The Beginning of Next
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own.
And you know what you know.
And You are the one who’ll decide where to go.”
- Dr. Seuss
Change can be painful and growth can catch us by surprise. My family experienced both last weekend. Beginning last Thursday evening and continuing through Sunday, it was clear these four days would become a marker in our lives – a time we could point to years from now and still feel the significance and impact it had on each one of us.
Brandon and Andrew, my two sons, each experienced separate situations, but both came away with the same awareness, and perhaps a dose of eye-opening shock, that life moves on, things change, and what we have one day may be gone the next. My wife, Mary Beth, fully aware of the necessity for change, welcomed the change she experienced and used it to take a significant step forward in her life.
My daughters and I witnessed, first hand, the exhilaration change can bring to people’s lives and we also show a hint of sadness and a sense of loss that can also be attributed to change. By Monday, however, we all felt hope for our lives; for what was on the way; for the beginning of next. Read more
7 Ways to Boost Your Resistance to a Bad Day
“We should count each day as a separate life.” - Seneca
My friend Tim Brownson at A Daring Adventure recently published an article providing seven reasons to be cheerful in spite of your circumstances.
On the particular day Tim wrote this article, he was experiencing the ultimate bad mood creator – transitioning all of his computer files from his old Windows-based computer to his brand spanking new Macintosh computer. Even though Tim is a very bright and capable guy, this exercise proved to be, shall we say, challenging for him.
At the moment of his greatest frustration, he happened to hear his wife break out in what Tim describes as “raucous” laughter. He followed the sound and found his wife watching the movie Hitch with Will Smith.
Soon, Tim found himself smiling and laughing along with his wife. In just a few short moments, his bad day had turned around and corrected itself. To be honest though, it was really Tim who made the adjustment, not the day at all. My friend just found a very good reason to reframe his bad day and then look at it from a different point of view.
All of us have this same ability, too. There exists in each one us the energy needed to reverse the negative circumstances we face in our daily lives and make them either more positive or adjust them. We also have the choice to accept the negatives, but then choose not to allow them to have any power over us. Read more
How to Live Without Alcohol for 100 Days?
“Keep the lesson, but throw away the experience.” - Author Unknown
You may notice the headline for today’s post, How to Live Without Alcohol for 100 Days?, is in the form of a question; not a statement. The reason for this is because I don’t know the answer. But, I want to find out.
I have always experienced the gap, the thin line in my soul between alcoholism and sobriety as paper thin and always in danger of being erased. There is plenty of family history to suggest both a propensity and a genetic pre-disposition for alcoholism to surface inside me at any given time. It is a disease I have narrowly escaped most of my life – and I want to continue to do so.
My attempt to go 100 days without drinking a beer or having a glass of wine will not erase my tendencies to drink for the wrong reasons and it certainly will not give me any moral ground to stand on if I am indeed successful. I just want to see if I can do it. Read more
