Pompeii - What are we able to accomplish?

When I visited Pompeii on my trip to Italy a few days before Christmas, I saw how incredible their lifestyle was then. They had so many beautiful mosaics on the floor and paintings on the walls, and wonderful columns throughout the city. The whole style of the city is just very aesthetic. OK, they had slaves who worked on building and maintaining all this. Today we have much better living conditions. But since the Pompeiians were able to build such an incredible city, shouldn’t we be capable of so much more, and have a wonderful life?

When I entered the city of Pompeii for the first time, I couldn't believe how huge it is! The volcano Vesuvius destroyed this wonderful place in the year 79 A.D. However, the volcano’s lava covered the whole city and preserved it. Therefore, we are still able to see exactly how the city looked when all the inhabitants died. Nothing has been added since then. Walking through the ruins, I felt like an inhabitant of about 2,000 years ago.

What do we learn when we look at Pompeii? I believe that there is more than one thing to learn from this ancient site. First, even a bad incident can have beneficial consequences. How could we have known so much about their lifestyle without preservation? Nonetheless, the most important lesson that we can learn from Pompeii is how great our lives can be. Around 2,000 years ago, people lived under more difficult circumstances than we do today, as they didn't have electricity, modern heating and warm water as we do. Still, the Pompeii citizens were able to create a beautiful town. What will we be able to accomplish then?

Accomplished Dreams Need to Be Shared

When I visited Hearst Castle in California this summer, it became clear to me what sharing your realized dreams means. Hearst Castle is a beautiful ranch with a castle on top of a hill close to the California Coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst built the castle with architect Julia Morgan because he wanted to bring the architectural styles he had seen in Europe during his youth to his home. The top of the hill where Hearst built the castle was his favorite place on earth.

Why did I feel so inspired when I visited this beautiful castle for the second time in my life? Every place has its own history and message. Mr. Hearst invited people to stay for free in the castle, which included sleeping in a beautifully decorated guestroom, swimming in the indoor and outdoor pools, reading the books in the library, joining Mr. Hearst for dinner, playing tennis with him, and just enjoying the wonderful place and view. When he was young, he had travelled throughout Europe for a long time.

Hearst Castle reflected what he had seen and liked in the European cultures and architectural styles. By inviting different guests to his castle for free, he found a way to share with others the treasures he had seen in Europe and brought to California. Mr. Hearst was a wealthy man, not because he earned so much money with his newspaper business, but because he had recognized that accomplishing dreams gains meaning by sharing them with others. Not everybody is as rich as William Randolph Hearst, and not everybody has a castle to offer. However, I believe that every human has talents and realized dreams to share.

What is your “castle,” what dream have you accomplished recently? How could you share your attained goals with others? Discover how you are able to share your achieved dreams by joining my free standalone telephone workshop on Wednesday, December 16, at 2 p.m. EST. To sign up, go to my workshop website at http://www.Create-Great-Life.com/12-session-workshop.html and the sign-up page at http://andreaklee.wufoo.com/forums/workshop-signup/. If you can’t make it to my workshop, I would be pleased to hear from you in a comment on my blog.

Predicting the Future

In karate, it is very important to recognize early when someone will attack you and how he will do it. If you check the smallest beginnings of movements, the eye’s look and expression, observed behavior pattern of that person, and the thoughts with your intuition, then it might be possible for you to recognize an attack very, very early. The earlier you realize the start of an attack, the more time and options you have to defend yourself. However, the best thing is not to fight at all. Even in this case checking the above ideas can help you prevent a fight to happen at all.

In 2003, I recognized that my mother’s skin had changed in a way that is typical for cancer patients. My intuition told me that she was very likely developing some form of cancer. However, wouldn’t it be very impolite to tell your mother “You look like you are having cancer.”? Yes, it would be impolite if I told her and it was not true. If I didn’t tell her my thoughts but they were true and she did have cancer, it would be a very bad case. That’s why I decided to risk being considered impolite. My prediction was correct, and four years later the doctors found an early stage of cancer in her breast. She had surgery and radiation, and until today, it hasn’t come back anymore, fortunately. If I had chosen not to tell her, things could have become much worse.

Have you ever experienced something like that? Being able to guess what will most likely happen in the future is a very powerful tool. The secrets to predicting the future will be revealed on Wednesday, December 9, at 2 p.m. EST in my free telephone workshop. Discover how to become powerful by predicting the future by signing up at http://andreaklee.wufoo.com/forms/workshop-signup/.