Posts tagged ‘staying positive’

May 31st, 2010

Halfway from Here to Heaven: Quotes for Your Memorial Day Monday

Among pining away for puppy love, I found a few journal entries on hope and a strong desire for inspiration. I was cataloging quotes to remind me to stay positive and to keep following my dreams.

Who knew that one day I’d want to share those secret thoughts with you?

Here are a few for your Monday to hopefully inspire you:

Vicky Ceelen author of Close Friends: “A true friend is someone who thinks you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.”

“If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you made me smile, the entire evening sky would be in the palm of my hand.”

Then from a tiny book called Ain’t Life a Pomegranate? by Dr. Linda Andrade Wheeler:

“Do not lose sleep or exert energy on people who do not love you back or do not make you a better person by being associated with them.”

I love this one: “Take your rubbish with you and leave the place better than how you found it!”

And one more from this wise book: “What happens to a person is less significant than what happens within him.”

From The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, A Toltec Wisdom Book
by Miguel Ruiz:

On Forgiveness – “You will know you have forgiven someone when you see them and you no longer have an emotional reaction…When someone can touch what used to be a wound and if no longer hurts you, then you know you have truly forgiven.”

I even wrote some of my own: “Imperfection is beautiful. It doesn’t pretend to be what it’s not-perfect.”

“I used to believe that love was an emotion engendered from a single soul endeared. Now I believe it is what remains from each individual that seeps into your heart and will remain forever.”

photo via Mukumbura

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August 3rd, 2009

Practice Your Happy Dance

I just finished reading The Boss of You by Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon. They devoted an entire chapter about celebrating your successes. An entire chapter! What does that say? Well to me it says being your own cheerleader is just as important as anything else when following your dreams.

This means no more thinking that the happy dance or that bottle of champagne that you’ve been saving, are for when you REALLY strike it big. The little moments deserve attention too. In fact, in their book Mears and Bacon list risk taking and even enduring a rough week as enough reason to celebrate and I agree. If not now, then when?

Sometimes we have this fear, usually us women, that if we indulge in a little celebration, that arrogance that life is really going well will come back and bite us in the behind. But I think that kind of thinking only sets us up for more disappointment. Life has its ups and downs but when we do a little happy dance when things are good, we’re inviting more good things our way. And we can either focus on being grateful for what we do have or suffer in what we don’t. I’d chose the former and I’d advise you to do the same. 

After all, the path of a dreamer is a long, challenging one. We’re going to need a lot of happy dances along the way!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRwsTyUPIYE&hl=en&fs=1&]

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May 21st, 2009

Positively Positive

I used to think that you either were or weren’t a positive person. (Spoken like a true pessimist!) But, after reading an email newsletter sent from Beliefnet.com and written by Chris Widener, I realized that anyone can transform negative thinking by focusing on positive thoughts. And in light of the stress and worries brought on my today’s economy, I thought we could certainly use a bit of positivity.  

Widener’s article discussed ways to redirect negativity by focusing on solutions instead of problems and by “keeping your eye on the goal.”  What a simple yet somewhat daunting task.  It’s easy to get sucked in to the way we wish things were instead of how they really are.  Common reactions, “Why me?  This couldn’t/shouldn’t have happened.”  But it’s often that resistance that breeds more negativity.  Instead, remember this moment because you might be grateful for that challenge one day.  Learning to focus our attention on what we can do now to get through it, will help make that day come sooner.

So what do you do to stay positive when life is making it hard to do so?  Some use prayer or meditation, listen to happy music, take a walk, talk with friends or spend moments thinking about what they are grateful for.  Watching Oprah always lifts me up and I also read positive quotes and inspirational stories in books and on websites to keep my positive meter running high.  Either way, I’d say, have fun and do all of them.  After all, life is short, why not choose to be positively positive!

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March 31st, 2009

Creating a Simpler Life

I’m someone who often tries to turn lemons into lemonade. And so our downward spiraling economy has given me yet another opportunity, albeit a tremendous one, to transform my life. When I was a kid, my friends and family had a nickname for me “cheap” or “tight with her money” because I hated spending. I was also skinny. I thought buying candy and popcorn at the movie theatre was absurd, not only because it was costly but because it was so fattening. Somehow I had everything all figured out when I was younger and then something happened…As I got older, my waist grew and my wallet shrank. How did that happen? More importantly, how did I let that happen?

When I look at online job sites now the prospects of me finding my dream job seems slim. It’s also a constant reminder to me about the importance of that simple life, the one where I knew when to stop eating and spending my money. The greatest lesson it has taught me is how to take back control of my life. Somewhere in my twenties and thirties, I had the insane notion that I could spend as much as I wanted and eat twice as much without any consequences. Whatever it was that got me here, one thing’s for sure, this economy has brought me back to reality. I don’t want to be looking back on my life ten years from now, ten pounds heavier and in debt. It’s a wake up call for me to start thinking the way I did when I was younger-to separate want and desire from necessity. To remember that a brand new car or outfit will not suddenly transform me into the confident, happy and successful person I’d love to be. That it’s the difference between the fantasy of a marketing ad and the simple honesty and realness of my own life.

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