The Blessing Way - A Weekly Blessing Experiment Update

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January 10, 2008
Vol. 1, Issue 1

Published every Thursday. You are on this mailing list because you chose to join the Worldwide Blessing Experiment and receive periodic updates. To change your subscription, see link at end of email.

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- Kate's Update: Thrilled to be Back!

- You Read It Here First: Be Among the First To Read This Update and Win!

- Feature Article: There Goes the Judge

- Our First Teleconference: Living Your Soul Promise: Bringing Your Dreams to Life

- Coming Soon! The new May You Be Blessed gift book is on its way!

- Heartfelt Blessings: The Rose

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Please Feel Free to Pass This Update Along to Others

Hello from my heart Tony,

If you've been a subscriber for much time at all, you're probably aware that in October I did a disappearing act. What you may not have known, however, is that my husband suffered complications from what we assumed would be routine surgery, leaving me no option but to step away from the Blessing Project unannounced. Great doctors, time, abundant faith and countless blessings have ushered in steady improvement and since he is now almost fully recovered, I am finally able to return to the work I truly love. I cannot tell you how good it feels to be back.

Thank you so much to all of who wrote during my absence and especially to those who received no reply. I do apologize. Though I did make an effort to answer when possible, there were many, many days when I simply could not. I thank you both for your concern and your understanding.

Endeavoring to let "out with the old" be my motto in 2008, while preparing for my comeback I made the decision to create a new HTML email format. So many readers disliked the old text format and asked me to "get with the program" and switch to HTML, that I decided I really must do so before sending out my first newsletter of the new year. Hope you like the new look.

Blessing Project Official Flower

By the way, I chose the bright yellow sunflower for the Better to Bless website and the email masthead for a reason: Not only are these humble flowers colorful and eyecatching, it is in their very nature to turn to face the light. One of the easiest and, I think, best ways to bless is to imagine the very best and brightest for the person or situation, in short, to turn away from the darkness of judgment and face the light of unconditional love. The sunflower, therefore, seemed the perfect flower to stand as representative of the Blessing Project and all who wish to bless the world and make it a lighter, brighter place to be.

In the next few days, I'll be adding new entries to my Brighter World Blog, posting a new events calendar to let you know about pending teleconferences, and interacting with people on the Better to Bless Community Forum. I hope to see you there. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this issue even half as much as I have enjoyed putting it together.

Until next month...

May you be blessed with all things good!

Kate Nowak, Creator of the Worldwide Blessings Experiment

Have You Accepted the Challenge Yet?

Read and Win!

I can't tell you the number of times I've received comments on a certain article or Heartfelt Blessing long after an update or Heartfelt Blessing has been sent out. Of course it is always wonderful to receive readers comments, no matter when they arrive, but often my updates contain timely information that loses its value after a few days, so reading the messages and blessings when they arrive is important.

Wondering how to handle this, I finally decided to emulate a woman I consider to be an e-zine master: Rebecca Fine, who's Certain Way Ezine arrives in my email box each month and is always promptly read.

Rebecca offers a "Prompt Readers Award" to her readers to encourage them to read her e-zine as soon as it arrives. Funny thing is, I have never, even once, submitted my name for an award, even though I always read the ezine as soon as it arrives. In my mind, if she thinks what she has written is important enough to award those who take the time to read it, then maybe it is. That supposition has yet to fail me.

Truth is, I put a great deal of love and thought into these newsletters. I want to pass along information that has blessed me in some way, in hopes that it will bless you, as well. And I want you to be blessed immediately, not weeks or months from now. Deciding, therefore, to follow Rebecca's example, I've created the "You Read It Here First Award" in hopes that you'll take the time to read this update all the way through right now instead of waiting until later.

To be eligible for this week's award and perhaps win a prize, all you need to do is answer a simple question. The answer is tucked within this update somewhere. Be among to the first to find it and let me know.

THIS WEEK'S PRIZE ...

Three readers will soon be receiving a signed copy of my brand new – just off the presses! – giftbook, May You Be Blessed, published by Simple Truths, Inc. (You can read more about the new book below.)

This book isn't even available to the public as of this writing, so those who win this week's award will be among the very, very first to receive a copy.!

REGISTER for the drawing by following these THREE steps:

1. Send an email to the address below by midnight (CST), Wednesday, January 17, 2008, to:

Jan-award@BettertoBless.com

2. In the body of the email, be sure to include your real name and your postal mailing address.

3. And don't forget to include your ANSWER to the simple question below. Remember the answer is in this update.

QUESTION: What caused Jackie to collapse in the hallway?

The answer is somewhere in this update!

(Please note that you must get your answer in BEFORE the deadline or it will NOT go into the random drawing. After all, it's the "You Read it Here FIRST! Award," not the "Maybe Later Award!")

Our First Teleconference Call is this coming TUESDAY, January 15, 2008, 8:00pm Eastern

TOPIC: "Living Your Soul Promise: Bringing Your Dreams To Life"; with Kate Nowak and special guest Karen Wright

Are you aware that your life is supposed to be blessed and you were meant to be a blessing to others? You were meant to be abundantly satisfied with life and the contributions you make to it. Life is your canvas, the place where you have come to be all you can be, to breathe life into the dreams of your heart.

But let's face it. Most of us are so busy grasping for enough air to get by that our dreams have to go into hibernation just to stay alive. Soon one day is fading into the another, and before we know it, years have vanished and we've hardly had time to think about, much less experience, living the life we imagine. We decide this must be how it is for everybody, that everyone is just as pushed, prodded and disappointed by life as we are.

Then along comes another January, ushering in a new season of promise and a new sense of hope. We start telling ourselves that this time it will be different. It will be better. Just the words "new year" conjure up all kinds of thoughts of rebirth and renewal, a chance to begin again and embrace all those desires that eluded us before. And so as each holiday season winds to an end, we gather up our hopes and ambitions, all our desires and all those hibernating dreams, and wrap them in firm resolve to finally, finally live up to our potential. But for many of us, by day ten — that's today — all those hopes and dreams have begun to wither away and we're back to telling ourselves that life is really nothing more than one big hamster wheel and all we can do is spin.

But as writer, speaker and business consultant Karen Wright points out, "You were meant for better things. More lofty goals. More significant contributions. More intimate satisfaction. This life you're living is it - it's your chance to make your potential come alive. That's what living is all about. To become and do all we can become and do. Not based upon the world's standards, but based upon the unlimited promise of your soul."

Of course, unleashing that soul promise is not easy if we don't know how. That's why I've asked Karen to join me on my first teleconference. Together we'll be sharing tips on how you can break free of the inertia of the past, get in touch with your own soul promise and make this year the truly outstanding and abundantly blessed year it is meant to be. My soul promise to you is this call is one you will not want to miss!

BUT YOU MUST HURRY!

This call is FREE!* but limited to the first 125 callers, The sooner you register the better your chance of grabbing a place on line. So please don't dally. Register today by clicking here.

*Long distance charges may apply.

And if you'd like to know a more about Karen Wright, I encourage you to read her new e-book, Rememberance:Letters to my Soul. I finished reading it a few weeks ago, and heartily recommend it. And, by the way, I consider her first book Sequoia Seeds, to be a must read for anyone on the path to a better life.

To me, reading Karen's work is like having a comfortable chat with a wise friend, and I find myself returning to her books again and again, anytime the need for sound counsel from the heart arises. You'll find both of her books here.

And don't forget to REGISTER FOR THE CALL! If you haven't already, click here to do so now.

There Goes The Judge
By Kate Nowak, excerpted from May You Be Blessed

"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus." --Mark Twain

My friend Jackie hated having Nancy as her manager. She thought her to be cold, insensitive and overbearing and had, in the past, tried twice to get transferred to another department, but to no avail. Nancy was apparently a favorite with her employers, and since Jackie was both new to the area and the job, she felt she had no strings to pull. This only served to irritate her more.

Then one evening while she was working late to finish up a quarterly report, Jackie felt suddenly sick to her stomach and was on her way to the restroom when she collapsed in the hall. The next thing she knew she was being placed on a gurney and wheeled out to a waiting ambulance. In the sea of faces hovering over her, the only one she recognized was Nancy's, and in the blur of activity, she could feel Nancy squeeze her hand and hear her say, "Don't worry, Jackie, I'm here. I won't leave you."

It was a promise Nancy kept. Over the next few days as Jackie, a newly divorced mother of two, lay in a hospital bed, coming to terms with the damage done by the stroke she had suffered, Nancy not only stopped by to see her two and three times a day, offering never- ending words of encouragement and bringing mail and get-well messages from co-workers, but also stepped in to see that Jackie's two daughters were cared for and that every aspect of Jackie's life was kept running as smoothly as possible in her absence.

When it was necessary for Jackie to leave the hospital and be placed in a rehabilitation facility, Nancy again made all of the arrangements and visited daily, and when Jackie was finally allowed to go home, it was Nancy who made it possible for her to travel to and from physical therapy each day until she was, at last, fully recovered and able to return to work.

By the time I met the two women, over a decade had passed. They still worked for the same company, though Nancy was about to retire, and Jackie was now the manager of her own department, a promotion she had earned the year following her life-changing stroke. It was obvious to everyone that the two women were the best of friends. I was a new hire for the company and learned about their history together when they invited me to lunch.

At Nancy's retirement party a couple of weeks later, I was standing next to Jackie as her dear friend was receiving accolades from the rest of her co-workers. Jackie looked at her and then whispered to me, "Can you believe I used to hate that woman? And if it wasn't for her, I'd probably be dead. Goes to show we never know who among us is an angel, doesn't it?"

None of us really knows about the people we decide to hate. We label them wrong and ourselves right and in so doing never realize that we are building a wall of separation that only grows stronger with time. We truly do block the angels from our midst. It is not until circumstance throws us together, as it did Jackie and Nancy, that we realize how very much we need one another and how very alike we truly are.

As a young girl living with my grandmother, any time I criticized another person in her presence, she would ask to see whose shoes I was wearing, a blunt reminder that unless I'd walked in that person's shoes, I had no right to judge. It was also a signal that I should stop talking and start thinking differently.

Judging others, I have discovered, does not let joy in.
Stepping away from judgment does.

Even today, I sometimes catch myself looking down at my feet when I feel tempted to criticize. "Who am I to judge?" I'll ask myself in the next breath, realizing as I do that I have no idea what the target of my critical focus is really going through.

Of course, that doesn't always stop me, and sometimes the judgment tumbles into my thoughts or words and takes up residence before I even notice. But through my own self-experimenting, I have noticed that when I succeed in suspending judgment and allowing myself to look at others from another perspective, my joy increases. Judging others, I have discovered, does not let joy in. Stepping away from judgment does.

In the long run, all judging others really does is bring pain and block us from our ability to offer love. We were born to give, to bless, and to be a blessing, but when we are sitting in judgment, we can't. As Mother Theresa pointed out, when we are judging others, we have no time to love them. It is only in suspending judgment that we open our hearts to unconditional love and empower ourselves and each other to be the best that we can be.

May you always be so busy blessing that you have no time to judge.

© 2008 by Kate Nowak and Live More Abundantly Productions

WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Author and Blessing Way Coach Kate Nowak is the creator of a worldwide experiment to bless the world and publishes a weekly ezine with 120,000+ subscribers. The above article is an excerpt from her new book, May You Be Blessed, published by Simple Truths, Inc. and soon to be available at her website. If you're ready to claim all of the abundant blessings in your life while making the world a more blessed place to be, Kate challenges you to start blessing everyone and everything in your life right now. To find out more about Kate's challenge and how you can participate in a project that is changing the world one beautiful blessing at a time, visit www.BettertoBless.com

A Blessed Gift Arrives

For those of you who have been part of the Blessing Experiment for a time and have received prior updates from me, you already know that Mac Anderson of Simple Truths, Inc and I are good friends. I absolutely love the work that Mac does and feel honored to be able to call a man of such integrity my friend.

I was even more honored last spring, however, when Mac said he would like to bring May You Be Blessed into the Simple Truths family. And right before Christmas, I was brought to tears when the first three May You Be Blessed books, just off the press, were delivered to my door. The momemt I held the book in my hands for first time, I knew I had made the right decision.

I remembered so clearly all those years ago when, as a young bride, I shyly confessed to my new husband that my dream was to write inspirational books and have my work read by millions. A few years later, as a new reporter showing up for my first day's work, I saw it as the classroom where I would learn to hone my craft and over the years, as my love for the written word grew, I never once allowed myself to give up.

I did not know, however, on that day back in December of 2005, when I awoke with the words to a simple blessing running through my head, that this would be the path that would lead to it's fulfillment. But as I held May You Be Blessed , the book, in my hands for the first time and saw how beautifully Mac and his talented group had brought my dream into reality, I felt just the same way who sees a dream come true feels, and I was almost certain my heart would literally burst with gratitude and joy.

At this moment, I know the book will be released in the very near future, but do not yet have an exact date. But I simply could not wait a moment more to let you know that the book is here and it's timing could not be more perfect, for on January 15th, this coming Tuesday, we will be celebrating the second anniversary of the Million Blessing Experiment and the official launch of May You Be Blessed. What an incredible anniversary gift this book is to me!

As soon as the book is available to the public I will, of course, let you know, so be watching for an announcement, and in the meantime, please join with me in sending blessings to Simple Truths, Inc and all the incredible men and women who work there, including Mac Anderson, Dan Green, Gregg Mrowka and Rich Nichol. They have done a remarkable job of helping to turn my beautiful dream into a reality.

Let A Cherished Blessing Make This Your Best Year Ever!

I received an email recently from my friend, Dr. Eldon Taylor, who wrote "Using your Blessed video brings heart rates into coherence in just the first few slides. It is really magical to see how the conditioning takes hold and becomes a new way of viewing the world and blessing our own beings."

While I was, of course, delighted to receive such positive feedback, I must admit I wasn't surprised. I'd noticed a marked improvement in my own health and well-being in the year and half I'd been watching the video daily, and for a very long while, now, scientific studies have been proving that something very positive happens to those who live their lives in a constant state of blessed awareness. Life just seems to flow better when we are aware that we are blessed. We become healthier, happier and more capable of attracting the very best into our lives.

Studies show that when we feel blessed, when we are comfortable with ourselves and feel loved, when we understand that time is an illusion and now is always the perfect moment, a very powerful electromagnetic field develops within us. We literally become magnets for our good. Being aware of our blessings not only makes us feel better, it shifts our point of awareness and our energy.

One very simple and positive way to become more aware of the blessings in your life is by watching our new Cherished Blessings DVD every day. Simply set aside 15 minutes each day — first thing in the morning or last thing before bed is best — and let the beautiful music, imagery and words in the three inspirational movies take you to a place of blessing and love and timelessness. Highly regarded experts throughout the world have long been telling us that placing ourselves into such a positive state is beneficial, not only to us, but to the world around us. Here is what just a few more experts have had to say:

"You must focus on healing yourself so you'll have this healing ability to offer others. If you reach a level of blissful illumination, where you're reconnected to the Source and are harmonized vibrationally, you begin to radiate the energy that converts disease to health." — Mahatma Ghandi

"Just as the subatomic particles that compose us cannot be separated from the space and particles surrounding them, so living beings cannot be isolated from each other. By the act of observation and intention, we have the ability to extend a kind super-radiance to the world." — Lynne Mc Taggart, The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of The Universe

"In every studied case of recovery from hopelessness and untreatable disease, there has been a major shift in consciousness, so that the attractor patterns that resulted in the pathologic process no longer dominated." — David R. Hawkins, M.D., PhD., Power vs. Force

To order your copy of the Cherished Blessings DVD, click here. And while you're at it, you may want to order extras to give away to those you consider to be Cherished Blessings in your life. After all, we always want those we love to feel blessed, too.

Spread a Little Sunshine Everywhere You Go!

With our brand new printable passalong Blessing Cards. You can either print the cards out on your own injet printer using readily available business card printing stock, or take the print-ready image we provide to your printer and have your own personal Blessing Cards created, complete with your business or personal information on the reverse side. That way you'll be introducing yourself by offering a blessing. Just think what a positive impact your introduciton will make! To learn more about these eye-catching and colorful new passalong Blessing Cards, click here.

When We Don't Feel Like Blessing, What Then?

Let's face it, there are times when blessing the difficult people and situations in our lives feels nearly impossible. Sometimes it is far easier to stress than bless. When those times occur, you might want to try EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). As EFT Developer Gary Craig points out, it is remarkably effective and should be tried on everything, so why shouldn't we use it to break down whatever resistance to blessing we may be feeling?

I've used it and I know it works for me. That's why I've created an entire webpage devoted to using EFT to break down our resistance to blessing. You'll find it here.

Still Unsure About the Challenge?

If you haven't accepted the Blessing Way Challenge yet because you either don't feel you have the time, don't think it would help, or don't believe blessing everyone and everything for 30 days would change anything, then click here to read what recent Challenge participant had to say.

The Rose

Click to Listen to today's
Heartfelt Blessing

"Think of a rose from the time it is a tiny bud. As it opens to full flower till the last petal falls, it is always beautiful, always perfect, always changing. So it is with us. We are always perfect, always beautiful, and ever-changing. We are doing the best we can with the understanding, awareness and knowledge we have. As we gain more understanding, awareness and knowledge, then we will do things differently."

— Louise Hay,
from You Can Heal Your Life

How quickly we tend to notice all our little imperfections, shortcomings and failings. And as our sternest judges, we almost always find ourselves lacking in some way. Just imagine how beautifully complete and satisfying our lives might be if we would simply remember that, like the rose, we have come to grow and bloom and allow our radiant beauty to shine forth for all to see. And, just as with the rose, with every change that comes, our ingrained perfection will remain a steadfast and natural part of our being.

May you be ever-aware that, like the rose,
you are steadfastly perfect in every way.

And may you always remember, too, that you are loved beyond measure and a cherished blessing to me. Until next time, may your life be filled with all things good.

Blessing motivator, Kate Nowak, is the creator of May You Be Blessed an internationally known inspirational flash presentation which, along with her other two movies, Has Anyone Told You? and A Holy Splash of Time, has been viewed by millions, and has served to attract attention to the focus of her work, her Worldwide Blessing Experiment.

Kate encourages you to bless everyone and everything in your life and challenges you to do so by inviting you to accept her 30-Day Blessing Way Challenge. It truly is a transformational experience — click here to read what one recent challenge participant had to say — and for those who complete the Challenge, Kate guarantees that you will never look at life the same way again. For more information, visit www.BettertoBless.com.

Publisher: Live More Abundantly Productions.
P.O. Box 58
Strawn, Texas 76475

Phone: 940-452-5679
Email: Info@BettertoBless.com

Live More Abundantly Productions, P.O. Box 58, Strawn, Texas 76475, USA

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