6 Ways To Stop Stressing About Things You Can't Control 9 Ways To Deal With Things You Can't Control, So You Can Feel Less Stressed Every Day

An Interview With Maya Angelou

How to Stay Calm in the Face of Change How to Manage the Anxiety That Comes With Change Fear Change? Seven Ways to Quiet Anxiety of the Unknown

Transforming your life involves going beyond the way you live, co-creating a better life for yourself, and changing the way you live. You do this by using your thoughts, visualization, words, faith, actions, or a combination of them. How allowing life to unfold brings you joy This Mental Trick Makes it Way Easier to Accept Change

How to Create Change in Your Life When It Feels Impossible 7 Small Ways To Make Big Changes In Your Life

5 Effortless Ways to Embrace Change 10 Ways to Embrace Change Why Embracing Change is Important How to Embrace Change That's Suddenly Forced Upon You

5 Distorted Thought Patterns and How to Change Them Unhelpful thinking patterns The Neuroscience of Changing Toxic Thinking Patterns (2 of 2)

I am willing to change and grow

7 Things to Do Right Now to Make Tomorrow a Better Day Make Choices Today That Will Help You Thrive Tomorrow 19 Things You Should Plan Today For A Better Tomorrow

I have a confession. Affirmations make me feel...uncomfortable. I'm extremely skeptical of the bold claims affirmations make. An example would be this one: I mean, really? Saying this out loud and often is not going to increase anyone's wealth. It's not possible. But there are people who claim it does.  Now, I understand that there are tons of affirmations not related to money or success but I'm still skeptical. I feel twitchy about it all.  So why affirmations? Why do a 365 on something I am so skeptical about? It's a topic that keeps popping up on my radar the past couple of years so I thought it might make for an interesting experiment. Provide an affirmation a day, some additional insights about its theme, and see if it makes a difference for me or anyone else.  One of the purposes of affirmations, from the reading up I've been doing, is to transform negative thinking into positive thinking. I can get behind that, it's basically a ...

The expression has its origins in the Bible, the book of Jeremiah specifically. The meaning is clear, some things about the nature of someone cannot be changed no matter what. 

Challenge. Conflict. Change. I'm grateful for the 3 C's of personal growth and development.  They all work together, if you allow them, to carry on the process of becoming who you were designed to be, to coming into the full potential you were created for. It works like this.  A challenge is issued.  A conflict usually arises from it because the challenge is personal, probably pierces your pride so therefore a conflict between our pride and others or our soul ensues.  If we practice good conflict resolution then change is birthed from the challenge and the conflict.  This is the abridged version of the 3 C's but I trust that you are smart enough to figure out the unabridged version or find someone who can help you figure it out! I'm grateful for the 3 C's even though they often sting because in the end I know if I can get my pride set aside and take on the challenge and resolve the conflict well then change, for the better, is happening in my life. What abou...

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.   Maya Angelou The butterfly only becomes beautiful in the confines of a cocoon.  We tend to forget that.  We tend to forget that it was wrapped up and underwent a metamorphosis that ushered in its beauty.  But it's the only way. And so it is with us.  Within the confines of painful and altering situations we undergo a metamorphosis that ushers in our own beauty (yes even you men!).  But just like with the butterfly we tend to forget that.  We forget that it is through the refining process that we become beautiful in character.  It is in that cocoon-type process that we shed the things that hold us back from being free to fly.  Tough things have a way of removing whatever is in the way of our freedom to be who we are. What would happen if caterpillars refused to enter their cocoon?  We would have no butterflies. ...

Life-giving people make an enormous impact in subtle ways.   Chris Hodges Are you a life-giver?  If you are you probably don't know it.  Most life-giving people are totally unaware that they are making a difference in the lives of others.  And if they are told they are they wonder about it, seem confused by it, etc. See life-giving people are just doing what comes "naturally" to them.  Did you know we are all created to be life-givers?  And yet some of us, too many of us really, are actually sucking the life out of people.  I call them "hoovers".  :)  We give life in a million different but usually very small and subtle ways. We can also suck the life out of people in very small and subtle ways.  We all have within us the potential to make an enormous impact, it is up to us what kind of impact to make. I don't know about you but I would prefer to be known as a life-giver rather than a hoover.  I mean right?  Who wants to b...

We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.   Santosh Kalwar Nothing changes until we change how we think about the person, the situation, the (fill in the blank) .  But we like our wrong thinking about the person, the situation, the  (fill in the blank) .  We might say we don't like our thinking about it but we do.  How do I know (outside of the obvious fact that I do this as well)?  Because we "pet" our thinking and encourage it to stay by feeding it, justifying it, looking for and finding reasons to excuse it, ignoring the stench of it, etc.  Our thinking stinks!  And I know this because anything unhealthy that we are unwilling to part with eventually becomes stagnant and stinky.  It becomes like a drug that we can't get enough of.  We are addicted to our stinkin' thinkin'! Pride is the main key, or problem, to all of this.  We are prideful.  We are too prid...

Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.   Jacob M. Braude BOY HOWDY!  Isn't this the truth?!  I have enough trouble trying to change things about myself much less trying to change another person.  Besides, it's not my job to change others.  If I focus on others then that means I am not focused on myself and myself is the only person I should be working on.  Same goes for *you*.  What could be or would be different if we all focused on ourselves and the changes we know we need to make in our own lives?  Improvements to our self usually means we settle down and quit nitpicking on others.  What a relief for them and us!

When you have to start compromising yourself or your morals for the people around you, it's probably time to change the people around you.   Unknown Compromise:  :  a  concession  to something derogatory or prejudicial  <a compromise  of principles> When people in your life are asking you, knowingly or not, to change yourself and/or your morals for them and theirs then you need to take a step back and think long and hard about the possible consequences of what you are considering changing.  When we choose to put ourselves and who we are at our core on the back burner for others we have placed ourselves in a position of weakness.  Not standing firm for our beliefs and who we are is weakness not strength.  It is not strength to bend to someone else.  It is not strength to adopt immorality to make sure people are okay with you.  It is strength to stand tall and steady in the face of pressure to compromise. ...

flux, n The natural state.  Our moods change.  Our lives change.  Our feelings for each other change.  Our bearings change.  The song changes.  The air changes.  The temperature of the shower changes.   Accept this.  We must accept this.   Unknown Oh we hate change don't we?  Even if, in the long run, the change is good for us.  We still hate it.  We kick against it, we fight it, we run from it.  We hate change.  It's so interesting to me how much we hate change and how we will do everything we can to avoid it, to keep it from happening.  Sure, some of the minor changes of life are inconvenient but when it comes to the biggies we view them as more than inconvenient.  They scare us.  We don't like the unknown and change is usually a bunch of unknowns.  I have discovered that a lot of times the big changes that are actually good for us usually happen by "force".  Since we are ...

We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.   Johann von Goethe Ever run into someone who has decided, consciously or unconsciously, to stay a certain way - whether that's an age, behavior, mindset, etc?  It's painful isn't it?  It's painful to have to live with this person - whether that is literally or in a setting like work, etc.  Not allowing change because of desire to "fit in" with the age group you wish you could be forever, or because of laziness about taking on life responsibilities, or because of fill in the blank is one of the most detrimental things we can do to ourselves.  And it is OUR choice.  Nobody else can own that.  People may try to control it or own it but we always have a choice.   What happens when we choose not to change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves?  We become hard in all the places being hard is damaging.  We become hard of heart, we become hard in relationships, we bec...

What is the point of all of this if you aren't going to let it change you?   Francis Chan Today's quote and commentary is dedicated to one of my besties.  Sara "Sunshine" Pfaff-O chieng. If you are my FB friend then perhaps you've seen her and I together on FB.  Here we are a little over a month ago.  We are at the airport and I'm hugging her off to go marry her beloved, Paul.  He's a Kenyan and they married in Kenya since the U.S. was being stinky about letting him come for a visit here so they could marry in the States.  What's CRAZY about my Sara's story is this:  a short year ago, on this date, she had no plans to marry anyone and move her whole life.  Amazing what can happen in a few short months.   Sara went to Kenya last summer (2011) for a 7 week missions trip.  She met Paul in about the last hour she was in Nairobi and now they are married.  Paul, who is AMAZING, currently teaches and lives in Oman.  So Sara ...