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Trying to Wear too Many Hats Doesn’t Do Anything But Cause Headaches

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Quote About Trying to Do Too Many Things
 

This past week, alone, I’ve witnessed the following:

  • An e-mail from a Christian newsletter publisher talking about treating joint pain.
  • A department store with a bank, clinic, and tax prep booth – all where better shoe, books, and clothing selections once were.
  • A bar-b-que restaurant serving fried fish. BAD fried fish.
  • Another e-mail newsletter (“specializing” in health) talking about relationships.

And it’s just Wednesday!

Is it just me, or are people trying to DO too many different things and BE too many different people these days?

Fast food restaurants may be the worst. There’s even one clown who seems to think he’s Starbucks.  Stick to the fries and burgers, buddy.  Oddly enough, people seem shocked that this restaurant is falling in profits and popularity. That happens when you stop trying to “perfect” what you’re supposed to be doing.

There’s a beauty salon I drive by frequently and it seems that each time something new has joined the lineup: manicures, pedis, botox, fillers, and other things I can’t even pronounce. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to drive by today and see, “Now doing open heart surgery! Get your nails done before you even come to!”

Even my own much, much beloved coffee shops are branching out further and further. Pastries, sandwiches, smoothies, candy, nuts, etc…

Trying to do everything doesn’t perfect anything.

Take the flip side. Think of  Chick-Fil-A, Cracker Barrel, NBA Players, and Waffle House.

  • Chick-Fil-A sticks with chicken. They concentrate solely on what’s on the sign out front and you will not find better chicken in any fast food restaurant.
  • Cracker Barrel doesn’t try to be anything they’re not. They serve great home-style cooking and leave the rest to… well, they leave the rest to the rest.
  • NBA and WNBA Players Defy Logic. Ever think of how incredibly difficult it would be to get a small ball into a hole that’s hanging so far away? All while there are 5 athletes, your size or bigger, giving their all to defeat your purpose?! But these men and women commit themselves to the game and they are just mind-boggling to watch. They specialize in perfecting their game and their conditioning. They do things we can’t even begin to imagine doing because they work at that one thing – basketball.
  • Waffle House? Breakfast food all day, all night. Can you imagine how ludicrous it’d be to see “Now serving lasagna” on the sign out front? A lot of the scenarios we see everyday are just as ludicrous, we’ve just gotten used to them.

Now let’s bring it home to where we live. Do we ever fall into the same traps to the ones above? Of course we do. It’s human nature, I suppose to think, “More = Better.”  Wal-Mart’s reasoning is that if they create essentially a “small city” inside each store, more people will shop there. They think, “Let’s give them a bank, a clinic, a beauty salon, a pharmacy, an Optometrist, a place to do their taxes…”

None of which, of course, makes them a better department store. Ironically, it makes them LESS valuable as a department store because all the other clicks and whistles are squeezing out the LAST things they should be squeezing out. I can remember when Wal-Mart had the cutest, most affordable shoes in town. This was about 10 years ago and their selections have gone downhill since. I guess they just don’t have room for things like that anymore.

Mark my words, Sam Walton would not be a happy man.  Can you imagine what he’d said the first time someone said, “Hey, Mr. Walton, I have a great idea. Let’s put a clinic inside each store!”

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud ambition but, like they say, “Ambition without knowledge is like a boat on dry land.”  And since NO ONE knows everything, that stands to reason that a lot of people are treading water they never should have jumped into in the first place.

What happens when an individual tries to do too many things, wear too many hats, and tries to walk on too many different paths? Well, for one thing, they look like a darn fool.

On a more serious level, though, he or she suffers in three key areas:

  1. The MORE they do and try to do, the LESS happy they will be. They find themselves so BUSY trying to do all things and be all things that they’re left with no time to simply enjoy life. Life is passing them by and they never actually even look up long enough to see it. Stress is a particularly ugly monster and he prefers people who have too many hats. They’re like some kind of signal to him – he thinks, “Easy prey!”  How can you tell if stress is sneaking up on you or already has you in his clutches? I think the easiest way is to ask yourself how your RESPOND to situations and people. Do relatively small things set you off? Do things that once wouldn’t even measure a blip on your radar now cause your heart rate to speed up, your neck muscles to tense up, and an angry disposition to show up. Sure signs of stress…. and since stress leads NOWHERE good, deal with it today.
  2. The GO! GO! GO! mentality creates physical problems that can be deadly. Heart disease, hypertension, and even gastrointestinal problems can, and are, directly linked to this type of hyper lifestyle and mindset.  Have you ever seem someone in the throes of thinking they had to do a million and one different things? I swear, sometimes they even forget to breath.
  3. Relationships Suffer. While this is the last one in the list, it certainly is not the least. Moms and dads who think they HAVE to work extra long hours at the expense of actually spending time with their children are making one of the biggest mistakes known to man or womankind. It’s also one of the mistakes they’ll, one day, regret the most.  The same can be said for husbands and wives who become so wrapped up in “making money,” “having more,” and “getting caught up…” when every topic of conversation revolves around these subjects, the stage is set for misery.

Life isn’t something we’re going to be able to get out and enjoy for hundreds of years, you know. If you’ve become so busy that work or money are all you ever think or talk about and you’re forever looking for your next hat – do yourself (and everyone in your life) a favor…

  • slow down
  • breath
  • live in the moment
  • enjoy life

Your level of happiness will rise with each hat you cast aside.  Life is to be enjoyed, not rushed through.

~ Joi

Overcoming Fear: Truth Be Told, It’s Just Pretty Darn Cool

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Canoeing at Sunset
 

My husband and I recently took a canoe trip on one of Kentucky’s many beautiful lakes.  For most people, this would simply be another beautiful adventure in the great outdoors. But for someone, like me, who has a “nearly” paralyzing fear of bodies of water larger than a bathtub and a “totally” paralyzing fear of snakes, it was like riding a roller-coaster at an old abandoned amusement park… a roller-coaster without seat belts in an old abandoned amusement park.

A roller-coaster without seat belts in an old abandoned amusement park being operated by a clown with an evil laugh.

OK. You get the idea.

When we set off from the safety of the land (I really, really love land) and the canoe started swaying “too far” that way, then overcompensated by swaying “too far” in the other direction, my mind went full on “fight or flight mode.” It started coming up with scenarios that could get my feet right back on the nice safe land. I thought,  “I could say I forgot something…” then, when my husband said, “What?” I could say, “I forgot to stay in the car.”

Then, I thought, “I could say I’m sick… and it won’t be that much of a stretch…”

By the time I was deciding on one approach, I realized we’d gotten too far away from precious land. Frankly, I didn’t have any intention of ruining the husband’s day by making him step in my chicken &$!^.

Just as my brain tried to console itself by thinking, “At least we haven’t seen a s-n-a-k-e yet…” guess what slithered by the canoe with its head held up high, trying to get away from us as fast as possible.

That’s right.  A s-n-a-k-e.  My brain spells it out… makes them seem less real.

Here’s the kicker. I thought he (she???  – how in the heck would you know??) was downright cute.  The whole head up above the water while the body tried frantically to get it to safety made me feel both a kinship and a pity for it.

It was cute. There I said it.

I even somehow managed to raise the camera I was holding in a death-clutch and tried to take a picture of him (her). It was too fast, its fight or flight speed left mine in the dust.

It wasn’t long before I had actually relaxed enough to actually speak. I managed to tell Michael that I was going to need lots and lots of chocolate when we got off that lake.

Chocolate is my adult pacifier.

By the time we’d seen beavers, an epic beaver lodge, herons, eagles, ospreys, geese, and deer (in the distance… they weren’t swimming out there, now THAT would have freaked me out), I was having the time of my life. As the sun began to set, I realized that our canoe trip was nearly over and I actually felt a sense of regret.

Then I remembered the chocolate and all was well.

What I took away from the entire situation was this: Sometimes we tell ourselves SO OFTEN that we’re afraid of this, or we’re afraid of that that we cause the fear to seem larger than it actually is. We make it a huge monstrous two-headed beast when it’s actually usually much smaller, not that monstrous, and has just the one head.

When we allow fear to dominate us, we’re actually giving it too much credit and ourselves not nearly enough.

One thing that helped me fairly early in the canoe trip was a certain little “mental checklist” I did.  I asked myself what was the worst case scenario and what I would do if it came to pass.

I determined that if the canoe flipped and I found myself in deep water approached by a s-n-a-k-e, intent on using my soaked body as a buffet, I would club it with my oar. My brain also reminded me that I could always climb back into the canoe and that, after all, I was wearing a life jacket.

After I saw the you-know-what fleeing the scene, it also occurred to me that a clubbing wouldn’t even be necessary. I’d have to chase it to do so and I have no intention of doing that.

Ironically, I was ITS huge monstrous two-headed beast.

During the canoe trip, I also got a live, up close look at what irrational fear looks like. In a canoe near us, a “football player size” teenage boy nearly turned the canoe he and his girlfriend were in completely over. Seriously, they were inches from landing in the water.

He caused such a commotion, their canoe swayed like Gilligan’s ship in the opening credits and I still have no idea how it kept from wrecking.

Come to find out… he did all of that because he saw a spider. I’m not even kidding you.  As I was laughing at the big ole boy afraid of a tiny little spider, my over-stimulated and shot out mind asked me, “What are YOU laughing at, snake charmer?”

The day was as enlightening as it was entertaining.  My irrational fear came thisclose to ruining it for both me and my husband and I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am that I chose “fight” instead of “flight.”

It’s not an overstatement to say that it made me stronger. Winning battles does that – especially when you’re your own opponent.

Our minds are utterly fascinating and utterly powerful.  While this may seem like a reach, It’s one I’m willing to risk: Our minds determine the world in which we live.

We pretty much create the world we live in all between our ears. If we want something to be beautiful, it will be beautiful.

If we want to find fault in a person or a situation, we will be able to find as many as we’d like.

If we want to make a situation fearful, we won’t have to break a sweat, we can make it horror-story quality.

I’m sure you’re asking the same thing I am… why would we want to create anything negative?  Why would we desire to create anything frightening or ugly?

Unless we’re as crazy as crazy has a right to be, we want our world to be beautiful, peaceful, and infinitely happy. Right? Well, the good news is we have the power to set it on the right track.

This power is our mind.

Next time your mind tells you something is scary, ugly, or even hideous, don’t just take its word for it (especially if it spells it out). Step back from the situation, take a deep breath, and create the world in which you truly want to live.

~ Joi

Your Turn: What are your own personal phobias or fears and what have you done to overcome them? Anyone else “highly cautious” around snakes?!

Canoeing

Top Ten Things You Should Stop Doing

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Top Ten Things You Should Stop Doing
 

We are a generation of to do lists, multi-tasking, smart phones, and appointment calendars.  We’re convince that the MORE we DO, the happier we’ll be.  We think, “If we want happiness, we have to do do do and get get get…”

We proudly wave our “git ‘er done” mentality and vow to do just that.  And, of course we want our lunch to go – after all there are places to go, people to see, and plenty of ‘er to get done.

I won’t even lecture (well, not today anyway) about what this does to our health, psyche, and relationships. You get a free pass, I’ll go all mother hen on you about your well-being another day.

What we fail to realize, however, amongst all of our busyness, is that we can have an admirable “To Do” list, but if we keep doing certain negative, destructive things – we’re just shooting ourselves in our ever moving feet.

Think of these 10 self-destructive thoughts or actions as your To Don’t list.

  1. Don’t put things off.  If you’ve been wanting to build a tree house… go buy your lumber today! If you’ve always wanted an herb garden Martha Stewart would be impressed with, start planning it right now. If the thought of something makes you smile, imagine how much you’ll smile when it’s out of your brain and in your reality.
  2. Don’t let others determine how you feel about yourself.  Never look to other people to see your own reflection – you’ll never get the same one twice.  Taking a good, hard look at yourself is the first step in the self improvement journey.  But YOU are the one that has to take inventory.  Don’t let others build you up too high, but certainly don’t allow them to tear you down.  When someone else determines your highs and lows, don’t they pretty much have control over you?
  3. Don’t allow toxic thoughts to rent space in your mind. Here’s the dangerous thing about thoughts – they don’t remain thoughts. They become actions, they become attitudes, and they become words. Actions and words CANNOT be undone. They can be apologized for, agonized for, and can serve as huge weights on your conscience – but they can never be erased. If you entertain negative thoughts about an individual and keep feeding these thoughts with MORE negativity and hatred, it will come out – make no mistake about it. Think of negative thoughts as toxic waste. NOW, how long do you want them sticking around?
  4. Never “bad mouth” your loved ones to others.  I once read a woman’s quote that said something to the effect of how thankful she was that her name was always safe in her sweetheart’s mouth. I thought that was beautiful. She knew that if he ever spoke of her to his friends and/or family, it would be with kindness and love. When we speak of our loved ones, should they not be able to say the EXACT same thing? Are your loved one’s names safe in your mouth? Don’t run people down – especially those you love. Build them up… brag on them! People will make judgments about your loved ones by your own words – they’ll also judge just how much you love and pride you have for them from these same words.
  5. Don’t make excuses.  If you mess up, and come on, who doesn’t – own up to it.  Don’t try to laugh it off if it isn’t funny, don’t try to re-size it (up-size or downsize), and most of all, don’t try to put the blame on someone else.  Finger pointing is a big pet peeve of mine. Don’t. Do. It. It’s ugly.
  6. Don’t underestimate karma.  Seriously, never ever fail to give karma her due – you’ll be sorry.  I’ve been telling my daughters about her (and her keen memory and even keener sense of justice) as long as I’ve been telling them to say please and thank you.  Karma can be a rewarding, kind, beautiful seeker of justice, but she can also seem like a cruel, vindictive something or another. Either way, she has an impossibly long memory. You can’t outrun her, you can’t hide from her.  The only thing you can hope to do is to stay on her good side.  You know the old adage that says the mother is the “heart” of the home, and that if she’s happy, everyone’s happy – but if she’s miserable, everyone’s miserable?  Meet Karma… the heart of life’s home.  When you make a point of doing the right thing (whether anyone’s watching or not), Karma keeps score and your world will be more harmonious.  But when you dodge what’s right in favor of what’s wrong, you’re instantly on her ‘ish list.  And make no mistake about it, she’ll get to you.
  7. Stop doing what you hate. If you’re working in a job that makes you miserable, find another one.  Life’s too short to spend it being miserable.
  8. Stop thinking so much about money.  That’s another thing that sort of defines our generation. We never seem to think we have enough money.  Think about it this way – if we had more, we’d just spend more.  When my husband and I were first married, we didn’t have a heckuva lot of money.  When our beautiful daughters started arriving, we had even less.  More love, more happiness, more laughter – but most definitely less money.  Today, we’ve been blessed to have enough money, but guess what?  We still spend it.  We simply pay a little more for what we wear, where we live, what we eat, and what we drive.  We were as warm, as comfortable, as full, and as mobile then as we are now.  I’ll let you in on a little secret too, we were just as happy then as we are now.  We’re the same people now as we were then.  We laugh out loud at Andy Griffith reruns, get far too wrapped up in UK Basketball and St. Louis Cardinals baseball, spoil our daughters and cats, and so on.  Money buys stuff but it doesn’t buy happiness, it doesn’t buy relationships, and it doesn’t buy memories.  If you’re sacrificing any of the three in its pursuit, you’ll be more than sorry in the end – you’ll be devastated.
  9. Don’t nitpick other people!  Sorry for the exclamation mark – I just felt compelled to yell this one out loud.  How this guy wears his hair, how that woman dresses, what this person eats, how that person talks – none of your concern.  Not your problem. In the new testament, at the point where Jesus has risen and is addressing his apostles, one of them sees fit to ask Him about another apostle.  Jesus’ response was, “What is that to you?” A very loving and long-suffering way of saying, “Now remind me how that’s any of your business sir….”  We get SO off track by looking at what others are or are not doing.  They are responsible for their own lives – how they dress, where they work, how they live… Unless it is directly… directly, now… affecting you or one of your loved ones, let it go. Why bother finding MORE things to worry about or be unsettled by? Wouldn’t life be better if one looked for things to be happy about? Also, keep this in mind – if you overly criticize people, they will eventually stop trying to please you. They’ll figure, “I can’t do anything right with this so and so… so…. I quit even trying.”  If you kill someone’s creativity and confidence, how does that benefit you OR them?
  10. Finally, stop doing what isn’t working. If you’ve been working toward a particular goal and don’t seem to be gaining on it whatsoever, it’s time for Plan B because Plan A is belly up.  You can either keep wasting time and hope it suddenly flips over and miraculously starts working, or you can abandon what doesn’t work and find something that does.

BONUS: This one is my absolute favorite one… so I set her aside from the rest. A chosen, favored one to be sure.  Once years ago, I read a quote that – if there were such a thing – would be my ‘Spirit Animal Quote.’  It said, “All I’m after is a world filled with laughter.”  I’m all about laughter and had MUCH rather be accused of finding too many things funny than of finding too few things funny.

Yes, I’m one of those who laugh out loud at commercials with talking animals, and can be found doubled over with tears in her eyes while watching funny cat videos online.

I love to laugh and the sound of other people laughing is music to my ears.  Never fail to look for the humor in situations.

Here’s an example that happened to my family recently.  I was sitting beside my daughter Brittany in a “surgery waiting room.” She was waiting to be taken back for kidney stone surgery.  She was in quite a bit of pain and was almost as worried and anxious as me. Almost. There, surrounded by about 10 other people who were awaiting surgeries, we found ourselves in a totally somber setting.

Then she pointed out something to me and we both had to laugh – a “biker” came strolling through, slowly, and took a seat. On the back of his leather jacket were the words GRIM REAPER.  Brittany said, “Oh, great. What’s he doing here?”  I told her, “I thought he’d be taller.”

I don’t know, there was just something about the moment that made us laugh. She even reached for her camera phone to take a picture but the Grim Reaper sat down and his chair hid his identity.

We both decided that, yet again, we had proof of one thing – God has a terrific sense of  humor.

Just because we aren’t kids anymore doesn’t mean we have to stop looking for the fun in life. It’s there. You’ll find it if you look. Try to find the humor in as many situations as possible.

Laughing beats grumbling any day.

Sometimes we have to STOP doing things in order to START doing things.  The negatives just weigh the positives down, so ditch them on the now.

Now, I’m off to plan my epic herb garden,
~ Joi

Quote About Humor

Sometimes a Surplus of Information Creates a Deficit of Action

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Action Quote About Taking a Step
Humans are pretty funny when you think about it. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before, yet we often don’t seem to know what to do with it. It’s as though we’re suffering from information overload and can’t figure out how to dump it all out.

If you’ve watched much golf – or any golf for that matter – no doubt you’ve seen golfers who suffer from something the great tennis player (and even better human being) Arthur Ashe referred to as “paralysis by analysis.” I remember one time thinking I could have baked a pie in the time it took Jim Furyk to hit a shot. He stood over the tiny little ball for what seemed like forever.

Finally, I just bellowed at the tv, “Hit the darn thing! It’s not going to hit back, I promise!”

He spent too much time thinking and, sure enough, the golf shot was lousy.

Sergio is another golfer who often seems lost in time as well as in his own thoughts.

“Doing nothing gets you nothing.” – Sean Reichl

Truth be told, you don’t have to be a golfer to battle with over-thinking.  It gets us all at one time or another.  We gather data, facts, figures, and quotes. Heck, some of us (guilty, guilty, guilty) even print our information out, give it the hole-punch treatment, and house it in an appropriately colored binder. We fill our brains with information but we neglect to carry it out. It’s great to have facts, don’t get me wrong – but if that’s all we’ve got then… Well, then that’s all we’ve got.

To be fair, sometimes it takes a great leap of faith and a significant amount of guts to carry out an action. It’s so much safer to sit back and think about the action.

And think about it, and think about it… And, and, think about it….

The only problem is we end up standing around, doing little more than just getting in our own way. Our intentions are out of this world – but we just can’t seem to get everything out of our brains and into our hands.

People will gather and read everything they can get their hands on about eating healthy, then go out and order the biggest burger their lips will fit around as a prize for all the research.

If you aren’t going to change your game why even bother reading the rule book?

Is there anything in your life that you’ve been “studying on” without “acting on?” Decide, today, to stop standing over the ball – hit it a country mile. It may, or may not, go exactly where you expected it to go – but at least it went. You can always stomp through the rough and hit it again. If it goes in the water, you can roll up your pants and wade out to meet it. You wouldn’t be the first. You wouldn’t be the last.

Oh the stories I could tell you about my miniature golf experiences…

The point is, at some point we have to stop planning to act and just act!

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee

Think of at least one thing that you’ve been rolling over in your mind. Maybe you’ve been planning out the great walking regime you want to start, or maybe you’ve been planning to launch an e-bay business. Take ACTION right now. DO SOMETHING that will put these plans and thoughts in motion

The most important thing you can do is this: Take your first step. It’s the toughest, so just go ahead and get it out of the way.

Once you’ve put yourself in motion, keep on keeping on.

I’ll be here cheering you on!
~ Joi

One of the Most Buzz-Worthy of All Buzz Words

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Quote about Perseverance
January is a month filled with great energy. Everyone is hopeful for the year ahead and buzzing with electricity over new resolutions and goals. Unfortunately, these resolutions very often fall by the wayside by the time Cupid shows up on the scene mid-February, half-dressed with nothing but love in mind.

We have the energy, steam, and electricity for a few weeks but – after that – eh, it’s business as usual.

Sometimes the reason is simple – in fact, I’d wager that most of the time the reason is simple: We’d like to have this particular goal… but we don’t want it badly enough to work for it and we certainly don’t want it badly enough to inconvenience ourselves for it.

During January, we throw buzz words like determination, goals, mindset, will-power, success, and resolve around like peanuts in a Christmas parade.

Problem is, reaching goals and following through with resolutions takes a whole other buzz word: perseverance.

As they say, anything worth having is worth fighting for. This means it’s worth digging in your heels, throwing out our chin, clinching your fists, and full out going to battle for.  What makes this war of wills so difficult is the fact that we’re fighting the person in the mirror and they know all our tricks.

It takes perseverance and it takes determination.  Put together, they make a pretty darn good team.

I guess what I’m saying is this – whatever you’re reaching for, whatever you’re striving for… keep on keeping on until it’s your’s.  When the going gets tough, think of the humble little snail.  It was by perseverance that his ancestors EVER reached the ark.

Keep going!

~ Joi

A Few Favorite Quotes About Perseverance:

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another. – Walter Elliott

Lord, give me the determination and tenacity of a weed. – Mrs. Leon R. Walters

Character consists on what you do on the third and fourth tries. – James Michener

Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist but in the ability to start over. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

By perseverance, the snail reached the ark. – Charles Spurgeon

There’s only one thing that can guarantee our failure, and that’s if we quit. – Unknown

More Perseverance Quotes…