Happy Sunday, this is Kris wishing you a great day today. Hope everything has been going well.
I want to go in a different direction. I want to get away from some of the sad stories that I have been talking about, like incest and rape. Those can bring us down for sure.
I want to talk about the effect our actions have on everything around us. Sometimes we think in our day-to-day interactions with each other that most things do not matter, when in reality they really do.
Each little thing that we do has an influence on everything and everyone around us.
There is a wonderful story that I want to tell you so just sit back and listen. I am not going to write it down. It is a starfish tale.
So we need to remember that our actions even though they may seem simple, and people might ask “ what difference does it make.” Everything we do makes a difference.
Every interaction we have with each other affects that life force in some way. We get to decide if it is good or not by how we interact.
Are we being kind, or are we being a jerk? Have we said something nice to someone or have we been mean? Each thing matters. Each interaction matters. And remember our words matter just as well.
I am going to tell you another story. It is about my experience with a store clerk so again you can sit back and relax while I tell my tale.
And that was the end of my going to that store. I felt I did not need to frequent a place where the cashier was going to treat me poorly. Did my not going back hurt the store. Probably not, it was a large chain, but perhaps my retelling of the story will enlightened others to not tolerate someone being unkind to them.
We must be mindful in our interactions with others. We need to be aware of how we treat another person as it does matter. Your actions can influence that person in a good or bad way. We have that power.
Keep that in mind when you are interacting with your friends and family. Remember that each little interaction that you have has an impact on that relationship. It affects their day. Effects how they may feel for the rest of the day.
If you can think of that and be mindful of being kind and gentle with someone you may have a great day yourself. I believe what goes around comes around. We get back what we give out.
So, for today I want you to have a great day. Enjoy whatever is going on inside or out and remember that you do have the power to influence others.
Offer a smile or a kind word. Be a positive influence. Do not be a negative person. Look at your blessings, be glad of what you have today.
Each day is another opportunity to get things right. We are the directors of our lives. We are the guides on this journey called life.
So, as I always say have a great day today, you and I deserve it. And smile at someone just for today.
I screamed at my bird this evening. He was out on his perch playing like he does most evenings, and I lost it. Coco is an African grey parrot who likes to imitate the beeping of my alarm clock, my cell phone, and even the microwave. He has a whole array of noises he likes to share whenever I’m trying to sleep or take a nap and he thinks I should be up. Well, there I lay sprawled on the couch trying to get some shut eye and that bird was filling the silence with his whole vocabulary. Did I mention that he also talks, but not as much as he likes to make sounds. I will reveal his less polite sounds like burping and farting, noises that sound just like my granddaughters, the little pigs.
I’m not sure if you know that I usually work nights which is probably the worst shift to work for any human being wanting to get a good night’s sleep. I’m one of those people that can only nap for about 3 hours. My body won’t let me sleep any longer even with a little medicinal help. I wake up and then take a two-hour nap before I leave for work. Giving me a grand total of five hours of sleep a day that is usually split up. Do I need to admit that sometimes I am a GROUCH. Understandable, right.
I also have a very ailing old dog and I’m goanna admit that sometimes my patience runs thin with her needs as well. And I don’t know what was wrong with me today but for sure I yelled at the bird, yelled at the dog, got up angry for being disturbed then yelled “Oh my God can I have some peace and quiet” and then I realized what I was doing.
How can we expect anything to be other than what it is? Why would I expect my talkative bird to be quiet when I’m sleeping during the day, and it’s his wake time. It’s cruel to try to get my dog to not bother me when I’m lying around trying to nap. She needs love, affection, food, and potty breaks. I felt like such a meanie.
She loved to wrestle with the baby.
Imagine how people must feel in the human world when others around them expects them to be something other than what they are. The song about rose colored glasses is really true because until we take those glasses off, we don’t see clearly. We may not realize who or what that person is before us in our relationship until we remove the glasses. Our expectations of who they should be often outshines who they actually are, and eventually if that is the case, we become disappointed, grumpy, and annoyed, which is crazy, a bird is a bird right!
If you are having relationship problems, I want you to stop and look at that person. I want you to see who you” think” that person should be. Are you seeing the real person or the one you imagine they should be? Ask yourself is this a clear picture of this person or am I just putting my desires of what I need onto their shoulders. I believe this is what happens in many relationships. We expect the other person that we share our life with to be different than who they are. We see those rose-colored glasses come on and love gets in the way as our heart fills with joy, blinding us like a ray of sunshine. But, when the clouds come overhead, and we get a good look and we realize we might have imagined these elements of who they are we start picking, and picking, and picking.
I was married to my second husband for thirty something years. We are still friends. He is the same person he always was. And I can tell you that when we first got together, I had some heavily tinted glasses on. Along the way as I grew up and grew older, I realized that just because I had expectations of who this person was supposed to be, did not make it so. That was a very enlightening “ aha” moment because we were going through some serious storms in our relationship.
It takes time to really get to know someone, be it friends or sweethearts. The main reason is we usually put our best foot forward trying to impress and win over that special person we want in our life. Eventually though the glasses come off and we see what we see, and that may not be a good thing for anyone.
They have to come off sometime.
But here’s where I come to my ex-husband’s defense and say that he was being 100% of who he was with all his little flaws, all his little kindnesses, all his bias ideas, and I was not going to change any of that by throwing a tantrum or pulling out the silence card or withdrawing from him because he was who he was and he didn’t understand why I didn’t understand him. He was just being himself. A bird is a bird!
Eventually I came to understand that we cannot expect other people to change to please us. If there is a change in a relationship it must come through a change in ourselves. We have to change our expectations and make them real. We must open our eyes and be fair to that other person.
Our marriage didn’t work out as the differences were too difficult, but I did learn to accept him for who he was, and we are still friends. I have my flaws, he has his flaws, and we care about each other. I came to realize how unjust I was being by expecting anything else.
Now I’m not saying that things can’t change in a relationship, but it has to be something you both agree on. Things can’t change if one partner is saying “ it has to be my way” or saying “if only you would do it this way, if only you were that way, if only you were more thoughtful, if only you were neater or kinder or cleaner or happier” or whatever it is that we are trying to lay on their shoulders that we think would make us a happier person, and that’s wrong.
Ta Da.
All we can do is learn to change ourselves to find peace within. To accept others for who they are and accept ourselves or if we don’t like what we see improve what we find wrong within in ourselves, not criticize the other person.
They say when you look at other people in your life you are seeing reflections of yourself. I tell myself that often if I’m struggling or being too judgmental. I say that is me looking back at me and that is what I need to take care of, perhaps what I need to change in myself.
If you believe in the ripple effect, I wrote a piece about that, you might get lucky and that other person may change a little bit too, but it won’t be because they see that we think there is something wrong, if may be because we have become a better person to be around therefore they are able to relax into who they are and enjoy our company, hopefully we can enjoy their company too.
Yelling at my bird didn’t solve a single thing. If birds could think, and I don’t know if they do, he probably thought I was crazy. I think his little birdie brain was saying “Doesn’t she know I always do this when I’m out and about. What’s wrong with her, why’s she’s so grumpy today.” Okay that was too much dialogue for a bird, but I will admit that I felt ashamed of my reaction to both of my lovely pets. I was upset with my bird for being a bird, and my dog for being dog. Please don’t be angry at those in your life be it people or pets for being who are. Be angry with yourself because you have the wrong expectations leading you astray, and it’s causing conflict in that relationship. The fix is for us to change our outlook, our reactions to life so that we can be a happier people. And may that happiness reflect outward, and hopefully others will find joy being with us. So, as I always say, have a great day today, you and I deserve it!
I am re-releasing this blog because ” Breast Cancer Awareness Month” is right ahead of us, just, one more day , and our minds will get blown away with all the “caring, sensitive, advertisements for products supporting breast cancer awareness. If you have read my previous blogs you know this is a sore spot for me. Below is my book which expresses those painful, angry opinions. They come from my experiences with breast cancer.
I will add a piece each week about my opinions and experiences with breast cancer. I hope my book will be an awaking for you. If I tell you one thing, it is to take action now if you have something that is wrong inside your body. Do not wait! Waiting can and will lead to death. Here’s the actual piece from Facebook.!
Okay, I have been thinking. A dangerous thing for me to do, but I must. I want to send out a challenge to all my friends, and friends of friends to share the new ” Take Action Now.” theme. Did you know that cancer kills, but did you know that sometimes cancer kills because we didn’t act fast enough.” My book, ” Screw Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Take Action Now. The New Mantra.” is an important message for all to hear. When something is wrong in our bodies we need to act. I would like to have this message reach a million people. I know, I know, I expect a lot, but the projections for the number of new cases of cancer for 2020 was roughly 1,805,695. I am talking just in 2020, with an estimated 606,800 deaths that year. The driving force behind my book is that I feel I am not reaching enough people with this important message of ” take action now” through just my blog. So if you will share this blog, and this post with all your friends on Facebook, and have your friends share it, and continue on to who knows when, maybe as a group we will save someone’s life. There is much to learn about cancer. It is better to learn it now instead of when you really might need to have this information http://www.amazon.com/dp/BO8GFCX7MK
Add as I always say, have a great day today, you and I deserve it!
Hello, this is Kris. Welcome to my blog. It has been quite a while and I must apologize. There are no excuses, only things that got in my way or distracted me from talking with you.
Sadly, I lost my sister recently. Her death came quickly, we only had two months to prepare, but considering her condition of health, and the cancer that was devouring her, I can only say she’s in a better place. If they let her in that is (that was her kind of humor.) When the hospice place first rejected her, she said, “it’s because my foot’s not far enough in the hole” and actually at that moment she was correct. Six weeks later she was gone.
I brought some of her little belonging’s home with me and throughout my house are little reminders of her. We lived quite a distance apart, over 1000 miles, but we saw each other almost every year so we stayed close and had many adventures.
I was the one who had to go through all her belongings and clear out her home to prepare her estate or should I say to prepare her mobile home to be sold. She had lots of little special collections that she loved and had gathered to herself over the years. Pretty little things that brought her happy memories. Collections of stuff that didn’t mean much to me or her friend but were special to her. Some of those little bits and pieces I brought home not because I wanted them but because they were part of her happy memories.
Most of her things went to charity which broke her and my heart. She couldn’t believe that all her cherished mementos meant so little to others. I did not have the time to stay around to find a good home for them. Sadly, out the door they went.
After her passing I was suddenly hit with the realization that I am the last of my family. Of course, my parents are gone, I’m 72, but now so are my siblings. I am the last of the litter. That is a scary feeling and brings home the age factor to me. As I told my son, I’m no spring chicken. Now I must admit it.
Something that I came to recognize as I put my grubby mitts in her cupboards and drawers is that sometimes we develop preconceived ideas about others. We look at people, form impressions of them by what we think we see, and sometimes miss out on who that person really is. What we think we know about people is a one-sided notion and the impressions may not even match who that person is before us. It is like looking at a flat piece of paper. We only see one side. We don’t see the whole book. We don’t see all the pages.
I believe we are influenced by our life experiences, who we love, how we love, and how we grew up and formed our personality. There are so many sides to our stories, but people only see one side, the side we want them to see, not the other pages and layers. We are one dimensional in our inclusion or exclusion of others. I can honestly say that I don’t think we know most of our family and friends as well as we think.
When we look at a stranger, let’s just say someone we think is well off and doing fabulously because they may have everything we desire in our life. We may feel envy or anger at their advantages. We may be jealous of their good looks, their obvious good luck, but what I want to say is that what we see of each other is only the outer shell of who we are. We do not see the inner self, the things that have occurred in that person’s life, the things that may have been done to them or all the people who have been a part of that life unless they have shared that story.
We can look at a person and assume by the way they behave and the way they are dressed or how they live if they have been lucky in life. We can assume through appearances that they have probably never been mistreated, but instead given all the luxuries of life. But what we may not know is if they have been depressed, suicidal, or abused because we really don’t know what is encased in that shell. The life events that have meddled and meshed to form who they have become. We are so much more than what is seen by others, we are not just the things around us.
Regarding myself, I keep secrets. I don’t always tell the truth when others ask how I am. I don’t let people see what has come before. And, I have very few in my life who know “my” whole story.
What I wanted to bring to your attention, and what has come to mine, is that we don’t know all the bits and pieces that are there when we look at someone. They may have a wealth of money, and a lovely home and car, but their life could be the shits for them. Maybe they grew up with terrible parents. Maybe they had a terrible childhood. Maybe their school years were terrible, or they were bullied. One thing is for sure, they survived all of that to become who we see before us.
When we look at you at each other we really don’t know what is there and I suggest we pause and analyze what we see when we start to judge others. That person we see is the bits and pieces of all their life events, and all their reactions and feelings to those life events.
I know that as I sit here, I’m surrounded with all the stuff I thought I wanted and needed, but as it turns out it is just a multitude of useless items that should I die in this moment nobody would want. When I was going through my sister’s belongings it broke my heart to see all the things that she had saved and collected, pictures she had and things that honestly meant nothing to me. Things that mean nothing to the one son that has survived her.
What I discovered is we don’t need all this stuff around us. I certainly don’t need all this junk I have collected over time. And after being at my sister’s I’m going to clear out the cupboards in my house because I do not want my children to have to go through the things that they could care less about or want as part of the death process when I pass.
I can honestly say that the real things that are the most important and will be the most important to each one of us is the time we have spent together. The laughter we may have shared, the pranks and jokes we’ve told, not the stuff that sits around and fills our empty corners.
If I was going to offer one bit of advice, and I am, it is that it is our connection with people, with our family that is the most important aspect of our life. We need to focus on creating happy, wonderful memories with each other, not buying another trinket or doda that will just be thrown in the trash when we turn to dust.
I’m not a wizard, brainiac, therapist, or anybody who has the right to tell you what to do, I’ve just lived 72 years of life experiences, and come to realize that I need to stand quietly and observe and appreciate my network of friends and loved ones more than all the things that surround me.
We’ve all heard the line “tomorrow’s another day” but I say stay in this moment, be present now, be present with the people today that are in your life and let them know through your actions and words how much you appreciate them, how much you love them. At the end it is not the stuff, but the people we will miss the most. And as I always say, have a great day today, you and I deserve it.
Today’s topic is a sad one. I hate to admit it, but I don’t always feel real peppy and motivational. You see there will be a death soon in my household. Now for some of you who have never loved a pet you may not feel sympathetic towards me, and that’s okay. But those of you that have travelled this path know the heart break coming my way.
If you have been following along with my blog you know that Tessie, my lovely old friend, has been with me for some years. She has filled my heart with joy and laughter as I hope that I have filled hers. When people ask me what kind of a dog she is, I tell them Hawaiian, as my son got her when he was stationed there before going to Iraq.
Tess has been a part of our lives for thirteen years, and mine exclusively for eight. This lovely dog and I have grown old together. As for me I am not too decrepit yet, but Tess is not doing well.
You see her poor old body is full of “fatty tumors.” Things they can do nothing about, and I have watched as they have popped up all over her body. The worse are the ones I can’t see as she gets breathless, stumbles when she walks, and sometimes she just stands there like she is waiting for something to happen.
When she came to live with me, she became the motivation for both of us to get outdoors and walk. Together we discovered this wonderful park area not far from where I live. I didn’t even know there was such a wonderful place until we started our walks and explored the neighborhood.
She loves the snow.
We quit walking there years ago as I discovered another area that was much larger with many more trails, you may have heard me talk about the Shunga. But yesterday we went back to our old haunt as my poor little car would not start. My SUV is too hard for Tess to get into so a dear friend gave me an old Toyota echo so that she would not have so far to jump as we head out on our adventures.
Due to the death of this little car we returned to our old trails, our old pathways, and it brought tears to my eyes as I remembered finding this area when we first came together.
This haven is 43 acres of trees and grasses with little trails and ravines. Over the water are lovely bridges and fallen trees that let us take pause along our journey.
Over the years we have seen deer, turkeys, ducks, great big beautiful hawks, and once a gorgeous coyote. It’s amazing that as we began our walk Tessie remembered exactly which trails to take and followed the old paths we had trodden before. It was so heartwarming.
The tumors on Tess have gotten pretty large but they don’t stop her from walking. She loves her walks, she loves to snuffle. As I said, sometimes she gets so breathless we must stop and let her catch her breath for a minute. I don’t know how many breaths a minute a dog is supposed to breathe, but she is like a little train puffing away.
It’s as if she saying, hurry up.
Despite all of this she’s an inspiration to me. Even when she is having difficulty, and probably some pain, she just keeps taking that next step. She keeps going which should remind all of us to take that next step forward as well and keep going.
We need to move past the pain and suffering because we do not know what tomorrow may bring. We do not want to miss an opportunity to see a beautiful landscape or feel the warm sun on our skin or miss having the cool breeze touching our face. Nature can be such motivation to keep going.
One thing I have noticed when I walk outside is that it is very noisy. The birds are chirping and singing to each other. There are woodpeckers hammering away, dogs barking in the distance, and the wind rustling the leaves in the trees. Not a quiet place, but a soothing, healing place. Some days I just want to lay down and embrace the earth it is such a gift.
Tess has been my companion for a long time, and I don’t think she is going to make it to the end of the year. It is the hardest thing for me to watch knowing that at some point I may have to put her down to ease her suffering. I pray every night that the lord will take her in her sleep so that she will not suffer, and I will not have to make the decision to end her days. It is tough one as many of you know.
I have already decided I don’t want any more pets after Tess is gone because at my age the only thing that’s in my future is who will go first, me or the pet. I have felt great love for this old dog, and we have had many enjoyable trips along our favorite paths. Soon it will end, and we will only walk in spirit along our favorite trails.
She never chased the other creatures, we were quiet observers.
There is a lovely story that Andy Andrews, a motivational presenter tells about his wife and their family dog. Every time his wife enters a room the dog gets so excited and happy wagging its tail and smiling at her. The wife in return hugs the dog and gives it little scratches. If the wife leaves the room again as soon as she returns the dog acts like she has been gone forever and gets all excited again, getting hugs and scratches once more.
Now Andy said he asks himself “why his wife didn’t treat him that way when he came home or entered a room”, and his response was, “because I don’t treat her the way our dog treats her, and that is with great joy when she enters a room, always so happy to see her.
Maybe we should treat each other like we have been apart for a long time and are filled with joy and love once we set eyes on each other again. Do you think it will make you or them feel better? Of course, it would.
All around us there are motivational things to soothe and relax each one of us. Things to fill our hearts with joy. We just need to open our eyes to what is there.
Did I mention she can be a coach potato.
If you are feeling down watch some YouTube videos. There are millions to choose from. They can certainly lift your mood. Listen to some gentle music. Look at nature videos. There are apps galore that provide calming nature sounds or music.
There was a study done where people just looked at a fireplace with a fake fire going and they reported feeling warmer just by watching. I have one of those fake fire heaters. You can use them without the heat on and it is very soothing watching the colorful flames bouncing about.
Sometimes we have to step away from the chaos in our life and there are so many ways to do that to help ourselves feel better. We don’t always recognize the feelings of the stress burdening our bodies until we let go. Step away, embrace something wonderful. Then you will feel it, you will feel the tension that was hardening your muscle, tightening your chest, making it difficult to breathe. We get so use to those feelings that when we let go it is like we are floating on air.
One of the best tools in my life to help me push away the chaos has been my sweet Tessie. I am so glad that she has been there with me. When her time comes, I will shed many tears of sadness, but I will also be filled with gratitude for our time together. I know that soon she is going to be gone. I hope it will be an easy passing. I dread the time will come when I may have to make a choice to intervene. Say a prayer for me and her that she will go in her sleep so that our parting will be an easy one. If you have a pet snuggle them close, just stroking their fur can lower your blood pressure and ease your pain. Love all the beings in your life, animals, and humans. Each is a gift we should cherish. And as I always say, “have a great day today, you and I deserve it.” ( she loved her girls,)
