Given a choice, wouldn’t you choose to live the sweet life instead of a bitter life? But how do we change our thinking such that life becomes sweet? This article takes a look at this topic of creating the sweet life using a simple analogy with candy flavors.
Think about this: 98% of the ingredients of a sweet orange skittle and a sour apple skittle are the same. Every single kind of skittle has the same sugar, corn syrup, and hydrogenated palm kernel oil.
Yet, even with 98% of the same ingredients, the experience of a mouthful of sweet orange skittles is totally different than the experience of a mouthful of sour apple skittles.
How? How can the experience of the sweet skittle be so different than the sour? The answer, of course, is the flavor that was added. The flavor makes all the difference.
Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of things you want to focus on? Yet, you find it hard to make real progress forward? Perhaps, it’s time to slim down your list and focus on just one or two larger goals. I too didn’t know how to focus until an unexpected conversation with my husband exposed my problem. This is that story.
For New Year’s Eve last year, Jeremy and I were looking for something to do—a traditional party with an actual countdown, mingling with strangers, getting dressed up in swanky outfits, holding champagne, kissing at midnight, etc.
I felt so relieved when we were invited to such a party. “Finally, we’re not going to be orphans this year,” I thought. However, the Universe had other plans for us; something sweeter, something better.
It was a Thursday night in July of 1996 when my quest for finding happiness began. I was sitting on the floor of my luxury apartment doing paperwork when it hit me that the path I was on was not the path for me.
I was twenty-five, wealthy (six figures in the bank) and had achieved every single material goal I ever wanted. I literally thought I had it all. My closets were filled with designer clothes and fancy shoes. My bathroom cabinets were filled with luxury cosmetics. Everything was great except for two things: I was miserable and I felt empty.
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Love to you.
–Tina
Just for kicks, here are some articles from the past that you may like:
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To me, writing is not work. Writing is like dancing with Existence, with Spirit, with God. It’s beautiful and precious. I get more satisfaction and energy from writing than I do from a few extra hours of sleep. Seriously.
Some days, when absorbed in the moment of writing down a stream of thoughts, I lose track of time, and I skip sleep altogether. And I function fine the next day–only with a bigger smile.
Sometimes a string of words will hit me so strongly that I will sit in front of the computer bawling. I cry, not because I am sad, but because I’ve experienced such intense joy that it moved me to tears.
Writing is just one form of creative outlet. I am no more qualified to write than you. And usually, as I relax and flow with my stream of consciousness, and write down whatever comes to mind, the result is surprising to me too. I am just a messenger after all.
Forgiveness is a difficult topic. On one hand, we feel that we have learned to forgive. On the other hand, we find ourselves resisting when we actually try to forgive someone. Implementing forgiveness into our lives is a process.
Sometimes, things work in mysterious ways. Almost a year ago, I took a workshop on forgiveness. Some days, I would feel that I had learned how to forgive, and other days I felt that I had failed. The following is a story of a casual encounter with a stranger that reminded me of all that I have learned about forgiveness.
The other day I was walking my dog and, as I always do, I gave him a little water from the hose in front of someone’s house. I don’t know the owner of the house well. I met him once and I never asked him if I could do this. I always turn the hose off tightly and roll it back up leaving it exactly the way it was when I found it.
What are your dreams? What are you passionate about?
Around the time I graduated University I became fascinatedwith photography. It became my first passion. I dreamed of becoming a professional photographer.
I loved photography, and dove in head first determined to make my dreams come true. I read books, took countless images, invested in equipments, spent countless hours in Photoshop, attended gallery showings, and took classes on specialized subjects.
I loved photography so much that –at one point- I built a darkroom from scratch, rented a large loft space to have my ideal studio setup and eventually married a photographer – who I admired, because he was so confident with his craft and was among the few successful working photographers I’d met. Most other photographers I encountered all struggled to make ends meet.
I never understood why some people would work late into the night and sleep most of their mornings away, but now that I am sitting here, at 1am, listening to the same song on repeat, I get it.
When the rest of the world is asleep, there are very few distractions. There are no phone calls and no urgent tasks that need to be done at this time of the morning. I can completely focus myself on my work and let my creativity glow.
You may have read The Power of Now, or studied the Sedona method. Both these resources focus on teaching you how to get your mind in the present to forget about your worries and to really live in the moment.
When I graduated from fashion school last spring, I, like many other new graduates and job seekers, felt ready to take on the world. I had devoted 4 years to studying the thing that I had hoped would lead to a bright, shining career in the fashion industry, a dream I had held since I was 7 years old.
It didn’t happen like that. After graduation, I applied to over 20 jobs – in the first few months, the only reply I ever got was from a start-up company who insisted that their employees be Japanese and sold t-shirts with crude drawings on them.
Needless to say, my job search didn’t go too well. After a while, there was one position that I applied to when I had just started to give up that seemed to be the light at the end of the tunnel. I fought for the position, and almost got it.
It was a very unhappy and stressful time for me. At the time, I was being overworked at my full-time job in the wedding industry, however, I wanted very much to get my feet wet in fashion – my passion.
I never know what I’m going to write until I actually sit down to write it. Actually, the less I think about it, and just allow myself to relax into the flow, the better the writing usually takes shape.
My state of mind has everything to do with the quality of the final result. Thus, the lack of writing produced in the first 10 months of 2010 – as I was recovering and overcoming post-partum depression.
The biggest gift I received from the Good Mood Blogger contest was, that in entering it, a mental shift took place in me that pushed me over the edge of the mental blockage I was “stuck” in. And for that, I felt like a winner from the very beginning.
The mental blocks (aka. Limiting beliefs) we experience in life – not just in writing, but with taking action toward goals we want to accomplish – can have a detrimental effect which dramatically change the stories of our lives.
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