Tag Archives: encouragement

Including Lost Loved Ones In Your Holiday Celebration

Losing a loved one hurts a lot. It’s a pain that never really goes away, it just becomes a little more bearable as time goes on. And while I am grateful that my religious beliefs are that we will see our loved ones again someday in the eternities, there is still the hurts of missing […]

TEN YEARS BABY!!! I MADE IT TEN YEARS!!!!

It was August 13, 2010 when I posted my very first blog.  I was CEO of my company MediConnect Global at the time.  My company had grown from 70ish employees to well over a thousand and I had been struggling to find a way to stay in touch with all of the employees in the […]

The Greatest Gift A Father Can Give His Daughter

The most influential man in my life turned 82 years old over the weekend. That man is my Father, Gerald Rees.  He is my rock, my exemplar, my advisor, my hero, and my friend. He taught me that that I am capable of doing anything I set my mind to if I am willing to […]

Get Up And Win The Race

One of my very favorite poems, that has helped me through several difficult times in my life, was written by Dee Groberg and is titled “The Race” (I am posting it below…it will inspire you to never give up…): “Quit! Give up! You’re beaten!” they shout at me, and plead.  “There’s just too much against […]

What I’m Most Thankful For

As we head into this week of Thanksgiving I felt it might be an appropriate time for me to share what I’m most thankful for: My Faith. I am thankful for my faith in God.  My faith and love for my Heavenly Father is at the very core of who I am and it helps […]

The Only Way To Take Sorrow Out Of Death Is To Take Love Out Of Life

“The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.”  -Russell M. Nelson Eight years ago this week I received a phone call telling me that one of my very best friends in life, Steve Gasser, had passed away unexpectedly.  I remember the pain in my chest and that […]

Eight Years, 52 Weeks A Year, Five Days A Week, And More Than 2,000 Blog Posts Later

EIGHT YEARS! EIGHT years ago on August 13, 2010 I posted my very first blog post. At that time I committed to my employees that I would write a blog post to them every work day, five days a week, without fail from that point forward, writing every day except official holidays. When I made […]

Bitter or Better – It’s A Choice

Liz Murray grew up with parents who were both cocaine addicts. Her family ran out of food a few days into each month because her parents spent their welfare checks on feeding their drug addiction instead of feeding her and her sister.  So as young girls she and her sister would go from door to […]

Accept things as they are, not as you wish they were, then focus on your wishes for the future

“When you struggle against this moment, you are actually struggling against the entire universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole universe by struggling against this moment.  This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as […]

The Power Of Encouragement

“Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you.” –William Arthur Ward Today I was reminded of the powerful impact my mentors have had on me. I have had the privilege of […]

10 Tips To Help Get You Through The Hard Times

None of us are immune from having hard times in our lives. We all struggle with one thing or another. Whether its illness, or loss of a loved one, or financial difficulty, or heartbreak, or job loss, or feelings of inadequacy…everyone struggles…  Over the past few weeks I have had several close friends dealing with […]

The Countdown to WONDER WOMAN has begun! Why You Too Should Be Excited About That.

Look I am not even going to try and hide my excitement here – and anyone that knows me well won’t be surprised when I say that I am SO EXCITED for the Wonder Woman movie premier! So excited, in fact, that me and my friend Jacki (who I became immediate BFF’s with when we […]

We Need MORE HUGGING

I love hugs and I have always been a hugger. I hug everyone. It is just something I have always done because it makes me happy! But it doesn’t just make me happier – hugs make everyone happier! Did you know that every time you hug someone or someone hugs you that oxytocin gets released […]

It’s Gonna Be Okay

Anyone that knows me knows that music is a HUGE part of my life. I love music and I love to dance. So does my family. You will often find us dancing around our kitchen or driving in our car belting out a song at the top of our lungs. I think the reason we love […]

The differences between optimists and pessimists

“In the long run the pessimist may be proven right, but the optimist had a better time on the trip.” –Daniel L. Reardon I love Brian Tracy. He is a motivational speaker who has some great books and audio recordings that have helped me a lot over the years. He shares some thoughts on the […]

How To Get Your Swagger Back

Do you ever have days where you wake up feeling blah? Where every outfit looks terrible, and your hair just won’t go right, and you can’t find your keys, and you are late for work…we’ve all been through days like that. Sometimes we endure them and pray they will quickly be over. Other times we […]

Avoid discouraged, depressed, and empty!

Motivation. We all need it. Not just once or twice, but every single day of our lives. If we don’t refuel our motivation tanks on a regular basis we will burn through them and find ourselves discouraged, depressed, and empty. It would be nice if we had a low fuel indicator light on our personal […]

“Charity is expecting the best of each other”

“If it is our nature to criticize or demean, we can cause the voices of gladness to be silenced. We need those who bring gladness into our lives. We need those who give encouragement and reflect optimism.” – Marvin Ashton What the world needs more of is people who are encouraging and optimistic. The world […]

WE CAN DO IT, WE WILL DO IT, WE ARE GOING TO DO IT!

What if we were to all wake up each morning with an: I CAN, I WILL, I DO attitude? Can you even begin to imagine the incredible things we could accomplish if we really embraced that “can, will, do” mentality going into each new day? I CAN is us keeping a positive attitude and a […]

“Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day.”

Within any given week we are going to have good days, and bad ones. Rarely is an entire week perfect…at least I’ve never had a week like that myself. There are up days, and down days…there are stressful days and fun days…there are monotonous tasks that have to get done and there are new and […]

Don’t Look Back, You’re Not Going That Way

I shared this poem once before but I had forgotten all about it until I came across it today and it just seemed to reflect what I was feeling today so I wanted to share it again: As you travel through life there are always those times when decisions just have to be made when […]

TODAY IS THE START OF SOMETHING BRAND NEW!

That’s right! Today is the start of something brand new!  It is the start of a brand new week! And it’s a new week that can literally become whatever we want it to be because it is something BRAND NEW! Look, I’m just going to say it – last week was miserable – but I […]

Live, Love, Leave a Legacy

I hope all of you had a fabulous Memorial Holiday Weekend! There is something special about seeing all the flowers laid on the graves of everyone’s loved ones on Memorial Day. It serves as a great reminder of the love and the legacy that great people leave behind when they pass.  In my own family […]

Do It In Memory Of

For many people the holiday season is the happiest time of year, but for many people who have lost someone they love to death it can also be an incredibly difficult time of year. I was reminded of this over the last several days as a dear friend of mine lost his father and then […]

Happiness is a CHOICE

“Happiness is a choice”. That is the saying that my daughter has on a sign on the dashboard of her car that she looks at every time she gets in her car to go anywhere.  When I asked her the other day if she had a favorite saying that was her motto of sorts in […]

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

Single parents carry an incredible burden. Only those who have been a single parent can truly understand just how heavy that burden is. For a period of ten years I was a single mother myself, trying to raise my two children who were around 2 and 5 years old when I got divorced. When I […]

Filling Up Your Inspiration Tank

When my children were young I used to teach them the principle of filling up their gas tanks – our bodies and minds are like a car that is always running.  In order to run we need gas in our tank.  Even when the car is in idle and not driving forward it needs gas […]

Mirror, Mirror on the wall…You’re GORGEOUS!

On the wall of my friends office hung a princess mirror.  It wasn’t just any princess mirror, it was a Disney princess mirror that talked to you when you looked into the mirror, stating things like “that color looks lovely on you” and “you are so pretty”. It had to be my FAVORITE mirror ever! […]

Conquering Blah Days

“It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.” Some days are just blah days.  Nothing great, but nothing bad either…just blah.  That was how today was.  It seems like when the weather gets cold the blah days come with it…unfortunately.  So today I decided to gather ideas on how to best handle a blah […]