As a child, your best friends were always nearby because they your siblings, cousins, or perhaps your neighbors.
Give a Gift to Your Family
Give a gift to friends and family.
If you’re happy with those around you, show it.
It doesn’t have to be a large demonstration. You can show how much you care by picking up a small gift now and then. Buy a $5 gift card. Send a cute greeting card.
If money is an issue, leave a note or make a phone call.
The reaction you receive will give you as much pleasure as it will give them.
Every Monday, a new motivational memo is posted. Subscribers to ThisTimeIMeanIt.com’s coaching service get this – and many more benefits – sent to them directly. If you’d like to know more, follow this link.
What Really Matters Most?
Long from now, all that will remain of us are the relationships we left behind.
This is not intended to be a morbid thought, rather a reminder of what really does matter. No one will care how fancy were your clothes or how fast was your car. There isn’t a soul on the planet who will think of how neat was your house of how expensive was your furniture.
Your legacy is being created now. It is being constructed by the relationships you have.
Take time to tell someone you love how important he or she is to you. It doesn’t matter how often you’ve done it before. It can never hurt to say it again.
Is It Time to Say Goodbye?
Is it time to say goodbye?
When it’s time to move on, from bad habits or painful relationships, these simple steps will make it easier:
- Accept the reality that what you had once is no longer working
- Get support
- Decide what you want to do that’s different
- Make a small step toward that new priority
- Praise yourself for changing
- Give thanks for what you had; it served you well for a long time. (If you’re saying farewell to a person, remember “compassion first” whenever thinking about them or bumping into them.)
Goodbyes are certainly not as fun as “hellos” but they are necessary.
How we handle them is essential to a balanced and happy life.
Growing Up in an Overweight Family
by Tara Spener
My parents have always been overweight.
When I was very young, it wasn’t something that I really noticed. They were just my parents. I didn’t notice or didn’t understand that they were heavier than they should be.
However, as I got older, that changed. Over time, my parents’ weight was about much more than their health.
When I was a young child, my parents being overweight meant that they couldn’t play with me the way some of my friends’ parents could play with them. There were no games of chase, no family bouts of tug of war, no family football matches in the backyard. It also meant that they didn’t have the energy for me. They were often too tired from their day to do more than sit down on the couch at the end of the day.
In the beginning, I just thought that’s the way things were, but as time went on, it started to weigh on me that my parents couldn’t (or didn’t want to) do the things that other parents did. I felt like I was missing out in some small way.
Meal times were not the most healthy.
It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started to think of dinner as something that didn’t come from a box. Once I started to become more interested in eating healthy foods, my parents couldn’t provide me the guidance I needed. They weren’t able to teach me how to make nutritious meals. It wasn’t until I was married that I knew how to make a roast chicken. It wasn’t until college that I knew how to do more than boil some spaghetti noodles.
The unhealthy foods and the unhealthy role models made it hard for me to know how to live a healthy lifestyle.
Once I got to high school, I became interested in track, and I started to lead a more active lifestyle myself. I struggled for many more years trying to learn how to eat a healthy and balanced diet, and I continue to struggle with body issues.
Because my parents didn’t teach me healthy habits, I never learned how to listen to my body and give it the healthy foods it needed. I didn’t learn to exercise because of what it could do for my body and how it could make it feel. As a result, I struggled for a long time with learning how to say no to foods and with learning to strike the right balance with exercise. I either worked out too much or not at all. I either ate too much or too little.
Continuing to run track in college helped me to find that balance.
I learned how to train to push my body to its highest performance. I learned how to eat a healthy diet that gave me energy and made me feel great. Most of all, I learned how to love my body and to treat it with the respect it deserved.
My parents still struggle with their weight.
However, now I am able to offer them the role model that I had hoped they would be for me. With time, I hope that they are able to learn how to adopt a healthier lifestyle so that they can live long and fulfilling lives. And maybe one day we’ll be able to enjoy that game of tag … with their grandchildren.
About the Author: Tara Spenser is currently the resident writer for workingcapital.org, where she researches the most affordable business capital available. In her spare time, she enjoys blogging, swimming and being a mom.