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Positive Thought

How to Make Yourself Feel Better

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When you have a bad day or something wrong happens and ruins your mood, how to feel better about yourself? Actually, it is not so difficult as you think. Here are 5 small things you can do to help yourself move on and feel better.

Take a Laugh Break

Laughing can trick your brain into thinking that you are happy which can stimulate actual feelings of happiness. It lets your muscles relax and helps relieve your body’s stress response. Well, when you have a terrible day, take a break and laugh! Remember some funny situation or joke, call your funniest friends, watch funny video or movie and your bad mood will go away.

Pamper Yourself

You are the best and that is the perfect reason for beautifying yourself, especially if you are feeling down. Pamper yourself to your own standards. Go get your nails done or get a new haircut. If you like shopping (although I don’t know any girl who doesn’t like shopping!), buy yourself some new stuff for fun. No matter if you buy a pair of new heels or CrossFit shoes (to choose the best ones see http://thecrossfitshoes.com/11-best-cheap-running-shoes/), pretty blouse or sexy skirt, you will feel more confident and, moreover, in such a way you can also boost your self-esteem, which helps make you happier.

Dive into Reading

The healing power of literature is amazing! When you are sad, stressed or depressed, reading can transform your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. You can forget about your problems while reading about someone else`s or you can come to understand your state of mind and try to improve it because you can find yourself in the pages of a nice novel or in a wonderful poem. Experiencing someone meets their challenges will give you good ideas and great inspiration on how to meet your own.

Join a Gym

Don`t forget about your physical health because it also affects your mental well-being. Regular physical exercise helps you improve and maintain your physical health that leads to an increased level of mental health. Just remember, you should choose the best trainers for your regular workouts. The right CrossFit shoes will improve the efficiency of your workouts and reduce the risk of injury.

Spend Time with Family or Friends

Strong social support is your key to happiness! Try not to isolate yourself if you feel super down, temporarily depressed or just in a strange mood. Your family and friends are a great source of support because it identifies a sense of belonging and security. When you spend  time with your family members or trusted friends, you understand that you are not alone in this big world and this realization makes you a really happy person. Thus, the support of your family and friends helps you deal with your emotional pain faster and foster a sense of self-worth.  

Well, no matter what life brings you, you should find the strength to feel good about yourself whatever happens. It is in your hands to lift your spirits and you have everything to do that by yourself.

Use the Power of Positive Thinking to Change Your Life

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Everybody at least once in their life has heard the phrase that the way we think about something can program our life. Some people are too skeptical about the power of the mind, while others force themselves to control every thought. People can’t believe in the power of positivity, because they can’t think positively. What is the power of positive thinking after all: a myth or reality?

Believe it or not, but the power of positivity really exists. How does it work? The only way to confirm this is to open your mind to positive thoughts. Perhaps, you have heard that if you can’t change the situation, you should change your attitude to it. Haven’t you? It’s better to understand this “life hack” with the help of an example. Let’s imagine that you hate waking up early every morning to go to work, school, university, or somewhere else. Almost all people are familiar with this problem. There are some ways to solve it:

First of all, you can change your working place or timetable. Is it possible? Sometimes yes. However, in most cases, it’s impossible to do. Do you want to live with this perpetual resentment? You’ll hardly be happy. Then it’s the time to apply to positive thoughts. Think about the advantages of waking up early, overlooking all those things which annoy you. For example, early awakening enhances your productivity, gives you a better mental health, improves your quality of sleep, and so on. As soon as you begin to perceive early awakening not as your duty, but as an opportunity, your life will be improved!

In all situations, people can find some great moments, they just have to look for them. It is important to think about the thing you want and the ways how to get them. This is the secret of positivity. Successful people never concentrate their attention on the difficulties. Moreover, they don’t let themselves even think that they will not succeed. They have a greater control of their life because they can control their thoughts. That’s when we’ve come to the question of how to control our thoughts or how to change the way of thinking.

How to make your thinking positive?

Stop believing that you cannot control your thoughts. You can! Of course, it’s not an easy task. However, uneasy doesn’t mean unworkable. The following key issues will help you to change your way of thinking and, finally, life:

  • Positive people

Try to surround yourself with people, able to cheer you up even when everything is too bad. If you hear how someone moans about problems in his or her life constantly, you start to think that life itself is unfair and you should wait for the other shoe to drop. On the other hand, when your friends can see only good things even though life makes them hurt, it’s impossible to become a pessimist!

  • Positive quotes

Reading is the best medicine for everybody and everything. When you feel like losing control of your thoughts, it’s exactly the time to apply to different motivational quotes and sayings about life. You shouldn’t underestimate the power of such things. As a rule, quotes like “Your positive action combined with positive thinking results in success” isn’t an empty promise. People, say something like this, know for sure that it’s effective! Positive thoughts will come with positive quotes.

  • Hope and Belief

Nothing helps more than self-confidence and the hope for a better future. Positivity has the power only in the case you believe that it is going to work. Always believe in yourself, your thoughts, and positive future. If you believe that you are a happy, healthy, and successful person, you’ll surely be happy, healthy, and successful. Vice versa, when you think that you are an unhappy loser with poor health, you’ll always feel bad. This will definitely spoil your life.

  • Filtering

It’s important to control not only your thoughts but also the flow of information you get during the day. Negative news provokes negative thoughts. TV news, newspapers, magazines will hardly tell you how wonderful our life is. Avoid wasting your time on these things. You’d better choose a new hobby or activity, which will get your head straight. Like reading? Read interesting books about successful people (you’ve already known how helpful inspirational quotes can be). Prefer watching TV? Choose films with persistent characters, achieving their goals.

Praying for Your Elephant by Adam Stadtmiller (Review of an Amazing Book!)

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Praying for Your Elephant by Adam Stadtmiller

Praying for Your Elephant

I read A LOT of books… Spiritual books, Old Hollywood Biographies, inspirational books, Agatha Christie mysteries, American History books, Ancient Egypt books, cookbooks….

You get the idea. I’m almost always seen with several books in one hand, a caffeinated beverage in the other, and a cat (or two or three) in my lap.

I always have more than one book going at once – usually 3 or 5 because my interests are all over the place. Having said that, three genres are constant:

  • Agatha Christie (I read and re-read her and have one Hercule Poirot mystery going at all times)
  • Inspirational Book
  • Old Hollywood Bio

Agatha Christie is like playtime for my brain.. I simply love everything about her mysteries. Old Hollywood books are an absolute obsession – if I’m not watching an Old Hollywood movie, I’m lost in at least one biography. As for inspirational and Spiritual books – they feed my soul.

The book you see pictured here, Praying for Your Elephant, is one of the best books of any genre I have ever read. You read that right…. I loved it that much.

Have you ever heard of the phrase “Prayer Warrior?” I have considered myself to be a Prayer Warrior for many years. This simply means that I pray day and night with the fervency and determination of a warrior who is smack in the middle of the battlefield. I pray for my family, friends, people I read about, strangers, crazy drivers who run red lights, individuals I see prayer requests for, etc. With this much praying going on and with this much on the line, I need all the inspiration I can get! Naturally, the Bible provides the bulk of said inspiration, but God uses Christian authors to further inspire and motivate.

Prayer does the salvage work of raising the sunken treasure of our lives. – Praying for Your Elephant Page 57 

This particular author, Adam Stadtmiller, has written an extraordinary book and it has taken my prayers to a whole new level. I’ve always believed in asking God for all needs – from small to large and all sizes in between. However, this book has inspired me to go further. It takes the phrase “small to large” and asks, “Why stop at large? Aim for COLOSSAL!”

Elephant-Size Colossal!

From the Back Cover:

What If Your Biggest Prayers are Too Small?

Get ready to re-ignite, re-imagine, and repurpose your prayer life while experiencing great intimacy with God. This is an invitation to identify your elephants—to name, through specific and strategic prayers, the 100 most important and audacious petitions you can imagine. These are the elephants that—if answered by God—would be game changers in your life and perhaps the world.

By supersizing your prayers and daring to ask for the big things – your elephants – you will come to know God in a way you never have, even if His answers aren’t what you expect. Dive deep into the adventure that is the prayer-filled life!

Praying for Your Elephant starts off with a bang. The author guides you into a 40 Day Prayer Challenge: Forty Days to Praying for Your Elephants. He gives you 10 suggested “categories” to create to organize your prayers and all but dares you to pray big!

My take away from this section was to pray as big as the God we’re talking to. Again, COLOSSAL comes to mind.

The book provides a chart for these categories, or you can simply write them down on paper or (my own personal approach) in a Prayer Journal. Writing prayers down helps you to see, over time, which prayers are answered and which ones may take a little longer. I have also experienced something else in my prayer journal – sometimes your prayer changes as God guides you from one destination to the next.

“There is no way that Christians in a private capacity can do so much to promote the work of God, and advance the kingdom  of Christ, as by prayer.” – Jonathan Edwards

Praying for Your Elephant is available on Amazon and I, quite frankly, could not recommend it enough. I love to tell you about books that have the potential to change your life for the better… to help you open up a whole new world… to touch you in such a way that you feel empowered to do anything you set your mind and heart to!

This is such a book and I really hope you’ll grab your copy as soon as possible. You won’t regret it. ~ Joi (“Joy”)

Find out more by visiting Praying for Your Elephant!

About the Author: Adam Stadtmiller is lead pastor at one of the San Diego’s most historic churches, La Jolla Christian Fellowship. A regular contributor to Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal, he is also the author of Give Your Kids the Keys and Discover Your Kid’s Spiritual Gifts. Adam lives in Carlsbad, California, with his wife and two daughters.

Praying for Your Elephant Quote Graphic


How Cats Make Humans Happier and Healthier (Infographic)

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Really Bad Girls of the Bible by Liz Curtis Higgs

Alexa, Busy Supervising my Book Reviews!

If you’ve read any of my blogs or have bumped into me on social media, you know one thing for certain about me – I am ALL about my cats! They’re family and I’m not the least bit embarrassed to say that I love them wildly.

In addition to spoiled rotten indoor cats, we also have a healthy number of outside cats – we live in the country and have loved/sheltered a feral colony of cats for years. While we provide the best food on the market for our furry babies, as well as a steady stream of new/creative cat toys, love/attention, and daily fresh water (confession time: I refrigerate it in the summer months)… our cats give us far more than we give them.

Benefits of Cats

  • They are 24/7 entertainment. Cats are little toddlers which means they’re little clowns. Even when a cat isn’t trying to be funny… she can’t help but be exactly that!
  • Cats are purrfect stress-relievers. Petting a cat or, if they aren’t as fond of petting as they are playing, playing with a cat makes the cares and worries of the day float away.
  • Cats are a CURE ALL for loneliness. I often (often, often, often, often) hear from parents who are either facing an empty nest or have kids who had the audacity to grow up (Crazy Kids!!) – one of the first pieces of advice I offer is this: “If you have the room and means to care for her/him, go to your local shelter and adopt a cat or two. Focusing love and attention on this new furry family member will help heal you in ways you didn’t think were possible. Giving a furry baby a forever home and forever family is a WONDERFUL thing to do… but, trust me, in a few months you’ll wonder….’Okay, who exactly saved who?!‘”
  • You can’t underestimate the physical and health benefits of a cat, either. When they’re so beneficial for your emotional health, it only makes sense that they’re beneficial for your physical health.

A Few Precautions for Those New to Cats in the Family

  • Always be certain that you (as well as your family members) do not have cat allergies before bringing one home. It would be heart-breaking for all concerned (especially the cat!) to have to turn around and take her back to the shelter.
  • If you aren’t familiar with cats, allow this cat mamma to prepare you for something – they are unlike any animal you are familiar with. They are incredibly unpredictable – which, in my opinion adds to their charm and high level of entertainment value. Although there are exceptions, most cats do NOT like to snuggle and cuddle. They’ll often grace you with their presence by laying in your lap, but if you try to push it (by, say, petting too much!), they’ll bolt. You just have to get to know your own little one and let her/his personality and temperament call the shots.
  • No two cats are exactly the same. One of our cats (Guennie) had three kittens and they are the PERFECT example of how different cats can be. One of the three (Dokkie) cannot get enough attention and affection. She seeks it out! She thinks nothing of jumping right up on your chest and nuzzling under your chin – purring so loudly the other cats wonder what’s up. Another one (Huckleberry) loves affection nearly as much as Dokkie but her idea of a good time is playing. She’ll snuggle for a few minutes, but she’d much rather attack your feet, hands, or anything else you have to offer. You could pick up either of these two kittens and carry them for 2 miles and they’d never say a thing about it – however the third kitten (Tulip) is, shall we say, more tightly wrapped?! She is, in fact, more like the typical female cat. She will sit in your lap and allow you to pet her, but if she thinks you’re pushing your luck. she’s liable to meow loudly at you and stomp off. She’s just as adorable, just as lovable, and just as appreciated as her sisters – she’s just different. NEVER take a cat’s temperament or personality personally – they are not trying to be difficult and they are not insulting you (Judging? Absolutely! Insulting? No.)

The infographic below (from https://www.catological.com) will show you (adorably!) 22 ways cats make humans happier and healthier. Enjoy!

 

The Non-Confrontational Person’s Guide to Conflict

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When this infographic landed in my e-mail, I couldn’t help but smile. I am, quite possibly, the most non-confrontational person to ever walk on two legs. I can’t speak for three or four-legged people, but I’m all but certain I hold the title among the two legged.

People do, of course, have different temperaments and personalities – as well as different experiences and life stories. Each of these things go into making us the way we are, for better or worse.

Personally, I think something else contributes to this particular train and you don’t have to look any further than your mom and/or dad.

Many times, if we’re raised by at least one parent who has an outgoing… confrontational, when need be… personality, we tend to pull back. It could be simply because we grew up knowing they would take care of everything. They had our back, so to speak, so we didn’t even have to turn around, let alone add our two cents to the moment.

It can, of course, go even further. If, by way of our own personality and temperament, we were somewhat embarrassed by our parent’s gregarious approach to conflict, we pull back EVEN further.

Welcome to my world!

My mom was NOT a wallflower. She was the most amazing, predominant piece of furniture… and she didn’t sit against the wall… oh no! She’d be the amazing, predominant piece of furniture in the middle of the room. Smack in the middle with a lamp shining on her. That was my mother and I loved her greatly.

While I was more the comfy chair next to the window, I did, usually appreciate her placement in the spotlight. However, there were times when (as a calm and quiet chair) she would mortify me in public. If her steak wasn’t “just right,” the server and cook would know about it. If we had waited beyond an acceptable amount of time at the clinic, the entire room would soon be aware of just how many minutes we’d been there.

If a salesperson, nurse, doctor, or electrician was rude, they’d soon pay the piper.

My dad and I exchanged so many, “She’s about to blow…” glances over the years and nearly as many, “She blew…” glances.

Two different teachers flat-out wronged me in high-school and – by the time it was all over – I almost felt sorry for them. You see, nothing would elicit an eruption quite like thinking her only child had been wronged.

I wonder if either teacher has recovered yet?

At any rate, I am non-confrontational to the extreme. If you’re a similar “comfy chair” (And let me go ahead and say there’s nothing wrong with that! What’s a room without chairs, after all?!), you’ll enjoy this infographic as much as I did.

~ Joi (“Joy”)

The Non-Confrontational Person's Guide to Conflict (Infographic)

Credit: The Non-Confrontational Person’s Guide to Conflict