What does it mean to be thank­ful? I’m not talk­ing about being polite after someone’s opened the door for you. I’m talk­ing about feel­ing thank­ful for the true bless­ings in your life. True Bless­ings” mean the things in your life that res­onate impor­tance in your life — the things that touch your core. How does being thank­ful affect your life? Let’s look at it in terms of some­one you may know. Imag­ine the per­son who is usu­ally in a bad mood. They are always com­plain­ing about some­thing, there is always some­one who’s done some­thing to them and they’re always get­ting the bum deal. This per­son is hard to be around and it takes a lot of energy to main­tain a rela­tion­ship with them. By the end of a visit, you’re exhausted! Do you think this per­son is a thank­ful one? Prob­a­bly not. In fact, if you asked them what they’re thank­ful for, they may have a hard time telling you. On the other hand, think of some­one else you know. This per­son is ener­getic, and has a cer­tain spark to them. They laugh a lot and have a “can-do” atti­tude. They may be afraid, but they are will­ing to try new things. If you ask them what they’re thank­ful for, they will be able to list off many. And when you visit with this per­son, you feel ener­gized, inspired and thank­ful to know them. It’s safe to say that this per­son is more ful­filled in their life than the unthank­ful one. Of course our lives are never per­fect but we still strive for per­fec­tion. But you know how it is. You reach the top of one moun­tain and lo and behold! there’s another moun­tain to climb! Don’t feel dis­cour­aged by this. Be sure to look back at all the moun­tains you’ve climbed and acknowl­edge the growth and progress you’ve made. Be thank­ful for the expe­ri­ences because with­out them, you wouldn’t be where you are today.And what if where you are today is not where you want to be? Again, be thank­ful that you are where you are — because now you have a very clear idea of what you don’t want. You can now work towards what you do want. If you are won­der­ing how to get started on this, begin with a list. Write down every lit­tle thing you’re thank­ful for. Noth­ing is too small to put on this list. Include the mun­dane things like the first cup of cof­fee in the morn­ing or the birds that were singing. Tell your­self that you’re going to add to it all day as ideas pop into your head. Keep this idea in your mind all day. You don’t have to be totally focussed on it, just be open and know that at the end of the day when you read over your list, you’re going to see that there are so many won­der­ful things in your life that you have to be thank­ful for. You can even add things that you don’t have, but want. This is impor­tant in man­i­fest­ing our dreams. The Lord has revealed to me how a thank­ful heart can change the whole way you see life! It is a flood-gate opener to bless­ings, joy peace and all sorts of good­ness. With thank­ful hearts, we can even touch the very heart of God, and King David even told us that when we approach God, enter into His gates with thank­ful hearts!
I will be start­ing a fam­ily jour­nal and encour­age my fam­ily to join with me and learn what it is to be thankful…join me.

So this week I have been called unhappy, bit­ter, unkind, spite­ful, a com­plainer, angry, pas­sive aggres­sive, ugly, a bully, nag…amongst a lot of other things. Most of you who know me would not use these words to describe me, or maybe I hide this side from all of you. In any case words are hurt­ful and peo­ple who really love you do not keep a record of wrongs. Can you recall the last time when you dealt with a dif­fi­cult per­son or peo­ple say­ing things with the inten­tion of hurt­ing you. These words are hurt­ful and no amount of say­ing them will change a person…encouragement is a much bet­ter avenue! What do you do to get through these sit­u­a­tions with peace and grace and most of all for­give­ness!
No mat­ter where we go, we will face peo­ple who oppose our ideas, the way we par­ent, the way we run our every­day lives. The fact isn’t the cause of con­flict, but it is the trig­ger to our emo­tions and our emo­tions are what drive us back to our most basic sur­vival instinct: react and attack back to defend our­selves. In these moments we may lose track of our­selves and become the human ani­mal with an urge to pro­tect our­selves when attacked. This is nat­ural. A stingray when feels threat­ened will attack, or a momma bear pro­tect­ing her cubs. How­ever, we are the only ani­mal blessed with intel­li­gence and the abil­ity to con­trol our responses…So how do we do that? It may take some time to over­come the nat­ural urgency to pro­tect our­selves and attack back.
Why should we bother con­trol­ling our human instincts? For one we do more harm to our­selves. “Hold­ing a grudge against some­one is like drink­ing poi­son and expect­ing the other per­son to die.” The only per­son we hurt is our­selves. I real­ize that now after three years of hold­ing a grudge…it is hurt­ing me and my fam­ily way more than it should have ever. I looked to other peo­ple to fill my void…to get away from my anger and resent­ment and it has seri­ously torn me apart! I am always feel­ing as though I am threat­ened and feel as though I have some­one count­ing every­thing I do wrong and are adding them to this lit­tle book to once and for all destroy my well being. When we react, we are dis­turb­ing our inner peace and men­tally cre­at­ing pain within our­selves.
Usu­ally when peo­ple ini­ti­ate neg­a­tiv­ity, it is a reflec­tion of their inner state expressed exter­nally and you hap­pen to be in front of that expres­sion. When you respond neg­a­tively it become a unpro­duc­tive bat­tle of who is right. Anger feeds anger, Neg­a­tiv­ity feeds Neg­a­tiv­ity. Rarely can any good come out of react­ing against some­one who is in a neg­a­tive state. It will only trig­ger anger and addi­tional reac­tive response from that per­son. The angrier our thoughts become, the angrier we become. It’s a neg­a­tive down­ward spi­ral. It becomes a waste of energy. Where atten­tion goes, energy flows. Since we only can focus on one thing at a time we should spend our energy on our per­sonal well being and not con­sume it with angry thoughts. Neg­a­tiv­ity spreads like wild fires…Once I have let neg­a­tiv­ity come into one area of my life it starts to sub­tly bleed into other areas as well. When we are hold­ing a grudge against some­one, we don’t feel good, we lose sight of the clar­ity and even end up get­ting sick. I can say with­out a doubt that it also affects my health! My blood pres­sure has been perfect…so per­fect that I have had many doc­tors com­ment on how great it was pre­vi­ously for years and years now…and now I am hav­ing to take med­i­cine. I have not been able to focus, I haven’t been able to sleep….yes the grudge has con­trolled my inner being. The more I think about it the more my life becomes more chaotic.
Peo­ple are enti­tled to their opin­ions, I should let them express how they feel and let it be. Some peo­ple may have a less than elo­quent way of express­ing them­selves, they may even be offen­sive, but they are still enti­tled to do so.
I need for this to be resolved…I need to be able to for­give. Wait it out…while I may feel com­pelled to instantly send a text or an email defend­ing myself. I have learned that emo­tion­ally charged emails never get us the result we want and only add oil to the fire. Does it really mat­ter if I am right? Should I just not respond…we we react we are giv­ing them what they want. Stop the cycle of neg­a­tive snow­balling. Stop talk­ing about it — When you have a prob­lem or a con­flict in your life, we just love talk­ing about it? We end up repeat­ing the story to any­one who’ll lis­ten. We express how much we hate the sit­u­a­tion or per­son. What we fail to rec­og­nize in these moments is that the more we talk about some­thing, the more we talk about how much we dis­like a per­son, the more hate we will feel towards them and the more we’ll notice things about them that we dis­like. Stop giv­ing it energy, stop think­ing about it, and stop talk­ing about it. Do your best to not repeat the story to oth­ers. Try putting your­self in their shoes. This under­stand­ing will give you a new per­spec­tive on becom­ing ratio­nal again, and may help you develop com­pas­sion for the other per­son. Find the lesson…in all of this there has to be some­thing that God is try­ing to teach me. If an agree­ment can­not come out of this limit the time I inter­act or spend energy on. Remem­ber that you have the choice to com­mit to being sur­rounded by peo­ple who have the qual­i­ties you admire: opti­mistic, pos­i­tive, peace­ful and encour­ag­ing peo­ple. Don’t just be the change you want to see in this world be around those who will help you.

After a cou­ple years of my hus­band hav­ing a blog, I have just stum­bled upon it. I love the way he writes! God has def­i­nitely blessed him with a tal­ent of being able to turn thoughts, feel­ings into words. Not every­one has that gift, I for sure don’t! I tend to think too much into every­thing. Here is the link to it…guess I don’t need a tab here for him. :) Just don’t know why I am just find­ing out about it now — mixed feel­ings. I told you I am not good at express­ing my feel­ings. :) txaggies.wordpress.com

My hus­band recently updated his sta­tus: I can­not believe that the pur­pose of life is to be “happy.” I think the pur­pose of life is to be use­ful, to be respon­si­ble, to be com­pas­sion­ate. It is, above all, to mat­ter and to count, to stand for some­thing, to have made some dif­fer­ence that you lived at all.

With­out him know­ing two days prior, I had vis­ited the library and checked out two books on hap­pi­ness! Guess the main rea­son was…that was his favorite line to me. He would say, “I just want you to be HAPPY!” . As stud­ies have shown..not really sure how they come up with these fig­ures, 50% of hap­pi­ness is genetics(which I can tell you already I would be at a dis­ad­van­tage. LOL) Life cir­cum­stances, age, gen­der, eth­nic­ity, mar­i­tal stat­ues, income, health, occu­pa­tion and reli­gious affil­i­a­tion account for 10 — 20 percent…that leaves about 30% up to me. :) Well actu­ally, Hap­pi­ness comes from the Lord, but what does this really mean? The oppo­site of hap­pi­ness, is unhap­pi­ness — Not depres­sion. So many peo­ple think if you are not happy then you must be depressed. Depres­sion is so much more seri­ous and should be dealt with differently.

Could I find the Secret to happiness…probably not!! It has been stud­ied for­ever and the great­est minds have already laid out what it is to be happy. I just want to be the best per­son I can be around, friends and fam­ily and make a dif­fer­ence. I find when you are happy, you light up everyone’s life around you! If it takes really learn­ing what it takes and mark­ing off goals…I am up for the chal­lenge! Expect a hap­pier me…and be pre­pared to hear all about the journey.

This was a small chal­lenge but one step closer! The other day when I went to the gro­cery store, I decided that THIS day I would not look at the ground while I was walk­ing, instead I would look at peo­ple when they looked at me and actu­ally acknowl­edge them with a smile…or a sim­ple Hello! I walked around with a smile! Right away a stranger, not an employee went and grabbed a cart for me first before he got one for him­self. I found a lot of peo­ple smil­ing back. I even saw some­one I knew and didn’t scurry behind the next aisle as fast as I could to get away from them. LOL Come on we have all done that! I say live a hap­pier life and you won’t have any rea­son not to be use­ful, to be respon­si­ble, to be com­pas­sion­ate. It is, above all, to mat­ter and to count, to stand for some­thing, to have made some dif­fer­ence that you lived at all.

In chess, the pawn is, gen­er­ally speak­ing, the least pow­er­ful of the pieces on the board. The pawn is used as a “foot sol­dier” by the player. They are an inte­gral and vital part of the game, but are read­ily sac­ri­ficed by a player to achieve objec­tives. Look­ing at the pawn in this light reduces the pawn to the level of an instru­ment or a tool to be manip­u­lated by the player. Now for the anal­ogy.
A per­son who feels like a pawn in a chess match is feel­ing used or treated as expend­able to the pur­pose of some­one else’s ends. He’s just a tool to be applied for another’s gain, and no thought is given to his own worth by the indi­vid­ual mak­ing the deci­sions. The per­son who is a pawn is just a foot sol­dier in a big war, and the dan­gers he con­fronts and the per­sonal risks to which he is exposed are lost to the shot callers who decide what moves, where it moves to, and when it moves.
This sums it up for me, some days I feel like a pawn…well almost every­day lately!
With bills that have to get paid…children going this way and that…pressure of every­day life and not feel­ing as what you have to say really mat­ters.
Guess I can just be happy I am still on the board!