Thursday, February 28, 2013

Change your life...change the lives of others...

"Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight.

Extend to them all the care,
kindness and understanding you can muster, and do with no thought of any reward.

Your life will never be the same again"

- Og Mandino

It is hard work to accomplish this but it is worth the effort!

If we could approach every interaction this way what a difference we could make in not only other people's lives, but our own as well!

Give it a shot!  What do we have to lose?

Stay Strong! !!

Monday, February 25, 2013

"Call upon Mary"

In dangers, in doubts, in difficulties,think of Mary, call upon Mary.

Let not her name depart from your lips,never suffer it to leave your heart.

And that you may more surely obtain the assistance of her prayer,neglect not to walk in her footsteps.

With her for guide, you shall never go astray;

While invoking her, you shall never lose heart;

So long as she is in your mind, you are safe from deception;

While she holds your hand, you cannot fall;

Under her protection you have nothing to fear;

If she walks before you, you shall not grow weary;

If she shows you favor, you shall reach the goal.

Take on the Week!!!

Happy Monday!!! 

Remember you are not alone...and your life has a very valuable meaning!! 

Remain open and ready to realize just what that meaning is!!! 

In the meantime, practice kindness, provide strength and compassion to others in need, and do not lose sight of the multitude of BLESSING we have in our daily lives!! 

Focus on the POSITIVES ONLY!!!  Those are all that matter!!!

There is a plan and we all have a lead role!!!   Be ready for the "call"!

Stay Strong!!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Banish Worry!!! TODAY!!

"It is not work that kills men; it is worry.
Worry is rust upon the blade."
- Henry Ward Beecher

It is a staggering fact that we often spend days, weeks, and sometimes years ruminating and beating ourselves up over something that may have taken only a few seconds to occur!!!

How many things do you have bouncing around in your head that happened many years ago yet you are still thinking about it, lamenting, regretting and re-living it???

How crazy is that???  How silly does that sound?!!

The good news is we all possess the power and ability to stop this insane activity TODAY!!!!

Treat today as a starting point to a NEW chapter in your life!

Declare it now!!!!  The past is behind us!!!!  

We cannot change what has already occurred...as Shakespeare famously wrote;

"What is done is done and cannot be undone."

So why in the world would we continue to re-live it and worry about it?

Sure, we always can and indeed should learn from past events and correct anything we deem necessary to fix, BUT only with a focus on moving forward!!!

Leave the past where it belongs - YOUR time is NOW!!!

Life is short ..do not waste a valuable minute worrying and re-hashing the past!!! 

It does nothing to help us!!!!  Zero!!

Remember, there is a plan..and everything works out!!!!

Stay Strong! !!!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Re: [Stay Strong] Happy Wednesday!!!

Yes!!!  Happy Ash Wednesday!!!!!

Thank you, Kim!!
>
> HAPPY ASH WEDNESDAY!
>
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: CIM
> Sent: Wed, Feb 13, 2013 8:55 am
> Subject: [Stay Strong] Happy Wednesday!!!
>
>
>
> --
> Posted By CIM to Stay Strong at 2/13/2013 08:55:00 AM

Happy Wednesday!!!

Thursday, February 7, 2013

"Our greatest glory consists, not in never falling,
but in rising every time we fall."
     - Oliver Goldsmith 1730-1774 (repeated by Nelson Mandela)

"Our greatest glory consists, not in never falling,
but in rising every time we fall."
     - Oliver Goldsmith 1730-1774 (repeated by Nelson Mandela)

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Avoid the Envy Trap...sage advice!

MANAGING YOURSELF

Avoid the Envy Trap

by TONY SCHWARTZ

Comments | February 5, 2013

We were sitting around a table, talking about someone we all know, who is very successful in our field. Instinctively, I started in. "He's incredibly full of himself," I said. "And kind of a phony." One of my colleagues, a great mimic, did a spot-on imitation of the way this fellow speaks. We laughed uproariously. The Greek chorus chimed in and piled on. A dig here. A jab there. In minutes, we had taken this competitor down to size, made mincemeat of him.

We felt clever, bonded, and if truth be told, superior.

Except that when I left the room, something didn't feel quite right, which was surprising. Over the years, I've had hundreds, maybe even thousands of these conversations, with scores of friends and colleagues. They're so commonplace I rarely give them a second thought.But on this day, I unexpectedly found myself wondering about the competitor we had trashed, and how he might have felt if he heard our exchange.

At a minimum, he would have been stung, and so would I, if others said those things about me, as they surely have. Then I started thinking about whether I actually believed what I'd said.

I realized I actually had a broader and more nuanced set of feelings about him, including admiration.I put down this competitor so I could feel better about myself — raised myself up at his expense.

To avoid feeling "less than," I defended myself by moving to "more than." I assumed a false position of power — not just this time, but on countless previous occasions — to ward off some experience of inadequacy. I covered up my feeling of weakness with a thin gloss of strength.

Above all else, I was careless.

Envy, I'm abashed to say, lay at the heart of it.

For more than two decades as a journalist, envy was a steady hum in my life that sometimes turned into a roar. No matter what I wrote — even a bestselling book — it never felt good enough and neither did I.

The feeling is endemic among writers, as I suspect it is in many professions. "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little," 

Gore Vidal once famously remarked. Speaking of his fellow writers, the novelist Pete Dexter took it a step further: "Jealousy is the wrong word for what I usually feel. It's closer to hoping they get hit by a car.

"Funny, yes, but also kind of horrifying, and toxic.

When I finally left journalism, it was in large part to escape these feelings. But wherever you go, there they are.

We've all felt them. Not smart enough, not accomplished enough, not thin enough, not rich enough, not admired enough. At the most primitive level, it's the feeling that we're still living in the savanna, fighting for our survival in a world of scarcity. If you get yours, then I won't get mine.

The war over food has evolved into one for self-worth.

The problem is it's a zero sum game you can't win.

Constantly compare yourself, and no matter how good you are, eventually you're going to come up short.The truth is I've had enough of not enough and I've also had enough of the smug superiority I've sometimes inadvertently assumed as a shield against feeling the opposite.

The first step has been to raise my awareness. That means noticing these feelings when they arise — both "not enough" and "better than," which, after all, are just two sides of the same coin.

It helps a lot, I'm finding, to simply observe my feelings, rather than getting lost in them, or compelled to share them.

Two questions strike me as helpful here. When you're feeling "less than", the question is, "What do I truly appreciate about myself?" Or, as the family therapist Terrence Real puts it more lyrically, "How do I hold myself in warm regard, despite my imperfections?"

When you find yourself beginning to feel "better than," the question is, "What do I truly appreciate in this other person?"

Or as Real says,"How can I hold this person in warm regard, despite his/her imperfections?"

Sheryl Crow gets this just right in "Soak up the Sun":

"It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you've got
I'm gonna tell everyone To lighten up
I'm gonna tell 'em that
I've got no one to blame for every time I feel lame.

"In Buddhism, the Second Noble Truth is that all suffering is caused by craving.

I've never interpreted that to mean we should let go of desire, which is quintessentially and inescapably human.

Rather, we need to hold desire more gently, so we can acknowledge it, and conjure with it, and even enjoy it, without feeling consumed by it, or dependent on its being satisfied.

Avoid the Envy Trap...sage advice!

MANAGING YOURSELF

Avoid the Envy Trap

by TONY SCHWARTZ

Comments | February 5, 2013

We were sitting around a table, talking about someone we all know, who is very successful in our field. Instinctively, I started in. "He's incredibly full of himself," I said. "And kind of a phony." One of my colleagues, a great mimic, did a spot-on imitation of the way this fellow speaks. We laughed uproariously. The Greek chorus chimed in and piled on. A dig here. A jab there. In minutes, we had taken this competitor down to size, made mincemeat of him.

We felt clever, bonded, and if truth be told, superior.

Except that when I left the room, something didn't feel quite right, which was surprising. Over the years, I've had hundreds, maybe even thousands of these conversations, with scores of friends and colleagues. They're so commonplace I rarely give them a second thought.But on this day, I unexpectedly found myself wondering about the competitor we had trashed, and how he might have felt if he heard our exchange.

At a minimum, he would have been stung, and so would I, if others said those things about me, as they surely have. Then I started thinking about whether I actually believed what I'd said.

I realized I actually had a broader and more nuanced set of feelings about him, including admiration.I put down this competitor so I could feel better about myself — raised myself up at his expense.

To avoid feeling "less than," I defended myself by moving to "more than." I assumed a false position of power — not just this time, but on countless previous occasions — to ward off some experience of inadequacy. I covered up my feeling of weakness with a thin gloss of strength.

Above all else, I was careless.

Envy, I'm abashed to say, lay at the heart of it.

For more than two decades as a journalist, envy was a steady hum in my life that sometimes turned into a roar. No matter what I wrote — even a bestselling book — it never felt good enough and neither did I.

The feeling is endemic among writers, as I suspect it is in many professions. "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little," 

Gore Vidal once famously remarked. Speaking of his fellow writers, the novelist Pete Dexter took it a step further: "Jealousy is the wrong word for what I usually feel. It's closer to hoping they get hit by a car.

"Funny, yes, but also kind of horrifying, and toxic.

When I finally left journalism, it was in large part to escape these feelings. But wherever you go, there they are.

We've all felt them. Not smart enough, not accomplished enough, not thin enough, not rich enough, not admired enough. At the most primitive level, it's the feeling that we're still living in the savanna, fighting for our survival in a world of scarcity. If you get yours, then I won't get mine.

The war over food has evolved into one for self-worth.

The problem is it's a zero sum game you can't win.

Constantly compare yourself, and no matter how good you are, eventually you're going to come up short.The truth is I've had enough of not enough and I've also had enough of the smug superiority I've sometimes inadvertently assumed as a shield against feeling the opposite.

The first step has been to raise my awareness. That means noticing these feelings when they arise — both "not enough" and "better than," which, after all, are just two sides of the same coin.

It helps a lot, I'm finding, to simply observe my feelings, rather than getting lost in them, or compelled to share them.

Two questions strike me as helpful here. When you're feeling "less than", the question is, "What do I truly appreciate about myself?" Or, as the family therapist Terrence Real puts it more lyrically, "How do I hold myself in warm regard, despite my imperfections?"

When you find yourself beginning to feel "better than," the question is, "What do I truly appreciate in this other person?"

Or as Real says,"How can I hold this person in warm regard, despite his/her imperfections?"

Sheryl Crow gets this just right in "Soak up the Sun":

"It's not having what you want
It's wanting what you've got
I'm gonna tell everyone To lighten up
I'm gonna tell 'em that
I've got no one to blame for every time I feel lame.

"In Buddhism, the Second Noble Truth is that all suffering is caused by craving.

I've never interpreted that to mean we should let go of desire, which is quintessentially and inescapably human.

Rather, we need to hold desire more gently, so we can acknowledge it, and conjure with it, and even enjoy it, without feeling consumed by it, or dependent on its being satisfied.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Today....

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Put the past behind you. Spending a single minute on the past is a complete waste of time and effort!

Do not let past disappointments and failures rattle or upset you.

They do not define us!

They don't matter!!

All that matters is NOW!

Today and the decisions we make today are all we need to focus on as we move forward!!

The beauty of this short life is that we all possess the power and amazing gift to reinvent ourselves, learn from our mistakes and start afresh!!!

And we can begin this very second!!!!

Do not quit!

Do not fear.

Make a plan and move forward in Faith Hope and Gratitude!!

Leave the past where it belongs!!

Stay Strong!!!

Today....

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Put the past behind you. Spending a single minute on the past is a complete waste of time and effort!

Do not let past disappointments and failures rattle or upset you.

They do not define us!

They don't matter!!

All that matters is NOW!

Today and the decisions we make today are all we need to focus on as we move forward!!

The beauty of this short life is that we all possess the power and amazing gift to reinvent ourselves, learn from our mistakes and start afresh!!!

And we can begin this very second!!!!

Do not quit!

Do not fear.

Make a plan and move forward in Faith Hope and Gratitude!!

Leave the past where it belongs!!

Stay Strong!!!