When I became a parent I never knew I could love another human being so much. I still remember the way I felt when I became pregnant with my second child – I remember wondering how I could ever love another person as much as I loved my first child. But then 23 years ago […]
Recently I had a conversation with some young women who shared feelings of discouragement after they had been told that they needed to accept certain limits on their choices for the future. I was so frustrated because I know firsthand those limits don’t exist and those young women can achieve all of the goals they […]
2019…can you believe it?!?! It’s 2019! And today is the first day of the rest of your life and it’s going to be AWESOME!!! Happy New Year everyone! My family rang in the new year by busting out a bottle of sparkling grape juice only to find it was fermented, which caused my son and […]
In 1861, the same year the Civil War began, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lost his wife when she was melting wax to preserve a few locks of her daughter’s hair in an envelope and her dress caught on fire. Henry tried to extinguish the flames with a rug and when that didn’t work he used his […]
“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.” -W.T. Purkiser Have you heard about the #LightTheWorld Worldwide Day of Service? I want to give you a heads up now so you can get in on the fun! December 1st is going to be the […]
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 […]
“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again… So why bother in the first place? Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above… One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is […]
“Fear is an idea crippling, experience-crushing, success-stalling inhibitor inflicted only by yourself.” – Stephanie Melish We are the ones who create our own fears. We decide what we are afraid of by the thoughts we allow into our minds. We think our fears into existence and then we allow them to exist and grow in […]
“One of the great innovators of our time, Steve Jobs of Apple, had this insight: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward,” he said. “You can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” What did he mean by that? Perhaps an illustration will […]
When my twitter feed revealed #TheMeaningOfLifeIn4Words as the top trend hashtag of the moment it totally killed my focus tonight. The truth is I don’t usually pay attention to things that are trending but for some reason this one caught my eye. Perhaps that’s because I’ve spent days on end doing nothing but writing word […]
“Promise Yourself To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only the […]
The weekend is just around the corner, which in and of itself is something to get excited about. Some days things go fantastic and other days can be a struggle just to make it through. When times are tough the best thing to do is remind yourself to just keep on keepin’ on: Keep on Keepin’ […]
“If you want to be happy, you have to be happy on purpose. When you wake up, you can’t just wait to see what kind of day you’ll have. You have to decide what kind of day you will have.” –Joel Osteen I’ve learned a lot about this concept of being happy on purpose over […]
In speaking of how he’d like to be remembered in life after he’s gone, Muhammad Ali said: “I’d like for them to say he took a few cups of love, he took one tablespoon of patience, one teaspoon of generosity, one pint of kindness. He took one quart of laughter, one pinch of concern, and then, […]
“Every song begins with a blank page.” – Pasek & Paul This evening I had the incredible opportunity to go and hear Pasek & Paul, songwriters of The Greatest Showman movie, speak and perform at Utah Valley University ( UVU ). Now I was a HUGE fan of The Greatest Showman movie and soundtrack already, […]
“Stop being a worrier and start being a warrior!” – unknown I lost several weeks of productivity when I was down sick with the flu the last few weeks. It put me so behind on everything that I found myself worrying to no end over how I will possibly catch back up again. and worrying […]
I will keep my words short today because I want you all to watch this video. I know it’s five minutes but I promise you it is worth the time to watch this entire video – don’t fast forward any of it – I promise…you’ll be glad you watched it. When things get tough, remember […]
David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times wrote an awesome article in 2015 called “The Moral Bucket List” (well worth the time to read!). Here is an excerpt from the article that perfectly explains the answer to a question I was asked the other day as to why I donate so much of my […]
“Destiny is a mysterious thing, sometimes enfolding a miracle in a leaky basket of catastrophe.” – Francisco Goldman A few days ago I posed a blog about taking control of our lives by first taking control of our thoughts and then figuring out what we can do to improve ourselves in every situation. Today I […]
“If you are scratching your head and wondering why you continue to find yourself in the same storm, stop splashing around in mud puddles. Figure out the role you have played in making it rain.” When things go wrong one of the easiest responses to jump to is that of self-pity…”Why me?”, “It isn’t fair”, […]
Tomorrow morning is the funeral of one of my heroes. My first interactions with Thomas S. Monson (whom I will refer to from now on as President Monson out of respect as at the time of his passing he was serving in the positon of the President and Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ […]
Today I met with an entrepreneur who is going through the pains of growing their young business. We talked about all the pains that come with learning to communicate your vision with your team, hiring, training, delegating, prioritizing your time, and all the other struggles that are typical growing pains for entrepreneurs. As I shared […]
Even a perfect plan can go awry. Take it from the girl who thought she had a perfect plan in place for her life at 18 only to find that nothing in my life those next ten years went according to my perfect plan. Years later I came to realize that rather than trying to […]
The last several months life has thrown me some major curveballs that I frankly never saw coming, and those curveballs have caused me to have to deal with things I never expected to go through. As each of them hit I felt completely unprepared to deal with the mix of emotions hitting me all at […]
I grew up in a big family. My parents have ten children and nine of the ten are married currently and all ten of the children have children of their own, and some of those children have children of their own. In fact at present my parents have a total of 70 something children and […]
“Never let what you feel make you forget what’s real. Facts over feelings. Don’t let your emotions overpower your intelligence.” -unknown Learning the lesson shared in that quote is something that took me making a few really bad personal life choices in my early adult life and going through the horrible pain that resulted from […]
C.S. Lewis once said that “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” I’ll freely admit that sometimes it can take serious effort on our part to remember that our extraordinary destiny will someday come to fruition if we just hang in there and we don’t let the hardships stop us. These last few months it’s taken me more effort than […]
Okay, the last two days I have posted awesome poems that I found about Put-Off Town and Gossipville, only for me to then find the poem, The Town Of Don’t You Worry. I figured your week wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t share all three poems of these poems with you! Especially because once we’ve […]
PUT-OFF TOWN Did you ever go to Put-Off town, Where the houses are old and tumble-down, And everything tarries and everything drags, With dirty streets and people in rags? On the street of Slow lives Old Man Wait, And his two little boys named Linger and Late; With unclean hands and tousled hair, And a […]
Today I was honored to introduce one of my personal heroes, Alan Hall, for a speech he gave at Utah Valley University’s Executive Lecture Series. Alan Hall is someone I have had the honor of knowing for many years and he has been a significant influence in my life and is an incredible example to […]
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