What you say to yourself and others has long term consequences.  Words said in anger cut deep.  Words that devalue who you are, your worth and esteem put you in a self-imposed prison.

Communication begins with you to you.  When we esteem ourselves we can esteem others.

As you learn to appreciate who you are, you can assist your next steps forward with positive statements made in the first person “I” that affirm your significance and usefulness.  These confirm your positive intentions for life.

I affirm that I have choices and abilities

I  affirm I have worth and value

I affirm that I can accomplish any goals I choose when

I put my heart, mind and hard work to the task

Creating positive affirmations

Discouraging, hopeless and dispiriting messages tear us down. Affirmations reflect our values and principles.  They motivate and encourage us to be the best we can be.

Repeated daily they draw us towards the goals we have established.  They become a new self-fulfilling prophecy.

They also become a new automatic response to adversity and life in general.  They re-train our brain and our thought processes from a negative point of view to one that is positive and affirming.

Here are some possibilities for your consideration:

• I am intelligent, capable and responsible for all my actions
• I choose to expand my point of view and focus on what is positive in my life
• I can become more than any hurtful events in my past
• I forgive because hanging onto grievances will hurt me
• I work for excellence instead of perfection
• I am methodical and careful in everything I do
• I focus on what I can do and not on what I can’t do
• I let go of the hurts of the past so I can work on my future
• I can say “no” and respect my decisions

Take some time and create your own affirmations.  Or use the ones above and modify them to address your special concerns, needs and wants.

Then act them and live them.  Let them guide you to positive new goals.

Marlene Anderson

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To Receive a Free Consultation for putting together a Personal Plan of Action for yourself,  fill out the contact form beside this blog or send me an e-mail.  I am also available for speaking engagements, retreats or teaching workshops for your church, clubs or women’s groups on a variety of topics that affect our lives.

I lost a brother last week – sudden – unexpected.

In honor of his death and life, and for anyone who has lost a loved one, I post a poem I wrote in 2008 when I was working with people going through grief – wounded people.

You may have struggled going through a major loss in your life. Or you may be helping a friend who is grieving.  This is for anyone who has been in that position.

Wounded People

Need a hand for support as they learn to walk again

Need friends who will be there

Need to know they can honor their journey

Need to have their feelings and experience validated

Need assistance – not fixing

Need someone who is willing to listen

Need acceptance, grace, understanding, compassion

Do not need pity, trite words, or lectures about the future

Need to know they are okay – when someone who has leg surgery they want to know,

“Will I be able to walk again?”

Wounded people need to know “Will I be able to live again?”

Need encouragement

Need to know they are still needed

Need time to recover, sort things through and restructure their life

Need to know they will enjoy life again

Need to know that life is worth living – there is a purpose and meaning

Healing occurs when we allow ourselves to go through the pain,

Are willing to reach out for support when we need it,

To gain the strength and courage to create a new beginning

Marlene Anderson

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To Receive a Free Consultation for putting together a Personal Plan of Action for yourself,  fill out the contact form beside this blog or send me an e-mail.  I am also available for speaking engagements, retreats or teaching workshops for your church, clubs or women’s groups on a variety of topics that affect our lives.

Those of you who love to take pictures do more than point and shoot. You are constantly adjusting the lens to take in more of the landscape or to narrow the scope to pinpoint a particular point of interest.

You continue to adjust your focus until you can capture exactly what you want.

You care about the lighting, the angle, the depth perception, and the nuances that give some pictures a timeless quality.

We adjust the lens of our cameras –

but do we adjust the lens of our camera of life?

Sometimes our focus needs to be needle sharp, pinpointing a particular problem that requires immediate attention.

At such times we narrow our scope to attend to it, completely obliterating anything else that is happening; such times as when our child is sick, someone is having a heart attack or we find ourselves in a dangerous situation.

At such moments we don’t care if the sun is shining, the birds are singing or the daffodils are blooming. What we care about is the emergency in front of us that takes center stage and requires our full attention.

Other times our focus is broadened and we stop to smell the roses, see the beauty of nature around us and relax in the comfort of knowing God loves us and so do others.

Every day when we get up we can adjust our focus.

When we have problems we can adjust our lens to look for those things that will give us the necessary information to work with,pinpointing the cause of the problem and then look for solutions.

Or we can allow our lens to get stuck on what isn’t working and

remain fixed on the problem instead of a solution.

When our lens is stuck in only one position, we miss the beauty of life that surrounds us, the things that can make our heart sing, the people who enrich our lives, the work of nature that continues to keep things growing and moving from season to season.

We miss the opportunities to try new things, to experiment, to find new experiences and ways to build a positive life. We get stuck on hate instead of love, anger instead of compassion.

You are the camera of your life. You adjust the focus every day.

Each moment in time offers us something new to experience – a depth of understanding, a new perspective, a desire to accomplish, a passion to help and share. Within each moment in time we have opportunities that are gone in a second if we don’t focus on them. What amazing things we could accomplish if we allowed ourselves to think of the possibilities and act on them.

When I get up in the morning I have a choice as to what I will focus on.

I can focus on my vulnerabilities or I can focus on my strengths.

I can feel depressed about what I don’t have or I can rejoice with God about all the possibilities that lay before me.

I determine what pictures of life I will take. I determine the focus of my life camera.

Marlene Anderson

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To Receive a Free Consultation for putting together a Personal Plan of Action for yourself,  fill out the contact form beside this blog or send me an e-mail.  I am also available for speaking engagements, retreats or teaching workshops for your church, clubs or women’s groups on a variety of topics that affect our lives.

When we feel there are no solutions to our problems, we strike out, hang on to resentment and blame others for our difficulties or distress.  Or we condemn ourselves.

Remaining in that mindset, however, takes away our personal power and keeps us locked in a never ending cycle of bitterness and anger.

Our focus remains on what we can’t do and not on what we can do.

We are a combination of many things: DNA, personality, childhood experiences and the fundamental beliefs we put in place while growing up. We form perceptions of who we think we are based on how we interpret our experiences.

Everyone will be affected differently by life events. While one thing may be an irritant to one person, it can be a positive experience to another.

Completing the stories from our past give us the opportunity to take a more measured look at what happened in our growing up years and how that continues to influence our present day life. Some things made us feel little and insignificant while others motivated us to become the best we can.

As we challenge and speak to those things that made us feel inferior and worthless, we have the opportunity to heal old wounds and put to rest the intense emotions associated with them. Our view of ourselves, the world and who we can become is expanded. We can remember the good times as well as the bad and those that helped and encouraged us. Choosing to let go of our pain and grievances allows us to create a new and positive chapter for our life story.

We are not our past. Our past does not define who we are unless we allow it to. Completing our stories help build a more positive bridge from the past to the present.   It enables us to take charge.

Life can be hard. It is easy to fall into the trap that we are entitled to a happy life and that somehow others are responsible for that. But when we buy into that belief system, we relinquish our personal power and freedom. We are no longer in charge of our lives – someone or something else is.

We are free to choose how we respond to whatever is happening. During the tough times, we can learn how to be resilient, flexible and compassionate. We have the opportunity to think in more positive and productive ways. It is where we accept our vulnerabilities and work with them instead of hiding or denying them. In those moments we recognize our need for God and reach out to Him for strength, hope and courage.

It is during the tough times, when everything is going wrong, that we have the opportunity to become more of who we are than we could at any other time. It is where we stretch and reach higher and grow.

A Letter of Affirmation

Take a piece of paper and write a letter to yourself. Write about all the things you have accomplished and all the people who have helped you. Include the talents and abilities you have. Write about the ways you want to improve and grow. Complete your letter with a faith statement of how you want to live your life and use the wonderful gifts you have been given. Read this letter every day as an affirmation of all the things you can achieve and become.

Marlene Anderson

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To Receive a Free Consultation for putting together a Personal Plan of Action for yourself,  fill out the contact form beside this blog or send me an e-mail.  I am also available for speaking engagements, retreats or teaching workshops for your church, clubs or women’s groups on a variety of topics that affect our lives.

I remember those early days and months after the death of my husband. One winter morning, I saw a white rose blooming on one of my rose bushes.  The leaves were gone and it was January and very cold.

It precipitated the writing of the following poem.  I share it today for my friend.

Loss is part of life; but those who remain struggle with their loss. Lois,  God be with you and comfort you.

I Cried – He Came

God came one morning when I was down and low

He showed me a patch of blue between the clouds,

A bird scrounging in the dried bushes

Looking for food

Singing a song

And He said, “I’m here – I’m here

I’m right here beside you!”

I’m with that bird – He’s singing in the cold

I’m in that sky – there’s a promise of spring

I’m in the earth around you – Close your eyes and feel my strength

Feel me giving you breath to continue on

“Bloom wherever you are,” He said. “Just bloom.”

I looked and saw my rose bush blooming

There were no leaves

It was still the middle of winter

But there were roses blooming.

Bloom wherever you are

Bloom in the winter – the summer – the fall

Bloom wherever I place you

I will feed you

I will water you

I will be by your side

There are many things I do not understand

– why I must be alone when it is people I need

–  why I must struggle when others are at play.

We all have our prisons:  they come in separation and isolation – in loss and discouragement. They come in the midst of poverty and in the midst of wealth. They sneak up behind us and catch us when we are not looking,

and in desperation we cry out to our God

I do not understand. I do not understand.

But I do know this. My God came and stood beside me today

He came and I felt His presence

in the sky – the bird – the roses

I closed my eyes and felt his presence by my side.

And I was no longer alone.

Marlene Anderson

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To Receive a Free Consultation for putting together a Personal Plan of Action for yourself,  fill out the contact form beside this blog or send me an e-mail.  I am also available for speaking engagements, retreats or teaching workshops for your church, clubs or women’s groups on a variety of topics that affect our lives.

“The Shack“, by Wm. Paul Young.

Several years ago, I led a six week book review at my church on “The Shack.” Last week I was asked to speak at a book club on the same book which has come into focus again with the recent release of the movie made from the book.

Preparing for my talk and discussion, I asked myself, how can I reduce such a rich book to an hour speech? I saw the movie, reviewed the book again, and reached deep into the text to pull out some of its jewels of thought provoking questions. Although it is a fiction story, it invokes questions such as who is God? Does He really care for us? How am I to respond to Him? If I have suffered a great loss, an unspeakable tragedy, does God care?  And what do I do with my anger, hate and resentment?

Here are snippets of that book feature I did on my blog site, in May of 2015.

“The Shack”

Yes you can!  Just say No!

Perhaps you just lost your job – or you have spent four grueling years getting your degree but there are no jobs available in your line of work. What do you do?

Do you get up, put on a brave face and keep trying?  Or do you give up.

Yes you can! Just say No.

Yes, you can is a mindset that reflects our willingness to dig deep inside ourselves and look for the tools we need to hone and use them more effectively. This isn’t just about putting a positive spin on a serious, perhaps life threatening situation.

It’s looking at your situation squarely and saying, yes I can; with the help of God and doing whatever it takes within my principles and values to make it happen.

It won’t be easy. It will take hard work. It will take ingenuity and creativity. It will take doing many things you might have thought beneath your talents and abilities.

And it will require saying “No” to doing what feels good in the moment; “No” to taking life for granted; “No” to unrealistic expectations. It takes knowing where you are right now, and saying no to purchases you thought were absolutely necessary simply because everybody else is doing it.

Finances can become a serious problem if we do not have impulse control. Not having a budget and knowing how to manage our money can have long term consequences.

When my husband and I were first married, we had no financial cushion. He had just  returned to his home town after playing in big bands both on the road, in studios and in Vegas.

We got married with high hopes of him starting his own band. He tried selling real estate to pay the bills while trying to make the band business profitable. It didn’t.  We were back at square one.  Pregnant with our first child, I could no longer work at my job and we had to move in with his parents.

But, there was never the thought of giving up.  Instead we looked at other options.  Before letting real estate go, we used his commission to buy our first little track house. He realized that neither his dreams for his own big band nor real estate would take care of the needs of a family. He chose a new direction, worked at several jobs at once, went back to school to get his Masters in Music Education and took a job teaching school, something he swore he would never do.  He not only was an excellent teacher, (his students attest to that), but starting from scratch, we worked together as a team.  He became the head of a music department, respected by many, as we also met the challenges of raising a handicapped child and taking care of a Mom with a serious heart condition.  Later, I was able to go back to school as well and get my masters.

Yes you can!

But you might also have to say No.  No to getting all those things you believe you can’t live without in the moment; no to spending money whenever you feel like it. It isn’t easy.

Sometimes you have to scale back farther than you ever thought possible.  But when you develop an attitude of Yes I can, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.

Throughout life there will be tough times when you will be sidelined, knocked down or will face a major roadblock. You may have to spend money getting more education or training; or you may have to cut way back to make ends meet while you work on how to take that next step.

It is so easy to buy on credit.  With the click of a button on phone apps we can make purchases.

We are often unaware of how much we are spending and people can find themselves thousands of dollars in debt.

As important as it is to manage your time and put in place productive habits for healthy eating and exercise, it is equally as important to have a financial program in place.

A lesson I learned

My husband and I shared a similar mind set of, if you want to, you can find a way to do it. Here is my own story about discovering how I spent my money as a young adult – a very valuable lesson learned and remembered.

As a young woman, I shared an apartment with my sister and brother.  I worked at an entry level job and struggled to pay my portion of rent and food costs.  I rarely went shopping and avoided retail stores where I would be tempted to buy things on sale. 

Our Dad had instilled the importance of putting at least 10% of our earnings into savings.  Where was my money going?  How could I possibly do that?

I decided to put down on paper all the things I purchased in a month, no matter how miner or small. I was shocked to discover my lack of money came from all those little ticket items: a new lipstick, a quick cheap meal out at lunchtime, an inexpensive scarf, etc. This was the spending that kept me broke. 

When I put in place new habits around spending, I was again surprised when I was able to save over a $1,000 in a year’s time while still paying my share of the bills and even getting some new clothes from time to time. Back then, that was a lot of money.

Yes We Can

There are many organizations that can help us with financial planning and budgeting if we are having trouble.  The Dave Ramsey program has been very successful in teaching people how to spend wisely and prudently and accumulate wealth in the process.

But you can do this on your own if you are willing to take the time.  Getting higher incomes and better paying jobs does not automatically guarantee you will get out of debt.  Studies show we simply increase our spending in relation to what we earn. In fact, you will be able to accumulate more money by establishing prudent spending/budget/saving habits.

Time management, financial management, self-regulation and self-discipline can be the greatest gifts you give yourself.  Yes you can.  Just say No to impulses. And Yes to meaningful long term goals.

Marlene Anderson

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To Receive a Free Consultation for putting together a Personal Plan of Action for yourself,  fill out the contact form beside this blog or send me an e-mail.  I am also available for speaking engagements, retreats or teaching workshops for your church, clubs or women’s groups on a variety of topics that affect our lives.

“How was your day?”

It is a question we need to ask ourselves at the end of the day regardless if we work from a home office, are a stay-at-home Mom, or commute to a job away from home.

Are you exhausted, worn out and ready to collapse at the end of the day?

If your job leaves you drained of energy, coming home each day to a chaotic environment, dishes in the sink, clothes and toys scattered all over, chores left undone, is not what you want to have to face. It’s hard to relax when everything around you is a mess.

Time management is your tool.  It will be effective only as it fits your wants, needs and goals.

What can a time management plan do for you?

It can put in place routines, schedules and to do lists that give you overall control over each day’s tasks and duties.  A time management plan can reduce stress, indecision, and create habits that work for you and not against you. Included in that plan is establishing specific times for relaxation and enjoyment with your family or the people you love.

Replacing one habit with another 

Before you put any plan of action to work, you need to know what you are currently doing.  What habits already in place are not working? What keeps them in place? What needs to happen to replace those not working?  Consider the following examples of every day living that can make your life easier instead of harder.

• Having clothes washed and ready to wear when you want them
• Keeping the kitchen free from dirty dishes making it easier to prepare meals when you want
• Making supply lists and regularly selecting a time to purchase groceries on a regular basis
• Sitting down together as a family for meals
• Designated times for work and free time with family, spouses or friends
• Morning and bedtime routines that allow for minimum stress and frustration
• Developing sleep habits that insure maximum sleep advantage
• Planning and completing long term tasks such as thorough house cleaning, car maintenance, etc.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, to change course requires both a conscious and deliberate decision followed by some kind of action.  It takes both to change to a new direction.  Habits based on what you feel like in the moment will lead you on a downward spiral of exhaustion, frustration and depression.

How do you spend your day?

Most of us assume we know exactly what we do every day – how we spend our time.  When we are asked to keep a log for a week, however, we are often surprised at how much time is wasted or used inefficiently.

Keeping a log is a gift to yourself. It is time well spent.

Keep a daily log for a week, from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night to discover how you really spend your time.

Take a piece of paper with lines for the times of day, from when you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night. Then for a week, each day jot down what you do at these times. Don’t make any changes or any judgments.  Just record.  Be as honest as you can.  You are doing this for you – not anybody else. The following questions in each section can help as you record and evaluate at the end of the process.

Let’s Start

1.  Morning Routines

When do you get up?  How long does it take to get ready for work?  If you have children, how long does it take them to get dressed, eat, and leave for school? Put down commute times to and from work. At the end of the week, you will see routines that have helped and those that haven’t.

2.    During the Day

If you work outside the home your time will be dictated pretty much by your job.  You have a choice as to how you spend your lunchtime.  Simple chores can be done during such times if you choose such as writing thank you cards, etc. If you work at a home office, do you start work at a designated time each day? Do you take breaks and time for lunch? If retired, it may be more difficult to remain motivated without a schedule in place. What are you missing at this time of life by not having a schedule? What could your retirement look life if you did? What opportunities are you missing?

3.    Evening Routines

Who makes meals, is in charge of preparation and clean up?  Are chores shared by all members of the family or does the responsibility fall on one person? Do you eat together as a family and how does different meal times create extra stress and work?  Is there a consistent school homework schedule for children as well as play time?

Is there a time when family members can come together to enjoy one another? Is there a bedtime routine that is followed fairly consistent? Does your current schedule make it more difficult to get to sleep and get a full night’s rest sleep?

4.    Weekend Schedules

If working full time, is there time designated on weekends for cleaning, vacuuming, and other ongoing home tasks?  If you work out of your home, as I do, I can complete tasks throughout the day as I schedule ten or fifteen minutes away from my desk making it easier to complete larger tasks at a time I choose. Knowing what needs to be done to make the home run smoothly ahead of time, gives you the option of perhaps doing some laundry or house cleaning during the week allowing more free time on weekends.

 Patterns

At the end of your week, review your time and habits.  Do you see patterns of behavior that are ineffective? How could you change them so they work for you? How could some tweaking make it better. What benefits are you receiving in the short term that costs you more in the long term.  It might feel okay to leave dishes until the morning because you just don’t feel like doing them.  But the cost will involve doing double duty the next day.  Only you can determine both the short term and long term benefits for how you direct your day.

Remember, whatever you do, you are doing it for you and your family.  However you set up your routines is up to you.  Each family and circumstances will be different.

This isn’t a “see how much I can accomplish” mission.  It is about finding out if you are satisfied with things as they are, or if you want to improve your options by replacing old habits.

Marlene Anderson

If you enjoyed this blog post, share with your friends.

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To Receive a Free Consultation for putting together a Personal Plan of Action for yourself,  fill out the contact form beside this blog or send me an e-mail.  I am also available for speaking engagements, retreats or teaching workshops for your church, clubs or women’s groups on a variety of topics that affect our lives.