Posted on by BWThomas

Making the best of the worst, changing what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity. Albert Einstein

If we are going to be good at something we also have to be a novice at it. We will struggle and make mistakes, we will feel foolish and unskilled, and we might never feel like we’ve mastered the challenge to our satisfaction, and that might be the best way to feel.

There will come a point when our best work is not still ahead of us, but if that point is later in life it might be better for us. It might be best if we go through life and find new challenges. I think of Mom with most of her quilts being created after she turned eighty.

I’m thinking about what challenges I might take on after eighty. It is sobering to become the oldest generation but once our parents pass we become the oldest generation. Do we feel wise enough to be the oldest generation? As we become the oldest generation we are supposed to be wise and forward-looking, depending on our age now, that might happen sooner or later, but if we live a long life it will happen. We will become the patriarch or matriarch in our family.

We will never be ready to take on the mantle but we will rise to the occasion because there is no other choice. We might not be growing up with enough sense of duty, we think our choices only matter to our own lives, but our choices and other people’s choices create the society we live in. If we want a better society better choices have to be made by someone, but if we always expect someone else to make the better choices, and not ourselves, we have no power.

If you can stay positive in a negative situation you win. Anonymous

The only power we have in life is to improve our own life and that of our family, and when everyone improves, society improves. If we do the right thing, other people might choose to do the right thing, but waiting for everyone else to do it first is how nothing changes. This could be picking litter off the street, not dropping it in the first place, or treating others with respect, kindness, and fairness.

We don’t live in a perfect society, and we never will, but do we appreciate how good it is? Can we continue to live in peace and relative harmony without letting the conflicts in the world come between us? Can we continue to build a better society, or do we think the best times were the times of our youth, because it was the best time for us, our whole life was still ahead of us instead of more behind than ahead for many of us.

What we do for the society we live in is not just for us, it is for our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren and further down the generations. We are setting up the future for generations to come, it won’t be all good or all bad, and I’m not sure we know which is which.

I pray that one day when I pass the mantle onto my son and daughter, I feel good about where we are and what we’ve done as a society. The sum of the improvements we’ve made and the mistakes at least balance out. Perhaps every generation lives in the best of times and the worst of times. Our challenge is to make the best of the worst, not the worst of the best. This might be the challenge of our lives to make the best of the worst, to improve what can be improved, and to accept what we can’t change.

Never let a bad situation bring out the worst in you. Choose to stay positive and be strong. Unknown

The bad news: Nothing is permanent. The good news: Nothing is permanent. Lolly Daskal

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Eckhart Tolle

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Thank you to everyone who reads my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Learning and growing, teaching and being taught, is there a better way to live a life?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A wise person knows that there is something to be learned from everyone. Anonymous

Can we learn something from everyone we meet?

How do we square having more than enough against knowing some don’t yet have enough?

If we are lucky enough to live in abundance, surrounded by peace and plenty, do we have something to teach others? Can everyone live in abundance, surrounded by peace and plenty? Are we moving toward this or away from it?

If we look around and see other people living better lives than we are, can we emulate them so their ways become our ways? Is mentorship how we pass things on to others and learn what we don’t know?

If we learn the best practices from everyone we meet, how good can our lives become? What if, instead of envying others for their accomplishments, we learn from them and become eternal students learning and growing throughout our lives? One of the ways we can do this is to be part of organizations that are comprised of diverse groups who have different things to teach us.

By joining organizations, we can meet people we wouldn’t meet any other way. Our only point of commonality may be that we are part of the same organization, and Toastmasters is that kind of organization. Everyone who joins Toastmasters wants to improve something about their lives, and this is a great meeting point because when we see others improving their lives and telling their stories, we begin to think we can have bigger lives as well.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more you are a leader. John Quincy Adams

We might listen to a speech on helping the poorest of the poor, how bringing smiles to faces and making a difference in lives brought more meaning to the giver’s life than they thought possible.

People know what works in their lives, and advice taken to heart and implemented will work in ours. If we learn from other’s mistakes instead of making those mistakes ourselves, can we spare ourselves a lot of grief?

If we learn the best things from everyone we meet and implement the best practices into our lives, will we make a difference in our lives and those we love?

We can get this knowledge from books and podcasts because many books and podcasts are about building our best lives. But, when we meet people doing it, we might believe we can do it too instead of thinking there is something special about who we are reading about or listening to.

Being part of a group, whether a religious or secular group, might bring us closer to turning philosophy into action. An idea is just an idea rolling around in our head if we don’t put action into making it a reality. We might have the best ideas rolling around in our minds, but if they only remain ideas, will they impact our lives?

Do we have mentors in our life and are we a mentor to others? What if we don’t limit ourselves to mentors who look like us, or believe what we believe, what if we really can learn something from everyone?

We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort. Jesse Owens

When you’re intentional, you can add value to everything you do and to every person you meet. John C. Maxwell

Success is not to be pursued. It is to be attracted by the person you become. Jim Rohn

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Thank you to everyone who reads my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Audacious goals, living well with a merry spirit and a grateful heart.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A merry heart does good, like a medicine. Proverbs 17:22b

Mom turned ninety-nine on Tuesday. She can’t believe where the time went. I listened to a podcast on aging, and the expert listed the five top things that impact aging in their order of importance: friends, diet, exercise, stress, and creativity. Mom puts diet as number one.

If we want to have the opportunity to age well, we will have to eat a good diet, but what is a good diet, and how good does a good diet have to be? Friends are important, Mom lost her friend and walking partner a couple of years ago and it made a huge difference in her life. Exercise is important and Mom is still going for a daily walk because it is important at ninety-nine to be able to do Thursday what you could do on Wednesday.

Stress at ninety-nine, one shouldn’t have a lot of stress but of course, there is always stress in our lives and one of the stresses aging people face is that they might lose the ability to make choices for their own life.

Creativity might be the choice that pays the biggest dividends for our mental health as we age. We can’t control what will happen to our friends, or how often our family comes to visit, or when our spouse dies, but we can choose to be creative and put passion and purpose into our lives. Mom quilted before Dad died, but it was after his death that quilting became a bigger focus in her life and she created her most beautiful and intricate quilts.

A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy. Mother Teresa

Being alone is a physical state, and it is not the same as being lonely. Loneliness is an emotional state and we can still be lonely when surrounded by people. There comes a time when we might not be able to physically continue with our creative pursuits and that might be when loneliness descends upon us. The hours are no longer filled and the promise of what we will do tomorrow is not with us.

We might wish we didn’t live long enough to lose the ability to do the things we love, but we don’t have a choice in that. We will have to deal with the circumstances as they show up in our lives and make the best of them. Keeping a sense of humor and perspective on life will help. If like Mom we can see the funny in whatever situation presents and retain an attitude of gratitude because even if what is, isn’t great, it could be worse. Life is what it is and we can make the best of it or the worst of it. We can appreciate the wonderful moments life presents or be miserable.

Even when we don’t get to make many other choices in our life our attitude is still our choice and it is so much more wonderful to be around someone happy and grateful than sour and miserable.

Mom is an example of aging with grace and dignity, keeping a positive attitude, and a grateful spirit. It is my wish to be as great of an example to my children and grandchildren as she has been. It almost seems impossible, but what is life for if not audacious goals?

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. Henri J.M. Nouwen

Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast. Norman Vincent Peale

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every moment with love and gratitude. Denis Waitley

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to those who read my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Birthdays and choices, as long as we have choices will we embrace our next birthday?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest. Larry Lorenzoni

Visiting Mom was wonderful and I will look back over the time I spent with her before her ninety-ninth birthday with gratitude forever. One of the things we have to be okay with is aging, our own, and those we love. We have to accept the limitations and adjust our expectations. If we are used to non-stop conversation, we may need to become okay with sitting in silence. Our presence is comforting and if someone no longer wants to be alone being there with them is a gift to them and us.

I found knitting relaxing. Sitting in silence shouldn’t feel awkward, but having something to do with our hands and our minds while we sit might make sitting more comfortable.

I remember one of Mom’s friends had a child that went through endless hospital visits and treatments. Mom said she didn’t know how she would be able to do it, but she could have, we all can if we have to, we might not know it, but we can rise to the circumstances of our lives, and be there for those we love in the capacity they need because it is what needs to be done. Jordan Peterson tells us we should be the strongest person at our parent’s funeral. We should try to be someone others can count on, and what a society we build if we all can be counted on, and we can all count on someone.

Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it. Will Rogers

Mom’s niece drove from California to spend a month with Mom; she calls her Aunty-Mom. Mom was there for her, and now she’s there for Mom. The circle of life goes around, for some, it is short, for others it is longer but it does come to a close, and living it with dignity is what we want and strive for. Some people find dignity in a home, some find it staying in their own home, and one choice isn’t necessarily better. Mom’s sister-in-law came to visit while I was out, she chose to go into a home and is happy with her choice. Mom is choosing to stay in her own home and is happy with hers.

What is agonizing is when a person can no longer have what they want and finds it hard to accept their limitations, or someone gets to make choices for them they disagree with. We are fortunate that my sister and her family are looking to relocate near Mom and will live with her, a benefit to both of them. We don’t know how things will work out, or what circumstances will occur that make things we didn’t see how could work out, work out, this is serendipity in our lives and it is working for Mom.

My aunt who moved to a home says the same, she was beginning to think she would look into a home, a room was available, and she liked it when she saw it, the food is good, she is close to family, and she says it fits her perfectly. All the pieces came together in ways she didn’t expect and she is grateful and happy that things worked out how they have.

One of the things we want most in life is choices over how our life will unfold, sometimes the choices will be between two goods, between the best of what can be, but if we have a choice we will feel better about our lives.

At the end of our lives, we will look back over the choices we’ve made and how wonderful it is to spend time with people who are happy with the life they’ve lived, surrounded by children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren. As I write this I am hearing men debate about whether the richness of life is having a family or not, or they should spend their lives only on the pursuit of money and status. In the end, family is the only thing we will leave behind, and I can’t imagine feeling great at ninety-nine with no family because we made the choice not to have one, not because the circumstances didn’t work out and we had to accept the things we couldn’t change, but because we thought money was more important than family.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. Truman Capote

You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake. Bob Hope

The idea is to die young as late as possible. Ashley Montagu

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item, I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Creativity adds a dimension to our lives we will get no other way.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns. Edward de Bono

Creativity feeds our soul and gives more life to our years and what if it even adds years to our lives? I found this definition of creativity: the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. Creativity opens our minds and allows us to bring into existence something new.

We don’t need to be creative these days to live because we can buy everything we need, and often our do-it-yourself projects don’t look as good as professionals would, but is our life smaller if we don’t bring creativity into our lives?

What if one of the best things we can do for ourselves is to find a creative outlet we enjoy? Some people love to take an old car and turn it into a beautiful work of art, it might take years to find the parts and refinish the body. People remodel homes, build gardens, sew, paint, and find other creative outlets.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. Maya Angelou

My daughter paints with her eighteen-month-old son and he loves it. His other grandmother came over to pick up a couple of his masterpieces to put on her fridge. He isn’t concerned with what he’s painted once it is finished; it is the act of creating that he enjoys. This is the thing with creativity it is the creativity in the moment that feeds our soul.

Do we feel bad if we create bad art, compared to buying what others consider good art, or have you like me looked at what some consider good art and wondered what makes some of it good?

Making something is good for the soul, being useful is good for the soul, and contributing to the greater good is good for the soul. What might not be so good for our soul is being the bystander that we become when we watch TV.

One of the things I’ve thought about is, whether we do well with too much leisure, or do we do better when we have full and busy lives? Do we even know what makes us happy, or do we find ourselves happy in unexpected moments?

Do we sometimes think creativity is for someone else? Creativity is for all of us, and the more we bring it into our lives the better our lives will be.

If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present. Lao Tzu

The worst enemy of creativity is self-doubt. Sylvia Plath

Creativity is simply connecting new dots in new ways. Sam Horn

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Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

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Time is moving on, change is coming whether we are ready for it or not.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Socrates

This weekend I harvested my potatoes, picked the last tomatoes, and lifted my Dahlia tubers. Last year the Dahlia tubers looked great and the next time I looked at them they were withered, I planted them without much hope they’d grow, and they didn’t. I purchased new tubers and the blooms were lovely, still not planted in the best spot but next year I’ll find a better spot for them and pick up a couple more varieties.

Creating a beautiful garden is still one of my dreams. The garden has moments but needs much more tender loving care than it gets. This was a bare lot but now the trees have gotten big, and there is a lot more shade than there used to be. We love sitting out in the backyard enveloped by the trees we planted years ago.

Gardens don’t stay the same and our lives don’t stay the same either. We need to edit our lives and edit our gardens as time goes by. We think we’ve planted the perfect tree in the perfect spot, and we love the beautiful blooms but perhaps not the mess from falling leaves and crabapples the rest of the year. What was once a blooming garden below is now in too much shade, and plants that used to come up every year no longer do, it’s time to redesign and replant.

Next year will be better we tell ourselves but of course only if we do the work to make it better. No one is going to force me to do the work to have a beautiful garden, it is up to me.

There are three constants in life… change, choice, and principles. Stephen Covey

No one will force us to read the books, plan the trips, or go to the gym. When we are in the grocery store no one tells us that’s too much ice cream, or are you sure you need those cookies? In the grocery cart yesterday I put in pumpkin spice pecan butter tarts and then took them out, no one else would eat them and do I need eight butter tarts? Here I am the next morning still thinking about them. They might make their way into my cart yet. Baked from scratch the package says, will they taste better in my mind than if I try them?

How much of what we think about is better in our mind than the reality? Is that just an excuse not to do things, to take the chance, to have an experience? They say we regret what we don’t do more than what we do. I’m getting ready to visit Mom before her ninety-ninth birthday. I am fortunate to have the time and opportunity to spend this time with her.

The time we spend with people we love is special. The ordinary moments of our lives we often don’t appreciate until they are gone. Our lives continue on their ordinary path until they don’t, something changes and we long for the ordinariness we had. We will never be ready for some of the changes coming into our lives, even when they are welcome like a new baby, our life changes in ways we didn’t see coming.

Our job is to adapt to the changes and make the best of what comes. Our lives change, the seasons change, and there is beauty in every season if we look for it. Are we looking forward to what is possible in our lives, how we can make our here and now as good as it can be, and planning for the future? We are here, we might have a lot of choices or few, but if we make the best of the choices we have, can we make the best of what is?

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance. Harrison Ford

Making a big life change is pretty scary. But know what’s even scarier? Regret. Zig Ziglar

Life is about trusting your feelings, taking chances, finding happiness, learning from the past, and realizing everything changes. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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Thank you for reading my books and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon link.

Posted on by BWThomas

Make your choices carefully; those choices build your life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Make the most of yourself for that is all there is of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I am giving my final speech to receive my Distinguished Toastmaster designation. It’s taken me seven years since I last started Toastmasters, and I was away from Toastmasters for thirty years.

There are many lessons I’ve learned from Toastmasters, but they aren’t lessons special to Toastmasters. Toastmasters might only have helped me be more courageous and go after my dreams with more vigor. We can only juggle so many balls at once and Toastmaster has always been a ball I could set down and pick up again, unlike marriage, family, and business. Writing, art, and Toastmasters are back in my life because the heavy lifting of raising children is over.

No matter what we do in life we need to set goals, persevere, and realize that the journey as well as the destination is important. When we reach a pinnacle of achievement we need a new goal because although it feels great to meet our goal it also feels like we’ve lost something. If we don’t replace the goal we just attained with another one we may feel let down which hits us hard because we weren’t expecting that.

There’s something magical about putting yourself into life. You’ve got to stand up and take responsibility for your own life and you cannot abandon that. Bill Kurtis

Nothing in life lasts forever an old phase ends, and a new one begins. If we set goals for every phase of our life we will continue to grow, but if we begin to think that the best is in the past, why bother to set new goals,  we can become disheartened, and life becomes bleak and colorless.

My cousin is staying with Mom and sent a picture yesterday of Mom knitting. Staying interested in things or getting interested in them again can be a boon to our lives. We might think little goals aren’t important, but little goals lead to bigger goals, and over time a series of small goals we’ve accomplished might lead to more success than we thought possible.

Life is a series of choices and we make choices that affect our lives every day. The better the choices we make the better our lives will be. We might think as we get older we don’t need to set goals but even the goal of going for a walk every day will make a big difference.

I met a lady years ago whose aunt said to her, “It takes a long time to die.” She had been given a prognosis and instead of living until she died, she was waiting to die. It might seem like a subtle difference but we hear about people with a bad prognosis that live with as much gusto as they can manage.

In truth, we all have a bad prognosis, because this life will be over at some point, so we need to make the best of the opportunities and choices we have while we have them.

What do we still want to do, what is still possible, and what is our next step?

The success of any change depends, in large measure, on your attitude about that change. David Cottrell

You can change yourself and you can change the situation but you absolutely cannot change other people. Only they can do that. Joanna Trollope

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. Stephen Covey

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Choices, chances, and changes, we must make a choice to take a chance or our life will never change.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First we make our choices. Then our choices make us. Anne Frank

Don’t talk; act, don’t say; show, don’t promise; prove, these words are written on the cover of a journal I purchased. It is easy to talk and not so easy to do. Showing, not telling, is the best way to live our lives.

How much are we willing to put ourselves out for someone else? How do we make others feel by our actions because words not followed up with action are empty?

We meant it when we said until death do us part, or did we? We meant it when we looked at our newborn baby and said, “I will always love you,” but children don’t always do what we want them to do, become what we want them to be, and are we still there for them regardless of their choices in life?

Would we have kids on the street if parents didn’t give up on them, or are some of the kids on the street because they’ve given up on themselves and their parents are still there for them?

When are we enabling with our support or being unsupportive when we expect more from people? In every relationship, is the dynamic such that it can be very good or bad? Do we live somewhere on the continuum of being our best or worst, and we are a choice away from either extreme?

What if, when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change, and our perception colors our life more than we acknowledge? How often have we felt trapped when we look at things one way, but if we look at them from a different perspective opportunities open up?

Life presents many choices, the choices we make determine our future. Catherine Pulsifer

We might be looking at our cup, basket, or life as half empty, but what if we looked at it differently? What if we looked at every challenge as an opportunity, what if we saw the silver lining in every adversity, and what if we realize we are enough, and if we do the most with what we have it will be enough?

As we look toward retirement we are told we haven’t saved enough, we can’t possibly live on less than… Depending on where the information is coming from often we are told we need millions to retire, and yet many people are retiring and living quite well and they don’t have millions in the bank.

One of the things I like about YouTube is real people telling real stories about how they manage to live healthy lives, become adventurers, travel the world or their country, and build a secure retirement with reasonable amounts of money. As I write this I am thinking of Henry Mah, and his books and podcasts on maximizing the TFSA (Tax-Free Savings Account).

Information is available on any subject; we have to find it, digest it, and act on it to see the dividends it might pay in our lives. Life has always been about choices, some of our choices we regret, some we are proud of, and some we still have to make. We can’t do anything about the choices we regret, they are what they are, what we can do something about is the choices we have to make in the days, weeks, and years ahead.

Our lives will be the sum of the choices we make, we might think our choices are all behind us, we didn’t start soon enough, and it is true we can’t have what we would have had if we made some choices years ago, but we can have what a good choice will bring us now.

We would be fitter if we started exercising earlier, but what people achieve even when they start fitness programs later in life is amazing. Too often we talk ourselves out of doing something we could do. It will take effort, courage, and faith to embark on a new path, but isn’t that what we are here for, to have the adventure of our lives?

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision. Tony Robbins

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. Eleanor Roosevelt

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. Nelson Mandela

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Life lessons from Suzanne Somers. She’s been a force in my life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

As human beings, equipped with marvelous intelligence and the potential for developing a warm heart, each of us can become a force for good. Dalai Lama

Suzanne Somers died last Sunday and I didn’t hear about it until my husband told me. When Three’s Company was on TV my roommate and I were looking for a third roommate. A young man answered the advertisement in the newspaper, and we agreed he could be our new roommate. I was away one of the first weekends after he moved in. The police knocked on our door in the middle of the night and my female roommate was awakened from her sleep. Our male roommate – his words, “Inadvertently tossed the contents of the refrigerator onto the main street.” We lived on the fourteenth floor and luckily no one was hurt. We were again on the hunt for a new roommate and over the next few years I shared the apartment with male and female roommates.

Does everyone remember the thigh master? I remember something called the Gut Buster but can’t find any reference to it. I bought one and was diligently doing sit-ups when the bottom part of the machine separated and hit the wall like a bullet. Someone could have been hurt, and maybe that is why I couldn’t find a reference to this product on the internet.

For many of us exercise gadgets have been part of our life. We were always looking for the perfect exercise aid that would give us results. If a gadget helps us exercise it’s important to know it’s the exercise and not the gadget that made the difference.

Years later Suzanne Somers popped into my life again. I was listening to the radio and she was talking about one of her diet books on food-combining. How separating fat and carbohydrates in our diet keeps us from gaining weight. How many women has she encouraged over the years to take control of our diet and our lives? She maintained a marriage of fifty-five years, fought breast cancer for 23 years, published books, and has remained relevant all these years. She has been a force for good.

I want to be the force which is truly for good. John Coltrane

She became a force for encouraging women to take control of their bodies and their health. Not to be intimidated by the experts, but to question and learn. If we can live until we die that is a goal to aim for, and I think everything I see about Suzanne Somers, she did just that, she was a role model to the end.

We can’t change what we can’t change but perhaps our attitude on how we deal with what life throws at us is what we can control. Living a life with cancer might look quite different from waiting to die of cancer. In the end, the amount of life might be the same but what if it isn’t the amount of years in our life, it is the amount of life in our years that counts.

We are being reminded every day it seems, that if there is something out there we want to do we better get to it. I wonder if Suzanne Somers ever said to herself, who am I, to talk about diet, hormones, and exercising, and then did it anyway. I remember talking about yeast overgrowth to my Doctor and it was a foreign concept at the time, but everyone is talking about gut health now.

We are sharing parts of our lives in podcasts, blogs, books, etc and some of it might be oversharing, but even that might help people learn things they need to know. None of us are getting out of this life alive, but if we share the lessons we’ve learned along the way, even if they are hard lessons, maybe especially if they are hard lessons we might help someone.  Some people are sharing things that don’t put them in the best light, but perhaps they believe they may help someone else make better choices and avoid the mistakes they’ve made.

Life is messy, and they say confession is good for the soul. Perhaps when people can say, “Accept me warts and all, or don’t accept me at all,” they are strong. Strong people aren’t pretending they’ve never made mistakes; they acknowledge their mistakes and go forward better, not bitter.

Are we going forward better, not bitter? Are we learning the lessons others are trying to teach us?

The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation – a force for construction and destruction. Jonathan Haidt

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. William James

When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back. Yoda

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Being alone isn’t always loneliness, and being around people doesn’t mean we can’t be lonely.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. Mother Teresa

Watching “Alone in Alaska” we might wonder how we would fare. I’m not even talking about finding food, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be good at that part, but what if our needs were met, so we wouldn’t starve, could we handle being alone? I’ve never spent much time alone and it would be a huge adjustment.

Many of us will spend time alone at some time in our lives. If we have things we can do that make the time pass it might not be too bad. But, if we are only watching a clock tick, and have nothing we can or would like to do, then the time will go by very slowly.

We are connected technologically more than at any age in history and still, the rates of loneliness are increasing. It makes sense we will have to deal with loneliness as we age especially if we end up being the surviving spouse. Even people in nursing homes report moderate loneliness and some report being severely lonely. This shows we can be lonely in a crowd or in a building filled with people just like us.

I’m looking at something I’ve found on the internet, “More than 2 million over 75s live alone in the UK, with over half regularly going for more than one month without conversing with a friend, neighbor, or family member,” this is taken from an article by the Good Care Group.

Wow, that is far worse than I thought it would be. We have to wonder what brings someone to the point where no one calls them, or they have no one to call, visit, or interact with.

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel all alone. Robin William

Some of it, as in Mom’s case is she’s outlived her siblings, Dad’s siblings, and friends. Making new friends when our peer group is gone would be difficult, maybe heartbreaking, and we might think we are getting close to someone to end up losing them.

We might think putting our loved ones in a home is best for them, we won’t worry about them as much, but what about what is best for them? Aging in place is what Mom wants and what we hope can continue for her.

There aren’t easy answers, we wish there were easy answers and we might make decisions that are easier for us, but not for our loved ones. We all want the best for our loved ones, and to feel we did as much as we could to make their life as good as possible.

There are hard choices that need to be made with aging parents, but as long as our parents can, the choice is up to them. We might not like the choices, we might worry about them being alone, and maybe we can do something so they aren’t alone too much of the time.

What I think we all want is to make the choices that affect our lives to the end, be in control of the decisions about our own lives, and have autonomy until we die.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. Buddha

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. May Sarton

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. Michel de Montaigne

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts, click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.