Be Blessed!
I am excited and refreshed after a weekend of inspiration in the Chicago area. You all know sharing the world of travel, cruising and great conversation with family and friends always excites me. Sometimes it’s FAMILY family (you know… kids, grandkids, aunts, uncles, cousins etc) and sometimes it’s job-related FAMILY.
In preparation for my blood-related family time later this month at a lake we have long enjoyed where I grew up in Missouri, this last weekend was more on the order of how to pay for the holiday time coming up in July. You see I love being WITH my kids, grands, sisters, cousins and all that jazz, and I also love being able to march up to the office at this long-favored “Nemo Hilton” (which is kind of a joke – it is anything BUT a part of the Hilton brand….. and besides that MARRIOTT represents our family anyway!) and pay for the family rooms there after our time together.
I personally was blessed to be able to speak to some biz partners about my book GETTING PAID TO CRUISE this weekend and how it can become poolside reading on a cruise ship and used to grow a travel business, but that wasn’t the entire blessing.
Many of you reading this have no idea who Juliet St. John is. And many of you do. So for those who do NOT know her I’ll share a few things. She is humble, she is quiet, she is shy, she has claustrophobia, she works at overcoming her fears, she provides for her family who she dearly loves and she is one of the highest paid female earners in the world of network marketing. But she didn’t get there easily. She is made of hard work, guts and determination and LOVE for not only her family but for humanity.
You see, Juliet St. John was living in her car after sacrificing everything she had to provide for her family — when she found a family who believed in her. Through hard work, determination and love for her own family she became successful in her field – the biggest industry on the planet – TRAVEL.
The reason why I was so inspired by Juliet this weekend is not only because of what she has DONE, but what she is DOING! You see Juliet and I share many of the same experiences. What she spoke about was holding a child that had been rescued from war torn areas and left to die. I too have held such a child. She spoke about traveling the world and how it had changed her. I too have been blessed to travel the world – that blessing has changed me. She spoke about being terrified to zip line. I too have been terrified to zip line.
And then she spoke about what she is DO-ING with the millions of dollars she has made in a company that believed in HER, so she has remained loyal to them. She spoke from her HEART and the depth of her SOUL about what she is doing with her millions to change that baby’s life she held in her arms.
Our comparisons stopped there. For I have not made millions in dollars but I do have a WEALTH of experience in war torn nations and third world countries. What Juliet did for me is to remind me of my two WHYs for joining our company.
My first WHY is four grandchildren…. To educate them to the world of travel. To inspire them with the zeal to help others. To show them that hard work and a true heart can bring riches that dollars and cents cannot buy. To take them on a cruise WITH me. To share the world of LegoLand and SeaWorld WITH them. To learn to ski WITH them. To write on paper their feelings as they grow in age and maturity. To support them in their growth as a human being. To leave them with happy memories of their Nana who taught them about having inner peace.
My second WHY you see, left me with a desire to do what Juliet has done. My second WHY is to help that woman who lives in Cambodia and sleeps on a flat panel with 7 other family members …. A lean-to structure that has no running water, no pillow to lay her head on, no place for a life and hardly room to even turn over. That woman who said as she touched my spirit with her eyes when she pleaded “Can you help get me out of here? Can you help change my life?”
My second WHY touches on the orphanage I visited in Vietnam where Binh Rybacki of Children of Peace International uses my CD entitled PEACE to quiet the children. That orphanage is one of many Binh started that houses children with severe mental and physical challenges who were rescued from the streets and given a loving home with care only someone who is a second Mother Teresa could have provided.
My second WHY reaches out to the woman in the window frame who is probably 40 yet looks 80 as she mournfully looks out over unclean water and sewage in the streets…. To the woman feeling she has to sell a child into prostitution in order to feed the other younger children in the family.
My WHY reaches out to a young woman and fellow ITMI Tour Director Susan Wahlen who took her experiences leading tours in Africa to start a company that gives BACK to the people in Africa who have long suffered without clean water to drink.
I’m not sure how many of those WHYs I can address in the rest of my lifetime. But you can rest assured someone like Juliet St. John inspires me to try.
If we as human beings can let go of the ANGER DANCE, the BLAME GAME and the HE SAID, SHE SAID while concentrating on a very good book available in all book stores, on the $$$$ i-pad, on the $$$$ i-phone etc etc etc… Perhaps I don’t even have to tell you the name of it but here are some of the verses within:
Judge not, least ye be judged. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Perfect love hath no room for fear. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.
I’m just sayin’ ….. if we took all the NEGATIVE out of our lives, think of the great works we could be doing with all the POSITIVES !
So let’s get to work, Families! Peace be with you.
Happy Cruising INTO the rest of your life with a sense of INNER PEACE.