Change is in the air.  Can you sense it?  Spring has sprung!

And only 15 days to the start of Minor League Baseball here in Spokane!

Change is in the air with me as well. What I used to tolerate so easily, is now bringing me to a state of restlessness. My old excuses are not as comforting as they used to be. I often feel I am in limbo between what was and what is yet to be. 

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or maybe it’s that I’m getting wiser, but the questions I ask myself now cause …

Do you strive for perfection?

Do you wait to take action until you’re assured that all of your ‘ducks are in a row’ and everything is perfect? That used to be me.

In those days, my sense of self-worth came from what other people thought of me. So, I was very careful to always ‘appear’ to be perfect. I didn’t speak up unless I knew I had the correct answer. And I rarely asked questions, because I didn’t want anyone else to think I didn’t know things.

I even had a gold necklace that I wore th…

Negativity Bias. Have you heard that phrase?

I don’t know about you, but I like to think that I’ve evolved quite a bit from my cro-magnon ancestors. I understand that they had to pay attention to dangerous and negative threats. For them, it was literally a matter of life and death. They were on high alert for any negative stimuli.

And yet, 25,000 years later, as humans, we still tend to

• Remember traumatic experiences better than positive ones
• Recall insults better than praise
• Think abou…

Comparison is a dream killer.

Not only that, but comparison is a thief of joy and steals momentum.

So often, we think we need to be an expert before we get started. We think we need a lot of experience before we get started. We look around at others who are following their dream, making an impact, or living fully and when we compare ourselves with them, we may feel diminished, frustrated, and lacking confidence.

And it’s hard to find your joy, to get started, or to live your aligned life wh…

Are we hard-wired for negativity?

Dr. Joe Dispenza writes in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, “Most of us live in the past and resist living in a new future. Why? The body is so habituated to memorizing the chemical records of our past experiences that it grows attached to these emotions. In a very real sense, we become addicted to those familiar feelings. So when we want to look to the future and dream of new vistas and bold landscapes in our not-too-distant reality, the body, whose cur…

When my daughter was in the first grade, there was an outbreak of lice.

Sure enough, she brought them home with her (and we didn’t need any more pets!).

When my husband and I researched options and local treatment centers, there were two schools of thought: one said we needed to follow extensive home cleaning instructions and the other said we didn't need to do any of that once our daughter had been treated.

One center told us we had to wash her sheets, hats, clothes, and coats; the other c…

Are you kidding me? Don’t take anything personally?

'Don't take anything personally' is the second agreement in Don Miguel Ruiz’s classic, “The Four Agreements.” It means that whatever happens around you has nothing to do with you. All people are reacting to their own ideas, beliefs, and perceptions and their actions and reactions say more about them then about you. So, hey, no need to get your feelings hurt or get offended or have any sort of emotion - - don’t take it personally. It’s not ab…

There was a time when I thought I had to be perfect!

And for me, part of being perfect was pretending that I wasn’t ever angry, envious, judgmental. I was afraid to look at my negative thoughts and beliefs because I didn’t want to manifest negative or dark things in my life. After all, how could I be perfect if my outside life was negative or dark? Not only that, but how could I teach, mentor, or guide congregants or clients when I was right where they were?

So, I avoided my negative thought…

We all want things.

But our wants can be categorized in two different ways: needs and desires. With some things, it’s super-easy to determine if our want is a desire or a need. However, with other things, it’s harder to figure out. Or, are needs and desires the same thing? Let’s find out.

Desires

Desires are items that you lust after or that you ‘think’ you need. They are the things that you don’t need to survive, but instead just really enjoy having. Desires can be physical things like the i…