“A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles must begin with a sin­gle step.” ~ Lao Tzu

The Pref­ace

Dur­ing the fall of 2009, I attended a week-long lead­er­ship work­shop in North Car­olina.  This was a won­der­ful learn­ing and growth expe­ri­ence, and one I still hold close to me today.  The day I arrived, I sat next to a young woman, unknown to me at the time.  Our group that week was small — 7 par­tic­i­pants.  And our time together was also, very much a “get­ting to know you at a deep level” expe­ri­ence. Good, good stuff.

Back to that young woman, though.  Her name…Angie Kenny.   A soul-filled per­son, sup­port­ing the growth of a  local hotel in neigh­bor­ing Greens­boro.  We con­nected over that week together, and have con­tin­ued our friend­ship and sup­port of each other since that time.

A few months after this work­shop, Angie shared with me that her real pas­sion was bak­ing.  Not only that, she was going to give it a shot — going after her dream (awe­some, isn’t it!).  And that’s exactly what she did — and today, nearly two years later, she has a thriv­ing busi­ness, Zen Cat Gluten-Free Bak­ery, ser­vic­ing the Greens­boro area and the world!

Her motto:  Gluten-Free + Vegan + All Love (so, so fit­ting for this lovely soul!)

Read below as Angie shares a part of this jour­ney toward her true peak.

Angie and Zen Cat Gluten-Free Bak­ery

I am a dreamer.  I’m also a Gem­ini, so I like to do a lot of things and dream up a lot of ideas.  I like to learn things to help me grow and to just have an expe­ri­ence with life.  I’ve moved away from the thought that you “choose one thing to do and do it”, career-wise.  I wasn’t con­scious about this phi­los­o­phy until I looked at my job his­tory.  I’ve had expe­ri­ence in inte­rior design, farm­ing, film­mak­ing, serv­ing after­noon tea, assist­ing a bril­liant CEO and now work­ing in a bakery.

This is not a sta­tus list; it’s from where I’ve trav­eled so I value it as a snap­shot of my life.  I also see the tra­jec­tory of my choices.  One deci­sion to learn a new skill set (read: over­come fear or reser­va­tion) became a step­ping stone to the next learn­ing expe­ri­ence.  I only had to apply (basi­cally) one thing:  my heart.

Most of the “adult” career or job choices I’ve made were led by my heart and not by social pres­sures or a dol­lar sign.  Sure I wrote down the pros and cons of each move (I am an ardu­ous list maker), weighed options, took a deep breath and took a dive…

My cur­rent posi­tion in life is no excep­tion.  I am a baker.  I own Zen Cat Gluten-Free Bak­ery, and I started this busi­ness from my heart and with a few busi­ness skills picked up from my pre­vi­ous – full-time, salaried, with ben­e­fits! -  job at a very suc­cess­ful hotel and restau­rant company.

My heart and my tummy moved me!  I had to go gluten-free a few years ago, which is not an easy lifestyle change.  I was hun­gry!  I couldn’t find any good cookie to eat and worse, I wasn’t able to eat my grandmother’s most deli­cious pump­kin cake.  I knew that if I was look­ing for some­thing good to eat, then there were oth­ers out there look­ing for the same thing.

I real­ized that in help­ing myself to a good cookie, I could help oth­ers.  I would help oth­ers in open­ing a bak­ery busi­ness.  AND, I wanted to touch every­one, not just those who are gluten-free and vegan.   

This became part of Zen Cat’s mis­sion state­ment:  to cre­ate great desserts and bak­ery prod­ucts that are gluten-free and vegan (did I men­tion vegan??), that are more health­ful and that appeal to every­one.  I want to bake with mind­ful­ness, with love.  I want love and well-being to be the ingre­di­ents, along with organic sugar and fair trade cocoa.  You don’t have to be gluten-free or vegan to enjoy Zen Cat Bakery’s Oh Snap! Triple Gin­ger Cookie…you just have to love a good cookie! 

What this expe­ri­ence has brought me thus far:  joy, sweat, tears, hap­pi­ness, fear, sur­prise, fatigue, dis­ci­pline, deter­mi­na­tion, many friendly faces and love.  All those things you get when you are fol­low­ing your path of heart.

There are 2 things that keep me going

1 – When I ask myself “Can I do it, can I run a bak­ery busi­ness?”  I remem­ber my husband’s reply when I asked him this ques­tion early on:  “You are doing it”.  Present moment les­son for me.

2 – Curios­ity.  My CEO friend empha­sized the act of being curi­ous in life.  Ask ques­tions, find answers.  This helps in fig­ur­ing out new recipes, new mar­kets, busi­ness strate­gies, and of course what makes me tick, what makes oth­ers tick.   

For good mea­sure, there’s a 3^rd – My dreams and ideas keep me going:  What’s next?  How can I grow the bak­ery?  What new health­ful cre­ation will peo­ple love to eat?  And the inevitable:  what comes after the bak­ery, what’s next on my life’s journey?

Angie has recently began sell­ing her deli­cious baked goods through Etsy, open­ing the world up to her yummy treats!! (check them out — they are a delight!)

I’ve tried sev­eral of her prod­ucts, and have JUST received my sec­ond batch of brown­ies (my favorite!!).   From the pack­ag­ing, to the per­sonal note of thanks, to  the care and love I know goes into every­thing she bakes — Angie has cre­ated amaz­ing and deli­cious baked goods that sat­isfy a gluten-free diet, while not sac­ri­fic­ing taste that some might expect from gluten-free food.  I eat these just because they taste great!!

Keep up with Angie by vis­it­ing Zen Cat Gluten-Free Bak­ery, lik­ing her Face­book page, and buy­ing her deli­cious­ness on Etsy!
 

Note: This is part of a series where I fea­ture peo­ple who are on their true peak jour­ney.  If you’re inter­ested in shar­ing your story, please con­tact me.

“A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles must begin with a sin­gle step.” ~ Lao Tzu

Today our guest is Chris­t­ian Hollingsworth, from Smart Boy Designs.  Chris­t­ian writes about blog­ging and life at his site, and has cre­ated an active com­mu­nity through the sto­ries he weaves.

Below Chris­t­ian shares a part his story, as he has con­tin­ues his true peak journey.

Please read and enjoy…

I’m going to put it bluntly, straight­for­ward from the beginning.

I found my true peak by for­giv­ing myself and under­stand­ing that I make mis­takes.

The past cou­ple of months have been a whirl­wind of learn­ing for me. A time to pon­der and con­sider the great ques­tions of life. For a year I was serv­ing as a ser­vice mis­sion­ary in Col­orado and then Novem­ber of 2010 I got incred­i­bly ill. At first it was thought to be the flu, but I never got bet­ter. Heart prob­lems, stom­ach issues, joint pain and more. At this point, over seven months of being ill, the doc­tors still don’t know what is wrong.

It’s been dur­ing this time that I’ve grown the most.

Let’s Go Back a Lit­tle Bit

I feel like I’ve had a blessed life. A life full of oppor­tu­nity and kind­ness given to me. Brought into my life my forces unbe­knownst to me. Life has been handed to me – and I’ve always had no excuse (in my mind) to be my very best.

In short, I have always been my own worst enemy and critic.

Whether it’s a sim­ple draw­ing or essay, I’ve always been the one to judge myself. The one to say I haven’t done my best. That lit­tle voice who dis­tills in my mind – bring­ing the neg­a­tiv­ity. Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever feel like you’re the tough­est per­son in the uni­verse, on your own work and out­put? I often did, and still do sometimes.

I Choose to be Positive.

In order to fight it, I had to under­stand and firmly believe in a sim­ple truth.

Neg­a­tiv­ity is not my nat­ural spirit.

That’s not how I’m sup­posed to be. That’s not who I am. Those feel­ings are and were only the feel­ings of the neg­a­tiv­ity we face on a daily basis – that creeps in from the world.

From our youth we are often pos­i­tive. We’re going to climb the high­est moun­tains and be the next astro­naut on the moon. We’re going to accom­plish every­thing and take oth­ers with us. Then the world, peo­ple and our own selves start to voice their own opin­ion. They tell us it’s not pos­si­ble, we can’t make it, and what we’re bring­ing to the table isn’t enough.

Don’t believe them.

My True Peak

Let’s go back to my orig­i­nal thoughts. Being ill.

It’s been dur­ing this time that I’ve been hum­bled to the core. I’ve been brought down to a tremen­dous low. It’s often dur­ing these times that we rise, and make some­thing great out of the dust.

From being ill I’ve reached my True Peak – because I am quicker to for­give myself. I’ve come to under­stand that I will make mis­takes, dif­fi­culty will arise – and that I have the power within to overcome.

That’s the true peak. That’s the peak we each face every day. The moun­tain we climb.

We’re going to make mis­takes – but we’re also going to reach the peak, and summit.

It’s the happy mes­sage. The one we should be proud of.

I don’t know that I’ll ever fully reach my True Peak in this life, but do know that I reach smaller, less pro­nounced peaks each and every day. I’m still young, and have so much to learn.

I’ve got my back­pack, filled with some tools of life – and I expect it’s going to be an inter­est­ing climb.

Chris­t­ian Hollingsworth is the cre­ator of Smart Boy Designs, where he talks about liv­ing your life to the fullest, with a spe­cial atten­tion toward cre­at­ing an online pres­ence.  Keep up with Chris­t­ian on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Note: This is part of a new series where I fea­ture peo­ple who are on their true peak jour­ney.  If you’re inter­ested in shar­ing your story, please con­tact me.

“A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles must begin with a sin­gle step.” ~ Lao Tzu

Today our guest is Gina John­son, from goodthingz.  Gina is a life/business coach based out of Illi­nois.  About a year ago, she cre­ated the goodthingz site, as a way to really focus on the good things that were uplift­ing and ener­giz­ing for her.  This is a won­der­ful story of how we truly become what we think.

Below Gina shares her story, as she has con­tin­ues her true peak journey.

Please read and enjoy…

Almost one year ago, I decided to start a social net­work­ing site aimed at inspir­ing peo­ple to live pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive lives. goodthingz is the name of the site, and it is the home of the goodthingz movement.

What is this goodthingz move­ment all about?

Well, it is really about 3 main things.

1. Choos­ing to be/ stay solu­tion focused when deal­ing with neg­a­tive events and/or peo­ple in life.
2. Search­ing for and focus­ing on what is right in life rather than what is wrong in life.
3. Cel­e­brat­ing one’s joys and inter­ests with oth­ers, and in turn choos­ing to walk away from unnec­es­sary drama and gossip.

All three of the above sen­tences can be summed up in four words, “Be the bright side”, and this is the goodthingz slo­gan.  It is a slo­gan that reminds me that my atti­tude and out­look are always my choice.
 

What inspired the goodthingz movement?

I was inspired to start the goodthingz move­ment after I had been post­ing on the goodthingz twit­ter site for about 6 months.  I started the goodthingz Twit­ter account because I was at a dark and lonely place in life. My dad had recently passed away, and I was simul­ta­ne­ously expe­ri­enc­ing many other big changes, both per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally. To say the least, there were a lot of stres­sors, and not a lot of obvi­ous pos­i­tives sur­round­ing me at that time.

Unfor­tu­nately, I allowed my think­ing to fol­low the course of the events/situations around me, and I immersed myself in a lot of neg­a­tiv­ity. Neg­a­tiv­ity bred neg­a­tiv­ity. Neg­a­tive thoughts led to neg­a­tive behav­iors which attracted neg­a­tive peo­ple. You get the idea; I chose to deal with life’s neg­a­tives by being neg­a­tive, and my reward was unhap­pi­ness. Luck­ily, at some point, I real­ized I wasn’t going to get my life back on track until I made a point to get my think­ing back on track. As a licensed men­tal health ther­a­pist and cer­ti­fied life coach, I was well aware that I could not just tell myself to think dif­fer­ently, more pos­i­tively, that is. Instead, I needed a strat­egy, a way to struc­ture my think­ing and to fol­low up with positive/productive actions.

It was then that I decided to make a game out of it. I opened a twit­ter account, named it goodthingz and chal­lenged myself to find 10 “good things” to post each day. I wish I could say that it was all down­hill from there. No, I quickly learned that find­ing 10 good things to post each day was eas­ier said than done. How­ever, I was deter­mined to feel bet­ter, and I knew an adven­ture in positive/productive think­ing and behav­ing was the treat­ment I needed. I asked myself what I enjoyed before life (and I) had taken a neg­a­tive turn, and I returned to those things (i.e., music, art, design, self help articles/books, movies, bicy­cles, pho­tog­ra­phy, nature, etc). I then made  a point to post some­thing from  those cat­e­gories every day.

While at first, it felt as if I was going through the motions, it didn’t take long for me to start expe­ri­enc­ing joy when look­ing and find­ing my good things for the day. Per­haps, more impor­tantly I noticed that in my down­time, away from work, I was think­ing dif­fer­ently, in a more positive/productive way. Rather than wor­ry­ing or dwelling about the neg­a­tives in life, I was deal­ing with them and mov­ing on. Mov­ing on to learn­ing more about an author that I  found while search­ing for my goodthingz site, or I was off to take a photo to share, or to look up a new song title.   I was mak­ing time for the good things and it was pay­ing off. Pos­si­bly best of all, I was learn­ing how to bet­ter con­nect with other peo­ple through pos­i­tive things vs. neg­a­tive things. All of the above left me feel­ing more ener­gized and invig­o­rated. Instead of feel­ing bogged down by life’s prob­lems, goodthingz gave me more energy to work toward solv­ing those prob­lems. Slowly but surely I changed for the bet­ter and so did my life.

After 6 months of post­ing good things on Twit­ter and expe­ri­enc­ing pos­i­tive changes in my life, I decided that I would like to cre­ate a venue for other peo­ple to do the same. I took my idea to Sur­face 51, a local web and design firm,  that is com­prised of peo­ple I gen­uinely like and trust. They were imme­di­ately on board and after a lot of hard work, the goodthingz site was up and run­ning. We also have sev­eral plans for future devel­op­ment on the goodthingz site.

How to get involved with goodthingz

First, visit goodthingz and join our com­mu­nity! Next, find and share your good things with us.
 
Here are a few exam­ples of how peo­ple are cur­rently using the goodthingz site and con­tribut­ing to the community.

• To develop a more pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive mind­set. Make a goal to find and post 2–3 good things a day. (It can be any­thing, a pic of some­thing cool, a story about some­one thought­ful, a great song you heard on the radio, or a piece of art your friend showed you.) Don’t sit back and wait for good things to cross your path; go search­ing for them and bring them to us! The acts of search­ing for and shar­ing good things day after day is a proven way to bet­ter your over­all mind­set and mood.
   
• To main­tain and grow an already pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive mind­set. We are all adversely affected by neg­a­tiv­ity bias; search­ing for and shar­ing good things each day helps pre­vent neg­a­tiv­ity from tak­ing hold of us. Even more, find­ing and shar­ing good things pre­vents stag­na­tion and pro­motes growth.
   
• To inspire, encour­age and moti­vate oth­ers. By con­tribut­ing to the goodthingz site you are help­ing to cre­ate a data­bank of good things…a data­bank that any­one can and will visit to find strength, encour­age­ment, wis­dom and humor. You never know when some­one will tell you that your post made their day.
   
• To build and store col­lec­tions of good things unique to you. Goodthingz gives you one place to store all of the pos­i­tives you find in life. Are there cer­tain songs that moti­vate you, cer­tain places that hold spe­cial mem­o­ries, pic­tures that make you smile, videos that inspire you? Col­lect them and store them on your goodthingz page. What a great place to return, to share laughs with friends or to find some relief after a stress­ful day.

It is my hope that goodthingz will mean many things to many peo­ple. Per­haps it will mean inspi­ra­tion to some, safety to oth­ers and hope to all.  I would love to see you there!

Gina John­son is the founder of goodthingz move­ment, an online com­mu­nity to share all the things that inspire and ener­gize.  Keep up with Gina on Twit­ter and on the goodthingz site.

Note: This is part of a new series where I fea­ture peo­ple who are on their true peak jour­ney.  If you’re inter­ested in shar­ing your story, please con­tact me.

“A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles must begin with a sin­gle step.” ~ Lao Tzu

Today, our guest is Jacque­line Way, from 365 Give | Chang­ing The World One Day at a Time.  Jacque­line recently started on a quest to make a dif­fer­ence in our world, every day, and doc­u­ment that jour­ney.  From that, her site has become a place to share some­thing, every day , that is good in the world — from her, and from oth­ers mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in their own unique ways. 

Jacque­line shares her story of life, and of find­ing a deeper pur­pose in all that she does.

Please read and enjoy…

Do you ever won­der what your true call­ing is? Do you ever won­der why you are here or what the mean­ing of your life is?

What Is My Purpose?

I have asked myself this ques­tion often. It started when I began my own busi­ness in my late 20’s. I started in the won­der­ful world if fundrais­ing. Pre­vi­ously, I had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow my busi­ness and get involved in the cor­po­rate world but I made a clear deci­sion based on my “call­ing.”  I’m not reli­gious but I heard this voice — that lit­tle voice we all have. It was call­ing to me and telling me to base my busi­ness on giv­ing back. I didn’t have a mil­lion dol­lars to give away but I knew I could raise it through other peo­ple. Fif­teen years later I have done just that. I have used my skills to raise more money than I could ever give by lis­ten­ing to my calling.

Then Comes Mid­dle Age

Then I hit 40. Oh that magic age that makes us sit and reflect what we have done to date. All of a sud­den I was half way through my life, I had a two year old and I wanted to do more (as if rais­ing a child and run­ning my own busi­ness wasn’t enough). But the voice was get­ting louder and louder.  I wanted to get to the end of my life and know I had done every­thing in my power to leave the world a bet­ter place for my beau­ti­ful son, his friends and future gen­er­a­tions. I sat, (I had no choice I had bro­ken my foot – the gifts life gives us!) I pon­dered, I thought, I wrote, I waited to be inspired. I waited..and waited…and waited… and then it came!

Inspi­ra­tion!

It hit me one day when I asked myself some impor­tant questions.

• When was I happiest?
• What made me work until the wee hours of the night just because it made me happy?
• If I was asked to get up in front of an audi­ence with no prepa­ra­tion and speak pas­sion­ately on one topic what would it be?
• If I won a mil­lion dol­lars what would I do with it?

The Answers 

The answers were there, I just had to lis­ten. The answers to all of my ques­tions came back to the same thing. I wanted to change the world! Wow what a big state­ment from one person.

I wanted to inspire other peo­ple to give more in their lives. I wanted to find a way to make peo­ple under­stand that our every­day actions and choices could change the world. I’m not Bono or Oprah but I am some­one. I am one per­son that could do some­thing every day to make the world a bet­ter place. I had few finan­cial resources to start a world­wide move­ment, lit­tle tech­ni­cal back­ground but I had a vision and desire. I had pas­sion, I was inspired and I had the drive to fig­ure it out. I had one other thing as well that had been hold­ing me back for far too long.…

Fear

Have you ever been so scared to start some­thing you know noth­ing about that you just don’t do it? I have done it many times. I have tons of bril­liant ideas to change the world but fear always held me back.

• What would peo­ple think?
• Where would I get the money?
• How would I do it alone?
• Who do I think I am?

 Not this time. I had a son to think of and an exam­ple to set. What kind of an exam­ple was I set­ting if I let my fear get the best of me and let my life go by with­out at least try­ing. I took a deep breath and jumped. I asked for help and the per­fect per­son appeared to hold my hand to get me going. I started a blog, 365give.ca. Eight months ago I didn’t even know what a blog was. But I had to write – every­day. It was going to be my mis­sion. Do one thing to give back to the world every­day and blog about it. I did for­get one thing about myself — I’m not a writer! I can ask peo­ple for money for a good cause, but I’m not a writer. I started writ­ing every day. Then came the chal­lenge to get my blog noticed. Twit­ter? Face­book? No one told me I had to become a social media expert so some­one would read my writ­ing! Ahhhh! In comes the fear – I don’t do social media. I do now. I’m not an expert but I do my best.

Hap­pi­ness

Hap­pi­ness comes in many shapes and sizes. It can be as sim­ple as tak­ing the first lick of your favourite ice-cream or lying on a beach lis­ten­ing to the waves. It can be a first kiss or your first born. The hap­pi­ness your get from giv­ing back every day is some­thing no one can take from me. It doesn’t come and go, it doesn’t leave you or fade. Giv­ing every­day has brought me a hap­pi­ness that gets me up in the morn­ing and dri­ves me. It helps me write, it helps me Tweet and Face­book. It even keeps my fear at bay.

The great­est gift of giv­ing is what you receive from it. The look on someone’s face, the first time your son picks up garbage to help the planet with­out any prompt­ing. Or it could be a sur­prise email in your inbox from some­one like Lance that inspires you to keep going.

Explor­ing

Tak­ing the time to explore what it all means to you is time well spent. I have found my call­ing. It is giv­ing. It has made me feel like I am mov­ing in the direc­tion I should be going. It will change and evolve as I move along this jour­ney but I now know I am head­ing in the right direction.

What will you do to move in the direc­tion you should be going? Will you listen?

Jacque­line Way is the founder of 365give, an online diary of one woman’s actions and impact in chang­ing the world every day for 365days. 365give has the poten­tial to cre­ate a move­ment of giv­ing and a com­mu­nity of com­mit­ted ”givers” that can edu­cate and inspire future gen­er­a­tions.  Keep up with Jacque­line on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Note:  Pho­tos pro­vided, in part, by Karen Somers Pho­tog­ra­phy.