Women Living Beautifully

One day I was enjoying a walk in the park with my dogs, a leisurely bike ride and the beautiful spring flowers. The next day we had 30 inches of snow, all the flowers were dead and my dogs wouldn’t even go near the door. What’s wrong with this picture? I guess it’s kind of like life. One day everything seems to be going along perfectly and the next, things are tumbling down around us. Why does that happen? We could say it’s all in how we look at it.

I guess I could have gotten really angry about all my beautiful flowers being under 30 inches of snow, but fortunately, because I had heard the Weather Channel report, I cut most of them and brought them inside. So I had a house full of spring blooms. Is it perfect? No, but at least I was able to enjoy them. Their beauty and scent filled my home and it felt like spring inside the house.

Life is kind of like that when you think about it. One day everything seems to be sailing along doing just fine and the next day, we are knee deep in a ton of problems. What comes out of that varies for different people. For some it’s doom and gloom, for others it’s an opportunity to grow and learn. Which one are you?

If you’re raising a family in this all too difficult time, then it might be a good idea for you to look into being one of the ones who utilizes stressful and unhappy situations to grow and learn from. Kind of like cutting the flowers before they froze instead of just complaining about the weather. Throughout our lives we will be faced with many trying and unhappy situations, but it’s how we handle them that really makes us who we are. It also paints a big picture for our children on how to handle things.

If you are easily upset and complaining, then you can pretty well expect that your children will pick up those same habits. If you are optimistic and try to find the good in each situation (and believe me I find that very hard to do sometimes) then chances are, even if you don’t see it right away, especially with teenagers, your children will eventually grow into doing much of the same thing. It’s kind of like that old adage if life gives you lemons make lemonade.

So the next time you are faced with a trying situation, think about what you can get out of it. What are you supposed to learn from it? What can you do to turn it around? You may be very pleasantly surprised to see that the answer you need is right there in front of you. In fact, it may even be life changing for you. I have often wondered if God gives us situations we aren’t happy about to teach us how to grow. And, we being typical humans, just grumble and complain instead of finding the lesson or the good in the adversity. What do you suppose your life would be like if you tried to look at it the other way for a change?

Have A Beautiful Day, Until Later …
Heart Hugs,
Susan Marie

Posted by Susan Marie at 8:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Have you ever gotten one of those emails that requests you to sign a petition? You were so strongly in favor of the issue that you immediately put your name on it, and sent it to everyone on your email list? How about “send this to 10 people and it will bring you good luck?" I have. I rarely forward anything but once in a while one gets through to me and I do it, because I feel it speaks to something that is important to me.

Well I’ve just discovered they don’t do any good. In fact “they” are in reality, marketing companies who are trying to verify emails so they can use your address for --- you guessed it more spam. This is also true of many prayer chains, so be very careful of anything you ad your name to and that you forward to your email addresses. Chances are your friends won’t be saying thank you.

Here’s a tip my good friend Barb suggested and I have adopted myself when I find something I really, really want to send along. Just highlight it, copy it, and paste it, in to a separate file and delete the part that says if you don’t send this to X number of people in the next 10 minutes your left ear will fall off ... you know the ones. You can also just copy it directly on to your email and send it along to who ever you think will benefit from it.

Another thing you can do that stops the passing along of your friends email addresses … if it comes on an attachment to your email. Just click on the attachment itself and paste it on to a new email. If you just hold it over the actual body of your email it will go where it needs to. (This works well if pictures are involved because sometimes the pictures don’t transfer if you try to paste them directly onto a new email), and it’s perfect for all those video’s that are so funny to watch. Instantly you have eliminated sending all those forwards. They will get the document or video, without hundreds of other peoples email addresses appearing in the sent part of every forward you have to click on before you get to the actual video or message.

This suggestion came from my husband. He had me adopt it years ago when I first learned how to “send” things to people. And for a totally non-techy person like me it was a very big help. Don’t put your list of email addresses in the “send” category of your email for the world and all those snoopy marketers and spam people to see. Put them in the Blind Carbon Copy or the BCC section. You can actually “send” the email to yourself, by putting your address in the send box. That way no one gets to see the addresses you are sending to. It protects the privacy of your friend’s emails, and keeps you from being the one that helps to get them on spam lists everywhere, and believe me, they will be very grateful. Especially if they get a couple of hundred emails a day like I do.

And last but not least, after doing some checking I found out that the government doesn’t accept emails for petitions. In fact without your signature it isn’t even considered a petition. So don’t forward any more “petitions” to anyone when they come in the form of an email. Instead go to http://www.snopes.com and check it out. You can find the history of many of those emails. It’s a wonderful way to find out if what you are forwarding along is real, or if it’s just a hoax. Bookmark that address, it could help save you a great deal of spam in the future.

Have a Beautiful Day, Until later …
Heart Hugs,
Susan Marie

Posted by Susan Marie at 8:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)