Power to Change

"You have the power to change your world and environment." - Dean Sweetman

There is so much that happens in our lives that we forget that change is possible. We get wrapped up in the fury of so much bearing down upon us at any given time. Yet the amount of pressure that is in our lives is in large part put there by our ownselves. We demand too much of ourselves in many ways.

It may be attempting to always look perfect or to work harder then the next individual. Maybe it is the career woman also wanting to be the perfect mother with children. Could it be that we should stop and take a breath, stop to think what is important in our lives?

Take time to evaluate what it is you want to accomplish in life. Measure your time to determine what you can devote attention to. Discard or lower your expectations of those things that only serve to complicate your life. Change is possible, change is yours to make. Make it a good change.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month - please take a moment to follow the contributions link for the National Breast Cancer Foundation. This is the month to help women in their fight against the leading cause of death in women between the ages of 40 and 55. It is the most common cancer among women other than skin cancer. It is also the second leading cause of cancer death among women, second only to lung cancer.

For the men out there, did you know that nearly 1,600 men are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and that 400 are predicted to die. So this effects more women, but we men are not immune.

There are many health causes out there and I have those that are important to me. These include Breast Cancer, Diabetes, Crohns Disease along with a few others. Look inside yourself to see what matters to you, then begin helping those causes. This is another key to a full life, to helping others, to impacting others.

"Give time for a worthy cause (with eagerness) and you will be worthy and richly rewarded." - W. Clement Stone

Gaining Attitude Daily

A couple of days off from writing as I head into a weeks vacation. I will have limited stories to write as I get some of the 'work at home' done. I also have a son graduating from Army Basic training this week. The days are full and it is alway good at this point in my life. There will be times of worry and pain, times of self doubt and anger. Yet I continue to allow my life to evolve in such a manner as to not let those things keep me down.

You have the same ability within you to overcome those obstacles, those 'rocks in your wagon' that burden your daily life. Find it within yourself to find goodness in your day. Do not allow the bad to consume your life. There are wonderful things that will happen in your life if you let them. Put yourself among those that wish to see positively and change will occur for you.

"Like success, failure is many things to many people. With Positive Mental Attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order and prepare to try again." - W. Clement Stone

Try to have a 'ladder' experience as often as you can. I'll explain more in future stories. Have a great week.

Power To Change

"You have the power to change your world and environment" - Dean Sweetman

Everyday passes as another learning experience and opportunity to make your life better. Events happen around and to you that will give rise to your ability to react in one way or another. How you handle these moments, these interactions of life will dictate if you move towards the life you want or leave you standing still in the same place.

When life is not going well, people tend to adapt to the conditions by growing accustomed to the situation. To change, to risk movement is not something that they would consider. A pop singer named Tori Amos said, "our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about."

I would not hold that quote to just a particular generation for I find it in all age levels of people I talk to. The complaints may be different as are the reasons for why anyone may have a need to complain. It would appear to me that these people simply allow themselves to give thought to negative attitudes. Those negative attitudes are like planting a seed inside yourself much like the planting of a positive seed.

A negative seed though is like a weed. It grows quickly and fervently to take over all other thoughts. Others will notice it growing in you by how you talk and your gestures. Eventually anything positive in your life is overrun by the negative. You need to carefully seperate your negative attitudes from the positive ones. Burn the negative from your life as much as you can. This will allow the positive to grow stronger and brighter.

Making room for great attitude will result in the strength to make change. It will help you make room for a better life.

Compassion At Any Price

Things happen in life to all different people, with different backgrounds and different income levels. It is all relative to where you are in life. Take for example what happened to billionaire Steve Wynn. A great and valuable Picasso painting being shown to friends is accidentally punctured...by the owner himself!

A lot of value gone in an instant. You may think why feel bad for someone with so much money. Why not feel a bit of sorrow? A beautiful original painting that can be repaired but also it meant a lot to a person. That person may have more then you or I, but still they are a person.

There is a limit of course to the compassion, Mr. Wynn will be just fine in his loss. But when it comes to the misfortune of others, your instinct should not be to immediately 'pile on'. Find it in yourself to have a reasonable amount of sympathy. It may just be you next time having lost something of importance.

"Make no judgments where you have no compassion." - Anne McCaffrey

Make A Difference Day

"Make A Difference Day is the most encompassing national day of helping others -- a celebration of neighbors helping neighbors. Everyone can participate. Created by USA WEEKEND Magazine, Make A Difference Day is an annual event that takes place on the fourth Saturday of every October. The next event is Saturday, October 28, 2006."

Have you ever considered taking a bit of time or even a lot of your time to help someone else? Doing something for another that can use your support.

The "Make A Difference Day" is a great opportunity for people just like you around the world to do just that. So you ask what can you do? Fill a need somewhere, do something nice for someone, paint a porch, get people together and clean up that small park.

When you click on the link, you will find an Idea Generator. Something that will help spark that inner you. Just do something, get up and put away your needs for a short time. You will be amazed at the difference you can make. You will be amazed at the difference it makes in you.

“The best way to do ourselves good is to be doing good to others; the best way to gather is to scatter.” - Thomas Brooks

Cheerfulness In Life

The Swedish text is translated to say;


Cheerfulness prolongs life.
Politeness delights company.
Industriousness brings prosperity.
- Carl Damm [1828-1884], a writing tutor in Wirestad [Virestad/G], Sweden

It is said by Thomas Carlyle that "wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it ;better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen." How often we go through life with a frown upon our lives wishing for a change that could bring happiness. For many people it is an elusive quest, this thing called happiness. Yet most fail to see that it resides within oneself, that ability to be cheerful.

Some have scoffed at my idea of happiness and cheerfulness. They say that it is easy to talk of this when things are going well. I understand the thought process they are using when saying wait until things go bad. I am here to state that things have gone bad in my life. I have suffered pain at times and understand sullenness of the heart.

My years though have taught me that to remain in a state of being glum solves nothing. It provides no opportunity for others to come into my life and lift me. Without the hope of gladness, of sunshine to once more cascade over your spirit is a terrible way to live.

Be of cheerfulness as I told a friend once. "Suffer", it was said by Aristotle, "becomes beautiful when any one bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of mind." A glad and happy heart is there if you look for it.

Choose The Beauty In Life

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” - Aldous Huxley


This is one of Thomas Kuhn's Paradigm Shift examples. A whole lot of scientific theory and thought goes into that which he is famous for.

I choose to leave that to those better suited for the scientific discussion and use the example to wonder about our perception of what is before us.

The picture is two images in one. Can you see both and if so, which one do you choose? Will beauty and grace win out over somberness and seeming despair?

Both have a place in your vision and exist in most every decision you are faced with. There will be your reaction to that which is happening to you. How you choose will determine and say much about your character and ability to overcome obstacles in life.

To choose the goodness that prevails in life, to choose the best that life is all about. Do not wallow in pain and despair but rejoice in what life has for you. Embrace your life in even the worst of times and choose to see the beauty in everything.

Trust In A Father

Yesterday was my father's 76th birthday. A day that I am thankful for as he gave me more then he'll ever know. He is like many other fathers in that he toils in quiet greatness providing for a family the best way he knows how.

He has touched many people in life and given of himself to make life for others better. He is enjoying life at this time hopefully with the knowledge that his children are doing well.

Like this 1930 US Quarter Dollar, it says "In God We Trust." For you Dad, it is also you that I trust.

Attitude - Done From The Inside

The following story is from "Cheerfulness As A Life Power" by Orison Swett Marden. It is an example of how your outward appearance reflects your inner self.

Acting on a sudden impulse, an elderly woman, the widow of a soldier who had been killed in the Civil War, went into a photographer's to have her picture taken. She was seated before the camera wearing the same stern, hard, forbidding look that had made her an object of fear to the children living in the neighborhood, when the photographer, thrusting his head out from the black cloth, said suddenly, "Brighten the eyes a little."

She tried, but the dull and heavy look still lingered.

"Look a little pleasanter," said the photographer, in an unimpassioned but confident and commanding voice.

"See here," the woman retorted sharply, "if you think that an old woman who is dull can look bright, that one who feels cross can become pleasant every time she is told to, you don't know anything about human nature. It takes something from the outside to brighten the eye and illuminate the face."

"Oh, no, it doesn't! It's something to be worked from the inside. Try it again," said the photographer good-naturedly.

Something in his manner inspired faith, and she tried again, this time with better success.

"That's good! That's fine! You look twenty years younger," exclaimed the artist, as he caught the transient glow that illuminated the faded face.

She went home with a queer feeling in her heart. It was the first compliment she had received since her husband had passed away, and it left a pleasant memory behind. When she reached her little cottage, she looked long in the glass and said, "There may be something in it. But I'll wait and see the picture."

When the picture came, it was like a resurrection. The face seemed alive with the lost fires of youth. She gazed long and earnestly, then said in a clear, firm voice, "If I could do it once, I can do it again."

Approaching the little mirror above her bureau, she said, "Brighten up, Catherine," and the old light flashed up once more.

"Look a little pleasanter!" she commanded; and a calm and radiant smile diffused itself over the face.

Her neighbors, as the writer of this story has said, soon remarked the change that had come over her face: "Why, Mrs. A., you are getting young. How do you manage it?"

"It is almost all done from the inside. You just brighten up inside and feel pleasant." -end

An accompanying poem and ending statement are included here:

"Fate served me meanly, but I looked at her and laughed,
That none might know how bitter was the cup I quaffed.
Along came Joy and paused beside me where I sat,
Saying, 'I came to see what you were laughing at.'"

Every emotion tends to sculpture the body into beauty or into ugliness. Worrying, fretting, unbridled passions, petulance, discontent, every dishonest act, every falsehood, every feeling of envy, jealousy, fear, -- each has its effect on the system, and acts deleteriously like a poison or a deformer of the body. -end of book excerpt

It takes yourself to change what is viewed on the outside. But you can also provide that seed or spark to someone else with a kind word or gesture. Then the word has to be planted inside and allowed to grow. From there, it is all 'done from the inside'.

Move Beyond It

A single act that occurs to you can set the tone for your entire day, if you choose to let it. Those seemingly small 'slights' that are thrust upon you by another person. An example would be getting cut off in traffic.

This happened to me recently at a two lane right-turn when a person in the righthand turn lane decided to get into a hurry. They moved over into my lane as I was turning and nearly hit me. Now out of all the articles I've written, life happens and you should just let it go. But of course I couldn't for the first five or so minutes.

How could this person do this, 'what a jerk' and all the other thoughts you develop in these situations. Physically I could tell that it was upsetting me, I identified it and began a series of thought processes to bring me up from that low point.

You first identify that is has upset and is effecting you. Secondly, ask yourself why you are reacting in this manner. What is the reason that action upset you in the first place. Then begin to think about how you are going to let it effect you the rest of the day. If you decide to hold onto it and let it fester, the rest of the day is going to be miserable.

Let it go, chalk it up to simple human interaction. There was no real harm, so no real foul and you both move on. The problem is if you don't, it will impact how you deal with others during the day and can have disasterous results. Letting it go will free you to move on and have a productive day.