The Camp Experience of a Lifetime

Something wonderful is going to happen today. That is what I said to myself when I woke up this morning. This is what author and speaker, Elisabeth Fayt, refers to as a powerful pre-pave.  She was one of several phenomenal keynote speakers, workshop leaders, and panelists who shared their hearts, souls, and time with 200 women campers at Camp Experience in Copper, Colorado this past weekend. 

Sunday was the second time I've had the incredible good fortune to hear Elisabeth speak; the first was at Camp Experience's one day workshop back in February. Now that I think about it, it was just after hearing her explain the laws of attraction seven months ago, that positive things began happening in my life.  As she explained then, people spend more time choosing what they are going to wear in the morning than they do choosing how they will connect with people, how they will feel or what they will accomplish. By choosing what we will focus on, we can create the energy to achieve anything!

It was a good time for a reminder.  Like many of us, I had fallen into the habit of being so busy and being so stressed, that I forgot I have the ability to choose how to be.

When I'm meant to learn a lesson, it's funny how many teachers suddenly appear! I had to chuckle when I recently read about  Melanie Mills and her 'best job in the world', which she translates as "Restoring hope to people by reminding them what they already know." I already knew I had the power to choose how to be, I just needed someone to remind me.

While we can choose how to react to the world's external signals, we cannot choose our brain's internal signals. Ten years ago, Sharon Underwood's letter to the editor roundly defeated the myth that sexuality is a choice. The kind of love demonstrated by moms like Sharon, and Jeanne Manford, founder of PFLAG, is the kind of love that we do have a choice about. It is true love, in its purest form...

The challenges of mothering prompted Betsy Henry's self-reflections about the nature of nagging; they reflect another kind of brave love with which so many women can identify. It takes a boat-load of discipline to express your love by keeping your thoughts to yourself!

Jean Guyton describes a rare love as well. When she and her husband embarked on their Ayurvedic Journey to India last December. The image of this well-traveled and well-educated American philanthropist being brought to tears by the respect and reverence of the young Indian woman kissing her feet, is one that will stay with me, and resounds another echo in the theme of choosing love.

A desire for a more balanced life with less stress is the number one reason that people downshift their lives, according to writer Michael Bloch of Green Living Tips.  Hmmm, that seems to lead me full circle back to the fact that I have the choice to assert that "something wonderful is going to happen today".  I owe my gratitude to each and every one of these people for reminding me that love is a choice, and that I have the power to choose!

I may just have to tie a little string around my finger so I never again forget to pave it forward.