Tag Archives: happiness is a choice

Hang Out With People Who Add To Your Fun Jar

If you are wondering what today’s opening title means I can explain it best by sharing an experience I had with my daughter back when she was still a teenager.  One day after she’d gotten home from high school I was asking her how she was dealing with a negative situations she’d had to face […]

The One Who Can Smile

“Tis easy enough to be pleasant When life goes by with a song, But the man worthwhile Is the man who can smile When everything goes dead wrong.” When I read that poem today I immediately thought of two people I know who exemplify the person spoken of in that poem – my sister-in-law Katie […]

We Are The Sculptor Of Our Attitudes

There is a poem called “The Sculptor’s Attitude” that was written by an unknown author who perfectly expresses the role each of us play in sculpting our own attitudes. The poem goes like this: I woke up early today, excited over all I get to do before the clock strikes midnight. I have responsibilities to […]

8 Reasons We Can’t Lighten Up

In one of Loretta Laroche’s talks (comedian, public speaker, author) she shares eight big reasons why people aren’t able to lighten up: Eight Reasons We Can’t Lighten Up 1.      We’re too busy. (Let’s face it? Will we ever not be busy?) 2.      We’re afraid of what they may say.  (I don’t know who they are, but they sure stop the laughter […]

We Are Ultimately In Charge Of Our Own Happiness

“So often we get caught up in the illusion that there is something just beyond our reach that would bring us happiness: a better family situation, a better financial situation, or the end of a challenging trial.The older we get, the more we look back and realize that external circumstances don’t really matter or determine […]

Happiness Is A Choice. Make It!

The driver had picked me and my friend Sarah up from our downtown San Francisco meeting and was trying to get through the heavy downtown traffic so he could get us onto the freeway so my friend could make it to the airport in time for her to make her flight. Traffic was a bear […]

Decide That Every Day Is The Best Day Of The Year!

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson After having spent the last several days down sick in bed I was super excited to wake up feeling at […]

For A Seed To Achieve Greatness It Must Come Completely Undone

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ―Cynthia Occelli When I look back at the last few years it is amazing to me to see some of […]

Happiness Is Living In The Moment RIGHT NOW! A message from a man with ALS

Earlier this year one of my dear friends, Warren Osborn who is also a very successful entrepreneur, was diagnosed with the fatal disease ALS.  The news rocked my husband and I because Warren is one of the most active, healthy people we know. He has a work ethic that is unmatched and he’s never afraid […]

Nuggets Of Knowledge. What 47 Years Have Taught Me.

September 14th…I can’t believe I’m turning 47!  Why is it that 47 just sounds so old when I say it… I can’t pretend I’m not feeling how old I am, because I do. Aches and pains come from nowhere, climbing stairs takes a lot more effort, and the wrinkles…so may wrinkles…but with all that, I […]

Family Road Trips – No Better Way To Test Your Love For One Another

Nothing bonds a family like traveling in an RV without air-conditioning in 105 degree heat…At least I suppose one could call it bonding the family together when all of us were so sweaty hot that our bodies were literally sticking to the sofa seats of the RV as we made our long drive back from […]

If You Want To Be Happy, You Have To Be Happy On Purpose

“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 […]

“You’re allowed five emotional minutes in the day, then you gotta be a Gangsta.”

“You’re allowed five emotional minutes in the day, then you gotta be a Gangsta.” I love it when I come across the absolutely perfect quote at just the perfect moment when you need it the most. This quote seriously made my day today so I had to share it in case any of you needed […]

Ideas for Making The Dreaded Holiday Un-Decorating Process A Lot More Fun

Christmas is amazing…but the after Christmas clean-up, not so much….Once the holiday is over, taking down the decorations is about as much fun as unpacking your suitcase after a fabulous vacation…not fun at all… As I’ve faced the need to take down my own Christmas décor I’ve been wondering what I could do to make […]

When Life Throws You A Curveball

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 […]

How Wonder Woman Helped Me Make Millions

I still remember watching the Wonder Woman series on television as a little girl. The series began when I was just four years old and the series ran until I was eight years old. I remember each week how excited I would be to watch the next episode. She was the most amazing superhero I […]

“Attitude is the difference between and Ordeal and an Adventure”

I am a person who likes to have a plan so I know what needs to get done and when I need to do it. Having a plan in place is great and it definitely allows me to get much more accomplished. But when something happens to make a plan go sideways, well that is […]

Sharing a little about one of my Heroes

21 years ago today I gave birth to the most amazing little girl in the world. Ashley made her entrance in the world in the same epic fashion as she has done everything else since she was born – she came out bottom first! That made for an amazingly difficult labor and delivery for me, […]

Choose your own adventure!

When I was growing up they used to have these books called the Choose Your Own Adventure series. You would start reading the book and it would present a scenario to you such as “You are walking down a long hall in a castle. You come to the end of the hallway and there are […]

Do you want to build a snowman?!

When I left to work this morning there wasn’t a drop of snow on the ground, so imagine my surprise when I go to leave work tonight at 6:30pm only to find that it had been dumping down snow leaving my car covered in snow and the roads home a snowy mess. …And of course […]

This feels like a great week to be HAPPY!

The desire to be happy. It’s a desire shared universally. It is one thing in life we all have in common – the desire for happiness. Some people wait for happiness to find them, only to learn that this kind of happiness is temporary and it goes as quickly as it comes. Other people have […]

Some days you just have to create your own sunshine

I woke up this morning so excited to go out into the warm spring sunshine…I put on my short sleeved shirt and sandals, and I opened my door to find ridiculously cold wind and rain! NOOOOOO!!!…. Back inside I went to change my sandals for winter shoes and put on my warmest sweater. I was […]

When you get to the end of your rope…

Growing up there was a poster on one of my siblings bedroom wall that they got for free when they ordered books from the scholastic book order forms we used to get back in elementary school (ps. I loved those book orders!). The poster had a picture of a kitten that was barely hanging onto […]

One Year Older, But Hopefully Wiser Too!

Happy Birthday to me! Okay, let’s get real…at my age birthdays are no longer quite the same feeling of happy that they were when you were a kid trying to grow up too fast. The older we get the more they tend to turn into a reminder that your sexy is a little less sexier […]

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” So often in life we get so sucked into thinking about every little thing we still want that we totally lose sight of just how blessed we […]

Don’t put off living

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We dream of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our window today.”    -Dale Carnegie I totally agree that too often we put off […]

Life is supposed to be Fun…The Joy is in the Journey

Today I want to write about JOY! And being HAPPY! Because I had a pity party for myself last night where I got all my tears and sadness out and I woke up today and decided that it is time for me to follow the advice my brilliant daughter Ashley gives me anytime I feel […]

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 […]