Quote: What's Now Got To Do With It?

“The future depends on what we do in the present.” -Ghandi

Fun Friday: Messing Up Our Lives Has at Least One Positive Point

Found this on Pintrest
(not sure of it's origin)

Fun Friday: Funny Things I Learned Last Thursday

Many of you might have noticed I posted Fun Friday last week on the wrong day;
I posted on Thursday!

Funny, because as I reviewed Friday's scheduled posts, on Wednesday night, I knew the next day was not Friday.

But, when I woke up in the morning, I carried on like it was!
I sat down, opened up my computer, noticed that none of my blogs had posted, chalked it up to another annoying tech error...

"Grrrrr....", I thought, "Sometimes I despise technology!"

 THEN:
Oh well, just verify that that Friday is February 10th (and per the calendar - Feb. 10th IS a Friday)...
 then force the posts through.

So, ignoring the feeling that something was amiss, and encountering what I assumed to be another internet glitch, I worked busily on 'fixing' the 'problem'...then received a text message from a  friend:

"Today is not Friday, it's Thursday".

Okay. I thought...
So?.....What's that suppose to mean?

After a little while I realized, indeed it was Thursday! I was posting all of my Fun Friday's on Thursday!

YIKES!

All I could do was laugh!

How funny! I was so deep in thought that it was Friday, I even posted my Friday blogs!

I laugh every time I think of it.

What a silly mistake...

Last Thursday, I learned several things:

1. People pay attention (thank you, dear friend).
2. Some people care enough to tell you when you screw up (thank you again, oh wonderful friend).
3. When you get that little feeling like something doesn't add up, stop & think, because there's probably a  
    reason for it.
4. No matter how much you wish Thursday would be Friday, it simply is not.

Are you able to laugh at your mistakes? 

If so, share.

Not Enough Time...

Never make the same mistake twice or you'll never get around to all of them.~ Unknown Author

Lost (RePost w/Link)

Ever get lost? 

Sure there’s Mapquest and GPS navigators and good old fashioned maps…so you shouldn't get off track, but have you ever just taken a wrong turn? 

Or, you know, when your GPS doesn’t realize you've just passed the road you should’ve turned down?

It stinks when that happens and can get quite discouraging if it happens more than once.

Usually it’s not too much effort to get back on track, but it does occasionally take longer than expected.

Ever notice that staying calm and thinking positive is the key to getting through it?

I had to travel somewhat far away recently. It was about an hour south of me and I had never traveled the road before.

As I drove south on the highway I got to thinking…

Just because you're going South doesn’t necessarily mean you are headed down.

It made me wonder how many people actually think that every bump in the road or wrong turn is actually a negative thing, rather than a positive thing.

I like to refer to a song that I know. 

It’s from my favorite band, Coldplay.

It’s called Lost (and actually a woman made this cool video to go along with it).

Listen to Lost -- and imagine-- what if every wrong turn or missed opportunity was meant to be. 

...That you were supposed to travel this road you're on so that you can see and/or experience whatever it is that is on that particular path.

Keep Calm and Carry On...

 

Truly,

Amber

Mistakes Make You The Expert

Mistakes and fumbles along the roads of life teach us who were are and help us learn what we need to become.

This blog post says it all...

I am not perfect and I am certain that I am better today because I screwed up yesterday.

I admit it, I love to tell others how to fix things...but that's because I have messed up so much in the past now I feel I am a wealth of knowledge on how NOT to!

I found the title of this blog post intriguing 'Martinis, Mistakes and The Experts' (I knew I could totally relate...)

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2LFCz8/livethecharmedlife.com/2010/08/100-ways-to-uncomplicate-your-life/comment-page-1

Happy Mistake Making!

Truly,

Amber

I’m an addict

I love to solve problems.  

I don’t like Crossword puzzles or Sudoku very much, but I do enjoy the challenge of figuring things out. I will take anything apart and attempt to put it back together again. I thoroughly enjoy fixing things.

I get so excited to improve anything and everything.

From finances to customer service; writing to parenting; relationships to faith, I think I can always make it better.

That’s right, I’m an addict.

I’m addicted to self-help material; like how-to books, videos and articles. I spend hours in the non-fiction-self-help section of libraries and bookstores. I write about it, dream about and l annoy my friends and family with it.

But with that being said…

Even I am starting to get sick of the influx of media trying to sell me answers to my problems.

I have a Twitter account, Facebook page and a couple of different email addresses and there is not a day (ssshhheeeshh…a minute) that goes by where my phone and/or computer are not blowing up with quick-fixes for my life.

“I’m fine.  Thank you very much.” is all I want to say sometimes.

On magazine covers, on sidebars advertisements of websites, and in the pages of the newspaper…

If it’s not a better food, it’s a better drink. If it’s not a better body, it’s better clothes. It it’s not better thinking, it’s better medicine. The list goes on and on.

Since when did being ourselves become such a problem? Don’t we like ourselves at ALL?

What is the world coming to? I mean if this is what the media is selling; doesn’t that mean this is what we’re buying?

What happened with being content? What happened to acceptance?

 And what the heck happened to ‘This is Me’.  Like ‘Me or not’.

I admit it (and like I’ve said previously), you don’t have to twist my arm to work hard at fixing something in my life; I am all for advancement, but man, is it just me or is the world on ‘fix-it-overload’?

Everybody knows something that they want to teach you. And as wonderful as it is to want to help others and share our experiences, (I feel like I am one of those people) I wonder if others are sick of hearing it.

Are we asking for the advice or is it unsolicited? And can we even tell the difference?

I’m usually the one who says, ‘Yes, bring it on; let’s do this!’ and lately I feel more like, ‘Shut up already.’

I have to wonder…. when even I am sick of this stuff, what are other people are thinking?

Not one of us on this planet is perfect. Not one of us is pristinely healthy, or perfectly well versed or wonderfully well-behaved  24/flipping/7.  And if someone pretends to be perfect, they are full of it.

How many celebrities have we seen, including presidents of the United States, go down??? Hmmm?

If we were perfect, there would not be these things called faux pas, accidents, my bads, oopsies or #@$! And no one would ever regret a thing and we would never have to say ‘I’m sorry’.

To err is human.

And, it doesn’t matter what type of degree you hold, what your background is, or even how much money you have, you will not be perfect.

So, that leads me to this question; Self-help, I think, is a necessity. Isn’t it? I mean, what would we do without the option of getting better at something, or having the ability and freedom to improve a weakness or downfall? After all, that is our second chance.

This leads me to another question: where is the balance between self-improvement and self-acceptance?

I do not know the answer, but I am determined to find out.

                  (To be Continued…)

A couple of quotes that seemed fitting:

Self-acceptance comes from meeting life's challenges vigorously. Don't numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.-J. Donald Walters Author, Lecturer

Loving Yourself is Healing the World!-Jaymie Gerard

Truly,

Amber

I Love Donald

Okay, so maybe I don’t love another man besides my fiancée.

But I do admire three other men very much.

The first is Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory…I just love ahem…like him. He is so funny.

 The second (my other Honey as my REAL Honey calls him) is Peyton Hillis.

Who doesn’t like Peyton? And by the way, it has nothing to do with his looks or his arms; I just get a kick out of how Peyton jumps over people on the field! He’s got stamina and gutts!

The third man I admire is Donald Trump.

As soon as I say the word, ‘Trump’, I know that many people are probably cringing…

The man went bankrupt in …..several different years.

Has been divorced  …several different times.

And has terrible hair.

So, why would I like him?

How could I like him?

Because I can respect him. And I find him to be very inspiring.

As Donald realized, he could have it all, and then lose it all, but then get it all back again…

….Again and Again.

                     Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal.

                                        MIKE DITKA-Professional football coach

See Donald live

See Donald take risks

See Donald make mistakes

See Donald learn from his mistakes

See Donald get smart from his mistakes

See Donald learn lessons learned from his mistakes

See Donald teach others from lessons learned from his mistakesJ

I read my first Donald Trump book when I was 24. It blew me away. And, if you have ever picked up one of Donald’s books, you’d find that it is full of life education as well as business education.

Donald’s reality show, ‘The Apprentice’ was the first reality show I ever watched.

Like many, I don’t think Donald’s hair is the greatest, but I’ve always admired his choice to keep it the way it is. His hair is a part of him and I respect him for not changing it because others tell him he should.

I can also respect someone who can be honest with themselves when they screw up, then tell people about it; then persevere and succeed once again!

He’s got  @%#! .

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday. -Jonathan Swift

Go Donald!......Peyton and Sheldon…

I love you too, Honey;)

Truly,

Amber

When the Pain is Great Enough

I did a ton of traveling this week back and forth from Ohio to Tennessee.

It’s about a 10.5 hr drive one way, if you don’t stop but to pee a couple of times.

I did this trip twice during the week of Thanksgiving. And that’s a lot of time sharing the road with others.

I love to drive. I always have. I enjoy the scenery, the time in the car to think and I also like the challenge that driving can bring.

Driving can be a risky business. It requires mindfulness, not to mention the mindfulness of others. It’s definitely a ‘thinkers’ sport.

As I drove, I thought a lot about how the fastest travelers, and the majority of travelers, were not always the best at their sport.

It seemed as if they were robots, with their gas pedals flat to the floor. Many had no rules, no plan, and no sense of how to avoid an accident.

Personally, I like to leave a space of 1 to 2 cars in front of me, in case someone stops quickly, I will have the opportunity to apply the brakes without A)losing control of my vehicle, B) hitting someone in front of me, or C) giving my passengers, or myself, whiplash. I also happen to like the control and sense of security it allows me, because when I see things up ahead, I have the freedom of slowing down without slamming my brakes on and turning the car line behind me into a panicked frenzy of squealing tires, thus worrying about being rear ended and scaring the rest of the roadway and myself.

Here we were, a group of about 35 cars driving on the highway, all doing about 70mph (the speed limit is 70 in many parts of Tennessee) and people are cramming themselves so far up each other’s bumpers, that if just one guy in the group slammed his brakes on, they all had no place to go but into each other and the median.

Smooth and uneventful, thus far, I did not expect it to last. Traffic up ahead began to slow down and the line of cars behind us were obviously starting to get very impatient.  

I could see, that although the majority of these people saw traffic slowing, they were not easing off. And,  if they saw brake lights, just kept on with their pace. Shockingly, no matter how many times they slammed on the brakes to avoid an accident, they kept following the same path, using the same driving habits. They would tailgate someone who was tailgating someone, who was also tailgating yet another someone! At one point I witnessed the same car slam its brakes on, slide into the grass median to avoid rear ending someone, just to do it again in less than five minutes. Unbelievably it happened a third time.  There were plenty of other people joining in this.

I wondered if they were blind. Weren’t they awake when they were involved in near-pile up?  Why would they put themselves in a position to let that happen again? Why would they put themselves in danger, as well as everyone else around them!?

It didn’t make any sense to me.

So, as I witnessed this pattern in traffic, and saw people’s behavior, I thought about how they could travel like that. How could they not leave much room for err, and then make the same mistake over and over. Not only that, but they kept on making the same error, repeatedly, without learning their lesson.

It made me wonder why sometimes it takes us longer to learn, than others.

My friend used to always say, ‘when the pain is great enough, you’ll change’. And she said that about anyone who seemed reluctant to change, or who was too stubborn to admit that they even had a problem that might need fixing.

I assumed that maybe these folks have been traveling like that, on the road, and in life, the same way for years, without much repercussion and so they don’t see the need to change. Nothing’s broken, nothing to fix.

Until, of course, they end up in an ugly pile of metal in the middle of a median. Then I guess that will be their ‘aha moment’ (another term my friend used to use a lot).

I am no angel. I have gotten stopped for speeding multiple times in multiple cars since I started driving. I have made numerous ‘donations’ to the American Cancer Society and paid multiple fines to the courts. But, I have never once pled not-guilty. I was speeding, I knew it was wrong and I paid the price.

I have to say that I am very thankful that the price was never so costly that I did not get a chance to wake up out of my stupor to realize that speeding wasn’t the best thing to do.

Finally one day…the pain was great enough for me to make a change. I was yet paying for another ticket I did not have money for, I was losing a half day of work to stand in line to see the judge-which I never had to do before, and had the embarrassment of getting my first speeding ticket with my children in the car (Shame, shame on me…The judge was not happy with me and I was definitely the topic of talk at the dinner table that night with my kids).

Now…. my lead-foot has retired and my right brain is working. My foot always knows the speed limit without even looking at the speedometer, and my mind checks on my foot, just in case ;)

Change is tough. Habits are hard to break. But there’s never a time that the warning signs are not there, to let us know that we are making a mistake.

I’ve had my warnings. For the past 21 years I have had warnings that I speed and that I should stop.

But, hand it to Ohio to break me of my habit. They do not fool around out here, they are much different than  Connecticut;) My first ticket in Ohio was at midnight, in October of 2007, on 271, with my truck packed with the very last items I was bringing from my move out of my house in Connecticut to my apartment here. No mercy. ‘Have a nice night and welcome to Ohio’. Oi.

I was a speeder from way back, I think Ohio did their job. Touché. And thank you, I'm glad the pain was great enough.

The point is, we all make errors. We sometimes do it and it’s an ‘oopsy’. Then we do it again and it’s not quite an oopsy. Eventually, we continue doing the wrong thing. And in life, like on the roads, we can tend to ignore the signs for a while before the pain is great enough and we finally decide to change.

Try to take a few moments to think about what might not be working for you. Are there any repeat occurrences in your life that keep needling at you? Something you keep doing which tends to bring those not-so-desirable results? Maybe someone’s trying to tell you something.

My recommendation: Don’t wait until the pain is great enough.

It’s much cheaper and a whole lot less painful when you have the freedom to choose to correct it now, instead of being forced to correct it later.

Ask me how I know ;)

"You have to stop to change direction." Eric Fromm

Amber

I'm sorry.

No one’s perfect right? If I screw up, oh well, right? It’s no secret that I make mistakes. So, the sooner I apologize and work on rectifying the situation, the better…I try to teach this to my children, by example. And in the past, I have more than once, admitted being tired and that ‘I didn’t mean to yell’.  I’ve also been known to admit I was wrong when I didn’t let my child finish their sentence before I jumped to a conclusion.

I’m hoping that I’m  teaching them that I’ve acknowledged my wrong-doing, and  they were correct in feeling I was off base, or out of line. During moments like those I end up learning a valuable lesson on how to handle things the next time, while teaching them how to behave and how not to behave.

So, what’s the big deal with making an apology to my significant other?

There shouldn’t be anything wrong with it, but it always seems slightly more difficult to do than apologizing to the kids.

Today was one of those days….

My significant other was doing his best to address something we talked about previously. He was being pro-active, and trying to do the right thing, he was trying to talk to me about something and I basically made him wish he hadn’t.

I was having a rough morning. I hadn’t gotten up when the alarm first went off, my children needed assistance all at the same time, and I was doing a last minute thing for school. I was not happy with the situation.  Nor was I happy with myself.

I was frustrated and I just wanted to be done with what I was doing. I did not want any interruptions, let alone any questions. I had a ton of other things on my mind and I was abrupt. I quickly cut off the conversation. I did not handle it well, to say the least.

I felt awful. I knew, even before he left for work, that I was wrong. I tried to talk to him about it, but without apologizing. I guess I wanted to think that I was right.

After he left I felt even worse. I knew I was wrong and I really hadn’t meant to start the day off that way.

We would now spend all day apart…he would think that he’d been wrong, when all along, he’d been right.

I put on some quiet music and began to think as I went about my morning. I let go of my pride and had the sudden urge to text him, two words: I’m sorry.

To my surprise, he apologized back. He said that he could have handled things better and I said the same. It made me smile. I felt relieved, the weight had been lifted.

Now he could go about his day without the stress and anguish he’d gotten, from being confused. And, although I may have preferred him to go about the morning’s discussion a little differently, the truth was, he did the best he could. He was working hard to communicate. (Something I’ve asked him to improve on.)

I, on the other hand, displayed no patience what-so-ever and ended up messing up a good moment and feeling guilty about it.

So, I learned today, that my patience is best used when I don’t have any ;)

I suppose it’s moments like those that counting to 5, or 10, if need be, would be wise and quite helpful. Even just putting up a hand to ask for a second or two to think and focus. That way, I will refrain from pushing someone away, when all they were trying to do was ‘the right thing’. And…most likely, it would keep me from having to apologize.

Thankfully, my mistake was easily rectified and I was forgiven. It’s not easy to admit your wrong, but it sure is best to not wait too long to make the apology.

We both learned a little something today about our communication habits, we both had a great day at work, and coming home tonight was wonderful. It was as if this morning never happened.

Nobody accomplishes anything by holding on to pride or anger. No one wins when you want to be right.

Be humble and love.