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Developing resilience. Do we bounce back or battle through?

Do we bounce back or battle through? Developing resilience.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls, the most massive characters are seared with scars. Kahlil Gibran

Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress – such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.

The five pillars of resilience are self-awareness, mindfulness, self-care, positive relationships, and purpose. If we strengthen these five pillars we strengthen our capacity for resilience.

Clinical psychologist Meg Jay in her book “Supernormal” shares essential tips on how we can become more resilient.

1. First, recognize that your struggle is valid, no matter what you’re struggling with.

Don’t be ashamed of what makes you stressed. “A lot of people say, ‘Well, I wasn’t in a war…’ They have to learn what the most common adversities are and see those as being legitimate chronic stressors.”

2. Then realize the ways you’re already resilient.

“You may not have alcoholism or drug abuse in your home, but I’m guessing you’ve been through something. Think about, ‘What were the three toughest times in my life? How did I get through those things?’ You probably already know something about being resilient.”

3. Don’t wait for the situation to fix itself.

“Resilient people tend to be active copers. They say, ‘What am I going to do about this?’ versus, ‘When will I be released from this?’ It may not be solved overnight, but every problem can be approached somehow.”

4. Know your strengths and use them.

“In general, resilient people tend to use the strengths they have. For different people, those are different. Some people have a great personality. For other people, it’s smarts or some sort of talent or a real work ethic. They use that to grab onto, to get through whatever’s in front of them.”

5. Don’t try to do it alone…

“One of the biggest predictors of faring well after an adversity is having people who cared. One thing that resilient people do is they seek support. It doesn’t have to be a therapist; it could be a best friend or an aunt or a partner. Resilient people actually use other people — rather than not let themselves need them.”

6. …but know that it’s okay not to tell everyone.

“Increase the number and quality of your relationships however you see fit. For some people, that will be, ‘There are two people in the world who know all of what there is to know about me.’ For other people, they’ll want to be known by a bigger community. Love is very powerful, and love is love. The brain doesn’t know one kind of love versus another. It just processes when it has a positive experience with another person. Get out there and feel like there are people who see you and understand you and who care – that’s it. It doesn’t matter where you’re getting that.”

7. Find your favorite way to take a mental break.

“Many people use fantasy or books, or dive into their hobbies, or hang out with their friends to take a mental break from a situation that they cannot solve overnight. You may not be able to fix that problem, but you can protect yourself from feeling overwhelmed by it. As an adult, you can do the same: read a book, pick up your Frisbee, hang out with your friends, turn off the news alerts on your phone. There’s a lot in the world right now that feels overwhelming. Resilient people fight back where they can, but they also learn to take a mental break.”

8. Be compassionate with yourself and realize all the ways adversity has made you strong.

“People who face some adversity in their lives become stronger. Of course, it depends on a lot of other factors — how big is the adversity, how much support do they have, how did they cope — but by learning to cope with stress and having that experience, we gain confidence and we gain preparation. I think sometimes we forget that. You see how you’re broken rather than how you’re strong. Focus on the resilience and see yourself as someone who is even better prepared for life than the average person because you’ve already lived so much of it.”

A good half of the art of living is resilience. Alain de Botton

I like her ideas, there is nothing new in them but then there isn’t much new about life. We cope with what people have always coped with and we struggle with what people have always struggled with.

Businesses are started and end every day. Relationships are started and end, people are born and die. Even though we don’t like tough times it might be the tough times that bring out the best in us. Lots of us would say, we don’t need to be that great, we don’t want to challenge “The greatest generation” for resilience, perseverance, and courage. We were comfortable not facing any remarkable challenges like war or pandemics. Other people have faced great challenges already in their lives but many of us born in peace and plenty have lived lives privileged by our prosperity.

We all hope we will be resilient enough to deal with what happens in our lives. We hope we will continue to improve ourselves, our outlook, and our contribution to our family, community, and the world. Family is the most important group in society and many people believe our society rises and falls with the strength of the family. When we are resilient we teach resilience to our children who teach it to theirs and on down the generations.

If we aren’t resilient, do we also teach that? Resilience doesn’t mean we won’t fail, we won’t make mistakes or bad decisions. It means we will rise seven times when we fall six. We will keep on keeping on and if at first, we don’t succeed we will try and try again.

Is resilience a trait, something we just have, or is it something we develop?

When we learn how to become resilient, we learn how to embrace the beautifully broad spectrum of the human experience. Jaeda Dewalt

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good. Elizabeth Edwards

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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Supernormal: The Secret World of the Family Hero Paperback – Jan. 15 2019

by Meg Jay  (Author)4.8 out of 5 stars 108 ratings

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Perspective and gratitude. Looking back we’ll get perspective, can we look forward in gratitude?

Looking back we'll get perspective, can we look forward in gratitude?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Legally speaking, the term ‘public rights’ is as vague and indefinite as are the terms ‘public health,’ ‘public good,’ ‘public welfare,’ and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals. Lysander Spooner

Last night was a book club night, first on free Zoom and then on Google Hangouts. We talked and laughed for two hours. The book club puts so many things in perspective. The books we read help put life in perspective. We discussed The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman. This was our second time discussing it and we did what we always do, moved into discussing life.

Of course, the question, “Are you taking the vaccine came up?” One of our members said, “I’m taking it because my mother lost six siblings because there weren’t vaccines.” One of her mom’s siblings died from polio which ravaged the world until the Salk polio vaccine was introduced in 1955 and the Sabin oral vaccine introduced in 1962 eventually brought polio under control.

Many of us are asking this question in a flippant way but it is no small thing to be able to have vaccines to curb diseases that killed and maimed millions. We may think things should be better, but how often are we grateful they are not worse? We have the U.S. going through an election where results are being contested. The system is working and one of the things Jordan Peterson says is, “We wonder why things aren’t better, but we should wonder why they aren’t worse? It is almost a miracle to live in peace and plenty.”

My husband has a fair point when he says, “For someone that preaches positivity you don’t sound very positive.” I’ve been ranting lately about the injustice of the small businesses paying the price during our second lockdown. I stand by my feeling and I don’t know how to be positive and deal with what to me is injustice even though it does not directly affect us, yet. The trickledown effect of putting small businesses out of business might affect us all in a far bigger way than what we are trying to prevent.

Depression has been called the world’s number one public health problem. In fact, depression is so widespread it is considered the common cold of psychiatric disturbances. But there is a grim difference between depression and a cold. Depression can kill you. David D. Burns

We might not have good choices, we may only have bad choices but history is being made right now, and maybe the great leaders are not the ones that make the good choices, they are the ones that make the best choice in bad situations. Someone on the radio said we are about halfway through this in his estimation. Spring is coming and we will have to deal with the fallout of this pandemic and the choices that are made to deal with it.

Only looking back will we think we know the choices that should have been made. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but we don’t get to make our choices in hindsight. We make our choices and hope we made the best one.  Everyone making choices is trying to make the best choice and they are trying to juggle competing interests.

Many of us have said we live in a society that puts money first. Our leaders are trying to show us that they do not. Are they making the best decision or in the end will we wish they put economic health on an even platform with public health?

It’s critically important that people trust you during a public health crisis. Richard E. Besser

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the freshwater system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? John Cleese

The longer I’ve looked at these questions, of the American diet and the public health crisis that we face because of that diet, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that the collapse of cooking is a big part of the problem. Michael Pollan

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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In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto Paperback – April 28 2009

by Michael Pollan  (Author)

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Lemonade for sale. When life hands us lemons should we make lemonade?

When life hands us lemons should we make lemonade? Lemonade for sale.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

One bad chapter doesn’t mean your story is over.  Anonymous

Winter is coming, can spring be far behind? We know spring always follows winter. The only attitude we can control is our own. The only business we can mind is our own. The only time we need to be concerned with is now. It might be hard to live with these words as we go forward into winter.

For many of us, it may feel like the Grinch stole Christmas. We are being told, “It’s for your own good. We are doing it to protect you.” Some people might be protected right out of their livelihood.

In my own house, we are divided on what should be done. There is no right answer that makes everyone happy. There are those who want freedom, those that want protection, and often those two aren’t both possible.

My sister-in-law has to close her hairdressing shop, again. Her landlord still needs his rent, the bank will still expect their mortgage, the city will still expect the taxes, and everyone still needs to eat. We can’t just put life on hold and is it fair for small businesses to pay the price for this? It seems it is small businesses whose doors are closed. Restaurants, hairdressers, gyms, and small businesses were following the rules set down. If there was a problem at any location it should be dealt with. Blanket shutdowns are probably not going to be effective except at depriving people of their livelihood.

It breaks my heart to think how it would be if we had one of those little shops, to see what we’ve built up over years destroyed, not through our own mismanagement, not through being unwilling to follow even rules we deem unfair, but because we are easy to close. When we close small shops, restaurants, and hairdressers that were only allowed a few customers at a time what are we accomplishing? Had we kept our businesses open at the level we had before this lockdown and let them succeed or fail, at least they had a chance.

Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know. Pema Chodron

How should it be handled? I don’t know, but the despair that has been cast on business and people’s lives since this new lockdown was declared will weigh heavy on many people. No one envies the decision-makers right now.

A ninety-year-old woman opted for assisted suicide rather than go through another lockdown in her nursing home. She planned on an assisted suicide death, but not yet. Preventing people from living to some is not better than dying. Loneliness is a big deal, solitary confinement is considered unacceptable for prisoners, and yet we are now doing it for people’s own good.

My aunt always said she planned to live till she died. She died in 2018 in her own home at 97. Mom at 96 lives in her own home, taking care of her own needs. What if she was in a nursing home in lockdown, I can see her saying “I did that, but I won’t be doing it again.”

We need to bring out all the sayings we can come up with right now as we go through this. We will need mantras, prayers, and positive self-talk as we develop a mindset to get through this winter. Gratitude, prayer, and positive thinking will serve us better than bitterness. Is the lesson we need to learn that if we are okay at this moment then we are okay. Looking too far down the road will scare us. If we focus on what we have this moment we can be grateful and live in gratitude, joy, and love. We may have to face whatever we have to face but why worry about it until we have to face it? Can we not let a bad situation bring out the worst in us? Can we choose to be strong and positive and remember Spring is coming? How would you like your lemonade, sweet or sour?

Tough times don’t last but tough people do. Robert Schuller

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Eckhart Tolle

A great attitude becomes a great day which becomes a great month which becomes a great year which becomes a great life. Mandy Hale

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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Tough Times Never Last, but Tough People Do! Mass Market Paperback – May 1 1984

by Robert Schuller (Author)4.6 out of 5 stars 306 ratings

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Can anger motivate us to do better or ruin our lives? Can we harness anger as fuel for a better life instead of ending up in bondage and suffering?

Can we harness anger as fuel for a better life instead of ending up in bondage and suffering? Can anger motivate us to do better or ruin our lives?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Yoda

Is anger having an impact on our lives? Is it fear that leads to anger? Fear and anger are brought into being during stressful, hostile, or trying events. It’s no wonder our anger levels may be heightened. Is this not one of the angriest, most trying, and hostile times we’ve gone through? If our anger fuels us to change things like in Jim Rohn’s video The Day that Changed Your Life our anger is not only justified but helpful as it propels us to say “Never Again.” His “Never Again” was to never again be too poor to… He became a part-time multi-level marketing distributor and elevated himself and his family.

Is the point of anger to propel us to change something, or are we getting angry because our expectations are not being met? Are these expectations possible to be met? If we get angry because our dog barks or worse yet someone else’s dog barks we know dogs will bark and expecting them not to is futile.

We may be upset that we have lost control of a situation. In most situations, our degree of control especially if other people are involved is much less than we’d like.  Don’t we feel more powerful when we are angry? Aren’t we more dangerous when we are angry? Aren’t we all scared of an angry person because we don’t know what they will do? Sometimes we let our anger get the best of us and we create situations that wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t angry. If we don’t have self-control our anger can lead us down a dangerous path.

If we let worry, fear, and anger control our lives it will probably not go well. People will make us angry but we can learn to control our reaction. In “Taking Charge of Anger” W. Robert Nay Ph.D. tells us there are five components to every anger episode: trigger, thoughts, feelings, anger expression, and outcome. He says we can break our anger down into these five components and he suggests we keep an anger journal so we can see how often we get angry, and we can take charge of our anger. When we start our anger journal we may wonder if “that” really should go in the journal?

Happiness: The emotion that puts your face in motion. Fear: The emotion that puts your legs in motion. Anger: The emotion that puts your fist in motion. Lesson: Don’t be afraid or angry and you won’t have to run and fight. Unknown

Awareness of our own triggers, behavior, thoughts, and feelings is what we are after. Once we become aware we can do something about it. Don’t we all laugh at the snickers commercials where someone is hungry and angry? We may find we are also dealing with a shortened fuse when hungry.

When I was driving my kids somewhere and they weren’t little anymore I would go sit in the truck waiting for them so I didn’t get angry watching them dawdle. How many families start out a long-planned outing or vacation in an angry mood because someone thinks everyone should be ready to leave before they are?

We may be worried about things and get angry, but if the anger isn’t helpful because it doesn’t propel us to action to change things, or it is things we cannot change we may need to get back to dealing within our circle of influence. We can waste our energy being mad at things we cannot change instead of putting that energy into things we can do and can change.

I’ve started my anger journal and will learn a few things. I hope to learn what are my triggers, thoughts, feelings, anger expression, and outcome. Maybe like Jim Rohn, I can use anger to fuel changes in my life that need to change. Maybe I’ll find most of my anger episodes are over things I have no control over and I need to put my attention back into my circle of influence.

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. Ambrose Bierce

If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains. Helen Gahagan Douglas

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. Chinese Proverb

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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Taking Charge of Anger, Second Edition: Six Steps to Asserting Yourself without Losing Control Paperback – March 6 2012

by W. Robert Nay  (Author)4.4 out of 5 stars 29 ratings

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Today is the first day of the rest of our life. We get to choose what we do with it. Will we choose gratitude, joy, and love?

Will we choose gratitude, joy, and love? Today is the first day of the rest of our life. We get to choose what we do with it.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality in the mind next to honor. Aristotle

Today is the first day of the rest of our life. That statement may mean different things to different people. To me, it means opportunities are here and what we do with them is up to us.

We are fortunate if we have loved ones we can spend time with even if that time is over the internet or phone. It is nice to get together but we are fortunate to be able to connect with others without meeting in person. We are able to move around the world and stay in touch.

Just because we live in the same area does not mean we are close. It takes effort to stay in touch with people by phone or by visiting them. If we are lucky we have a close loving family regardless of how far apart we are in miles.

They say we have the life we have today because of the decisions we’ve made and the actions we’ve taken. This is good news, it means we can change things if we want to. It means we can make things better where we are. We may realize that the life we have is not the life we dreamed of, but better in ways we couldn’t conceive of and that didn’t seem important, but are incredibly important and rewarding.

We always have choices to make, are we living our own life and making happen what we want to happen or are we waiting for permission? Who is going to give us permission to do the things we want to do? Who will tell us it’s okay to write our book because? It’s okay to start that business, learn to paint, sing, dance, or play an instrument? Whatever it is we’ve longed to do, there comes a point where it is now or never.

I chastise myself all the time why didn’t I start blogging and publishing my writing back in …. I have a lot of years I can go back to. There was always a reason in my own mind that made sense. Where will I get the time? It isn’t about the time; it’s how we use the time. Daniel Steele had 7 children and has written 179 books. Obviously, it is possible to raise children and write at the same time.

We have seasons in our life and I may be happier being a new writer at my age than being an accomplished writer at my age. There is so much to look forward to, there is so much to accomplish instead of already having accomplished it. This may be the gift of being a late bloomer, finding a new passion, or finally getting to the passion we’ve always had.

I know that people only do what they know to do. Not what they say they know, not what they think they should know… People do only what they know how to do. So I have patience. I pray that people will have patience with themselves and learn more. Maya Angelou

Often times we are hard on ourselves because we aren’t… We aren’t someone else and we will never be someone else, we are us, we have gifts, we have things we can do, and we have what we have done. We need to be like flowers in the garden where we all bloom but we are not wishing we are the rose if we are the sunflower or the peony if we are the bluebell. What if we are not a flower, we may be the oak tree or the grass.

We can all be a blessing to someone. Can we love and encourage, inspire, and make someone’s life better? In our corner of the world can we do the best we can? We cannot all do great things, but can we all do things with great love?

Everyone has inside them a piece of good news. The good news is you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is. Anne Frank

Press on – nothing can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Perseverance and determination alone are omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. Garrison Keillor

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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The Power Of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness Paperback – Dec 26 2017

by Emily Esfahani-Smith  (Author)4.4 out of 5 stars 270 ratings

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Creativity and the fountain of youth. What if the fountain of youth is to be creative and tapping into this source will keep us young in heart and mind?

What if the fountain of youth is to be creative and tapping into this source will keep us young in heart and mind. Creativity and the fountain of youth.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Creativity is contagious, pass it on. Albert Einstein

What if creativity is the fountain of youth and we all have access to it? We choose to find ways to use creativity in our lives.

I was at the bookstore looking for a book for my son for his birthday. On a podcast, I had seen a book called The Practice by Seth Godin. When I looked at it I thought it was a better fit for me so I bought something else for my son.

Seth Godin has been writing a blog for twenty years. He has written nineteen bestselling books. He has been walking the walk of the practice. He has been making creativity, a practice, and putting it out into the world. On the podcast, he said, “Do you know why I’m putting out a blog post tomorrow? Because it’s Friday.”

He tells us we should be generous with our ideas, our art, and our creativity. He calls putting our work out into the world “Shipping the work.” It may take us a long time before we feel ready to “Ship the work.” It took me until I was fifty-five to hang my own paintings on my own walls. What was I afraid of? It took me until this year to publish the novel I’ve been writing since 2012.

I need to get back into the practice of painting. I’ve cut my blog down to two posts a week so I can write my second novel in the mornings. I’m working on learning Adobe Illustrator so I can finish a children’s book I’ve started. Time needs to be carved out for painting. Nothing gets done if we don’t take the time to do it. We don’t get better if we don’t continue to practice.

He tells us not to focus on the outcome. That is what we cannot control. It is like planning a picnic but we have to work with the weather. I remember when we were kids we used to go to my Uncle and Aunt’s place at the lake for picnics. We had many picnics inside roasting hotdogs in the fireplace and I remember some of those the best. We can let the rain ruin our day, or we can find a way to have fun anyway.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Sylvia Plath

Life is about choice and we have created our lives by the choices we have made. He suggests keeping our expenses down so we can afford to be creative. Has he looked at rent lately, or the price of buying a house? But, truthfully keeping our expenses in line is always the best solution because consumer debt is one of the big problems of our time. Debt is not a new problem, a widow was left with the prospect of her sons being sold into slavery in the bible because of her dead husband’s debts. That is when she was told to fill all of her vessels with oil from the small amount of oil she had, and she sold the oil to pay off her debts.

Not needing to live off the proceeds of my writing or art is freeing. Poverty is never something I’ve aspired to and it is a good position to be in to be able to do something for the love of it without having to depend on it for sustenance.

This was the advice given to the character Philip by his art instructor in “Of Human Bondage” by W. Somerset Maugham, to not pursue art as his calling if he wasn’t of independent means because money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make complete use of the other five.

We can find a way to make art, writing, quilting, dancing, singing, playing instruments, or any other artistic endeavor part of our life and earn a living at the same time. We don’t have to choose to only make a living or only be creative. Sing, dance, and learn something new. Life is an adventure if we make it so. We can learn new things and we can share what we learn with others. What if this is the secret of those who say they don’t feel old because the creativity they use in their lives keeps their mind and heart young?

A rock pile ceases to a rock pile the moment a single man contemplated, it bearing within him the image of a cathedral. Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. Stella Adler

There is a fountain of youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap into this source, you will truly have defeated age. Sophia Loren

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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The Practice: Shipping Creative Work Hardcover – Nov. 3 2020

by Seth Godin  (Author)

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)

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The price of a bargain. Beware the price of a bargain.

Beware the price of a bargain. The price of a bagain.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The bitterness of poor quality remains longs after the sweetness of low price is forgotten. Benjamin Franklin

A strange thing has happened two times in a row. The upper eyelid of my right eye became red and swollen and this time the left upper eyelid has become red and swollen. I think I’ve figured out what I’ve done two months in a row that has triggered this. I’m pretty sure it is an allergic reaction. I’m even pretty sure I know what has caused it. It is my frugality, I bought a product on sale instead of the product I usually buy, two months in a row.

No matter how cheap that product is, I will not be buying it. I didn’t realize what the difference was between the two products, and I assumed there wasn’t much of a difference. Now I do not know for sure that what I am blaming is the culprit. I could use it a third time and be more sure, but that seems like a really stupid idea so I will believe what I believe and not use that product again.

The only reason I put two and two together is I keep a food journal and had written about my swollen eye, and when it happened again I did some detective work to come up with my working theory. If I didn’t have the food journal and note symptoms that show up in my life I wouldn’t be connecting the dots. By keeping track of symptoms that show up I try to figure out what might have caused them.

Allergic reactions are no joke. Some people are lucky and their reactions are mild and not life-threatening. Some people are not lucky enough to have time to figure things out. If we get a warning like an allergic reaction we should heed it, and figure out how to manage without what caused the problem.

The offending ingredient I think is PPD which is an ingredient in hair color. The darker the hair color, the permanency of that hair color, and those that last for up to six weeks are the ones most likely to cause problems according to the research I am doing. We need to watch out for “Fade defying color,” if we have sensitivities. Lighter colors tend to cause fewer problems from what I am reading so I might be moving out of the “Browns” and into the “Blondes” for my hair color.

Don’t bargain shop for parachutes or plastic surgery. Unknown

The other option, the one that makes me shudder is to not color my hair at all. I will, I tell myself go natural at some point, but this is not that point. It can’t be that point. But, the truth is I would look better with a full head of grey hair than a swollen red eye and it doesn’t feel very comfortable either.

Hopefully, my choices are not grey or no allergy reactions. What I was doing was coloring my hair a nice brown and then putting in hi-lights to give blondish streaks.

I’ve colored my own hair for years. It wasn’t until my daughter was getting married, and urged me to get hi-lights that I had my color professionally done. When Covid hit I started doing my own root touch-up, my daughter stepped in and did foil hi-lights. We seemed like a dynamite team. Now, this allergic reaction showed up I’ll never look at hair color the same. Until we suffer our own allergic reaction to something we don’t understand what it is like. If I could just pay full price for the other hair color and have this go away but then I wouldn’t know an allergic reaction awaited me, and if I didn’t use the same product two consecutive months I wouldn’t have connected the dots.

In the end, I need to be grateful for hard-won knowledge about an allergy, the price of a bargain, and questioning what the difference is between products before assuming they are basically the same.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. Warren Buffet

A bargain is something you don’t need, at a price you can’t resist. Franklin Jones

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. Albert Einstein

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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The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization by [Gordon Laird]

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The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization Kindle Edition

by Gordon Laird  (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Seeking to understand others instead of seeking to be understood.

Seeking to be understood instead of seeking to understand others.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply. Stephen R. Covey

We have a problem with listening in our society it seems to me. We don’t understand people who think differently from ourselves because a lot of the time we don’t acknowledge they are thinking at all.

Sometimes instead of listening, I find myself just waiting until I can speak again. That isn’t really a conversation, it’s two monologues, and we get more entrenched in believing the merits of our side.

Do many of the answers to living in a civilized society lie in the middle ground? Where has the middle ground gone? Those trying to live in the middle seem to be straddling a chasm getting ever wider.

We can’t even agree on some basic things like when life starts, sex and gender, and if there might be some benefits to both shared values, beliefs, and multicultural ones. We don’t agree on the rules a great society is built on. We don’t agree on the merits of a good leader, or what makes someone a bad leader. We don’t agree on religion, or if there should even be religion.     

We can’t seem to have civil discussions because some people have deemed what the politically correct ideas to hold are, and even if we fall in line on what is politically correct in some areas, probably few of us fall in line with what everyone wants to call politically correct. The list of what we can’t say is growing ever longer and someone is waiting to catch us with a “Gotcha”.

How do we square those who feel the state intervenes too much in people’s lives and those who want more intervention?

Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking. Bernard M. Baruch

Don’t we notice when we buy a car or are looking at a car that the car we want is everywhere? What if we were looking for opportunities, would we see them everywhere? We have opportunities staring us in the face. Amazon would have published my book in 2012 when I first started writing it. It is only in 2020 that I put it out into the world. Mom got the first copy in 2016 and that wasn’t my first draft. What opportunities have I lost by waiting so long? The list of investments that could have been made over my lifetime but weren’t, is long. If I look over my life the string of opportunities I have not availed myself of is a long list. Am I the only one that hasn’t availed themselves of the opportunities that presented? If I had been a better listener and acted on advice I was given…

Have any of us seen someone else start the business we thought of, or doing the thing we were advised to do? Opportunities are all around us but are we seeing them? People are all around us who will share the way they see life if we’ll listen long enough for them to tell us, and not just be waiting for our turn to speak, or interrupting them as they speak.

We were given two ears and one mouth. I for one know I need to seek first to understand before seeking to be understood. It isn’t easy, but then isn’t looking for easy one of the problems we have in our life?

It takes a great man to be a good listener. Calvin Coolidge

There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing. G. K. Chesterton

It’s not at all hard to understand a person; it’s only hard to listen without bias. Criss Jami

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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Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding Paperback – Jan. 3 2018

by William R. Miller  (Author, Contributor)4.8 out of 5 stars 71 ratings

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Is gratitude our favorite attitude? Are we living in gratitude and grace?

Are we living in gratitude and grace? Is gratitude our favorite attitude?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves. Henry Ward Beecher

The cold winds of November are blowing today and my little dog gets back into the house as fast as her little legs will carry her. It is in these cold days going forward that we need to draw on the sunshine in our hearts to get us through.

We can spend our time recounting fun and happy times or we can spend our time worrying about things that haven’t happened and will likely not happen. We can spend our time going over slights and transgressions we feel people have made against us or we can forgive them. It is our choice to live in worry and fear or laughter and love.

We may worry over what happens that we cannot change and there are many things we could spend our time worrying about. But, what will all that worry get us? If we have things we need to deal with worry won’t deal with them, action and making the best of the choices available to us will get us through.

If we are blessed with a warm house to live in as the cold winds howl. If we have food and clean water, and our family safe beside us we have much to be grateful for. Are we like the squirrel, have we looked after our winter provisions? Are we like the migratory birds moving to a warmer clime for the winter? Or we would like to but circumstances may make us experience this cold winter where we are.

I was listening to an Indian Mystic Sadhguru he says he wanted to spread happiness throughout the world and as the host is impressed with the 500 million he has reached. The Mystic says, “Don’t laugh at my failure, I wanted to reach the whole world.”

If we are failing the way this Mystic is failing because our goal is so audacious that it was impossible to meet in our lifetime what a way to live. If we are trying to make the world better by giving our gifts to the world we are doing our part. We live in a society where everyone’s gifts paid and unpaid give us what we have. Farmers, teachers, engineers, lawyers, singers, dancers, sports players, sanitation workers, cooks, servers, politicians, police, health care, etc. all contribute their part to make our life better.

To me, forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past could have been any different than it was. Dr. Mary Pritchard

We may think our society should be organized better and maybe we will come up with better organizations and practices but what we have is a lot to be thankful for. When I go to the supermarket later today I am not worried the shelves will be empty. I am amazed at the array of choices available and it is no small thing that our supply chain works.

We may think things should be more perfect but what if someone came from a few hundred years ago and saw what choices we have available to us. Turning on a tap and getting potable water for cooking and flushing a toilet and not have to deal with our human waste ourselves.

How must cities have smelled before sewage and treatment plants were built? The first sewer system in the United States was built in the late 1850’s in Chicago and Brooklyn, and the first sewage treatment plant using chemical precipitation was built in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1890.

Do we appreciate the ingenuity that has gone into making our life work? Or do we spend our time lamenting over things not being quite as good as we think they should be? It is so easy to criticize and I find myself doing it a lot, but what if we thought instead that everyone is actually trying to do their best most of the time?

A society that works even if not perfectly is what everyone doing their best looks like. There will be mistakes and we don’t want to be the one that has to deal with someone else’s mistake but thinking they meant to hurt us or harm us may be worse for us. Can we give each other a little grace and offer understanding instead of judgment? When we see mistakes and oversights can we tell people privately instead of shouting from social media?

Memory… keeps gratitude fresh and… gratitude keeps faith fruitful. Dale Ralph Davis

The things we take for granted are dreams for many people. Unknown

When we bless God for mercies, we usually prolong them. When we bless God for miseries, we usually end them. Praise is the honey of life which a devout heart extracts from every bloom of providence and grace. C. H. Spurgeon

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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Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy Hardcover – Illustrated, Sept. 20 2016

by Sadhguru  (Author)4.7 out of 5 stars 5,962 ratings

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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020

by Belynda Wilson Thomas  (Author)5.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings