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Posts Categorized: Overcome Adversity

Laugh – Its good for your health

“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

Mark Twain

“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and

hang on. And swing!!!” Leo Buscaglia

“The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow” H. G. Wells

Laughter is a tonic that makes today better and raises hopes for tomorrow. Humor is not just fun. It is extremely powerful “medicine” that heals the soul and mends the body.

Each person has within them the ability to create humor and laugh.

Packing

Last year I went on a long anticipated river cruise. It was something I had wanted to do for years and was excited when I had the opportunity to go.

Because good friends had done most of the research for our trip and had established our traveling plans, what was left for me was to determine what I would take with me for the fifteen days we would be traveling on a beautiful river boat up the Danube, Main and Rheine rivers.

It took careful thought to determine what I would need on the trip. The clothes I chose would need to meet many different weather situations: rain, sunshine and chilly winds as well as dress up and casual. At home I had a whole closet to choose from as needed. Now however, what ever clothes I took had to fit into two suitcases that I could carry.

What should I take? What do I need to purchase? What would I like to take but really could do without? Eventually, I came up with just the right amount, the right balance and was ready to take off.

My Next Step

Tradition compels us to start the New Year with new resolutions. We have good intentions, but too often they don’t go anywhere.

I resolve to . . . . Go on a diet,

start an exercise program,

lose 25 lbs. and on and on it goes.

But if you are anything like me, I look back at the many resolutions I have made and most did not come to fruition. Perhaps some effort was put into them, but then they were abandoned.

But why? I think we have a spurt of motivation which evaporated once our regular routines begin again after the holidays. So do we abandon the idea?

New Steps – New Year

Over the last few months we explored six little words that can help transform our lives.

Imagine Create Believe

Achieve Inspire Transform

These are words I want to remember as I step into the new year. I want them to form stepping stones to a better life, a renewed life, a transformed life.

It takes imagination to create a church, a cathedral or skyscraper. It takes time to build a structure that will rise thousands of feet in the air. We need to believe in ourselves and our abilities to achieve the impossible. It takes determination and a willingness to allow our inspirations to find a way to transform our dreams and goals into actualities and a willingness to be vulnerable.

Within each of us are great possibilities for doing great things. But it starts with the little things. It is more than belief in one’s ability; it’s a belief in others – in their potential. The possibilities then become how can we work together, how can we see the good in each other instead of all the things that divide us.

Transformed

What does it take to transform one thing into another?

Flour, sugar, butter and water are some of the basic ingredients that go into the making of beautiful pastries such as those that filled a window in this pastry and coffee shop.

Enticing and tempting, their tantalizing shapes and forms suggest the pure enjoyment we have of biting into such sweet confections.

Just as a baker transforms the simple ingredients we find in our kitchens into magnificent works of culinary art, so we can take the ingredients of our individualism, uniqueness and innate creativity and fashion them into a life that reflects beauty and substance.

In the process we become transformed from the mundane into the bold, audacious and adventuresome.

Achieve

If you can imagine a better life, you can create it.

If you believe you can, you will find the strength and resources to make it happen.

To achieve, you must first believe you can.

Just like you, I have struggled with the enormity of problems over the years and have been discouraged when trying to find solutions.

But I continue to remind myself that I have found solutions and can take whatever is handed to me and achieve something positive from it.

When struggling with devastating odds, we are often flooded with self doubts. “How will I do this? How will I survive?” But when we stay in that space of doubt and fear, panic can set in and keep us frozen.

I Believe

Last month, I wrote about five little words that helped inspire a young woman to put together the pieces of a shattered life.

Imagine – Create – Believe

Achieve – Inspire – Transform

If you can imagine a better life, you can create it. If you believe you can, you will find the strength and resources to make it happen. But first you have to believe.

We are often Unaware of our Beliefs

Beliefs involve a conviction, a mindset and attitude – an approach to life where we take a position or point of view and act upon it with the assumption that something good or positive will result.

We don’t often think about it, but our beliefs are influencing our decisions in one way or another all the time. Some we rarely give much thought to; such as the sun rising and setting even when hidden by clouds – we simply take for granted it is there. Others seem insignificant, such as believing your favorite sports team will win and cheering them on in the stands.

Yet, our beliefs guide and direct what we do all the time. In fact, when we do things that go against our beliefs and values, we will feel discontented, uneasy and distressed.

The Power of Words

Jennifer was a goal setter – she attended college, returned home for a visit, met and married her first husband.

But then her world began to fall apart and like all of us whose ideals, expectations and normal assumptions for life begin to crumble, she found herself struggling to save her marriage – eventually realizing it was beyond saving.

She went from a healthy, vibrant individual to sinking into a troubling depression and wondering what life was all about.

As she struggled with the enormous changes that had occurred and the overwhelming challenges she faced, she found a bracelet that had been lost. Unable to find the owner, she looked more closely at the words that encircled the band:

Imagine Create Believe Achieve

Inspire Transform

Focus on what you can do – not what you can’t

What do you say to yourself?

What do you say to yourself when faced with handicaps or obstacles that seem overwhelming?

Do you say, I can do that, or do you look at all the reasons why you can’t do it.

That internal way of thinking will influence everything you do. When under pressure to complete work within a limited time frame, or when things go wrong in your marriage or you don’t know how to talk with your teens, and your life seems like it is spinning out of control, what you say to yourself is critical.

Our thoughts and typical approach to life will either compound and add to the stress we are experiencing or we will find new ways to accomplish what we want.

Challenge That Critic

As children we hear lots of negative messages that tell us we are “not good enough.” They come from many sources: bullying, teasing, comparisons, and a lack of words of praise.

Over time these accumulated messages from our past can form tapes that are constantly being activated that program us to behave in certain ways and do things only one way.

These tapes have been rehearsed and repeated so long they become a habit that form an “internal critic” who constantly reminds us of how useless and unsuccessful we are.

Our focus remains on what we haven’t done right instead of all the things we have done right and can do.

Instead of analyzing problems, look at pros and cons, learning from mistakes and applying that learning in a positive way, we are instead sabotaged by this critic that says we aren’t capable of doing anything right.

An internal critic can only repeat what it has learned from the past. It will be triggered whenever we face problems today. It pronounces a judgment and predicts future outcomes. It affects all our thinking and becomes an automatic response to whatever is happening.