Tag Archives: Health

Speak Kind Words To Your Sweetheart

Posted in Life, Love, Marriage, Psychology, relationships, Romace, Spiritual by

Love is like a gardenWords can build your sweetheart up or tear them down so it seems that this saying most that most of us grew up hearing from our parents and school teachers was right,” If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Isn’t it amazing how a simply statement like that is so true?

Even small children learn that language is a very powerful instrument and what they utter gets results. When a baby says, Da, Da  or Ma, Ma for the first that little baby receives some awesome responses and that experience becomes forever ingrained in their parents hearts.

Statements like “You’re Brilliant” or “I Just Love The Way Your Mind Works” and this one, “You Are So Intelligent” spoken to your sweetheart can over time change how your sweetheart sees themselves. If your sweetheart was endlessly yelled at or told they were stupid or maybe they were overly criticized as a child they may not know just how brilliant they are and just how much you love and adore them.

It’s never to late to start telling your sweetheart just how wonderful they are and how much they mean to you. After all you’re no dummy and you have chosen them to be your sweetie . . .  so that right there makes them pretty awesome. Doesn’t it?

The more you tell them in all sincerity something  inside of them will start to shift and they will begin to believe you and in them selves and that they aren’t stupid. The more you speak kind and true words into them the more they will become able to believe you and in them selves. You will start to notice that other people will start saying similar things to them and in time the words will change entirely how your sweetheart feels about themselves.

Stop and celebrate your sweethearts intuitive genius and the extraordinary functions of their minds after all they were smart enough to choose to love you that choice right there makes them genius. Doesn’t it? One form of emotional healing comes from the precise use of language and words that you speak to your sweetheart and words that they speak to you. What you say, and what you hear them say, has the power to sculpt how you love and respond to your sweetheart.

Consider the words you utter to your sweetheart as words of great gifts of love and in the midst, marshal this powerful influence and use it to bring life, encouragement, and healing to the one you most adore. Negative words may have shaped your sweethearts early consciousness and their perception of themselves but you see the opposite in them. They may see themselves as, “Ugly” and you see them as,” Beautiful” don’t just tell them one or two times or when your feeling amours tell them often.

Remember silence is like a vacuüm, drawing in all thoughts that go by, so protect your sweethearts ears and be aware what your words imply. Choose your words carefully; think about what you say. Don’t fill the void with just anything, squawking like a jay. Make sure your emotions aren’t trapped elsewhere. Give what you say, meaning; speak and act with care. Then love will sound like a trumpet and to your words impart the clarity of romance as you speak to your sweetheart.

Ten Big Things To Remeber During The Ups and Downs Of Life . . .

Posted in Changing Habits, Dreams, friendships, Goals, Life, Love, Psychology, Quotes, relationships by

be-yourself-When life puts a mountain in your way don’t forget you’ve faced mountains before. Don’t be afraid. You’re strong. Just start climbing. Imagine yourself reaching your goal. Changing your attitude can free you or keep you bound. You have what it takes . You have your spirit, mind and body. You have wisdom to know how to compensate. Cry is you want. Kick and scream. It’s okay. Get it out of your system then check your worries at the gate. Remember  . . . it’s just another mountain. You’ve climbed mountains before, and you will climb this one. You can do it. Absolutely!

Ten Things to Remember During The Ups and Downs After Calling Your Best Friend . . .

  1. Your life is a gift to you. Appreciate this gift with all your heart.
  2. Know that God is always with you. Pray to Him often, Listen to His guidance, and don’t forget to thank Him for your blessings.
  3. Respect yourself and make wise choices about your life.
  4. A balanced life is based on give and take. Give joyfully out of your own need, and you will draw whatever you need to you.
  5. You’re thoughts, words, and actions paint the total picture of who you are. Be good as your word, and be good.
  6. Treat others as you want to be treated, no matter how they’ve treated you . . .
  7. Don’t judge others. Don’t try to change others especially your sister or your best friend; it won’t work. You’ll have enough trouble changing yourself.
  8. When you’re down, get up and try again. Whatever you’re going through will look different on another day.
  9. If you wrong someone, ask forgiveness, and when someone wrongs you, be quick to forgive.
  10. Choose to love others, for when you show love, you are making a positive difference and don’t forget to call your best friend.

I hope you will look at all your good qualities and realize how important you are to those who love you. Start reflecting on your own attitudes, your accomplishments, and all the things that make you who you are. I know you will find ways to make the difficult times easier, your cares lighter, and the days brighter. I pray that revelations and secrets will unfold for you to make a difference as you tap into that source of strength I know is within you, that place where hope and courage lives  and new dreams are born.  I hope you will connect with the kind of faith that helps you to reach your desired goals.

~Granny In Training~

Ways To Tame The Frenzy

Posted in Brain Study, Getting Organized, Life, Psychology, Women, Working Women by

Organize your mind organize your life and train your brain to get more done in less time. Does this sound to good to be true? Have you ever lost your keys, missed an appointment, or been distracted by a frivolous email?

 The key to a less hectic, less stressful life is not in simply organizing your desk, but organizing your mind. The latest neuroscience research studies at Harvard Medical School shows that our brain’s have an extraordinary built-in system of organization that translates the science into solutions.

 You can learn how to use the innate organizational power of your brain to make your life less stressful, more productive and rewarding. According to their findings you can regain control of your frenzy, embrace effective uni-tasking, fluidly shift from one task to another and use your creativity to connect the dots.

How organized are you? 

  A. Very organized. My desk is neat, I never miss an appointment or a deadline, my friends are amazed, my co-workers are jealous and boss loves me.

B. Moderately organized. I manage to stay on top of things pretty well, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed, not sure wha to do first, and I must admit that I’m a little jealous of my colleagues and my boss who seem more organized.

C. Completely disorganized. In fact, I’ll be lucky if I can remember where I parked my car. That’s assuming I  don’t get a text or a phone call in the next two minutes, which will completely throw me off and … what was the question again?

If you answered A, B or C, you will glade to know that there are amazing new insights gleaned about the way our brain works to organize our thoughts, actions, and emotions, through high-tech brain scans, or neuroimaging, we can now “see” the response of the brain to various situations. Affiliates of Havard Medical School have helped tens of thousands of clients through important and positive changes in their health, work and personal lives.

  Subjects in the Harvard study were shown a series of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral pictures while they were attempting the difficult task of keeping in check their emotional reactions. Through the use of high-tech imaging or neuroimageing, researches were able to observe the “thinking” regions of the subjects’ brains(including areas called the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex) managing the “emotion“generating parts of the brain.

It’s an intriguing new study that sheds light into the brain’s own built-in system of organization and regulation-one  that strives for order, one that can “tamp down”(suppress) our emotions when necessary. Here’s the most exciting part the features in the brain’s magnificent self-regulation system come  “preloaded” in every functioning human mind; these features can be accessed, initialized and used to allow you to become better organized and to feel more on top of things. You just have to know how to do it.

Six Tips For Organizing Your Brain and Taming The Frenzy

1. Tame the Frenzy: Organized, efficient people who are able to acknowledge and manage their emotions. Unlike many who let their emotions get the better of them, these folks have the ability to put the frustrations and anger aside, almost literally, and get down to focused work. The sooner the emotional frenzy welling within you is tamed, the sooner the work is done and the better you feel.

2. Sustain Attention: Sustained focus or attention is a fundamental building block of organization, You need to be able to maintain your focus and successfully ignore the many distractions around you, in order to plan and coördinate behaviors, to be organized and to accomplish something.

3. Apply the Brakes: The organized brain must be able to inhibit or stop an action or a thought, just as surely as a good pair of brakes brings your car to a halt at a stoplight or when someone cuts suddenly into your lane. people who don’t do this well will continue to act or think in a certain way despite information to the contrary.

4. Mold information: Your brain has the remarkable ability to hold information it has focused upon, analyze it, process it and use it to guide a future behavior, even after the information is completely out of visual sight. It is capitalizing on working memory, a kind of mental workspace.

5. Shift Sets: The organized brain is ever ready for the news flash; the timely opportunity or last-minute change in plans. You need to be focused but also able to process and with the relative importance of competing stimuli and to be flexible, nimble and ready to move from one task to another, form one thought to another. This cognitive flexibility and adaptability is known as set shifting.

6. Connect the Dots: The organized and efficient individual pulls together the things we’ve already talked about; the ability to quiet the inner frenzy, to develop consistent and sustained focus, to develop cognitive control, to flexibly adapt to new stimuli and to mold information. The organized and efficient individual synthesizes these qualities-much as the various part of the brain are brought together to perform task or help solve problems and brings these abilities to bear on the problem or opportunity at hand.

When you organize your mind you organize your Life making it possible to stay mindful of your self-care priorities while navigating the challenging stresses of everyday life this can be helpful to any one who wants to tame their frenzy.

A Positive Attitude Changes Everything

Posted in Life, relationships by

Although happiness and life satisfaction are relatively new areas of psychology studies. A current research suggests that there is more to being happy in life than external objects like cars, luxury homes, and all the must-have gadgets money can buy. The results agree with the nine requisites that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, eighteenth century playwright wrote of.

First was health, in order to make work a pleasure and then came wealth to support one’s needs. Other factors on his list included strength to deal with difficulty, grace to confess and abandon sin, patience, charity, love and hope. What does it take for you to feel that things are going well and that you are flouring?  How happy are you? Answer the questions in this fun, short quiz to discover your level of happiness and how contentment you are with your life.

1. How satisfied are you with your personal relationships (that is, with family, friends, and spouse or significant other)? A. Very satisfied with my personal relationships. B. I am neither satisfied nor dissatisfied but feel fortunate to have them. C. I am dissatisfied.

2. If you could change your life in any way you wanted, how much of it would you change? A. I am happy with my life and the choices I’ve made, B. I would change several things if I saw that certain areas would work better once I’d made improvements. C. I would change a lot; nothing in my life seems to be working.

3. Thinking about the level of stress in your life, how would you rate the level of stress you feel? A. Low; not much stresses me out. B. Medium; the stressors in my life are not constant but ebb and flow. C. High; most of the time it seems tha my life is driven by high drama and unrelenting stress.

4. Comparing your life to that of most other people, how would you describe yours? A. I am extremely fortunate. B. I am somewhat fortunate. C. My life is the pits.

5. How much would you change your physical appearance if you had no monetary or other restrictions? A. Nothing: I am content with the way I look. B. A little nip here and a tuck there could make a vast improvement. C. I’d change my whole appearance, get the works.

6. How happy or satisfied are you in your choice of job or career? A. I am extremely satisfied with my choice for my life’s work. B. I am somewhat satisfied, but I might be tempted to switch jobs in the future. C. I hate my job, and it’s a drag having to show up for work every day.

7. When you think about all the various aspects of your life, how would you rate your satisfaction with your life in general? A. I am highly satisfied with my life. B. I am moderately satisfied with my life but planning to make a few small changes to improve it. C. I am totally dissatisfied with my life; it sucks.

8. Rate how difficult or easy it is for you to achieve personal goals.  A.  I frequently set goals, stay focused and finish what I start: My goals are usually easy to reach. B. I sometimes set goals and although many are challenging I strive to attain them. C. I resist setting goals since I never seem to attain them.

9. Comparing your life to that of most other people, in general how do you feel about yours? A. I feel extremely fortunate. B. I feel somewhat fortunate. C. I feel dissatisfied with my life and can’t understand why nothing ever seems to go my way.

10. Imagine your ideal life. How close do you feel you are having your ideal? A. I am living life to the fullest and enjoying every minute of it, so I’d say that I’m close to having the perfect life. B. I’m still tweaking with areas of my life. Since there’s always room for improvement, I’d say I am somewhat close to having my ideal life. C. My life at present is not close at all to what I’d like my ideal life to be.

Reasons to learn how to take the positive path to happiness

 Becoming an optimist sees the miraculous and the extraordinary existing alongside the ordinary in their daily life and is frequently pushing themselves outside the boundaries of their comfort zones in order to have personal growth, spiritual renewal, and happiness.

If you want to find happiness and add years to your life choose positive thoughts over negative ones, you are more likely to develop an optimistic outlook on life. According to happiness researchers such as Martin E.P. Seligmann, director of the Positive psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and Barbara Fredrickson, PhD,  professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,  positive people generally have higher levels of optimism and life satisfaction and live longer.

 In a BBC News report, Dr. Selligman was quoted as saying that he believed that “we” have compelling evidence that optimists and pessimists will differ markedly in how long they live and Dr. Fredrickson has counseled that changing your mind-set can change your body chemistry. She has stated that positive feelings literally can open the heart and mind. And there’s more good news even if you aren’t normally a happy person, thinking happy thoughts is a skill that can be learned.

 Anyone can learn to the art of being an optimist and choosing to think positive thoughts. You can start seeing the proverbial glass half full rather than half empty. Here are a couple of ways to start changing how you react and think. The next time you are in line at the post office and someone cuts in front of you or says something rude, resist the urge to respond with anger, which can clamp down your blood vessels and increase your blood pressure.

This suggestion might up set you but it’s worth it to experience peace of mind. Instead return rudeness with kindness and respect. Keep that positive vibe going through your intentions and actions in whatever you do. The more frequently you choose to be happy, the more your effort will be strengthened. So don’t fret; be happy and live longer.

Now’s the time to love the life you live and it’s time to go from blah to blissful. So c’mon, get happy!

When Childhood Is Tea Parties and Chasing Butterflies

Posted in Chidren, Dreams, Life by

Childhood is hanging your pictures on the refrigerator, and tea parties you always cater.

Childhood is chasing butterflies and picking flowers, playing with blocks and making towers.

Childhood is hating nap time, and thinking everything is MINE.

Childhood is crayons and coloring books, playing hide and go seek in all the right nooks.  Childhood is falling asleep to your favorite lullaby. Childhood is wishing you had wings so you could soar into the sky. Childhood is only crying over a scrapped knee, or being stung by a Bumble Bee.

Childhood is collecting seashells, building sand castles, swimming and roasting marshmallows down by the seashore without a care in the world.

Childhood is thinking boys have cooties, or your mom making you wear itchy booties.
Childhood is ruining mommy’s new rocking chair, and making friends and keeping them forever.

Childhood is a time when we are innocent, when our world seems to be fair and when our universe is around out toys.

Childhood is a time when we live in dreams, when everyone seems selfless, when everyone appears to be a friend.

Childhood is the time when our life is full of colours, when sorrow never knocks on our door and when a smile is a gift presented to everyone.

Childhood is a time when love is pure, when there are no obligations and when tenderness prevails.

Childhood is a time which is long gone for many of us but smiles flow from our faces and our eyes sparkle when we revisit our childhood. Our childhood will never come back but the child within us will always be able to dream of catering tea parties and chasing butterflies.

Let Go And Surrender

Posted in Dreams, Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual by

Letting go is an emotional and spiritual surrender. It means willingly jumping out of the lifeboat of your preconceptions of reality and taking your chances out in the open sea of anything-can-happen.

It means that even as your definition of reality is dissolving before your very eyes, you willingly relinquish it, instinctively comprehending that the state of surrender itself will be a creative condition. It’s hard to let go, to live in a formless, destinationless place. All our lives we’re taught to hold on, to be the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls. Letting go isn’t comfortable; it can feel like anything from laziness to utter loss of control. It’s not aggressive and self-assured. It’s not the American way.

But letting go is, in truth, is a most elegant kind of daring. It is vulnerability of the highest order, an emptying out of self, of all the clutter, chatter, ideas, attitudes, schemes, and plans that, ordinarily, we all contain. In this emptiness, there is room for so much; in this vacancy, anything can happen: breathtaking transformations, changes of directions, miracles that will purely astound you, love that comes out of a spiritual conversion. But only if you are willing to truly let go of it all: as the tree dropping her bright leaves for winter, the trapeze artist, suspended in midair between two bars, the diver free-falling from the high dive, have all unequivocally, wholeheartedly let go.

Letting go is being alive to the power of anything is possible. It is living in surrender, trust, and the belief that emptiness is at once the perfect completion and the perfect beginning. So let go. And remember that if you hang on to even a shred or try to make a deal with Gods meaning of letting go you might not experience all the wonderful things that are ment happen to you.

To Realize The Value Of A Sister Or Brother

Posted in Babies, family, Family Values, Life, relationships by

To realize the value of a sister or brother ask someone who doesn’t have one.

To realize the value of ten years ask a newly divorced couple.

 To realize the value of four years ask a graduate.

To realize the value of one year ask a student who has failed a final exam. To realize the value of nine months ask a mother who gave birth to a still-born. To realize the value of one month ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week ask an editor of a weekly newspaper. To realize the value of one minute ask a person who has missed the train, bus or plane. To realize the value of one-second ask a person who has survived an accident.

Time waits for no one treasure every moment you have. You will treasure it even more when you can share it with someone special. To realize the value of a friend or family member ask someone who has lost a friend or family member.

The Sweet Knowings Of Love

Posted in Brides, family, generational changes, Life, Love, Parenting, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

The journey of love is a journey of many sweet knowings. It is the sweet bliss, in first love, of discovering all your love’s little secrets, her favorite flower and fragrance, the color that sets off her eyes so; his plaid flannel shirts, the way he laces up his boots, his shaving brush, and that one wild hair in his eyebrow; the scent of her skin, the feel of her hair, the drawer she keeps her lingerie in.

It is later the being together and love becomes the sound of the key as he locks up the house, the sound of the rain in the shower each morning as she is singing and shampoos her hair. It is how she rolls over at night in bed, how he sleeps like a saint, with his hands folded over his chest; it is what he can fix; what she can mend. And it is the changing, this way and that way.

Sometimes there are unkind words spoken the anger and love in the mist; making love, holding hands. And the children, wanting, not being sure about wanting them; being scared, and so overjoyed and seeing them sleeping and carried at night in his arms; how he is so tender, how she is so easy, so strong with them.

It is watching the years go by they come and go and come and go and then they just seem to Go and Go. Autumn and spring and winter and summer. So slowly and endlessly beautifully folding, unfolding so quickly go. And how we have done every year, so many things and so few. Each day, and the meals and the work and the talk.

Each day a small town with a map and the trip they have taken in it. And the walks and the light and the changing of the light and how they have traveled. And how they have given the gifts. At Christmas, birthdays, wedding  anniversaries and just because. They want to remember all the words they have written on cards. The things they have said and the things they have whispered to each other. I love you, good night and I adore you. You are my one and only.

And how time has passed He has grown old and he has white in his hair and the fine thin lines of his life and sun are remaking his eyes. He notices that her eyes softer now but still blue and even after so many years and the fading he still loves her. He still loves the scent of her perfume after all these years. 

She still loves how he after all these years he still sleeps with his hands folded over his chest and the scent of his after shave lotion. They love remembering now and not forgetting why they love each other. He said for them it’s been like a long love song that tells the story of how they have melted, woven themselves, befriended, ensouled one another.

 Now that they are here at the end of their lives that they know one another so well, like the bird knows the air like the snowdrift knows the snow; and how he said long a go, until we know each other like the seasons; and now it is spring; and now it is summer now it is autumn now it is winter; and we know we know, that love is endless and we will know each other in eternity too.

Clearing The Cobwebs

Posted in Life by

How do you let people know you are mad? Some gals holler, some are cupboard door slammers and others get very, very quiet.

Emotions are interesting things. We all have them, we are all affected by them, and we all try to hide them, at one time or another.

Those who cannot hide them well are subject to comments like “she wears her heart on her sleeve” or “it was written all over her face.” Twitching eye brows, clenched jaw, blushing checks, and pursed lips are telltale signs of our inner fluttering hearts, churning stomachs, indignant sensibilities, or raging hormones.

But emotions don’t like to stay hidden for long. In subtle, or not-so-subtle ways, we broadcast our feelings to the world. Our emotional vocabulary includes some pretty interesting phraseology. We talk about our stomach dropping out, our heart stopping, or blowing our stack. We are down in the dumps, hoping mad, in a tizzy, all choke up, in a funk, sick at heart, swamped, and at odds with ourselves.

And when it’s time for these emotions to come gushing out, they take many forms: temper tantrums, endless ranting, sleepless nights, mood swings, critical attitudes, blind rages, constant complaining, pity parties, and hissy fits. Unfortunately, the  popular clichés people say about us to describe how we react when we are mad contain words that are not very flattering are they?

The next time you lose control think about this statement: Only a fool vents all his or her feelings, but a wise man or woman holds them back. But that doesn’t mean we should bottle them all up. No, it means you need to release some of that inner turbulence carefully to someone you trust.

Do you have someone you trust, someone who will never tell what comes up during an angry spat, someone who can listen with understanding, someone you vent to?  Even though it comes most naturally to let off steam in the form of angry words or bitter complaints, laughter is a wonderful alternative! Remember the advertising slogan: Don’t get mad, get glade! Have you ever turned a frustrating event into a funny story? If you haven’t try it!

We can sigh about things, or we can laugh. Both these responses release pressure, but which one is the most fun? We laugh so we wouldn’t scream. Whatever is probably wouldn’t go away, so we might as well live and laugh through it. When we choose to release some of our frustrations with laughter, we allow others around us to relax and join in the chuckle. A woman or man who is willing to find the funny in their day is unmistakable more pleasant to be around than the one who is angry and venting about how their day went.

The truth is that every day has its share of stress. When you feel like an aerosol can because you are under too much pressure, find a listening ear to act as a safety valve. Throw a pity party for your friends so you can all get it out of your system at once. Drown your fears in compassion for each other and then rise up and give yourselves a great big hug. Encourage each other, pray and hang in there!

Fight The Good Fight

Posted in family, Life, Love, relationships, Romace by

No relationship is without conflict and differences of opinions, preference, and even direction and a relationship is only as good as the conflict it can contain.

 This means that a relationship has vitality only to the degree that it can endure the stresses of each difference and resolve them through healthy conflict, so that the relationship and the individuals in it can move toward greater authenticity.

Then notion of the totally tranquil, we-never-fight relationship as the paragon of love is a dangerous fallacy. All too often the persons in such a situation are scared to death of testing the resilience of their relationship by airing their real differences, or have so suppressed their individual selves that their differences seem invisible.

Many couples are scared of conflict because they don’t know how to fight. They are afraid their own anger will run away with them, that they’ll lose control and become vicious, vituperative, or even physically destructive. They maybe afraid of the other person’s anger. They wonder will he or she yell, throw things, slam the door, or maybe walk out?

These behaviors can sometimes occur and can even be a real danger, especially for people who have been abused with anger themselves. But even they can learn to express anger in a constructive way.The sign of a good fight is that it makes you both feel you have discovered something, that you know one another better.

Even if you fight again and again about the same issues (and most people do), a good fight gives you hope about the future because you have gained a measure of insight about something that previously baffled or frustrated you. Here’s some help:

1. Try to see what you’re upset about. This is usually something very specific:”That he or she didn’t call you” not “Because life is miserable.”

2. State your feelings and why you feel that way: “I’m upset that you didn’t call because it makes me feel unloved.”

3. Say what you need in recompense: ” I need you to apologize.”

4. After your mate has given the apology, ask yourself and him or her if you feel totally resolved.

5. Kiss and make up.

For example: “I’m upset with you for yelling at me about burning the tea kettle. You embarrassed me in front of Jane. It made me feel belittled to have to have her hear you talk to me like that. I need you to apologize.” I’m sorry, honey. I was in such a rush this morning and was anxious about that big meeting. I was out of line. I don’t want to make you feel that way. Please forgive me.”  

 

This kind of fight could win the  “Academy Awards for the Most Civilized Fight”. There are many people who agree to disagree about an offense and make it a point to resolve it in a timely manner.

They never go to bed upset with each other. Yes! They do deserve an award for being the kind of people that we all should aspire to be like. Don’t they?

You can learn to be gracious when someone offends you. To start with try to remember.

1. A good fight isn’t a free for all. Don’t say everything you feel like saying even though you may have a legitimate gripe. Remember that words can wound, and after the fight you don’t want a battered mate.

2. Be specific with your complaints. Don’t throw in all your grievances since time began.

3. Let the other person’s words sink in before you take up your cudgel. Remember, you’re having this fight to learn something, to arrive at some new insight as well as an immediate resolution.

4. Go easy on yourself and your honey when you don’t do it perfectly.

Laugh Like Kids

Posted in Chidren, grandkids, Grandparenting, Humor, Life, Parenting, relationships by

Have you ever notice how much energy children have? Granted, they’re flinging around bodies that weigh twenty to sixty pounds while you and I weigh… never mind, let’s not go there.

But my point is that kids are indefatigable or another way to put it is that some times they seem to be incapable of being fatigued.I noticed the other day after a few hours playing with my grandsons I was all tuckered out, and needed to take a nap. As I dosed off I thought to myself I would love to be able to bottle some of their energy. Just bottle it up, and take a swig whenever I was dragging. Can you just image how much money I could make if I sold their energy in a bottle?

Whizzang! Just image that suddenly you’d be Superwoman if you had the energy of a child. If you were at work, your fingers would suddenly be flying on the keyboard at an amazing pace. What if you had the energy of a child while doing housework?  You’d have the beds made, dishes washed, socks darned, and chimney swept in the amount of time it use to take to fluff your pillow for your afternoon nap. Coworkers would gape in amazement. Friends would be amused and stare. Your husband would have to eat an energy bar just keep up with you. They’d be thrilled with your performance at work and the way your kitchen sparkled.

But my guess is that sooner or later they’d question the Crayola scribbles in the hallway, the grass strains on the knees of your best pants suites, and the distracting way you’d have of jumping up and down, blowing spit bubbles or sticking your chewing gum under your desk whenever someone was trying to get your attention.

So! Maybe we don’t really want all the energy of a kid. Still, maybe we can pick up a few pointers from the little people in our lives. Kids have such vitality. Such zest for life. They posses wild imaginations, boundless energy, and limitless passion. These are things I miss from my youth. I don’t know about you, but I would love to recapture some of the youthful zeal that characterized my life before grown-up responsibilities, problems, and anxieties started.

What secrets do kids have to share about youthful living(at any age)? What wisdom can we glean from their zestful ways? 

Lets find out. A smile a minute. A study recently revealed that children, on average, laugh four hundred times a day. Wow! isn’t that awesome? 

The same study revealed that adults laugh about fifteen times in a day. That’s not very awesome is it?

That means that our children and grandchildren are  finding something to laugh about almost every other minute.  You and I, on the other hand, are lucky if we chuckle once each waking hour. You think we might be onto something here? Do you want to feel younger? Laugh. Here are a couple of ideas that might help us to be mindful to laugh more. Write down things that make you laugh.  Is there a certain movie that tickles your fancy?  Or a humorous writer?   How about a favorite cartoonist? 

The other suggestion is to, at some point in your day, find a way to incorporate extra laughter into your day. I don’t know about you but, when I want more laughter in my life I read The Cat In The Hat books to my grandson’s and before I turn the first page we are laughing.

I still laugh when I watch some of the old black and white cartoons that I grew up watching. Sometimes watching reruns of my favorite sit coms on T.V. will get me laughing too. The third idea is well… a little zany. But I promise you wouldn’t regret trying it.

 As kids, my friends and I had this game. We would start laughing for no reason. One of us would begin the game by forcing a laugh. Not a ” ha ha ha“, mind you, but a “ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…” The person who starts the game is merely saying the word “ha” over and over. It sounds artificial and impotent. Then as the laughter begins you will feel the urge to apply some stomach muscles. You wouldn’t be laughing uncontrollably but it’s a pretty good imitation. It’s starting to coming from the gut. It sounds convincing. Usually with in a few minutes things will be in full swing and before you know it your eyes will become watery, you will experience belly laughs, giggles, and even aching ribs.

Before you know it you’ll be pinked-checked from giggling, guffawing, and gasping for air between round of laughter. We use to laugh ourselves into a state of genuine, uncontrolled, urgent  and howling hilarity. My laughing buddies are  my grandchildren if you don’t have any borrow one from a neighbor and ” ha ha ha ha ha ha” until you see stars or almost need CPR, which ever comes first.

Sometimes you wouldn’t have any idea why your laughing, But you’ll be glade that you are. If none of these suggestions work for you try putting a pillow case over head while jumping up and down on your bed I know that’s just zany isn’t it? Just laugh…

A Season Of Life

Posted in family, generational changes, Life, Love, relationships, Spiritual, Women by

Positive minds produce positive lives. Negative minds produce negative lives. Positive thoughts are always full of faith and hope. Negative thoughts are always full of fear and doubt.

Some people are afraid to hope because they have been hurt so much in life. They have had so many disappointments, they don’t think they can face the pain of another one. Therefore, they refuse to hope so they would not be disappointed.

This avoidance of hope is a type of protection against being hurt. Disappointment hurts! So rather than be hurt again, many people simply refuse to hope or to believe that anything good will ever happen to them. This type of behavior set up a negative lifestyle. Remember “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”

Do you know someone who is extremely negative?  They might say to you, that if they have two positive thoughts in a row that their mind would get a cramp? Their whole philosophy is this: “If you don’t expect anything good to happen, then you won’t be disappointed when it doesn’t.” After spending time getting to know them, you learn that they have encountered many disappointments in life, leaving them afraid to believe that anything good might happen to them again. It becomes obvious to you that since their thoughts are all negative, so are the words they speak; therefore, so is their life. You try to  stay positive and wish you could get into their head and replace their negative thoughts with positive ones. Wouldn’t that be helpful?   I have friends who are negative, and I find it interesting that words they speak came to pass in their lives.

 I  also have friends who are positive, and are always finding the good in the many situations they are in life. It doesn’t mean that people who are positive thinkers don’t have doubt and feel sad, but it  does means they don’t stay stuck in their negative thoughts. It means that remain hopeful.

 Sometimes a season of life might be so devastating that the only positive thought we can have for a while is I’m breathing. I was in a season of life with a friend a few years ago. All we could say to each other was, “Your breathing aren’t you?”  Then that makes this a good day doesn’t it?  Now when I want to complain about my current season of life, I remind myself that I’m not only breathing but, I’m happy again. Life is good. Isn’t it?

Wouldn’t life be perfect if we never had to endure the devastating seasons of it?  

A few years ago I went through a devastating season of life. It was when people I loved passed away unexpectedly, and all I could do was breath because I was numb. 

 Now, I’m in a season of a life, and looking forward to the birth of my granddaughter. I have learned that life really does work in seasons, and some can be cold like winter, while others can be sunny and warm like summer.

Some Times Love Hurts…

Posted in family, Life, Love, relationships, Women by

It’s been said that love should never be associated with the word “hurt”, but it often is. It can hurt so much that it can break someone’s heart.

Heartbreak is not always avoidable but it may be repairable. 

 Sometimes fate deals us a lousy hand. The person we love is forced to move away, someone steals your love’s heart from you, or their death cuts your heart into a million pieces. Avoidable heart breaks are the most tragic. You’re already together, but something is trying to pull you apart. It starts with a wound real or perceived. An apology would cause the wound to heal, but pride or stubbornness or stupidity keeps the apology locked inside.

One wound might not be serious, but when added to a series of others, the consequences can be fatal. So the two of you become haters and the love is shattered. While the leftover cracks might not make gluing together the many pieces of a shattered mirror worthwhile, love is. Other wise people may spend the rest of their lives stepping on those shard of their love all around their life. Each shard is labeled with a “What if?” and each is capable of causing endless pain. They can be dulled by the years, swept away by a new love, or used for endless episodes of self-pity. One solution is to look into the future and realize that love needs to be put above all else. Petty emotions have to be put aside to protect the bond of love.

When someone suffers a heart attack, it’s obvious that every second counts and that the patient needs immediate attention. It’s not as obvious to many people who the same is true for a broken heart. Too often people wait until it’s too late to get help to repair their relationships. Remember every second counts when repairing a wound and the loss of love might be the price.

Nana’s Hands

Posted in family, Family Values, generational changes, grandkids, Grandparenting, Life, Quotes, Spiritual by

If we can be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love’s reach. Our Nana was a generous woman with a big heart not just to her family but to all kinds of people, even people she didn’t know.

 She did nice things without expecting anything back. Nana was especially good at baking and she made the best chocolate chipcookies in the world.

One of the best things about Nana was that she loved people and they loved her back. Friends and family knew they could stop by and see her anytime and Nana would always welcome them. Everyone in her family depended on Nana to keep them up with the latest birth or who got married in the neighborhood (in the old neighborhood) as my dad use to say. They grew up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 

Now Nana’s not here to tell us what’s going on, or to bake those favorite things she was so good at making. Nana passed away a few years and my cousin found this poem and we realized that it describes how we felt about our Nana. It’s called “Nana’s Hands.”

Nana’s Hands used to touch us with. Nana’s hands would scold us and sit us down in a chair. Nana’s hands would applaud us when we did something good. Nana’s hands would hold us every chance they could. Nana’s hands would aid us when we fell down. Nana”s hands, Yes I miss them, they were the best hands around. Nana’s hands would spank us and she would say, “Now, Baby, you act right.” Nana’s hands would stroke us and tuck us in at night. Nana’s hands would pray for us, they would pray for everyone she knew. Nana’s hands would rise in the air as in God she put her trust. Nana’s hands were special; they were the very best. Nana’s hands got tired, and now they are at rest.

We thought a lot about the last line of that poem it taught us that it can be hard to lose people we love but it can sometimes be for the better too. When Nana got sick we felt bad for her when we realized she couldn’t do things she loved anymore and she was in pain. At least we knew that she didn’t hurt anymore.

 We also realized that we never thought about how things would change once Nana was gone. Losing someone you love can definitely help us appreciate the people who are special to us while we still have them in our lives.