Posted on by BWThomas

What we know but don’t want to know. Acknowledging what is and dealing with it.

Painted by Belynda Wilson Thomas

You can’t heal what you don’t acknowledge. Jack Canfield

We sometimes know something we don’t want to acknowledge and so we don’t check what we can check, we don’t monitor, and we don’t make subtle changes that can make our life better.

We also live in a time when there isn’t agreement on what might make our life better. Should we be eating plant-based meals, low-carb meals, low-fat meals, or just stick with real food but not too much?

Sometimes we know our clothes aren’t fitting right, we haven’t been to the gym, and we can’t remember the last time we got on the scale. We know we won’t like the number when we see it on the scale but better to see it sooner when we are five pounds up than when we are twenty-five pounds up or even more. Facing our demons is a life-long battle.

Those who knit will know the saying, “A stitch in time saves nine.” Another saying, “We need to nip this in the bud“, means dealing with the problem early instead of when it is almost too big to manage. Overlooking minor details can have disastrous effects on our life.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

How many things happen in our lives because of something else we didn’t look after well enough? What heartbreak and hardship could we prevent if we looked after the details and mundane things in life better?

Sometimes we have areas in our life that flourish because we are looking after them very well, but in other areas, we are neglecting them. I had a friend whose garden I admired until I realized she spent all her time in her garden because her marriage was disintegrating. Could a little less attention in the garden and a little more attention to her husband have changed things, or was she coping as best she could?

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us. Socrates

To excel in one part of our life does another part have to be neglected? Our health we neglect at our peril because health is the first wealth. Not everyone is blessed with robust health, but some of us who are, take our robust health for granted until we are no longer healthy. It is why those who are still fit and healthy at sixty-five might not be those who looked the best at eighteen. How we looked at eighteen was the blessing of good genes, but by sixty-five it is good genes and what we’ve done with them, and the older we get the more our choices will matter.

I expect in the end it is not extreme diets, or extreme exercise routines that lead to good health, but moderation in diet and exercise and continuing to be active throughout our lives. What if active living is better than going to the gym? What if eating a healthy diet without dieting is best? What if the health and fitness industry is not good for our health? What if trying too hard to stay young, ages us, and aging gracefully will keep us more youthful and healthier longer?

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that ain’t so. Mark Twain

Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom. Charlie Munger

Accept what is. Let go of what was. And have faith in what will be. Sonia Ricotti

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 that 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 is a series of small steps that propel us forward.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Every day is a new beginning, take a deep breath, smile, and start again. Winston Porter

If we want to do anything we have to start small. There will be the first time we give a presentation, go for a job interview, or put ourselves out in some small way. Everyone has to be a beginner before they become what they become. We sometimes think the small, halting first steps aren’t important, but what if they are the most important? Without the first step, the next steps don’t happen.

What if what we often do is worry about the next steps before the first steps are completed? We worry about publishing and agents before we’ve written the book. Life is a series of steps we take, and each person’s steps are different as is each person’s life. Even if we try and duplicate someone else’s steps we won’t get the same outcome necessarily. Sometimes we worry about failure before we’ve even tried, which of course guarantees it. Even if no one but ourselves knows we failed to try, we know, and we are one of the important people in our lives.

I was looking forward to putting on a “Storytime” later this summer, but it ended up not working out to the disappointment of me and other authors that were also going to read their books. We may still get the opportunity to do it, but something else has come up that I never expected. Sometimes we are going in one direction and we end up in another direction, but had we not been going in the first direction the second direction might never have happened.

Jim Rohn tells us, “Life has strange ways.” We need to be willing to ride the roller coaster of life. Disappointments will come, but maybe something better is also coming.

What if we find in the end that who we help and encourage on the road in life is the sum total of our lives? This is why being a parent is the biggest challenge in our lives, we are responsible for a whole person, and in some cases many people. As I watch our grandson not quite willing to take those first halting steps. He crawls up and down the stairs, and can get from one end of the house to the other in a flash by crawling. With speed like that, he might think who needs to walk?

A single tiny step you actually take is better than any big plan left undone. Jane Lee Logan

He’s playing the piano with two hands exuberantly, and one afternoon he went from the drum, playing piano, to the guitar, and xylophone, going from one to the other and back again. He is of course the most wonderful little boy we’ve had the pleasure of knowing, this is what every grandparent thinks. We hope as grandparents we can widen his horizons. He likes to look at the books I’ve written and he knows it’s my picture on the back cover.

Life is so wonderful when we have children and grandchildren to share it with. Even if no one outside of our family knows who we were if we raise our family to take their place in the world and they in turn do the same, we’ve done our part, we’ve made our contribution.

I look at Mom turning 99 this year, (We’ve started planning her 100th birthday for next year). What a life she has lived, what an array of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren she has.

Sometimes it seems to me that we who grew up in easy, prosperous years are more pessimistic about the future than those who grew up in tough times. We think we, our children, or grandchildren couldn’t face those tough times and be okay. Those who have faced tough times know it is possible to get through tough times to better times.

Where do grit and fortitude come from? Are some born with it, or can we all develop it, and if we can all develop it, then why don’t we? I ask this as I think of people who give up when others trudge steadily onward. Part of life is making a decision about how we will handle what life throws at us. We might not like what is coming, but we have to deal with it, and if we can deal with it in a way that makes us and our family proud, I think we’ll all feel better in the end.

Courage is not having the strength to go on; it’s going on when you don’t have the strength. Theodore Roosevelt

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one. Mark Twain

Don’t underestimate the power of small steps to build a great future. Jocelyn Soriano

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you will 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 that 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 link.

Posted on by BWThomas

Holidays and memories, celebrating milestones, and back to real life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The best things in life are the people we love, the places we’ve been, and the memories we’ve made along the way. Unknown

Yesterday was my husband’s and my thirty-seventh wedding anniversary. My husband was listening to a podcast, I can’t remember the podcaster’s name, but he was saying he didn’t like Jordan Peterson’s advice on marriage; “He’s only been married once.” Our daughter says, “Isn’t that the point, to only be married once.”

Staying married isn’t about finding the perfect person who always acts perfectly or being the perfect person who always acts perfectly, that’s a fantasy, and fantasies don’t come true. Real people get married, and lead real lives, with ups and downs, good times and bad, and getting through them together is the challenge. Anyone can throw the towel in at any time, but giving up on marriage is like giving up on anything else, something can’t become a success once we give up on it. We don’t finish what we start if we quit halfway through.

I’m not saying no one should get a divorce, and I’m not judging those that do, but I prefer to take advice from those that have gotten through the tough stuff that inevitably comes with a long marriage. I am blessed with a wonderful husband, two great-kids, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and now a grandson. One of the secrets to staying married is to not throw the divorce word around, if you put it out there, and your partner says, “Okay then.” You are getting a divorce and most times neither of you can take it back, even if you think it would be best for all concerned. I wonder how many reasonable marriages end because of something like that, a moment of weakness when we give up on each other?

Don’t count the days. Make the days count. Muhammad Ali

We got back from our road trip to B.C. and Alberta. Our schedule was packed and it was wonderful for our kids to meet some of their cousins again as adults. We had time with Mom; I stayed at her place while everyone else went to a BnB so I could maximize my visit with her. We were up at six o’clock talking before everyone else showed up, and we talked until bedtime every night after they left.

At the BnB, a turkey mother saved her chick from a hawk attack while our kids watched, nature, red in tooth and claw they saw firsthand. City kids are protected from the ferocity of nature and survival. Predators are everywhere and to live a good life we have to be aware of predators, in the wild we know who is who, in the city not so much.

We were out and about in downtown Vancouver and Calgary and on the street were the down and out, the drug-addicted, and unfortunate. Will decriminalizing drugs help mitigate the problem? I believe if we knew how to fix the problem we would try our best as a society to do it. But, how do we fix it? Does anyone have the answer? Does it come down to personal responsibility, choices, consequences, and helping people get back on their feet when they choose to turn their life around?

The time in Vancouver and Calgary makes me think if I would have loved living out West more than I’ve loved living in Ontario. It’s like marriage, you make your choice, live with it, and make the best of what you have. Life has been great for me in Ontario. There are always things we like about somewhere else, but home is home. After a wonderful trip of sightseeing, new experiences, and reconnecting with people, it is back to our regular wonderful life.

Never let your memories be greater than your dreams. Doug Ivester

The greatest legacy we can leave our children is happy memories. Og Mandino

You will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a wonderful 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 that read my books, and a special thank you to those that 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

Living fully in the moment and documenting our days may lead to understanding our lives better.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are. Carolyn V. Hamilton

We are so busy, but what are we busy doing? Keeping a journal helps us understand the life we’ve lived and the thoughts we had while we lived it. As we plan our itinerary for our trip out west the schedule is getting pretty full. Can we see this person I ask, just pop in and say hi. I’m not even trying to fit cousins in, just nieces and nephews.

Making this trip so everyone gets to see most of what they want to see is our goal. We don’t have tickets to the Calgary Stampede yet, we thought we couldn’t get any but there were a few available last night. My husband has to decide if he wants to go now that it looks like it’s a possibility once again. Decisions, decisions, decisions, we only have a bit of time to spend so we have to decide how to spend it.

Years ago we took the ferry to Vancouver Island and toured Bouchard Gardens so we aren’t doing that this trip. We’ll see Stanley Park, dinner beside the ocean with a niece and nephew and their families, and the Night Market in Richmond on our first day.

When do we rest, when indeed? We might have to lighten our schedule a little we do have a fourteen-month-old on board, but I expect him to be a little trooper sleeping in the stroller or carrier.

How lucky we are to be able to take this trip for his Great-Grandmother to get to meet him, and my kids to see their Grandmother.

Our little dog is staying with my daughter-in-law’s grandparents while we are away, but they also got asked to look after a cat. Fortunately, the cat will stay somewhere else so we don’t have to worry about a cat and dog fight. They might have gotten along well, but my daughter-in-law doesn’t want the responsibility of Lulu getting hurt while with her family.

There’s a whole load of stuff in life that is worth documenting. You see it every day but do not even notice. Jan Chipchase

Sometimes we plan things for years, other times they come together quickly as this trip is. We are so blessed to be able to go on a family trip, to have a family to see, to live so far away and still be able to get together, to be able to pick up the phone and talk, and even video chat if we want to.

There is so much to enjoy, so much to see, and so much to be grateful for. We will be getting in a lot of walking which I hope will make up for the amount of eating we will be doing. Good food is always an enjoyable part of a holiday.

One of the things I’m planning to do is create an Illustrated Journal of our trip. I’ll be giving a couple of talks on Illustrated Journals when I get back, so having one I started on our trip will be a good example of what I’m talking about. I’m feeling a little pressure to make it worthy of display but the goal is not perfection, so much as documenting our trip.

Documenting our life is a good exercise and putting our thoughts, maybe a few photos, drawings, and observations on a page will bring us back to the moment when we look through our journal. We can write down what we are grateful for and how we feel now. We can write down thoughts we don’t want to forget. Combining writing, art, photos, and even memorabilia will fill our journal and make it special. I like to read my journals and relive what I was thinking because we don’t always know at the moment how important something will be. We won’t always look back on things the same way we were looking at them when they happened.

Life is what we make it, and keeping a journal whether written or illustrated is a way to make more of our lives. The more we put into life, the more we get out of it.

Document the adventure of your current life, whatever and wherever that might be. Diane Evans

Documentation is a love letter that you write to your future self. Damian Conway

Art creation is the documentation of the soul’s voice. Malkiese Paythress

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

Thank you to those that read my books, and a special thank you to those that 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

We can’t do everything, but we can choose what we will do, at least some of the time.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Theodore Roosevelt

We think we can’t do things until we do them. Then we wonder why we didn’t do it earlier. It might be getting up early to write, exercise, or practice something. We wanted to do something that didn’t fit into our lives until we made time for it.

Much of life is making a decision to do something and then doing it. We can’t be more than we are until we do more than we do. That makes sense so what would we like to be accomplishing that we aren’t accomplishing yet? What would we like to do, see, or be? If it is going to happen we are going to have to make it happen by finding a time to fit it into our life and schedule it.

One of the things my husband and I haven’t gotten to is traveling. We are planning our trip to England for next year, and Mom turns one hundred years old. This is a milestone that needs to be celebrated, so the trip to England might be postponed for at least a year.

Planning things is tricky, sometimes if we put things off they might never happen, but if we don’t put them off something better won’t happen. We never know what will happen in our lives or the lives of others, but we can make the best of what we have now. We can enjoy the blessings in our life now. We can laugh and celebrate now. We can invite someone to dinner and find out a couple of months later it was the last dinner we’ll spend with them, and we are happy we got to spend the time with them we did.

This is why we are taking our grandson to meet his great-grandmother and not waiting to do it to celebrate her 100th birthday. We can do it now, and if we are blessed we can celebrate her 100th birthday, but we don’t want to regret not going now when we can. England is not going anywhere, it will still be there waiting for me. My husband was born in England and has always wanted to take me to see his place of birth. He’s been to my hometown in Saskatchewan and seen the farm I grew up on. I want to see where he started his life in London, England.

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. Og Mandino

Some people never get back to the land of their birth, but some like my daughter-in-law’s grandparents returned for the first time after being gone for seventy years. Life rolls along whether we are accomplishing what we want to or not. We get to make choices in life, and those choices color our lives in ways we might not have considered when we chose them. This is why our choices are so important.

Is there a bigger choice in life than who we marry, and who we have children with, hopefully, the same person? We can change jobs, start businesses, and create a side hustle, but getting in and out of marriages is where we really hurt people.

It seems to me one of the blessings in life is to find a great partner and stick with them through thick and thin, and spend our later years doing things we didn’t have time for when we were busy building a life. If we have a partner we are going through life with we can share our joys and sorrows, go on adventures we might not want to do alone and enjoy the harvest of our lives.

We don’t know what may come, so we need to make our plans and do things while we can. What are the things we really want to see, be, or do in life? What’s possible now?

Do something today that your future self will thank you for. Unknown

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Jane Goodall

Our problem is not that we don’t have power, so much as that we tend to not use the power we have. Marianne Williamson

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

Posted on by BWThomas

Planting a garden, tending, and reaping is a metaphor for life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson

This is the gardener’s weekend, whether we are planting seven tomato plants or a garden patch to meet all of our family’s needs this is the weekend. I was feeling quite smug, I wintered my three Dahlias from last year. I planted them in too deep of shade so they never bloomed but this year was going to be my year with Dahlias. I carefully dug them up and put them in a box in the cold cellar and sometime during the winter I looked at them, and they looked great.

Yesterday, I pulled out my little box of Dahlia tubers, and to my horror, they shriveled up to almost nothing. What if this was a collection of rare Dahlias, what if they were something I needed to be a good steward of? What if this is a metaphor for my life, and I think I’m tending to things better than I am? What if a little more tender loving care needs to go into other areas of my life so they bloom and blossom like I am still hoping dahlias will?

Fortunately, I can buy more Dahlia tubers, and I can learn how to store them so they will overwinter, or I can purchase more every spring. This is a choice we have when we live with an abundance of stores wanting to sell us our heart’s desire. If nobody overwintered plants we would not do well as a society.

Mom stored her Dahlias, which grew every year, and she bought new varieties and expanded her Dahlia border. Being a good steward of what we have helps us to get more. If we squander what we have through neglect, ignorance, laziness, or fear we will not see an increase. The law of sowing and reaping plays out in our lives in small and big ways. When we look after the little things the big things look after themselves. Haven’t we all heard that our whole lives? How is it working for us?

It might be the wrong thing to do, but I’ve soaked my shriveled Dahlia tubers and I’m planting them today. If they grow they grow, this is my little experiment giving them a chance in case there is some life left in them. I could just throw them out, but maybe not giving things a chance is also one of the problems we have in life. We are quick to throw away things that could be fixed, recovered, and repaired. We do it with things and we do it with people.

Life is an echo. What you send out. Comes back. What you sow you reap. What you give you get. What you see in others exists in you. Zig Ziglar

I’ve read articles about people getting rid of negative people in their lives. I’ve read books where people found a way to deal with difficult people and found they became allies and friends. Finding a way to deal with difficult people is the better way because there will always be difficult people, and some may think we are the difficult ones.

Yesterday, I pulled out armfuls of stinkweed, definitely, something I was not happy to see in my garden and yet when I Google stinkweed it provides many benefits. It stops bleeding, disinfects wounds, and alleviates skin rashes and arthritis, fevers and gum disease, muscle and headaches, bruises, and sprains. Wow, I pulled up a whole pharmacy from my backyard because of prejudice against certain plants that grow more easily than the plants I want to grow.

Cicero said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” What if we can learn as much from our garden as we can from our library? I loved being out in the dirt with the sun and the trees, earthworms wriggling, and the promise of the bounty of my garden. I love planting, but tending is also essential as is harvest and storage so it will grow again next year.

This year I intend to spend more time in my garden and learn the lessons the garden has to teach me. Are you enjoying a garden, on a window sill, balcony, patch of earth, park, or public garden?

Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7

Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny. Charles Reade

If you don’t like what you are reaping, you had better change what you have been sowing. Jim Rohn

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

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

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that 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

Making plans and setting goals. If we don’t know where we are going how will we ever get there?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A goal without a plan is just a wish. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Can we always tweak things to make them better? Is it possible to continually improve? At some point in life, our goal might get to be being able to do on Tuesday what we could do on Monday. How do we measure our life? Did we wring all of the joy out of life and all of the opportunities; did we do all the good deeds and help as many people as we could?

We realize how efficient and effective we can make our time when we are planning a trip. How much can we pack into a week, ten days, or a month? The longer we take to plan our trip the more we think of what to do, see, and experience. Sometimes we need a rest at the end of our trip because we were so busy doing what there was to do, and seeing what there was to see. Even if we pack it as tight as possible, we won’t see and do everything.

What is the point between busy enough and relaxed enough? We don’t want to miss smelling the roses, but we need to plant them and tend them. There gets to be a point in life (I’m told) when traveling doesn’t have the appeal it once had, and some are telling me it comes sooner than we think it might. This is scary, my husband and I are getting to the stage where we might finally have some time to travel. Will we get to see the Seven Wonders of the World, wouldn’t that be a worthy goal? At Toastmasters my mentor’s goal is to see all seven of the world’s wonders. The new list was compiled in 2000 when a company based in Zurich Switzerland launched a campaign to name the New 7 Wonders. The seven wonders of the world on today’s list are:

The Colosseum, Rome, Italy, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, India, Christ the Redeemer Statue, Brazil, Machu Picchu, Peru, Chichen Itza a Mayan city, Mexico, Petra, Jordan.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only wonder of the ancient world still standing.

The seven wonders of the natural world are:

The Northern Lights: Aurora Borealis,  Mount Everest, Paricutin volcano in Michoacán, Mexico, the Grand Canyon, Victoria Falls along the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, The Harbor of Rio de Janeiro, and the Great Barrier Reef.

Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life. Les Brown

We might not agree with the lists, but they are at least a starting point. It would take a lot of traveling to see everything. We should all make our own list of what we’d like to see and do in our lifetime. There are lists of places to go, things to see, and experiences to have. We must curate our own list, and make our own plans because we must live our own life. When I look at YouTubers putting their experiences out I think what a way to see the world and some are getting paid for it.

We all make choices about our lives, and we may look at other people’s choices and think why didn’t I think of that, but they are living their life and we are living ours. We can’t have someone else’s life, but can we make the best of our own is a question we should ask. How much of what we want can we get out of the next ten years? How much effort would it take to figure out what we want and go after it?

Do we need to ask ourselves what we want to accomplish in life? Do we need to let life unfold knowing we can’t know everything that is ahead and we have to be willing to go with the flow, but also we can direct that flow somewhat? Is there something deep down we want to see, experience, or do? Can we make it happen without disrupting the rest of our life?

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. Tony Robbins

Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. And there’s no telling what will happen when you act upon them. Jim Rohn

Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan. Tom Landry

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, see archives and 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 that 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 purchase through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Developing our attitude is the power to develop our lives.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A person with an outstanding attitude makes the best of it while he gets the worst of it. John c. Maxwell

It is truly inspirational when we read about people who have made the most of the worst situations. They were dealt hands we would never want and turn their life into something great. Wheelchair athletes come to mind, and it reminds each of us to focus on what we can do, not on what we can’t.

When one door closes another opens is something we’ve heard and it can empower us to not look back at our losses but instead look ahead to our opportunities.

I love listening to YouTube videos of old motivational speakers, Earl Nightingale, and Jim Rohn. Books by Florence Scovel Shinn and Neville Goddard are being read and posted on the internet. Are they better speakers or writers than the ones we have today? Many of our speakers today have looked at those speakers and writers and been inspired by them.

Yesterday the news said our school libraries are removing books written before 2008 from the shelves. This will mean children will not find any of the same books their parents read. Books written more than fifteen years ago are irrelevant, really. I believe we need to make room for new writers, but do we need to get rid of all great literature to replace it with what is recently written?

My interpretation of this process might be wrong, but how it was reported is sure to upset a lot of people. Of course, libraries cannot carry all the books, and they have to pick and choose what books are worthy of being in the library. I would hate to have to make that choice but that is what librarians are for, to put together a collection of books for their collection of students.

I’m not sure anyone’s life turns out exactly the way they imagine. All we can do it to try to make the best of it. Even when it seems impossible. Nicholas Sparks

It is easy to criticize, grumble, and think things aren’t going how we think they should. Announcements like that make us wonder who is making the decisions and why. We may be thinking they have motivations they don’t have, but published before 2008 does seem a little arbitrary. Maybe authors like me will have more opportunities to get our books into libraries. It never crossed my mind before, what book would have to be removed for mine to have room on the shelf.

Sometimes I still have to pinch myself that I have four books out into the world. That I accomplished a goal I’ve had since I was a little girl a goal for many years I barely breathed a word about, even to myself. Reaching our goals changes us, not because of the goal, but because of what it took to reach the goal. The hard work, discipline, persistence, dedication, and learning that goes into achieving a goal widens our horizons, we now know if we could attain that goal, we could also attain others. We could have done things we didn’t do, but we can also do things we haven’t done.

We realize that we have limited our life by the choices we have made, or we might have a bigger life than we ever thought possible. We can think that life is over as retirement looms, or we can think there is time for pursuits we haven’t pursued. How we look at what is left of our lives will determine our future.

Harnessing our minds is what we are told is required to live a great life, but minds are not easy to harness or control. Criticism and grumbling come easier than gratitude and speaking a blessing. Is what we think, and what we say building or destroying our lives? Is it easier to think everything is being done to us, than to think that out of what we have we can make something great?

Whatever life may send your way – make the best of it. Don’t waste your time and energy worrying about it. Instead, find a way to do something about it. Learn from it, adjust to it, be strong, be flexible and be your best in every situation. Les Brown

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. Art Linkletter

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

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 everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that 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

Getting out of our comfort zone and finding passion and purpose.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

You can’t find your passion, thinking about it in your head. Marie Forleo

How long will it take…? It will probably depend on how often we practice, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

This weekend was the Toastmasters District Conference on Zoom. This was my first time being an author on Author’s Corner. There were four authors and in our own breakout room, visitors came to see us. What an interesting group of people came to talk to me, and so many people would like to write something, but they don’t have time, don’t know how to start, don’t know if they should, or like someone who visited me, has been entrusted with her father’s writings and is expected to do something with them.

It is a daunting process, and we make it more daunting by building it bigger in our minds than it is. We worry about publishing and how our writing will be received before we write it.

I listened to a valedictorian speech posted to YouTube on the weekend and he said he found out he was being considered to be a valedictorian candidate and so he worked really hard and won the honor. He felt so good for fifteen seconds, and then there was the sixteenth second when he thought of what he had given up to get the award, and it didn’t seem worth it. He didn’t have the experiences he could have had in his last year of high school because he was focused on an award.

It makes sense working toward an award hollows out the award, and what if you don’t get the expected award? What if he hadn’t known he was in the running for the valedictorian award and he got it? It probably would have been a better experience and the icing on the cake of a wonderful last year of high school. Don’t we love it when people are genuinely surprised when they win an award? Don’t we love it when something comes to us that we weren’t expecting?

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. Oprah Winfrey.

We expect to feel more from a big achievement, what we don’t realize often is the joy comes from the doing, and when the project is complete, so is the joy. This is why at the end of a project we need a new project to work on because if we don’t start something new we will feel empty, lost, and adrift. This is why when the heavy days of parenting are over, and the nest is empty we need something to pour ourselves into. Creative endeavors, volunteer work, and becoming involved in service organizations can give us passion and purpose. We learn by helping others that we also help ourselves.

If being part of an author’s corner were only about begging people to buy our books it might seem empty. But talking to people about a writing journey they might want to take, or about how writing expands our lives, and getting out of our comfort zone is where the growth is, it becomes a joy.

When we talk to someone that has done what we want to do it expands our horizons, if they can do it, why can’t we? There are so many resources for us to learn to do whatever we want to do. How long will it take to learn what we want to learn? That will depend on how much time and effort we put into it. Will it make us rich and famous? Probably not, but that isn’t where the joy is. If our goal is to be rich and famous that might be a hollow victory, but if our goal is to do what is in us to do and somehow through luck and serendipity, hard work and perseverance we get rich and famous, then that is just a fact of life and the fruit of our labor.

Is there something we want to do we haven’t attempted yet? What are we waiting for?

Look. You can’t plan out your life. What you have to do is first discover your passion – what you really care about. Barack Obama

If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen for you. To you and because of you. Alan Armstrong

If you feel like there’s something out there that you’re supposed to be doing, if you have a passion for it, then stop wishing and just do it. Wanda Sykes

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 everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads or 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

Creating the life we want by making small changes is easy to do, but also easy not to do. Nothing changes until we change what we do daily.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. Vincent Van Goh

If a change is easy to make it is easy not to make. How many of us have used the excuse not to do something because we don’t have enough time? Later we hear of people even busier than we were who did what we wanted to do.

Some people are fit and some people aren’t and the difference is our daily choices. I’ve been slacking on this front and if I don’t make time for fitness I won’t get the benefits, and this is not the time of life to let things slide.

This is the time of life to be all we can be, because what we are capable of as we age is not more but less, and the more we do, the more we are capable of doing. Sometimes I wonder if we even know what we are capable of before we do it.

There comes a point in our life when if we can do tomorrow what we could do today that is a successful day. I read last night about a high school football team that did really well one year and since many of their team was still with them the next year they had very high hopes. They told their coach they didn’t want to do all these training exercises and wind sprints, they wanted to play football. Their coach took them on a bus ride to a professional football team and showed them the professional team doing the exact same exercises. He told the team they could choose if they wanted to do the training, but he also told them this choice of doing the fundamentals to be ready to play the game would impact their life because we always have to practice the fundamentals of life to master anything we want to master.

Success leaves clues and one of the clues is practice, practice, practice. When we schedule our practice it fits into our schedule, but if we are waiting for the time to do it, the time goes and we didn’t take that walk, we didn’t have time for yoga, or the gym, but if we made an appointment to do something we did it. We need to make appointments with ourselves to get things done.

One of the realities in life is projects will eat up as much time as we let them. How efficient can we get if we put our minds to it? One of the ways to fit more into our life is to start our day earlier. Getting up earlier will do more for us than staying up later.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. Barack Obama

We’ve all heard, early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. The magic is not just in getting up early, the magic is in what is done with that time.

Last night I set my alarm to get up an hour earlier. The birds were singing as I walked downstairs. My goal is to finish my blog post and go for a walk before starting the rest of the day.

I’ve managed morning walks at various times in my life, and it is time to start enjoying them again. What other changes can I make so my life will be healthier, wealthier, and wiser?

As Jim Rohn says if you go for the walk, maybe you will eat the apple, and if you eat the apple, maybe you will do some exercises, and if you do the exercises maybe you will adjust your diet, and if you adjust your diet maybe you will read more books, and if you read more books, maybe you will tweak your finances, and on and on it goes creating a virtuous circle. But, what is easy to do is easy not to do, it is easy to quit getting up early, quit going for the walk, quit writing every day, quit reading every day, quit being creative every day, quit watching what we eat and a degenerating circle is started.

We always need to make adjustments in our life. My grandson is wonderful and I love spending time with him, but I have to be careful I don’t use him as an excuse not to do the things I need to do. I don’t want to miss spending this precious time with him, he’s only one once, but not getting up as early as I should isn’t because of him, and not getting as much writing done so I’m not on track to reach my goal is not because of him, even if I have been using him as an excuse. Any excuse will do if we want an excuse, and I’ve been looking for an excuse lately.

It’s time to bring back some discipline into my life. I’ve been slacking and the time to nip things in the bud is now. Spring is a great time to take stock of where we are and where we want to be. A few changes right now will get me back on track, but if I don’t do them now, I will get more and more off track.

Time to go, I have running shoes to lace up.

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine. John C. Maxwell

Procrastination will delay your change!!! Today is a very good day to change; don’t let you stop yourself from growing. Steve Harvey

By changing nothing, nothing changes. Tony Robbins

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 everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that 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.