Tag: courage

2019 has been…

A great year!  I have so many things to be grateful for this year.  Has it been hard at times?  Yes of course.  But I feel so incredibly blessed to have lived this life for another year.  You know, I AM getting up there, haha.  The 50’s haven’t exactly been my favorites.  But I am working on having a better attitude about them :).

So I know it’s only been a few months since I started writing daily but I feel like the holidays are so important for all of us to be spending time with our friends and families.  So I will be taking the next few weeks off of writing to spend building those relationships.  I may possibly write one or two in between (just have to see how it goes), but that is the plan.

I am so appreciative of those that follow me and those that read what I have to say.  I am humbled by those of you who have shared with me your feelings, experiences, emails, comments, and love this past year.

My health journey is on going and something that I will continue to progress through.  I am determined to be able to continue on a good healthy path and hope that I can help any of you along the way who might be struggling.

Mental illness is no joke!  It’s can be debilitating and life threatening.  If you or someone you know suffers with any type of mental illness, please, please, please seek help or help them get the help they need.  It’s out there and it can make your life livable and breathable again.  Please don’t suffer in silence. Make it your goal in 2020 (a new decade!), to get your life back!  Make it your goal to get healthy and happy, make it your goal to not just survive but to thrive!  And above all, have joy!

I love you all.  Merry Christmas!

XO Wendy

Learning to Love yourself

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I recently went to lunch with friends and we got talking about how hard we are on ourselves.  How we constantly beat ourselves up for every little thing that we do wrong.  And yet if our children or friends were to fall, or fail at something, we are the first to come to the rescue to pick them up, console them and to build them back up.

Why is it that we are so hard ourselves? Especially us women (men too but not to the extremes we see in women)?

It’s funny because sometimes I run across the same message in several different ways when I am trying to decide what to share.  And that’s when I know that it is one that the Lord wants me to share.  Today this message seemed to be everywhere.  I listened to a podcast this morning that talked about how to give grace to ourselves for all of the short falls that we might have or mistakes we may have made in the past.  To learn to live in our feelings of not being perfect, that it’s ok, expected and normal NOT to be perfect.

When I returned from lunch and checked on social media I found this message from our Prophet, Russel M. Nelson.

Ladies (and guys), The Lord loves us and we should love us too. After all we are created in his image.

Think about how awful it makes you feel when your child is down on themselves. When they are saying how stupid they are and what a mess of things they’ve made, or how ugly they are.  It breaks your heart and all you want to do is take all that pain that they are feeling away.  So think how our Heavenly Father (and mother) feel when we are constantly filling our own minds with negative self talk and self loathing.  It must break their hearts and fill their eyes with tears.

Gratefully, this is not something we have to figure out on our own.  As in the statement above we can ask our Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ and He will let us know exactly how he feels about us.  And that should make a difference in how we feel about ourselves.  If given the opportunity, I’m sure they would wrap their spirit around us in a big hug of comfort, peace and love. Can you even imagine the great love they have for us?

Oh my dear sisters, (for thats what I believe we all are), if only you could see yourself the way God sees you!  What would change in your life if you knew, really knew, how special you are?

One of my friends shared this idea for a practice that we could start that may help and I thought it was such a good idea.  I think I will get a new pretty journal just for this! 😉

So the idea is to learn to love yourself and recognize all that you do and are that is good.  So every night, you will write down 3 things that you liked about yourself that day.  Then in the morning when you wake up, you read over those three things again.  Then that night you repeat the process with 3 more things (different things) that you liked about yourself that day.  And then the next morning you read over again the things from the night before.  You continue this process daily.  As the days progress you will learn to love yourself and all that you are.  You will begin to see in yourself all of the good that everyone else and especially the Lord sees. You will remember who you are and your life will be changed!

I see you my dear sisters.  I see you.  And you are more beautiful and loved than you can imagine!

XO Wendy

Consistency is Key

Ok So yesterday we talked about making changes and just taking one step in a positive direction. How’d you do? Hopefully it lit a fire under you to make a change that will move you closer to who you want to be. And now how do you make that happen? How do you become what or who you want to be? CONSISTENCY is the Key!
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Guys, I’m not kidding when I talk about this. It’s a critical part of the decision that you just made to make a change. Now, your challenge is going to be that you stay consistent in your goal. Meaning you work on it every day. Every day. Every day! What does that look like?

It looks like filling your life and your mind with the things that support the step forward that you have taken or the change that you are instituting.

When I was a young mom and my children all started school. I decided that I wanted to do something or make a change that would help me kind of find my identity as a woman again. Not something completely selfish but something where I could improve myself and help others along the way.

I had a friend that had encouraged me to get into pageantry. Run for a MRS. title. And so after brooding about it and feeling stuck and telling myself all kinds of reasons why I couldn’t do it. I finally decided to make a move forward. Just do it. I made that decision and then I moved! And you know what? It was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to see so many positive changes in myself and others, because we had a “platform” which was something that we believed strongly about and wanted to make a difference with. I chose mentoring and worked with Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America. I got to see changes in myself, but more importantly, I got to see other’s lives change through me. I didn’t win the title that first year, but because I worked hard and I was super consistent, I placed first runner up. So of course I knew that I would do it again the next year because naturally I wanted to win. 😉

But in order to do that, I had to continue to be consistent. I didn’t just stop working after that first pageant (in the off season). I didn’t procrastinate until it came closer to that next pageant. I worked my tail off. Physically, mentally and spiritually and also with the children that I worked with (including my own family), so that I would be able to present my best self.

And it totally paid off! I won the title of Mrs. Utah in 2001. I reached that goal, and it felt so good to know that I had really made some positive changes in the lives of those around me, my family, my relationships and especially in myself. But a big thing that I learned through that experience is that it wasn’t the end goal that mattered most. It was the things that I learned on journey by being consistent and working hard!

Now that’s a story that I don’t share a lot about because since that time there have been a lot of other changes in my life that have become incredible moments for me. But it was a defining moment for me because I realized I could do hard things! And I could reach big goals! But I had to be consistent in working towards those goals. And so can you!

Take the choice you made for change and make consistent steps toward that change everyday. Everyday. Everyday!

XO

 

Are you a hope maker or taker?

Have you ever had someone take your hope away simply by their words?  Have you ever been filled with despair because someone said something about you, or to you that was completely defeating?  Yeah, me too.  Words are very powerful! We can go from completely elated to simply defeated in the time it takes to say, “you can’t”, “you will never” or “that’s impossible for you”.

And even more important, is the way we talk to ourselves.  “It’s hopeless”,  I’m so stupid”, “I will never be….”, and my favorite, “I can’t…”  Why is it so easy for us to use words in such a negative way, especially to ourselves?  Well, I haven’t completely figured out the answer to that question.  But what I do know is that I have had my share of negative words thrown my way, spoken behind my back by others. As well as given to me through my own negative self-talk.  And I am positive that I am not so much different than anybody else.

So today I wanted to offer you some encouragement through the words of someone who had every right to lose hope, but somehow found it. This is well worth the 15 minutes out of your day to watch Nick Vujicic

Please use positive self talk and practice self love. Look for hope.  Find it. And live it!

XO Wendy

Power of Hope

There are many days that I have struggled to understand the reason that I have had to deal with having bipolar.  It’s not easy to find hope when you are full of despair.  My whole life I’ve been through the ups and downs of it. I could go months and months with no signs of it and then all of sudden it was there like a cloudy, gloomy day.  Some days are wonderful, and other days I wondered if I’d make it through.

But good news!  I did.  And maybe one of the reasons that I’ve had to go through this is so that you can see that you can too!  I know that we are here to help make another’s burden light.

So how did I find hope? Well one truth that I can point to is that I knew that there was a reason for me to be here, to be alive.  I know that part of that came from my upbringing and knowing that there is a God and that He loves me.  But another part came from deep inside, just feeling that there was something more to all of this. Somehow I had hope.

Deiter F, Uchtdorf once said  “Hope has the power to fill our lives with happiness.  It’s absence– can make the heart sick.

Despair drains from us all that is vibrant and joyful and leaves behind the empty remnants of what life was meant to be, despair can seem like a staircase that leads only and forever downward.

Hope on the other hand, is like a beam of sunlight rising up and above the horizon of our present circumstances.  It pierces the darkness with a brilliant dawn.  It encourages and inspires us to place our trust in the loving care of an eternal Heavenly Father who has prepared a way for those who seek for eternal truth.”

The rest of that talk can be found here.

I love the vision of a beam of sunlight.  I can just picture it coming through the clouds and shining brightly and warmly on my soul. Giving me hope for a brighter day.

Today, let’s look outside of ourselves.  Let’s look for a way that we can make another’s burden a little lighter.  Just look around you, there are people everywhere that have hard things that they are dealing with and it doesn’t take much to give them some hope.  Remember that maybe you were given this mountain to show others that it can moved!  Pray and ask God who it is that needs your help today, and I promise he will show you.  And remember it only takes a tiny bit of hope to keep you from falling into despair.  Today choose to have hope.

XO Wendy