Are you living the life that you want to live?  Are you happy with your life?  Life is too short to spend it focused on stress, drama, chaos, hurt, pain, negativity, what someone else is doing to you or has done to you.  Life is too short to give your power or control over to someone else.  Life is too short to be wasting your potential or time or money or love.  We only have a limited amount of time.  Make the best of it.  Are you making the best of your life right now?  If not, what do you need to do to make the best of it for you and your family?  What needs to change so that you are living your best life?  What do you need to change in order to show your children how to live their best life?  Some thoughts for the day.  Send me comments through my contact page.

No matter what the situation in your life, you have a choice.  Sometimes the choice is between good and bad and sometimes it's between bad and worse, but still you have a choice in every situation.  You have a choice about what kind of parent you will be, what kind of relationship you will have, what kind of person you will be, what career you will choose, how you deal with situations that come across your path, what kind of life you will have, how successful you will be, how you live, what you believe, how you take care of yourself, how you address your health issues, how you will die (in denial, fear, dignity, gratitude, etc.).  Don't live reactively or without thinking.  Make conscious choices about everything you think, say, or do.  Situations occur that our awful and out of our control, but we can choose how we deal with that and we can choose to not let the trauma and the negative control our lives, future, destiny.  We can choose not to let our negative pasts pass down to our children or affect our relationships.  Life is about attitude and choice.  You can choose.  What will you choose?

Feel free to send me comments through my Contact page, which will be posted with this article.

Who are you in the grand scheme of things?  What kind of person are you?  What is your character?  Are you the person that you want to be?  Are you the person that you are meant to be?  Who we are is a combination of all we have been through in life up until this present point in time.  We are a sum of our experiences but that doesn't mean that that is all we are.  Dr. Phil is fond of saying that the past tends to predict the future.  I agree with this to a certain extent.  If you are not aware of what you have been through in the past and how this affects who you are, then you are doomed to repeat certain cycles in your life over and over again.  Just because we are a sum of our past experiences doesn't mean that we have to continue playing out our negative experiences throughout our entire lives.  We can choose to be someone different, someone healthy despite our past.  Though we have been through trauma, grief, loss, abuse, unhealthy relationships, neglect, not being loved, being told that we will never amount to anything, being told we aren't worth anything or whatever else we have been through or have been told by others, doesn't mean that we have to be this for the rest of our lives.  We can choose to be different, to be happy and healthy despite our past.  Be a healthy self for you and your loved ones despite the past.  Don't let your past and stress and trauma and all what not determine the kind of person you will be in the present and the future.  Take control and be a healthy you in the present and in the future.  BE A BETTER, HEALTHIER, HAPPIER YOU!  HURRAY FOR THE NEW YOU THAT YOU ARE TO BE!  HERE'S TO THE NEW, IMPROVED YOU!

Share your thoughts on this post with me and others.

How much time do we really take to focus positive, appreciate who we are, what we have, being alive, blessings, etc?  How much time do we take to have an attitude of gratitude?  It can be so easy to spend time trying to identify and solve issues and problems, avoid issues and problems, put out fires, numb ourselves, go through the boring, mundane routine that we forget to appreciate ourselves and our lives.  Some may feel that there is nothing positive going in with them or in their lives,and never has been or ever will be, so why spend time appreciating anything.  But there is always something positive, even if it is just one tiny thing.  If you are alive, that means there is a plan or purpose for you to complete and there is something positive going on keeping you alive or you have the time and opportunity to focus on and/or create positive in you and in your life to focus on.  This time of year is a time when people are either very positive or very negative.  What are you going to be?  Can you have an attitude of gratitude?  Can you make positives to be grateful for?  Can you see the positive in you, appreciate it, and celebrate?  You might be amazed at what a difference this makes in your life, with how you feel, in your relationships, with your family.

Here is what I see positive with me and what I am grateful for - I consider myself to be a good mother, daughter, sister, aunt, counselor/therapist.  I am intelligent, hard-working, honest, and have a strong belief in God.  I care about and want to help others and try to do that in all ways that I possibly can.  I am in a career that I love and am doing work to own my own business and work for myself.  I am attending school to further my career.  I have my daughter, parents, brother, sisters, brother-in-law, nephew, neice, cousins, aunts, uncles that I do care about and who I know care for me.  I'm in relatively good health as is my daughter.  My daughter is a bundle of energy and is happy and loves me as I do her.  I have a roof over my head, food to eat, clothes to wear.  I am responsible, dependable, and reliable.  I know who I want to be and how I want my life to be and am working diligently towards that but I can appreciate and love who I am now while I work towards that.  I love me.  I know my life is not where I want it to be but I believe that it will be and look forward towards that while I work on it.

This list is just off the top of my head.  What is positive with you?  What are you grateful for?

IS WHAT YOU ARE STRUGGLING WITH AND STRESSING OVER WORTH IT? 

It's been a while since I've written and I thought I'd write something given that I'm on Christmas break.  Because of my change in schedule, I haven't been able to keep up with journaling.

At the end of the year, many find themselves musing about how things have been, how they'd like things to be, successes, failures, what they could have done differently, resolutions for the new year, etc.  These are things I think about off and on through the year, but I have been more focused on this given changes in my life.  I went back to school full-time in September to pursue a Nursing degree (both an Associates and a Masters).  The plan is to add a nursing career to my current counseling career.  So, I have heaped on a whole bunch onto my already full plate - single parent, self-employed business owner, counselor/therapist, daughter, sister, family member, friend, and now full-time student.  Needless to say, I have had a lot of time management issues and almost no time for me.  I know that I have cheated my daughter of time together as well.  So, along with all of this come the normal feelings of being overwhelmed, guilt, stress, fatigue, etc.  Not to talk of the normal stress of making any major transitions in your life, of which school is a major transition.  I have done and still do a lot of reflecting about all of this - do I really want to do this, am I making the right choice, will it be worth it in the end, is it worth the price and the sacrifice I'm making now not just for me but for my daughter and the rest of my family, can I really stay in school that long, etc.  There have been lots of doubts along the way.  When I weigh it out, though, it does end up being a good choice with more good than bad points and that is what I have to hold onto no matter how hard it gets, no matter how overwhelmed, no matter guilty or tired or doubtful or stressed I may feel.  I hold onto the fact that this will not last forever and I am doing something that will benefit my daughter, the rest of my family, and myself in the end.  Anything worth having is worth struggling for.  I guess I say all this to say that, sometimes you do go through struggles and doubts and difficulties in working towards your goals and in life in general, but you always have to remember why you are doing what you are doing.  If you are struggling with any situations in your life, ask yourself is the struggle worth it.  Is the difficulty you are facing now going to be worth it in the end?  On the other hand, are you going through struggles and difficulties right now in situations that are a waste of your time or that are completely pointless?  Is what you are in right now and the stress you are going through going to pay off in the end?  Whether it is a relationship, job, friendship, etc., is the stress and struggle you are going through now worth it?  Will there be any good coming out of it?  Or do you need to cut your losses and move onto something better, something worth struggling for?  I have concluded for now, that might struggle is worth it and I continue on.  I know that I can do it and I am hopeful and looking forward to a better future as well as making the most of the present.  Is your struggle worth it?  If not, what are you still doing there?....

Just some thoughts....Let me know what you think.  Happy living!!!!