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You are here: Home / 2010 / Archives for May 2010

Archives for May 2010

Do it Anyway, Indeed!

May 31, 2010 by Joi 11 Comments

I’m not at all sure who the original author is, but the words below are brilliant. I’ve always been a huge fan of the “Do it anyway” concept – when used properly, that is!

Sometimes we come up against seemingly impossible odds.  For example, when giving to a favorite cause, don’t you sometimes wonder, “What good will this $50 actually do?”  You’d be amazed!  Give anyway.

DO IT ANYWAY
People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.

Fight for the underdog anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help, but may attack you if you help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you’ve got and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day – and an especially big THANK YOU to all of the brave men and women who have ever served our beautiful country. You don’t get nearly enough credit, respect, or gratitude. I don’t think any of us could ever thank you enough for the sacrifices you make.

Filed Under: General, Make a Difference, Positive Thought

Top 20 Superfoods According to South Beach Diet

May 27, 2010 by Joi 10 Comments

The following delicious foods (it reads like a grocery list I’d be most interested in) are handpicked by South Beach Diet as the top 20 foods containing the highest antioxidant concentration.

Why should we be interested in antioxidant-rich foods?  Here’s why: Antioxidants are naturally occurring nutrients that help prevent heart disease and cancer, and even the effects of aging.  Any time prevent comes before that cast of characters, we need to perk up and pay attention!

  1. Pomegranates
  2. Small red beans (dried)
  3. Wild blueberries
  4. Red kidney beans
  5. Pinto beans
  6. Blueberries (cultivated)
  7. Cranberries
  8. Artichokes (cooked)
  9. Blackberries
  10. Prunes
  11. Raspberries
  12. Strawberries
  13. Red Delicious apples
  14. Granny Smith apples
  15. Pecans
  16. Sweet cherries
  17. Black plums
  18. Gala apples
  19. Black beans (dried)
  20. Plums

Lately, I’ve been focusing really intently on holding each and every food and drink that I put into my body under the microscope.  Okay, not literally, my family would send me off somewhere and my cats would disown me. I simply ask myself what that particular food or drink will do FOR me:  Will it help my health or fitness goals in any way? Will it hurt them in any way?  Do studies exist that indicate this food or drink could actually be harmful?

In the same way that we wouldn’t want to inhale polluted air, we should never rush to throw unhealthy food into our bodies.  We want to breathe pure, clean, life-giving air and we should take the same approach with our food and drinks.

As a wife and mother, wanting to give healthier foods and drinks to my family drives me even more.  I don’t want to bring things into the house that are going to harm any of these beautiful smiling faces.

Just look at the superfoods named above.  As a fruit lover extraordinaire, I was delighted to see so many fruits on the list of superfoods. What an outstanding fruit salad you could make!  As for the beans, these beans would work well together in a bean soup or even a bean salad. Black beans and kidney beans are also wonderful in tossed salads.

Check out this delicious, quick and easy recipe for fruit dip that’ll turn fruit into dessert in your household.

Filed Under: Fitness, Health Tagged With: antioxidants, nutrition, South Beach Diet, superfoods

Quote of the Day: How We Spend Our Days

May 24, 2010 by Joi 3 Comments

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard

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Filed Under: Daily Quote Tagged With: inspirational quotes, motivational quotes, quote of the day, quotes

Be Happy! Grandma Moses, Bison, Flashy Ribbons, and a Heavy Love Seat

May 20, 2010 by Joi 9 Comments

Bison at the Elk and Bison Prairie 22
One of my dearest online friends recently told me that he was going through a particularly tough time and feeling incredibly sad. My heart breaks for anyone who feels this way – but never more so than when a person who’s face I know feels such crushing sadness.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Some who are reading these words right now may find themselves under a dark, heavy sadness.

Unfortunately there are no magic words. If there were, I’d bottle them and give them away. You can’t GOOGLE “How to be happy,” early in the morning, click on the first result and be on top of the world by noon.

However, there is hope. There’s always hope. For every one person who is, at this very moment, in the shadow of sadness, there is another stepping out of the shadow. For every one person who is on the verge of crying, there is another who is suddenly having trouble containing their laughter. One can’t remember how happiness feels and the other can’t completely remember how sadness feels.

I only hope that something within these words can help you find your way out of your own personal shadow.

The Heavy Love Seat

Not long ago, we got a new couch and love seat. They are incredibly heavy.  I remember when my husband and our daughter Stephany’s boyfriend (Rusty) moved them into the house.  Each looked like he’d just ran a marathon – while packing a bison on his back.  These are strong guys, mind you, but the furniture nearly did them in!

Last week, while watching an episode of the Golden Girls (an afternoon ritual for me and our cat, Alexa), I decided that the love seat needed to move back some.  I love to do yoga while watching the Girls, and my feet kept hitting the love seat. With great heaving, I pushed its ridiculously heavy girth backward.

I noticed that it had left indentions in the carpet.  How could it not, when it was the size of a bison? I’m nothing if not anal, so I tried to force the crushed carpet to rise to the occasion.  I coaxed, fluffed, and tried to make it look as good as it did pre-burden.

It was having none of it.

A few days went by, however, and the carpet seemed to lift its spirits.  The spot of the weighty burden can’t even be detected.  It’s as though the carpet told me, “I just needed a little time.”

It was like a huge bison standing on grass, then slowly moving away.  The “injured” grass beneath his heavy feet slowly heals and rises to blow in the wind once more.  For the grass that was once crushed beneath the beautiful bison’s weight to stay crumples would be perfectly ridiculous and would serve no purpose whatsoever.

In “My Life’s History,” Grandma Moses wrote, “Then Anna was born, so I had four babies to care for.  But we got along very nice till the children got the scarlet fever, that was a hard year but it passed on like all the rest.“

Given the fact that Grandma Moses lived to be 92, she knew a thing or two about the passing of time – good or bad.  As she looked back over her life, she was able to see, clearly, that a very bad time passed on like the rest.  She remained (for over 90 years!) alert, creative, happy, and full of life and, in my very humble opinion,  her attitude was one of the reasons.  Grandma Moses realized that… well… life is as beautiful as you want it to be.

Life may be full of people getting knocked down but it’s also full of people getting back up, dusting off their backsides, and telling their opponent (whether it be cancer, the economy, an individual, a personal struggle…), “I’m stronger than you gave me credit for.  You may have caught me off guard and knocked me down but it’ll take a whole lot more than YOU to keep me there!”

It’s human nature, after being knocked down, to just stay there.  I’m not sure if we stay down because we’re afraid to get back up (after all, that’s where we were last time we were knocked down – what if it happens again!?!), we’re too weak to stand, or it’s simply easier to stay down than to exert the effort to rise.  Whatever the reason, we all have a tendency to just lie there – creating spiritual and emotional scars the way my love seat created indentations in the carpet.

I moved – with no small effort – the love seat and allowed the indentations to rise. We can just as surely move – with no small effort – our heartaches and allow the scars to heal.

It’s all about making a choice.  Remember, we make our choices and, then, our choices make our lives. You have to choose to get back up, choose to look at the beauty around you and within you, choose to let go of negative emotions, and choose to get on with your life.  Bitterness, anger, resentment, and jealousy are the things that give sadness its weight.  When you release these negative emotions, you’ll find that you can move the burden off of you.

Say, out loud, I‘m releasing my anger (or bitterness, remorse, guilt, pain…).  Good riddance!

I know I’ve shared this story before on Self Help Daily and Out of Bounds, but it’s worth repeating because I know that if it’s an emotion I’ve felt before, others have as well.  The first Christmas after my mom died, I felt so completely sad and missed her so much that Christmas trees and decorations were the furthest things from my mind.  Me… the person who loves Christmas more than anyone in the world!

I had brought in the Christmas ornaments, the tree, the lights, the decorations, and so forth.  Stephany and I stacked them in a corner of the living room.

Then, I more or less ran to my bedroom and threw myself across the bed.  Tears came down hot and heavy as I recalled the years my mother and I had put up Christmas trees – talking a mile a minute about cookies, candy, presents, and so on.   I got my profound love for holidays from my mom.  She always did things up HUGE and I’m proudly carrying on the tradition!

While lying across the bed, I knew that my daughters and husband were in different parts of the house – possibly even wondering if it would be okay to even try to get in the Christmas spirit.  I’d managed to slip away and have my tear fest without them seeing – but they had to know what I was going through.

I reasoned with myself that I could lie there and feel completely miserable or I could get up, wipe my eyes, and get on with life.  I knew full-well what my mom would want me to do:  Get up and decorate that Christmas tree with the brightest lights, the flashiest ribbons, and the most magnificent ornaments at my disposal.

She’d want me, Michael, and her much, much, much beloved granddaughters to be happy and our home to be filled with joy and the Christmas spirit.

I made the decision to dry my eyes, put on a little makeup, throw on a smile, and get after that tree.  My husband smiled at me as I walked through the house, and Stephany sprung up to help make the Christmas tree magnificent.  We talked a mile a minute about cookies, candy, presents, and so on.

I made the right choice.

I did the right choice in another very emotional and trying situation as well.  Due to my husband’s career, my family and I lived on Pensacola Beach (in a beautiful beach house – right on the water) for a while. We lived on Santa Rosa Island with countless sea gulls and pelicans.  The dining room wall was nothing but windows looking out over the ocean and its beautiful gulls, pelicans, waves, dolphins, and so on.  Each morning and each evening, I’d watch with joy as dolphins played, basically, in my back yard.

Paradise?  You betcha.

Michael’s career then pulled a fast one on us and demanded that we leave Florida and move back home to Kentucky.  I love Kentucky, but it’s never easy to leave paradise.

On the day we were leaving the island, I drove our Caravan while Michael drove ahead of me in the U-Haul. While driving over the bridge – leaving the island – part of my mind questioned me, “Are you going to take a look back in the rear view mirror to see what you’re leaving one last time?”  I thought, “Heck no. I’m looking forward, toward my next great adventure!”

Right decision.  Where we live now (Kentucky) is greener and I can actually enjoy snow again! We also got the blessing of spending a lot more time with my mom in her last years.  Huge blessing!  It was just in a bit of a disguise, that’s all.

When things happen that hurt, you have to INSIST on healing and INSIST on moving forward.  Don’t stay where you are, weighed down with “bison-like” weight – cementing your emotional scars in deeper and deeper.  Please make the decision to get up and move on with your life.

We all only get one shot at life.  Any time spent feeling sad is time wasted.  The best revenge you can have on anyone or anything that has knocked you down is to get back up….. stronger, better, and happier than ever before.

Heck, that’ll knock them down.  Sweet.

~ Joi

Photo Credit: Bison Pictures

Filed Under: General, Positive Thought Tagged With: happiness, how to be happy, overcome depression, overcome sadness

Protected: 8 Attributes of Great Achievers

May 18, 2010 by Joi 4 Comments

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Books I Love, Spiritual Tagged With: 8 Attributes of Great Achievers, Book Reviews, Cameron C Taylor

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