Posted on by BWThomas

Is there room for improvement in our lives?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in. Bill Bradley

Is it time to make resolutions, plans, and promises to ourselves? Do we do this on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedule? The more often we set goals the more effective we are likely to be. We need big goals, small goals, long-term goals, and short-term goals, aspirational goals, mundane goals, and once-in-a-lifetime goals.

Do we want too much out of life or want too little? Do we expect to accomplish more than is possible or less than is expected? How do we balance our resources, time, and energy, our expectations of ourselves, and the expectations others have of us? If we gave ourselves a report card for how we are doing would we be an A, B, C, D, E, or F student of life? How would we be doing if we let someone else write up our report card?

Are we where we want to be for our stage in life? Is this comparing ourselves to others or what we wanted out of life? If we need to change one thing to make life better what is that one thing? Is it more time for ourselves, managing or making more money, planning the trips we’ve always wanted to take, health and fitness, or making time to be creative?

If we have one thing in our life we focus on that would make our life better it will of course be the hardest thing, isn’t that the way it always is? If health and fitness are what we believe focusing on would pay us the greatest dividends we will find a host of reasons why we can’t fit a walk into our daily schedule, changing our diet is not workable, and eating home-cooked food is too hard. If finances are our biggest challenge we won’t see how to cut our spending or increase our earnings.

Small changes lead to big changes, what is a small change we could make in the area that most needs a makeover? As we get close to the New Year is it time to think of changes we want to make, is it something we want to add, or something we want to take away?

It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently. Tony Robbins

In Hal Elrod’s book The Miracle Equation, he tells us unwavering faith and extraordinary effort equal miracles. What do we need to have faith in we can change, and put extraordinary effort into changing? Is there something in our life we’ve never quite mastered that with faith and extraordinary effort, could make changes we’ve always wanted to make?

What if we pick one thing to focus on in the coming year? Every day, every week, and every month our goal is to believe we can change it and put extraordinary effort into making this happen. Where will we be in a year if we do it, in five years, and ten years?

When we get one thing moving in the right direction we can focus our unwavering faith and extraordinary effort on something else. What if changing one thing impacts other areas of our lives positively? What if we could overcome whatever we never quite feel we have control of?

Hal Elrod gives us a formula to make a deal with ourselves. I am committed to maintaining Unwavering Faith that I will _____________________________ insert your mission, and I will continue putting forth Extraordinary Effort until I do. No matter what there is no other option.

He advises us to review our commitment every day, figure out what our extraordinary effort will be, and hold ourselves accountable. It is daily actions over time, that lead to big results. What if, dependability, consistency, and being able to improve, are more important than talent?

Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time. John C. Maxwell

The key to success is consistency. And right now, the only way for you to actually take action is to believe in yourself. Zak Frazer

Daily, consistent, focused, faithful expectation raises the miracle power of achieving your dreams. John Di Lemme

Thank you for reading this post. Please return and read 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 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

Journaling is a practice we can use to live our best life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Your journal is like your best friend. You don’t have to pretend with it, you can be honest and write exactly how you feel. Bukola Ogunwale

Unwavering faith and extraordinary effort lead to great things in our lives. One of the worst things we do is give up before we reach the end of the time we’ve set to achieve our goal. Often the last days, weeks, or months make a big difference, but it can be tempting to quit before we reach our goal, when it seems far away.

What if failure happens when we give up too soon? We don’t set enough goals, or we don’t have faith in ourselves to go after what we want. Journaling is a practice that can help us sort out what we want, and if we read what we’ve written over the years we will realize many of our fears never came to pass, and by putting them on the page we freed our mind to concentrate on other things.

Journaling is a process we can use to manage anxiety, and healthily express our feelings, and it can help us identify what makes us anxious. It might help us become aware of unhealthy thought patterns and challenge ourselves to change them. When I think this, I should think this instead. When I’m feeling this way I should go for a walk.

In our journal we can question our thoughts, try on ideas, and investigate what interests us, we can figure out who we are and who we would like to become.

I’ve come across ideas on the negative effects of journaling, and as someone who has kept a journal for almost fifty years, I question what could be negative about it. If we read our journals we might think we were more negative than we are, because we tend to dump our negative feelings onto the page. This frees our mind for the positive things. Our journal is not a repository for everything going on in our lives – at least mine isn’t.

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Joan Didion

A journal is not another thing to tick off on my to-do list. It is not an onerous practice. It is something I get to do, not something I have to do. If you watch videos or read articles on journaling you will find each person that journals has a different way of doing it. Each one of us must create a practice that works for us, and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for not writing in it as often as we think we should, or not creating a pretty journal.

One of the reasons for putting illustrations in our journal is sometimes we can’t express in words what is going on in our lives, or we don’t want what we are thinking to be found by someone and used against us. We can use Neurographic art which is dumping what is in our mind onto the page as a scribble and then embellishing it and turning it into a work of art by darkening lines, creating and adding shapes, and adding color, or leaving it black and white.

We can create patterns using straight lines, C-shapes, S-shapes, circles, and dots. We can create unlimited patterns, and there are set patterns called Zen tangles which are copy-written patterns. Anyone can use the patterns but only certified teachers can teach them, and the same goes for Neurographic art, but the concepts behind both are simple. I question copywriting patterns as if someone can own the creative process.

Journaling is a practice that can help us create a life we love, become the person we would like to be, and track our growth and goals. One practice I’m adopting from another journal keeper is writing quotes and great ideas inside the front cover, and writing my goals inside the back cover – two spaces I’ve left mostly blank over all these years.

If you want to start a journal let it develop as a practice that fits into your life. If you miss days, weeks, or months of entries, pick it up and write when you are in the mood. I’ve missed days, weeks, and months, but never years.

Your journal will stand as a chronicle of your growth, your hopes, your fears, your dreams, your ambitions, your sorrows, your serendipities. Kathleen Adams

A journal can offer you a place to be someone, anyone, who you want to be. Brian Ledger

Journal what you love, what you hate, what’s in your head, what’s important. Journaling organizes your thoughts; allows you to see things in a concrete way that otherwise you might not see. Kay WalkingStick

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 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

Journaling is whispering to ourselves and turning that whisper into reality.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

You don’t have, because you don’t ask. Jordan Peterson

On Tuesday, my daughter asked, “Mom, what is your speech about?”

I said, “Creating an Illustrated Journal.”

“That sounds really boring,” she said. I think some people don’t have better lives because they think the things that will give them a better life are boring. She didn’t mean it maliciously, only trying to help me have an engaging speech. She hasn’t heard the speech, which is twenty minutes long, and tonight, I will find out if my audience thinks it is boring.

As my Distinguished Toastmasters project, I had planned a Story Time event for August 28th – the focus of a DTM project is to create a project or event that will help a community group. The community group for Story Time was going to be a local Children’s Aid Society; the event was scheduled for August 28th but was cancelled in July, because of scheduling conflicts.

About the time Story Time was cancelled I was contacted by another community group I’d put a proposal in to teach a workshop on Creating an Illustrated Journal. The workshop is scheduled for September 15th, and I will present the same workshop to my writer’s group on September 9th.

I would never have thought of creating a workshop on Illustrating Journaling if the head of the Mississauga Writers Group hadn’t asked me to come with her to a community group helping people with brain injuries and to present a proposal for a workshop.

I thought, “What do I have to offer as a workshop to anyone, let alone people with brain injuries? But, I thought of a conversation I’d had with someone recovering from a mild stroke. “They tell us to relearn, what we already know, it is not a time to learn new things.”

What do we already know? We know how to write, and we know how to make marks on paper. This speech I am giving tonight is to be a professional 20-22 minute speech. The speech will be a shorter version of the workshop I will deliver in September, and each presentation will be geared to a different audience.

Journaling is paying attention to the inside for the purpose of living well from the inside out. Lee Wise

I believe keeping a journal which I have done since I was fifteen is one of the best things I’ve done in my life. I have shelves full of journals I’ve written over the years, sketchbooks I’ve kept over the years, and some that cross over into Illustrated Journals.

We can’t always articulate our thoughts into words, which is why an illustrated journal is superior to only a written one. A picture can tell a thousand words, an eloquent scribble might be as cathartic as pages and pages of writing. I believe if there is anything I can encourage people to do that will improve their lives, keeping a journal is one of the biggest.

In a journal we explore our dreams, some we will articulate, some we won’t, and some we will never breathe to another person. In my journal entry on Sunday, February 2, 1975. I wrote about wanting to be an artist and a writer but I wanted a career as a backup in case I failed in my other two endeavors. I found that entry a few years ago when I was writing a speech and reading some of the things I’d written.

A mindful, meditative practice will help us improve our lives, a written journal and especially an illustrated journal can be that practice. Keeping a journal is a profoundly powerful practice we can have in our lives. I think I started keeping a journal because my grandmother, I never had the privilege of knowing, kept one. All but one of her journals was ruined by squirrels, she documented her days, and the little things are our life. In the end, they are the important things. We think the big things are more important than the little things, but the little things add up to be the big things.

Jordan Peterson tells us if we can get the small things in order, we can improve our lives incrementally. Let’s say we get meal times in order – that will look after our health. If we get an exercise routine in order – that looks after our fitness. If we can get our relationships in order – make time for our spouse – time for our children, time for friends, and time for ourselves. That would look after a big part of our life. Documenting this in a journal can help us tweak areas of our lives until we have the life we want.

If we articulate what we want we will be on our way to making it happen. We want to travel, when, where, for how long, and how much will it cost? Then we can start planning, maybe a big trip is too expensive, maybe we can go on a smaller trip and plan for the big trip. When we journal we whisper to ourselves and hear those whispers. Living is turning those whispers into dreams and goals.

Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context. Stephen Covey

Whether you’re keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it’s the same thing. What’s important is you’re having a relationship with your mind. Natalie Goldberg

Keeping a journal of what’s going on in your life is a good way to help you distill what’s important and what’s not.

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

Words have power, how we use them is a big responsibility.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Our words have creative power. With our words, we can speak blessings over our future or we can speak negative things over our future. Joel Osteen

Does our tongue get us into trouble, not just with other people but with ourselves as well? Do we tell ourselves we’ll never be able to accomplish this, overcome that, or rise above circumstances beyond our control?

We might not be able to stop the thoughts that come into our mind but what if verbalizing them is the problem? What if they are without form and substance until we speak them? What would our speech look like if we only talked about the things we want to come to pass? If we get what we focus on and what we focus on is what we speak about, then maybe talking about being fit instead of fat might make a difference.

We know encouraging words work better than discouraging words with our children. In Toastmasters we give twice as much positive feedback as negative, it is not good to only tell people how great they are, we also want to give them feedback to help them improve so they can develop into better speakers.

We may have to work on how to encourage people to better themselves. If we are willing to work on it for others, are we also willing to work on it for ourselves? If we give life to things by speaking them, we must be careful about what we say. Joel Osteen tells us in, “The Power of I Am” we must not just think good thoughts, but we must declare them. If we think we are strong and healthy it is one thing, but to say it gives it power.

Don’t ever diminish the power of words. Words move hearts and hearts move limbs. Unknown

We don’t have to declare things to others, but it sounds like we must be willing to speak about what we want, and what we expect. It might make a big difference in our lives if we are saying, “Now that I’m getting older, aches and pains are coming.” Not every older person gets aches and pains. What if when we get one we can think this isn’t right, what is causing it, and work to eliminate the cause instead of saying oh well what can I expect at sixty-five, seventy, or eighty-five?

I think one of the secrets to Mom’s health is she hasn’t talked much about aches and pains, and when she’s had them she’s worked to eliminate the cause, not accepted it as something that comes with age. We will die, but what if we can die young at a ripe old age? What if youthful thinking and acting are more important than a number, and our thinking, speaking, and actions can make it so?

What if we are all more powerful than we think we are? Like everything, there is a downside to this. We might in our hubris think of someone unfortunate in whatever circumstances, that if they thought better thoughts, and said better words it would be better for them. Perhaps this is where judge not, lest ye be judged comes into play.

We are often disappointed when we have expectations of others and even ourselves. If we hold ourselves to a standard we can’t meet we will deal with disappointment and if we hold others to standards they can’t meet they will disappoint us as well. We are our own control board we can watch the words we speak, but not the words others speak. We can control our own actions but not the actions of others.  

What if for today I only speak about what I want to happen in my life, the lives of others, and the world? What if thinking before I speak is one of the best changes I can make in my life?

Words can inspire and words can destroy. Choose yours well. Robin Sharma

Your words have the power to hurt, to heal, open minds, open hearts and change the world. Never forget the responsibility you have over the words you speak. Steven Aitchison

Words have a magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the greatest despair. Sigmund Freud

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back again 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. 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 live with the decisions we make. Not making a decision is still a decision, but we lose the power to change our lives.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever. Keri Russell

As I look at my five-month-old grandson I am looking at a unique human being. We are all unique; the only one of us there will ever be with our distinct characteristics, experiences, and gift to give to the world.

Is it true we each have a gift to give to the world or is this just something we’ve told ourselves? What if we act like it’s true? What if we try to be the best us we can be and do the most good, for the most people? What would our scorecard be so far, and what would we like it to be? Death is closer today than it was yesterday for all of us. In two hundred years no one will know who we were, but we are here, we can make our mark here, and if we have a family we have a legacy we will leave behind.

How do we want to be remembered by the generations that will remember us? Will my grandson remember the grandma that could get him to break out into a big smile? Maybe it is more important that I’ll be able to remember how he smiled and welcomed every experience with enthusiasm. I hope he never loses the joy even as he grows up and becomes a man. I hope I can still make him laugh when he’s twenty-five.

Maybe he’ll read one of my books and say, “Grandma you made me think, or maybe he’ll say, “Things must have been really different when you wrote that book.” I hope they aren’t too different, they’ll be different, but maybe they will be different in good ways. I’ve had opportunities my grandmother’s never had; they lived through tough times I’ve never seen. Their children lived through the prosperity they hoped for, and I hope my children and grandchildren continue to live in peace and plenty.

I am not a product of my circumstances, I am a product of my decisions. Stephen Covey

Do we owe a lot of what we have to the good governance which we have in Canada? We may not approve of all our government does, and the decisions that have to be made, but we aren’t embroiled in civil war, and we could be. We aren’t facing famine, and we could be. Our children get an education most of us couldn’t give them if we had to do it all on our own. We have access to health care that we pay for collectively when we need it.

We live in an unfair society but do we know how to create a fairer society? We are fortunate to live in one of the best countries in the world and I know some people rail against it and say it’s not that good, you are deluding yourself. But I think we live in Camelot, it isn’t perfect but in the future, we may look back and wish we could get back to what we didn’t think was good enough, or maybe we will look back and say things are still better for most people in Canada than many other parts of the world, and we are continuing to strive to make things better for even more.

Every country is a collection of the people in it; we get to elect our leaders. No matter who leads us we will not be happy with every decision they make. Sometimes leaders have to make hard decisions and good leaders make the decision they think is best to move the country forward. They may not always make the best decision but perhaps having someone who can make decisions is better than not having a direction at all. We are fortunate we don’t need a revolution to change things. Do we need to be careful about the changes we think will be good for ourselves, our country, and the world? Does trying to be too careful lead to indecision?

Unsuccessful people make decisions based on their current situations. Successful people make decisions based on where they want to be. Unknown

When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier. Roy E. Disney

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions. Jim Rohn

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 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

It’s easy to be a critic, but if we can be thinkers and doers we can have an impact in our sphere of influence.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

It’s easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk, and change. Wayne Dyer

It is so easy to be a critic and I find myself being critical of what is being done to correct problems even though I don’t have a clue how to solve the problem.

I was listening to Wayne Dyer on YouTube last night, he said he had eight theories about raising children but then he had eight children and no theories. Our theories may help us to go forward thinking we know what should be done, but we may find as we tackle whatever issues we have, environment, climate change, population growth, foreign relations, poverty, water scarcity, etc. that our theories fall by the wayside as we move toward one solution and then another. Why do some of us believe we can’t face the challenges ahead of us when we have faced challenges in the past?

Do we think we aren’t as strong as people in the past? Do we think we aren’t as smart as people in the past? Do we think we aren’t as committed as people in the past? Do we think enough people can’t see what is important as they did in the past? Do we think we are the only ones with the right answer? Do we not even agree on what the problems we need to address are?

I think virtue signaling makes us think we’ve done something when we haven’t done anything at all. Nodding our heads or liking something isn’t taking action. We have to take action to make things happen.

Be an encourager. The world has plenty of critics already. Dave Willis

My son talked me into taking action. I joined the Conservative party so I can be one of the people who decide on who our next Conservative leader will be. It’s better than shaking my fist, and railing against the decisions others make. I might join the Liberal party when it is time for them to choose their next leader as well. I don’t think it is a small thing to stand for election. Most are making a sacrifice to become our leaders; it is a thankless job because everyone thinks they know how to do it better than the leader. No matter what decisions are made, or directions are taken critics are telling them they are wrong.

Yesterday, I railed against the carbon credit system. I don’t think it is a good system. Some people will get rich selling carbon credits and I don’t think they will have done a thing for the environment, but the long view may be that these credits will be a catalyst for real change down the road. It’s so easy to be a critic but coming up with real solutions is not so easy.

If we have to let the critics criticize and the doers do, which one do we want to be? If we can be thinkers that do and doers that think we can better deal with the challenges ahead.

The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doers in one person. Steve Jobs

A leader is always first in line during times of criticism and last in line during times of recognition. Orrin Woodward

If you can’t tolerate critics, don’t do anything new or interesting. Jeff Bezos

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.

Posted on by BWThomas

Better decisions equal better outcomes. Wouldn’t it be great if we always knew what the better decision would be?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

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

Time spent in nature rejuvenates us. We were invited to the reception of a wedding that took place a year ago. They will be off on their honeymoon in Greece in about a week. With the happy couple will be her grandparents that haven’t been back to Greece in seventy years.

We all have had it hit over our head with the sledgehammer of a worldwide pandemic that life is uncertain and if there are things we want or need to do, to get to it.

We were invited up to a cottage on Saturday and followed the GPS which took us on a scenic tour, but we arrived at our destination. A cabin nestled in the woods with a huge granite rock at its doorstep, and a wide screened-in porch on the back facing the river allowed us to watch a parade of boats cross the river, all shapes and sizes all day long.

What a lovely spot to spend the day and we didn’t get one mosquito bite although they were some of the most giant mosquitoes we’ve ever seen. When we were outside we sat on a deck in the sun and bugs and mosquitoes didn’t bother us. We had a lovely day talking and laughing with friends and the GPS on the way home took us the short way to the highway.

Friends, food, and laughter in a beautiful setting, what a wonderful way to spend a day. When we don’t spend time in nature we don’t realize how much we miss it. Finding balance in our lives is not easy and it is easy to focus on what needs to be done so much that other facets of our lives are neglected. We may be going through stages of our life we don’t like. Not seeing eye-to-eye may seem like we live with contrarians.

The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights. Joe Andrew

We’ve never seen eye-to-eye on everything, that is why we have opinions, but it seems opinions have become more contentious, as the sides we take have become more us against them. Instead of realizing we don’t see eye-to-eye on a small part of a big subject, we are talking as if we don’t see eye-to-eye on anything.

It seems we used to be flexible about agreeing on the big picture but not on all the small details, now we are discussing small details like they are the big picture. Perhaps I am not correct, but it seems to me everything is causing us to become more polarized in our views, us against them is rearing its head more as we settle into armed camps of believing we don’t all want a good society even if we don’t all agree what makes a good society. We think our mistakes, missteps, and errors in thought are understandable, but we can’t understand others’ mistakes, missteps, and errors in thinking and judgment.

Where is the idea that other people mean well even if they are misguided? Why do we now have to believe in “Science” but only one kind of science, and not the other views that are questioning hypotheses and assumptions? We might find in one conversation we are on the right side, and with another group of friends or family, we are on the wrong side of their thinking.  

Maybe to get along we just nod and smile without interjecting our opinion. We are blessed to live in a country where we can have dissenting opinions and for the most part, we all get along finding common ground on what is most important.

I sometimes think we live in “Camelot” and hope we can continue to live in peace and prosperity. Even as I say it I know prosperity is not evenly distributed and we have issues with homelessness, and other social ills we don’t know how to deal with.

Life is not getting easier for most people, but looking backward we may think life was easier for people when it really wasn’t. We don’t know how hard it was keeping families together in the past? Relationships were still fraught with hurt feelings and misunderstandings. Keeping things together, putting a roof over a family’s head, and providing the necessities have always been a struggle for some and easier for others.

Our view of life is not the only view. We might think we should all be seeing life the same, but how can we when we have different circumstances, challenges, beliefs, and perspectives? We can’t walk in another person’s shoes so we will never see things exactly how they see things, and they will never see things exactly how we see things, and we need to be okay with that.

Do we want to control others when we can only control ourselves? If only they thought right or did things our way, life would be better for all of us. Making decisions and living with the consequences is how we all have to live. Better decisions equal better consequences, but we don’t always know which is which.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions. If we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals. Stephen Covey

Sometimes it’s the smallest decision that can change your life forever. Keri Russell

Consider every choice carefully, no matter how small, for it will affect the bigger decisions you make. Jim George

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 for reading my books. 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

Harness the compound effect in your life. It is working in your life but is it working for you or against you?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Smart, small choices + consistency + time = radical difference. Darren Hardy

In October of 2020, I wrote about the compound effect. The theme at Toastmasters was “Looking Forward” where do we see ourselves in five years. I said I wanted to be a grandma, have more novels published, and a line of children’s books written, illustrated, and published. I’m beginning to make audacious goals, for too many years I wasn’t willing to commit to any goals at all. Darren Hardy in the compound effect tells us decisions shape our destiny and the effect of our decisions compound.

We’ve all heard if we set a little money aside in our youth and watch it grow with compound interest it will outgrow our savings at an older age. Our habits compound, if we eat 100 calories more than we burn off every day it will compound into something we won’t be happy with. If we do a little exercise every day it will compound into something we are happy with.

We often think it is big things that shape our lives, the big decisions we have or haven’t made and they are important, but the little things we do daily are what we have real control over.

Taking control of our life, our finances, and our fitness may seem daunting. I was looking at mutual funds we started long ago. The good thing about them was we could put in a small amount of money every month. The bad thing is they charge a 2.69% fee to do it. A couple of years ago I took some money out of it and put it in a self-directed TFSA investment account and bought some good Canadian dividend stock. I am told that by reinvesting my dividends I can watch the magic of compound growth over the next few years. Marc Lichtenfeld author of “Get Rich With Dividends” tells us the secret is to hold the stock long enough to see the compound effect work instead of selling and buying something that looks more promising. Buying and selling cause many to lose money in the stock market. The buy-and-hold folks, holding good strong dividend companies are who make the money over time. They aren’t fancy stocks, they chug along, but it is the chugging along decade after decade that makes the money. Dividends, paid upon dividends, paid on the dividends-dividends add up.

It’s not the big things that add up in the end; it’s the hundreds of thousands or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary. Darren Hardy

Since going the Indie Author route I’m not waiting for a publisher to tell me if my work will be published, or if the sales weren’t good enough on my first book they wouldn’t publish the second one. I’m now working on my third novel and my second children’s book. I am producing the work, making it the best I can, and putting it out into the world. Where it goes once it is out in the world I don’t know, but I’ve done what I have control over by creating it.

Remember the experiment with a glass of water where we keep doubling the amount of water and the glass is only half full when the next time it doubles it is full to overflowing. This is one of the reasons we get disheartened when we watch the small imperceptible growth of one drop becoming two drops, and two drops becoming four until eventually, one half becomes full. Often we give up before we start seeing results thinking it will never become anything at this rate, but because we quit we don’t know what it could have become.

Too often we sabotage ourselves by not accomplishing what we want to. We talk ourselves out of doing it; we think we don’t risk failure if we don’t try. But we can’t risk success if we aren’t willing to risk failure. Those who do well in life often embraced good habits, and those good habits compounded over time, and by having the courage to risk failure, they achieve success.

We can rest assured the compound effect is working in our lives. Is it working in a way we are happy with?

The complete formula for getting lucky: Preparation (personal growth) + attitude (belief mindset) + opportunity (a good thing coming your way) + action (doing something about it) = luck. Darren Hardy

The real cost of a four-dollar-a-day coffee habit over 20 years is $51,833.79. That’s the power of the compound effect. Darren hardy

A daily routine built on good habits and discipline separates the most successful among us from everyone else. A routine is exceptionally powerful. Darren Hardy

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 sales through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Our choices define our lives. When we make better choices we live better lives. Choose wisely.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The choices we make dictate the life we lead. Unknown

How many times have we quit when we should have kept going, and kept going when we should have quit? I’d be surprised if we can’t all think of times we should have kept going and other times we kept trying to make something happen that was never going to happen. Knowing which situation we are in can be the difficult part.

My son-in-law tells me of someone he knows who got a friend a job. It sounds like a good job, he was sick for a few days and when the guy who got him the job called him he said he wasn’t going back to work. This sounds like a situation where perseverance was needed, maybe the job and he wasn’t well suited. What he probably should have done is keep the job until he found something else so he could do the other things young men his age should be doing, finding a partner, and building a future.

Sometimes we have things we prefer to do, but they don’t always pay the bills and help us build a life. Writing is one of those things. There are people who make a lot of money off of the books they write, but most authors do not. This doesn’t mean we should give up writing, it might mean we should keep our day job.

Writing feeds my soul but the fact it can be a pastime, interest, and hobby instead of giving me my daily bread is freeing. It’s a side hustle that I enjoy, my life is better for doing it, and my life is opening up in ways it wouldn’t without it.

My life would be so much poorer without writing and art. I am blessed to have time for these pursuits.

Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we’re proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: We are what we choose to be. Graham Brown

Some people can pursue artistic careers without a day job to pay the bills. Some may say the day job as insurance will keep you from reaching your full potential because you have a backup plan which means you aren’t all in. I do think I’ve found my niche, something that feeds my soul, something that is part of my life but not my whole life.

We all have to decide what “The Good Life” is to us. Last night sitting outside with my husband, daughter, son-in-law and new grandson it felt like we are living the good life. A long conversation with Mom and one of my sisters over the weekend, planting my garden, trying a new coffee my son-in-law found, and listening to my son’s seminar as I made breakfast, and coffee out with my husband. All of these add up to a wonderful weekend.

Is everything perfect? Define perfection. We can’t have everything; we often have to choose between two goods, and sometimes between the best of not-so-goods. Life is a choice and we come to forks in the road where we can only choose one path, the worst thing to do is not choose and stagnate where we are. We made those kinds of choices when we got married, had children, started a business, or changed jobs. Everything we do in life changes us and those we don’t do change us too. Life is about growth, change, and the decisions we make each day create our life. Those decisions might not seem big at the moment but over time going for a walk over not going for a walk, eating an apple instead of a chocolate bar, drinking water instead of soda, and not reacting to everything that irks us adds up.

It is unlikely we will be proud of every choice we make. Sometimes we can go back and make a different choice, sometimes we can’t. The more wisely we choose the better our tomorrow will be.

We are a product of the choices we make, not the circumstances we face. Roger Crawford

Life is all about making choices. Always do your best to make the right ones, and always do your best to learn from the wrong ones. Unknown

Every choice that we make creates consequences, consequences in the lives of others and we experience them in ourselves, those same consequences, every choice that we make.  And by the way the choices that you might think are the most important are not always the most important. Gary Zukav

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

Thank you to everyone that reads my books. A special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you purchase an item through the Amazon link I receive a small percentage through the Amazon Affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Moral high ground. Agreeing to disagree. Seeing hope despite the darkness.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

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

We don’t agree on many things. We don’t agree with co-workers, neighbors, experts, our government, our spouses, our kids on many levels and many subjects. We have to be okay with not agreeing because what is the alternative? Someone compelled to believe what we believe doesn’t work because compelling someone to act like we are right, doesn’t change the way they think, in fact, this probably leads to passive-aggressive behavior. When we can’t openly disagree we act out our disagreement in other ways.

There are times we should stand our ground and make our point. We also have to know when we’ve made our point. When there is nothing more to be gained except to ruin what we have, what we are standing up for.

Agreeing to disagree is the resolution of a conflict that requires all parties to tolerate the opposing positions, even when they do not accept it as the best choice. We can’t always get what we feel is the best choice because the other party does not feel it is the best choice. Expecting everyone to agree and go through life without disagreeing on what the correct response is; is not the correct response.

The problem appears to me to be how to stand down when we’ve taken a stand without ruining what we had before we took the stand. Often people don’t stand up for what they think is right because they fear the cost of standing up is too high. There is also a cost to not standing up, and there is a cost to not realizing when we’ve made our stand and it is time to stand down.

Maintaining high moral ground is a tough thing to fight. I’m reading that when 3.5% of the people get behind a non-violent movement change happens. One of the ways to destroy such a movement is for it to descend into violence, for people with nefarious purposes, and rabble-rousers to get involved that are looking for a fight.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Unknown

We know in our personal relationships that maintaining high moral ground puts us in the winning position, but when we allow our temper to get the best of us, often we lose any ground we’ve won.

It’s a good place to live, on moral high ground. It’s a good place to build our society, and raise our children. Moral high ground isn’t perfect; it isn’t about not making a mistake as a people, a family, or a government. It is doing the best we can, most of the time with what we had at the time. Looking back we may think if we knew then what we know now we’d have made a different decision. That is the human condition we didn’t know what the unexpected consequences of our actions would be.  

Building families, societies, and countries is a messy business. We make decisions with unintended consequences. There are winners and losers and everyone is not happy with outcomes. Everyone would not be happy if the outcome was different.

If we stand on moral high ground, everyone may not think we are right, but when we can look ourselves in the eye and think we’ve done the best with what we had and tried to do the most good for the most amount of people that’s a good way to live a life. Two sides don’t have to agree and they can both think they are standing on moral high ground.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. Winston Churchill

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. Desmond Tutu

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

Thank you to those who read my books. 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.