What is your proudest accomplishment in life? I’m going to stall here for a moment while you think about your answer to this question. Mighty fine weather we’re having, huh? Doo doo doo—oh, I love this song! Yes-sir-ee, looks like a beautiful day. Okay, and… Time! What did you come up with for your proudest accomplishment?
Continue reading “The Struggle is Real… Important”
Sometimes, we have to deal with people we just. don’t. like. It’s one of the unfortunate, necessary evils of being a member of a society. Maybe the person who sits next to you in biology makes you roll your eyes every day because she over-shares about her personal life with the whole class. Or, maybe your neighbor lets his dog roam around your yard, and the dog leaves little turd-shaped hidden treasures in your grass for your feet to find in the dark when you’ve got your arms full of groceries. Or, maybe your coworker is incompetent and makes you grind your teeth at how they just can’t grasp a simple task like cleaning up after their own mess. Ugh!!!!
If your blood is beginning to boil at just the thought of this, then hopefully the rest of this article will provide you with some relief. In my measly one year’s worth of restaurant management experience, I’ve encountered some employees who really feel like some Higher Power sent them along to test my character. Fortunately, though, I’ve learned some things, through life and through reading. And I want to share some of these things with you.
Continue reading “Reconciling Resentment”
This book review is rated “E” for everyone, but the title of the book is rated “PG-13,” or whichever rating using the f-word grants you, because while I have cutely titled this blog post as a book review on a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a “Care,” the true title of the book is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F#@%, which you have Mark Manson to thank (or blame) for that.
Continue reading “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a “Care”: A Book Review”
Right now, I can feel that my body is coming down with a cold. I’ve been stalling it off for a couple weeks, but I think one of those darn bugs finally broke through and got to me. How do you feel when you’re sick? Other than “lousy,” if you’re like most people when you’re sick, all you want is to return to good health. As we’re blowing our irritated nose for the one-hundredth time this morning, or as we’re launched into a coughing fit in the middle of a conversation, we’re probably thinking, “I just want to be healthy again! Then I will feel so much better!”
The “high” we feel when we return to good health after being sick is pretty significant. A friend once told me it’s one of the greatest feelings he’s experienced——we almost feel like a superhero, being able to breathe through our nose again! But after the initial couple days (if even that long) of being relatively healthy again, we forget about how much better we feel by comparison, and we begin to take our good health for granted again.
Continue reading “The Practice of Gratitude”
How do you feel when one of your co-workers is in a bad mood? How does that one person’s negative attitude affect the social environment?
Does their attitude feel almost contagious? Continue reading “Growing the Right Attitude”
How do you love yourself?
This question might seem familiar. Last year, I wrote an article called For the Love of You, which began with the question, “Do you love yourself?” I wrote about the importance of self-love and how it can change your life to break the internal cycle of self-hatred that we learn to perpetuate. If you haven’t read it, or if you haven’t revisited it since I posted it, I would encourage you to read through it again.
It’s easy to acknowledge, “I should love myself,” but it’s not at all easy to actually start taking the steps towards loving yourself. It’s the how that’s the challenge; when we spend so much of our life forming the habit of self-hatred, it takes a lot of strength and courage to re-route those hard-worn paths in our mind. Continue reading “A Vision of Self-Love”
Nobody really teaches you how to be still. They teach you how to crawl, how to walk, run, ride a bike, drive a car, but nobody really teaches you how to be still.
I graduated from college and nothing happened. The stillness felt like failure. They teach you how to run, and then you run. That’s what you do–you’re not supposed to stop. But then I stopped.
Stillness makes people uncomfortable; sometimes, it upsets them. The ant must carry the leaf; the bee must pass the pollen. It was a spring day in May I walked across the stage set up at my university’s football field, the fresh electric scent of bloom tickling my nose. Continue reading “A Year of Stillness”
Even if you’ve never been in a courtroom, you’ve probably seen it portrayed on TV before. There’s usually an audience, maybe a jury, defendants and plaintiffs, and then there’s the person who sits above everyone else, appointed to decide what happens to people who make mistakes through their supreme ability to judge others. That’s what the judge does—-forms an opinion and decrees this is the right order everyone will obey.
Sounds kind of harsh, but sometimes we can be harsh, like the judge, without realizing it.
How many times have you heard the phrase, “Never say never”? The irony of the saying is not lost, although perhaps the meaning of it is.
I used to hear “never say never” and think that it was a facetious way of conveying that anything is possible. There is no instance where something can never happen. There’s always some sliver of possibility. I do believe this is true.
Now though, I also interpret it a little differently. Rather than understanding it as “Anything is possible,” I understand it also as “Do not speak in absolutes.”
Sometimes, as feeling human beings, we feel a significant sadness weighing in our chest, inexplicably. It certainly seems as though some are more prone to this sadness than others, and when frequently visited by it, the clarity of peace is obscured, leading us to dull ourselves.
Although it’s okay to feel sad, when it becomes intense and cumbersome, there are ways to work with yourself in order to overcome the heavy feelings. Continue reading “Conquering the Great Big Sadness”
Slanted Spines 