Posted on by BWThomas

Playing our game, meeting the challenges, chasing the dream, loving, and making the best of what is.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

In the game of life, we must play what is dealt to us, and the glory consists, not so much in winning, but in playing a poor hand well. Josh Billings

Our team plays an important game, and we are sure we’ve lost it early in the game. We wake up and our team is out of the playoffs, but the birds are still singing, newly planted flowers and vegetables look beautiful and vigorous. Our family is as healthy as it was yesterday, and life goes on.

We get caught up in the fortunes of the teams we root for. Watching them gives us a little excitement in our lives. For a few brief weeks, we dream this could be our year. The sports we watch on TV or the games we attend are not important games unless our children are playing, because we are just spectators in someone else’s game.

The important game is our game, the game of life. Too soon, our game will end, the opportunities, missed plays, wins, and losses will be over. Do we wish we’d played a better game, made better choices, taken a chance instead of playing it safe, or played it safe instead of taking a chance?

We are where we are, but it doesn’t mean we don’t still have choices. Are we in the first period of life, second, or third, and will we get a chance at overtime? I watched a heartwarming movie, “Nonna’s,” the other night. It’s about overcoming loss, following your heart, and taking a chance. It’s based on a true story about everyday people chasing a dream.

Every small business is someone’s dream of a better life. Some small businesses become big businesses, but they all start in someone’s mind first. Businesses come and go; some live long after their creator. This week, Canadian Tire bought the branding and intellectual property from the Hudson’s Bay Company. One iconic Canadian company will own the multicolored stripes motif, coat of arms, houseware brands Gluckstein and Distinctly Home, and the apparel line Hudson North.

Ultimately the way to win the game of life, is found in only one thing: Our ability to choose meaning in any life circumstance. Become the master of meaning and you master your life. Tony Robbins

Change is always coming, some of it we like and some we don’t, but we must accept the bitter with the sweet. How often do we wish things were different, but if we want something different in our lives, we must do something different? We’ll have to take a chance, get out of our comfort zone, try something we’ve never tried, or return to something we gave up on when life got in the way.

Life is about choices, some we’ll be proud of, some we’ll regret, and some will haunt us forever, but the choices we didn’t make haunt us as well. The things that coulda, woulda, and shoulda been, if only…

We might wish we’d stayed with something longer, or given up sooner. Maybe we wish we’d travelled more, taken the opportunity far away, or stayed close to family and loved ones. When we say yes to something, we are saying no to something else, and we have to be okay with that. Time spent doing something means it isn’t time spent doing something else. We can juggle a few things, and we have to choose what those things will be.

What would we choose if we knew we couldn’t fail? What would we like to do, but doesn’t seem worth the effort to make the changes needed to make it happen? What if we took the chance? Is a new adventure waiting if we get out of our comfort zone? Are we waiting for a push, a sign, or a cataclysmic event to make a change we want to make?

Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle; it is a game. Florence Scovel Shinn

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor. Sholom Aleichem

Life is a song – sing it. Life is a game – play it. Life is a challenge – meet it. Life is a dream – realize it. Life is a sacrifice – offer it. Life is love – enjoy it. Sal Baba

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

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

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave reviews 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

Appreciating uncertainty, embracing self-doubt, and moving forward with faith and courage.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Fear and self-doubt have always been the greatest enemies of human potential. Brian Tracy

 On Saturday, I gave a talk at Mississauga Writers Group on self-doubt. How often does self-doubt keep us from doing something we want to do? Does it also have us check over something before we do it? Is the flip side of self-doubt hubris, where we feel invincible and overconfident? Would being overconfident be better than being underconfident and doubting ourselves? Do both of them come with an upside and a downside?

We might envy the overconfident but also consider them arrogant. The world appears to be their oyster, but does it come with challenges?

What does confidence feel and look like? We might be confident in one area and struggle in other areas. Do we compare the worst of ourselves to the best of someone else? Do we see other people’s ambitions as more noble, worthy, and important than our own?

We are where we are; our decisions and circumstances have brought us here. Some things can be changed, and some things cannot, but what if accepting the reality of our lives, where we are, the constraints we have, and embracing what is possible is how to live a joyful and consequential life, no matter our age or stage.

Do we have gifts we could and should be using to better our lives and the lives of those around us? What would it look like if we made the best of every opportunity? Encouraged every person we meet, built bridges wherever we can, and forgive ourselves and others for being less than we feel we and they should be.

Life is a journey, and of course, if we’d known then what we know now, we’d have made different choices in some areas, but that might also lead to consequences we don’t like.

You’re busy doubting yourself while others are intimidated by your full potential. Unknown

We were told the consequences of many things in the truisms we grew up with. Things like, “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” We may look at someone who lived by that maxim all their lives and wonder how they are healthier, wealthier, and wiser than us. Who can say they were never told to “Live below their means,” or “Self-mastery is the road to freedom?”

Was it hubris that we didn’t listen to the sage advice we received, or chose which nuggets to follow? Is life simple, but not easy, and everyone has challenges to deal with?

What if wrestling with self-doubt is part of life, and every time we want to take a new path, we will struggle with it? What if courage and faith are what we need to go forward in life? It’s what we’ve always needed. We might have areas in our lives where courage and faith are easy, other areas where we find it hard, and it is the combination of everything we do and everything we think that builds our lives.

What if self-doubt and fear, if we harness them, can help us build a better life, and we need to go forward with faith and courage to make the best of what can be? Our life won’t look like someone else’s because it is ours. If we all wrote a book, it wouldn’t be the same book, even if the prompts we were given were the same. That is how life is: we can’t change the past, but we can turn the page and write a new chapter.

What would we like more of in the next chapter of our lives? What do we need to do to make it happen, and what do we need to give up, change, redirect, or embrace? If we have life, we have choices, and our choices today will impact our tomorrows.

What choices do we have before us, what would we like to be, have, or do?

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. Unknown

When self-doubt creeps in, don’t ignore it – address it. Unknown

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. William Shakespeare

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

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

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those who leave reviews 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

Motherhood and the hand that rocks the cradle.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Raising a child is like planting a seed and watching it grow into a beautiful flower. Lisa Wingate

It’s been a family weekend. Our daughter attended a bachelorette party, and we looked after our six-month-old breastfed granddaughter. With a good supply of breast milk, bottles, and a hungry baby, we had a wonderful time. She slept like a baby, getting up every few hours to feed, and I felt like I was managing okay, but it was hard to get up this morning.

Raising children is a big job, and we forget how big it was when it is behind us. Motherhood is romanticized; it is a lot of work, but it is one of the most fulfilling roles we get in life. I’m sure it is romanticized because we become so much more when we become mothers than when our only concern was our interests. So much of life is taken up with caring, feeding, and providing for children that we lose connection with people who aren’t parents or want to be parents.

Motherhood is not the power-wielding career some women crave, but when it was said, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” It wasn’t said in jest; the families we are born into color our view of the world, the possibilities we see for our lives, and the dreams for our future.

Fathers and mothers have dreams for their children; they mold and shape them in the early years. Some children rebel, some attain a parent’s dream without realizing their own, some have so many choices but never choose a direction. Sometimes, going with the flow puts people on paths they didn’t know they could choose.

Life works in mysterious ways, and we never know if things we think are bad will work out for good, or things we think are good will end up bad. We have to have faith to deal with what shows up in our lives, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need not be too harsh with those who need a helping hand because some day we or someone we love may need one.

I wrestle with what help looks like, when we elevate, and when we enable. Are we building a strong, resilient society, or a society that only works for a lucky few?

Life isn’t fair, it will never be fair, and maybe part of what we need to embrace is who we are with our gifts, vulnerabilities, and potential. I wonder if we spend so much time wishing we had other gifts, we don’t use the potential we do have. Are we like roses wishing we were dahlias, or rabbits who would rather be the hawk?

The most precious jewels you’ll ever have around your neck are the arms of your children. Cardinal Mermillod

I think of Mom and Dad, who didn’t have the benefits society offered many, because their parents moved north to homesteads in a new area where schools would eventually be built. Dad often said, “You got a good education.” Looking back at the opportunities available, I wonder why I didn’t do more with what was offered.

We sat around the table last night, and my husband mentioned a detached house we looked at years ago for $110,000.00. We thought Wow, how could we afford that? A few years later, we bought a condo and paid much more. Does anyone make all the right decisions? When we look back on our lives, we had opportunities and choices; we took one road, but we will never know where the other road might have taken us.

How many people look back over their lives and think they should have made different choices? Should I have married him or her? Should we have had more children and started sooner or later? Should we have started a business, or stayed with the good job that would have given us a pension?

Life is about choices, and our choices make us. We become parents, or we don’t, and sometimes it’s a choice, but other times circumstance. Our big goal may elude us, or when we get it feels like an empty victory. We may reach the pinnacle of success in one area of our lives, but fail in others.

If we go forward with a good attitude and gratitude for what we have, and teach our children to be grateful for what they have, as they look for opportunities to contribute to society. I think we’ve succeeded as parents.

As Mother’s Day approaches, many of us give thanks for a mother we can no longer talk to. We hold her memory in our hearts; we appreciate what she taught us, her endless love and support. Even if we didn’t feel endlessly supported and loved, she gave us life and the opportunity to grow and develop into who we are and make the best of this life. If we haven’t made the best of it yet, there might be time to make some choices and make the best of what is still to come.

A salute to mothers who did the best they could. We might not understand the challenges they faced, the choices they felt compelled to make, or the sacrifices made so we would benefit.

Thanks, Mom, for all you were, and all you did.

Parenting is the easiest thing in the world to have an opinion about, but the hardest thing in the world to do. Matt Walsh

The best kind of parent you can be is to lead by example. Drew Barrymore

The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family. Mother Teresa

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it and return to read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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

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