18 Ways to be Kind

Saw this while cruising the Internet this morning. Fabulous ideas!!

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-13875/18-easy-ways-to-be-kind.html

Practicing Gratitude

The past couple weeks has been pretty tough for me; lots of transformations. Anyway, through this time of change there has been one thing which has been unwavering...my gratitude. What I found was when times get hard, once your practice gratitude, things seem to be no so bad and easier to handle. Wow! What an amazing discovery! How can you practice gratitude? Here's a couple little things I do:

1. Find the good in the bad. When you're going through a hard time, find the good in it. These tough times are here for a reason and the universe wants you to see the lesson in it. It's not an easy task but for some reason when I look for the good it makes things seem easier to handle.
2. Crying is gratitude to yourself. Yes it is. Crying is a fantastic release of the things you've bottled up inside. Crying is showing the humanism in life. Allow yourself the time to cry and show your body gratitude.
3.  Gratitude in girlfriends! As I've gotten older I've notice how grateful I am to have such awesome women in my life. When I was younger, I never had girlfriends. I worked around men and was more comfortable with them. Men are good but there is something about having a girlfriend that helps tough time tolerable. I value them so much.
4. Journal the things you are grateful about. It doesn't have to be paragraphs. Simple, one word responses. I have a gratitude book I started two weeks ago. Here's a couple things I wrote and am grateful for: my husband, my daughter, bravery, rainy days, well written assignments, daily blessings all around us, wine...
5. Say your gratitude out loud! I talk to my guardian angel all the time and I figured if I say the things I'm grateful for, it just puts more positivity into the universe. After all we all need some happiness in the world. 

Robert Emmons wrote the book, "Thanks!: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make you Happier." In it, he talks about how you can be healthier by practicing gratitude. He says just the mere fact of writing down what makes you happy and things you witness which show gratitude can make you happier. Here's a little video he did about his research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRrnfGf5aWE


Our society has taught us to look at the negatives which happen to us. Why? All it does is cause us heartache, pain, sadness. Who wants to live like that! I sure as hell don't want to. I want to be happy, share my gratitude to all, and hopefully they will see how happy they are too.

On the website unstuck.com, they wrote about how to cultivate gratitude. Here's what they said:

1. Notice your day-to-day world from a point of gratitude and be amazed at all the goodness we take for granted. The video "A Good Day" from TEDxSF can get you in
   the right frame of mind.
2. Keep a gratitude journal. All it requires is noting one or more things you are grateful for on a daily basis. No fancy notebook, no computer program required.
3. If you identify something or someone with a negative trait (the cold conference room), switch it in your mind to a positive trait (the conference room with
   a great view).
4. Gratitude requires humility, which the dictionary defines as "modest and respectful." Explore where it fits in your life. The article "Humility: A Quiet, Underappreciated Strength" is a good start.
5. Give at least one compliment daily. It can  be to a person or it can be asking someone to share your appreciation of something else ("I love how quiet it is in the morning, don’t you?").
6. When you find yourself in a bad situation ask: What can I learn? When I look back on this, without emotion, what will I be grateful for?
7. Vow to not complain, criticize, or gossip for 10 days. If you slip, rally your willpower and keep going. Notice the amount of energy you were spending on negative thoughts and actions.
8. Sound genuinely happy to hear from the people who call you on the phone. Whether the caller responds with surprise or delight, he’ll know you value speaking with him.
9. Become involved in a cause that is important to you. Donate money or time or talent. By joining in, you’ll gain greater appreciation for the organization, and it will appreciate you more, too.
    (Source: http://www.unstuck.com/gratitude.html)

Pushing The Lawnmower

As I'm on my quest for happiness, I'm also on the quest to do more things with my husband. These past few weeks we have been redoing our flower beds together. So far it has been very successful and I think we bond a little bit more. We laugh a lot and we literally enjoy each other's company. After all, I did marry my best friend. So I decided to take it a little further and help out with our lawn. Sipping the good wife that I am, I went around and did hand edging/Clipping around the house. If that was an exhausting enough (which by the way it was)  I got the harebrained idea to do the hand mowing which my husband normally does. This involves using the push mower around the trees, Hills, Flowerbeds, etc. I was ready! I had on old sneakers, my favorite baseball hat, sunscreen, and a water bottle close by. So I started off. I thought it start with the easy things first by going around the trees and the flowerbeds then onward to this small hill next to our house. Keep in mind I do yoga every day and I powerwalk at least three times a week. This, by far, literally kicked my ass! You think your lawn is nice and flat and relatively easy to do; so far from the truth. I really thought my lawn with this nice looking, well manicured area which my husband I put together. However when you add a push mower to the mix, it really put some perspective on it. I was never so exhausted in my life. Pushing babies out of my vagina was much easier than the push mower. As usual, with every experience in my life, I learned some lessons.

1. Be prepared for the expected. Life can always go along Nice and flat and on even keel. It's the hills that challenge us. The hills are therefore reason; they are there to show us what is important to us.
2. Never go downhill - the mower can get away from you. In life we tend to see things on the negative side we are going downhill and the chances of reaching your goals are never going happen. Going uphill means staying positive, focusing on our passions and what is important to us. When we go uphill, we should never look back. If we do look back, we should look back at the lessons that we were taught; not on the emotions that kept us there.
3. Mow carefully around the flowerbeds. What I mean by this is think around the box or globally. When you mow carefully around the flowerbeds you're paying attention to every aspect and every action you take. You do this in life! When you have a situation, think of every possible outcome from your actions before taking the right decision for you. So when you are mowing around the flowers, you're making sure that you're taking the proper course to keep the flowers pretty.
4. Sweating for woman is not sweating; you are glowing! So why can't we glow every day? Each day get out of bed and say to yourself, "today I will glow with inner sunshine and happiness." It probably sounds a little hokey, but what the heck! If we look at ourselves from the inside and see how strong we truly are, we see that we do glow with a bright sunshine that can empower us to be the true person you really are. Glow and be proud!

It's never a bad thing to try I do things with your spouse. After doing the lawnmowing, I had a newfound respect for that man. That was some hard work! Even know deep inside I was whining and complaining, I think I'll do it again because I saw so many great lessons in lawn mowing. He didn't tell me I did a good job and with that, I sat down and had my glass of iced tea, and looked upon my yard with great pride.

Men Growing Old

My husband is 64. As he has gotten older he's gotten a little slower, a little grumpier, and extremely OCD but I love all that. What gets me is the out of control hair; not the hair on their head. It's the out of control eyebrows! And the ear hair! OMG! But wait, the underarm hair somehow decides to become an entity of it's own; like the island of crazy hair.

Let's break this down and analyze this one at a time. Ok...the eyebrows. It's like God fertilizes them overnight and they wake up like an overgrown bush! And they don't grow one way, they grow everywhere yet somehow they come together right about the nose. They even grow down on the eyelids! What's up with this hysterical joke? So every few days we have my husband sits on the side of the bathtub and I get out the eyebrow brush and little scissors and trim. And every few days I do this somehow one hair grows even faster than the rest; maybe it gets more sun. Then the wild ones on the eyelids get clipped; then we move to get close to the skin to trim the ones in the middle. I can tweeze because "it hurts too much." Really? 

Where in the world does all that ear hair come from? Not just inside the ear like potato roots but around the ear too! Like the eyebrows, the outer ear hair grows like weeds! And long too. The inner ear hair which hardly sees light somehow manages to grow long enough to braid. Again every few days we go for a trim. And again I am amazed at how fast these things grow! Nature is remarkable.

My husband's armpits since turning 60 are like the hair of a yetti. They grow and grow and grow. We measured one hair (which I did trim) at 16 inches. If he starts wailing a mating call, I'll begin to worry.

There is no reason for the pharmaceutical world to create synthetic testosterone when you have guys like my husband. My goodness! If I could figure out a way to harvest it and sell it to guys with low 'T' I could make a ton of money. Or better yet, we could create an organization for guys who need body hair. Now that would be profitable.

Guys like Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, and George Clooney (Brad Pitt maybe) must have the same problem. Someone has to be sitting them on the side of the bathtub and giving them a trim every few days. So men you must unite and create a group to share grooming tips. There are some out there who need it.

 

Angels Around Us - A Tribute to Candy

When I was young, I believed I could see things that weren't there. Family members who passed would come visit me and talk to me. As I grew, I lost that innocence and life got ahead of me. About the time I got sick I wanted to something believe in. I'm not a religious person at all. I found great spirituality through meditation and yoga. But more kept coming to me through nature. I was driving along one day and a hawk followed me and was looking at me. That solved it for me; I had to talk to someone. My friends pointed me in many directions. First I went to someone who could interpret what nature was telling me. She told me there were messages from the other side for me to listen to. Ok, I got that; however it is pretty cool to see what nature tells you. Next stop, a psychic. Found a really cool one who was local. He told me some pretty remarkable stuff. But my journey wasn't over. He sent me to an angel reader. There's where it get's interesting. I met my friend Candy. I've known Candy for years but never really went to her. You see, she's an angel reader. Now, before you shake your head and debunk it, it's not.

Candy explained to me we have angels all around us all the time. She also explained we have a guardian angel all the time along with family members who are watching out for us. All we need to do is listen to them (again, that gut feeling). It's been over two years since I saw Candy and I still believe everything she said to me. She gave me homework too and I did that.

Candy gave me a renewed belief in life and the universe. While I'm still not religious, I do believe there is a great abundance for us to take from the universe (I'm a big believer in The Secret), and I also believe I have angels all around me. I talk to them now and in their own way, they talk back to me. Like I said in my earlier post, it's that gut feeling. Angels are really cool and the afterlife is more amazing than we know. We are so caught up in life and we forget what it's like to believe in things that aren't there. Candy gave me that belief. She is a remarkable woman who I have come to respect even more but have an unconditional love for her because of her gift. She has not one angry bone in her body and greets people as if they're family. Candy is getting ready for her journey in to the next phase of her life. While I will miss her in the body, I will know she is with me and I will continue to talk to her and my angels.

When I need to get a professional angel reader, I go to my friend Anne Marie who is an amazing woman. She was trained by Candy and I know Anne Marie will guide me as Candy did. When I meditate daily, I talk to my guardian angels and my family members. Talk to yours; they are your guides. Listen to them, and they will help you through the toughest of times.

Seeing Your True Beauty

The other day my friend Cindy was visiting me. We sat outside enjoying the beautiful spring weather and she remarked that I looked beautiful. I thanked her for the compliment but part of me wonders, "what do see in me that I don't? why are we so critical of ourselves? Are we really beautiful?" So easily we can look in the mirror and see ourselves as we are but we also need to see our true beauty.

I looked up the definition of the word beauty in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It is defined as,

The quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts mind or spirit: loveliness.

We see the beauty in flowers, food, clothing, etc. We're too busy being critical of our own life and bodies that we forget to see the beauty in who we are! There's a website just for people to notice how beautiful they truly are: operationbeautiful.com. This website encourages us to write positive affirmations on Post-it notes daily to remind ourselves how beautiful we are. Their mission statement is pretty awesome and it says:

The goal of the Operation Beautiful website is to end negative self-talk or “Fat Talk.”  If this little blog only does one productive thing, I hope it helps readers realize how truly toxic negative self-talk is  — it hurts you emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

I know I am just as guilty as anyone else with the negative self talk. I can't tell you how many times I said to myself that I'm stupid or ugly or unworthy and the things that I do. I change that around and I literally yell at myself when I hear myself starting to say things like that and change it around to something more positive. By talking positive to yourself you see yourself as you truly are: you are worthy, You are beautiful, you can achieve. By talking positive your whole attitude towards yourself changes dramatically. The negativity that you hear and see within yourself dissipates and you become more confident about yourself; you start seeing yourself in a light that is brighter than a sun and stronger than anything you've ever experienced. You smile more, you hold your head higher, you feel healthier when you talk positive about yourself.

There are so many people in the world that don't even consider themselves to be worthy of being alive. This isn't so. We are all worthy of being on this earth and in this lifetime. We create life with passion and love, continue with that passion and love within your own life. We aren't mistakes! We were put here, right here right now, to embrace the world and the universe and everything that comes in it. So stop this self negative talk! Tell yourself all day today how beautiful you are! Do it! Look in the mirror right now and tell yourself, "I am beautiful! I am awesome!" Every time you look in the mirror today tell yourself this. You will find your day Will be absolutely amazing.

So how do I see myself? I am dead sexy! I am worthy of everything the universe has to give me! I've worked hard on the body I have and I am comfortable with in my skin. I am beautiful.

Becoming the Parent of the Parent

All through my life, I've had my parents. They've raised me, watched me grow, have a child, and move into the phases of my life. My father passed away in 2003 after battling pancreatic cancer. This was tough and for the first time in my life I became the parent to my parents. I helped my mother make the decisions and, in turn, I took the time to take care of my father. I would leave my house at 5am for the hospice center, bathe him, help brush his teeth, feed him, brush his hair, etc. I helped my mother with this transition and started watching over her too.

Mom is now 80. Her balance isn't the greatest and neither is her memory. Her MS is working on her neurological issues. She still drives but only in and around the local area. She's not at the point of taking care of her but I've had to start checking in on her, make sure she eats, take her pills, etc. But lately I've noticed changes in her personality, her memory isn't the greatest and sometimes has a hard time remember everyday things. I worry about her being alone but she refuses to have a device in case she falls. She want's to be independent but yet, I fell it's important I'm there help her.

It's not easy being the adult here. When you become the parent of your parent so many things come into your head like all your childhood thoughts come back to haunt you. Here you're dealing with someone who raised you and all of a sudden you're thrust into a role of caring for them.

In an article in Psychology Today, Dr. Tamara Greenburg says,

When a parent becomes ill everything from our own childhoods, which we thought we had put to rest, can come back to haunt us. This is especially true when taking care of children at home. In the midst of our own vibrant lives we get reminded of the limits of our own upbringing. If we did not have an ideal (or good enough childhood) anger and resentment can take the stage. When this is the case, it is pretty tough to take care of everyone who may need us.

I'm not angry but I sure am frustrated. If you try to help, the parent gets angry because you're taking away from their independence. I'm finding ways of getting past this while helping her in ways she doesn't know. For example, if you're on your parents health power of attorney, you can let them go to the doctor themselves, but follow up with the doctor on the visit. You don't need to be at the bank to see what they have (if you have financial power of attorney), but you can go online to double check their transactions so they're doing ok. Small things.

Mom still frustrates me and I know the time will come soon enough where she will need care. I'm not sure if I'm ready for that but who ever is? Greenburg goes on to say,

Taking care of an aging parent can throw us into multiple versions of ourselves. We can feel like an infant, child, and parent all at the same time. Although parenting requires people to deal with how dependent they were as kids, taking care of an adult parent puts this dilemma in the forefront. It can seem like there is no room for us to feel like a grown up and a kid, but this is exactly what is required of us. When parents are ill and elderly, we have to manage a number of disjointed and seemingly contradictory feelings and identities.

So the lessons continue...