Tag Archives: priority

While You Are Growing Up, They Are Growing Old

Today I was really bummed out because it was my Mother’s 78th birthday and we couldn’t be with her even though she lives only fifteen minutes away.  With the quarantine we could only stand on her front porch singing Happy Birthday to her through the glass and then leave a cake an balloons on her […]

To-Do Lists Don’t Work – Scheduling Everything Does

Whenever I have a big to-do list I find myself sitting and staring at it like I’m a deer in the headlights wondering “where do I even begin?”… Overwhelmed by the question of where to begin the list almost always leads to procrastinating on starting anything on the list…and procrastinating inevitably leads to feeling down […]

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 […]

Organizing Your Thoughts And Making Room For The Amazing

Just the word “organize” is stressful because it makes me immediately think of all the piles of things that are waiting for me to organize them. And try as I want to, every new day brings in more and more piles of additional emails, additional documents, additional letters, additional phone calls, etc.. all of which […]

Your Presence Is My Present

When my 21 year-old daughter wants to get my attention she will utter the phrase, “Your presence is my present.” That quote is a very effective way to remind someone to put away the distractions and focus on the moment you are sharing together. Spending quality time with someone gets harder and harder with all […]

Don’t wait for “someday” to make time for family

Tonight I attended the pre-funeral viewing for my Uncle Buzz who passed away last week (his funeral is tomorrow). Walking in the doors of the room where the viewing was taking place and seeing so many of my aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings and my parents all gathered together inside the room was […]

The Link Between Traditions and Happiness

This weekend marked the beginning of my family’s holiday season traditions beginning. Each year in October my parents and siblings and their families who are in the area all come together and we go to a place called Rowley’s Red Barn where we start by enjoying their homemade donuts and apple cider for breakfast and […]

What Will They Say About Us?

Today I attended my Aunt’s funeral and I have to say it was a marvelous and inspiring day. I know funerals are usually sad occasions but today was a little different because Aunt Iris lived an amazingly full life during her 98 years on this earth and hearing the stories and memories people shared about […]

Everyone Needs Some “No Phone Time Together” (Our European Adventure)

Over the last two weeks my husband and I and our son Dalton and his wife Alexis and our daughter Ashley all went together on a European Family Adventure! We planned this trip to be our first family trip of just our own family because we wanted our daughter Ashley to get to know her […]

Have we forgotten how to stay sharp?

Once upon a time, a very strong woodcutter asked for a job in a timber merchant and he got it. The pay was really good and so was the work condition. For those reasons, the woodcutter was determined to do his best. His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he […]

Remember what it feels like to just breathe

The last several weeks have been such a whirlwind for me. I was running around like crazy trying to prepare everything for my daughter to get home, and then there was all the emotion that surrounded her actually getting home, followed by hosting a huge open house event for everyone to welcome her back. I […]

It’s all about relationships

A dear friend of mine received an award this last week and I was able to be there to congratulate him at the event. I knew I was going to have to slip out early and that I might miss his acceptance speech so I asked him to quickly share it with me before we went […]

Never Assume..Let Them Know

Over this last few days my husband and I were able to go and visit his family up in Idaho where he is from for his family reunion. His family, like mine, is large and spread out to several states across the country so it becomes increasingly more difficult to get everyone together in one […]

Unplug and Make Time For Friends and Family

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”   –C.S. Lewis Last week was a great experience. My husband and I took both our sets of parents as well as several other couples we are friends with along with our son Dalton and […]

Learn To Be Comfortable Saying ‘No’ Or You Won’t Be Available To Say ‘Yes’ When It Really Matters (Forbes Article)

“It’s only by saying “no” that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.” – Steve Jobs Saying “No” can be awkward, uncomfortable, and downright difficult. After all, it is human nature to want to be liked, and what better way to be liked then to make people happy by saying “Yes” when […]

Graduation Day – Presenting Dr Anderson :)

We come into this world with two things:  Agency and Intelligence.  We leave this world with what we have done with that agency, and our intelligence – which has hopefully deepened significantly during our life, either through education or experience or a combination of both. I am a great believer in education and I have […]

Getting Your Life Affairs in Order

So often in life we get incredibly busy to the point that we are literally only able to handle the new things coming at us each day, with time sensitive items getting first priority, rarely even getting to the list of items in second priority, and just forget about anything down in the third priority […]

“Love your Parents. We are so busy growing up, we often forget they are also growing old.”

Life the past few months has been a reminder that I am growing older, especially facing an empty nest.  However, in all my focus to deal with seeing my own children grow older I have honestly lost sight of the fact that my own parents are also growing old… My parents stopped by the other […]

Time Management and the Parable of the Rocks

Getting back into work after being gone for the summer has made for a hectic week so far. As I started to go through all of the meeting requests and emails and calls I missed the last few months in order to prioritize them, the memory of a parable I once heard came to my mind. […]

Sometimes You Have to Choose

Sometimes in life you are faced with a choice between two things that both matter to you.  Today I had that experience.  I will give you some background that will help explain the situation:  My entire life since I was old enough to have a workers permit (which I think was 14 years old) I […]

I Try To Take One Day at a Time

“I try to take one day at a time, but lately several days have attacked me at once.” How often do we feel like that lady looks!  Way too often!!! Taking one thing at a time feels impossible most days.  Life doesn’t throw things at you one at a time with a nice little time […]

It’s a Daily Effort

Becoming the person you want to become is a daily effort and one that extends a lifetime.  It’s not as though one day you wake up and go “I’ve arrived! I am now the perfect person.  My work here is done.”  And if you do wake up thinking that you have a whole other set […]

Seeking Success In A Finite Number of Hours A Day (Forbes Article)

We all have a finite number of hours in a day – 24 to be exact.  What we choose to do with those hours is of the utmost importance. We can waste our time, or we can use our time to improve ourselves and our lives. I have always felt passionate about the importance of […]

It’s Not About Having Time, It’s About Making Time

Ah, yes, time.  The one thing we never seem to have enough of.  Days pass by so quickly that it feels impossible to get it all done.  And yet some days we go at a million miles an hour only to come to the end of the day and wonder what the heck we actually […]