“We have to keep asking God to help us see clearly what our call is and to give us the strength to live out that call with trust.” — Henri Nouwen Do you ever feel lost? Like you need a compass to help you navigate your life from the inside out rather than being at the mercy of life’s changes? Dawna Markova provides such a compass in her book, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion.
Read more →“It is not the events in your life that determine who you are, it’s how you choose to respond to them” Victor Frankl I have no idea how or why the 35-year-old from Illinois ever came back to find me in the crowd of several thousand runners as I was approaching mile 24 of the Little Rock Marathon last weekend. “FOCUS!” he shouted, as he caught my eye. He could tell I was utterly exhausted and somehow knew my
Read more →Negative self-talk can make it difficult for us to move forward in our lives. When we listen to our negative messages and believe them, we can end up sabotaging ourselves. “You aren’t working hard enough.” “You should be further along in your career.” “You aren’t smart enough, attractive enough, wealthy enough, experienced enough, old enough……..you’re not enough!” “You’re too introverted, too extroverted, too aggressive……you’re too much!” Such messages, called “Saboteur Voices” in the coaching world, are often the result of
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Do your daily or weekly habits support the goals you have for yourself? Or do they prevent you from reaching your goals? These are important questions to ask because we shape our lives by making choices again and again, moment by moment, year after year. Every day we face hundreds of small discreet tiny choice points to engage in this behavior or that, this habit or that. Take the goal of weight loss, for example. This goal just happens to
Read more →I came across “The Mayonnaise Jar” on my personal facebook page today and decided it was worth posting here on my blog. This “lesson” has been making rounds on the internet for at least 10 years but it’s message is timeless. For those of you who may have already seen this, welcome to a good reminder! The Mayonnaise Jar When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day is not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar
Read more →The pictures I remember seeing of myself as a child are limited. Yes, there were baby pictures of my siblings and me hanging in the house, but my parents stored most of their photos as slides which were packed into small cardboard boxes in the hallway closet. Upon occasion, my parents would use a slide-viewer or slide projector to view the slides with us kids, but rarely did we get through all of them. When one of my brothers recently digitalized hundreds of my parent’s slides for a family
Read more →Please allow me to introduce you to the work of Brene Brown, a vulnerability researcher and professor at University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, and leading expert on vulnerability, shame, authenticity and belonging. Brene’s work is based on thousands of interviews with men and women about their important relationships and experiences of connection. What stood out in her research findings was the importance of believing we are worthy of love and belonging, and the importance of owning and engaging our own vulnerability. She talks about the
Read more →Here’s a link to an absolutely excellent article written by my daughter’s friend, Kelly, last spring. It was featured on the restoration living website www.restorationliving.org, a site, by the way, with many other great articles: http://www.restorationliving.org/journal/2012/5/24/hope-deferred.html Enjoy! I hope it encourages you. And, thank you, Kelly, for giving your permission to share your article! After reading Kelly’s article, I encourage you to ask yourself two questions: What are my unmet hopes and dreams? How am I living fully in the face of this reality?
Read more →“Interruptions can be viewed as sources of irritation or opportunities for service, as moments lost or experience gained, as time wasted or horizons widened. They can annoy us or enrich us, get under our skin or give us a shot in the arm, monopolize our minutes or spice our schedules, depending on our attitude toward them.” William Arthur Ward My husband and I had planned on a small Christmas this year with only a small portion of our geographically scattered
Read more →Last night I went to see Stephen Spielberg’s recently released American historical drama film, “Lincoln”. In case you haven’t seen it yet, this film starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, is based in part, on Doris Goodwin’s biography of Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals, and focuses on President Lincoln’s tumultuous final 4 months in office before his assassination. In a nation divided by war, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the
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