Welcome to "Surpass Your Dreams". The goal of this newsletter is to help you recognize your potential and surpass your dreams. This month's issue will focus on friendship.

So, tell me what you'd like to see, and what's important to you. Are you trying to figure out what your dreams are? Have you found what they are, but are afraid to pursue them? Have you reached your dreams, and are now ready to take it to the next level? Please share with our readers what is going on with you, and how you came to the place where you are today. You can send your stories to info@surpassyourdreams.com.

Are You Living Your Dreams By Yourself?
How to Create Lasting Friendships
Book Corner
Free Newsletters
Are You Ready To Stop Living Your Dreams By Yourself?
Last Month

I. ARE YOU LIVING YOUR DREAMS BY YOURSELF?

Are you living your dreams by yourself? This is a question we should all ask ourselves. Why? Because your dreams were not meant to be accomplished alone. Life is so much better when we have people around who love and support us. You might be successful, have all the worldly possessions that you desire, but no one can truly be fulfilled without friends.

So, who better to help us live our dreams but our friends? Some romantic relationships work and some do not, but friendships can last a lifetime. Friends know our good and bad sides, and love and accept us anyway. They know our deepest thoughts and desires. Friends are forgiving and are always there to hear what is truly important to us. Our lives flourish because of our friends, and we couldn't be as happy without them.

So why do we try to live our dreams by ourselves? Past hurts and disappointments keep us from reaching out to others. Negative experiences can take away our vitality and we take this out on the people around us. Do you hesitate to share your dreams with your friends because you are thinking: "I don't want to bother them", or "They have busy lives" or "I only want to tell them happy things"? These thoughts keep you away from people.

Remember one thing, when you keep out the bad, you keep out the good. No good can come your way if you close yourself off. The payoff is that you don't have to bother the people around you, but you pay for this in loneliness. With this insight in mind, isn't friendship worth another try?

Letting people contribute to you is the greatest gift that you can give them. All we want to do is make a differences in people's lives. Letting people in not only brightens their day, it brightens your day too.

So how about calling one of your fiends? It doesn't matter how long it's been since you last spoke, or how the conversation ended last time. The important thing is that there is a person out there who cares, and would love to hear from you. Friendships are the windows to our soul and our lives are so much better because of them. Share your dreams with a friend today!

II. HOW TO CREATE LASTING FRIENDSHIPS

This piece was written by Charlene Dougiello-Niestemski, Reading and Language Arts Consultant, Freelance Writer, Educator, who can be reached at charleamd@aol.com. Charlene based this list from life long relationships with several childhood friends, some of who have spanned 40 years.

1. Continuously use what we know about one another to create gifts of joy, moments of laughter and exciting surprises!
   The joy of really getting to know our friends, is the way that we use this knowledge to demonstrate our love, affection and appreciation of them, on a daily basis.
   
2. Like what we see in each other and even when we don't, we learn to like it anyway, in spite of ourselves.
   As we recognize these little idiosyncrasies in our friends, we accept them with honest appreciation because those are the very traits that affect their uniqueness and our own and cause us to be one of a kind.
   
3. Share our lives with each other.
   We share the proud moments and the blunders; the excitements and the disappointments; the triumphs and the defeats. We are open and honest and hold each other's hand as we experience these sacred moments of life. We keep confidences safely locked within our hearts.
   
4. Count on each other for support and understanding.
   We wait patiently to help pick up the pieces and help put them together again. And when everything is still falling apart, we stand firmly together with a smile; a tear; a loving word; an eye to eye awareness; a gentle kiss or a strong embrace. Fair weather friends last only as long as the sun is shining. We are committed to being BFF!(Best Friends Forever)
   
5. Keep your word to each other.
   If we speak it, we do it. Our word is our bond. This bond creates trust that nourishes the spirit and dispels doubt, disappointment, despair and disillusionment.
   
6. Play together regularly and enjoy every stolen second of it.
   We laugh heartily and giggle playfully and savor the precious, present moments that will someday be our memories.
   
7. Be honest with each other.
   We allow and encourage the free flow of honest feelings, concerns, hurts, fears and questions with confidence in each other's desire and ability to listen, hear and communicate truth, understanding and when appropriate, forgiveness.
   
8. Be sensitive to each other's emotions, feelings, needs, desires and goals.
   Because we have developed an awareness and sensitivity to each other, we use care when communicating our honest advice and opinions and offer gentle direction so that we preserve the spirit of the soul.
   
9. Love unconditionally.
   We highly regard each other with an eye towards improving who and what we are to ourselves, each other and the world. We appreciate the energy, time, commitment and resolve to do whatever it takes to keep the relationship healthy and thriving. The ever-present love in our hearts empowers us with joyfulness, mindfulness and assuredness that we will remain BFF-Best Friends Forever.

This month's Book Corner is devoted to providing you with suggested resources to love, cherish and appreciate the friends in your life.

A Book of Friends, by Dave Ross, Laura Rader
Did you know that friends come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors? Did you know that you can spend time with many friends or just one friend? Did you know that friends make the good times better and the bad times easier? Grab a friend and share this adorable book together!

Friends Make the Difference, by Rasheen Hewlett (Editor), Patsy Pennington (Illustrator)
Your friends make your life special and exiting. These quotes, amidst illustrations of tea cups, will explain why. Comes with a ribbon bookmark and a 24K gold-plated charm.

Looking for Friends; In All the Right Places, by Edward Ross, John S. Hilkevich.
After spending almost 10 years of his life in a relationship with a women he didn't love, to avoid being lonely, Ross set out on a quest to discover how to fill his life full with rewarding friendships. He was determined to find out exactly why some people have an abundance of friends while others have few or no friends and are living extremely lonely lives. Ross interviewed hundreds of people, some having an abundance of friends, others having few or no friends and most importantly applied what he learned to his own life. He not only discovered how to fill his own life with rewarding friendships, but was shocked to discover the repeated mistakes that lonely people made in their efforts to make friends.

IV. FREE NEWSLETTERS

Would you like to have your newsletter or e-zine listed here? Please send an e-mail to info@surpassyourdreams.com with the name, web-site address and 1-2 sentence description of your on-line publication.

Are you reaching for greater success AND balance? Get help by subscribing to The Business Woman's Advantage, a free, e-mail newsletter for women with entrepreneurial spirit. To subscribe send an e-mail to: bwa-request@listhost.net. Put subscribe in the body (not subject line) of the e-mail or visit the Business Woman's Advantage web-site at http://www.womansadvantage.com/bwa.

Dr. Donald E. Wetmore, a full-time Professional Speaker, one of the foremost experts on Time Management & Personal Productivity, and the author of "Beat the Clock" would like to know if you would like to receive a free copy of his article, "The Five Top Time Management Mistakes". If you do, email your request for "mistakes" to: ctsem@msn.com.

Would you like to receive Donald's free "Timely Time Management Tips" on a regular basis so you can increase your personal productivity and get more out of every day? Sign up now at his "TIME MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION LIST". Just go to: http://www.topica.com/lists/timemanagement and select "subscribe". Donald welcomes you aboard!

Taking action towards living a life you love takes courage and a belief in yourself. It also sometimes means asking for help. Asking people to help us or be a part of our dreams allows them to contribute to us which warms their heart. There is nothing more fulfilling than doing something for someone else.

If you are ready to ask for help in living your dreams, then Personal Coaching may be right for you.

For a Free 30-minute Telephone Coaching Session, call me at (516) 432-2440, or send an e-mail to info@surpassyourdreams.com. This session will give you the opportunity to see first hand if a personal coach is right for you. My web-site is at http://www.surpassyourdreams.com

Last month's newsletter focused on discovering if you are really committed to living your dreams.

Have you committed to your dreams or are you just talking about them? The answer to this question makes the difference between living your dreams today or one fictitious day in the future.

True commitment takes hard work, and sometimes we are not ready to do this. But the rewards are bountiful. You cannot live your dreams without committing to them first.

But how do you commit. The answer is simple. You just do it. You declare your intention, and go for it. Once your declaration is out there, your dreams can happen. Once you say it, it becomes reality rather than this unaccomplishable thing that only happens to other people. You have more power over your life than you think.

The power of commitment will strengthen your ability to commit to what is truly important, giving you the freedom and power to make an extraordinary impact on the world. Isn't this the reason you got out of bed today?

To read this issue, as well as other past issues, check the newsletter archive list at the top of the page.

Anyone can subscribe to the "Surpass Your Dreams" newsletter by sending an email with the word "SUBSCRIBE" in the subject line to newsletter@surpassyourdreams.com. To cancel, send an email with the words "UNSUBSCRIBE" to the same address.

Your e-mail address will be kept strictly CONFIDENTIAL and will NOT be shared with any other party or mailing list.

Have a great month!

Deborah

Copyright © 1999, all rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy or distribute text from the newsletter or the content in its entirety so long as this copyright notice and full information about contacting the author (Deborah J. Brown) is attached.

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