We must never forget
We must never forget those who were lost.
We must never forget those who are still fighting.
And we must never forget how precious life is.
Photo by Obese Seagull Productions
Change the way you see
“What you see is what you get.”
This saying is usually used in a negative sense but when you think about in a different way, at a more positive angle; it turns into something very powerful.
Read it again:
“What you see is what you get.”
“What is so great about that,” you may be asking. Well it’s telling you that the way you perceive something is the reality that you experience.
For instance; say you’re living in poverty. There’s two ways to look at the situation. 1. It’s a living hell. 2. It’s a test of my strength and perseverance.
If you think of it as a living hell, it’s going to turn into such. All you’re going to do is focus on the negative aspects of everything in your life.
Now if you see your poverty as a test of you, then you’re going to find even the toughest of situations positive because they’re teaching you priceless lessons.
“What you see is what you get” can morph into a positive and life changing saying.
You see positive, you get positive.
You see negative, you get negative.
To help you change the way you see your life experiences, here are a few tips:
- Revisit old memories of tough times and focus on the positives you are able to see now that you couldn’t see then.
- Realize it’s not going to be second nature to look at every difficult circumstance in positive light. It’s going to take a lot of time and work.
- Ask yourself questions:
- How am I benefiting from this?
- Will it even matter 2 weeks from now? One month? Six? A year from now?
- Think of those who have it worse. There’s always someone else living through harder times.
Do you remember any experiences that you thought were negative at first but then you changed the way you looked at the situation and realized you benefited greatly from it? Please share in the comments below. We’d love to hear your story.
Photo by DownTown Pictures
“Makes Me Think” will make you think and more
Everyone has a story; some more compelling than others. Unfortunately millions of these stories go untold. However, thanks to a new site called MakesMeThink.com people have to ability to share their own amazing stories from life and read others.
Makes Me Think was founded by husband and wife team Marc and Angel. According to their about page MMT is; “…an online community where people share daily life stories that provoke deep thought and inspire positive change.”
They go on to explain their motivation for creating Makes Me Think; “Sometimes the most random everyday encounters force us to stop and rethink the truths and perceptions we have ingrained in our minds. These encounters are educationally priceless. They spawn moments of deep thought and self-reflection that challenge the status quo and help us evolve as sensible individuals.”
I personally can’t get enough of MMT. I check it at least once in the morning and once at night. When reading through the various stories, I find myself not only thinking, but going through a whole range of emotions from happiness to sadness to amazement.
Some of my favorite stories so far are:
“Today, I visited my grandpa at his retirement home. At 87, he always seems so happy. This morning I asked him, “How come I never hear you complain about your age like everyone else here?” He replied, “I have no complaints about growing old. Many folks are not fortunate enough to have the opportunity.” MMT” – by Seven
“Today, while I was driving my grandfather to his doctor’s appointment, I complained about hitting 2 red lights in a row. My grandfather chuckled and said, “You always complain about the red lights, but you never celebrate the green ones.” MMT” – by bange
“Today, I waited on an elderly woman at the local restaurant where I work. She left me a $90 tip on a $10 tab with a handwritten note that said, “I’m 86 and I can’t take this money with me. So please spoil yourself with it.” MMT” – Drew
“Today, my father told me, “Just go for it and give it a try! You don’t have to be a professional to build a successful product. Amateurs started Google and Apple. Professionals built the Titanic.” MMT” – by McGong
“Today, my company employs 130 intelligent individuals and turns a net profit of nearly $500K a year. I started this company 10 years ago after I was laid off by IBM. If they hadn’t laid me off, I might still be working in a cubicle at IBM today. MMT” – by Bill
“Today, I learned that not everything people say behind your back is bad. Actually, some of the nicest things that have ever been said about me were never mentioned to me directly. MMT” – by Dan
I highly urge you check out Makes Me Think and bookmark it.
Photo by Amable Odiable
5 Reasons to Grow Your Own Food (and why it’s not too late to begin now!)
This is a guest post.
With the end of summer approaching, many people think that they have missed the opportunity to grow some of their own food. Actually, this is the perfect time if you’re just starting out because it’s unlikely that you’ll get too ambitious and find the experience too time-consuming or physically hard.
There are many varieties of vegetables that can be grown in small, quickly prepared raised beds. Spinach, broccoli, carrots, arugula and artichokes all do well when planted late in the season. And indoor windowsill gardens provide basil, parsley and many other herbs; giving soups and roasts wonderful flavors that can also help reduce the emotional impact of a cold and gray of winter.
Keeping a small vegetable garden or fruit orchard was once very common. My grandparent’s yard still contains apple, pear and plum trees and a vegetable plot that produces well into autumn.
With the modernization of the 20th Century also came a decline in the family garden and the ensuing rise of the commercial food industry brought the degradation of quality in the flavor and nutrition of the food we consume. In recent years however, the increasing environmental consciousness is influencing a new interest in the small produce plot.
Here are 5 reasons why you might consider starting your own kitchen garden.
- Freshness
Fruit and vegetables taste better and are healthier if eaten as soon as possible after picking. Most fruit you buy from the store is picked well before it is properly ripe (to extend the shelf life) and this has a negative impact on flavor and the nutritional density. Growing your own provides the taste of the freshest possible produce as well as giving you more nourishment.
- Quality
Commercially grown crops are often selected for their high yields, uniform appearance and long shelf lives rather than for quality and taste. When you grow your own, you can concentrate on the quality rather than the economics.
- Price
Much of the supermarket produce is overpriced because of the cost of transporting it from distant commercial farms. Growing your own from seed is inexpensive and even growing from small plants you buy as starters is likely to provide you better food at a lower cost. With many plants, you can use the seed from one growing season to provide plants for the next – a self sustaining cycle that will cost you only time and effort to keep going.
- Origin
Many people have reasonable concerns about how their food is produced; with chemical pesticides, fungicides and Genetically Modified seeds a particular worry. With your own vegetable patch, you know exactly where your food is from and how it was grown.
- Variety
There are literally thousands of different varieties of fruit and vegetables, but most grocery stores tend to concentrate on only the most profitable to sell. This means that the consumer’s choice is often limited to a few select varieties of apple, for example, rather than the hundreds of traditional kinds that exist. Growing your own lets you pick the varieties you like the most, and experiment to find new ones you’ll rarely find in the store.
And one additional benefit; gardening is a natural stress reducer.
If your lifestyle is busy with work and family commitments, you might not think you have the time to devote to this new pursuit.
But starting small with a few herb plants on your windowsill, or even a single tomato plant, will give you an opportunity to detach yourself from the stressors of the modern lifestyle and experience the rewards of harvesting your own high-quality food.
Written by Patrick Welch
Patrick is a Peak Health Coach who provides nutrition, exercise and stress control programs to his clients with both in-person sessions and remote coaching online.
More information can be found at www.allproactive.com.
Article photo by adactio
Do What You Can – and Keep Smiling
This is a guest post.
When a disease kills a number of your family members, and threatens your life and the lives of others you love, the disease is asking you a question: What are you going to do about me?
Many possible answers present themselves:
(1) Try to enjoy your life without thinking about the disease, and hope it doesn’t kill you or anyone else.
(2) Become obsessed with the disease, letting its looming threat drain your joy.
(3) Keep your mouth shut, hoping that your silence can prevent people from feeling sorry for you / worrying for you / declining to hire you / declining to date you.
(4) Fight back, without losing your smile and sense of humor.
At 19 I learned that in addition to height and an interest in reading, I had also inherited polycystic kidney disease from my father. Cysts, or pockets of fluid, grow on and throughout both kidneys of people with PKD, often causing high blood pressure, aneurysms and renal failure by the mid-40s or early 50s.
My grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all dropped dead of heart attacks in their mid-40s. (My father had died at 42, though not of PKD; he drowned.) I am now 41. For many years I tried not to think about PKD. I definitely didn’t talk about it. I hoped that science would advance in time to save me and my siblings.
Then my first cousin died at 35. A great guy, Mike was just five months older than I was. We had grown up together. PKD gave him high blood pressure and an aneurysm, and when he died he left two young children and many other shocked relatives behind. I decided I couldn’t wait for science: I had to give science a hand. I wanted to help fund the research that would cure PKD, saving not just me, but two of my siblings, my cousin, their kids, and the other 600,000 Americans — one in every 500 people you see — who have PKD.
Doing this makes me feel good. I’m glad to know that my small contribution is much better than nothing. It lightens my burden to meet others who are also fighting PKD. And raising money to fight PKD has also taught me interesting things about people I wouldn’t otherwise have learned. Some close friends whose help I expected have given nothing, while many people I knew much less well have given a great deal, blowing me away with their generosity. I’ve heard similar things from other fundraisers. People are funny.
If you’d like to help, too, please check out my music video at www.kennythekidney.com.
If it makes you smile at least once, please pass it on to a friend or two.
And if you can afford it, please click the “Donate” button and donate $5 or more to help cure PKD. (Sadly, donations under $5 cost more to process than they’re worth.) If you enter your middle name as “Lyved,” I’ll be able to tell Andrew that you heard about me on his site — and that’ll make Andrew feel good, too.
Thank you!
Best,
Kenny the Kidney
