Month: January 2017

Sometimes you just need to GIVE-UP and QUIT

For Christmas I was given the opportunity to own a pair of “Designed by me” Oakley Sunglasses.  I was so excited. I designed them to be maize and blue… just like my favorite football team, U of M.

I love how they look and now I would own a pair absolutely free, or were they?

You see, I have to wear glasses full- time.  I need them for distance and I need them to read close up, so this is where the dilemma started.

 

 

How hard can it be to wear contacts?

My husband was encouraging but also said things like “how are you going to put in a contact? You can’t even put drops in your eyes.”

I was determined.  I called and made an appointment for 2 hours later.

I am excited but also nervous.

I get through the appointment and the Doctor is saying things like “we will try, this first.  If this does not work then we will try another route.” Basically he was saying because I have astigmatism in one eye and I wear bifocals, and I need glasses for distance, that we would be in a trial and error stage.

I sit down and watch the cartoon video on the do’s and don’ts of contact wearing and care.

The video finishes, I wash my hands and now the fun begins.  I need to put in and take out my new contacts.

It takes a while, I get frustrated go figure… I am the one who cooks on HI so that it’ll get done faster, forgetting the fact it also burns and does not cook evenly.  I breathe, pray, and finally the contacts are in.

The doctor looks at them, I can see at about 8 feet away, in a small confined room and I can see up close, not great, but I can see.  I keep telling myself that I just need to get used to them.

I leave the office, walk out to the car and we start driving… oh this is not good, everything is blurry.  I just need to get used to them, I keep telling myself.

Friday is a snowstorm so we are in all day, and Saturday I have to sit for a couple of hours through a training.  I am so excited, I get to wear my new sunglasses. Wait a minute, I can’t read the street signs.  Whats going on?  I get to the training and I can’t read the HUGE powerpoint screen… I am talking a screen that you see in a Mission Control room, oh wait, it was in a state of the art command center, and I can’t read the powerpoint. I’ll spare you the details of trying to take them out (it took like 15 minutes).

Monday, comes and I call the doctor they can see me at 2pm.

“Ok, so that is not going to work”, he says.  Lets try these.  I put them in and take them right back out. NOPE.

“Ok so lets try this brand and now your left eye is for up close and your right eye is for distance.”

I said, you think my brain is going to like this?

The doctor said, people do it all the time.

OK, I was saying in my head, you are the doctor.

All the way home I had one hand partially over my right eye, just so I didn’t get sick trying to drive.  I was willing to try this for 48 hours and see if my brain would rewire my eyes so that it would work, because the last resort were contacts for distance only and keep readers with me at all times.

About 5pm, I decided to take out my contacts.  NOPE, not happening.  I tried. I cried. I prayed. I made a pact with God. I was so desperate, that I had my husband even try to get the contacts out.

At 6:30,  my husband and I were driving to the doctor’s office to get my contacts out of my eyes.

This morning as I was getting ready, I started dreading, not the putting in my contacts, but tonight the taking them out.

As I started to get my contacts out of their case, I heard God saying “you said, if I got them out, you would not put them back in.”

I immediately started thinking that I was a failure if I did not put those contacts in and that I let them win.

My word this year is “OVERCOMER” and I felt that if I gave up I was not overcoming.

I realized though, that I was being held hostage by a lie.

The lie was that if I quit, I was a quitter, I was a loser. I would some how be less than.

No, I needed to realize what truth was.

For me why would I continue to put contacts in my eyes, just so I could wear a really cool pair of sunglasses? The contacts, in reality were doing more to frustrate me, they were causing me headaches and according to the Doctor my prescription would never be exactly correct?

So my aha moment came over a pair of sunglasses, and contacts; what is it that you need to walk away from because it’s not healthy but because you are afraid of being labeled a quitter, a loser or thinking you will be thought less than; you continue with that unhealthy choice?

 

 

 

It starts with a THOUGHT

We have entered week 2 of the New Year and most people have either already given up on or at least cheated on their New Years Resolution /Goal.

If you are one of those people, I want you to ask yourself why?

I know my why?  Because the Blue Cheese on the Black and Blue Burger just looked too good.

My thought pattern was this: “I’ll remove most of it.  It will only be a little on each bite.”

By the time I was done, just like the nurse who was sitting across from me said… “if you are allergic, you will have a response within 15 minutes,” I was coughing.

Right then and there, I decided for me that I have a new expectation for 2017. I want to see how long I can go without a breathing treatment for my reactive airway.  It is something I can control with diet, but I have to be willing to follow through, and I am allergic to dairy, but not like a peanut allergy, so I have always felt I could cheat. (See prior blogs: I didn’t cheat that much part one and part two )

I believe if more people would stop talking about New Years Resolutions and Goals and start asking this question: What is my new expectation for myself when it comes to: _________________________________________________, we would actually accomplish things through out the year. 

When I teach on goals we talk about the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. In this book he uses the metaphor of a bus and having the right people on the bus in the right seats.  Well for our analogy, we first say you need to slam on the brakes, open the door and throw off anyone and everyone who is not helping you to become the best person you can become.

You know those are the people who are belittling you, talking about you behind your back, always making excuses for themselves and you.  There is also another group of people that  you need to throw off your bus, they are those who can’t even see themselves becoming successful.  If they can’t see themselves as successful, how are they going to help you become successful?

Now that you have thrown everyone off… pull up to the next stop and let on only a couple of people.  Here is a mistake that people make;  You do NOT need 15 people talking to you.  You need to pick a few people that see in you what you want to accomplish and ask them to hold you accountable.

Here is the next hurdle you have to jump over: YOU!!!!

You need to be willing to hear the hard words of someone who can see the end result you have laid out in a vision, when they tell you to slow down, turn left, go straight or STOP!

 

This commercial is from GE that Ideas are scary.  As I watched this video, I quickly saw it as a learning tool for people who don’t have the right people in their lives, equipping and empowering them to succeed.

Take time to watch this video and ask yourself who is it in my life that I still need to throw off my bus?  What new expectation (IDEA) do I have that I want to go after, even though it is scary?

Who are the right people to be on my bus that will EQUIP and EMPOWER me to go after my new expectation, my IDEA?

 

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Craigslist: Father for sale

  Supposedly this ad was on Craigslist, which made its way to Facebook. As I read this ad, I did the little nervous giggle, you know the one that says, “oh, I can’t believe they said that.”  I then felt compelled to write this blog because in reality these are the very children that your children play with every day, or even played with years ago. You may even be friends with the family and it won’t be until years later when some big event happens that you will say: “I would have never known.” or “Where was I, I thought we were friends?”

 

We cannot turn back the hands on the clock to magically start over when we were born. Nor can we start over yesterday. But what we can do, is decide tomorrow how we will live.  

Now that the venom has been spewed, I am not sure that this person feels much better today, because the challenge is that even though we wrote out our anger, we  are still US and the events of our past, including words spoken over us, will affect our tomorrow.

 We have a choice though, will your tomorrow, have positive or negative actions?

I am sorry this is how this father is.  That is his temperament, that is his choice. Unfortunately though this is probably one of those ads where many will say “oh, I didn’t know your dad and mine were related.” 

We have a choice though, will we allow him and his actions to affect us and the rest of our lives?  The answer usually is YES, becuase we never see that there is another way. We say we will never grow up to be just like so and so, but the reality is we end up becoming just like so and so.  

To the person who wrote this ad or to the person who would like to have written this ad, you have to understand that yes all that has been said, all the letdowns, all the sorry’s that were never said or that were said and not meant, are a part of your life.

They happened and we cannot change that.  But tomorrow is a new day, you have a choice: do you allow all this to dictate the REST of your life in a positive or a negative fashion.  

More times than not, we allow all of this to accumulate and we are a freight-train that has lost control but we just don’t know it yet. That is a cycle called letting life happen.  This cycle gets it start when we continue to hear words like “You’re not good enough”. “You’ll never be pretty enough or skinny enough.” “You are going to be just like so and so.” “You’re a good for nothing, $%&ch.”

Whatever those words are or sayings are that you hear or heard, they become part of you.  They unfortunately become part of your expectation in life. Then it goes down hill real fast when you couple that with low self-esteem, and if you are a female, then you can find yourself in relationships that are toxic or dysfunctional in themselves. 

We have bought the lie that sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me. 

Words impact us much longer than a broken arm or leg. Words are associated with times a day, years or even seasons. We can be many miles away or the person may have even passed on, but that word… that smell… that vehicle…. that mannerism…. can all trigger in our subconscious a memory and before we know it… we are angry…. we are hurt…. we are in that event that caused us so much pain. All those nasty emotions that you thought you had forgotten, come back up with a vengeance. You lash out at whoever is nearby.  

So how do we change this and how do we make life happen for us?  First thing is to forgive.

Forgiveness is to cease to have resentment against. To pardon an offense or an offender.  

I am not saying you have to become best buds and start hanging out.  What I am saying though, is that this forgiveness is more about you, the person becoming whole and allowing yourself the freedom to be free from all the expectations that this person had placed on you by the words they spoke to and over you. 

If you are ready to try the forgiveness thing, here is a conversation that needs to be had by you to God. 

God, I am so tired of these feelings.  I am so tired of feeling like this.  Daddy, please I ask that you will allow me to lay this person and (name all the offenses) at Your feet.  I am so tired of carrying around this aggression.  I want to be freed from the bondage that this person (name here) still has over me.  Daddy, free me today from this anger. May I forgive (name of person) and if I ever start to think about this event again or these offenses, may I be reminded that You Daddy love me so and You gave me (insert whatever place, thing like a butterfly, a deer, a bunny… etc, that you see that God has used to remind you that He loves you more) to remind me that You are so much bigger than (this offense) and that I will live today basking in Your love instead of the dread of the burden. 

Now redo that prayer and put your name in there as the person to forgive.  You need to forgive yourself in order to start healing from your past. 

Now that you have worked through that, and it may take you multiple times of working through that, now is the time to ask yourself:  

What do I want for me?

Who do I want to be?

What expectation do I want to live up to?

 

After you have asked those questions to yourself for yourself… what ACTION steps do you need to take?

1)____________________________________________

2)____________________________________________

3)____________________________________________

Now that you have your action steps what EVENTS do you see happening from those ACTIONS? 

To the one who wrote that ad for real or to the one who just wrote it in your head,  are you still living by those expectations that were laid out for you by an authority figure? The expectations that created an angry person who doesn’t know who she or he is anymore because they have fallen into the trap of “this is all my life has to offer, so why try?” 

Don’t allow satan to keep you there.  You are worth so much more…. believe me, I know… because I could have written that ad years ago, from a very angry teenager.