Tag Archives: joy

You Can’t Depend On Your Eyes When Your Imagination Is Out Of Focus

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain Just as you can’t trust your eyes when your imagination is out of focus, you can’t trust your emotions when your body is physically spent.  Sometimes we get moving so fast and furious through life that the terrain we are […]

12 Ways to Lighten Up

We all need help lightening up once in awhile. Here are 12 great steps to help you lighten up: “Approaching your life with a non-serious attitude gives you a clearheaded view of difficulties and the energy to deal with them. Problems are easier to solve, people are more cooperative and you feel more relaxed. You […]

Am I The Only One Who Finds It Hard To Focus The Day Before A Holiday?

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE HOLIDAYS?! I love everything about them. Great food, fun, friends, family….how could I not love holidays??  In fact, I get so excited about holidays that I start celebrating them in my mind the day before they even arrive…the closer we get to the actual holiday the more antsy […]

Everyone Needs A Five Second Dance Break!

Often when everyone is heads down working on things at our house someone in our family will randomly call out “DANCE BREAK” and everyone immediately stops whatever they are doing, stands up, and starts dancing in place for five seconds to our own beatboxing sounds – then everyone quickly sits right back down and keeps […]

Be Content…See The Wonders

“Everything has it’s wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.” –Helen Keller Feeling content….that’s a concept I struggle with because I have always found that not being content with things as they are has been the great motivator for me to try harder, to […]

Stuck In A Jam

Traffic jams are so frustrating! It is so painful to be stuck on the freeway when there is a traffic jam of bumper to bumper cars and there is literally no way to get yourself out of it. All you can do is sit there and wait for the traffic to start moving again. You […]

Of Regrets And Resolutions

Six years ago I heard a talk by Dieter F. Uchtdorf called “Of Regrets And Resolutions” that impacted my life tremendously. I had pulled portions and excerpts from this talk (as the full talk was a little long to post in my blog) and shared them back in 2012.  Today I happened to be looking […]

Happy Inconvenience Yourself Day!

I just learned that February 28th is “Inconvenience Yourself Day”, a day that is celebrated on the fourth Wednesday in February each year.  When I heard about it my first thought was, “Why would anyone want to have a day where they inconvenience themselves on purpose?” So I decided to look it up and see […]

Appreciate the Excitement that comes from the Anticipation

We all wish we could have certainty life because it takes the fear out of things if we already know what is going to happen. But last night I was reminded that knowing the ending also takes that excitement and anticipation that comes from not knowing. As much as we think we want to know […]

Come What May, And Love It

Years ago someone gave me a little plate that reads, “Come what may, and love it.” It is a quote that came from a fantastic story told by a man named Joseph B Wirthlin in a talk titled the same in which he shared: “When I was young I loved playing sports, and I have […]

What will be talked about at your funeral? The importance of eulogy virtues.

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 […]

“No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else”

No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else.” – P.T. Barnum If you haven’t yet seen the new movie “The Greatest Showman”…. GO SEE IT!  Oh my goodness it is fantastic!  Seriously, the storyline, the music, and the cinematography are just amazing!  And there are so many great messages in the film: […]

Have We Done Enough To Make It On Santa’s Nice List This Year?

I distinctly remember as a kid the fear I had of doing something bad that would cause me to get put on Santa’s naughty list. I think most kids, from a very young age, are fully knowledgeable about Santa’s Naughty and Nice list that he uses to determine whether he will be bringing them presents […]

The Most Stressful, I Mean Wonderful Week of the Year

I realize we refer to this month as “the most wonderful time of the year” and I don’t disagree with that, but let’s have a little #realtalk for a second…the week before Christmas is straight up the most stressful week of the year! Let’s start with the fact that every time you go to an […]

Be That Star On The Hill #lighttheworld

Every night as I drive home the weeks before Christmas I look up on the hill above my house to see a big star that is lit up on the mountainside. It’s a star a neighbor has lit up for years during the holiday and I look forward to seeing it every night. There is […]

All I Need To Know I Learned From Santa

All I Need To Know I Learned From Santa    (written by unknown) *Encourage people to believe in you. *Always remember who’s naughty and who’s nice. *Don’t pout. *It’s as much fun to give as it is to receive. *Some days it’s ok to feel a little chubby. *Make your presents known. *Always ask for […]

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 […]

Only 48 Days Until Christmas – Let The Countdown Begin!

Can you believe there are only 48 days until Christmas??!!  It’s just so exciting!  So because it takes so much work to decorate the house for Christmas and put op our 13 foot tall Christmas tree we decided that from now on we are going to enjoy those decorations as long as possible, which is […]

Have you cheated the man in the glass?

When you get what you want in your struggle for self And the world makes you king for a day, Just go to the mirror and look at yourself  And see what “the man” has to say. For it isn’t your father or mother or wife Whose judgment upon you must pass. The fellow whose […]

Try and inject a little more of that childhood attitude of wonder into our adult lives

Watching all the cute little kids in their trick-or-treating costumes, running around ecstatic about all the free candy they were collecting, I couldn’t help but think how great it was to be a little kid. So oblivious to the problems in the world, wide-eyed with excitement about even the littlest things, believing in fairy tales […]

Creating A Day Worth Living

Life can sometimes seem ridiculously complicated. And trying to find peace amidst the chaos day to day often feels a bit impossible. So what makes for a peaceful day? If the only way to have a peaceful day is to have a day where everything goes perfectly then the chance of us ever having a […]

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 […]

Treasure Every Precious Moment

Today was the baby blessing of my grandson Flynn Dalton Anderson. When I saw him in his little white outfit I was amazed at how much he looked exactly like his father, my son Dalton. I remember my son Dalton’s blessing day as if it was just yesterday. I remember getting him into his cute […]

The Town Of Don’t You Worry

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 […]

Gossiptown – Where Rumors and Falsehoods Abound

Gossiptown Have you ever heard of Gossiptown On the shore of Falsehood Bay, Where Old Dame Rumor with rustling gown Is going the livelong Day? It isn’t far to Gossiptown For people who want to go, The Idleness train will take you down In just an hour or so. The thoughtless road is crowded, you’ll […]

Put-off Town – Where Procrastination and Unhappiness Reside

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 […]

Don’t stop dreaming just because you had a nightmare

“Don’t stop dreaming just because you had a nightmare.” Some days I come across a quote like that one and instantly know it’s what I need to write about in that day’s blog, and for whatever reason when I saw that one I knew it had to share it… We all go through our own […]

“We have not yet the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us…”

Do you ever have times where you feel you have already been through so many hard trials in your life, and you’ve already overcome so many hard things, and worked to improve yourself in so many ways that surely you deserve to have a reprieve from life’s difficulties because you feel you’ve fought through hard […]

You never realize how little self-control you have until…

“You never realize how little self-control you have until they put chips and salsa in front of you at a Mexican restaurant.”   #truth Having self-control isn’t always easy, as is so brilliantly illustrated in the example of trying not to eat the chips and salsa placed in front  of us…we can all relate to facing […]

The Energy That Comes From Doing What You Love

“The only great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs Tonight I was asked to give a keynote speech to a group of entrepreneurs at Startup Ignition, a startup Bootcamp program for entrepreneurs. Truth be told as I was driving down to give my speech I was feeling exhausted from having had […]