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What I Learned When I Stopped Complaining
For the 2014 Thanksgiving season, I began a challenge of 30 Days Without Complaint. And it was hard. Honestly, it was pretty much impossible to keep 100%. I wanted to revisit what I learned when I stopped complaining. 1. I learned that being negative has been my default setting for most of my life. I tend to see the one wrong thing like a flashing beacon begging me to fix it, which makes me a fantastic essay grader as a teacher, but also means I have to be purposeful about seeing the positive and intentional about mentioning it! Trying my best to follow the dictionary definition of ‘complaining’ as expressing…
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A Change in Perspective
Heaven Not Harvard started with my acknowledging that all the world’s pressure on my parenting was creating unnecessary stress, weighing on me, pushing me to be cranky and insistent with an incorrect perspective, trying be a perfect mom based on imperfect standards. Inside my head, I yelled, ‘stop!’ And I shifted my parenting away from a generic “Harvard” goal and prioritized my focus on a “Heaven” goal. Over time, that mantra has shifted my focus in a myriad of ways, including my goals for myself, including my perspective on my marriage, and including events like Thanksgiving. Today, I simply wanted to focus on being thankful, with a peaceful attention on…
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Fairy Tale Proposal and Happily Ever After
It didn’t start as a fairy tale proposal! It started with a traffic stop. April 6, 2006, I got pulled over by the sheriff. Alarmed, I couldn’t imagine then how this event would change my life. But it did. In 2016, I was so excited to sit in the very spot of this momentous encounter with our sheriff with my daughter and watch this video of her daddy’s surprise return from Iraq which had a bigger twist than I realized. I was stunned. I had no idea what was happening. Until I watched the reply, I wasn’t even sure what I said – on NBC, MSNBC and now YouTube! Now…
