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Motivation Mondays: Stumbling Blocks
“Are you going to let the obstacles in your life be stumbling blocks or stepping stones? Choose the positive. You are the master of your attitude.” Bruce Lee
Motivation Mondays: Overcoming Stumbling Blocks
Ultimately, success is not measured by first-place prizes. It’s measured by the road you have traveled: how you have dealt with the challenge and the stumbling blocks you’ve encountered along the way. Nicole Haislett
There’s so much happenstance, so many accidents – stumbling into something and finding it interesting and living with it over time and building on it. It’s okay to work from doubt. You need to be willing to not know. Ellen Gallagher
What are YOUR Stumbling Blocks? What is your most persistent Stumbling Block? We all have them or have experienced them at different points in our lives. They are barriers that we either come up against, create in our minds, or allow others to pass on to us and they stop our movement forward. The most ubiquitous blocks we have tend to come from a number of emotional upsets; REGRET over actions we took that derailed our plans and now we are stuck. PEOPLE we have in our lives who have a frozen image of who/what we are and these folks could include those close to us who are well meaning and those toxic people we need to lose. CONFUSION that mars our ability to make clear choices and this type of stumbling block creates chaos and indecision in our lives. EXPECTATIONS we hold about how others perceive us or how we wish to be perceived and sooner or later this creates a dichotomy in our thinking that leads us down a path of self delusion and not speaking our truth. DEFEAT over promises we made to ourselves or others and the deep sense of paralyzing failure that lingers. The most pernicious of all is FEAR or the unknown, of failure, success, of life and of all sorts of imagined and real adversaries that create blocks in our path. But we do NOT have to stay down or live in that space permanently.
A Story: The Headache & Halo by Anon
One day, a man walked into his doctor’s office complaining… ” Doctor, I have this awful headache that won’t go away. Please, could you give me a prescription for it?”
“I will,” murmured the doctor, pondering what had set off his usually calm patient. “but first, I want to check out a few things and ask you a few questions… Tell me, do you drink a lot of alcohol?”
“Alcohol?” the man shouted back indignantly. “I never touch that filthy stuff. Nor do I go near people who drink it. All filthy!”
“How about smoking?” the doctor calmly inquired.
“I think smoking is disgusting. I’ve never touched tobacco in my life.”
“Okay,” the doctor continued, “I’m a bit embarrassed to even ask this, but… Do you run around at night seeking dangerous pleasures?”
“Of course not! What do you take me for? I’m a highly spiritual and disciplined man, and I’m in bed by 10 o’clock every night.” The man spat back.
“Then, tell me…” said the doctor, “This pain in your head, is it a sharp, shooting kind of pain?”
“Yes, yes!” The man eagerly replied, his eyes lighting up… “It is… a sharp, shooting kind of pain.”
“Well, that’s simple, my dear fellow!” the doctor replied with a smile on his face. “The trouble is that you have your halo on too tight. All we need to do for you is loosen it up a bit; loosen you up a bit! Avoid the bad habits I mentioned earlier, and enjoy some innocent pleasures in life – Create some balance. Let go of the rigidity. Live!”
“A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.” Eleanor Roosevelt
Motivation Mondays: Overcoming Stumbling Blocks
What we sometimes consider a stumbling block is rather a rock we can step on. Mother Teresa
The right attitude can transform a barrier into a blessing, an obstacle into an opportunity or a stumbling block into a stepping stone.
Cory Booker
What are stumbling blocks and defeat to the weak and vacillating are but stepping stones to victory to the determined soul. Orison Swett Marden
How Can We Overcome our Stumbling Blocks? According to the article below, we can make great changes to our fears, challenges and stumbling blocks by taking a number of crucial steps along the way. Preston Ni offers 8 ways we can change that barrier to our growth and it begins with 1. The power of perspective – our attitude and beliefs about events in our lives make a huge difference. If we face them down, we can break them down. The others are listed and do come back for the details 2. Don’t focus on the mud. 3. All you have to do is ask…the right individuals 4. Thrive on your strengths while exploring new potential 5. Keep the fun and enjoyment 6. Keep your options open 7. Keep the faith 8. Resolve to never, ever give up.
Read Psychology Today: Turn Your Stumbling Blocks into Stepping Stones! by Preston Ni M.S.B.A.
The details for Motivation Mondays are below. Join in! The themes for DEC 2017/JAN 2018 are:
12/01 – World Aids Day, 12/02 Abolition of Slavery,
12/03 – Start of Advent, 12/7 Pearl Harbor Remembrance, 12/8 Immaculate Conception, 12/9 Anti-Corruption Day,
12/10 – Human Rights Day, 12/11 Green Day, 12/12 Start of Hanukkah,
12/17 – 12/18 International Migrant’s Day, 12/20 End of Hanukkah, 12/21 Winter Solstice, 12/23 Super Saturday
12/24 – 12/25 Christmas, 12/26 Start of Kwanzaa, 12/31 New Year’s Eve
01/01 – 01/01 New Year’s Day, 01/04 World Braille Day, 01/07 Orthodox Christmas, Golden Globes Award
01/08 – 01/11 Human Trafficking Awareness, 01/14 Orthodox New Year,
01/15 – 01/15 Martin Luther King Day, 01/21 World Religion Day,
01/22 – 01/26 International Customs Day, 01/27 International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust
01/28 – 01/28 Grammy Awards,
Are You Looking for Ways to Stay Creative in 2018?
– Join the Daily Post Post-a-day or Post-a-week Challenge.
— Join the BlogHer Writing Lab
More Below! Read more…
Photo Challenge: A GROWTH Mindset
“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” Carol S. Dweck
Photo Challenge: A GROWTH Mindset Japanese Peony & Beefsteak Tomatoes
The person who does the work is the ONLY one who learns! Harry Wong
The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice. George Eliot
Our growth depends not on how many experiences we devour, but on how many we digest. Ralph W. Sockman
Growth is a life long experience/process and it is inevitable. Sometimes it is easy and, at other times, it is as hard as pulling teeth. Our mindset/mental attitude can help us or hinder our growth so we must be vigilant about our responses to the stimuli we receive. Like sunrise and sunset, we are in constant motion, and we either grow or we stagnate. When I think of examples of our growing process, I look to plant life as it is so easy to see how they thrive, strive and die each season… and then start the process all over again and again; they surrender to the process and reappear rejuvenated.
READ: Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor E. Frankl
Photo Challenge: A GROWTH Mindset
Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. Napoleon Hill
Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong. N. R. Narayana Murthy
Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way. When people…change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth take plenty of time, effort, and mutual support.
The daily actions that aid our growth happen like clockwork: Without the air we breathe and the rising sun that stimulates the internal clock of much of life, we would be gone in no time… Our mindset plays a big role in it all. We can go with the flow, and perform our tasks with purpose or we can hinder our growth, by resisting every opportunity to move forward with our daily lives. Come back for more and enjoy the photos from my garden and yard. I will share more later.
More Below! Read more…
Motivation Mondays: Happy New Year
“A Happy New Year! Grant that I May bring no tear to any eye. When this New Year in time shall end. Let it be said I’ve played the friend, Have lived and loved and labored here, And made of it a happy year.” Edgar A. Guest
Motivation Mondays: Happy New Year
A good beginning makes a good end. Louis L’Amour
‘Dear world, I am excited to be alive in you, and I am thankful for another year. Charlotte Eriksson
Just read one book a month and at the end of they year you would be totally different but an impressive personality. Amit Kalantri.
Whatever you wanna be, just, at the end of the day, if you’re being a good person, which is not hard to be, and you’re putting positive energy into the world, and you’re appreciative and loving to the people around you that care about you and everybody in general, then it’ll work out. Gnash
Happy New Year 2018! What are you going to do with yours? Start Small and Build: What a gift to live through one year and greet another year. One of the joys of starting a new year is that we can begin afresh, clean the slate and revisit our plans and promises from the previous year. Instead of wasting time bemoaning what we coulda/shoulda/woulda worked on in 2017, let’s make 2018 a new year to focus on the things staring us in the face. If we start with the small things then the big picture will take shape. Think BIG and start SMALL. If you remember that Jeff Besos started Amazon in a garage, Mark Z envisioned Facebook as a hobby in a college dorm, and that Google started as a graduate school project by two friends, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, it would make sense that the fantastic begins with a small action step. So let’s have a conversation with our higher self and focus on what we know we are capable of achieving.
Think of a puzzle of a 1000 pieces; you start with one piece and methodically find your way through hundreds and hundreds of tiny connectors, and piece them together until, viola, the work is done. At least until others show up demanding your expertise and offering feedback. What often happens with so many of us is that we spend so much time worrying about the future, the expectations of others or even the amount of work we imagine it would take to get stuff done that we become paralyzed. If we remember to acknowledge the tightening knot of fear in our stomach, still stay the course and work our plan by taking decisive action steps we will reach the next level of our game plan. To get there, we must push those gnawing, fearful thoughts aside and refocus on the here and now by zeroing into one small facet of our task, magic happens. Okay, a fairy with a wand doesn’t show up… I know. What really happens is that our mind buys into the task once we get into the groove of it and, before we know it, a great portion of our mountain has become a molehill.
Another Fresh New Year is Here – by William Arthur Ward via yourdailypoem
Another fresh new year is here . . .
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!
This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest . . .
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!
I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!
READ: From the garage to the Googleplex
The fabulous life of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person in the world (FYI- He is now the richest person in the world.)
History of Facebook
“New Year’s Day. A fresh start. A new chapter in life waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery. Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change.” Sarah Ban Breathnach
Motivation Mondays: Happy New Year
Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery. John Ruskin
Any new beginning is forged from the shards of the past, not from the abandonment of the past. Craig D. Lounsbrough
If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us. Jim Rohn
Indeed, this life is a test. It is a test of many things – of our convictions and priorities, our faith and our faithfulness, our patience and our resilience, and in the end, our ultimate desires. Sheri L. Dew
How do we start afresh? What can we do? What You Believe, You Become: We can start this year with a laundry list of all the reasons why things didn’t go our way, or we can be proactive by re-framing our strategies and moving forward. There will always be mountains to hike and, if we remember Ruskin’s advice above, we must stay focused on reaching the mountain top. Why? Because those who don’t get sidelined by fear, excuses, or real and imagined adversaries will get to enjoy the beautiful scenery. Instead of spending valuable time imagining all the ways things can go wrong, or listing all the reasons why we can’t/won’t do X, we need to turn those voices down and take a decisive step forward. I find that when I act on a task without debating all the pros and cons, I am able to get things done. Conversely, when I wallow in day dream land and look at every permutation of a task, it doesn’t get done.
Commit to Grow Not just Change: When William James said that The greatest revolution in our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives, he was on to something deeply profound and ingrained in every human. We develop our beliefs from our family/culture/environment/surroundings and those perceptions, beliefs and attitudes become so entrenched that so many of us are never able to wrestle our mind from the programming and experience a much needed paradigm shift. Our brain processes our excuses in real time and so we must be vigilant with what we feed our mind. Think back to a simple every day task like laundry. When we first look at the pile of clothes, they look insurmountable like a messy mountain with nooks and crevices everywhere. We imagine the chore of sorting and spot treating our garments. We imagine the endless whirl of the machines as they soak, wash, rise and dry our clothes. At the end, we experience the satisfaction that only comes from sticking to a task and doing it well… the exhilaration of completion. The same mindset can be applied to other areas of our lives.
READ: Psychology Today: You Are What You Believe
The details for Motivation Mondays are below. Join in! The themes for DEC 2017/JAN 2018 are:
12/01 – World Aids Day, 12/02 Abolition of Slavery,
12/03 – Start of Advent, 12/7 Pearl Harbor Remembrance, 12/8 Immaculate Conception, 12/9 Anti-Corruption Day,
12/10 – Human Rights Day, 12/11 Green Day, 12/12 Start of Hanukkah,
12/17 – 12/18 International Migrant’s Day, 12/20 End of Hanukkah, 12/21 Winter Solstice, 12/23 Super Saturday
12/24 – 12/25 Christmas, 12/26 Start of Kwanzaa, 12/31 New Year’s Eve
01/01 – 01/01 New Year’s Day, 01/04 World Braille Day, 01/07 Orthodox Christmas, Golden Globes Award
01/08 – 01/11 Human Trafficking Awareness, 01/14 Orthodox New Year,
01/15 – 01/15 Martin Luther King Day, 01/21 World Religion Day,
01/22 – 01/26 International Customs Day, 01/27 International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust
01/28 – 01/28 Grammy Awards,
Are You Looking for Ways to Stay Creative in 2017?
– Join the Daily Post Post-a-day or Post-a-week Challenge.
— Join the BlogHer Writing Lab
More Below! Read more…
