Tag Archives: purpose

Blogroll, choices, Enlightenment, Expectation, Gratitude, Growing, Healing, journey, Lessons, life, mindfulness, self help

Life Is Tough!

Let’s be real honest: Sometimes life is tough, I mean it’s just plain hard. I mean there are days that we say to ourselves: “This is just not fair!” You know the kind of day I’m talking about. The one where you don’t want to get out of bed or if you did make it out, you’re thinking to yourself you should go right back. Trust me, I’ve had more than my fair share of those days and every now and then, they still try to creep up on me. It is important to realize that some days are going to be good and easy, and some days are going to be bad and hard, but a day is just a day and when you finish this one, there is another one coming.

Life has a way of making us focus on the bad and it is true that what we usually tend to focus on, we often get more of. I have discovered in my own life and living that a bad day does not have to mean a bad life. In fact, I am learning that some of life’s greatest lessons are learned in and through the bad stuff, so if I can just learn whatever the bad is trying to teach me, then I can grow on beyond it.

When I am having one of those bad days, I try to ask myself as soon as possible: “What needs to be fixed?” If there is something that can be fixed, then I want to fix it and not waller around in misery. When I find myself in the “bad place”, I ask myself: “It there a crisis that can be prevented?”, and if not, then why am I wasting my time worrying about it? Another self question that helps me fix my perspective is: “What new thing do I need to make life better?” In other words: Is their a new attitude that I need to adopt, a new belief I need to grab hold of or a new perspective that I’ve never considered before???

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” -Philippians 4:4-7

I’ve discovered in living through just enough bad days that just as easily as our focus can be shifted from the positive to the negative, it can be shifted back from the negative to the positive. We’ve got the power. When life moves us from the positive to the negative, this shifted focus automatically moves us out of gratitude and into worry! Once worry takes over, we have a battle on our hands to not keep digging the hole deeper. It’s just part of life that there are going to be good days and bad days. The secret is to live and learn from them and not get stuck in the bad days and empower them to become weeks, months and possible even years.

Here are a few tips to grow through the bad to the good and get the most out of all that God has for you:

1.) Embrace The Experience!

Whatever flows to you has a purpose and the sooner you discover and embrace it’s purpose, the sooner it and you can move onto something else and something better. We cannot always avoid the negative, so sometimes we have to embrace it and get from it whatever it came to teach us.

2.) Deal With Reality!

Often, we think if we pretend everything is okay, then it will be, but when we eventually get back to reality, problems that we have not dealt with and worked through are still there and have often grown in size and complexity. If you are going through a bad time, then be honest and figure out what and why, and deal with it. The sooner you go through the process, the sooner the process will accomplish what it is there to do and you can move on to bigger and better.

3.) Do Your Part!

I’ve discovered through the years that most all of my bad days where in some way influenced by me and my attitudes and thoughts. When I started to accept responsibility for my life and began to hold myself accountable for making better choices and decisions, my life began to change. It was not that I did not have bad days, but the days became shorter and fewer.

4.) Count Your Blessings!

If you know me, then you know my belief in the power of gratitude. When my girls were little and would get ungrateful attitudes, I would have them go to their room and make a gratitude list. Taking the time to thank about all of the blessings we have in our life is often one of the quickest ways to shift our focus from the negative to the positive.

5.) Live, Learn, Laugh And Love!

This life is God’s gift to us and what we do with it is our gift to God. Live – It’s what you were created for. Learn – It’s one of God’s greatest gifts to help us become, which is really living. Laugh – Life really is funny and laughter is fun. Love – God is love and He created us in love to love. When we receive His love and share His love, it creates a powerful flow of the stuff of God flowing to and through us and this is what our existence is all about…

Life is tough, but so are you. You’ve got this!

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Blogroll, change, Creativity, Enlightenment, Growing, life

Changing Your Change!

So I’m on the road today and I really have not had a chance to sit down and write anything on the blog, but I have a very unofficial goal of trying to post something everyday, so I figured I would pull out my phone and see if I had a little something in my heart I could pump out.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I spent the whole first half of my life trying to change myself in an attempt to live up to what I thought was everyone else’s expectations. The problem with trying to change ourselves, is that it will almost always leave us disappointed, because there is always going some way, shape or form that the world uses to try and convince us that we need to change ourselves.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” -James 1:17

The reality is that you are who you are and trying to change who you are will leave you disappointed and frustrated every time. A better way of doing life and working for meaningful change is to change your actions and reactions. When we work to change our actions and reactions, a more authentic version of who we really are begins to show up.

If you stop and think about it, I’m sure you can identify at least three actions that you need to change. You know these action are destructive and costing you more than you want to pay. When we talk about needing to change who we are, we are really distracting ourselves from giving attention to the actions and reactions that need to change in our life and living.

Identify your three actions to change, make a plan on how you will do it and get to work. The changing of your actions will not necessarily change you, but it will allow the real you to emerge and you and others will find that the real you is a true blessing and gift to this world…

Blogroll, faith, Growing, life, mindfulness, peace

Enjoy The Game!

If life were a football game, then I would guess I am some where between half-time and third quarter. It’s hard to believe that the first half of my life is over with, gone and cannot be relived, but it is and I have to say: I have learned much and realize more clearly than ever before that there is still so much left for me to learn.

There is a lot that we can understand about life, but then there is also a lot that is a mystery. There are some things we are supposed to figure out and learn from and other things that we just need to allow to unfold at their own pace and pleasure.

I like the idea of just allowing things to unfold, because it takes a lot of self imposed pressure off. I don’t have to try so hard to make things work, I just need to get out of the way, enjoy the journey, watch and learn as life does it’s thing.

Not everything is about toil and hard work, sometimes it’s about working smarter, not harder. Who says we have to understand everything? Why do we feel like we have to explain everything away? Why can’t we just be content with saying: “I don’t know???”

Live life long enough and your expectations will be shattered and you will discover that it everything is still going to be okay, because our expectations are often very unreal anyway. We would do well to practice the art of “ALLOWING”. Allow life to be what life is going to be. Stop trying to manipulate, calculate and subjugate life into what you think it should be and simply learn to enjoy allowing life to be whatever it is going to be.

Learn the joy of sitting back and observing life and it’s beauty as it unfolds like a flower revealing the secrets it has hidden away some where deep inside of itself. Shut up, judge less and listen, really listen and you will be amazed at how your mind will open up and allow your heart to be touched by the mystery of life and living…