Fear is an invisible yet powerful force. It can often paralyze you from moving forward or immobilize you from pursuing your dreams. You must choose, freedom or fear. You can’t live in both places. This week, I encourage you to think about some of the things that hold you back in life? And start by doing one thing a day that scares you.
©2012 Susie Lee
A few years ago, I read this little yet powerful book, The Four Agreements. They’re simple and practical steps on how to keep life uncomplicated leaving more room for freedom and fullness of life. This week, I came across this poster and thought I’d share this wisdom with you. Choosing to live by these simple agreements in your relationships, work and play can instantly transform your world into a healthier and happier place. As a daily reminder, you can pin this up on your fridge, bathroom mirror, hallway, back of your door, in your car or have it as your screen saver on your phone or computer. Have a terrific week. © 2012 Susie Lee
In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
Sid Caesar
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
Richard Bach
We see things not as they are, but as we are.
H. M. Tomlinson
Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare.
Japanese Proverb
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
Jimmy Johnson
When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?
Sydney Harris
Don’t go through life, grow through life.
Eric Butterworth
Positive anything is better than negative thinking.
Elbert Hubbard
I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
Oprah Winfrey
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.
Dennis P. Kimbro
Winners lose much more often than losers. So if you keep losing but you’re still trying, keep it up! You’re right on track.
Matthew Keith Groves
An obstacle is often a stepping stone.
Prescott
The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job.
Zig Ziglar
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
Napoleon Hill
I read this article and thought these 8 steps can apply to anyone not just moms (with a few modifications to #4 and #6). I especially identified with #1, 5, 7, and 8: #1 is a good reminder to be myself rather than to please people, #5 needs to be a part of my weekly routine as I love to work, #7 needs to de-clutter my sea of papers on my desk ASAP, and #8 is a good reminder that I need to graciously accept help from others.
These steps are simple, practical and can ground us in our hectic world we sometimes live in; juggling work, family, friends and health. And with the year being officially half over, I hope your New Year’s resolutions (or goals) are being fulfilled and you’re moving towards your personal best in all areas of life.
Here’s to a happier you!
–Susie Lee
8 Ways to Be a Happier Mom
While our greatest hope is for our children to turn into happy adults, most of us moms grit our teeth a fair amount on the road there. After we hustle our kids off to soccer practice, shop for dinner and hunt down the perfect kindergarten, we are left with little inspiration to model the one thing we most wish for our children: happiness. It’s not that we don’t want to be happy. It’s more a question of how to fit it into our schedule. Read on for some practical tips from parenting experts on how to move “be happy” to the top of your to-do list.
1. Be Yourself
Much of our stress and irritation as parents comes from trying to live up to impossible standards. “Mothers universally feel that they ‘are never good enough,'” says Meg Meeker, MD, author of The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose and Sanity. A lot of these feelings of inadequacy come from comparing ourselves with other moms and competing in ways both small (bringing an elaborate dish to the potluck) and large (pushing our kids to achieve on the playing field). “It’s tempting to look around us to see if we measure up with other moms,” says Meagan Francis, author of The Happiest Mom: 10 Secrets to Enjoying Motherhood, “but when we’re comparing our private lives to somebody else’s public game face, we’re not getting a very accurate picture.” Francis adds that the best way to be a happy mom-and a good mom-is to be yourself. “Don’t try to be anyone else’s version of what a good mother should be,” Francis says. “Be the best version of who you are, and your children will recognize that and learn from it.” Think about your own strengths and work them into your everyday life as a mom. Maybe sewing costumes isn’t your thing, but you love to bake. This Halloween, buy costumes even though all the other moms are making theirs, and instead bake a batch of cookies to munch on while you all get ready to go trick-or-treating. When you play up your strengths as a parent, you are bound to have more fun and be happier.
2. Pencil in Solitude
Routinely setting aside time to go for a walk, write in a journal or read a book is one simple way you can raise your daily happiness quotient. “Mothers contend with so much stimulation during the day that life becomes overwhelming. From kids crying and older children needing homework help to answering cell phones and replying to emails, mothers can feel as though their nervous system is becoming fried,” says Dr. Meeker. Solitude is a necessity for our mental health. “Solitude achieves two very important purposes,” Dr. Meeker explains. “First, it allows mothers to quiet the ‘noise’ in their lives so that they can refresh themselves and hear themselves think. It allows our nervous system to slow down and become quieter so that we can recharge mentally, physically and emotionally. Second, solitude gives us a reprieve from giving. No woman can sustain constant giving to other humans (even if they are children) without a break.” If you don’t have even a half-hour to yourself each day, it may be time to reassess your to-do list. For example, do the brownies for this year’s bake sale really need to be made from scratch? Probably not-and by opting for the easier method, you can carve out a little bit of time for yourself.
3. Practice “Slow Family Time”
Slowing down the rush of family life has been one of the keys to happiness for Tsh Oxenreider, creator of SimpleMom.net and author of Organized Simplicity. “For our family,” Oxenreider says, “we’ve defined slowing down as ‘moving together at a deliberate and unhurried pace.’ When we slow down, we’re able to choose how to spend the 24 hours in each day, and therefore find more meaning in our activities.” Oxenreider achieves this by planning activities around family life, not the other way around: “Each Sunday, my husband and I meet to talk about our upcoming week. It only takes 30 minutes, but that brief connection gives us a chance to look at our calendars and decide how many evenings we’ll schedule out of the house, how we can help each other with upcoming tasks and how to dictate our commitments, instead of letting our commitments dictate us.” For other families, “slow family time” might mean leaving unstructured time in your schedule or simply hanging out with your kids at home with no particular plans or goal in mind.
4. Put Your Girlfriends Back on the Schedule
One of the quickest routes to getting your smile back is picking up the phone and calling a friend. Remember how good it feels to catch up? So often we put our friends on the back burner when we become mothers, forgetting that friendships are an essential source of joy. “Friends act as a tremendous support, but they also contribute to a mother’s happiness by acting as a release valve,” Dr. Meeker says. “When frustration or other emotions run high in a mom, a woman friend can provide a safe place for her to vent. And a key to a mother’s sanity and happiness is having an outlet for intense emotions.” Feel like you don’t have time for friends? Try the multitasking approach: Exercise with a friend, invite another mother over while your kids play in the backyard, offer to drive a mom to the baby-and-me class or invite a single girlfriend over for Sunday dinner.
5. Create a Weekly No-Work Day
Once upon a time, Sunday was strictly a day off. No one went to work and most stores were closed. It was a day to recharge and spend time with family. But with the advent of email and flexible schedules, any day can now be a work day-and any time can be work time. By integrating a regular “No Work Day” into your family’s weekly routine, moms can create more time for family fun while decreasing household stress levels. To pull off a day without work, family members will need to join forces in preparation for the day, including agreeing upon guidelines such as no checking email or work phone calls. To ensure that it’s a day off for stay-at-home parents as well, plan to work together the day before to clean up the house and prepare heat-and-eat meals such as lasagna or chili. If a full day dedicated to not working seems like too much of a leap from your current hectic schedule, start off with just one evening: one night a week, have the family gather to relax and play games or watch a movie with cell phones and computers off. The kids might balk at first, but soon they too will see the benefit of a time designated exclusively to leisure.
6. Share Your Passion with Your Kids
Somewhere between the afterschool shuffle and the rush to make dinner, many of us have lost track of our own passions. We are so in the habit of standing on the sidelines of our children’s activities that we’ve forgotten to share our own hobbies and passions with them. However, when you share the activities you like and enjoy with your kids, you will most likely be laughing, smiling and showing what happiness looks like to the people you care about the most. Think about simple ways you can enjoy your passions with your kids. Are you a music lover? Break out your CDs or old LPs and play DJ. Love to paint? Sit down with your kids and make art with them. By doing what we enjoy, we model happiness and show our children who we are.
7. Conquer Clutter
“Clutter is one of my biggest cranky-mom triggers,” Francis says. And most moms would agree that a messy house is one of their primary obstacles in the pursuit of happiness. “Adopt a no-prisoners approach to clutter control,” she suggests. “Toss unneeded papers in the recycling bin daily, come up with a simple system for keeping track of pending bills and paperwork, and, most important, become ruthless about which papers you’re willing to keep in the first place.” Having a routine can also help contain clutter. Have every member of the house do the same thing when they come home for the day: Hang up their coats (be sure to have a row of child-height hooks near the foyer), put shoes in the closet and place backpacks, purses, briefcases, keys and lunchboxes in their designated spots.
8. Outsource It
“We can’t do it all,” Francis reminds us, “and just because something needs to be done doesn’t mean that you need to do it.” Acknowledging that we can’t all hire household help, Francis suggests using a more flexible definition of ‘outsourcing’ for getting the help we need. “When we all focus on what skills and talents we bring to the table-without any shame for the stuff we aren’t so great at-we can meet our kids’ needs without having to try to do everything ourselves,” Francis says. Assess each family member’s skill set and delegate duties based on ability. Have a teenager who’s good at math? Assign her to help your middle school-age son with his algebra homework. Is one of your kids great at organizing? Assign him to create order out of a pile of mismatched plastic food containers. “We’re all good at different things,” Francis explains. “And it makes a lot of sense to divvy up household and parenting tasks by interest, skill and available time.” Apply the same concept of teamwork to cleaning the house, too. Hold 10-minute tidy-up sessions: Gather your family, cue up the dance tunes and set the timer for 10 minutes. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done working together-and how much fun you’ll have doing it!
Article from WomansDay.com written by Theo Pauline Nestor
For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life, but there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one. -Souza
When, at some point in our lives, we meet a real tragedy — which could happen to any one of us — we can react in two ways. Obviously, we can lose hope, let ourselves slip into discouragement, into alcohol, drugs, and unending sadness. Or else we can wake ourselves up, discover in ourselves an energy that was hidden there, and act with more clarity, more force. -The Dalai Lama
When we are willing, we are able to change our minds, see another’s opinion, find understanding when all seems stuck, lost or forgotten. When we are willing, we are given the gift of openheartedness that sets us free from the chains of our past. When we are willing, we are willing to change. -Rhonda Britten
May we live with our hearts wide open to embrace all the goodness life has to offer, and to live fearlessly and love generously. -Susie Lee
When we are no longer able to change a situation,
we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor Frankl
Change is inevitable. Progress is optional.
Tony Robbins.
Be smart enough to hold on, be brave enough to let go. Sometimes, we need to hold onto faith while letting go of the outcome. Open your hand and hold your dreams gently, don’t try to grab them.
Anonymous
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
Carl Jung.
The harder you fall, the higher you bounce.
Unknown.
I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I’ve ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Anonymous
People will hate you, rate you, shake you, and break you.
But how strong you stand is what makes you.
Unknown.
You are who you are and what you are because of what has gone into your mind. You can change who you are and what you are by changing what goes into your mind.
Zig Ziglar
When in doubt, choose Love.
– Anonymous
Your task is not to seek love, but to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
– Rumi
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.
But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
– Maya Angelou
The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
– Rumi
Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect.
It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.
– Anonymous
The appearance of things change according to the emotions and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty really are in ourselves.
– Kahlil Gibran
Find the guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or stay awake just to watch you sleep. The one who turns to his friends and says, “thats her”.
– Anonymous
(Borrowed in part from our friends at HealthyMarriageTips.com)
Supermarket magazines bombard us with a constant stream of “Secrets to the Best Sex Ever”.
Here is the real secret.
If you increase the quality of your emotional intimacy you will significantly increase the quality and quantity of your physical intimacy.
Physical intimacy can take place with a total stranger and while it will be physically exciting it can never come close to the exultant ecstasy that comes from becoming one with your spouse with whom you have developed a strong emotional bond.
Emotional intimacy usually takes time to develop. It can’t be rushed or purchased. But it can be built one conversation and one experience at a time.
Before going much further it would also be good to give you our definition of emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy is your perceived sense of closeness with your spouse.
It’s built on trust, acceptance, forgiveness and knowing that the other person honestly wants what is best for you and “has your back”.
On average women tend to develop emotional intimacy through words and men tend to develop emotional intimacy through experiences. An example for women would be when they share their feelings about something they are struggling with. An example for men would be a hard and difficult experience that they overcame like fighting in a war, participating on a sports team, or any other shared physical activity that involves an element of danger and or difficulty.
Emotional intimacy also involves a tremendous amount of risk. It leaves you vulnerable to getting hurt because it involves lowering your walls and allowing someone else inside your defenses. Which in turn could allow them to use what they learned later on to hurt you.
It’s no wonder that Paul Simon wrote,
“I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain….
…If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.”
Yet even still there exists inside all men and women the desire and the need to feel close to someone.
So how do you have “safe” emotional intimacy? And how do you build and strengthen it?
The first step is to realize that no one is perfect. In other words you will never be able to engage in “safe” emotional intimacy. You will make mistakes and so will your spouse. What you can work towards is an emotionally intimate relationship in which you both quickly apologize and forgive each other when you do occasionally hurt each other. In a future tip we will cover how to accomplish this. The keyword though is, occasionally hurt each other. Emotional abuse is real and can be far more damaging then physical abuse. We will address emotional abuse in a future tip as well.
The second step is to engage in activities that will help your emotional intimacy grow stronger. For men that means setting aside time to JUST LISTEN. When a man hears a problem they want to fix it as quickly as possible and move on. Bite your tongue and let your wife talk about her feelings. If she asks you for a possible solution then feel free to share your ideas, otherwise JUST LISTEN. The other skill that MUST accompany listening is empathy. It’s not good enough to just keep your mouth shut. You also need to try and understand how she feels. Does this skill come naturally to most men. No, but it is like any other skill. It can be learned. At first it will feel awkward, but no more awkward than dribbling a basketball and shooting a layup with your offhand. If you stick with it and develop the skill, then the rewards in the physical intimacy area will be more than you can possibly imagine.
Besides setting aside at least 15 minutes a day to just talk, other activities you can engage in to build emotional intimacy include sharing with each other your dreams, struggles, difficult experiences you went through growing up, participating in difficult physical activities together like training for a marathon or backpacking in the mountains, praying together, sharing embarrassing moments, making promises and keeping them, sharing two things a day that you appreciate that your spouse did that day, saying please and thank you, asking about his or her day, giving at least a paragraph long response to “how was your day”, writing thank you notes, trying to see the world from your spouses perspective, complimenting your spouse, being totally faithful to your spouse, making sacrifices for your spouse and brainstorming other ways to strengthen your bond of emotional intimacy.
It also takes being intentional and even coming up with a plan . So make it happen and the rewards will come pouring in.
For more tips, log on to HealthyMarriageTips.com
If what you’re doing is not your passion, you have nothing to lose.
– Anonymous
The person who says something is impossible should not interrupt the person who is doing it.
– Anonymous
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
– George Eliot
All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.
– Walt Disney
What the mind can conceive, it can achieve.
– Napoleon Hill
If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.
-Milton Berle
The sky has never been the limit. We are our own limits. It’s then about breaking our personal limits and outgrowing ourselves to live our best lives.
– Anonymous
Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
– Life’s Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Everything you want should be yours: the type of work you want; the relationships you need; the social, mental, and aesthetic stimulation that will make you happy and fulfilled; the money you require for the lifestyle that is appropriate to you; and any requirement that you may (or may not) have for achievement or service to others. If you don’t aim for it all, you’ll never get it all. To aim for it requires that you know what you want.
-Richard Koch
Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
– Steve Jobs
living your best 