Day: July 30, 2018

#UpbeatAuthors: Optimism & Happiness

“Positive thinking gives us the power to achieve our goals.”

I am a firm believer in goals. I also believe in optimism.

Optimism is considered to be a key ingredient to happiness, well-being, and satisfaction. Happier people have been found to be much more successful and leading more fulfilling lives.

Happiness doesn’t mean wild elation. Wild elation is exhausting. Content works. My goal is to be content. It’s not about reshaping the world around you; it’s about making a decision, an effort at times, to be optimistic.

Yes, life can suck. It frequently does. That doesn’t mean a person has to wallow in it.

 

Overcoming Fear

Fear can be paralyzing.  Keep you up at night. Be the root cause of illnesses.

Some of my favorite ways of dealing with fear include:

  • Reminding myself I have no control over anything except my emotions and reactions to situations.
  • Journaling–writing out my thoughts about anything has always been a way for me to understand exactly what is going on in my head.
  • Breathing–sometimes a person needs to take a break from everything going on in her head and breathe. Don’t think about anything else except the breathing. This is actually very calming.
  • Count your blessings. I know this sounds hokey, but remembering all the things one has to be grateful for can improve one’s state of mind.

Here’s a list of other suggestions.

 

 

August Is Romance Awareness Month

I am a romance author. I believe in the power of love. I’m glad I write in a genre that generates hope.

I went on Pinterest to look for ideas about how to be romantic so I could include them in this blog. Oh boy.

OK. Pinterest is a female thing. I’m going to just keep reminding myself of that. Because otherwise my head would probably explode. “Why,” you ask?  Because everything I found was what a woman can do for her husband. How she can support him. How she can take care of him and show him her appreciation.

You know what? WOMEN NEED APPRECIATION TOO.

The few pins I tracked down focusing on women were about sex.

Maybe romance, like Pinterest, is a female thing. That’s too bad.

But my findings got me to thinking:

  • my husband always used to open the car door for me (remote locks and lugging babies into car seats put an end to that)
  • he would peel an orange and offer me pieces (I can’t peel oranges. I have never been able to peel an orange. )
  • He has never expected me to have dinner on the table every night. (He does expect there to be food in the house and that I will ensure that happens now that we are empty nesters.)
  • When the children were very young, he installed a remote operated light in our back entry so I could use the garage door opener to turn it on when I got home with the children every night.

You might not consider those things to be romantic, but they are all his way of taking care of me. And that’s romantic.