Everyday we make choices. Some of them are based on wants. Some of them are based on fears. Some of them are based on ease, but most of them are based on someone’s idea of what should happen. The question is whose ideas are running your life.
I’m one of those ridiculous people that love the Facebook quizzes like, “Who were you in a past life?” or “What song defines you?” I think they are just fun to see what questions the creator bases it on and what kinds of things are said afterwards.
One of these came up with something along the lines of “You’re an independent spirit” and a friend of mine responded with “you have always lived your life on your own terms”. I found this to be a great compliment. I don’t know how many people who live miserable lives, complaining all the time because they are doing what is expected, or because it would be too difficult to change.
I can’t understand this concept. You have repeatedly said that your life sucks… how could making changes make things worse? Now I’m not saying if you hate your job that you should just up and quit. Obviously you have bills and responsibilities.. but let’s be honest, most people aren’t doing anything that they are even slightly interested in. They spend years working way too many hours just to make enough to get by. However, if they just decided to take a little chance.. and work a little harder for a small amount of time they could learn something new.. make new connections.. and basically create an entirely new life for themselves.
I have another friend.. a young woman, and single mom, she worked retail and was working her way up to management. She liked her job, but hated the hours. She constantly had to get a babysitter and never got enough time with her son. She knew it would only get worse. She finally decided that she deserved more. She took a class and got a certificate in medical transcription. She’s making more money and what’s even better she has a job with normal hours. She can now work around her son’s schedule and spend more time with him.
This may not be your idea of an ideal job, and in a few years she may decide that it’s not her’s either, but the important thing about this story is that she now knows that she is capable of more. She is capable of accomplishing what she puts her mind to. She can put her son first, and she doesn’t have to wait till he’s old enough.. or put her life on hold out of fear that if she fails then what? It wasn’t easy and there were a lot of long nights.. but now she’s happier and more secure than she was before she started… and her son isn’t even in kindergarten yet.
Fear is debilitating. Blame is easy. Almost everyone has someone else to blame. If you are in your 30s or 40s and still mad at your parents for not supporting your going to college it’s time to look in the mirror. Now that’s not to say that financial success is the only goal to aim for. I quit college in my 20s and had to go back to finish my degree, and it took me almost a decade longer. I did this to help take care of my God daughters.. and I wouldn’t have changed that for anything. I still had jobs that I loved and still managed to pay the bills, but helping to raise my God daughters was MY choice. I can’t blame their mother for her issues. I can’t blame the kids for needing someone. I can only take responsibility for my own actions, and I made my choice based on my priorities.
Don’t get me wrong, I have made plenty of mistakes; I can’t and won’t deny that, but they were my mistakes. And the best part of understanding that they are my mistakes is understanding that it gives me the power to make better choices in the future, and I don’t have to depend on someone else to fix me.
We are what we imagine that we are. There is a quote “Worrying is praying for things you don’t want to happen.”, and it’s so true. We spend so much time in our heads imagining what we want. What we don’t want. What we’re afraid of. What we long for. We get them all mixed up and eventually we put all our effort into thinking about things that we hope never happen.
No one wants to “do the work” anymore. When you look at the check out line magazines, the random ads on the internet or TV, or a million books in the bookstores and they are all “get….. quick”. It doesn’t matter what it is. Get rich, lose weight… find the perfect man. It’s all about the here and now moment.
But see those are all the reasons that I didn’t like it. The whole movie is about this young girl who braves all dangers and bounds on an adventure to save her community. It sounds inspiring. But all I saw was a little girl who had a call to the ocean that used any excuse imaginable to try to get out into the deep blue. When she finally gets her chance because the fish are gone, she gets hurt and decides it’s not worth it after-all and gives up.
She said her insurance is too high under the Affordable Care Act, and the Republican’s want to repeal it… yes, and put people, like her and her family, who have pre-existing conditions into a pool of their own so that their insurance will go up 10x and those without any health problems will drop.. “well, that won’t happen”. I told her that they have come out and said that anyone who has a pre-existing condition doesn’t deserve good insurance because they couldn’t manage to take care of themselves…. “No one said that….. ok only one guy”… yeah, one guy who happens to be a member of congress.
make sure that they are stopped from making the bombs.. I told her that Trump’s response is making sure that all other countries get the bombs too so that they can bomb them fist if need be. She said that was crazy… no one would want that. I showed her the video… even Saudi Arabia… who he just sold $110B worth of weapons to.
I have no problem with a healthy competitive nature. It’s good. It keeps you motivated, but as soon as my 4 year old starts his outbursts he’s done. I take away the controller, I pause the game, and I tell him that he has to breath. I tell him that he has to calm down if he would like to continue playing. I have used this technique a lot over the last year. When he is in the car on a long ride and needs to get a little break and starts screaming.. I tell him, “If you calm yourself down I will pull into a Dunks and we can take a break.”
takes actual purpose to not give them what they want. To make sure that they know how to handle problems, and adversity.. and slow internet connections. I purposefully let the batteries run out, or disconnect the wi-fi, just so that he has to learn how to deal with these things. He has plenty of other things to play with. Even on those long car rides when other’s in my car may want to hand him off a device.. I tell them, “He’s fine.. he’ll figure it out.” and I’ve watched the boy play for 10 mins with straws.
would find love. I could get a better job. I could…. whatever. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my brains, my “real” looks, my ambition. It was just that I was overweight, and as soon as I got in shape my world would be great… I just had other things that took priority over losing weight. I can always do that later.
This is both great.. and dangerous. It’s great because in a time of pussy grabbing and defunding women’s healthcare, women need a hero. We need to band together and take back our rights and our self respect… but, if this movie bombs it will just be another check in the boxes of men saying how women can’t do things.
ously 
registered dietitian you should not be giving advice on how to counteract real medical problems. And if you have a medical condition, you should not seek advice from randoms on the internet.
some have the RIGHT to toss other’s aside like yesterday’s news? I have a four year old and I have spent the last 3.5 years teaching him to respect other people. To say please and thank you. To say sorry. To “mind his manners”. Did no one bother to do that with THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
I’m starting to adore… both involving handshakes. One was in a 
Katrina Michelle Russell 