CONCENTRATE ON YOU!

Every morning I read The Daily Love, this quote caught my eye, well most of the quotes catch my eye but this particular one I chose to share on today.

"Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.

Make all your friends feel there is something special in them.

Look at the sunny side of everything.

Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best.

Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

Give everyone a smile.

Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others.

Be too big for worry and too noble for anger."
- Christian D. Larsen

Be a blessing and be blessed,
Epiphany Essentials

25 SAVVY STARTUPS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS

Now is the time to start a business. Launching a business in college (See 5 reasons why you should here) — or collaborating on one — sets you up for a bright and successful future. I’ve come up with 25 ideas college students can start for $200 or less. Believe it! You can use one (or more) of these suggestions or come up with your own. Some of these startup ideas may work better than others, or, depending on where you go to college, may not work at all, but it's up to you so choose wisely and adjust quickly if the business you start isn’t advancing. So, college CEO, before you head back to school for the semester pick your money-making match.—Felicia Joy (Black Enterprise Website)

Be blessed and be a blessing,
Epiphany Essentials

YOU ARE YOUR 1ST PRIORITY

As soon as I began to write this I think of the recent cover of Essence Magazine with Michelle Obama and her article speaks about the importance of putting herself 1st. I haven’t read the article but the title is self explanatory. I also remember reading a magazine a feature article on Will and Jada Pinkett Smith. Will had expressed to Jada early on in their relationship that he put himself 1st. Initially, it was a concept that Jada didn’t understand, she felt that the family should be first.

Years ago, I watched an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show where she had mothers who felt unfulfilled and unhappy. The main cause, they were putting family and every other thing in their lives 1st because they felt that is what they were supposed to do.

Now yes the good book teaches us that it is better to give than to receive; the key however is that you have to have something to give! For instance it is difficult to sow into someone spiritually if you are not being spiritually fed yourself. It is difficult to share faith with someone if you are not working on first increasing your own faith. Does that make sense? In laymen terms, you cannot give what you do not have.

Think about when you are on an airplane and the stewardess begins to give you safety tip. They tell you if the air pressure in the cabin gets too low, oxygen masks will drop down. They go on to tell you to put your oxygen masks on 1st and then help your small children or anyone else whom may be with you that needs assistance. Why is that? With your oxygen mask on you will be able to breathe freely which gives you a clear head and the ability to calmly and quickly secure the mask around your child etc. It is a great lesson in being your own 1st priority before helping someone else.

Now please don’t read this and take it the wrong way or to the extreme. What do I mean by that? Say your refrigerator is full, all your bills are paid, and you have savings in the bank that you are saving for something special. Someone comes along and is in serious need, now you have the means to help them but you choose to focus on yourself and what you need and completely ignore their need. That is absolutely not what I am suggesting with this post.

What I am suggesting is that you take time for yourself. Take time and exercise, eat right, read a book, write something that you’ve wanted to write. Do something that is for you and you alone everyday. Even if it is just sitting for 15 minutes in solitude. Do something that you want to do that creates a sense of calm, peace, joy in your life without any distractions.

I think it is easier for many of us to be all things to all people than to be all things to ourselves. I can see some of you reading and thinking to yourselves I don’t understand. You have children, they play sports, you volunteer, you work a full-time job, you have to cook, clean, and wash clothes, church commitments and so on, your laundry list of things to do daily doesn’t allow you the time to squeeze yourself in.

If that happens to be you, you may suffer from busyness. There is a great difference in being busy and being productive. Having a daily laundry list and completing many tasks everyday doesn’t mean that you are being productive while it may be very efficient for your life. Learn to delegate tasks and prioritize better. If you don’t have time for yourself in your life you definitely need to prioritize some things. Why? Because at some point you will experience burn out. Even Jesus took time for himself. There was the example where he went alone to pray and asked the disciples to stay awake and watch. He spent 40 days in the desert well the devil was their tempting him nevertheless he was alone. He chose not take the boat once and walk to the other side and meet the disciples there. He even was asleep on the boat when the storm came in which the disciples were upset that Jesus was sleep because they thought they would die.

What’s my point if Jesus who healed the sick, restored the lost, and died for all of our sins was able to take time for himself. Surely you can even though he told us we would do greater works than him. The bible also tells us to love God, ourselves, than others. After God comes you, not your children, not your husband, not your hobbies, associations, committees etc.

YOU should be your biggest priority. You also may want to examine if you are spreading yourself to thin and eliminate some of the things you are doing. You may just be busy to avoid examining your life and making necessary changes.

Be a blessing and be blessed,
Epiphany Essentials

TOP OF THE CLASS BUT MUST SHARE HER HONOR

Kymberly Wimberly is suing her former Arkansas high school for allegedly forcing her to share valedictorian honors with a White student who had a lower GPA. (Essence Magazine, October 2011)


Earlier this month, we delivered more than 130,000 petition signatures -- the product of tremendous activism on the part of the ColorOfChange.org and Change.org communities -- to local school officials in support of recent high school graduate Kymberly Wimberly.

ColorOfChange.org has followed up with hundreds of phone calls to the superintendent and school board members in McGehee, Arkansas. That's where Wimberly, a young Black mother, was forced to share a "co-valedictorian" designation with a lower achieving White student. This after the high school guidance counselor assured the Wimberly family that Kymberly was the top-ranked senior, and a staffer worried aloud that having her in that role would cause "a big mess."

Despite all the petition signatures and calls, district officials are continuing to pretend as if they've done nothing wrong. So more than 100 ColorOfChange.org members have now called state-level leaders. The commissioner of Arkansas' education department and members of the state board are staying tight-lipped as well, refusing to make statements in support of Kymberly.

What Arkansas school officials fail to realize is that by staying silent, they're saying plenty about their beliefs on the topic of Black student achievement. The situation in McGehee has never been solely about Kymberly. The equal protection lawsuit she has brought against the district alleges that administrators and teachers there routinely discourage Black students -- nearly half the high school student body -- from taking honors and AP classes.

As much as the events in McGehee sound like an aberration, they're not. This spring, a district in Malverne, Long Island, mistakenly named a white student valedictorian. Once the error had been exposed, school officials attempted to name her co-valedictorian with the higher achieving Black student. The community pressed for the district to fully fix the error, and the school board eventually voted to name the black student, Aalique Grahame, the sole valedictorian.

In Sumter County, Georgia, the Black community began organizing around a similar issue in 2009, when a high-achieving Black student at Americus-Sumter High School didn't make the cut for valedictorian. Suspecting that some teachers were giving Black students lower grades to ensure that they stayed out of the top slot, the local NAACP petitioned school officials to explain why only one Black student had been acknowledged with the honor in the previous eight years, and why high-achieving, ostensibly eligible Black students were not being permitted to apply for a federally-funded scholarship administered by the school.

Ignored by local officials, the Sumter County Branch of the NAACP eventually took its complaint to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). OCR investigated whether the district was discriminating against Black students, but before it could issue a recommendation, the district asked to resolve the complaint. Superintendent Roy Brooks signed a resolution agreement in April, agreeing to revise and clarify district policies around valedictorian selection, train all staff who advise students about the valedictorian process, notify parents and students of the criteria for achieving the honor and to provide other information on a timeline established by the OCR, which will continue to monitor the district. It's a process that's just beginning, but it appears that the federal government -- after being called upon by local activists -- is pushing a major culture shift in this Georgia school district.

In McGehee, where ColorOfChange.org members' attention has been focused, the district is expected to respond to the Wimberly family's lawsuit within the next several weeks. But in the meantime, officials there would do well to pay attention to what happened in Georgia. Ignoring a groundswell of activism is what school leaders did in Sumter County, too, and it didn't serve them well. If the activism of more than 130,000 people around the country can't set things right in McGehee, perhaps the U.S. Department of Education will have to. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rashad-robinson/will-arkansas-officials-s_b_941218.html)

Be a blessing and be blessed,
Epiphany Essentials

YOUNG, BLACK, AND AMAZING

This was written by Constance C.R. White, Editor in Chief, Essence Magazine and can be found in the October issue. I wanted to share,

For all of my sisters in their 20s/30s:

1. Ask yourself, What do I want to be doing at 40?




2. Make a plan and work it. You can tweak it along the way.
   



3. Reach out. You don't have to do it alone. We're here for you.
   



4. Save a little bit every week, even a single dollar.
   



5. Don't accept negative things others say about you. If they have an observation, tell them to make it constructive.
   



6. You are responsible for your actions.
   



7. Video dancer is not a profession.
   



8. Be aware of the ways pop culture may try to diminish you. Reject them.
   



9. Be patient with people's shortcomings but not their bad behavior.
   



10. Know that you can love someone and still walk away.
    



11. Any job is better than no job. It's not forever. It's merely a stepping-stone.
    



12. Any man is not better than no man.
    



13. Men think about sex a lot. What's on your mind?
    



14. Whatever you dream, there's a Black woman who has already done it.
    



15. You can do it, too?

Be a blessing and be blessed,
Epiphany Essentials

SOWING & REAPING

This morning I was praying in the shower and confessing the Word of God over my life, my son, my family and this blog post came into my head.

Sowing and reaping is not simply and only about money it is about every aspect or facet of life.

So first let me share Galatians 6:7 with you in various translations:


Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. (NIV)

Don't be misled--you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. (NLT)

Do not be deceived and deluded and misled; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked [a]by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside.) [He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude God.] For whatever a man sows, that and [b]that only is what he will reap. (AMP)

What does this mean? This means be mindful at all times what you give out because that is what you will get back. Let me delve a little further into this. There are many people that are why me type of people? Why is this or that happening to me, the first thing is crap happens. "Good and bad" happens to the righteous and the unrighteous. So instead of having a pity party and asking a million and one questions, have a praise party and confess the Word of God. Also think about the things that you have done, said and you may have a better answer to your why me questions.

Ok, now back to sowing and reaping, if you sow love you are going to reap love, if you sow peace you are going to reap peace, if you sow joy you are going to reap joy, if you sow kindness you are going to reap kindness, if you sow mercy you will reap mercy, if you sow understanding you will reap understanding. Ok I think you get where I am going with this.

Now when you sow if you are sowing into a person, situation, or circumstance you may not reap from the place that you sowed but you will definitely reap.

Sowing is a law just like gravity is a law, it works no matter what you do.

So I ask you what are you sowing? The bible teaches us to love our enemies and pray for them, it teaches us that it is not enough to love those who love us but to love our enemies. Why because in loving our enemies we can begin to develop the God type of love that agape love. Also because it is easy to love those that are nice to you and that you love.

Pastor Winston yesterday was speaking on reaping and sowing, when you slap someone expect to be slapped back, when you cuss someone expect to be cussed back. Again the person you are doing this to may or may not be the one to do it back to you. It could be 15 years from now and yes, you repented for your sin and God forgot it but when you sow, you release energy. For those who don't know energy cannot be created or destroyed, energy simply continues to move and transfers. So whatever you did even though you repented for it energy was released into the atmosphere that will come back to you in some way, shape, or form. Again sowing and reaping is a LAW.

In a nutshell what am I saying, I am saying be mindful of the words you speak over other people, what you say to them, how you say it, and what you say about them. Why? because you reap what you sow. The golden rule is to do unto others as you would have them to do unto you. Imagine if everyone treated others the way they truly wanted to be treated, we would all be reaping harvests of abundant love, joy, peace, happiness etc.

The good thing is change begins with one person, so it can start with us right now. We can make a conscious effort to be mindful of what we sow because whatever seeds we plant will grow as a harvest in our lives.

Be a blessing and be blessed,
Epiphany Essentials

GRADUATE SCHOOL FAIR

The World's Best Masters and PhD Fair

Chicago Wednesday, September 14th 4-8P Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza

Free entry if you register on-line at www.topgradschool.com

Be a blessing and be blessed,
Epiphany Essentials