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You are here: Home / Archives for 2008

Archives for 2008

Quotes About Change

December 30, 2008 by Joi Leave a Comment

Quote about Change Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. – James Baldwin

Our dilemna is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better. – Sydney J. Harris

If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. – Mary Engelbreit

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. – W. Edwards

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. – Anatole France

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. – Victor Frankl

When you are through changing, you are through. – Bruce Barton

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. – John Kenneth Galbraith Quote

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. – Charles Dickens

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. – Confucius

Change always comes bearing gifts. – Price Pritchett

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions. – Ellen Glasgow

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. – Faith Baldwin

Above all, remember, there is no such thing as making a small change. All change is monumental.

Filed Under: Daily Quote

Your Comfort Zone Isn’t Such a Bad Place to Be

December 29, 2008 by Joi 6 Comments

comfort_zone1

First of all, let me start off by saying that I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoyed your family, laughed so much that your sides “felt” it, and shoved lots of wonderful food into your pie hole. I hope you gave generously and that it welt so good, you smiled inside as well as outside.

It occurs to me that one of the reasons Christmas is so magical is the fact that it does, indeed, feel wonderful to make other people happy. The sight of someone’s face when they open a present or when they eat something you’ve made just for them is utterly priceless. If we were half as clever as we think we are, we’d keep the magic going all year. Sounds like, smells like, and looks like a top tier resolution to me.

Second of all, I’m sorry for the fact that the holidays took the Daily out of Self Help Daily. But I know you understand that a wife, mother, and human to 4 cats has a lot of hats to wear – and some hats simply come first. With less school and work, my family has been home more than usual and if I’m not cooking for them, watching movies with them, or laughing at their antics – I’m just sitting and enjoying their company.

Something my husband and I were watching last night leads me to the thoughts behind this post, in fact. I LOVE music – so much so that I don’t even have a favorite genre. I listen to all genres, all artists. If the music and locals are good and if they make me “feel” something with my heart and tap something with my feet… sign me up! We were watching one of my favorite female singers EVER perform on television. (Notice the way I’m leaving her name out? I loves her, so I’m not going to sling mud on her prettiness.) She was singing a song that, frankly, she had no business singing. The song wasn’t bad, the singer dang sure wasn’t bad – but together? Well, uncomfortable. It was simply WAY out of her comfort zone. When the song presented itself to her, she should have looked the other way and pretended they’d never met.

I had (as usual) enjoyed too much coffee yesterday, so while I laid in bed waiting for the sandman (he gets lost in traffic often with me), I thought about my songstress. When she’s doing her thing, performing within her comfort zone – for lack of a better phrase – she can’t be touched. Others come close, but touch? No, no, no.

I have, like most people who fancy themselves Self Help writers, often written about the virtues of “stepping outside of your comfort zone.” I still believe that testing your wings, from time to time, is good for you. Anything that makes you reach further than normal is a good thing. Make that a great thing. HOWEVER, when the reach is so far that you leave your own neighborhood, that can be uncomfortable at best and downright ugly at worst.

Truth be told, the phrase “Comfort Zone” has a bad rap. Think about it. When Kanye West throws on his killer shades and sings “Love Lockdown,” he’s in his comfort zone. When George Strait grabs his cowboy hat and sings about cowgirls, he’s in his comfort zone. Their comfort zones have, deservedly, made them millions. What would happen if they switched? I’m a HUGE fan of each, but I’m not certain I’d want to watch. George with a “Love Lockdown” and Kanye asking, “How About Them Cowgirls?” – What?!

Each artist steps, reasonably, out of their comfort zones with new songs and performances – but they’re intelligent enough to know what they do and what they do as well as anyone. Stepping too far beyond that would be foolish. Why leave a neighborhood that’s money in the bank?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for challenging yourself. Getting too comfortable can be like taking a life tranquilizer. But taking too many steps away from your comfort zone can be your undoing. It’s all about balance, common sense, and knowing who you are and what you can do. We’re living in a time when we seem to think we have to be able to do everything. No can do.

My dad used to tell a story about a paper route he had as a boy. Did all dads once deliver papers??? There was a particularly ill-tempered german shepherd who was tied to a tree along the route. My dad knew how far the rope would reach, so he learned (after a hole in his jeans) how close he could get to the dog’s home. The dog seemed to know how far he could reach as well because after my dad began walking outside of his reach, the dog lost interest in him.

We all have a similar reach, whether we want to admit it or not.

When we first began a web publishing business, I tried to do it all. I’d design the site, make the graphics, write the content, do the coding, contact affiliates, network, etc. It got to the point that I felt so overwhelmed and stressed that I wanted to throw in the towel – or, better yet, throw it at someone. One day my husband told me that I should concentrate mainly on writing. He told me that he felt that I did everything well, but that he especially liked my writing and thought I should give it the majority of my attention. He’d never let me down before, so I took his advice. To make an already long article a little less long, suffice to say – it made all the difference.

There’s just as much to be said for stepping into your comfort zone as there is to be said for stepping out of your comfort zone.

If you have a particular “comfort zone,” don’t apologize for it – dominate it.

Filed Under: General, Self Help

Motivation from Catwoman! What We Can All Learn From Eartha Kitt

December 26, 2008 by Joi 4 Comments

Eartha Kitt
Eartha Kitt
Buy This at Allposters.com

 

“It’s not the name they call you, it’s the name you answer to.” – Fred Allen

I’ve spent the morning reading about Eartha Kitt, who sadly passed away yesterday. I’m sure you remember her as Catwoman #2 from the Batman television series. She was the Catwoman with the arresting voice. She was only in 3 episodes, but she will forever be remembered as the sexy, raspy voiced Catwoman.

What I DIDN’T know is what all this beautiful lady had to overcome in life. She was born in South Carolina in 1927, the result of a brutal crime. Her mother, a sharecropper who was of African-American and Cherokee Native American descent, was raped by a plantation owner.

Her mother (for reasons I guess only she understood) gave her daughter up. By the time she was 15, Eartha had dropped out of school. Without a home or family to call her own, she slept at friends houses as well as the subway.

Eartha’s was obviously a life that could have gone a hundred different directions, but equal parts talent and fight made her a household name. If that isn’t inspiring, nothing is.

She landed on her feet… her dancing feet…  in Paris and became the talk of the town. None other than Orson Wells called her, “the most exciting girl in the world.” She then found work in Hollywood, including the seductively memorable role that made her famous: Catwoman (1967-1968).

When I read about Eartha Kitt this morning, the quote at the top of the post came to mind.

What people think of us counts little compared to what we think of ourselves. And what others see when they look at us means very little when it stands beside what we see when we look at ourselves.

Can you picture it? A young girl in Harlem (where Eartha lived for a while) refuses to be a discarded child that nobody wanted to call their own. She didn’t see a child of rape when she looked in the mirror. At a time when race was on just about everyone’s mind, she didn’t see a race. She certainly didn’t see a little girl that needed pity.

She saw a star.

Look at the last print of Eartha, below. She stood before the Queen of England!

More Eartha Kitt Photographs and Art Prints:

Eartha Kitt Playing in the Tree

Eartha Kitt…
Buy This at Allposters.com

Eartha Kitt and Harry Belafonte

Eartha Kitt and Harry Belafonte
Buy This at Allposters.com

The Queen Talking to Bruce Forsythe and Eartha Kitt. November 1958

The Queen Talking to Eartha Kitt
Buy This at Allposters.com

 

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Eartha Kitt, self importance, self worth

Preserving Family Heirlooms, Family Recipes, and Family Memories

December 26, 2008 by Joi 2 Comments

Penny's Christmas Cookies
I know I touched on this a few articles ago, but I wanted to reach back and touch it again.

I hope everyone is reconnecting with their family members during Christmas and New Year’s. I like to picture families, the world over, sitting around the table laughing and telling stories. I like to picture mothers lovingly encouraging their children (of all ages!) to eat their vegetables, fathers dishing out the advice father’s like to dish out, brothers and sisters reliving the things they put their parents through, and grandparents remembering Christmas magic from the past.

I love to cook – love, love, love it. So on holidays, my family always knows where to find me.. In the kitchen amongst pots, pans, flour, ham, corn, cakes, wooden spoons, etc. It’s always so cute – my cat Alexa is always nearby and there’s always a steady stream of traffic as different family members come through to sample both my conversation and food.

At one point, my oldest daughter Emily came through with her boyfriend (great, great kids). We talked about family recipes and food for about an hour. He’s part Italian, so he was telling me all about his mother’s lasagna. As I was putting together my Corn Pudding, part of me was craving lasagna.

I showed him cookbooks I was compiling for each of my girls – filled with my favorite recipes, tips, advice, warnings, etc. Thanks to all of my own recipes, a huge cookbook collection and my food blog, my girls will never run out of recipes or cooking knowledge.

Unfortunately, there will be a lot of family favorites that I can’t pass along. My mom and sister in law each died completely unexpectedly and my only living grandmother now has dementia. Each of them had favorite recipes I would LOVE to have in my collection, but I never put them there.

We tend to think our loved ones will be around forever, don’t we?

Here’s something I think would be a really great idea: Family’s should compile a Family Heirloom Cookbook and ask different loved ones to contribute each of their favorite recipes. Thanks to the internet, recipes can be e-mailed back and forth and copies can be made, so each family member can have his or her own copy.

You have no idea how happy I’d be to have my mom’s meatloaf (she was queen of meatloaf!), my mother-in-law’s Dump Cake, my father-in-law’s delicious baked fish, my sister-in-law’s spaghetti sauce, and my grandmother’s…well, everything! That woman could have taken on Bobby Flay in her day. She’d have had him on his knees begging for mercy, recipes, and seconds!

I’m going hunting this week for recipes I can still get my oven mitts on. Before she got a Cracker Barrrel within 10 minutes of her home, my aunt cooked a lot. So, I’m going to hit her up for some of her recipes.  She recently made some Christmas Gingerbread Cookies (pictured above) that were so delicious I could have eaten the entire platter, myself.   She’s a great, great cook/baker – she’s simply decided that it’s SO much easier to let Cracker Barrel do all the work – and clean-up!

Smart lady.

I’m also going to contact family members a little further away – in distance and on the family tree. I plan on contacting another sister-in-law and begging, blackmailing or whatever it takes for her chicken and dumplings recipe. The woman weighs, like, 30 pounds soaking wet but cooks like a 240 pound southern lady.

How perfect would such a collection be for Christmas gifts next year? With all of the amazing Scrapbook kits on the market, they could be decorated beautifully and cherished forever.

As far as that goes, another great Christmas gift for 2009 would be a Family Memories Scrapbook – with or without recipes.

When it comes to talking early about Christmas and Christmas gifts, that may have just been a personal best.

Once again, I hope you’re having a beautiful Christmas season. Make every moment count double.

Filed Under: Relationships Tagged With: family, Relationships

Agree or Disagree? A Quote Questions Multi-Tasking’s Pulse

December 24, 2008 by Joi 9 Comments

Alexa
“Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.”  – Timothy Ferriss

When it comes to multi-tasking, are you a believer or do you side with Mr. Ferriss?  Which is more important – trying to cover as much ground as possible or focusing all of your energy, more or less, in one spot?

I look forward to your thoughts because, to be honest, mine are all over the place!  I can see both sides and I don’t really lean this way or that way.

Geez, even my thoughts try to mulit-task.

 

Filed Under: Daily Quote Tagged With: multi-tasking, quote

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