Category: Motivational

Thunder

Posted on by martyjreep in Creative Writing, Motivational, Poetry, Thoughts

This evening, a thunderous applause filled the room and warmed the hearts of recipients far and wide.  Remembering the dead.  Memorials, names, scholarships, awards.  Remembering the people who have gone before us and left a positive mark on the world.  Now, even in their absence, they are still leaving a positive mark on the world.

It is not enough to simply live your life without touching others.  There is an innate requirement of being a part of the greater whole and contributing to other individuals who are part of that whole.

Some may think that they don’t have to share what they know.  Don’t listen to them.  Don’t listen to that philosophy.  Choose to be different – to be important – to be worthwhile.

Share.  Be generous and kind.  Care about others, and have compassion.  Spur on those who need it and those who’ve gotten stuck in a rut.  Encourage everyone you meet – even those people that are hard to like.  They need your encouragement, too.  Eventually, whether you ever know it or not, they will realize how very different from the rest of humanity you are and how very vitally you live your life.

Your awesomeness will reach far beyond the foreseeable future and turn deadened choices into living romance.  It will fill a room and prove to the world that you are alive.  It will show even the nastiest of naysayers how goodness and purposed politeness win every time.  A thunderous applause will fill your ears and your heart, and you will know that you are living your life in the best ways possible.

Thunder.  It’s not just a sound… it is you.

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Need a speaker for your conference?
Give me a call.  I’d love to fire up your people!

Topics:
Believe. Do. and Follow Through!
Achieve Your Full Potential!
Leadership
Stress Management Through Humor
Multiple Intelligences (Learning Styles)

Platforms to Success

Posted on by martyjreep in Motivational, Thoughts

Use the challenges you’re facing as platforms to success.  Use the things that you’ve lived through and survived to be the things that you encourage other people with from this point forward.

Know that the hard places you’ve been and lived through are NOT the places you have to stay.  They’re part of your past, but they don’t have to be part of your present or your future.

Use them, and you can succeed.  Use them, and you can go far!

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Need a speaker for your conference?
Give me a call.  I’d love to fire up your people!

Topics:
Believe. Do. and Follow Through!
Achieve Your Full Potential!
Leadership
Stress Management Through Humor
Multiple Intelligences (Learning Styles)

My Head’s on Fire

Posted on by martyjreep in Creative Writing, Motivational, Poetry, Thoughts

Those ideas,
Those thoughts,
And all those things that gang up on me in my head,
Those are my world.
My imaginary world that’s real
And my real world that’s imaginary
My head’s on fire
And I don’t know how to put it out.
And even if I did know how,
I don’t know that I’d want to
It’s where my creativity comes from
It’s the blinding madness that’s known my soul
For as long as I can remember it.
Sometimes it’s in charge
And sometimes I am.

Sometimes I worry about
Whether people will misunderstand and misinterpret what I’ve said.
And other times
I really don’t give a shit what they think.
That’s up to them to decide.
This is for me, and that’s for them.
They’ll have understand it
Or they won’t
Either way, I’m good
Because I did what I was supposed to do
And I will have done what I was supposed to have done.
That’s the amazing thing about living:
The thoughts inside your head are one way,
And the life outside of it is another.

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Need a speaker for your conference?
Give me a call.  I’d love to fire up your people!

Topics:
Believe. Do. and Follow Through!
Achieve Your Full Potential!
Leadership
Stress Management Through Humor
Multiple Intelligences (Learning Styles)

Be Amazing

Posted on by martyjreep in Creative Writing, Motivational, Poetry, Thoughts

Sometimes I worry too much
What people think
What they don’t think
What they do
What they should do
And what they don’t do
That’s the part that really gets me –
When I know they should be doing more,
Doing something to help
The starving, poor people around the world
But they don’t do a damn thing to make a difference.

Instead they’re concerned about their cars,
Their hair, their bank accounts, and their houses.
It’s not like they’re gonna take any of that stuff with them when they die.
Nope,
They’re gonna stay right there in the box, dead.
And the starving children
They could have helped
With all their money that went to estate taxes?
They died, too.

Don’t be like those people!
Do something good with your life!
Do more than just worry about your 401K
And how many times your gonna go to the movies this month.
Life is MORE THAN THAT!
YOUR life is more than that.
You were put here for a purpose.
Find out your purpose
And live out your purpose.
Find out why you were born
(If you haven’t already figured that part out)
And then go do something amazing
With the years of your life that you still have left in front of you.

You can only live life in forward motion.
There’s no reverse on the controls
It wasn’t built into the game plan.
Sort of like those video games on a tape drive
You could only move forward or to the side
Not back.
No going back
Only going forward
Only going on
Learning from what you’ve done and been through in the past
And turning that learning into wisdom.
Yep – you are wise
And you just didn’t even know it.
Be amazing.
You ARE amazing,
So be that way.

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Need a speaker for your conference?
Give me a call.  I’d love to fire up your people!

Topics:
Believe. Do. and Follow Through!
Achieve Your Full Potential!
Leadership
Stress Management Through Humor
Multiple Intelligences (Learning Styles)

Actively Swim!

Posted on by martyjreep in Motivational

Stop waiting for the world to find you.
Go out, find the world, and tell it what you’re doing!

When you want to succeed badly enough, you’ll find a way.  A way will appear to you.  When you get too comfortable in your life and in your circumstances, you’ll simply drift along in the water like a dead fish.  Live fish actively swim.

Actively swim!

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Need a speaker for your conference?
Give me a call.  I’d love to fire up your people!

Topics:
Believe. Do. and Follow Through!
Achieve Your Full Potential!
Leadership
Stress Management Through Humor
Multiple Intelligences (Learning Styles)

Heartbeat

Posted on by martyjreep in Creative Writing, Motivational, Poetry

Down goes the beat
Of the heart that stands
In time before the end

Down goes the beat
Of the very heart
That beats within my hand
And softens me

Down goes the stirring
Of the head that turns the beat
That ends the strife and ends
The winding down.

Up goes the beat
The beat that turns the head
That causes hope to flourish
And waltzes into heaven
With a smile upon its face.

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Books by Marty
www.amazon.com/author/reep

Of Water and Sand

Posted on by martyjreep in Creative Writing, Motivational, Thoughts

A simple lunch at the beach becomes a symphony picnic choreographed by God in the details of nature.  Birds flit back and forth at the water’s edge.  The strong smell of seaweed and saltwater storm my nose and remind me why I love the shore so much.  It’s a perfect blend of sounds and smells.  The fish leap out of the water, breaking faith with the moisture below to become part of airborne groups above.  Although for just a moment, they transport themselves from the world of water dwellers to that of air breathers for an instant in time.  Therein lies the beauty of God.  Therein lie the answers to many of life’s questions.

From the grains of sand under my feet to the countless droplets of water that form the crashing waves, the Lord God has put his mark on them all.  His blueprint stands behind each iteration of a wave rolling into the surf making white foam in its coming.  The times in between each wave – the count – they too represent the finery of the majesty that stands in all.

There is a marked pristineness to an empty beach.  In the moments that it’s unoccupied by human eyes, it’s still appreciated by the countless other creatures residing in and around it.  The water is alive with life: teeming with fishes and monsters of the deep that live in retrospect to our finite knowledge of their existence.  Even though we don’t see them nor know their names, we still appreciate that they’re there.  We count it good even in the eyes of the vultures that glide by in air scouring the ground below for the beginning of a feast.

Pelicans have just passed overhead.  They steered out of the way, as if to avoid me.  I wonder if it was out of fear or because of an innate nature to steer around.  Either way, their change of direction gave me great pleasure in the appearance of their forms.  Now again, seven more flew over the other direction.  This time they were straight overhead.  I was able to see and appreciate another angle of their magnificent flying.  They’re amazing creatures.

Sadly, I have to return to another part of the world for now.  However, soon I will come back to this empty stretch of beach and touch once again that part of my being that is of water and sand.

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Books by Marty
www.amazon.com/author/reep

They Showed Me How to Truly Live

Posted on by martyjreep in Motivational, Thoughts

Recently, someone mentioned debts that can never be repaid, and my own indebtedness to Tom and Farrar Cottingham came to mind in a strong way.  I’ve learned over the years that when someone comes to mind like that, it’s imperative to get in touch with them as soon as possible.  So, I tracked down Farrar’s current number and gave her a call.

As we chatted, I was good for the first couple of minutes, but when I thanked her again for rescuing me 24 years ago, I lost it.  I got choked up and started crying.  I told her I would never be able to repay the debt I owed them.  She told me I didn’t have to.  She also reminded me that they had simply done what they hoped anybody would do.

When I was 21 years old, my apartment lease ended a month early due to university policy changes.  After living in my truck for a couple of weeks, I posted flyers around town looking for a room to rent.  At first, no calls came in, and things started looking pretty bleak.

A few days later, Farrar called the number listed (a friend’s house) saying she had seen my “Homeless College Student” flyer and told me to stop by for an informal interview.  I was ecstatic!

When I went to their house that night and saw the list of questions they had made, I was a little worried.  They finally said that they were just having some fun with me!  I started laughing, and we wound up talking for almost an hour.  At last, it was agreed; I moved in the next day.

During the year that followed, they not only provided me with a room, they treated me like family.  I soon realized that those two didn’t simply talk the talk about being good Christian people, they lived it every day.

Tom and Farrar had long been firm believers in meeting people’s physical needs before meeting their spiritual needs – that Christ’s love demonstrated spoke volumes more than empty words.  They believed that if they cared for people’s health and well-being, then those same people would listen when it came to spiritual things.

Furthermore, they brought it full circle.  They discussed spiritual things daily with each other, with me, and with other people.  They just made sure that their living words had tangible actions in front of them.  Social change and empowerment were real things to the Cottinghams, and they made them real on a one-on-one basis with the people they came in contact with.

Through their daily, constant examples, Tom and Farrar showed me how to live.  Every day by them just being them, they showed me what really mattered in dealing with people, in dealing with situations, and in dealing with life.  Sure, we had our differences.  In fact, we rarely agreed on politics.  But in time, I came to understand how little politics actually matter when it got right down to it.  We were playing on the spiritual team.

At the end of that year, I moved out and got married.  My wife and I visited them regularly while we still lived in the same town, but we eventually moved away to follow careers and raise our own family.  We stayed in touch over the years and visited when we could.  Tom died in 2012 at 96 years old.  He led an amazing, full life.

Farrar is now 95, but on the phone she still sounded like the chipper 71 year-old whose vibrant personality lit up the room.  I was making mental notes as she talked about living, serving, and enjoying life: ever the optimist with some realism thrown in.  We discussed various things, including the importance of paying forward acts of kindness and genuine care.  It was so good to talk with her again.

Tom and Farrar took me in when I had no place to go and showed me how to truly live.  For that, I will forever be grateful.

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Books by Marty
www.amazon.com/author/reep

Speak

Posted on by martyjreep in Creative Writing, Missions, Motivational, Thoughts

But if we stand in the doorway, unspeaking the truth of the moment, then we have become as guilty as the tyrants inside.  In those moments any concept of outside matters not, because if we are unwilling to wield the purposes and strength of God inside ourselves, then we are useless to the outside, unseeing world.  We have become like them, lost and confused in the dark – unseeing the future, scared of the loss of light, yet unwilling to do what we know is right.  Walking in the path of righteousness is not only what we are called to do, it is absolutely what we must do on the inside, in order for anything outside to change.  We, the tyrants of our lives, will yield, when the silent doorway-standers speak.

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Thank you, Simon, for the nudge.