Monthly Archives: August 2013

Brick to the Face Theory

So those of you up on the daily reading of my blog know I got hurt a few days ago when my face and a board met up at my new construction site.  The sweetest person sent me a really cute email to cheer me up and the story she shared in the email had […]

Why It’s So Hard To Trust

“People ask me why it’s so hard to trust people, and I ask them why it is so hard to keep a promise.” Nothing is as frustrating as putting your trust in people who then let you down. Trusting people in the first place is always scary.  But then after you take that leap and […]

It’s Just a Bad Day, Not a Bad Life

At least that is what I am telling myself tonight. Today was…well….not the best day.  I was over at our new home construction site meeting with plumbers, electricians, framers, etc doing a walk through when I turned right smack into a huge wood beam that was setup to temporarily hold up one of the walls.  […]

Get Your Sparkle On!

I have a great story to share with you today – it is a story that was shared with me tonight and it totally inspired me to want to GET MY SPARKLE ON!  Hopefully sharing it with you will inspire you to GET YOUR SPARKLE ON too! Going into this school year my daughter set a goal for herself […]

Seeking Success In A Finite Number of Hours A Day (Forbes Article)

We all have a finite number of hours in a day – 24 to be exact.  What we choose to do with those hours is of the utmost importance. We can waste our time, or we can use our time to improve ourselves and our lives. I have always felt passionate about the importance of […]

Just because its stormy now doesn’t mean you aren’t headed for sunshine

I am sitting in a chair wrapped up in a blanket and watching an amazing rainstorm through my window.  Lightning is shooting through the sky every few seconds followed by the constant cracking of thunder.  I have to say that there is something really magical about watching a storm like this.  Perhaps it’s the beauty […]

Sometimes You Just Need To Take a Time-Out in the “Happy Chair”

When my kids were little time-out at our house consisted of sending the kids to sit in the “happy chair” where they would have to stay until they were able to be happy again.  Our “happy chair” was a bright yellow chair with a sunshine and happy kids painted on it – all designed to […]

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

That is a fantastic Chinese Proverb I came across tonight that I had to share with all of you tonight because it is a perfect fit for what is on my mind. I have spent the last several weeks working on a landscaping design for our new home with our landscaper extraordinaire, Chip Galloway of […]

What Grade Would You Give Yourself?

School is back in session as is the focus in once again on trying to get good grades for this new semester.  As I thought about getting good grades it made me stop and think about the opportunity this could be for all of us adults, even if we aren’t in school any longer, to come up with […]

Remember All The Good

No matter what ups and downs we have experienced in our lives, there have always been a million blessings.  Sometimes we forget to acknowledge or even recognize those blessings because there are so many other things to easily get distracted by.  And when you have always had certain blessings in your life, it’s easy to take […]

5 Unique Recruiting Ideas That Paid Off Big Time (Forbes Article)

Attracting the best and the brightest people to join your company is the goal of any good leadership team, but finding those people requires serious creativity in your recruiting efforts. Typically the strongest talent out there is going to be gainfully employed somewhere else. So the challenge becomes finding the people who are not out […]

Appreciate Our Differences

The world would be a genuinely boring place if all of us were the exact same – if we liked the exact same things, wore the exact same clothes, liked the exact same music, played the exact same sport, had the same talents.   Don’t you agree? Yet we often spend time judging people precisely for […]

Spice Things Up!

Feeling bored with your daily job?  Tired of saying and doing the same thing day after day?  We all get that way at some point – feeling like life is stale and like we are stuck in the movie Groundhog Day where it starts to feel like each day is repeating itself over and over […]

Trust Your Gut!

Hindsight – how I wish we could have it on the front end of situations instead of going through hardships to figure out what you shoulda, woulda, coulda…but I guess then it wouldn’t be called hindsight 🙁  Today was a day when hindsight made it very clear what I shoulda done differently in a situation […]

Make Someone Happy

“Make Just One Someone Happy.  And You Will Be Happy To.” – Jimmy Durante.  I love that song btw.  If you haven’t listened to it in a while you totally should listen to it again. It’s fabulous. This last week I have been so grateful to all of my daughter’s dear friends who have come by […]

“You will never know your limits until you push yourself to them.”

The human spirit is an amazing thing.  It is capable of doing and becoming more than we ever recognize.  The fact is that we never really know our limits in life until we are pushed into them or until we push ourselves beyond what we are currently doing.  It is so easy to just do […]

There’s Nothing A Little Ice Cream Can’t Cure

Growing up at my house, the love of ice cream was an inherited trait.  The entire Rees family, from my father to his father to his father’s father and so on, the love of ice cream was passed from one generation to the next.  The fact was that if you didn’t love ice cream then […]

Make The Best Of The Way Things Turn Out

As I sit here at the hospital tonight, following my daughters second ACL surgery that took place earlier today, I am trying to reflect on what lessons I have learned in my life today so I can share those thoughts with all of you.  It’s funny how just sitting around in a hospital waiting room […]

Success Follows The Incurable Optimist

The most powerful personality traits to develop in one’s quest for success are incurable optimism and integrity. Optimism is defined as “the belief that good things will happen to you and that negative events are temporary setbacks to be overcome.” (-Mayo Clinic).   Integrity, as I would define it, is “doing the right thing, at the […]

Grateful For Her Example

There is huge power in the examples set by the people we surround ourselves with.  Tonight I want to share a story of one of the great examples in my life.  My daughter Ashley is 17 years old.  For those of you who have followed my blog for a time, you are aware that last […]

Pretty Good?? or GREAT!!!

In life we all have a choice. We can be pretty good, or we can be GREAT! The difference in those two often comes down to paying attention to the details. I used to keep a sticker on my desk that said “If you don`t have time to do it right the first time, how […]