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Please Don’t Give Up. Here Are Some Reasons to Keep Moving Forward

This year has felt heavy to me, and I feel guilty saying that because there have been many blessings this year, but I have struggled to stay motivated and positive in more than one area. Have you felt that way or has this been a successful year for you when you were highly motivated to achieve great things? I am so happy for you if you answered yes, but if you had a few low spots like I did, I would like to offer a few reasons why I hope you never give up on the things you love to do.

  • Success can take time. When it feels like nothing is changing you might be surprised to know how much you are learning and growing.
  • Giving up means you are closing doors that you might have been able to burst through with one more shove.
  • Instead of quitting, adjust. Do what you have been doing but do it differently. Experiment to find out what will bring you success. Running has been my therapy my whole life, but as I’m reaching the end of my sixth decade, my knees have started to be cranky. I cannot run every day or run ten miles straight. I was frustrated several months ago and I stopped running. Last week I realized there was another solution. Instead of stopping, I would adjust my routine. I run 2 miles and walk the rest then I walk the next day and then run. So far it is working great.
  • Not giving up builds resilience and mental strength.
  • Quitting never feels good but pushing forward makes you feel powerful.
  • Even though you might not realize it, there are people who count on you to be you.
  • You never know when a blessing or even a failure could change everything for the better.
  • Your words, your kindness, and your actions could save someone’s life.
  • If your journey didn’t have some walls to break down, you wouldn’t learn some valuable lessons.
  • What if you can be the change maker in someone’s life?

There are so many reasons to keep pushing forward even when you are tired and you feel like life has left you battered and bruised. Something wonderful might be about to happen.

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8 Ways to make it through the day when you don’t want to

It’s one of those days when you want to pull the covers over your head and stay hidden in your warm cocoon of blankets. Once you pull yourself out of bed you sit at the counter with your cup of coffee in your hands and dread the interactions to come.

Would it surprise you to know that even the most positive, upbeat people have those days when everything feels heavy? The secret to making it through when you want to tap out is that you need to have your mental weapons ready. Here are a few ideas to try to boost your mood and motivation.

· Put on your favorite music depending on your mood. If I’m feeling down, I want to hear something soothing, if I am not motivated, I need something I have to move to and I turn it up loud, If I’m angry, I play the best revenge songs. Music is cheap therapy. Sing along to the music as loud as you can and change the words if you want. I was singing a song yesterday and when I sang the chorus my husband started laughing and said, “Jen, those are not the words.” I have been singing the wrong words for years!

· Eat your favorite breakfast. On the bad days, nutritional value doesn’t count unless the days stretch into months. Eat a pop tart or some killer French toast. Good food can boost your mood.

· Remember you have power over your reactions. When my students walked into class in a bad mood, I would always remind them they had the power to turn their attitude around. You cannot always control what happens, but you can control how you react to it.

· Reach out to someone who makes you laugh. You cannot stay depressed for long when you are laughing.

· Share your feelings with those you trust. This year has been heavy for me, but I felt better when I shared those feelings and discovered there were others who felt the same way.

· Do something fun. If you are able, do activities you enjoy like reading or watching movies.

· Go to bed early. Sleep can be a great remedy. When we are sleep deprived everything seems worse.

· Seek professional help if needed. If you are struggling with your mental health, it may be time to ask for professional advice.

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How an attitude change reshaped my running

During most of my years of running I thought I had to run every day and the longer I could go the better I felt. Although I enjoyed swimming and biking, I didn’t feel as if I had exercised unless I had run, but as I have aged, I have had to adjust both my attitude and my running regimen.

Running has always been my therapy and my joy. I couldn’t imagine giving it up, but the excessive miles without some healthy rest and cross training started to cause issues in the form of injuries.

I had run a 5k before karate class and I jumped into intense sparring without stretching. I jumped back and landed strangely on my left leg and ripped through 3 layers of muscle in my calf. I was told to stay off of it for six weeks. When a runner is faced with time away from running it is hard not to think about all the hard work of training with the possibility of your fitness level slipping away. My husband told me the rest would be good for me while assuring me I would not lose my fitness level that fast, but all I could think about was how hard it was going to be to get back in shape, but then I thought, instead of giving up completely on cardio, why don’t I find a way to adapt and actually come back stronger?

Running is personal, so I’m sure everyone has a routine they enjoy, but what worked for me was to increase my strength training, stretching, and find cardio that would not impact my calf. I experimented with a variety of cross training and found if I was careful, I could do the bike on low resistance and the elliptical on a low level. As my calf healed, I increased the resistance on both.

That was only the beginning of the need for an attitude change and how that change would make me stronger. I tore my meniscus and was not able to run for around 7 months. I changed my thinking about racing when I was walking at the back of a 5k or doing an ultra. It isn’t where you are in a race or how fast you are going that matters. What matters is that you showed up.

The biggest attitude and routine adjustment has happened in the last few months. Both of my knees were very cranky when it came to running and I reached a point when I was in real pain. I didn’t want to quit running completely, so I started to experiment with a few things. First, I found my knees could handle running if I ran 2-3 miles every third day. I increased my stretching and did consistent weight training. I also did everything I could to strengthen the muscles around my knee. I do wall sits, step ups, lunges, and squats.

I have also had to make a mental adjustment as well. There are days designated for running when I would rather walk, but I tell myself to go out and run for ten minutes and see how I feel. Once I am out there, I’m glad to be running. Sometimes the hardest part is the first step out the door. I have been using some of the tricks I used when coaching cross country. When my motivation is low, I tell myself to run to a certain spot, and then I pick a spot beyond that.

As I’m aging there are a few things that help me to keep running. I have a massage regularly, I use the roller to roll out tight muscles, I do exercises to keep my core strong, and I take at least one day as a complete rest day because a rest day isn’t being lazy, it’s maintenance.

You don’t have to give up a sport you love, but at some point, you may have to adjust both your routine and attitude to continue to find joy in running.

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How Consistency Can Change Your Life

We all make plans to change certain things in our lives. We tell family and friends how excited we are about the new changes we are going to make, and we begin working towards our new goal with passion. unfortunately, the passion only lasts about a week and then we fall back into old habits only to try to restart about a month later and then again, we give up. If we all did more things in our lives consistently, we could turn our lives around dramatically. Here are some ways consistency can help you. 

Be consistent exercising and you can change your body.

Be consistent reading and you will improve your mind.

Be consistently positive and you will bring good things into your life.

Eat well consistently and you will have more energy and better health.

Sleep well consistently and you can improve your productivity and your focus.

Practice excellence consistently instead of settling for average and you will be proud.

Serving others consistently will improve your self-esteem.

Finding good in others consistently will improve your character.

Trying new things consistently will stimulate your brain.

Budgeting your money consistently will ensure you are financially healthy.

Learning on the job consistently makes you a better employee. 

Spending time consistently doing the things you love will make you happier.

Spending time with friends consistently will make you more secure.

Laughing consistently will keep your mood light.

Staying abreast of current events consistently will keep you knowledgeable.

Smiling consistently can improve the moods of those around you.

Listening consistently will help more than giving advice.

Being present consistently instead of thinking about the past or future will open your eyes.

Taking a few minutes to reflect consistently can clear your mind.

Follow your instincts consistently and make good decisions.

Treating others with love consistently can enrich your life.

Doing your best consistently is a great way to grow.

I hope these ideas give you some action steps to improve.

Strength training, outdoor by U.S. Naval Academy is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0
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The Mental Strength to Move Forward

 I wrote 101 Tips to Lighten Your Burden because I wanted to help some of the many people who struggle with mental health every day. I hoped I could provide some inspiration to show people the possibilities and the light when they only saw despair and darkness.

I knew I wanted to start the book with how to be in a good place mentally to make it easier for everyone to be able to move forward toward the best life possible. Here are the concepts that begin the book.

You are wonderfully made. Everyone has both weaknesses and special qualities. Don’t try to be anything other than your true self. Your real friends are those who love you exactly as you are. Focus on those strengths that make you shine and improve in areas where you want to be better.

Believe you can. Your beliefs become your reality. At the beginning of each semester, I did an exercise with my students to show them the power of negative and positive thoughts. I would ask for a volunteer and then tell the volunteer that he should hold his arm out at shoulder level and repeat, “I will not drop my arm.” After the student repeated this several times, I would tell him I was going to try to pull his arm down, but he shouldn’t let me. I was never able to make him lower his arm. I then asked him to raise his arm again, but this time I told him to say, “I can’t keep my arm up.” This time when I pulled on the arm, the arm dropped immediately. I wanted my students to realize that their energy could affect the outcome of their efforts.

Do not compare yourself to others. Be careful when you find yourself wishing you were like someone else because you don’t know what hidden burdens that person has. Be the best person you can be and celebrate your success as well as the success of those around you. Be grateful for your blessings and realize that imperfection is more interesting and involves inspirational stories.

Do not allow anyone to limit you.  Even your family and friends can hold you back when they don’t think your dreams are realistic. When I told my husband I wanted to be a writer, he told me he wanted to be a pro golfer but that wasn’t going to happen either. I had to draw some boundaries for his attitude about my writing, and he is now supportive of what I am doing. If you love to do something, move forward and prove the haters wrong.

When I was forty-two, I wanted to have a third child. When I mentioned this to others, the reactions were always negative and included comments about my age, how old I would be when my child graduated high school, and the potential for health problems because I was an older mother. I ignored the comments and had my daughter who is the light of my life. I would have missed out on so much joy if I had listened to others.

These are the basics of working on staying strong mentally. Once you can master these tips, you can move forward to use the next set.

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Ten Tips for Traveling with a Toddler

I always thought it was important to take my child everywhere even when they were very little. I wanted to expose them to everything and teach them from an early age how to behave and enjoy new experiences.

Those experiences included traveling with my children, but for some reason I didn’t travel out of the country with them until they were at least six. As a French teacher, I traveled often to France with students or family because I needed to immerse myself to improve my language skills. I brought my children as often as I could because I wanted them to be global citizens, to understand cultural differences and the importance of learning other languages. My oldest daughter went to France the most and her memories are of playing in the Luxembourg gardens, going to the interactive science museum called La Cité, and eating amazing food. When my grandson was born, she told me she wanted to expose her son to all of those wonderful experiences, so last week we took the four-year-old for his first trip out of the country. Let me tell you the tips I learned from this trip as well as what I learned from the trips with my children.

Tip #1 Always make sure your child is fed and rested. My grandson is a picky eater, so we knew our options were limited, so every morning I went into the bakery to buy two croissants and two donuts to be ready for that moment when he said, “I’m hungry!” This tip applies whether you are traveling or not because most meltdowns happen because of hunger or fatigue.

Tip #2 Factor in downtime. Being in a different environment can be stimulating and overwhelming. Plan some time everyday to have some quiet time.

Tip #3 Don’t supersize the itinerary. Plan one activity a day and if everybody feels good you can do something else, but if you plan too much at once you are asking for a meltdown and it might not be the toddler that has it.

Tip #4 Be prepared. My grandson is potty trained, but there was still potential for disaster, so my daughter packed extra clothes in case they were needed.

Tip #5 Let them be kids. Plan some kid-friendly activities like kid’s museums or playgrounds. Let them run off the zoomies.  

Tip #6 Build their excitement. Act as if what you are about to do is the best thing ever. They will join in with enthusiasm.

Tip #7 Be patient. When something goes wrong, realize that all the new things might be difficult for your child. Remember the trip doesn’t have to be perfect.

Tip #8 Keep a sense of humor. When things don’t go according to plan, see the humor in the situation and carry on.

Tip #9 Have a plan B. Be ready to pivot at any moment because even the best plans can fall apart. We had tickets to ride a bus to see the major attractions, but when we arrived my husband couldn’t find the tickets on his phone. Everyone can have those moments when excess fatigue shuts down the brain, so be ready to look for a different way to accomplish the goals. I redid the tickets and the company refunded us.

Tip #10 Ask for help. If you have family with you work together to help each other when it is needed. If you are alone, ask for help from others when you know those requests are safe.

I hope these tips help you. Don’t be afraid to travel with a child. It’s possible he or she will have the best attitude of the whole group.

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What’s Life without a few scars and brokenness?

Do you allow toxic thoughts to slip in that tell you what a mess you are and how broken you have become? First, let me assure you that you are not the only one to have those thoughts, but they can cause us harm, but there are ways to turn those thoughts around because your mess and your brokenness are all a matter of perception, so here are a few things to remember, and some action steps to take to go from feeling broken to glorious.

Change your thinking. One of the reasons I wrote this article was because I was lying in bed this morning thinking that I really was a mess then I started to argue with myself by finding a few positives about my messy self. I know I am not the only one to struggle with staying positive about myself. Our mind rules the day, so if we can control how we think, we can change a lot. Switch any negative thoughts to positives and see the difference it makes. Tell yourself you are pretty darn wonderful until you believe it yourself.  

List the good things. What are your best qualities? Are you kind? Loyal? Easy to be with? Make a list.

What have your scars and failures done for you? I am a true believer that the more you fail, the more you learn, and sometimes those failures leave mental and physical scars. I have the most scars from parenting, teaching, and karate. Parenting taught me unconditional love, forgiveness and the importance of boundaries, teaching taught me the importance of relationships, and karate taught me that I should never give up because persistence pays off, I should recognize toxic behavior sooner, and just because someone is the person in charge doesn’t mean he should be. If you never fail you will miss out on some valuable lessons.

What are your most glorious stories? Think about those times when you triumphed and it felt glorious. Write them down and relive that feeling. The first one that came to mind for me was when I was an advocate for my oldest daughter. She had started to go to the special education class during reading time because she was below reading level. She started to tell me that the teacher was yelling at them. I told her that a teacher should never yell, but maybe she had a bad day. Then, she came home and told me the teacher called her a liar. I arranged a meeting for the next day, and I made sure the teacher knew what I thought about her methods.

Keep rising up and bring someone with you. It doesn’t matter how many times you mess up. You have a fresh start every day. Hold yourself together with a sense of humor and a refusal to quit. When you figure something out, share the secret with someone else.

Be happy with who you are. I have been a people pleaser most of my life then suddenly I decided I needed to draw some boundaries to protect my peace. I’m happy with who I am and I’m not going to beg someone to be my friend. Don’t worry what others think of you. Deflect the arrows of the people who think they know what is best for you.

I hope these ideas help you to turn the thoughts around to see how glorious you are!

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How to be your best marketing tool

Don’t you wish you could just write and watch your writing sell itself? We all find out quickly that if we can’t find a way for people to notice our work, our writing will sit there and molder, but what if I told you marketing can be fun?

I thought marketing was something I did with newsletters and my blog which meant I could continue to interact through my writing, but I discovered that the best marketing is much more personal and it requires you to find the type of connection that will work for you.

When I first started writing I was terrible at marketing. I listened to the advice that said go out in your community, and make contacts and connections, but I always felt so awkward. My friend worked at an assisted living facility, and she asked me to vend my books there. I was sure the other vendors would know I was new at this, so instead of trying to act like I knew what I was doing, I confessed I was a newbie and I asked questions. I learned so much that day and each event I did after that felt more comfortable.

I contacted local bookstores and asked if I could come in and do a signing. More than once, I was the only one in the room, so that was demoralizing. I was asked to do a reading. There were six children and their parents and after it was over my friend asked me if I would do it again and my reply was, “Not if I can avoid it.” I felt so uncomfortable. After that day I decided I needed to come up with a different plan, so I applied to vend at a local craft market. I had no idea that the experience would change everything.

The first time I showed up to vend, I had a small table with my books set up. Several weeks later my husband had made some small displays and every week I tried to improve the presentation. I quickly discovered that I had found my favorite form of marketing because I could interact with people while I talked to them about my books and played with their dogs and children. I gave out treats to dogs and butterfly stickers to children and when they started to talk to me that is when the magic began. People told me their stories and asked questions about my books and picked up my business card.

Being able to talk to people in person made me realize the power of that personal connection. I spoke to the representative of Bob Marley’s family who was considering using my children’s books in their stores. A cross-country coach said he would let me know if my running book would be something to purchase for his 58 runners. I spoke with the granddaughters of Ernie Andrus who is one of the oldest people to run across America. I give hugs and tissues at my booth but none of the connections would be possible without personal interaction.

I hope you will move your writing and yourself outside of your office and go talk to some people about what you have to say and maybe change some lives.

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The Moment My Students Taught Me About Beauty

Students Classroom Leakey, Texas, San by U.S. National Archives is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

Do you think you are beautiful? Most people would answer that question with a list of their imperfections. What makes it difficult to answer that question with a simple yes?

My Advanced Placement French class taught me some very important lessons about what beauty is, and how it varies with your race.

There were five girls in the class, and I had been teaching them for four years, so there was trust and connection in that room, but I had no idea how much they were about to reveal about themselves. The teacher was about to become the student.

The theme we were working on was beauty. Each student was working on a presentation about the definition of beauty. I had no idea that events would line up to create some very important moments.

One of the girls always wore beautiful wigs. She would flick her long hair and thwack the girl behind her in the face. One day, one of the other girls said to her , “You always look so beautiful with your hairstyles.” I replied, “I bet she would be beautiful even without her wigs.” I didn’t think anything else about my comment until the next class when the girl pulled off her wig and stuck it in her backpack in a defiant gesture. I had the impression it was a moment of freedom for her. She didn’t want to spend hours to make her hair look beautiful. She wanted to embrace her natural hair. Everyone told her how great she looked. That moment was beautiful, and I haven’t seen her wear a wig since.

Although that moment was special and showed me how we become slaves to a quest for beauty and how freeing it can be to embrace our natural beauty, this young lady had more lessons for me when she did her presentation.

When she started her presentation, she gave everyone a mirror and asked everyone to look in the mirror and describe what we saw. Everyone started pointing out the flaws we thought we had. The young lady commented that we are very hard on ourselves when it comes to our appearance. She then asked us to each mention a positive comment about our appearance. The positive comment was much harder than the negative one.

As we began to share our struggle with feeling good about our appearance, another young lady spoke about how difficult it was to be the only black girl in her middle school class. She didn’t look like the other girls. She couldn’t use the makeup they used, and her hair didn’t look like theirs. She felt ugly because she was different. The discussion about beauty and race progressed into a more profonde dive into the racial divide for girls.

The transparency and willingness to have a dialogue about so many important topics allowed us to learn from each other and help each other to understand each other’s challenges.

I was so honored to be part of a conversation that more people need to have. This was not the only time my students taught me more than I taught them, but it was one of the most memorable for me.