjoyed a couple of margaritas, without the tequila hangover.

About a week ago I tried it again, this time in a class environment where Rhonda taught me and four other people how to do it ourselves.  We took turns clearing each others bars and went home feeling pretty good.  I've done this kind of energy work before, so I could tell this was a good healing method to share with others. 

The mantra of Access Consciousness is, "All of life comes to me with ease and joy and glory!"  When you get up in the morning repeat it to yourself.  When things are going bad or getting difficult, say it: "All of life come to me with ease and joy and glory!"  I think it'll make you feel better - make your perspective shift towards an easier and more joyful way.  I like saying out loud when my puppy poops under my desk or chews up my slippers. 

"All of life comes to me with ease and joy and glory!"

Sometimes it does, and now that I've defragged myself things should come to me pretty easily and joyfully, and even with glory.  At least I've lightened up my load.