Archive for the 'Self-Improvement' Category
The “To-Be-Experienced” List
Years before I heard anything about the Law of Attraction, I met a clairvoyant at a writers’ conference in Ft. Lauderdale and she told me that I had a way of moving heaven and earth to bring amazing things tome but at the same time denying them to myself. Could I simply learn to accept what I worked so hard for?
She was right. I began to notice how often I would work to make things happen and then, once it was right there for the taking, I came up with reasons not to accept it. I pushed those experiences and results away, supposedly because I didn’t have the time or the money or someone else needed it more than I did or…you name it. Always a reason NOT to indulge myself.
So I decided to make a list of the things I wanted to experience and if the occasion should ever arise to experience anything on my list, I “had” to do it. Otherwise, if I didn’t tell myself I had to take advantage of what came to me, then I would always find some excuse not to enjoy it.
My initial list had 10 items on it, and as I one-by-one encountered those items, Read the rest of this entry »
It’s Still About the Icing
Sometimes I feel like I’ve compressed as far as I can, simplified as much as possible, and now I’m ready to burst outward into new experiences, new learning, new relationships. One of these tools for expansion—and doing something new—is something I had long forgotten until Shannon mentioned how much she’d like to learn to decorate cakes.
In her job at Cold Stone (the gourm
et ice cream shop), she’s learned not only the business of dealing with the public (one of her goals with the job) but something about the cultures of her Russian and Czech co-workers as well as how to make and decorate an ice cream cake.
When she mentioned wanting to learn more about cake decorating, I had a flashback to when I was a couple of years older than she is now. I had just moved to Northwest Florida to be with my boyfriend-later-husband, and I often saw ads in the local papers for classes, seminars, and workshops that interested me. The one I saw most was for cake decorating at the mall, but that was a far drive and I didn’t have the $25 at the time for the class, let alone for any supplies or even for the gas to get there.
There were other seminars advertised in the local papers, too, and I was always interested but never attended. Read the rest of this entry »
The Bracelet Challenge
It’s not that I aspire to be Xena, Warrior Priestess, with my armbands and steel brassiere. (Okay, maybe I do, but that’s beside the point.) It’s a challenge I’m taking.
Some people refer to it as the “Bracelet Challenge,” but I’m not using it in quite the same way as Pastor Will Bowen who started it with the idea that you wear a small purple bracelet on one wrist for a straight 21 days and every time you catch yourself complaining, you switch to the other wrist and start over. There’s nothing new about that but it’s a little different twist on the usual version of “bracelets.”
For years, people have worn loose rubber bands on one wrist and snapped them (slap your own hand!) whenever they committed some awful habit they wanted to break. Cursing, for example. Or a certain phrase. Or a rude remark about their ex. (snap-snap-snap-ouch!-SNAP!)
The difference, to me, with Pastor Bowen’s technique is the switching the bracelet from one wrist to another. Something about that resonates with me, though I really don’t care for the purple bracelet…maybe because other people are using the purple bracelet and I like something unique to me. Read the rest of this entry »