Are the voices in my

head guardian angels

or spirit guides?

How do I know if I

can trust them?

Do I have to do what

they tell me to do?

How can I know if

they are good or evil?

What if I’m crazy?

Voices

Divinity or Insanity?

answers these questions

and more

40 of Skye Thomas’ most popular articles have been brought together to create this magical book.  Give it as a gift to someone going through a rough time to show them

your love and support.  Give

it to your teenagers as a series of life lessons to help them get through the difficulties of becoming adults.  Give it to yourself as a reminder that

you have what it takes to

get through the dramas that

life throws your way.  

When All Else Fails,

Find Your Heart’s Song and Sing Louder!

is one of those pick-me-ups

that you can rely on to always be there like a good friend ready to cheer you up on a cloudy day.

Who can I trust with

my heart?

What type of person

is naturally

compatible with me?

Who will love me for

who I am on the inside?

Who is naturally loyal

and faithful?

Why Do I Keep Falling

in Love With the

Wrong People?

answers these questions

and more

How can I stop the

negative self-talk from ruining my life?

How can I conquer my negativity and become a naturally positive person?

Why am I so fearful

of trying new things?

How can I improve

my self-esteem?

Beyond the Inner Critic

answers these questions

and more

Quirky Goodies can be found at our

Tomorrow’s Edge

Gift Shoppe

Love & Compatability       Angels & Spirituality       Horoscopes & Astrology       Self-Confidence & Personal Development       Skye Thomas

Articles       Books       Newsletters       Abundance & Prosperity       Family & Friends       Contact Us       ...and so much more

December 20th, 2010

Looking Up

Good morning,

I recently watched a special about Stonehenge on Nova's website...

http://video.pbs.org/video/1636852466/

With the big solstice eclipse coming Tuesday, I thought you might like to check it out.

Merry Christmas,

Skye Thomas

Tomorrow's Edge

...inspiring leaps of faith

www.TomorrowsEdge.net

Books, articles, newsletters,

life coaching, & horoscopes.

This Week's News of Interest:

January 2011 Horoscopes

The new January horoscopes were posted to the website and sent out to the subscribers over the weekend.  The December forecasts are still online.

Here are the links for those of you who like to read the horoscopes online...

Aries January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Taurus January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Gemini January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Cancer January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Leo January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Virgo January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Libra January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Scorpio January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Sagittarius January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Capricorn January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Aquarius January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

Pisces January 2011 Monthly Horoscopes

2011 Overviews

Here are links to the free 2011 Overviews.  Personalized versions are also available.  Order now before the New Year's Day rush.

Aries Horoscope 2011 Overview

Taurus Horoscope 2011 Overview

Gemini Horoscope 2011 Overview

Cancer Horoscope 2011 Overview

Leo Horoscope 2011 Overview

Virgo Horoscope 2011 Overview

Libra Horoscope 2011 Overview

Scorpio Horoscope 2011 Overview

Sagittarius Horoscope 2011 Overview

Capricorn Horoscope 2011 Overview

Aquarius Horoscope 2011 Overview

Pisces Horoscope 2011 Overview

Quote of the Week:

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. - Aristotle

People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to. - George Allen

If you don't invest very much, then defeat doesn't hurt very much and winning is not very exciting. - Dick Vermeil, American Football Coach

Feature Article of the Week:

Getting Back Up On That Horse Again

Sometimes, for whatever reason, we give up and quit.  Sometimes, we run out of resources or start up capital.  Sometimes, our children, parents, friends, and loved ones need us during their time of crisis and we gladly put our dreams aside to rush to their aid.  Sometimes, we are simply burned out and no longer feel motivated to take action despite still seeing the validity of the objective.  Sometimes, we do not have the skills, education, or credentials that we need.  Sometimes, we simply cannot do it alone and help is nowhere in sight.  Sometimes, political powers make it very difficult for us to accomplish our goals because our aspirations conflict with their ideology.  Sometimes, our competitors succeed at sabotaging our efforts.  And sometimes, we feel like we do not have the strength to pick ourselves up one more time to keep moving forward, so we decide to just stay down for awhile while we catch our breath and regroup.  We suspect that someday, somehow we will get back up on that horse again, despite feeling that right now in this moment, we just cannot go on anymore.

This article is not about how to solve the problems and remove the roadblocks that cause you to want to give up and quit.  This is about giving yourself permission to get back up, dust yourself off, and make another go at it.  All too often, once we give up and quit, we assign the "loser" or "failure" labels to ourselves and then assume that role in society.  It is a noble place in society, the person who gave it a good try and failed.  We get to hold our head up as one of those people who had the nerve to at least try compared to those who never do.  And we can smugly tell others who follow in our footsteps where to watch out for pitfalls and why they too should expect to fail.  Thus telling ourselves that we are also using our hard earned wisdom to assist others and to ease others from landing as hard as we did when we made our own face plant.  Yes, there is the nagging sense that we are indeed losers and failures, but there are enough small benefits that it is not so uncomfortable that we actually have to take action and move away from having tried and failed.  After all, there is no shame in trying your best and then failing.  Right?

For all the comfort we get from our peers and dear old Mom telling us that we are still lovable even when we fail, losing still haunts us.  Life is never stagnant.  At some point, circumstances change.  Sometimes, they change in our favor and sometimes they don't.  When things get worse, we shrug it off and reconfirm our choice to give up and quit.  But when things get better, when competitors leave the market, when political ideologies change, when creative new ideas come to us, when new technologies make it easier for us to wear more hats and not have to hire help, when it looks like our old dreams and goals become more do-able, then what?  Then we wrestle with the concept, "Do I try again?  Do I take another risk?  Do I put myself through all of that again?  Now what?"  

At this point, the question is, "Do I dare to hope?  Or do I surrender to my fears that things will probably fall apart again?"  At this point, it is easy to weigh the pros and cons, play around with statistics and probability analyses, and to fantasize success while also visualizing failure.  This is all good and well.  One should never make big decisions lightly or without all of the relevant facts on hand.

Sometimes, making the decision is easy.  You dreamt of being a rock star when you were a teenager.  Now, with home recording equipment and the Internet, it is possible to launch your music career and self-promote as an unsigned independent artist.  However, you are older, wiser, and no longer see that dream as anything more than a youthful fancy.  You no longer have the desire to work that hard or to put your spouse and children through the uncertain financial future of being a musician.  Therefore, even though you may enjoy dabbling and playing around with such things, you decide to keep your "real job."

It can also play out the other way, and saying yes to resurrecting your dream is easy.  You wanted to start your own business.  You created an excellent well thought out business plan, ironed out all of the details, analyzed the market's likely response to your goods and services, and you have the expertise, confidence, and tenacity to make great things happen.  However, you could not raise the start up capital.  No matter how brilliant your business proposal and no matter how enthusiastic your sales pitch, you could not find an investor who believed in both you and your dream.  Then along comes an old friend from high school you haven't seen in years and not only do they have the ability to finance your idea, they are excited at the opportunity to co-create it with you.  Therefore, it is easy to say yes and give it another try.

But what about when favorable circumstances are not overwhelmingly favorable, but just "more favorable"?  Or when your competition leaves the company, but that does not guarantee you the next job promotion?  Or when creative new ideas might work, but are not guaranteed to work?  Or when you have acquired enough new knowledge to know what you did wrong last time, but not much more than that?  Or when some wave of "change is in the air" washes over you and you just feel motivated again?  Or when nothing at all has changed other than you feel deeply called to try again because the dream haunts you and will not let you quit with peace of mind?  Then what?  How do you give yourself permission to hope again when the hard concrete evidence validating the logic behind rekindled hope does not exist?

To this I give you three questions to ponder.  One or more may apply in your personal situation.

Number 1) Let's say that accomplishing your goal brings good into the world.  For example, you are going to become a teacher, write music, run for office, cure Cancer, or some other dream that is not completely self-oriented, like "I am going to lose 20 pounds before my next birthday."  Your goal is in a service-to-others industry.  In your own way, you are trying to make the world a better place.  

Ask yourself, "If I work really hard struggling for years to bring my little gifts to the world, and it only helps two people, was it worth it?"

This question was posed to me by a well-meaning acquaintance years ago.  I was going through a tough time.  I wanted to write my little books and articles and to give my little speeches around the country to help others learn how to be happy.  However, it seemed that no matter how hard I tried to help my own friends and family, they kept reverting back to negative self-destructive behaviors that kept them from living the life of ease and joy that they could so easily have had if they would just heed my well-intentioned advice.  My question to this wise person I knew was, "Are you sure the world even wants to be happy?  Maybe I'm just wasting my time trying to force something on people that is not really in their nature?"  Without a "market" to sell "happiness" to, how could I possibly succeed?  He then asked me, "If you spend the rest of your life writing your books and traveling all over the world giving speeches.  And your words reach millions of people, but in the end, only two people are truly moved, only two people are able to really "get it" and apply what you are teaching, you only have a profoundly positive life changing effect on two people.  If that happens, then was your lifetime of hard work and effort all for naught?"  And so, throughout the hard times, whenever I was tempted to give up and quit, I would remember those "two people" and for them I would carry on.

Find how this line of questioning would apply to your own dream and ask yourself that same question.

Number 2) Ask yourself this question, "Who else would you be?"

Is this a dream that holds a piece of your soul?  Are you at the very core of your being a musician, artist, writer, singer, leader, civil rights advocate, politician, chef, doctor, etc.  For some people, a dream is just a dream.  For others, it is about becoming who they already were.  Look at someone like Oprah, she majored in journalism and wanted to become "Mary Tyler Moore".  She did not necessarily have the goal of succeeding at the level that she did, but at the core of who she is - is the personality that needed to educate, inspire, uplift, and entertain people.  She simply became who she already was.  The same is true for me; I was never not a wordsmith who meant well when offering unsolicited advice to anyone who would listen.  At times when life required that I put my dream on the backburner for a while, I missed "being" the kind of person who goes after this kind of a dream despite the odds, more than I did the actual writing, speech giving, or any other part of the actual "doing."  And so, it may be with you.  Are you able to spend the rest of your life NOT being who and what you really are?  Can you say no to a music career because deep down it is fun, but not really something that haunts you and owns you?  Does the music call to you, never leaving you alone, always screaming to be birthed through you?  Then, who else would you be?

Number 3) If I could promise you that you would only fail two more times and that on the third attempt, you would achieve everything your heart desires and more.  If I had a crystal ball and could promise you this without question, would you do it?  Would you put yourself through two more failures in order to get to that "third times a charm" place in the universe?  

I often hear from aspiring writers who are feeling quite discouraged because they have been turned down by a handful of perspective publishers.  They need to ask themselves, "What is the average number of rejection letters the average unknown writer receives before a publisher finally says yes to them?"  I remember at one time hearing that it was something like 27, and telling myself, "Okay, well I need to hurry up and blow through the first 26 rejections so I can get to that 27th one who will say yes."  Of course, we all want to be one of the lucky ones who gets a 'yes' sooner than what normally happens for the average writer.  However, if you go into the whole process prepared and steeled for 26 rejection letters, it makes it a lot easier than if you go into it saying, "I applied to three and got rejected all three times, so I must not be any good at writing."

Mulling over these questions does not guarantee you success as you contemplate once again giving hope a chance, but if you are on the edge and thinking that you just might take one more leap of faith, they can help you to remember why you wanted to fly in the first place.  And of course, there is my old favorite from the Talmud, "If not now, when?"

Need someone to talk to about life's challenges?  Skye Thomas is available for life coaching.

Copyright 2008, Skye Thomas, Tomorrow's Edge

Tomorrow's Edge

...inspiring leaps of faith

www.TomorrowsEdge.net

Books, articles, newsletters,

life coaching, & horoscopes.

Skye Thomas is the CEO of Tomorrow’s Edge, an Internet leader in inspiring leaps of faith.  She became a writer in 1999 after twenty years of studying personal growth, motivation, soulmates, self-esteem, parenting, spirituality, metaphysics, family dynamics, dating, and astrology.  Her books, articles, and astrological forecasts have inspired people of all ages and faiths to recommit themselves to the pursuit of happiness.  To read more of her articles, previews of her books, and her astrology forecasts, go to www.TomorrowsEdge.net.  To read more about Skye and to sign up to receive one or more of her free newsletters, go to www.SkyeThomas.com.  

 

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