Book Review...A Love Story

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels--A Love Story by Ree Drummond

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A city girl (Ree Drummond) turned country bumpkin all because she fell in love...I love the pioneer woman's blog www.thepioneerwoman.com so this was an easy book for me to dive into. It's a love story, it's cute and light and positive. A good bedtime book to facilitate happy dreams.



Note: I am quite a few more pages into the book than I was at the point of the above review, and last night I was reading feeling a bit nauteous about all the lovey lovey stuff. Maybe my mood was foul or maybe I've heard enough about how this cowboy makes her melt...and her knees weak.


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Good Reads...book review

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Emil Frankl

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I was captivated by Frankl's account of life within the concentration camps during the holocaust. I couldn't put it down. This pyschologists theories and stories got me thinking about how crucial a feeling of purpose and meaning in life is. Loved it!



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Personal Mission Statement

"The Key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about, and what you value."
Stephen R. Covey

As I come to realize how much order correlates to sanity and peace in my life, I reached for a book that's been on my shelf for a while but haven't paid much attention to. You've probably seen it, or maybe you have it on your shelf. The book is, The 7 habits of highly effective people. I recommend this book, when you are ready to take action with organizing your life. The book is framed in a way that you can apply it's strategies to your work, your home, your partnership and yourself of course.

The first thing I began to take action upon was creating a personal mission statement. Which Covey describes as basically the vision and the values by which you live your life. A personal mission statement gives you direction and helps you through decisions. As you look at your mission statement you will be able set your goals and based on your principles, focus your time and energy in that direction. As I see it, this can also be used in a similar way to the law of attraction in which you begin to attract what you focus upon. It helps to create this mission statement so you can get a clear vision as to what it is you want to attract into your life.

I have started my personal mission statement that I am still tweaking, so here's what I've got so far:

I am creating beauty around me
I am inspiring
I am living my life proactively and passionately
I am giving to and connecting with people wherever I am
I am using love as a verb in my life
I am living simply
I am laughing freely
I am visualizing and attracting unlimited abundance
I am remembering always that anything is possible
I am open to learn something new everyday
I am evolving and continually focusing on being the best version of me
I am sharing what the best version of me has to offer to the world.

So that's what I have so far. I will print it out once I'm completely happy with it and frame it on my dresser! And the journey continues....

Live your own story

My blog post is a simple one today, sorting through and organizing papers today, this quote I had jotted down a long time ago fell onto my lap. I take these messages from the universe seriously. I felt it was important to share this inspiring message to everyone today. I hope others can see themselves in this little passage just as I was able to this morning.

"...you can only borrow other people's stories after you've started living your own. You must become your own heroine...you must start seeing each day as a blank page waiting to be filled up with amusing anecdotes, profound turning points, provocative choices and pursuits of passion. The world adores storytellers, but deplores those who refuse to live their own stories."
-excerpt taken from Something More by Sarah Ban Breathnach

What will you fill your blank page with today?

Eat, Pray, Love...part 1

I read the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert last year and immediately was drawn in to this story of a woman who after a terrible divorce takes off in search of the self that she had lost. I saw the movie last weekend, and it did not disappoint. As a mother of two children, my fantasy of taking off to Rome in search of myself and some really fantastic Italian food gets zapped pretty fast. Although, when life with a 2 and 4 year old gets crazy, I feel like I could run off to Bali, my kids kind of need mom to stick around. Women love this story, even cynical women soften and are able to get lost in Elizabeth's story of surrendering and searching for worldly pleasures, connection to spirit and ultimately love. I believe that it's easy to connect to this story because I think in the end we all want those same things Elizabeth went looking for and found in Eat, Pray, Love. We all want to experience joy and pleasure of our senses, we all want to feel in tune with our inner self/spirit and I believe that if you boil down what each of us want, it links back to love. So, here's the question, how can the average person who can't quit their job or leave their children and husband tackle this journey of self? I will explore this question with "eat" in mind.

Eat

I think that other than the obvious, eat represents to me experiencing all types of sensory pleasures. However, in my humble opinion, there are very few other things as joyful as losing myself to a delicious meal. Fresh roasted beets and creamy goat cheese drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette. Earthy and creamy mushroom soup sprinkled with fresh parsley. Succulent crab dipped in butter....okay now I'm getting hungry. My friends who know me very well, know that I take my food very seriously, enjoying each moment. I tend not to be a scarf down a sandwich on the go person. I enjoy dining alone, with a book. Experiencing new tastes, restaurants I've always wondered about. Why not try out that little restaurant you always drive by? What about our other senses? Listen to some beautiful music that soothes you, cheers you and brings you joy. Take the time to smell the coffee as it's brewing in the morning, get yourself some lavender scented linen spray for your pillow at night. Sarah Ban Breathnach has a follow up book to Simple Abundance called "Romancing the Ordinary." This book is filled with many ideas to delight in sensory joys for each season. Eating is definitely my favourite way to connect to my senses. It's mid August, get yourself some fresh tomatoes and season with cracked pepper and sea salt, some hearty white bread (like french or italian), and make yourself a "Tomato Crunch." My sister in-law used to own a restaurant that served gourmet soups, salads and sandwiches, I worked there for a time. The menu changed weekly and seasonally, this was one of my favourite menu items in the summer time and is extremely simple to prepare at home.

Tomato Crunch

1 summer fresh tomato
2 slices of hearty white bread ( I love whole wheat bread for most things, but in this case, it must be white bread)
1 handful of plain potato chips ( preferably kettle cooked like "Miss Vickie's")
1 tbsp mayo, butter, salt and pepper to taste.

Directions:

Slice Tomatoes nice and thick, then season with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper
Spread bread once done with a bit of butter (optional) but I think it helps the bread to not get soggy from the mayo
spread bread with mayo
Assemble with tomatoes and then a layer of chips

Note: You could toast the bread if you wanted to but the "crunch" is best coming from the chips alone, with the soft bread.

Eat!

Awesome!

I stumbled across "The book of Awesome" at Chapters the other day and it filled me with such joy reading it I wanted to share it with others. It's a great reminder of all the simple little things that make living worth while. It's a reminder to pessimists that there is always something to be optimistic about. Some of my favourites are:

#995 Finding money you didn't even know you lost.

#528 When your pet notices your in a bad mood and comes to see you.

#538 Laughing so hard you start crying ( My friend Stacey and I did this the other night and it immediately refreshed my spirit)

#587 Taking your ponytail out (I love this part of my day!)

#597 When the cop finally passes you after following you for a while (because i am cop phobic this is a big one for me)

#604 Walking on grass with bare feet

#679 Old school sugar cereals (alphabits yummy)

#690 When the person scratching your back finds that one itchy spot

#707 Wearing what you just bought out of the store ( I bought a new coat the other night and I had to do this, I pulled of my shabby old coat and put it in the shopping bag, ripped the tags off and left the mall feeling like a million bucks)

#539 When you open a book to exact page you were looking for

#552 When you went to the gym yesterday (meaning now I don't have to feel guilty about going today)

#561 Letting the waves bury your feet at the beach

#591 Sitting on your freshly made bed and admiring your work after cleaning your room

Awesome! So this got me thinking about my day to day life and things that make my day. Things that make everything seem a bit brighter, moments that bring me joy, synchronicity or bliss...So here's some of my awesome list:

#1 That first sip of strong coffee each morning...mmmmm....

#2 Laughing out loud for real...not just saying "lol" but when an email or message from someone online really makes you "lol"

#3 Hearing my kids screeching "mommy!" when I come home from work

#4 Making a joke and my son Jalen (3 yrs old) gets it and really starts laughing, and then we both start laughing together

#5 Ruby singing "Take me out to the ball game" and the part where she says "woot woot for the home team...."

#6 Walking into a cold air conditioned house after being outside in the humid hot air of summer

#7 The sweet salty combo, for example, chips with a side of chocolate or a more sophisticated choice of old cheddar with red pepper jelly. My friend Kelly made a snack the other night of popcorn with butter, honey and black pepper; now I've never tried this until then and it was so good. The combination of the salty butter, a hint of sweet honey and a little heat from the pepper. TOO AWESOME!

#8 Roasting a perfect marshmallow at a campfire, not to dark, completely melty inside, golden brown on the outside

#9 Walking out of the salon with a fresh new haircut (one you are happy about of course)

#10 The short work week after a long weekend, Friday comes so much faster!

Now this is a list in progress, I actually just thought of these things just now as I was sitting here. What's on your awesome list?

Law of attraction and affirmations

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

-Wayne Dyer

Most people go about their days in an semi-conscious state. Not fully paying attention to what their minds are telling them all day long. There is scienctific evidence that 90% of our thoughts are exactly the same thoughts you had yesterday. Just what are we telling ourselves? What is the non-stop regurgitated chatter going on in there, and is it helping or is it harming our days? Thoughts like "There's never enough time..." "I'm always so tired"..."There's nothing to do..." "I'm so stressed out..." "I wonder if I said that wrong?..." "I'm broke..." All of these sound like excuses...excuses that hold us back from living a full and rich life.

If you read the book or saw the movie "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne than you'd know that through the law of attraction thoughts become things and what you focus on will be what you attract more of into your life. The very concept of this blog is based on this fact...if I focus on joy, I will attract more joy. If I focus on beauty, then beauty will expand in my life. Long before "The Secret" I read Wayne W. Dyer's book "The Power of Intention" and it helped me see things in a different way. I realized that I was in control of how my life ended up by setting my intentions for attracting abundance, peace, love and success. A little while ago Dr. W.W.D. was talking about his book "Excuses be Gone" on a PBS special (which I recorded) and I sat down with my pen (actually my favourite crayola markers) and took note of some affirmations that he suggests will replace all the useless counterproductive "excuses" we give ourselves to hold us back from living the life we were meant to. I also created a few of my own. Here is a list I've compiled to inspire others to change their thoughts and in turn change their lives:

*My life is handled with ease and grace

*I am strong and have unlimited energy

*I am open and willing to attract all that I desire beginning here and now

*I can accomplish anything I put my mind to

*Being myself involves no risks. Its my ultimate truth and I live fearlessly

*I have infinite patience (good one for mommies)

*I'd rather be loathed for who I am than loved for who I am not (I like this one alot)

*I am connected to an unlimited source of abundance

*The right circumstances and the right people are already here and will show up on time

*I am passionate about my life and this passion fills me with excitement and energy

Here are a few of my favourite books by Dr.Wayne W. Dyer: