Check out Bootstrapper’s list of 100 Tiny Tips to Improve Your Mood. These tips fall into 7 categories:
- Recreation
- Exercise
- Food
- Mental Power
- Social Aids
- On the Outside
- Environment: I am especially interested in this one since I recently wrote about it here. Bootstrapper added things I hadn’t thought of. Do you have any more environment tips?
This site has many, many other helpful lists. These are comprehensive tips. No need to buy a book. Read these posts and apply the tips that make sense to you. Maybe even form a support group and use the lists as the action items.
Here are some of the posts that strike my fancy. Maybe some of you would like to join me as I go through one of the first 3? Don’t need wedding help yet. 
Hat tip to The Happiness Project for introducing me to Bootstrapper.
February 29, 2008
“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s .” Joseph Campbell
As you know I’ve been mulling over procrastination, balanced living, the best me, God’s will.
I woke up feeling overwhelmed and missing God. So this morning I did something I used to always do: During my morning devotional time I looked for personal answers instead of reading the Bible for intellectual or theological answers.
So just for today, I will . . .
- Concentrate on today’s issues - not tomorrow’s b/c I don’t really know what will happen tomorrow.
- Question - what am I doing/not doing that will lead me to danger? What will I do/not do so that doesn’t happen?
- Think on who God is - Bigger than anything - instead of what I fear.
Nothing earth shattering here, but life-changing if/when I consistently apply Biblical principals to me life.
What did you get from your morning time with God?
February 27, 2008
I am blessed to have a sister who is also my friend.
Today is her birthday. We had . . .
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Ice cream waffles for breakfast!
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A song from Em to her mom about L.O.V.E - “L is the way you look at Me.” She also gave “mom” a “Mom” pen.
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Kay was very creative in her wrapping of some delish smelling lotion.
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Es decorated a mug - which will get used a lot.
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DH’s themed present will set the mood for much-needed relaxing.
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This time I gave my sista the pressie I bought her. (I kept the last one for myself.)
I am very proud of my sister in her growth as a woman, mom, sister, wife and friend. I look forward to many more years of relationship!
If you’d like to surprise her, click here and leave a birthday greeting.
February 26, 2008
“I valued accomplishment.”
“I valued being special.”
“I valued results.”
“The driven part didn’t question or examine these values.”
“It took them as real, and believed it was following the carrot “success” [and the road "righteousness"] wholeheartedly. Didn’t everyone believe in success? I never asked, “Success at what cost?”"
“A part of me is quiet.”
“It knows about simplicity, about commitment, and the joy of doing what I do well. That part is the artist, the child - it is receptive and has infinite courage.”
“But time and my busyness drowned the quiet voice.”
The above words are from Plain and Simple (page 5) by Sue Bender.
(more…)
February 22, 2008
Choosing the wrong values and too many of them have led me to an unfocused, frenzied life.
Too many choices . . . all lining themselves under the appropriate lists of accomplishment, special, and results.
Too many choices . . . more and more calling at my life’s door. Each beckoning me into its grip of more.
I’ve collected these choices (some very good and noble) and added them to my to-do’s. Now surrounded by piles of varying heights of accomplishment, special, and results. And righteousness - not all my choices are indiscriminate.
Indiscriminate: Having no particular pattern, purpose, organization, or structure.
These piles, my plies, have their own voice and their own demands, much like frisky kittens aloof, attacking, and affectionate, alternating, without seeming reason. And not knowing which to tend to first, I tend ALL or none.
Paralyzed by the responsibility of responsible choice, I make none until forced.
Procrastination covers the piles like a blanket muffling their cries for attention.
February 21, 2008
Illness can be a good thing. I tend to reevaluate my life after I’m on the mend.
Last week I was slowed way down because of the respiratory flu which also exacerbated my asthma. Yesterday was the first day in a week that I felt no pain and had a cheery spirit inside. Today is the same.
When I wasn’t sleeping, I browsed through a book by John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Six Sessions on Spiritual Disciplines For Ordinary People.
“You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry,” a wise friend advised Ortberg.
What? Why?
“Again and again as we pursue spiritual life, we must do battle with hurry. For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.” This paragraph is in chapter 5, An Unhurried Life, page 77.
“Following Jesus cannot be done at a sprint” (79).
Ortberg identifies 6 symptoms of people who have hurry sickness.
- Constantly speeding up daily activities - Always pursuing the fastest line in a store & at a stoplight?
- Multiple-tasking - “Ever try to eat dinner, watch tv, read, and carry on a conversation at the same time?”
- Clutter - Life is cluttered by physical things and “Life is cluttered when we are weighed down by the burden of all the things we have failed to say no to. Then comes the clutter of forgetting important dates, of missing appointments, of not following through.”
- Superficiality - Wisdom & depth take time to cultivate. Many of us have traded these for information because “we want to microwave maturity.”
- An inability to love - “Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible.”
- Sunset fatigue - This is when we are just too tired,or too drained, or too preoccupied, to love the people to whom we have made the deepest promises…Hurry prevents us from receiving love from the Father or giving it to His children.”
Ouch! I’m guilty of hurry sickness and the fallout that surrounds my poor choices. Ortberg does have suggestions on what to do next. But I want to spend some time with God and see what He says to me first.
Anyone else have hurry sickness?
Used to have it? What did you do to live your busy life well?
February 19, 2008
You know how in shows on TV where all the obscene words are bleeped out?
What if in life all the wholesome, godly or even neutral words that came out of our mouths were bleeped instead?
Would our life be a silent testimony?
Or a huge wake-up call as to what’s truly in our hearts? And what the people around us are hearing/seeing from this Temple of God?
Please pray that I am conscious of this. I’m not troubled with using swear words. But I do want to speak “only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).
My sista and I were talking a bit about this the other day and I’ve been thinking on this.
February 13, 2008
It’s His compassion.
“Jesus intercedes in prayer on my behalf because of His compassion too.”
God knows that sometimes I am like a restless, wandering, selfish sheep. I get myself into mud-holes, on the wrong side of the fence, or topple over and need help getting back into the pasture. And don’t you imagine that sheep feels grateful for the help?
I woke up as a thankful sheep today because yesterday I found the 24 news/journal/magazine articles. They were in my safe place, but I couldn’t remember where that was. :-) So after much prayer and procrastination, I purposed to look and look until I found them. Which I did!
I had looked last week and did not find them!
I have to turn in a reaction paper (for each one) this week. As the days passed with no articles in hand, I was feeling more and more like I was in a mud-hole, on the wrong side of the fence and upside down. It was totally my fault for losing them. I called myself all sorts of names like “baaaad, messy, thoughtless sheep.”
So why should God help me out? Why would He?
Because He’s compassionate!
How have you experienced God’s compassion this week?
(Okay, there are really more reasons why God answers prayer. I just had to clear that up.)
February 12, 2008
I know I said I was going to bring a dump cake to my hospitality class, but I didn’t have a cake mix. So I did a Google search on “brownie mix with cherry pie filling.” With 268,000 results I had quite a few recipes to choose from.
I finally settled on the following one:
Ingredients
- 1 box fudge brownie mix
- Ingredients listed on box of brownie mix
- 1 can cherry pie filling
- 1 small jar marshmallow creme - I didn’t know there were different sizes.
Directions
- Mix fudge brownie mix according to directions on the box.
- Pour into pan. (My directions said to put into a 9 x 13 inch pan.)
- Place cherry pie filling by drops on top of brownie mixture.
- Place a drop of marshmallow creme beside cherry drops.
- Swirl the marshmallow creme through brownie mixture by pulling a knife through the batter.
- Bake brownies according to directions on the box.
Notes
- I had trouble with swirling the marshmallow creme through brownie mixture as the creme was too solid. I ended up using my finger to pull it apart.
- I did swirl my knife through the cherries.
- When I took it out of the oven, the marshmallows had exploded and covered most of the top of the brownies.
- The brownies must’ve tasted great because by the time I got to them several adult males were getting every drop of brownie from the pan.
I will try this again and make sure I get a taste. I am also looking forward to trying the other 3 recipes as well.
Do you have a favorite cherry brownie recipe?
February 11, 2008
I know