Posted on by BWThomas

Agreeing to disagree, finding common ground, and building a better life on our shared ideas.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

We can find common ground only by moving to higher ground. Jim Wallis

Finding common ground is something we have to focus on during a conflict. When we focus on what we have in common, we can see eye to eye. If we focus on what truths we share, our common goals, and our hopes for the future without alienating those we love, who don’t see things the same, we can build a good life. If we feel we must convince our loved ones or others to see things from our point of view that may never happen.

Somewhere between our points of view is the common ground where we both want the best for everyone, where we can find peace and a resolution to a problem that works for everyone. We need to find and cling to common ground.

Politics and religion have long been polarizing topics and since we will not convince the other person they are wrong, and they won’t convince us we are wrong, it is best to agree to disagree, find common ground, and leave these polarizing subjects to talk about with other people whose views are not so entrenched.

We meet on the common ground of an uncommon age and share out our gifts of dark and light, good and bad, simple joy and not so simple sorrow. Ray Bradbury

Is it possible to have polarizing beliefs and still find common ground to build a good life together, building communities, and countries? As we bring people together, we also bring diverse views on how life should be lived, the laws we should live under, and how countries should be shaped. But, there is a point where ideas overlap, and this is our common ground. We often focus on where we disagree not on where we agree, but if we want to bring harmony into our lives we need to focus on the common ground we share.

This sounds like good advice, but it is easy to get drawn into conversations where we don’t stick to common ground. I am guilty of this often, sometimes I bite my tongue so hard I’m afraid I might bite it off, and sometimes I forget to bite it and launch into a tirade.

Life is likely to get a lot more interesting over the next few months as politics in the U.S. sorts itself out and a new President is chosen. My job is not to let the divide in America become a divide in my home. We agree to disagree is my motto and remembering that motto in discussions is the challenge, as we discuss the hot topics of the day.

Can we agree to disagree, and find the common ground to build better relationships, communities, and countries?

The focus of our attention should be on finding common ground. Jana Echevarria

Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves. Virginia Woolf

No one is exempt from the call to find common ground. Barack Obama

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

Posted on by BWThomas

We choose our response to what happens, and in that response lies our growth and freedom.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them. Gene Roddenberry

What does one write about after an event like the attempted assassination of Donald Trump? How should we react? Do we amplify, de-amplify, or have no reaction at all? Victor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space in that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

How can we use situations to make better choices and become better people? This is what life is about, did we hug loved ones a little tighter, and give thanks that the world we know wasn’t thrown into chaos?

For most of us life today is pretty much what it has been every day. We will probably never fully understand why a young man wanted to tear down and destabilize his country, instead of working to build it up.

I listened to Jordan Peterson speaking about building a life of significance which is hard, and why some people try to become significant by tearing things down and destroying. “Ignore me now,” seems to be their cry.

Is this something new, or have we always had the dangerous disillusioned who want to blow things up, and create as much mayhem as they can? How do we help the dangerous and disillusioned use their energy for good? How do we help them direct it toward a worthy cause? Is there someone out there who knew this young man saying to themselves, “I should have reached out as a friend, mentor, teacher, or pastor, maybe contact with someone would have made a difference.”

If life is good for us, we are blessed, but not everyone is so blessed. If we have a family, friend, mentor, teacher, pastor, or other religious figure in our lives that encourages us maybe we should be looking around for those who need encouragement, friendship, and a meaningful path in life.

I never understood alienation. Alienation from what? You have to want to be part of something in order to feel alienated from it. Boyd Rice

What if alienation is the root of the problem and we need to find a way to help people feel less alienated, to help them find a way to use their gifts for good? I’ve never liked the idea it takes a village to raise a child, or that we are our brother’s keeper, because it’s always seemed like it takes personal responsibility from people. But, we’ve heard stories where someone turns their life around because of someone’s influence. When someone turns their life around we don’t know where the direction they were going was taking them. If they become a solid citizen we treat them like they’ve always been on that path, and we look at those on the wrong path the same way.

If we could have helped someone and didn’t, befriended someone but wouldn’t, or encouraged someone, does that missed opportunity for helping someone cling to us and impact our lives?

It might be great to aspire to be a leader of leaders, but most of us will not be a leader of leaders, we are regular people who hopefully are making the best of the life we have. If we are an encouraging person, a friend, and a mentor, we don’t know who we may encourage, whose outlook we may help to brighten, or what small impact we may make in someone’s life. Can we reach out to someone with an encouraging word, and a smile, and bring people into the fold who feel like outsiders?

Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society. Martin Luther King Jr.

You can’t put abandonment and alienation under arrest. Carrie P. Meek

Young alienation, disappointment and heartache is all part of the first real growing up that we do. Judd Nelson

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

Posted on by BWThomas

Our choices change us, to make life better we have to make better choices.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Remember, the choices we make today shape the people we become tomorrow. Victoria Osteen

Are we lifelong learners, or did we quit learning anything new long ago? What counts as learning something new? Does doing something we’ve never done before count more than increasing our knowledge in areas in which we are already competent?

Do we not change things we’d like to change because we think it will make others uncomfortable? Do we worry if we change it will affect our relationships negatively?

Have we ever found ourselves doing something we thought would make the other person happy, and they were doing the same, but both would prefer something different?

This happens with my husband and I, we will be watching TV and he’s not watching something he wants to watch because he’s trying to watch something he thinks I will enjoy, but I’m not watching to watch, just being there spending time together.

He has started cycling and I’ve borrowed my sister-in-law’s bike so I can try it without a big commitment. I watched something on YouTube with my husband telling us there is no need to spend more than $6,000.00 for a good bike.

$6000.00 for a reasonable bike, I was thinking of picking one up at Canadian Tire. Am I out of touch, or is the YouTuber speaking to such a specific group that I have no business watching him?

I was reading a book talking about how too much research and wanting to buy only the best of the best can lead to less satisfaction. The author divided people into two groups, the maximizes who want the best of the best and are rarely satisfied, because there is always something better to find, and the satisficers who are content with good enough.

There is a choice you have to make in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end, the choice you make, makes you. John C. Maxwell

When we are only going to buy once it is easy to think we want the best we can get. I’m reminded of a speaker I heard who said she had a choice of two houses, one she liked because it was pretty, and one she was told would be the best investment. She went with the best investment, then house prices declined, and she always regretted that she didn’t at least get to live in the pretty house.

Life is about choices, and we make them every day about how to spend our time and money. We might look at our lives and think we can’t make changes we want to make, but who is stopping us from taking up a new hobby, learning a new skill, or making some other change we’d like to see in our lives?

We are our control board, the decisions we make will determine our lives. There is a good deal of luck in life, and we aren’t in control of whether the book we write is found by someone who will publish it and make us famous, but we are in control if we write it.

Decisions we make daily can make our lives better or worse. Do we make bad things worse, bad things better, good things worse, or good things, better? If we make things worse we might end up bitter and wonder how so much bad happened to us.

Do we have a choice to make, can we make the best choice with the information we have, and then move on to our next choice?

No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse. At the same time, it is often within your power to make them better. Randy Pausch

Take responsibility for your last bad decision, and then let it go. Don’t blame others or make excuses for yourself. Deepak Chopra

Exploring how you could make a hard situation worse can sometimes tell you what not to do. Harvey Mackay

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 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

Can we all make a difference, are we doing the best we can with the resources we have?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how our life’s story will develop. Dieter f. Uchtdorf

Yesterday we went to the baptism of our daughter-in-law’s sister’s baby. She was not impressed with the event but we were thrilled to meet this little person. Last Thursday our grandson turned two. It is wonderful to be surrounded by babies. I won’t amass the number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren my mother did but if I can create happy memories for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren and leave them with a belief that the future can be as good for them as it has been for us, that is my wish.

On our way home our trusty truck sprung a leak in a hose and steam was spewing everywhere. A young man came up to the truck to tell us we had a problem. Sometimes I have to pinch myself because even this problem happening on our way home from the event happened at a better time than it could have. It could have happened on our way to the event and ruined our day, or happened when we had our grandson in the truck.

As our son and daughter-in-law drove me home, and my husband went with the tow-truck driver my son said, “I am thankful every day for the life I have.” He told me he gave a lift to a homeless man on Saturday and heard his tale of woe, and from the sounds of it, when things could get worse, they got worse, and people our tax dollars pay to help, aren’t doing a very good job. Some of the people down on their luck and homeless would accept help, but it seems real help is not easy for them to get.

Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Unknown

I’m not in the trenches, I don’t deal with the homeless, but I’ve heard stories, maybe we are trying to help the ones that don’t want to be helped, while the ones we could help to get back on their feet we let slip through the cracks until they too are beyond the little bit of help that would have been needed to tip them back into a life that would give them pride of independence.

We say we give people help, but when we speak to the people who are supposed to be receiving that help, we find they have to fight against a system that appears to kick them when they are down, withhold payments they are entitled to until we take all dignity away from them, and then we wonder why they become bitter and defeated. Is there a communication problem between those helping and those needing the help?

This is a tale told to me by my son, of a homeless man asking him if he thought he could get a job in the industry my son is in. He would need some training but it is an industry looking for workers and skilled work with a future. If he gets a hand up will he take it? How many people we see are looking for a hand-up, not a handout? How could we use the money we spend on the homeless to make a real difference? Are we making a real difference now but not hearing the success stories?

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate. To have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. Helen Keller

Be someone’s strength. Be someone’s inspiration. Be someone’s reason to never give up. Unknown

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

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

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

Posted on by BWThomas

Write your goals down and be willing to work hard to achieve them.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life without endeavor is like entering a jewel mine and coming out with empty hands. Japanese proverb

We’ve set our goals and we are so excited we over-share them with people. One of the things that happens is if we talk about what we want to do we feel as good as if we already accomplished it. Haven’t we all met people who talked so much about what they would do that they never got around to doing it?

It might be easier than we think to become those people. Another thing is we might give someone an idea who is looking for a project and they accomplish our project before we do. We might get very upset with them but we gave our idea away and someone else ran with it and maybe they did such a good job we no longer want to continue with ours.

I’ve found talking about what I am writing diminishes my writing. It makes it harder to write like the force moving me along died down. We have to not sabotage ourselves on the way to accomplishing what we set out to do. It is easy to get sidetracked, to put things off we know we should do, and to lose enthusiasm for what we’ve set out to do.

Sometimes we set goals for ourselves with too tight of a timeframe but if we give ourselves enough time we can make our goals come true. We might need to break our goals into smaller goals and as we accomplish the smaller goals we are on the way to accomplishing the big goal.

We also might need to focus on one goal instead of thinking we can accomplish everything on our list.  What if every year we chose one main goal in each area of our lives to focus on?  We might even have to look at the goals in the different areas of our lives and pick the one that would make the biggest difference if we achieved it.

What comes easy won’t last. What lasts won’t come easy. Unknown

Brian Tracy tells us the biggest thing we can do is write our goals down with a date to achieve them. We can always revise the date, but at least we have something to aim at, and being aimless is one of the reasons we don’t accomplish our goals. We keep them too amorphous, like wanting to travel somewhere, we won’t get where we want to go until we have an actual destination. If we don’t know the where, when, why, and how, we might have a wish but isn’t it a stretch to call it a goal?

Last night my husband was listening to David Goggins talking about his journey. I didn’t stay up to listen to him, but I heard him say he doesn’t pity anyone because if he can accomplish things anyone can. For him accomplishing anything has been hard, but he embraces the hard, and for most of us, if we want to accomplish something we will have to embrace the hard. There are hard parts to raising a family, working at a job, running a business, staying healthy and fit, keeping our relationships strong, and learning new things.

If we are only working toward our goals until it becomes hard we aren’t likely to accomplish all we are capable of. Getting past the hard parts of life is part of living the good life.

Without labor nothing prospers. Sophocles

The world belongs to the energetic. Emerson

Without hustle, talent will only carry you so far. Gary Vaynerchuk

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 everyone who leaves 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.

Posted on by BWThomas

Choosing what’s important. How we spend our days, is how we spend our lives.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

In every single thing you do, you are choosing a direction. Your life is a product of choices. Dr. Kathleen Hall

Would the girl or boy we were, be happy with the man or woman we’ve become? Wherever we are in life, what would we still like to do, what adventures would we still like to have, and what is still possible?

I see through Facebook that lots of people are having adventures, traveling the world, and living life to the fullest. Average people can do things that were beyond all but the rich in days gone by. We live our lives in peace and plenty; we have technology that makes it easy to share our adventures.

Telling our stories has never been easier and we are interested in different stories at different times in our lives. My daughter is watching women on YouTube sharing their stories of motherhood, potty training, and homemaking. My husband and I are watching RV’ers document their travels and lessons learned along the way. Do we want to find fitness experts, financial gurus, artists, and many others who will inspire us with what they are doing, and help us make decisions about what we want out of life?

We’ve always had choices but sometimes we thought there was something special about the people doing some of the things we’ve always wanted to do. What’s special about them is they are doers, and we are doers, we just have to decide what we want to do and then do it. Nothing happens until we change something we do every day.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Victor E. Frankl

For years I wanted to write, I’ve always wanted to write, I even wrote it down in my journal when I was fifteen. Why did it take me this long to become a writer? Because, it wasn’t until October 9, 2000, that I started writing as a daily practice and kept it up. I documented how many words I wrote in the beginning, this helped me create a writing habit, and I still document how much I write each day. It’s a way to keep myself accountable but also I know when I wrote or edited that part of a novel.

We can’t do everything, we have to pick and choose how to spend our time and prioritize what is important by what we spend our time on. Writing in the morning works because often no one else is up, so it isn’t taking time away from anyone. We don’t want to be so efficient and productive that we don’t have time for those we love.

Success that comes at the expense of those we love will be empty. That said, if we spend all our time with those we love we might never get done what needs to be done and that won’t work well either. Balance is needed and it isn’t as easy as it seems to find balance in our lives fitting everything we want to fit in. It always seems something has to give; one of the balls we are trying to juggle must be put down to make way for something else.

Family is always the ball we must not put down, drop, or ignore. It is what gives our lives meaning, and purpose, and is the legacy we leave behind. When we are ninety-eight if we are lucky to live that long, family will be what is still left of all we have accomplished. If we have a grandson or granddaughter, or great-grandson or great-granddaughter that will visit us, kiss us on our cheek, tell us about their adventures, and how we helped them along the way, isn’t that what we want, what will make it all worthwhile, and give us peace? If a niece will come and spend time with us because we made time for them and they are making time for us.

If someone pops in with flowers because they are passing through, won’t that make our day? We all have choices until we don’t, are we making them count?

When people are not accepting toward themselves they are often obsessed with acceptance by others. Nathaniel Branden

Nonacceptance is always suffering, no matter what you are not accepting. Acceptance is always freedom, no matter what you are accepting. Cheri Huber

Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world, and perhaps even guiding them a little, is I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all. Franz Kafka

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

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

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

Posted on by BWThomas

Taking charge of our money is taking charge of our life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Savings, remember, is the prerequisite of investment. Campbell R. Mcconnell

Are we scared to think about retirement even if it looms large? Do we calculate how much money we need to retire comfortably and know if we don’t sell our home, and even if we do, we might not have that astronomical number? Yet people retire every year, and most seem to manage. What is the secret the financial gurus who are scaring us aren’t telling us? Could it be that we don’t need an astronomical sum to retire and be okay?

Do-it-yourself investors – those who bought stock in quality companies, many of them paying dividends, and held the stock over long periods are the investors that have done well. We have many blogs and books telling us about dividend investing and how we can create a growing income, and we don’t need a million dollars according to Henry Mah author of Your TFSA Compounder, Income Investing Explained, Your Ever Growing Income, and Salary for Life.

We owe it to ourselves to take control of our financial life, and not be embarrassed that we weren’t able to amass the astronomical amount of money the financial industry tells us we need if we don’t want to eat dog food in our old age. One of the problems we have in my opinion is we don’t talk about money enough, and by not talking about it we don’t learn what there is to learn. Many people would rather talk about their sex life than their financial life if given a choice.

If we never save money or invest we will always be poor. No matter how much we earn. Unknown

In Canada, we have the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) available to us since 2009 which allows us to contribute a total of $88,000 if we were born before 1991. According to Henry Mah and others, using the TFSA over RRSPs will give us more money and if we have a choice of contributing to our TFSA or an RRSP we should choose the TFSA first in most cases.

Of course, not everyone agrees on this, but I trust someone that wants to help me manage and grow my money more than someone that wants fees to manage my money when it seems the most effective way to grow your money is without paying fees or taxes.

The more control we take in our life the better, whether it is our health, finances, or attitude. For the most part, we have to be our own control board. Who else can make us do what we need to do? Finding books, blogs, and podcasts that enlighten us might change the course of our lives. I think those who read Henry Mah’s books will find themselves offered possibilities they didn’t feel were open to them because they didn’t have millions saved for retirement.

None of this knowledge is hidden and yet so many of us don’t know it. We know we should live within our means and invest, and I think what causes a lot of us problems, is we think the little we could save and invest won’t make a difference, so why not spend what we have on little enjoyments?

Small amounts invested grow over time and the earlier we start the less we need to save because the power of compounding works for us. Those who turn eighteen now have the opportunity to invest in the TFSA their whole working lives. The rest of us could only invest in it since 2009 but the contribution limit we haven’t used accumulates, and we can take money out and replace it at a later date.

Knowledge is power. Information on many subjects is available to us, and the more we apply it to our lives the better our lives will be. Have we learned everything we should about creating a good retirement, or is there more to learn?

Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving. Warren Buffet

Financial peace isn’t the acquisition of stuff. It’s learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can’t win until you do this. Dave Ramsey

Earn as much as you can. Save as much as you can. Invest as much as you can. Give as much as you can. Rev John Wellesley

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 purchase price through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Becoming better, not bitter, is this one of the greatest challenges in life?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Arguing isn’t communication, it’s noise. Tony Gaskin

We hear life is what we make it, but we think everything about our life can’t be what we make it, can it? I’m listening to a YouTube personality say something like, “My wife and I are getting a divorce and it’s my fault because I chose wrong.” He is being ridiculed for this but when we find we aren’t who we thought we were or someone else isn’t, shouldn’t we take full responsibility for thinking someone was something they weren’t even if that someone is us?

Would it sound better if he said, “I find to my regret I couldn’t be or at least wasn’t the person my wife needed me to be, to continue our relationship?”

How do we go through life getting better, not bitter? Is getting through the ups and downs of life without getting bitter one of our greatest challenges and if we can pull it off, one of our greatest achievements?

Online I read there are six words Brene Brown tells us we can use to stop an argument. What can they be I ask myself as I read on. “The story I’m making up is.” If I say those six words to my husband during our next argument I can see how they might stop the argument because what do you say to that? Perhaps I was expecting something profound like the gotcha statement I’m looking for that means, “Bet you can’t top this,” which is why we are quarreling in the first place. Each of us tries to prove to the other we are right, which of course makes the other person wrong, which doesn’t improve relationships.

She also tells us to delve a little deeper. What are the facts, and what are my assumptions? What do I need to know about the others involved? What am I really feeling? What part did I play?

Say what you mean, but don’t say it mean. Audrey Wachter

Do we really want to live with someone we’ve proved wrong? That doesn’t sound like fun, nor do endless arguments that can’t be won. Is there an answer to whether it is better to be a conservative or a liberal, a Christian, an atheist, or some other religion? Who has life harder, men or women? Who is treated most unfairly in life – pick your group, but will we agree on the answer?

We see life from our point of view, and how can we see it from anyone else’s point of view? Reading stories may immerse us in the lives of people and help us see things from their point of view or the author’s point of view. We listen to the news and different platforms slant the same story differently because they look at things through different lenses.

Sometimes in situations that don’t involve us, we pick a side and we see things from one side more than the other, and if our partner picks a different side an argument can ensue.

Is it possible to not take a side? A pox on both their houses and no one is right. Brene Brown tells us,” “We just have to be brave enough to reckon with our deepest emotions.” We have to let others reckon with theirs, without making them wrong for not thinking what we think, wanting what we want, or seeing things how we see them. But, it is so obvious that we are right we can’t even fathom how they can’t see it, and therein lies the rub.

When we can’t see how we could possibly be wrong we don’t leave space for anyone else to be right. Can we somehow find a way to give others the space to think what they think, be who they are, and realize they want things to be better too, even if their better isn’t what we think is better?

Be calm in arguing for fierceness makes error a fault and truth discourtesy. George Herbert

Raise your words, not your voice. It is the rain that grows flowers, not thunder. Rumi

Let the angry word be answered with a kiss. Thomas Hill

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

Friends are jewels in the crown of life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything. Muhammad Ali

Dinner out with friends the other night was a lot of fun. We need to keep our friendships even when we are almost too busy for friends. Friends are good for our health; they prevent isolation and loneliness and increase our self-confidence and self-worth. They help us through times of trauma.

We can’t choose our family, but we can choose our friends. We might meet friends at classes we take, or groups we belong to. We might remain close with childhood friends or people we’ve worked with. If we can make new friends throughout our lives we will enjoy a better life.

People come and go in our lives and we have to be okay with that. We may see people a couple of times a year or even less, but these interactions even if infrequent are making deposits into our emotional bank account. When we are kind and grateful we make deposits into our emotional bank account. If we are critical and negative we are making withdrawals. Too many withdrawals without many deposits can leave us emotionally overdrawn and may leave us eventually emotionally bankrupt.

To have a good friend we must be good friends. We need to be good listeners and we need to accept people how they are, and where they are, even if we are encouraging them in the changes they want to make in their lives. We have different levels of closeness with friends than acquaintances, but acquaintances can become close friends. Being a part of friendly inclusive groups adds to our well-being even if we don’t see the members outside of the group.

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. Elisabeth Foley

We can make new friends and reconnect with old friends throughout our lives. It does take effort to maintain and build friendships, but the more comfortable we get meeting new people the easier it becomes. One of the places I meet new people is through Toastmasters. The gym is also a place to meet people but only if I take the classes. Lifting weights and using the cardio machines doesn’t lead to any interactions, but the classes lead to chats at the beginning and end of classes, and meeting every week can lead to friendships.

When we join a faith community we can make friends or we can interact with very few people depending on whether we get involved in special activities and events. If we keep to ourselves people will leave us alone, but if we seem friendly they will reciprocate. We have to be approachable and we need to approach others to build friendships.

Even if we have a wide circle of friends we have different degrees of friendship with each of them. As we go through life our circumstances change and so will some of our friendships. Some friendships are short and some might last a lifetime but all are important and bring something special to our lives.

Are we treasuring our friendships, nurturing, maintaining them, and building new friendships as we go through life?

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation. Oscar Wilde

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend time with them, and it will change your life. Amy Poehler

True friends aren’t the ones who make your problems disappear. They are the ones who won’t disappear when you’re facing problems. Unknown

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.

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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

We shape our lives by the thoughts we think and the actions we take. If life isn’t progressing in the direction we want something needs to change.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted fifty years of his life. Muhammad Ali

I’ve been thinking about culture lately, we may think we aren’t affected by what others think but I think we are affected in ways we don’t readily recognize. We create a culture in our own family and we are around other people who influence us in different ways. There are cultures of excellence and there are cultures that don’t work as well to help people learn how to develop happy productive lives.

I love books and I think I have bought books at times in my life when instead of taking action I bought a book. This is why I have amassed such a collection of books on writing, art, and self-help. It was as if I thought by buying the books I would automatically move forward in my pursuit of being a better writer, artist, and person without actually doing the work. Instead of taking the afternoon to write or create art I would go to the bookstore and buy a book. These books have helped me in innumerable ways but they were also a way of putting off doing the practice of writing and art.

We become what we habitually do. We get better at what we practice, and the ideas we read about and listen to will form our worldview. We may wonder where some of the hopeless views are coming from but as Jordan Peterson says, the wonder isn’t why so many people are negative, or that not all societies work well, the wonder is that we aren’t all negative and living in societies that don’t work well.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. Theodore Roosevelt

What can we do to make our culture, and I mean the very smallest culture, our own daily practices better? We may wait our whole lives for other people to change, but we can make changes in how we act, how we treat others, what we hope for, work toward, and how we encourage others. We can be grateful for the beauty and bounty in our lives.

Individuals can choose to look on the bright side and even those who consider themselves perennial optimists may have trouble seeing the positive some days. I’ll say something to my husband and he’ll say, “You think you’re a positive person?” That is a question I’m not sure about. I want to be positive, I believe our attitude shapes our life and a better attitude leads to a better life.

A better attitude is, thinking the best about others and believing we can deal with and in many cases can overcome the obstacles we have to face in life. History is filled with challenges that have been faced and overcome. We have overcome things that generations before they were overcome, didn’t think it was possible to overcome. Things like slavery, disease, and abject poverty.

We have challenges to overcome in our time that may seem hopeless but won’t a good attitude, ingenuity, and the belief tomorrow can be better take us further than believing nothing can be done?

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it. David Starr Jordan

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires. Marcus Aurelius

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. Thomas Jefferson

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.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books. A special thanks 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.