Posted on by BWThomas

Make a choice; make a change, the compound effect works in our lives.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

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

The other day, I listened to Mel Robbins talking about rating how we think we are doing in different areas of our lives and then figuring out what we could do to raise our rating a point or two.

Where do we think our health and fitness rates on a scale of one to ten? Are we averagely healthy and fit for our age? That puts us at a five, so what could we do to raise it to a six or a seven? What action could we do every day or week that would add to our health and fitness and start to move our rating by a point or two? If we went for a walk once a week, that’s fifty-two walks a year, and most of us wouldn’t have to change our lives drastically to do it.

We might think we need to join a gym to get in shape, but what if we started doing morning or evening exercises? Gym memberships are expensive, and if we haven’t figured out how to fit exercise into our already busy lives, fitting the gym in might be difficult. What if we started smaller than a gym membership? What if we started with a yoga mat, stretches, pushups, and plank?

If we want to bring creativity into our lives, could we do something creative once a week? Would we like to write, paint, draw, dance, knit, crochet, sew, quilt, or build something? Could we integrate creativity into our lives once a week?

Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Unknown

Would joining a group like Toastmasters elevate our lives? Becoming a better public speaker gives us confidence that will flow into other areas of our lives and might become the catalyst for the change we seek. Most Toastmasters groups meet once a week with a low yearly fee, and we can check out various groups by attending three meetings for free.

Are we reading books, and would we like to read more? Is there a book we would like to be able to say, I’ve read that? Maybe it is the bible or other religious books full of wisdom. There are many templates for reading the bible in a year. What if we decided to read a great book in a year, but it took us two or even five years to get through it from end to end? Would that be a failure, or would it elevate our lives?

Small changes create results if we build on those changes over time. Saving small amounts of money and investing will eventually lead to the compound effect, and small changes in our lives do as well.

Small daily decisions shape our destiny, and those decisions lead us to a better life or a worse one. The compound effect is working in our lives, and small changes throughout our lives can change the trajectory we are heading for. A little exercise every day or every week will pay dividends. Reading every day or every week will pay dividends. Bringing creativity into our lives will pay dividends. What if we make a small positive change in our relationships, and what if we hug those we love more often, smile at them, thank them for doing something for us, or do something for them?

Small changes over time will lead to results. What if we implement small changes in every area of our lives and create the life of our dreams? What if this is our little experiment to see how great we can make the life we have, our relationships, health, wealth, and personal growth?

It’s never the big things… it’s all the little changes you can make in your life that make the difference. Dean Graziosi

Don’t try to overhaul your life overnight. Instead, focus on making one small change at a time. Over time, those small changes will add up to big transformation. Don’t give up! Unknown

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine. John Maxwell

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

Posted on by BWThomas

Can crisis be a powerful addiction; does it make us feel powerful to be part of a crisis?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Successful people recognize crisis as a time for change – from lesser to greater, smaller to bigger. Edwin Louis Cole

How many of you are hearing the phrase, “Modern women” thrown out disparagingly, mostly by men, but also by women? Young women with rights and freedoms are making choices and those choices impact society.

Some believe if women had stayed out of the workforce it wouldn’t take three incomes to purchase a home. Others believe if the women weren’t more educated than the men they wouldn’t have trouble finding a suitable husband.

My son’s conversations make me think, and that’s a good thing, but YouTubers complaining about modern women make me think they are bitter and twisted because women with choices don’t have to choose them.

Choice doesn’t always give us a better life, and too much choice might make us take so long to choose, the choices we thought we had are no longer available to us. This I think is the conundrum young women face, many have so much attention when they are young they revel in that attention until it passes them by, and the prospects for a husband become slim to none.

How many materially successful and highly educated women with no husband and no children wish they weren’t so highly educated or materially successful, and had a couple of children and grandchildren to love?

My son mentioned last night that watching me with my grandson makes him think that only having two children lessoned the joy I could have had in my life, as my husband and I put other things ahead of having a big family. He also said he doesn’t believe with all that feminism has brought to my life, it isn’t better than my great-grandmother’s. He might be right, what has made my life better is the healthcare I received, so I didn’t die during childbirth.

A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry. It gives us a chance, an opportunity, to choose well or to choose badly. Desmond Tutu

So much of a woman’s life is tied up in marriage and children, and a good husband has given women over the ages a good life. Two good people getting together and making the best of what there was has made our society what it is. One of the things feminism has done is make it so women can afford to flirt and cavort with men who do not have their best interests at heart, that doesn’t lead to a better life, it just means they don’t pay as dearly for bad choices. But someone always pays the price when there is a price to be paid. Part of the lament about “Modern women” is who is paying the price.

We went from handwringing about overpopulation, and now we lament about the birth rate. Do we need a crisis to be happy? A crisis gives us something to focus on, rally the troops, and feel important. What if we are making big things out of ebbs and flows, and in the fullness of time when now becomes history, and problems we think are big problems hardly cause thought at all, we will have other crises to contemplate – maybe real ones, the ones we won’t see coming.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own. Charles De Gaulle

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

Every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom. Martin Luther King Jr.

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

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

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Without labor nothing prospers. Sophocles

The world belongs to the energetic. Emerson

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

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

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

Thank you to everyone who reads my books, and a special thank you to everyone who leaves a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Posted on by BWThomas

What change can we make that will pay dividends for the rest of our lives?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction. Germany Kent

How are we doing so far on the changes we want to make? Have we asked ourselves what we want to stop doing, start, or keep doing this year? Sometimes we think we need radical change but small tweaks here and there can lead to big changes over time.

What if one of the reasons we don’t get the results we want is we want to change too much when our life can only handle small changes? Small changes lead to big changes over time. Maybe trying to change too many things at once is overwhelming; do we need to keep doing what we are doing because we’ve already made changes that put us in the direction of our dreams?

Is it time to enjoy more, relax more, and sleep more, instead of trying to do more? Is this a year of smelling the roses we’ve planted? Enjoying our families, getting together with friends, laughing, and enjoying life more? Is this a year of starting a business, starting a family, and bringing more into our lives, or a year of less business, and more reflection on what is good in our lives? We are all somewhere on the road of life, and at different times our life calls out for different things, and a good life is when we heed the call.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. George Bernard Shaw

Some people are having a dry January, passing on alcohol for the month. Getting back into a fitness routine or starting one might be our goal. Whatever change we want to make January is a good time to start. We might be thinking New Year, New Me, but will we still be thinking that in March, or by then will we be back to old ways, kicking ourselves for our lack of willpower?

How can we set ourselves up for success to make and keep making the change we want in our lives? Can we go to the gym on our way to or from work? When we do something can that be the trigger for the new thing we want to do in our lives? Do we want to change too many things and we need to pick one, and implement that into our lives before trying to change something else? Is there a change we can make that will pay dividends for the rest of our lives? If we know what it is can we start doing it? If we don’t know what that change is, maybe that is the question we must ask ourselves.

If you’re serious about changing your life, you’ll find a way. If you’re not, you’ll find an excuse. Jen Sincero

Change your thoughts and you change your world. Norman Vincent Peale

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings. Kakuzo Okakura

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

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

Thank you to 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

Habits are the secret to success; we must create the habits that create the life we want.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine. John C. Maxwell

In Tim Horton’s the other day, I overheard a man say, “I used to weigh three hundred pounds. I glanced at the man talking; he looked well under two hundred pounds. The only motivation that works for the long term is self-motivation. We can persuade and be cajoled for short periods but to set and meet goals we have to be self-motivated.

It is the time to set and work on our goals for the New Year, but New Year’s resolutions have a bad rap. Those who regularly go to the gym see new faces and some of them become old faces at the gym, but many do not, they go for a few weeks, or even a few months, but eventually quit working out. The people who go to the gym for years build a fitness habit.

It doesn’t matter what we set out to do, we will feel good about our goal in the beginning but eventually, self-motivation will be what keeps us going. If we order our life so our goals become priorities and habits it will be easier but we will have to be vigilant, or we may find it is weeks, months, or years since we…

I’m reading the book, “Life by Design” by Tom Ferry. The basic principle behind living by design: The right attitude + the right action + the right structure = an extraordinary life. Sounds simple and easy but we know if it was so easy we’d all be doing it, and he wouldn’t have anyone to sell his book to.

Pick any subject and a guru is telling us how to be rich, successful, slim, fit, happy, fulfilled, grateful, creative, and the list goes on. These gurus make money because we can’t make the formula fit every area of our lives, many of us are looking for an easy way to fix things we want to fix, but if we manage to fix them we will have to make a fundamental change in our lives, and we will find if we get one area of our lives under control we will have other areas crying out for attention.

All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. James Clear

No matter how well we do in life our lives will require maintenance. How many stories do we hear about people who are successful in one area but a failure in another because they put all their time into making that part of their life a success? They become rich but their marriage falls apart, their health suffers, or their children feel neglected. We see people at the gym whose physique is amazing and we might ask ourselves how the rest of their life is. The amount of time spent creating that physique might not leave a lot of time to excel in other areas.

To live an amazing life we need to manage and maintain all areas of our lives, and the best lives might not be as amazing and extraordinarily successful in one area, but having a measure of success in all areas leads to an extraordinary life.

We choose where we put our time and attention, and those decisions add up to the life we have. If we want something in our lives to be different we will have to make some different choices, create different habits, and persevere over time. No one else can do for us the things we must do for ourselves. How can we rearrange our lives to make room for the change we want to make?  

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

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

In a nutshell, your health, wealth, happiness, fitness, and success depend on your habits. Joanna Jast

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

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

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

Posted on by BWThomas

Celebrate the special moments in life, and maybe we’ll find more to celebrate.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life should not only be lived, it should be celebrated. Osho

Happy New Year! Here we are at the beginning of 2024, what changes do we want to make, what challenges do we want to face, and what do we want to celebrate? Is 2024 the beginning of a new phase in our lives? For some, this is the year they will get married, become parents and grandparents, start a business, retire, or go on the trip of a lifetime, but the world fell apart for some, and we might be standing on the sidelines wishing we could help.

As we reflect on 2023, did we reach the goals we set? Are we better off in 2024 because of things we did in 2023, and did decisions that need to be made get made, or did we put them off? Did we mend relationships that need mending? Have we reached the point where we can agree to disagree, let bygones be bygones, and take off the heavy burden we’ve been carrying?

If we threw a party for everyone we love, would they all come, or do some of them not talk to each other, and won’t be there if someone else is? As we start planning Mom’s hundredth-year celebration, she says, “There are a lot of ifs.” One of them, will everyone put aside their differences so Mom can have all her children together in one place?

One hundred years of life, we aren’t celebrating Mom’s birthday because not everyone in the family celebrates birthdays. We aren’t celebrating it on her birthday in November. Instead, we’ve chosen the 24th of August because a summer celebration works best when we are spread all over Canada and expect some to attend from the U.S.

Life is too short not to celebrate nice moments. Jurgen Klopp

Life is what we make it, but we have to work with how the world turns, and we always live in uncertain times even when we aren’t aware of the uncertainty. Living as if today is all there is, and there might be a 100th celebration in our future is a challenge, but both of those are true for some of us, we don’t know which it will be for us, and so we must make the best of where we are now, and build a future so we can make the best of that too.

Is it possible to live a life of no regrets, I doubt it, but can we live a life of few regrets? Don’t we all regret not getting into crypto when it was cheap? Maybe it still is cheap, but we’ll only know looking back.

Maybe it is always the best of times with the worst of times around the corner or the worst of times with the best of times up ahead, and we have to get through one to get to the next phase. Change is coming, and we have to ride the ups and downs of life and make the best of what we have where we are.

Maybe, if we knew what the future would bring it would destroy what peace and hope we have because now is what we have, and now is where we can make the changes we need to make. Now is when we can enjoy the wonderful moments we might look back on and think, if only I’d known, I would have enjoyed more, laughed more, celebrated more who we were and what we had.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor. Eleanor Roosevelt

We were together. I forget the rest. Walt Whitman

How short and fragile is this life! Keep reminding yourself especially with all that’s going around today. Take nothing and no one for granted. Appreciate everything, do you best under any given situation. Don’t give up and keep going. Most importantly, keep peace in your soul. Mufti Menk

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

To subscribe, comment, or see 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.