The fully matured man has no fear, no defense; he is psychologically completely open and vulnerable. Osho
Last night was the speech
contest at my Toastmasters club. We had a good turnout, five contestants, and a
test speaker for the evaluation contest. Six fabulous speeches to listen to.
The speeches that resonate
are the ones where people get real, vulnerable and tell truths about themselves
that are truths about the rest of us as well. People we think are the most
confident people we know have hidden fears they aren’t good enough. They fear
they haven’t been good enough people, parents, and partners.
We feel we don’t measure
up. But, what do we think we need to measure up too? We all have strengths,
weaknesses, failings, and successes. As one speaker said last night we need to
fight for the successes in our life, some of the other stuff comes and we just
live with it. But success, in life, love, relationships, career, and character
we have to work on.
Isn’t that part of what
makes life so great? We can choose areas we want to improve in and then we can
set out to improve our lives in little and big ways.
A man, who thirty years ago had a hard time introducing himself to someone because of his stutter, won the speech contest last night. He has to tell us he has a stutter because it isn’t evident. That didn’t just happen, he didn’t just outgrow it. He went to a five-day workshop which helped. and then twenty years ago he joined Toastmasters.
Developing ourselves and watching others develop is a great joy in life. It’s one of the reasons I prefer regular Toastmaster’s clubs to advanced clubs. I like seeing the growth that takes place at the beginning of someone’s Toastmaster journey.
Being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure. Bob Marley
For some people, an organization like Toastmasters is a hop on and away they go. For others it fills a greater need, for some, it is a way to tell their stories, and as they tell their stories, they find their voice, and themselves.
Some people find their voice through writing; some people find it through public speaking. Singing, art, and any form of self-expression feeds our soul. Do we suffer when we don’t express our truest selves?
Do we worry about being vulnerable like vulnerability is a weakness and not strength? We sometimes develop hard crusty shells to hide our vulnerability, but when we embrace it, other people can get to know us. Don’t we connect on a deeper level?
Often we are defensive
instead of vulnerable. We don’t take chances because we might fail. If we try
and put ourselves out there we are vulnerable to failure. We are living life,
we are thriving.
When we live an open, honest life and take the chances life offers we are vulnerable. This has nothing to do with being manly, or womanly. We need to live our lives open to joy, pain, sorrow, excitement, love, despair, and all that life has to offer. When we protect ourselves from feeling, we miss much of what life has to offer.
When we choose to be
vulnerable and feel, instead of defensive and not feel, we are choosing a
better life. Finding a way to tell our stories, feed our soul through some
creative endeavor we live a healthier, fuller, and more connected life.
Are we choosing to be
vulnerable or defensive? Are we open or closed to all, or some of what life has
to offer?
Vulnerability is terrifying. The courage it takes to reveal your heart is one of the most daunting…and yet rewarding experiences in life. It will set you free. Unknown
Vulnerability is the only bridge to build connection. Unknown
Emotional pain cannot kill you but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal. Vironika Tugaleva
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I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Making the Journey from “What Will People Think?” to “I Am Enough” Paperback – Dec 27 2007
What soap is to the body laughter is to the soul. Yiddish Proverb
I’ve visited three Toastmaster clubs in two days as part of my duties as Area Director, I’ve laughed hard at each of them. Tonight is my home clubs contest and I expect more great laughs.
We are told humor is the best medicine. If we laugh the world laughs with us if we cry, we cry alone, doesn’t this seem to be true? Laughter is infectious and there is nothing like a good laugh to make us feel better.
When I got home I watched some British clips on YouTube with my husband that had us doubled over laughing. They are called “Loose Women” and if you want a good laugh, look for them.
People who are able to get their message across to us effectively often use humor. The more comfortable we become the more our natural humor surfaces. The more we want to impress the stiffer we seem to be.
Laughter is said to improve our immune system, and in this season of colds and flues may be just what we need. Laughter also blocks pain. It definitely helps us deal with difficult situations, and when we are in a tense situation if we can laugh everything seems easier.
Every time you are able to find some humor in a difficult situation you win. Unknown
We may not get someone else’s sense of humor. Sometimes my husband and daughter are almost writhing on the floor in laughter and I hardly see what is funny. She says the same thing happens at her work where she is the one with the wry smile on her face and everyone else is killing themselves laughing. Other times we all get each other’s humor.
Not taking ourselves too seriously is another way of telling ourselves to find the humor in situations. It is great if we can laugh at ourselves but is bad form when we laugh at the expense of others.
We can find funny stories, jokes, shows, and talks to bring humor into our life. We can make an effort to bring more humor into our lives. Do we look at the bright side of things? Often there is humor in the worst life has to offer us. Finding humor is a way to get through the dark times. Sharing a laugh with someone brings us closer.
Have you had a good laugh
today? Are you finding the funny in life?
Laughter will always be the best medicine, silence will always be the best revenge, and love will always be all you need. Unknown
Laughter is an instant vacation. Milton Berle
Always find a reason to laugh. It may not add years to your life but will surely add life to your years. Unknown
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Laughter Totally is the Best Medicine Paperback – Oct 16 2018
I lie about being sick sometimes because people understand if you have a cold, but not if you have depression. Unknown
Today is Bell Let’s Talk Day and we have
a lot to talk about. I just read an article written by Philip Moscovitch that
was published in The Globe And Mail yesterday.
He frequently writes about mental health and mental illness and is
working on a book about life with psychosis – for those experiencing it and
those around them.
Last night I watched a video of a young
man experiencing psychosis and how hard it was for his mother and mental health
professionals to get him to agree to any treatment.
Philip Moscovitch’s article is asking “do we really need more talk?” His son who is open about his recovery from psychosis knows the flip side of fighting the stigma and how appearances are inherently built into how people respond to someone else’s mental illness. He says, “Even as a privileged person you are marginalized when you have a mental illness. There were nights when people I thought were my friends wouldn’t let me sleep at their place, I thought I was alienated from my family, it was minus-15, and I was just walking down the streets of Halifax with jeans that were frozen to the bone, unable to go anywhere and sleeping in underground parking lots.”
We want to help, we want to make a
difference but when we are faced with helping someone whose behavior scares us,
what are we to do?
Once we know someone has had an episode
or more than one episode how do we pretend we aren’t looking for signs of
another one?
It may be true that Bell Talk Day won’t
help those with serious mental illness. We may have to live with the fact that
someone we know suffered through mental illness and we wish we’d done better.
We wish we’d found a way to help.
It’s so common, it could be anyone. The trouble is, nobody wants to talk about it, and that makes everything worse. Ruby Wax
This disease comes with a package: shame. When any other part of your body gets sick you get sympathy. Ruby Wax
One of the criticisms of Bell Talk Day
is although raising awareness and funding worthwhile programs and services is
worthwhile. They don’t emphasize the kinds of fundamental change we need.
No matter how good we get as a society
we will never meet everyone’s needs to their satisfaction, all of the time. We
may not know what the fundamental changes are some people believe we need. What
works for one person may not work best for others.
We are trying and that is worth something. Are mental illnesses simply physical diseases that happen to strike the brain? There is so much we don’t know. It would be easy if one has a family member suffering from mental illness to feel not enough is being done. Someone who lives with a person with mental illness may even feel they know things about mental illness that aren’t being recognized.
We have a long way to go; we have a lot
to learn. Raising money for research is one way to make a difference. It might
not make much difference to someone in the throes of mental illness right now.
It is the same with research on any other disease, research being done helps
future patients, and it leads to future understanding.
It is easy to get discouraged; it is
easy to feel not enough is being done. Bell Let’s Talk Day is trying to be part
of the solution. It won’t happen overnight, it might not help the one we love.
Isn’t it still worth doing if who it helps is not born yet?
Don’t be ashamed of your story. It will inspire others. Unknown
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The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. ― C.G. Jung
If we are to find love
with another first we must find it within ourselves. Everything starts with
loving who we are. Can we release our longing to be someone else and love and
accept who we are? Do we then give ourselves the opportunity to blossom?
As we struggle to love ourselves as we are it may help us if we can accept it is the imperfections that make us uniquely who we are. When we are busy critiquing we are stifling our creative energy. You can only do you, and I can only do me when we are the best we can be we are better and our families, and our world benefits. I have read we become more attractive to others as we learn to love and accept ourselves as we are.
Self-compassion
‘It’s
good to explore self-compassion,’ says King. Research shows it’s associated
with greater happiness, optimism, curiosity, resilience, and reduced depression
and anxiety, suggesting it has all the benefits of self-esteem but fewer of the
downsides. Self-compassion has three overlapping parts:
Being kind to and understanding of ourselves in instances of suffering or perceived inadequacy.
A sense of common humanity, recognizing that pain and failure are unavoidable aspects of life for all humans.
A balanced awareness of our emotions – the ability to face (rather than avoid) painful thoughts and feelings, but without exaggeration, drama or self-pity.
Studies also show that self-compassion promotes self-improvement and reduces comparison to others. ‘It helps put our own issues in perspective and so reduces immobilizing self-pity. Because it focuses on caring about ourselves, being self-compassionate motivates us to work through challenges and learn from mistakes,’ says King.
Self-esteem (as opposed to self-acceptance) is typically based on judgments of how good we are within specific areas of our lives. Because these judgments are dependent on how well we are doing in that area, how good we feel fluctuates based on our latest success or failure.* Self-esteem also means that our judgment of how good we are is relative to other people, so it can lead to a sense of superiority over others, and therefore separation from them.
For once, you believed in yourself. you believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world. Sarah Dessen
1. Get honest.
“People lie to themselves more than they lie to anyone else. In order to be the best, you can be you have to be dead honest with yourself.
Once you look at things as they are, you can learn to love you warts and all. Without that complete honesty, you practice self-delusion rather than radical acceptance.
Once you love yourself at this very deep level, the whole world awaits you. Being real about your life and yourself gives you the power to change. Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey is a sex & intimacy coach, registered psychologist, educator, speaker, and author.
2. Be transparent.
“We all have an awful, ugly side we try to hide from the world. The problem is, the more we stuff the awful away, the more unworthy and unlovable we feel.
We start to mask our true selves which takes a toll on our health, our relationships, and our self-esteem. Learn to own your awful. Accepting your ugly side means no longer living in fear of not being good enough. You’ll finally have the freedom to choose the life you have always desired.
Owning your awful is the gateway to self-love, self-acceptance and true transformation.” T-Ann PierceT
3. Feel your feelings.
“Evidence for how you love yourself is all around you, you only need be brave enough to look and allow it to sink in.
What is your health like? How does your body feel? What are your relationships and friendships like? The evidence is there to convict you.
Allow that conviction to empower you to get the support that you both desire and deserve. There is no need to go on any journey you desire alone.MMichele Brookhaus RSHom(NA), CCH
4. Choose love.
“You always have a choice: to live in love or to live in fear. When you choose to love, you have little Aha moments into the nature of your Self. When you choose fear, your life becomes a twisted story of love being a means for your ego to get its demands met. The greatest Aha moment is when you wake up to your true identity as love and know what life truly means for the first time.”
Coach Annie-Leigh
5. Let love guide your goal-setting.
“The best way to disappoint yourself is to strive unrealistically for unattainable goals. The second best way to disappoint yourself is to not strive for goals you can reach.
Self-love emerges as we realize who we can become and we get out of our own way so we can fulfill realistic dreams, hopes, and our own potential!”D Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein
6. Allow yourself to feel anger and fear.
“Best way to reality? Trigger your anger, fear or grief and pay attention to how you respond.
You can do this safely with music that’s angry, scary or sad; let your feelings come up and just be with them until they pass.
The moment when your skin crawls, or you begin to weep uncontrollably?
That’s YOU. It’s also the moment when the transformation is present, asking you to accept yourself. Bill Protzmann
7. Get to know yourself.
“Self-love without true self-knowledge is impossible. In fact, it’s paradoxical to think you can love and nurture yourself when you lack a true understanding of your actual circumstances.
Self-love has to be unconditional. Otherwise, it’s something else entirely and can never sustain you. You are bound to make mistakes, sometimes terrible and inexplicable ones. You’re also bound to discover qualities that disappoint you.
The key is to love yourself, BECAUSE of these shortcomings, not in spite of them. And how can you ever love what you don’t really recognize?”
C. Mellie Smith
8. Accept that you have value beyond performance.
“When you love yourself, unconditionally, you are teaching others how you want to be treated and showing them your worth.
As you become more aware of your worthiness you will begin to attract the very people to you that you have always wanted to be with. Love yourself and fulfill your highest purpose of being. Linda Morinello
9. Treat yourself the way you want to be treated.
“People tend to treat us the way we treat ourselves.
Are you under the illusion that caretaking others—giving yourself up and people-pleasing—will result in feeling loved by your partner?
Here is where you need to get real! As long as you are rejecting and abandoning yourself and making your partner responsible for your sense of worth and safety, you will feel unloved by your partner.
Learning to love yourself changes all of this! Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
10. Get real.
“Loving yourself is not easy because it requires five essential gifts you must give yourself first: honesty, safety, trust, respect, and reliability. Without these, expressed in everything you think, do, and say, you will have games, misunderstandings, anger, and resentment.
You’ll think of yourself as a victim, a martyr, or worse, a person who has to settle for crumbs and the occasional compliment. If you want an equal, reciprocal, and mutual relationship—a healthy one—with someone else, it means getting real with yourself first.
Remember, you cannot give a gift you do not have! Rhoberta Shaler, Ph.D
11. Radically accept yourself.
“There is no “right” way to feel about money. No “best” way to think about dollars and cents. Savers are not “better” than spenders. And vice versa.
Every individual is born with a natural bent towards handling money. Give yourself a break if you like to spend or take some risks with your funds. Pat yourself on the back if you like to save. OR if you don’t like to think much about money, that’s okay too.
Love your natural bent—develop your strengths and work on your weaknesses, but stop telling yourself how you feel about money is wrong. Scott & Bethany Palmer
12. Set healthy boundaries.
“Loving yourself is vital to living a free, and authentic life.
Setting boundaries; asking for what you need and want; making choices that are good for you; allowing— and even welcoming mistakes to learn from, and quieting down that inner critic’s voice we inherited, but isn’t truly ours, and having self-compassion. There is no magic formula for achieving self-love; it’s a daily exercise and starts with awareness.
Noticing times when you choose to please others at your expense; or when you keep quiet to avoid conflict; or don’t ask for help when you need some. Then see if you can get up the courage to ask for the help; or set one limit that feels risky and see how it goes. Getting real about your life is a commitment to yourself. Dr. Sue Mandel
This is a lifetime of work accepting ourselves as we are, learning to love ourselves and our imperfections. It is these imperfections that seem jarringly obvious to us that are often charmingly endearing to others.
I am working on this, it helps to realize we all have things about ourselves we would change. Often changing them doesn’t make it better. Look at all the bad plastic surgery out there. I’ve noticed that thin at sixty isn’t as good as fit at sixty. Working with our natural body shape is better than fighting it. If we dress what we have instead of wishing it were different we are better off. There are photographs of people who were not perfect that are imprinted in our minds because the authenticity and naturalness of the person shine through. If we could each have one of those photographs of our self that show who we really are with our imperfections and our unique self shining through, maybe we would embrace our self more easily warts, baldness, crooked teeth and whatever physical flaws we may see but others may not even notice.
We need to accept ourselves, our partners, our children, our families, our communities, our cities, our country as they are. Through acceptance, we can change the things we can, accept the things we can’t and have the wisdom to know the difference.
Can acceptance nullify judgment? By choosing acceptance do we remind ourselves that what’s happening in our life is not good or bad, it just is? Is acceptance an act of trust? When we accept our current situation can we let go and know if we continue aligning our self with the truth, we will be guided to where we need to be? Is radical self-acceptance a training ground for action?
Is accepting our life challenges, knowing that acceptance is the first and necessary step to enter a place of happiness the step we need to take?
Is life what it is? But, it will also become what we make it?
“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” ― Brené Brown
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Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Melody Beattie
I’m starting to feel better. It isn’t even as if I’ve been all that sick but there is still that moment when you realize you have turned the corner. You are feeling better. A feeling of gratitude wells up.
I watched a video about a girl that
didn’t feel pain. It was not good. She hurt herself in big and small ways
because she didn’t feel pain.
There may be instances where we can do
nothing but mask the pain so we can function. The underlying cause may not be
fixable. It is not true that we all have to feel a lot of pain when we get old,
healthy eating and exercise will keep many people pain free even in old age. It
works for my mother.
We can’t agree on what good eating is, but we can all agree a lot of junk food, sweet drinks, processed foods, and empty calories are not the answer. If we start there we can quibble over whether we should only eat plants or mostly eat meat and greens. I’ve read about people doing equally well on both of these extreme ways of eating.
The middle road is more the road I want to be on. Eat healthy, mostly plants and not too much is my motto. An indulgence here or there I don’t sweat. I enjoy and then get back to plainer fare.
I am happy because I’m grateful. That gratitude allows me to be happy. Will Arnett
This week I’ll talk myself out of going to the gym because of the cold. Telling myself coming out of the gym into the cold might make me sicker. It’s okay to skip a week, but next week, back to the gym.
I miss the feeling of ease when I don’t go to the gym. Keeping limber by doing sun salutations, keeping strong by doing weights, and walking makes me feel at ease. Without exercise I begin to feel pain, it usually starts in my back or like this week in my side. If we don’t use it we lose it, and we lose it quicker than we think.
I remember watching a documentary about two over 100-year-old women. They exercised every day and their motto was if they could do today what they could do yesterday they met their goal.
Aging well with humor, grace, strength, and courage is my goal. I am blessed with a fabulous role model. When I go to the park in the summer a group of older adults are performing Tai Chi. They look fit, happy, and flexible. Role models are all around us.
People overcome diabetes with food and
exercise. Other diseases are overcome or mitigated with diet and exercise.
There is a rub; we have to be careful not to be judgmental. Just because my
elderly mother lives without pain does not mean every older person who does
what she does won’t have pain.
Everybody with type 2 diabetes may not
be able to eliminate it with food and exercise. We may do what worked for
everyone else and it doesn’t work for us. That’s life; we have to deal with
what is. It isn’t always nice, or fair.
No matter the circumstance we find ourselves in I think gratitude for what is good in our lives is positive. We may feel this situation we are in is unending and unchanging, but that is rarely true. No matter how grave our circumstances may be, our attitude is important.
Can we live with an attitude of gratitude every day, knowing that no matter how dark what before us seems, finding something to be grateful for will make it better in some small way? Are we the example we would like to see? Is being happy a kind of gratitude? Does gratitude lead to happiness?
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. Albert Schweitzer
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Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. Benjamin Franklin
I’ve been saying in my hubris that the reason I haven’t caught what everyone else in the house caught is I’m drinking kombucha. Today my throat is raspy. I felt it coming on after my husband and I got in from having tea and coffee at a coffee shop.
Before bed I
took oil of oregano and stayed in bed longer hoping to nip it in the bud. I
have an important date. I’m being taken out to celebrate my 500th blog post. I
don’t want to miss it.
Does hubris
get all or most of us sometimes? We think we are smarter, healthier, or
luckier. What mows everyone else down will not touch us. Hubris is extreme
pride and arrogance which ultimately brings down one’s downfall.
What is the difference between authentic pride and hubris? Is it just who is looking and judging? Is authentic pride based on a realistic appraisal of one’s competencies, abilities, and achievements? Is hubristic pride related to measures of impulsivity and aggression?
If we never fall or fail will it be authentic pride, if we fail or fall will it be hubris? Extreme self-regard doesn’t seem like a recipe for great relationships, nor does extreme self-loathing. Is finding the right balance hard?
Swallow your pride occasionally, it’s not fattening. Frank Tyger
What is the difference between arrogance and self-esteem? Psychologists distinguish between two kinds of pride, authentic pride and hubristic pride. Authentic pride arises when we feel good about ourselves, confident, self-worthy, achieving, productive, and is related to desirable personality traits like agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable. Hubristic pride tends to involve egotism arrogance, conceit and is related to socially undesirable traits like being disagreeable, aggressive, having low or brittle self-esteem, and prone to shame.
When most of
us want to improve our self-esteem we want to generate authentic pride, not
hubristic pride. In one study hubristic pride was thought to be a shortcut used
by people instead of doing the hard work of becoming competent, productive, and
achieving goals. Yet, aren’t we being told to fake it until we make it?
One of the traits that Jordan Peterson author of 12 Rules for Life tells us is innate is agreeableness and disagreeableness and women tend to be more agreeable than men. He believes being disagreeable is a trait that helps many people get ahead in the world.
What if
there is a place for authentic pride and hubris that has helped us make it to
where we are?
Show class, have pride and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself. Paul Bryant
Pride is an important quality to cultivate. If pride comes from a balanced view that can also respect the best in others, it stokes the inner fires that fuel us to great accomplishments. Unknown
Pride is the oldest and most common of sins. Humility is the rarest and most beautiful of graces. J.C. Ryle
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Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you do not have, you will never, ever have enough. Oprah Winfrey
What is a reallionaire? My definition of a reallionaire is someone that discovers their purpose, takes advantage and uses their many gifts, builds a life they love with good relationships, family and social connections. How do we learn to believe in ourselves? How do we conduct our life so if we get what we are aiming for we are happy with it? According to Jack Canfield scientists used to believe that humans responded to information flowing into our brain from the outside world. Now we believe that instead, we respond to what the brain – based on previous experience – expects to happen next. Do we have a reputation with ourselves and is this our self-esteem?
What if our brains are so powerful it can deliver literally everything that we want through the power of positive expectation? How do we build positive expectations? Do many of us spend our lives expecting the worst to happen?
Do we build
our life in little steps? Do some people change overnight, but most of us take
baby steps toward what we want? Do we eat “our elephant” one bite at
a time, build our lives one decision, and one habit at a time?
Do we need to build a track record with ourselves? If we have kept our bargains with ourselves in the past do we learn to trust ourselves? If we don’t make grandiose statements, but instead make small daily decisions we do keep, do we put ourselves on the path to where we want to go?
Just for today can we do almost anything? Tomorrow we can start again and do more. By taking life one day at a time do we build something we can be proud of? Can’t we always take the detour ahead if it seems better than the road we are on?
Having enough money has to be hand in hand with living in a way that you’re not being a slave to your possessions. Patton Oswalt
Do we tell ourselves what we want to happen in our lives, but we don’t believe and trust what we are telling ourselves is true? If we need to find statements we believe is one of the things we can do, is ask ourselves questions instead of using affirmations. When we tell ourselves things we know aren’t true, we are lying to ourselves, and we wonder why it doesn’t work.
We tell
ourselves “I am rich, I am rich, I am rich,” as we look in the mirror
feeling poor. If we know we aren’t rich, how does our mind react? What if we
asked ourselves? “Why am I rich?” If we are rich in health, love,
family, and we have enough to live every day buying what we need and sometimes
what we want, isn’t that a rich life?
Does giving
to someone who has less than ourselves make us feel rich? Can we take actions
to make ourselves healthy, fit, a great mom, wife, business person, author, employee,
etc?
If one of
the things our mind does is answer our questions then is asking better
questions the key to a better life?
If we want
something there are many people who have already achieved it. Do we need to do
what they did? When we ask questions we may find out we aren’t willing to do
what they did. But, what are we willing to do?
I was listening to a podcast by Gary Vaynerchuk yesterday he was saying so many people want to start a business and be the next greatest thing. Starting a business, and being able to replace the job we have isn’t that a good start? Isn’t building a great life for ourselves and our family the goal?
Can we be
happy enough, well-off enough, healthy enough, fit enough, good enough parents,
good enough spouses, good enough citizens, and build a well-rounded life?
Does that
seem like we’ve set our sights too low? Are only grandiose dreams worth pursuing?
What if instead of wanting to be millionaires, we want to be reallionaires, we
want to love the life we have? What if we become rich from the inside out?
True freedom is much more than having enough income and time to do what you want. Tim Ferriss
You are the average of the 5 people you associate with most. You don’t need to get much right to be and feel successful. Just form habits around 1-2 strengths. Tim Ferriss
Wealth is having enough. That means to some people, no matter how much they have, they can’t really be wealthy because they want more than they’ve got. Warren Buffett
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It’s up to you today to start making healthy choices. Not choices that are just healthy for your body, but healthy for your mind. Steve Maraboli
Last night
the book club met at a coffee shop. We were going to have our Christmas dinner
in January but no one had a place they wanted to go, so we ended up going to
Starbucks. We were lucky to get a table.
The baby that was born when I first joined the book club turned eighteen and
was celebrating his one year anniversary with his girlfriend, his Mom had to
leave early to pick them up.
We’ve added a couple of new members so we can meet more regularly. When the membership is too small it makes it hard to meet as everyone’s schedules don’t mesh.
One of our youngest members whose oldest is also eighteen said that the book club has been really important to her. She’s stayed home and raised her kids and hasn’t been out in the workforce for thirteen years. She doesn’t miss working but she does miss the social aspect of work.
“We lose ourselves in motherhood,” she says. “We need to find ourselves again.”
“What have you found?” One of the newest members asks.
“I’m
not there yet,” she replies.
The book club is not made up of a bunch of close friends. We’ve become friends over the years, but we mostly meet over books, coffee, tea, and conversation. We have shared conversations that would have been hard to have with other people. We read books that shine a light on something, and from that starting point, we can talk.
We are a group of women who talk about the important things in life and share what we’ve learned along the way. Someone always has a story to tell about something that has happened to them or someone they know. Last night was no different.
What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation. Glenn Close
Being connected to other people is important for our health. People with fewer social connections have more risk of early death. What does this say about us as our families become smaller and smaller?
People who
make new social connections are less likely to develop depression, and people
who maintain and build their social group connections have greater well-being
during major transitions like retirement.
There is a
correlation between social connectedness and mental health. 25,000 New Zealand
adults were studied over four years using the longitudinal New Zealand
Attitudes and Values Study. It was found that when a person’s level of social
connection goes down, they experience worse mental health a year later.
The
relationship also went the other way; people with good mental health were more
socially connected a year later. The influence of social connectedness on
mental health over time was about three times stronger than the other way
around.
How can we
harness the power of social connection to improve our health and the health of
our communities? Social connectedness is more than mere contact with other
people, or even being a member of social groups. It is about feeling you belong
to that group; that you trust others and they trust you in a shared purpose,
and that group members can rely on each other.
It seems we need to find groups we can belong to that are trusting, supportive and have a shared meaning and purpose. That purpose can be anything; it might be a community garden, book club, service organization, church, building houses for Habitat for Humanity, Alanon, 12 step programs, or Toastmasters.
Do we have
enough social connectedness? Is there a group we should start, or join?
If we start being honest about our pain, our anger, and our shortcomings instead of pretending they don’t exist, then maybe we’ll leave the world a better place than we found it. Russell Wilson
I didn’t speak to anyone about postpartum depression, I was very reluctant. Four of my friends felt the same way I did, and everyone was too embarrassed to talk about it. Adele
About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times. C.G. Jung
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The Power of Eight: Harnessing the Miraculous Energies of a Small Group to Heal Others, Your Life, and the World Paperback – Sep 25 2018
We are what we eat – not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Derek Rydall
Last night I cooked a pot of potatoes to let cool because they develop resistant starch which is good for our gut buddies. My son told me about a couple who started their health journey at a weight of 800 lbs between them. Jessica and Brian started out with a two-week potato diet. They started June 2018 and if you want to see their progress look up The Krocks on YouTube. Then they moved from potatoes to a whole food plant-based diet.
They have a video on the anniversary of starting the diet where they go back to Trader Joe’s and buy potatoes. They are standing in the same spot a year apart having lost about 270 lbs between them. This is the first time they ate potatoes since the two week potato diet.
Potatoes get
a bad rap. Many diet books tell us to stay away from potatoes. Dad used to say
he felt weak if he didn’t have potatoes. What if potatoes are one of the
healthiest foods we can eat?
Jessica and Brian think they needed the two-week potato diet to clean up their system so they could embark on their whole food eating plan. One of the things it probably did was make them not feel deprived when they could have fruit, chili, salad, and other whole plant-based foods after eating nothing but plain potatoes for two whole weeks. They prep their salad for dinner ahead of time; they make their lunches for work. One of the problems we often make is we don’t start hunting for something to eat until we are hungry, then we eat whatever we find.
When we eat mindfully, we consume exactly what we need to keep our bodies, our minds, and the Earth healthy. When we practice like this, we reduce suffering for ourselves and for others. Nhat Hanh
We can set ourselves up for failure, or we can set ourselves up for success. They’ve set themselves up for success, and by doing it on YouTube they’ve gained a lot of followers and built-in support and accountability.
If you’re starting to waver on your New Year’s resolution of getting healthier check out The Krocks. It is inspiring watching two people get their health back, one day at a time.
A trip to the store may be in order to buy the fixings for a big salad for dinners for the rest of the week. Yesterday was a fast day and for dinner, I had a salad, and lentil soup with kale before going to the gym.
Fast days are getting easier. Twenty-four hours is not that long, and if you do it from dinner to dinner there is no going to bed hungry which would be hard.
Getting my gut buddies healthy is one of my main goals. Dr. Gundry says we are basically a condominium for the bacteria that live within us. If we have good bacteria they keep us healthy. If we let bad bacteria take over we get run down, sick, and develop the diseases we are all afraid of.
It is possible to live healthy to a ripe old age. I’ve watched Mom do it. What we eat is a big part of it. Drinking kombucha every day is now one of my practices. Stretching by doing a few sun salutations in the morning keeps me limber. Most of the time we eat whole plant-based food.
If we are lucky we get old, can we be vital, healthy, and energetic? Is this the year to take our health into our own hands and let our gut buddies do a renovation?
We are what we repeatedly eat. Healthy eating then, is not an act, but a habit. Unknown
If we keep doing what we’re doing. We’re going to keep getting what we’re getting. Stephen Covey
The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. Ann Wigmore
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The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age Hardcover – Mar 19 2019
Don’t judge someone without knowing the whole story. You may think you understand but you don’t. Unknown
Yesterday a
friend and I went to the theatre. She’s a brave soul who wanted to drive
downtown and knows a parking garage near the theatre so parking was not a
problem and a bargain at only $8.00. We left early but not quite early enough
to enjoy a leisurely lunch, the restaurant was a short walk from where we
parked and the theatre, and the service was fast and friendly.
A day out with a friend is lovely. Lunch was fun, the play was great. It’s called Sweat the playwright is Lynn Nottage, and it is about companies closing in America in the 90’s and early 2000s, the angst it caused, and the eruption of violence that can change lives in an instant requiring a lifetime to repair the damage. It is about friendship, loyalty and blaming others for our losses. It is about prison sentences that seem harsher than the crime warrants and the carnage that leaves behind. It is about one bad decision. It is worth seeing.
When I got
home my son told me they are taking me out next Saturday to celebrate my 500th
blog post. It has been a journey for all of us, and I hope when my family reads
any of my posts they don’t cringe at what’s been said. No one has complained
yet.
We are very lucky when we have supportive families. The play yesterday also showed how fragile families can be. A job loss can change everything. Companies closing create problems in every part of a community as the effects ripple. If it starts happening to one community after another it can devastate large areas.
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. Mother Teresa
We often don’t see what is going on behind our neighbor’s smile and a friendly hello. Unless we know them well we don’t know what they do, where they work, or what circumstances they are in. We see a house go up for sale and we don’t know if they are moving on to better, or moving out because they can’t hold on any longer.
We don’t
know the quiet desperation in other people’s lives. We don’t know if their
choice will be to turn to liquor, drugs, or God. We might not know what our
choice would be if the worst happened in our lives. Until we face the worst
life has to throw at us we don’t know how we will react. Maybe it even depends
where we are in our life, or who we meet along the way.
One character turned to God, and one character turned to hate, shame, and groups that blame others for their circumstances. His face was tattooed –not a look likely to help in a job search.
Even when we can’t control our circumstances we can control our reaction to them. We are told this, we believe this, but when it is our turn will we have the strength, courage, and fortitude to make the right choice? Would we be the one with the bible in his hand or the one with the tattooed face?
Be curious, not judgmental. Walt Whitman
Don’t judge a man by where he is, because you don’t know how far he has come. C.S. Lewis
Judging a person does not define who they are. It defines who you are. Subodh Srivastava
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