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Positive Thought

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.

Positive Thought: Quote About Enjoying Life

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Quote About Enjoying Life
I’m normally a really chill kind of gal – which is just my way of saying I’m a clown with a penchant for the silly things in life and a distaste for the mature things in life. Grow up? I want no part of it. Like my dad before me, I obsess over birds, coffee, and good food and shirk away from being overly serious or “down.”

However, a few days last week I was in what could only be called a funk. It was a funk’s funk. Life has been kind of…. well… unpredictable lately and has thrown me a few curve balls.

I’m not a curve ball hitter. I like them up and a little outside but life didn’t ask first – it just threw one past me. Then another. Then another…

Anyway, I failed to roll with the punches and I found myself stomping through the house one day, getting annoyed with my own foul humor and crabby mood. Thanks be to God that I caught myself before I had to subject anyone else to the stomping and scowling. My cats slept threw it, so I didn’t even have to endure their judging glances.

Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don’t get so worked up about things.  – Kenneth Branagh

I came to my senses by asking myself, “What is so terrible that it was worth the cost of peace and happiness?” I stumped me, which is always a freaky kind of feeling.

The humor of the moment (as I searched for an answer that I would accept) lightened the mood and the day.  I walked around the yard with my thoughts and came to the realization that NOTHING that was bothering me was anywhere near worth losing a minute of happiness, let alone an entire day. So, I threw the worries over the fence and came back in the house.

If we were to be totally honest with ourselves, we’d admit that many… maybe even MANY of the things we get worked up over simply are not getting worked up over.  It made me think of the Kenneth Branagh quote Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don’t get so worked up about thing. 

Beautiful, wise words to live by – everyday. Even, maybe even especially, the rotten ones.

Keep smiling and keep laughing! ~ Joi (“Joy”)

Update to the Self Help Resources Page

I recently heard from a veteran ( in the US Marine Corp and US Navy units in the first Gulf War).  Veterans are a group that get my undivided attention and endless respect This Veteran is now one of our Country’s many Disabled Veterans.

He assists Maritime Injury Center in their mission of advocating for mariners and Veterans alike. In this Veteran’s own words, “Now more than ever, I think its important for service members to understand the significance of the Jones Act and how it impacts the captain and crew of merchant ships hauling military cargo in times of engagement. You can find out more about the Jones Act at www.maritimeinjurycenter.com/jones-act/.”

He went on to ask if I would consider adding a link back to MaritimeInjuryCenter.com  on the Self Help and Improvement Resources Page to help advocate for our armed forces, while also educating maritime workers on their rights if they become injured at sea.

Consider it done, sir, and thank you for your service.

 

Dance… As Long as the Music Plays

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Dance as Long as the Music Plays 

Dance… as long as the music plays.

When it comes to the subjects of aging well or coping with illnesses, one of my favorite sayings is this: “Dance as long as the music plays.” Tragically, yet understandably, most people – when they either reach a certain age or a certain point in their illness when their fight begins to leave them – turn their attention from living to dying.  They stop enjoying the world and begin missing the world…. long before they even have to leave it!

Short story: My father, Larry Joe (how perfectly southern is that name?), battled horrific illnesses most of his adult life. The things this man had to deal with would make the rest of us shake with embarrassment over the things we complain about.  A doctor at Vanderbilt once told my mom that my dad’s level of pain was almost unheard of – and that it was relentless. He likened it to pouring salt water in an open wound. Over and over and over again.

Each morning brought waves of nausea that he would joke about being his “morning sickness without a baby to show for it.”  One by one, things that he loved to do (working – he loved his job!, gardening, umpiring softball games, walking with his granddaughters..) had to give way to sitting in his recliner watching reruns of Matlock, Rockford Files and Perry Mason.

He wasn’t even 60.

Here’s the thing, though. The man never complained. Not once did he ask or even come close to asking, “Why me?” When he could no longer tend to his rose beds, he read rose magazines and browsed rose bush catalogs – talking about “next year’s garden” when he’d be “stronger.”

His body robbed him of health and it robbed him of many, many years but it never robbed him of his love of life. During his last hospital stay, he made jokes about the food and teased my mom by saying their food even made him anxious to get home to her’s!

Such a character.

What can we learn from this character?

  • For one thing, he had fun with life. There wasn’t a day that he wasn’t finding something to laugh about. And if that something didn’t appear, he’d create it.  I could always see it building in his face – I’d think, “Uh oh, here it comes.” Daddy was a sweetheart but he had a crazy sense of humor and you’d always kind of want to brace yourself for it.  If life wasn’t living up to his sense of humor, he had no problem with creating a little craziness. He’d get that sparkle in his eye and you knew someone was going to get roasted, you just hoped it wasn’t you!
  • He focused on the beauty in life and turned away from the ugly.  How many people just seemingly STARE at the ugliness in life? Not only do they stare at it, it’s almost as though they search it out.. then they share it all over social media. It’s kind of like, “I’m focusing on this ugliness and now I want you to as well.” The summer before he died, my dad fell and broke his hip. He had to have a hospital bed delivered to their home and even required a walker for several months after his surgery.  I guess it’s because I knew it was so close to the end, but the sight of that walker and hospital bed made me want to cry. He would, as you’d expect, make jokes about them. The only thing I ever heard him say about the walker was that he was very grateful for it because, unlike his granddaughters, he wasn’t much of a crawler.

Finally… what can we learn from this jokester?  He danced…. for as long as the music played. And he didn’t sit one song out.

He lived out one of my favorite sayings,  “Dance as long as the music plays.”

As we grow older, we have to be on guard for dark clouds that come swooping in. Dark clouds that remind us of things we no longer are able to do. Clouds that whisper that time isn’t on our side. Clouds that remind us of health issues, aches, pains, and what have you.  Is there a lot of truth to what they have to say? Sure. Those morning aches aren’t exactly fictional, are they?!

But here’s the thing – you can’t focus on any of that nonsense. Where’s the joy in that?

Whether age or illness (or if you’re really showing off and are up against both) has brought a few visiting dark clouds into your world, here’s what I want you to do.

  1. Acknowledge them.
  2. Obliterate them.

Don’t ever focus on the end of the song. Focus on the music and let the end work itself out. Focus on living and focus on the beauty in life. By all means, focus on laughter. The more, the better. Someone I once knew taught me that every now and then, if life isn’t funny enough, you have to create your own. Just warn everyone first, okay?

“Dance as long as the music plays.” – Larry Joe’s Daughter

How to Overcome Dread: Get “Through” Something You’d Rather Go “Around”

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Quote About Perspective by Dr. Wayne Dyer
Dread. verb

  1. to fear greatly;
  2. to be in extreme aprehension of;
  3. to be reluctant (to do, meet, experience)

Dread.  Even the word, itself, seems marinated in evil and ill will, doesn’t it?  Yet, ironically, most of the things we dread aren’t marinated in much more than inconvenience or maybe a little self doubt.

Many people dread going to work each Monday morning. For 12 years, I dreaded going to school each Monday morning. And Tuesday, and Wednesday…

I think a lot of Monday dreads come from the fact that it’s on the other side of Paradise, also known as the weekend. Weekends are brief little reminders of how things could be if we were 4 years old and Monday morning is nothing more than a big mean time machine.

No wonder it has such a bad rep.

Many issues in life, however, feel heavier than Mondays.  Whether it’s a public speaking engagement, a wedding role, a dentist visit, or any event that feels like a black cloud following you around, you have to remind yourself to keep things in perspective. A reminder is often needed because, let’s face it, once our emotions get involved, reason AND perspective fly right out the window.

Keep it in Perspective, Chief

  1. The event will, more likely than not, be a ONE and DONE type event. It’ll probably last, at most, a mere few hours out of ONE day. A ONE and DONE.  Each minute you spend agonizing over it takes the ONE and multiplies it. If you, collectively, spend an hour agonizing over the event, you’ve taken a ONE on a stress scale and made it a SIXTY. That’s simply giving it much more power than it deserves.
  2. If the event is, admittedly a minor event, think of times in your life when you’d have loved to have traded places. A girl I knew in high school always amazed the rest of us. Not only did she not dread and agonize over giving speeches in class, she almost seemed to enjoy it. Never being one to shy away from asking questions that needed to be asked, one day I questioned her about it. Turns out she had spent a lot (as in months on end) of time in a children’s hospital and  had endured (at that time) several grueling surgeries. She said that she used to get really nervous about speaking in front of class until her father told her one night, “Leslie, you’ve lived through far worse than this. You lived through 10s… this is a 2.”  She told me that it rang a bell for her and that, after than night, any time she felt overwhelmed by anything, she heard his voice. Perspective.
  3.  Ask yourself, “Is the dread coming from a lack of self confidence?” If it is, ask yourself a follow up question, “What are three proactive things you can do to make yourself feel more confident.” If you’re like me (God love you), it may be as simple as a great new top or earrings that are “to die for.” If the event or situation will involve something you don’t feel very knowledgeable about, brush up on the subject.  Armed with knowledge and a snazzy new top, you’ll feel unstoppable and may even begin counting the days to to the event rather than dreading them.
  4. Proceed with caution with this one, but some people soothe their nerves by asking, “What’s the worst that could happen?” I’ll be honest, my imagination is far too advanced and far too outrageous for me to even attempt this one, but if you’re a normal person, this may work well for you! Again, it’s all about perspective.
  5.  While the tip above is out of my league, I’m all over this one: Find the silver lining, even if you have to sew it in yourself. There may be 110 million things I am unable to do in this world, but one that I pretty much own is the ability to find the good in bad, the beauty in ugly, and the positive in the negative. I know that God endows us all with certain talents and abilities and I thank Him for this particular ability – it has carried me through many storms in life. No matter what you’re dreading, look for the positive. Find the silver lining and focus entirely on it. Even if it’s as simple as, “This will soon be over and I’ll never have to dread it again.”  Search out the “pretty” and stare at it like it’s the most beautiful sunset you ever saw.
  6. Thinking about things you’ve dreaded in the past.  More times than not, your “past dreads” turned out better than you’d hoped. Before beginning this article, I thought back to the “minor dreads” I’d experienced in life. (These, of course, don’t include things such as funerals or surgeries – they’re anything but minor and require more than seven tips to survive.) Not only were my past dreads not worth the hype I’d given them, I actually didn’t mind them in the least. Many times, things I dreaded turned out to be downright enjoyable.
  7. Be smart about where you put your energy.  Many times when we dread something, we spend an embarrassing amount of time trying to “get out of it.”  We’ll pray, bargain, plan, scheme… anything to find our way around the inevitable. Wouldn’t that time be better spent preparing for the moment or…. I don’t know… living?  Dreading isn’t living!

Keep everything in perspective and don’t create a monster out of a mosquito.

~ Joi

“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.” – Dale Carnegie

 

Joy… Joi… Joy… Down in My Heart….

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Joy
Yesterday I took one of those fun online quizzes that tell you something about yourself after a series of questions. This quiz was called, “What Your Parents Should Have Named You.”

After answering a series of questions, it told me that my parents should have named me… are you ready for it… Joy.

Well done, mom and dad!

My great-grandmother came up with the idea of spelling it with an i instead of a y, but Joy is my name… it’s just spelled with an i.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to say those words in my life, “…spelled with an i.”

Joy is, and always has been, one of my absolute favorite words. It symbolizes happiness, peace, contentment, bliss, and a whole other list of words that (as Andy Griffith might say), “Ain’t nothin’ but good.”

Earlier this month, when I wrote a review of the NinkaStudio Theme of the Year Calendars, they graciously told me to pick out one of the words as a thank you. Naturally, I went with Joy.

Because it “Ain’t nothin’ but good.”

I’ll let you in on another reason the word and name mean the world to me.

Many years ago (never mind how many, nosy Parker), my mom was a pretty sick 22 year old who’d just found out she was a mother-to-be. Her thyroid was going haywire, and being so long ago, treatments for such things were nowhere near what they are today.

She was told that the baby (me) wouldn’t make it and that, for her health, it was best to terminate the pregnancy. When she vehemently refused, she was assured that her pregnancy would not be an easy one in any sense of the word.  She was also told that her baby would not be “normal” – to which she simply said, “But it’ll be MY baby.”

The pregnancy was especially bad, causing her a great deal of sickness and discomfort – I’d imagine even more so given the grim forecast. As for the baby, I think I turned out normal enough.

On the day I was born, when it came time to name this small pink human that caused so much trouble, my mom chose “Joy.”

Spelled with an i.

That doesn’t just mean the world to me on a personal level (my name was one of the sweetest gifts she ever gave me, right after life, itself). It also means the world to me because, at the end of a battle – one in which she… at such a young age… called the shots – she chose Joy for more than just a name. She chose Joy as the way she’d view the situation.

I’ve had many life lessons in my years. Heck, I’ve even created a few of them along the way. But this one has left a profound effect on my psyche. Maybe it’s why I, without even thinking about it, choose to see the humor in life. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I seldom ever take anything seriously and why I’m always looking for the next reason to smile.

I often sign my name online Joi (“Joy”) to make sure my mom’s chosen name is completely conveyed. Ever since I had a teacher once call me, “Joe-I,” I take no chances.

I believe in positive affirmations, inspirational quotes, and motivational books. I also believe in the power of words. I believe that if you take one very special word and make it your “Spirit Word,” it can be your very own safe haven.

If you’re looking for a word to remind you that there are always reasons to smile…. a word that, itself, if filled with sunshine…. I have a word for you: Joy.

Spelled with a y.

~ Joi