Susan Who?

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Amber Whitener

I know this is old news, but the message of it is timeless and it felt sort of “right” to post about it this week.

Remember Susan Boyle?

Back in 2009 her courage to follow her dream inspired millions.

If you don’t know who Susan Boyle is then take 5 minutes to watch: Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent ’09.

Too many of us would have clammed up under the skepticism and undisguised ridicule she faced from the moment she walked out on that stage up until she started to sing her song “I dreamed a dream”.

Who would have believed that it was even possible that this 47 year old woman from some village somewhere had what it takes to be a star?And yet she did and she took the chance to prove that she could shine as brightly as any of them.

If you don’t agree that she was outstanding during her performance that’s OK. The point of it is that scads of others who watched her were changed a little after watching her – and there precious few who can say that they have been able to give that kind of genuine inspiration during their 15 minutes of fame.

So, what is your gift?

You know what it is. It is probably even definable in a single word like: William Shakespeare: story-telling, Albert Einstein: intelligence, and Martin Luther King Jr: leadership.

However, the gift/word itself had very little significance.

It was the mindfully strategic use of those gifts that actually changed the world.

If it wasn’t too late for Susan Boyle to show off her talent, then it certainly isn’t too late for you either.

“What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” – Robert H. Schuller

Plant Therapy

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Amber Whitener

How much plant life do you keep in your home or office environment?

There was a time that I had resigned myself to accept that I am terrible at taking care of plants and flowers.

I would have sworn that I was simply not able to keep them alive. I’d either forget about them or drown them. Plus, I never really had much of a yard to work with in attempt to have any kind of garden outside my home that’s for sure. The closest I ever came to being successful at growing anything was on Farmville. (Heh, yeah seriously.)

Then one day I was reading an article about herbs and their health improving properties, and I remembered that I had bought a few of those tiny herb kits at the dollar spot in Target.

I really have no idea why I purchased them other than the fact that I liked the adorable tiny pots that they came in. I know, it’s bad to do this. I actually avoid the dollar spot these days because I would always find something that would end up sitting in a box in a closet forgotten but taking up space.

Anyways, back to the point, I decided to dig out the little herb garden starter kits and try to grow them. To my surprise, they actually started growing! (See my photo of them above.)

I found nurturing the tiny little seeds to grow to be quite relaxing and rewarding.

This is an infant liquid medicine dispenser.

I gave them each tiny drops of water to drink every day. – Just enough to get the soil completely wet and I used an infant liquid medicine dispenser. (I know it probably sounds way to over-cautious to those of you with a green thumb, but like I said, I was pretty certain that when I took care of plants before I would either over or under water them.)

Because I enjoyed this little activity so much, I decided to look up the benefits of gardening. Turns out that leisure gardening is actually a newer type of therapy called horticulture therapy. Who knew?

From John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog post about Plant Therapy:

“A number of studies have already indicated that just looking at plants or nature can help alleviate stress, perceptions of pain and improve mood among patients. More recently, studies have gone further to indicate that the act of gardening can also have dramatic and restorative effects on health.”

The Mystery of Motivation

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Amber Whitener

Sometimes, I get lucky and am sent an extremely encouraging message exactly when I need it.

This time, a little bonne bouche came in my junk mail folder (which I hardly ever check by-the-way). The subject of the email was “The Mystery of Motivation“. (Intriguing right?)

The following is a blog post by a member at SparkPeople, username: SHAPNUP. SparkPeople liked it enough to email it out to all of their e-newsletter subscribers. ☀ Note the social media trick here. Did you notice it? It was free content for them, and they encouraged their member by sharing her message.

How does motivation work? What makes us pick up our feet and do what we gotta do? Well, for me, motivation works the same way, backwards and forwards.

It’s like this…

BACKWARDS:

I eat one Hershey’s Kiss. I am motivated to eat more. ◄ LOL! Isn’t that sadly true!?

My job is mostly sedentary. I am motivated to be less active.

My co-workers (mostly healthy weights) like to snack (on unhealthy foods). I am motivated to do the same.

I find comfort in certain foods. I am motivated to drug myself with them.

None of this takes much effort. I am motivated to do even less.

FORWARDS:

I read a success-story blog on Spark. My endorphins kick in. I am motivated to want success.

I skip an unhealthy snack. It isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I am motivated to do it again.

No pasta or pizza till I can’t breathe, and I sleep better. I am motivated to eat more healthfully and lightly.

Moving, even a little bit, raises my energy. I am motivated to move more.

What we feed grows.

If we feed the negative in our lives, it gets bigger. It becomes an unending cycle of drudgery and pain. And it continually gets worse. I am an EXPERT at feeding the negative. I think we all know how to do that.

If we feed the positive in our lives, it gets bigger. The cycle is now made up of health, strength, and energy. Feeding the positive, well, that’s a learning experience for me. It takes planning and effort and action. It takes overcoming LAZINESS, which I believe is a huge part of my negative cycle. I’m not so good at feeding the positive.
I’d like to get better at this myself.

This weekend I’ve been feeding both. Talk about confusion. No wonder my mind and body can’t quite get it together.

I’ve fed my negative cycle with poor food choices and poor sleep.

I’ve fed my positive cycle with lots of water and some great physical exertion. It’s a start.

My goal is to replace the negative with positive.
My goal is to replace negative with the positive… Hear hear!

Looks like my work is cut out for me.

How do you feed the positive in your life? What makes you pick up your feet and do what you gotta do?

(I put in a few things in bold, added a few bullet points, and a word or two in red; otherwise every word in black and white was hers.)

My final thoughts:
There is really not much one can add to this except that this motivational message can be applied to any aspect of our lives: business, family, friends, or our own health.

Whatever our goals are, we should surround ourselves with influences that will help us accomplish those goals. If we are always letting something or someone else discourage us, then isn’t failure practically inevitable?

Use Your Life to Serve the World

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Amber Whitener

I’m not Oprah Winfrey’s #1 fan or anything, but I do believe that she is an exceptional woman. I have seen my share of of her shows over the years, but I really don’t watch any talk shows on a regular basis.

There are some people who worship Oprah and then others who believe that she is pure evil who only does anything for self-serving purposes. I think both reactions are silly.

Oprah’s success is due to the fact that she is very human and capable of great things or terrible mistakes.

Whatever your opinion of her, you cannot deny that she has changed more lives and inspired more charity than any other human being alive.

What would it be like to know that about yourself?

Oprah’s Final Words of Her Final Show Transcribed

We all are called. Everybody has a calling, and your real job in life is to figure out what that is and get about the business of doing it.

Every time we’ve seen a person on this stage who is a success in their life they spoke of the joy and of the juice they received from doing what they knew they were meant to be doing.

A calling lights you and lets you know that you are exactly where you are supposed to be and doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. And that is what I want for all of you. Live from the heart of yourself. Know what sparks the life in you, so you in your own way can illuminate the world.

You will receive in direct proportion to however much you give. You have the power to change somebody’s life. You carry whatever you are supposed to be doing. Carry that forward and don’t waste anymore time.

Start embracing your life that is calling you, and use your life to serve the world.

- Oprah Winfrey during her final episode of the Oprah Show

Transcribed from What Oprah Knows for Sure video.

I am not really a big bible quoting person or anything, but I do always remember one particularly wise passage regarding gifts. In the middle of Luke chapter 12 verse 48 it is stated that

“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required”

And isn’t that the truth?

Oprah has given a lot over the years. She has also received a lot in return. I can’t help but wonder what she has actually given up to be Oprah.

What would it be like to never go anywhere without being surrounded by masses of people who either love you or hate you.

What is it like to have millions of people expecting great things from you and millions more just waiting for you to mess up royally so that they can self-righteously judge you for all your shortcomings?

5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 2)

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Amber Whitener

Every day this week I am going to write about the five main reasons why so many blogs are dying out.
1. Lack of Time / 2. Lack of Content / 3. Lack of Focus / 4. Lack of Response / and 5. Lack of Tangible Benefits

Lack of Content

Don’t have anything to blog about? This is a tough one.

Listen to what people are interested in and find the relative topic to write your post about.

Get Inspiration Choose a Topic / Main Idea

Google Trends are similarly powerful to Twitter’s Trending Topics.

Don’t look into those “free website content” things.

The biggest key is making sure that your content is your own. Even if you are writing a post about someone else’s post, after giving proper credit to your inspiration, let the reflections or creative writing come from you.

Check out this Problogger.net article: How to Write Great Blog Content.

5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 1)

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Amber Whitener

This week’s mini series of blog posts are for those of you who write blogs like mine. We have the ability to share experience that others can benefit from.

It is our right and maybe even responsibility to writing about what we know and hypothesizing (without intention of presenting hypotheses as undoubted fact) out loud about what we don’t completely understand yet.

Every day this week I am going to write about the five main reasons why so many blogs are dying out.

1. Lack of Time / 2. Lack of Content / 3. Lack of Focus / 4. Lack of Response / and 5. Lack of Tangible Benefits

Lack of Time

I am starting with this one because for the first time in 18 months I completely skipped my blog post last week. The reason that so many like me who love to write still end up falling short of their own expectations is because we get tripped up by the bar we set for ourselves. No matter how much we are all fighting it, we are all burdened with the limitation of 24 hours to each day. So we try to plan out as much of that time as possible and whether we like to think about it or not, we all have missed out on spending enough time on one thing or another that we could have really made a difference with.

3 Bottom-line Dependent Questions with Variably Correct Answers:

1. How often do you have to post to your blog?

COMMON ANSWERS: Once a day, every day? 5 times a week? Every other day-ish? Once a week? Once a month?

REAL ANSWER: It depends. No. Really.
It depends on purpose. Some businesses use their “web log” for press releases which may only get released semi-annually. I still only blog once a week. Except for this week because I am not going to spread this particularly important tidbit over a span of 5 weeks. If I have learned anything from all of the blogs business or otherwise it’s this: quality and consistency that beat bulk and fluff.

2. How long should blog posts be?
People get stressed while over thinking each blog post. They get hung-up on the false belief that all posts should be massive blobs of words rich (or cluttered?) with a massive wealth of details supporting your idea. In truth, you just need one main topic for each post and between three and four (at the very least) sentences or references to other content supporting your topic of the moment. And as long as that topic is relevant to the blog’s main idea then it only adds value.

3. Should I limit the amount of time I work on it?

ANSWER: YES
This is another difficult question. I am so picky about my writing and I often have so many ideas that it is a time-consuming effort to articulate those ideas without overly complex details or overly vague statements. I’m working on that. I am trying to keep my entire process to under 45 minutes.

I failed horribly on that time limit today. Tomorrow I’ll do better.

Time for Recess

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Amber Whitener

You know I’m always trying to learn new, more efficient ways to take better care of my health. Sometimes, it’s the old ways that benefit us the most.

Last Thursday, I had a bunch of work piling up while I was absolutely stuck on one of my projects… I knew I was probably being too much of a perfectionist about it.

When a few hours went by with hardly a trace of productivity on my masterpiece (of the moment) I realized I needed to stop. I needed to get the blood pumping through my legs again.

Then I thought about the usual exercises I could do… I didn’t want to do any kind of structured activity that involved a workout video or a treadmill… No, I would need something else.

I had a sudden urge to either aimlessly take a run around the neighborhood or run up and down the stairs until the productivity part of my brain could reboot or something.

I went down to our basement fridge to grab myself (yet another) diet coke and spotted Haylee’s (my eight year old) hoola hoop leaned carefully against the wall where I am certain she decided was a good place to “hide” it from Ryan (my four year old) who had been leaning all of his weight on it, bending it more of an oval than a circle.

What the heck? I thought to myself. I decided to go ahead and try it.

I went back upstairs and turned on the radio and hoola-hooped through three songs (and 27 commercials… that’s only a slight exaggeration.)

The exercise was invigorating and just exactly what I needed to reset and focus on my work. Then I wondered how often we “grown ups” stop and indulge in a little bit of playtime for ourselves.

Do something you haven’t done in a long time… like a handstand or jumping jacks… you’ll be surprised at how difficult and simple the skill is to revive after years of dormancy.

31 Days of Wishes: I Wish for Less

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Amber Whitener

My wish is for less… or fewer, whichever word is grammatically appropriate.

I could list a whole stack of things I would love to have more of: time, vacation, friends, money, and so on. Isn’t it nice to think about what you would wish to get less of? We are born conditioned to want more and more and more. And yet many of us all realize at some point that more really isn’t what we want at all.

What we really want is: enough.

Over the weekend, I started to realize that wishing for more time is just a waste of time. So I refocused my wishes to something that actually would give me more time.

I wish for:

less wasted time on thoughts or memories that I can do absolutely nothing about but still somehow manage get me down a bit
fewer times that I get so stressed out and tell my kids…” just a minute” then realize 20 minutes later I left them hanging just so I could… you know… “just get this done really quick!” :{ Yeah, I did that too much this year.
fewer detours
fewer illnesses
less depressing junk (wish I could use another word there) on tv or in my reading materials
less junk food… (This is the most difficult time of the year to with for that isn’t it?!

Most of all I wish for less stress. Maybe that means I need to wish for fewer moments to occur in which I allow things to pile up and come crashing down. Maybe it means that I need to wish for less impatience when things don’t go perfectly.

☆ Happy Holidays ☆ with less of what you don’t need.

Thanksgiving.

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Kena Roth

The last shreds of fall hold on like the stubborn leaves on an oak tree. You rake, and rake, but when you look up you realize they are still hanging there waiting for their OWN time to drop.

This year, Thanksgiving seems like one of those leaves. We have to wait for it to come before we can spring open the gates of the Christmas season. Around here, our neighbors seem more eager than ever to get on with the season of giving. So many lights are already up, days before the turkey is served, and the sales started weeks ago.

This eagerness points to the reason Thanksgiving is so perfectly placed. It might just seem like the road bump holiday that gets shoved out of the way in a mad rush to the Christmas season, but maybe instead, we should think of it as a starting point for all we celebrate at the end of the year.

After all, how can we give, if we do not first know what we are thankful for?

This year there are many blessings that bring us thanks. Family: who love and support us in what sometimes seems like a wild adventure. Children: who are the reason for the work we do. Friends: old ones who can be with us daily to bring joy and new ones that are physically miles away but always close in our hearts. Clients: whose enthusiasm is contagious, and whose success is part of our reward.

We are thankful too, that the Internet is bringing us together in new ways. Social media is something to celebrate. It is an opportunity. And the chance to pass its power on to others is a great blessing.

Thank you for your business.

Thank you for your friendship.

And as your thanks turns into giving this season, we wish you much happiness with those you love.

Exercise? Blah, It Just Sounds Like More Work…

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Amber Whitener

Back in September I wrote a post about how I really needed to make myself get more sleep. Well, I have done that 8 hours of sleep thing almost every single night since and I tell you what… I didn’t realize how tired I was until I actually started getting enough sleep.

It’s like that whole boiling frogs experiment… What!? Some of you have never heard of the boiling frogs experiment?

OK, there was a teacher that would make his/her students boil water and then throw live frogs in the water. Don’t worry though, as soon as those frogs hit the water they would immediately jump out.

Next the teacher would have the students put semi warm water in a pot and put the live frogs in… (They probably swam around all happy.) However, the student were told to gradually heat up the water until it got back to a boil.

The same frogs jumped out of the boiling water the first time ended up being slowly boiled to death.

Gross isn’t it? But what does this have to do with exercise? Well, let me answer the question with another question:

What is your environment like? Is it an optimal for you to stay healthy and happy? Or could you possibly be slowly boiling yourself to death?

I was definitely on a slippery slope to the latter. At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t getting enough sleep, I was stressing out about everything, I wasn’t eating right, I wasn’t exercising.

I was constantly busy! And yet, busy doesn’t always equal active. Ninety five percent of my work is on the computer, so, I have to change something else.

Last year, I gained a good 5 lbs during winter and I still have yet to be rid of it. So, this winter, I am not going to let myself gain another 5 lbs because I am too busy to exercise! Winter is quickly approaching and I had to ask myself: “Am I going to fall into the same cycle of less physical activity for another 3 to 4 months this year?”

My answer is: “Um… No!”

So, last week, I started exercising again.

Affiliate Link

See more reviews or purchase the Denise Austin Pilates Workout Video at Amazon.com

So, I dug out my old Denise Austin Pilates video and even the kids got out their yoga for kids videos this weekend. I am going to save myself from slowly allowing my energy to deplete even more because I am not keeping my body strong.

I like Denise Austin because she is so encouraging and authentic in her videos. The Denise Austin: Mat Workout Based on the Work of J.H. Pilates is my favorite. It is so challenging, but not too challenging.

She says things like “These exercises will help you strengthen and tone your muscles to be able to move around with everyday ease…”

Sounds nice right? And she gives you work-arounds for some of her more challenging moves so that you aren’t plagued with sore muscles and joints!

I got my kids involved too