TEN SIGNS THAT YOU TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY

1. Your favorite item is taken off the menu at a restaurant you frequent. You spend the entire meal complaining about it and decide you'll never come back.

2. Someone in your circle makes a mistake. You take this as a personal affront and spend 20 minutes berating them. During the span of time that you were raving, they could have corrected the simple, inadvertent error 9 times.

3. You update everyone you know about all of your ailments and problems in great detail, and often.

4. You assume your way of thinking is the only one out there and you get offended if people think differently than you.

5. You KNOW you're right.

6. Your conversation is peppered with phrases like, "That's nothing", "Am I right? ", "You should", "The right way to do it is", "that's stupid!" and "Why would you do that?"

7. You get upset when people don't know what you need, want, think and feel, even though you haven't told them.

8. You think "active listening" is when you let someone finish their sentence before moving on to your point.

9. You judge people frequently and voice that judgement to anyone who cares to listen.

10. You're offended at this list and assume I wrote it about you.

Getting There

Live Simply
Live Green
Trust God
Wish the very best for everyone I encounter
Have fun
Don't procrastinate
Do it with passion or don't do it at all
Walk my truth no matter what
Show compassion
Be Patient
Notice the beauty in nature
Be thankful
Be a very good friend
Don't take myself too seriously

Looking on the Bright Side

Lately I have had the opportunity to reflect on having a positive attitude. You can call it "glass half full/glass half empty" or any of the other common cliches that exist.

What it really amounts to is that every moment we live is an opportunity. We cannot always control what happens to us. What we do have control over is how we react to those occurrences in our lives.

I have known some very positive people over the years. These are the folks I used to think of as "too happy" or "unrealistic". They never complain when something goes poorly. They are invariably pleasant to those around them. Many have overcome amazing odds and have added so much to our world despite harrowing circumstances that have happened in their lives.

I have also encountered my share of the folks who look at the glass as half empty. Everything that happens is filtered through the lens of "my life is so bad, things don't go well for me, it's not fair....." As these folks complain, it seems more and more negative things DO happen to them. It's as if negativity begets more negativity - almost as if the universe sends them each day what they send out. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, and they can say "See! I told you my life was terrible!"

I have, during my life, waffled between these two positions. I definitely spent my share of time in the half empty court.

I have made a decision to no longer live there. I decide how I feel and react every day, no one else. I can choose, each and every day, how my day will go. Whether I run out of gas, or the cafeteria closes before I get my lunch, I can choose my reaction.

This is invariably a process. It has helped that many of us at work have joined "A Complaint Free World" together. The aim is to learn, together, to eliminate pointless complaining from our day to day lives. This process does seem to help, since we are all working on it together. Having the visual, and the process of moving the purple bracelet from my right wrist (right attitude) to my left upon indulging my complaining really helps to illustrate just how much I was complaining each day!

And so, I will continue to look for the positive. I will keep finding the silver lining. I will continue to choose to avoid negativity. And I will STOP once and for all throwing "Oh Poor Me, life doesn't go the way I want it to" out into the Universe. Because I am a firm believer that the Universe operates like a giant boomerang.

What you throw out there comes right back atcha so watch what you're dishing out folks!

Friendship

What does Friendship mean to me?

Friendship means helping your friend when you don't feel like it, even when you're tired, stressed, or overworked.

Friendship means balancing honesty and the ability to understand why something is so important to your friend.

Friendship is supporting your friend in her endeavors and being her loudest cheerleader when she is successful. It also means being there to pick her up if she falls on her face.

Friendship is being able to say "OK - reel it in there bitchy one."

Friendship is letting your friend know when she's mucking up her life.

Friendship is listening.

Friendship is being a shoulder to cry on.

Friendship means I can hear what you say to me when I need a good dose of reality.

Friendship is having your priorities in order. Do you want "She was a dutiful employee" as your epitaph?

If it's important to you, it's important to me.

If I say something to you or about you it should be to build you up, not tear you down.

Thank you for teaching me about Friendship.