Tag Archives: kindness

53 and ME!

Tomorrow will be my 53rd birthday.  53!!!  Where did the time go?!  The very last daily blog post I wrote was written exactly three years ago today on the night before my 50th birthday and was titled “What 50 years have taught me”.  That blog post read as follows:

How We Avoid Becoming Pawns In Someone Else’s Game

An Ambassador in another country shared the following sentiment with me: People who wish to do evil for their own selfish purposes (whether it be fame, power, position, or fortune) have figured out they no longer need to wage a war to conquer society – they only need to feign they are two people with […]

#BeNice

Tonight my kids showed me a social media post where someone shared their view on something and someone else disagreed with them by calling them a derogatory word, and sadly this exchange took place between two people who supposedly loved each other. I wrote a blog on this very subject five years ago because I […]

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 […]

Build Bridges of Understanding Rather Than Creating Walls of Segregation

Yesterday Russell M. Nelson, prophet of The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints released the following statement: “We join with many throughout this nation and around the world who are deeply saddened at recent evidences of racism and a blatant disregard for human life. We abhor the reality that some would deny others respect […]

How People Treat You Is Their Karma

“How people treat you is their Karma, how you react is yours.” – Wayne Dyer So often in life we find ourselves in situations where someone does something to us that is hurtful, unkind, ungrateful, unfair, unwarranted, dishonest, or a myriad of other mean things that hurt us or make us feel bad.  And often […]

A Great Way To Boost Your Emotional Well-Being and Happiness Level

Today as I was going through cabinets and organizing things I pulled out my box I keep of handwritten notes and cards people have written to me over the years and I began reading a few of them.  What an awesome way to boost your emotional well-being! Let’s face it – if someone asked you […]

Unlock Your Inner Awesome

It was probably ten years ago when someone sent me an article titled “How To Be Awesome”.  It didn’t list the name of the person who wrote the article but it read: HOW TO BE AWESOME “Being awesome, quite literally, means to elicit awe. Awe is not something people express much these days. So to […]

Focus On What You Can Control

“One of the happiest moments ever, is when you find the courage to let go of what you can’t change.” There are a million aspects to life that are out of our control. And focusing on things you can’t control is absolutely pointless…no matter how much you focus on them you can’t control them so […]

You’ve Got To Check Conditions Daily To Make The Needed Adjustments

Today we were discussing holding firm to our values in life. At one point in the discussion the leader of the discussion drew a picture of a boat and talked about the need for an anchor to hold the boat in place.  Some may picture a single anchor dropped in the water, but having been […]

Be The Miracle

Wishing for your own Thanksgiving Miracle or Christmas Miracle this holiday season?  After all…this time of year does tend to be a time of miracles… But what if this holiday season you decided that rather than just wishing for your own miracle you were actually going to BE THE MIRACLE for someone else’s life instead? […]

Beautiful People Don’t Just Happen

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not […]

What Would Your Wordle Reflect?

“Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.” -Buddha Words are such a powerful thing. Especially the words we speak. They can build up or tear down, hurt or heal, uplift or destroy. I personally believe that words, when unkind, can […]

Have You Ever Met A Hater Doing Better Than You? Me Neither.

“Haters don’t really hate you. In fact, they hate themselves because you’re a reflection of what they wish to be.” – unknown Today was World Day for Bullying Prevention, so it seems appropriate to share some past thoughts I’ve shared about bullying: Haters, bullies, mean people – they all suffer from one of the following: […]

On Civility And Kindness

Last Friday night I was invited by my dear friend, retired US Senator Orrin Hatch, to hear Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch speak at BYU at an event being put on by the Hatch Foundation.    Introducing Justice Gorsuch was President Dallin H. Oaks (the First Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of […]

The Best Thing About A Hug

Hi, I’m Amy, and just like Olaf in the Disney movie Frozen, I like warm hugs. I’m a hugger. I’ve always been a hugger. I hug people I know…I hug new people I meet…I pretty much hug everyone… I just love hugs! And apparently all that hugging has been far more beneficial than I ever […]

It’s Not The Places We Go, It’s The People We Are With

My husband and I spent most of last week in New York City with the Hale Center Theater Founders Board. The Hale Center Theater is an incredible community theater in Utah that has plays of the caliber of any Broadway show I’ve seen. Each year this board takes a trip together to go and see […]

From Politics To Philanthropy

Today I had the honor of spending time with my dear friend Senator Orrin Hatch, who served his country as a US Senator for 42 years making him the longest serving Republican U.S. Senator in history. I have known Senator Hatch since I was in High School when I was living in the Washington DC […]

I Double Dog Dare You

If you’ve ever watched the movie A Christmas Story then you know exactly what the term ‘double dog dare you’ means. If you haven’t watched the movie A Christmas Story then what in the heck is wrong with you?!?!  I mean, you gotta watch it!  It’s a holiday classic that needs to be watched every […]

Join the #LightTheWorld Day of Service

December 1st is #LightTheWorld Day of Service!  That day kicks off week 1 of the #LightTheWorld campaign.  Over 300,000 people worldwide have already opted in to join the campaign this year and the number is going up in droves each day!  The campaign goes throughout the month of December and its purpose is to encourage […]

We Will Be Known Forever By The Tracks We Leave Behind

“We will be known forever by the tracks we leave behind.” -Dakota tribe Riding a bike along a path I found my eyes drawn to a track that someone riding in front of me had left in their wake. I could see exactly where they had ridden before me. Perhaps it was the beauty of […]

Imagine Dragons, NASCAR, friends and family made for a birthday weekend to remember

For my birthday last Friday a group of friends took me down to Las Vegas in a private jet to go to a VIP meeting with the Imagine Dragons and then to hear the Imagine Dragons perform an acoustic concert for the Tyler Robinson Foundation Gala (the foundation raises money for the families dealing with […]

Attributes Of Empathy

“Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato This video clip below is awesome! It is a perfect illustration of why we ought to have a little more empathy for other people. We shouldn’t assume we know what someone is feeling or what they might be dealing with. We can’t […]

What We See On The Surface And What Lies Beneath. Everyone Needs Compassion.

It’s so easy for us to assume that because someone looks fine or appears to have a good life that they aren’t going through hard things. It’s also easy for us to assume that our own struggles are more difficult than someone else is since we are only capable of fully understanding the depths of […]

What True Love Looks Like

Here is a beautiful story about what true love looks like: “It was a busy morning, about 8:30, when an elderly gentleman in his 80’s arrived at the hospital to have stitches removed from his thumb. He said he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am. The nurse took his […]

How We’d Like To Be Remembered

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, […]

Choices And Consequences

Life is full of choices. Some are easy choices and some are hard, but the upside of choices is they are always ours to make and no one can ever take that away from us. However, the downside to choices is that while we get to make them, we don’t get to choose what consequences […]

What I Learned From Losing

Dalton Anderson checking in for the ol’ Mama Bear. Not that my mom is old, but since she’s a grandma and all I guess it wouldn’t be true to say she’s young either ;). Instead of digging myself a grave, I’d like to share a story of what happened this weekend. My two brother-in-laws play […]

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 […]

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 […]