Tag Archives: self-improvement

Be Confident

“Be Confident. Too many days are wasted comparing ourselves to others and wishing to be something we aren’t. Everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses, and it is only when you accept everything you are – and aren’t – that you will truly succeed.” The number one killer of confidence is when you start comparing […]

Your future can be better than you’ve ever imagined. Welcome to the year of – you fill in the blank

We just turned the corner and started a New Year. 2017. This will be the year of ______________. What is the blank?  Well that’s something each of us has to fill in for ourselves. It’s a personal choice. What do we want the year of 2017 to be?  Do you want this to be the […]

“Don’t let fear stop you from doing the thing you love”

All of us have things we love to do in life, but sometimes we let fear get in our way of actually doing them. We are afraid of messing up, or afraid of being embarrassed in front of others, or afraid of failing…so instead we don’t do that thing we love…and that is a shame… […]

The true essence of Christmas

The week of Christmas is upon us and my heart can’t help but think about the true essence of Christmas – to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and the sacrifice he willingly made out of his infinite love for each one of us. It reminds me of a story I try to read each […]

What To Do and What NOT To Do

Throughout my life I have been blessed with some incredible mentors and role models. They have taught me the “what to do” things in life, and the “how to be” qualities, that if we embrace will turn us into someone others will want hope to emulate someday as well. The more in life I would […]

It is better to give

Throughout this month I will try to share some of my favorite Christmas stories and poems that inspire me.  This story below is one I heard when I was growing up and I still remember the way it struck me as I heard it. It has a great message that inspires you to want to […]

How to Make the Right Decisions

Every now and then I will go back and read past blogs I have written on subjects that I am dealing with in my life that day. Tonight I read one of my blogs from back in 2012 that was exactly what I would have written to share tonight: Life is so full of decisions […]

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

Of all the things I do with my time, one of the things I enjoy the absolute most is the opportunities I have to speak to groups of college students and to pass on to them as much knowledge as I can on all the life lessons I have learned in my journey from being […]

#LIGHTtheWORLD In 25 Ways. Over 25 Days.

Today I learned about an awesome challenge for all of us to “light the world” in 25 ways over 25 days as we lead up to Christmas. It’s a challenge meant to help us focus on incorporating more Christ-like attitudes and behaviors in honor of this Christmas season and over 800,000 people have already joined […]

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 […]

The more you recognize it, the more you will have of it

I love a great motivational speaker. Zig Ziglar has always been a personal favorite because he is always so amazingly positive, so when I came across this excerpt from the book “Attitude is Everything: 10 Rules For Staying Positive” by author Vicki Hitzges, which shares a story about Zig I had to share it with […]

There Is Something Better…Be Patient…Live Life…

Disappointments are just God’s way of saying “I’ve got something better”  Be patient…live life… I love that quote because all of us have had those moments of disappointment…those moments when we had things all planned out in our heads so perfectly as to how they should go and then something unexpected happens and our perfect […]

Love Them All The Way To The End

I love the holiday season – I love the decorations and the holiday goodies and that extra feeling of love in the air. And I especially love Hallmark Christmas Movies!!! For those who don’t know what I am talking about, the Hallmark channel on TV puts out a bunch of original Christmas movies every year […]

What Makes A Winner?

“Years back when we lived in Boise, Idaho, a man … Bill Bowman, who was the wrestling coach at Boise State College, did his doctorate work, his dissertation, on what makes a winner. After interviewing over a thousand athletes and feeding all the information into the computer, he got his answer. Do you know what […]

Combatting Your Day After Sugar Rush

“That awkward moment when you’re wondering who at all the candy, and you realize…you did.” Trick-or-treating and the loads of candy we all gathered may have seemed like a great idea in the moment..and it tastes amazing when we eat it!…But once we’ve downed handfuls of that sugary goodness it begins flowing through our digestive […]

What would you do?

Here is an interesting story I came across: A letter was found in a baking powder can wired to the handle of an old pump that offered the only hope of drinking water in a very long, seldom-used trail across the Armagosa Desert. The letter read: “This pump was all right as of June 1932. […]

No Place To Go

No Place to Go  – (by Edgar A. Guest) The happiest nights I ever know Are those when I’ve No place to go, When the missus says When the day is through: “Tonight we don’t have A thing to do.” Oh, the joy of it, And the peace untold Of sitting ’round In my slippers […]

A Great Way To Teach Life Lessons

As a kid I used to get so excited when my Grandparents would come to visit. They lived in another state from us so it wasn’t that often that they came out to see us. My Grandpa would go on walks with me on the trails in the woods and I loved walking with him […]

What appears to be a sacrifice now will prove to be your best investment later

We live in a world where the options seem to be endless, but instead of making life easier, sometimes that make our lives more difficult. For example – when someone asks you where you want to go to lunch it isn’t just a choice of hamburgers or pizza….noooooo…there are literally hundreds of places to eat […]

Companies don’t have to be perfect but they do need to fix it when they screw up!

It’s late and I’m tired, but even worse I am frustrated beyond belief because I have just gone through one incredibly bad customer service experience and I am still going through it as I write tonight’s blog. I spent several hours tonight online booking airline tickets with Delta. I have been a faithful Delta Airlines customer […]

“The essence of honesty and integrity is not the words you use, it’s the message you convey.”

Honesty. It’s something that has always been of extreme importance to me in life. Perhaps being raised by a father who was in the FBI and who valued absolute honesty without exception had something to do with that, but I know that I was raised to value honesty and integrity above all else. I tried […]

Recognize Your Own Song And Sing It Well

In the book ‘Wisdom of the Heart’ Alan Cohen tells the following story: When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has […]

Apply The Triple Filter Test

I think most all of us have either been guilty of either saying something we shouldn’t have, or listening to something we ought not to, and likely we’ve made the mistake of doing both. It’s likely we have all made those mistakes more times than we wish we had, and I can’t think of a […]

From Strangers to Friends

For the last two days I was invited to be part of a special project in which I was introduced to 28 strangers who came from incredibly different backgrounds and who had incredibly different personalities. This particular group of people would likely never have crossed paths with one another in the course of normal life […]

When it doesn’t work out the way you had hoped..

If you have done all you can do, giving it your very best effort, and it still doesn’t work out the way you had hoped it would, then you have to trust that it wasn’t in your best interest for it to work out that way. Sometimes when we are excited about something going a […]

Who’s Packing Your Parachute?

“Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience! One […]

The Kindness of Strangers

Late Friday night my husband and I began our drive home from Idaho where we had attended our Aunt’s funeral, back home in Utah. We had intended to get an earlier start home but we had spent the day scanning in all of our Aunt’s photos and papers so the family members could have digital […]

She was really here and she really lived

Today I want to pay tribute to an amazing woman named Iris who happens to be my Aunt. Aunt Iris would have celebrated her 98th birthday this week, but sadly on Friday we got word that Iris had passed away. On the one hand I am incredibly sad to see Iris pass from this life because she was such a […]

The differences between optimists and pessimists

“In the long run the pessimist may be proven right, but the optimist had a better time on the trip.” –Daniel L. Reardon I love Brian Tracy. He is a motivational speaker who has some great books and audio recordings that have helped me a lot over the years. He shares some thoughts on the […]

Labor Day: A holiday to celebrate how hard you work!

Happy Labor Day everyone! I hope you had an awesome holiday today. For those who are wondering what Labor Day is about, don’t feel bad…I myself have celebrated Labor Day holiday my entire life but never really thought about why we had the holiday or what the holiday was about. I always just thought of […]