Posted on by BWThomas

Small changes lead to big changes, be willing to start small, and be willing to persevere.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. Marian Wright Edelman

Tonight I’m reflecting on my path at Toastmasters. It’s taken me 37 years but I am close to achieving my Distinguished Toastmasters designation. Someone said, “If you get everything out of Toastmasters you can get out of Toastmasters, you will never get out of Toastmasters.” I was out of Toastmasters for 27 years while my husband and I raised a family and built a business.

We can only juggle so many balls at once and Toastmasters was the ball I could put down and pick back up. We have to be careful when juggling the balls of life we know which balls are the important balls. The balls we must guard and protect, the balls which if they fall we will not be able to pick back up, or even be able to put the pieces back together again.

Life can be forgiving and not forgiving when we make mistakes, and some people will seem to get away with more mistakes than others, but Jordan Peterson tells us we never get away with anything. We always have to pay a price. I think this is true, then we must decide what price we are willing to pay. There are prices for opportunity and lost opportunity. There is a price for speaking up and a price for not speaking up about things that are important and even those that aren’t so important.

If we are asked what we want for breakfast, perhaps we could have eggs, sausages, and a delicious omelet with a side of toast and apricot jam (not bought but homemade). If we shrug our shoulders and say, “whatever” a bowl of porridge may be put in front of us, or a piece of burnt dry toast.

I think in life I’ve been a bit of a “Whatever” person and perhaps that works in marriage when the husband leads and the wife follows. Life is built on shared goals and values, and the workload is divided.

I’m becoming less of a “Whatever” person as I get older. Being a parent is such a heavy and wonderful load that it takes over our life and we don’t have a lot of time for pursuits of our own. When the heavy lifting is over we have time but often have no idea what we want to pursue with the time that is unfolding before us. We need to be careful especially as retirement nears we don’t just accept the idea that we are old and life is over, or almost over so why bother learning new things, or setting new goals? We think a drink on a beach sounds like paradise, and it probably is for a week. But then what?

Men trip not on mountains, they stumble on stones. Proverbs

There comes a time in our life when there will be few choices left to make and we might not like any we get to choose from. But if we are not at that point yet, we should think long and hard about how we want to spend our time before we get there.

We have many opportunities to do many things, learn, develop, grow, and make the best of the life ahead of us. The more decisions we make for ourselves the fewer will be made for us. Sometimes it is okay to say, “Whatever you’re having.” It might be better to develop our choosing muscles and design our days for maximum satisfaction.

I like to start my day by writing with a cup of coffee beside me and my little dog keeping me company. How do you like to start yours? There are days when the alarm rings and I turn it off and go back to sleep. I still get a bit of writing in but not the long uninterrupted time I need to get into it. On blog days I’m up at five, it’s the rest of the week I need to work on.

How we spend our days is how we spend our life, we can make better decisions to have a better life. No one will do for us the things we must do for ourselves and some of the little things we can change will make the biggest difference because it is the things we do daily that have a huge impact on our lives.

Is there a little thing we can change that will pay huge dividends in our lives?

Small changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious. Peter Serge

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

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. Confucius

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 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

We don’t know what we don’t know; life should be a learning experience.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger. Confucius

Visiting an art store gives us an array of items to experiment with, but there is usually a learning curve, and we have to be willing to be a novice before we master the skill we set out to learn.

This week I bought dip pens and ink. I’ve bought fine-tipped paintbrushes over the years but they never do what I want them to do, and I think I know why. A paintbrush is not the tool I’ve been looking for, the tool I’ve been looking for and didn’t know it is a dip pen that will give a sharp line. There is a huge variety of dip pens available for drawing and writing. I have purchased a few nibs and can’t wait to see how they work with acrylic paint.

We don’t know what we don’t know. It’s hard to believe it took me this long to figure this out. I have a book on painting with pen and ink, it has sat on my bookshelf for years.

Note about inserting nibs into nib holders. There are helpful videos explaining how to insert nibs into the holder. I mangled my first nib holder because I wasn’t inserting the nib into the correct place.

When I got my Speedball Sketching Pen Set home I found a broken nib, yesterday I replaced the broken nib and purchased a Calligraphy Pen set which includes what some reviewers suggest is one of the best writing nibs. These dip pens are going to make creating an Illustrated Journal more fun and creative, and I’m looking forward to enhancing my illustrations.

If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you. Zig Ziglar

We all make mistakes and one of the biggest ones we make is trying to do something without the right tools. When we look at what someone else can do and think they just have more talent than us, sometimes they have better tools, and they know how to use them. If we can get those tools and learn how to use them our work will improve.

But often we think we are lacking and we don’t explore what is out there that would help us improve. We are our greatest critic; we are the one that holds ourselves back the most. We compare our worst to someone else’s best and find ourselves lacking. We think if we don’t have the proper credentials we can’t do something we want to do. There are many self-taught people that do great things.

One of the best attitudes in life is to be a willing student and learn from everyone we meet. If we accept we will never know everything and are willing to learn, it is amazing where we might pick up insights that improve our lives.

We may think, if we’d learned this earlier it would be better, but we’ve learned it now, and we can do with it what we can. There are early bloomers, late bloomers, and repeat bloomers in life. It isn’t true that it’s never too late, there comes a time when it is too late, life has run its course, but until that time comes, we can learn and do more things.

We have never had so much access to information; we need to pick and choose from what is out there. I’ve always thought I wasn’t interested in marriage advice from someone who wasn’t married, child-rearing advice from someone who doesn’t have children, or life advice from someone not living a good life. Sorting what is good from what is not good is a feat in itself. But, we’ve always been told, “You’ll know them by their fruit.” If we focus on the good and the beautiful, those who want to build instead of the ones who want to tear down and destroy, we can sort through the maze of those who want to instruct and inform.

Life is what we make it, is there something new we would like to learn how to do, change, or experience?

It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning. Claude Bernard

A man who asks is a fool for five minutes. A man who never asks is a fool for life. Chinese Proverb

The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue. Antisthenes

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 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

In times of crisis do we see who we really are?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The secret of crisis management is not good versus bad; it’s preventing the bad from getting worse. Andy Gilman

For those of us that woke up in our bed, in our own house, we are blessed. Those that had to evacuate because of fires are blessed too because we have the resources to help people to get out of danger. Hopefully when the danger is past people will be able to go back to a home and community that is still standing, and if not they can rebuild.

As my sister who lives in Yellowknife said, “We’ll deal with what we have to.” Is there anything else we can do but deal with what we have to? We may think we shouldn’t have to deal with forest fires, but if we have forests, we’ll have forest fires. We may think things should be different than they are, maybe they should be, and maybe, we can do things a little differently so they are, and sometimes I wonder if we are trying to bend nature to our will instead of learning to live with it.

 For every action, there is a reaction. One of the things we tell ourselves is, “It will be different this time.” But perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves is why would it be different, whatever “It” is? We build houses on flood plains and are surprised when they flood. We bring more people into Canada than we have housing for and wonder why we have a housing crisis and house prices are out of reach for most people.

We need houses, and we need farmland, but do we need to build homes on farmland? We have planners for these things, but what forces come to bear on how decisions are made? Chances are no matter what decisions get made, everyone will not be happy. That is pretty much a given no matter what the decision is about, or where the decision is being made.

I don’t envy the people that have to make the big decisions, but I get to criticize them fairly or unfairly. We need a country that works, and for the most part, even though we grumble, we have a country that works, and we see how well it works when we see action taken in emergencies. During emergencies, we see what can be done, how we can work together, how we can look after immediate needs, how we can take care of everyone and meet the needs of displaced people and help them to get through a terrible ordeal.

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

Do we need a crisis to see the best in people? Not everyone acts the best in a crisis, we hear of looters, and arsonists taking advantage of situations but for the most part, people work together in a crisis and do the best they can for the greatest amount of good.

We think our housing crisis is a big deal, but it will be nothing like a food crisis if we build on the farmland of Canada and end up not being a country that is food sufficient. Counties that can’t feed themselves are OK until someone else needs what they want or they don’t have the resources to purchase the food, or their inhabitants can’t afford the cost of food brought into the country. Some people believe we can get more production per acre but how much, and at what cost?

Am I having these thoughts because I am getting older? Am I thinking growth is not sustainable because I have no vision?

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

You never let a serious crisis to go waste. And what I mean by that; it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Rahm Emanuel

The best people know that there are two phases in every crisis: the one where you manage it and the other where you learn from it. To succeed you have to do both. Mark McCormack

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 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 purchase price through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas · 2 Comments

The circle of life comes full circle whether we are prepared for it or not.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Mark Twain

If we know but don’t acknowledge we don’t accept the inevitability of what is coming, but it is still coming.

Tuesday morning my husband got a video call from his cousins in England. Their mother, his aunt at age 84 is not expected to live she’s had dementia for thirteen years. When I called Mom she didn’t sound right and other’s noticed it too, has she had a minor stroke, and if she has what do you do for her at age 98?

Everyone has to face the loss of their parents unless it is the parent that faces the loss of the child, which of course is worse. Loss is part of life and thinking we won’t face loss, hardship, disappointment, setbacks, and failures is perhaps why some people have so much trouble dealing with the realities of life. They don’t think they should have to deal with those realities.

We deal with them a lot less now than in years gone by when almost every family would have suffered the loss of a child. Many men suffered the loss of their wives in childbirth, and many women suffered the loss of their husbands in war, accidents, and misadventures.

I called my sister and she ran over to check on Mom, she said, “Mom looks fine.” Later she confided in me that Mom is declining which we all understand and so does Mom

  Mom said, “Did I say something wrong?”

“Did I say something wrong,” has been rolling over in my mind. I think it means, she was trying to hide her decline and it’s been noticed. How do we let Mom live out her life the way she wants to without too much of an intrusion but also without looking like or actually being neglected?

I’ve spoken to an agency called Nurse Next Door and they may be able to fill in the gaps that the family can’t so Mom can live in her home for as long as she wants. Perhaps right till the end. We all fear losing autonomy and decisions over our life being taken from us. Her friend was moved into a nursing home when she was still quite capable and only lived a couple of months. Mom thought she died of a broken heart more than anything else. She had to sell her home and give away all her treasured items.

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one. Epicurus

I have an aunt that has chosen to go into a home and she is happy and even says the food is good. Choice has a lot to do with this, choosing to go into a home is one thing, and being forced into one is another.

The end of life for some like Dad was swift, he died of a massive heart attack, the first day he couldn’t get dressed by himself. It was hard on Mom who was there when it happened and my brother who came over soon after and tried to resuscitate him, but for Dad, it was what he wanted, swift and he died all at once.

We hope Mom can have as much good life as she can, and that she still has good life ahead of her. We also hope she will have very little time when she is incapacitated or almost so. When we visited her in July her walking was much slower than last year, little declines are adding up.

Navigating the next months or years will be a balance between what Mom needs and what she wants. It is still her life, and she gets to make the choices she is still capable of making as long as she can. We need to support her and make the best of the time we still have with her.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. Kahlil Gibran

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet. Emily Dickinson

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. Norman Cousins

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 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 purchase price through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Unintended consequences, things we meant to make our society better don’t always make it better.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. Steve Jobs

I’m reading, “The 11 Laws of Likability” by Michelle Tillis Lederman. We may say I don’t care what someone thinks of us but deep down and often not very deeply being liked is very high on our list.

We don’t like hearing criticism – even if it is warranted, but when it is not warranted we feel picked on and unfairly treated. It is easy in life to take offense, and it is easy to give offense, but if we are to live together in harmony we can’t pick apart everything someone does to look for an offense. Looking for micro-aggressions is not a good way to live.

Things have been done in the past that were terrible and should never have happened, but they did happen and no one no matter how badly they treat someone in the present can make up for what was done in the past.

If we had a relationship with someone that treated us badly and then every relationship after that we treat people badly we haven’t made anything better, in fact, we’ve made it worse. Instead of going forward in a new wonderful relationship and life, we’ve carried the old hurt and brought it with us to the new relationship and created our own hell.

Forgiveness is a powerful force and if we are strong enough to use it, it is our life that gets better, not the person we’ve forgiven. If we hold onto old hurts and mistreatments then we carry them with us where ever we go and they color our world day and night. If we expect the worst from people we often get it, and everyone but us sees the chip on our shoulder we are unwilling to put down.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history. Niall Ferguson

We are fortunate to live in a time when we can leave a relationship that doesn’t work for us. We can leave a job. We can have many careers in our lifetime searching for the one that fits us best. What we can’t do, what no one has ever been able to do is make other people act the way we want them to.

We can live with them or work with them and like it, we can live with them or work with them and hate it, or we can leave. Those are our choices and we haven’t always had those choices, we couldn’t always leave but in this day and age we can. What we may not be able to do is find circumstances that never make us feel bad, disrespected, overlooked, judged, unappreciated, or wrongfully accused of things we haven’t done.

In many ways, we have come so far with people having rights that they are weaponizing their rights. Men choose not to get married because they are worried women will marry them for what they have and then take half, and that they only married them for this reason, not that they entered into the relationship in good faith and things didn’t work out.

Proverbs 21: 9-19 says “It is better to live in a corner of a roof than in a house shared with a contentious woman. The soul of the wicked desires evil; His neighbor finds no favor in his eyes.”

I don’t believe this is reserved only for men, or only for marriage. Dealing with contentious people is difficult and what if everyone that has choice leaves and only the contentious are left to deal with each other?

In many ways, society has gotten better, but one of the things we are doing that is not good is we are rewarding bad behavior and we are reaping a bitter harvest. This happens in the divorce court, the workplace, and our schools.

There are people who will never be given enough. Some men and women do their best to make their unhappy spouses happy, but we can’t make someone else happy. We can’t fix someone else’s insecurities; we can only work on our own. There are people who will never think their piece of the pie is big enough. They will never get enough unless they figure out what will fill the hole in their heart and life.

Jim Rohn tells us, “Don’t ask for life to be easy, ask to be better.” We need to be careful that in our zeal to make things better, we aren’t looking for problems where they aren’t, or making small ones worse.

The sum of all of us is the sum of our society. We all count; we all are responsible in some way for the progression or deterioration of our society. Perfection is the enemy of the good; we will never have a perfect society where everyone treats everyone else exactly like they’d like to be treated. Everyone will not always make the best choice so they do the best they can in life. We will make mistakes and people will take advantage of programs we put in to help make things better.

It’s fair that a spouse should get half of what a couple has worked a lifetime for, but marriage shouldn’t be a way to get half of what someone else worked for. My husband and I tell each other if something happens to either of us, “Don’t you dare bring someone in to get half of what we worked a lifetime for.” Whoever is left needs to build something with the new person, if they find a new person, but we want what we built, our half, to go to our kids, but not until our spouse is finished with it. Of course, no one controls things from the grave.

Wherever we go, there we are, and how we look at life colors the life we look at. Wayne Dyer tells us, “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” Are there some things we need to look at differently? Do we have unintended consequences working in our society? Things we meant for good are backfiring? What can we do to fix things, which will undoubtedly bring about more unintended consequences?

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. Milton Friedman

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. Margaret J Wheatley

Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of. Victor E. Frankl

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 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

Trusting the process of life and doing our part to make things better.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about. Margaret J. Wheatley

Trust the process of life. This is a statement we see thrown around a lot. What else can we do but trust the process of life, we rail against unfairness, and I rail against it more than I should.

Things shouldn’t be this way, people shouldn’t act like that, they don’t have the right, and it isn’t fair. Who says, and who is in control? If we don’t trust the process how can we live? When we see a cat with a mouse the process of life is at work, we might be happy if we are the cat, but what if we are the mouse?

Many of us in life feel we are the mouse. We aren’t in control of the big decisions; we don’t see life working out with our best interests in mind. We feel small in the big process of life, we feel our decisions hardly matter, and this is a dangerous way to feel. Some people feel if they looked different or came from somewhere else when they get to Canada they’d be treated differently.

We may have things at play we don’t understand, things we need to see are being brought out into the open and in the fullness of time what if the process of life works to make things better? That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of suffering in the process, and if we are one of the ones that suffer we won’t like it, but as Shakespeare said, “We are all actors on the stage.”

Children being exploited are being brought to our attention and the Movie, “Sound of Freedom” is highlighting this.   What if this horrible situation has to come to our attention before it can be dealt with, what if it takes years, years, and years to get resolved? People have been exploited in the past, and we have righted some of those wrongs.

What if righting wrongs is one of the processes of life, but it is a messy part, and we can think the problem is too big to make a difference, but what if that is rarely true? What if making a difference is something we can all do in big and small ways? What if trusting the process is making where we are the best it can be and helping those in our circle of influence, and as our circle enlarges we help more and more, and what if even if our circle never enlarges what we do is still important?

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller

What if instead of fighting about what someone else should do we concentrate on what we can do? What if pointing the finger at someone else often means we aren’t doing what is in front of us to do? Building a strong family means children are not easily exploited. I believe strong families build a strong country and where children are being exploited the family and society have broken down, and both need to be built back stronger and better.

It may seem selfish to some to concentrate on our own family, but if we are a strong family, building strong children who create strong families then we are not one of the problems society has to deal with. In a strong society, the breakdown of a family may not be a death sentence, but in a weak one, it might be.

Our beliefs don’t make us a better person our behavior does, and we show people who we are by what we do. We need to not give up on others or ourselves to build a better life, family, society, and world, but what does that look like?

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. Dale Carnegie

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings. Albert Einstein

The most dangerous creation for any society is the man who has nothing to lose. James Baldwin

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 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

Creating good habits, our habits create our life, we should depend on our habits not our discipline.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

If you have good habits, time becomes your ally. All you need is patience. James Clear

We plant our garden and then we have to water, weed, and take care of it. I’ve never planted a huge garden like Mom used to plant. We ate out of it all summer and then all winter from the canned and frozen food, and what would keep in the cold cellar.

I’ve long considered the grocery store my pantry. Anything we want is just a short walk or drive away. How wonderful to live in a country that works and we can count on our supply chain to deliver what we need and want on time and at a reasonable price. We have the opportunity to eat better than at any time in the past.

The question is are we eating better than we’ve ever eaten in the past, or are we just eating more without having to do more? I was listening to Warren Buffet and he was talking about how we want to live in a society that no matter what circumstances we get at birth we can live a life of dignity. What will we do when we don’t have an underdog to fight for? There will always be levels of wealth and if there aren’t we would never be able to strive to build something or create something that creates wealth.

Some of us may think less work and more play would make us happier. My sister has a four-day workweek and loves it. I would love to try a four-day workweek and some weeks that would work well, but some weeks we need that day and even the weekend to keep up.

We need to have a rhythm to our lives and when we do, everything goes well until something interrupts our rhythm. The gym isn’t fitting into my life again yet. What is taking so long? There are so many excuses if we want an excuse. Sitting in the backyard watching my grandson play in his sandbox seems like more of a priority, and following him as he climbs all the way to the top of the stairs. This new little person in my life takes up all the time I let him, and it is wonderful. I get up a little earlier so when he comes to visit me in the morning he doesn’t interfere with my blog, and I can fit a little walk in with my dog before getting to work. We look after him while our daughter goes to the gym, but we aren’t getting there ourselves as often.

You’ll 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

I keep telling myself on Monday I need to go to the gym. Another Monday comes and goes without getting there. The habit of going to the gym has been broken and I need to develop a new habit. Some habits are hard to break and some are easy, we might tell ourselves we just need a little more discipline but I find a good habit is better than trying to accomplish things with discipline.

When we create a routine we generally do everything in our routine, we don’t think about it, we just do it. The better our routine the better our life will be. We need to be careful about what habits we form in our lives because each habit will help determine our progress. It is too much to expect bad habits to give good results. Some things we do we might not consider habits, but if we continue to do them they become habits, and some of them we might not be happy with, others we might be glad we created.

What if every day we make a slight change to improve our lives in some way? To some degree, our life is what we make it. Is it all up to us, probably not, but probably more than we might want to admit.  I have to go my little dog is ready for her walk.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. Warren Buffet

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Octavia Butler

Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good. Malcolm Gladwell

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more, and 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

Making things happen, turning wishes into goals, and goals into reality.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations. Oliver Goldsmith

We can make plans but all they ever are, are plans unless we actually do something. Last night was our time to book the flight, places to stay, and car rental for our trip to British Columbia and Alberta. I keep adding people to see and my daughter is asking when will we get to relax. The answer is probably when we get home. We should have made our plans a little earlier we would have had more choice in accommodations, but I think what we’ve booked looks pretty good.

The more people involved in a trip the more complicated it becomes but all the pieces seem to be coming together nicely. For seasoned travelers what we did last night wouldn’t seem like much, but it took us all night to book the flight, places to stay, and the last thing was the car rental when the site we were booking through had a problem. We had the vehicle booked through a site and then when we saw the price they confirmed in the email it had been quoted in American dollars and converted to Canadian dollars, thus much higher than we thought. Was this our mistake or a shady site?

We need to be careful we don’t blame others for our mistakes but we also need to be aware that there are those out there looking to take advantage. There is a buffet of things we can choose in life and yet many of us seem hesitant to define our choices. Can we have what we want, but we have to know what that is? Why is it hard to know what we want, we have to be careful about wanting things but never actually getting around to making them happen.

Travel is something I’ve never gotten around to making happen. That trip to Europe is now in the planning stages, but will only be to London and Paris. A friend and I have been going to travel since we were in high school, maybe we will travel together as seniors, and enjoy and appreciate it all the more for all the life that has happened.  Has anyone managed to fit everything into their life and had everything work out just like they hoped and planned? Does serendipity work in our lives, and even if we don’t get what we planned, we love what we got, and still hope to realize dreams that haven’t happened yet?

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind. Henri Frederic Amiel

I have a friend sending me links to things we should consider for our trip to England and Paris. Planning is part of the fun, and I wonder if a surprise trip would be as wonderful as the anticipation of planning one.

When we have a goal and set a date things happen. When we have a wish without a plan it can remain a wish throughout our lives without any movement toward what isn’t actually a goal yet.

Life has strange ways, I was looking at a book, and a woman dreamed of a house and found herself living in a house exactly as she had dreamed, but she didn’t own it. She said next time when she dreamed of a house, part of the dream would be to own it.

Are we specific enough in our dreams, do we worry about things, and get our fears instead of our dreams? Focusing on what we want, instead of what we don’t want can sound easy, but in reality how often do we think about the things we don’t want? Sometimes we hear people talk about challenges they had in their life they would never have asked for, that have given them a better and bigger life than had they gotten what they wanted.  

No matter how life unfolds do we need to be willing to make the best of it? It seems to me those who can deal with the slings and arrows of life with grace and dignity are who we admire. We don’t admire those who haven’t faced challenges, who didn’t pick up a load, and who didn’t do something that was hard to do.

If we can truly say we’ve tried to make the best of what came our way in life we will feel good about the life we’ve lived. No one gets to live our lives, and we don’t get to live anyone else’s. We are each on our own journey and making the best of it will look different for each person, and our lessons will not be someone else’s lessons. Can we live and let live because we are all on a journey?

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. C.S Lewis

Have faith in your journey. Everything had to happen exactly as it did to get you where you’re going next! Mandy Hale

The only impossible journey is the one you never begin. 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.

Posted on by BWThomas

Build back better; making the best of the worst that happens can change our lives in unexpected ways.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and take whatever comes your way. Anonymous

Life is going along. We get a phone call that jolts us. Someone had a medical emergency, but they’ll be okay, a fire, but everyone got out safely. We give a silent prayer of thanks at that moment because we know the news could have been so much worse.

There is little we can do when situations are far away. If we don’t live in big close-knit families often help comes from the kindness of strangers. Organizations like the Red Cross are there to help in times of need and we are lucky to live in a society that has organizations like the Red Cross.

We hope we’ll be prepared for what comes in life, but are we ever really prepared? I spoke to someone recently whose apartment was gutted by fire. She said when she saw the orange flames, she froze, and if someone wasn’t there with her she’s not sure she would have gotten out. Being in a fire, for many of us is one of our worst fears. It’s why we hold firefighters in esteem; they are running in when everyone else is running out.

Restlessness and discontent are the necessities of progress. Thomas A. Edison

We can always rebuild, as long as everyone is okay. It’ll take a while but we’ll be okay. The strength of individuals seems to come out when they face hard times, disasters, and adversity. Does it take hard times to make the best of us come out, is that the silver lining of hard times?

If we need to rebuild our health or lives because of a disaster, we want to build back better. We want to learn the lesson of why something happened if there is one.  If we get the chance to build back better we better take the opportunity, we might not get that chance again.

Fire, water, and wind wreak havoc and yet when we harness them we get heat and power to run our lives. Do we also have parts of ourselves that if we harness and bring under control can power our lives to greater heights? We might be dissatisfied with areas of our lives, is that a power we could harness to build a better one? Could dissatisfaction be part of what fuels change? Is discontent a fuel that can drive us forward? Can dissatisfaction help us create something purposeful and beautiful?

You must have a level of discontent to feel the urge to want to grow. Idowu Koyenikan

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

Discontent is the wheel that moves people forward. Lu Xun

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. 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 to everyone that reads my books, and a special thanks 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

Facing our fears, gaining courage and confidence to face what needs to be faced.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. Do the thing you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt

Fear we’ve all felt it, and our fears have probably held us back. If we let it, fear will steal our destiny. Is it reasonable or unreasonable to have fears? It makes sense to fear what we don’t understand, to approach with caution, but to let it keep us from our goals, or keep us from making goals, does that make sense?

I think there is healthy fear and unhealthy fear. Healthy fear might keep us safe but if taken too far it becomes unhealthy fear. Every unreasonable fear probably has its roots in reasonable fear.

We are controlled because of fear, and we control others with fear. Do we sometimes want to teach people to respect things but instead we teach them to fear them? Franklin Roosevelt said, “The one thing we must fear is fear itself, for indeed if we allow it to, it will control us. If we confront it, we will master it.”

It has been said, “A wise bird knows that a scarecrow is simply an advertisement. It announces that some very juicy and delicious fruits are to be had for the picking. There are scarecrows in all the best gardens.” If we are wise perhaps we will treat scarecrows as if they are an invitation. If something makes us feel too small to achieve something – that is a scarecrow – letting us know beyond our fear is something we want, and worth going after.

We may have rational fears or irrational fears. If we all have a fear we call it rational, but if it is a strange fear we don’t share, we laugh at it.

Here are some strange fears: Chaetophobia is the fear of hairy people. Levophobia is the fear of objects on the left side of the body, dextrophobia is the fear of objects on the right side of the body, and auroraphobia is the fear of the northern lights.

I’ve never thought it would take courage to look at the northern lights. Some people who’ve never seen a stage they didn’t like will wonder about one of many people’s biggest fears, public speaking.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear. Franklin D. Roosevelt

We are all different and we might all have unique fears that hold us back. What if we looked our fear in the face and said, “You’re not going to control me, I will do what I have to do.” Courage isn’t not feeling fear; courage is facing our fears and going forward anyway.

Sometimes one of our biggest fears is facing what is in front of us. This might be why we get cold feet before we do something we really want to do. We hear about people being left at the altar. It happened on the day of my husband’s and my wedding.

Two couples were getting married earlier the same day, in the same church, in a double ceremony, and one of the grooms didn’t show up. The bride whose fiancé didn’t show up was still a witness for the couple that did get married. The minister was very glad to see me when I arrived.

I’ve often wondered about the groom that didn’t show up, did he make the best, or worst decision of his life that day? Was it fear or something else, if it was something else couldn’t he have let the bride know ahead of time?

We let fear control us in many ways. We don’t decide what we want for fear we might make a mistake. We dawdle along so we don’t have to take the next step. We don’t face up to situations how they really are, we don’t step on the scale, we don’t go see the doctor, and we don’t take a close look at our finances.

We don’t confront the problem that most needs confronted in our lives. If we do finally confront that problem we often find we can manage it, if we will face it and take the steps needed. Then we may wonder why it took us so long, it isn’t as hard as we thought it would be, and life is so much better when we get our fears in perspective.

Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run, it is easier. Eleanor Roosevelt

All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. Theodore Roosevelt

Every time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing. Theodore Roosevelt

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. 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 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.