Tiny Bites of Wagaliciousness

Have you noticed that you’re not perfect? Yeah, me too. Through the years I’ve gotten better at not kicking myself when I do something dumb, and it still hurts when I realize I’ve said something wrong and hurt someone’s feelings. Maybe you’re like that too? Give the gift of grace to yourself, just as you try to give grace to others. When you don’t know something, give someone the gift of teaching...

Think of a time when goosebumps sprang up on your arms and you got a warm, tingly feeling all over. That’s a good feeling, right? Can you remember what you thought or said or saw or heard that triggered that feeling? Maybe you even got puddles of tears in your eyes. Have you ever wondered what’s up with that? When that happens to me, I know that a deep connection to truth and love has just occurre...

Quick – think of something that makes you instantly irritated or angry. What if I told you that you can change that? The primitive part of your brain has a 1 to 3 second head start over the logical part of your brain, and it reacts most quickly and strongly to things that have upset you many times before. Take a breath – take control of the primitive part of your brain and tell it to relax while t...

How are you feeling right this minute? Frustrated? Bored? Excited? Humans have emotions and we’re meant to feel them. Now and then we’re bowled over by strong negative emotions and it’s very annoying to have helpful people saying things like “this happened for a reason” or “someday this will all make sense” when you hurt so hard you can’t even breathe. It is perfectly ok to be sad, so don’t waste...

A friend and I were having breakfast recently and she told me about some changes in her workplace that felt bad to her. She felt disrespected and not valuable to an organization she’s poured herself into. The more she talked, the worse she felt. She was earning an advanced degree in MSU. Remember MSU? That’s Making Stuff Up. Our brains can put together amazing scenarios about what happened, why it...

Look around you – what do you see? This morning I saw the first sunrise rainbow I’ve ever seen, and it was beautiful. On the same drive I saw a three-car accident on the side of the road and it was beautiful too. How can that be? Everything is beautiful. Everything. It’s up to you to look at in a way that emphasizes the beauty, not the flaws. Rainbows are beautiful and magical and ethereal – most...

Do you know someone – maybe you – who blames their parents for problems they have now? That’s lazy. Human, yes. Normal, yes. Lazy, absolutely. It doesn’t matter if they were controlling, withholding, incompetent, or abusive as parents, what happened to you happened. It can’t be changed. Continuing to place blame is lazy. When you continue to use their lack of parenting ability to excuse your lack...

Want to feel better about yourself? Learn to focus on the best aspects of the people you interact with. Focus on their kindness, their competence, and their great smile. Focus on the evidence of their heart being poured into their work. Focus on their faith in themselves and their trust of others. When you focus on the best aspects of the people around you, you become more aware of those same aspe...

Are you a right-fighter? I used to be and still have to resist the urge now and then. Maybe this has happened to you: someone comes to you with a problem, wants you to help them solve it, listens to your suggestions, and then they do something completely different. That used to irritate the life out of me – why would they waste my time if they didn’t value my input? Consider this - what other peop...

Can you be optimistic in the face of failure? The US space program took 32 tries before being able to put a man on the moon. The 32nd mission was one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, and a lot of failed missions led up to that step. When you try to do something and it doesn’t turn out quite like you planned, what’s your usual response? Do you beat yourself up? Try to cover the failu...

Don’t you just love that feeling of being in love? Did you know you can create that feeling whenever you want? We are designed to feel love and be love, and love is who we are. To create a feeling of love, all you need to do is find something to love. Look around you – there’s so much to love. Love the sun sparkling on water…love the songs birds are singing to each other…love the road you drive on...

Want a perfect way to gut your self-esteem and self-confidence? Of course you don’t, yet you probably do it a lot. What is “it”? Comparing yourself to others. If you’re like most people, nearly 10% of your thinking time each day is spent comparing yourself to others, often feeling like you don’t measure up. Can you stop doing that? When you find yourself using someone else as a yardstick to measur...

If you’ve lived more than a few years, there are people who have let you down in some way. Maybe you trusted or loved them and they used or betrayed you. If you’re like most people, maybe you beat yourself over it. May I give you a more powerful way to think about it? You gave trust or love to this person. You opened yourself to them, you felt good doing it, and you learned from the experience. Wh...

Is there someone who doesn’t like you? Do you respond by doing things to help them see the “real” you? Don’t. It’s a waste of your precious time and energy to try to make someone like you. When you’re around someone who doesn’t appreciate you, realize it’s their issue, not yours. There are people you don’t like. Maybe you don’t even know why you don’t want to be around them – you just don’t. Allow...

Observe the world around you for any length of time and you’ll understand that a lot of what happens around you, and sometimes even to you isn’t perfect. Sometimes it’s horrible or tragic. There is darkness that may occasionally happen to you, but the darkness isn’t you. You are the light that continues to shine in spite of the darkness you endure. You are the beacon that others look to in order t...

Time is on your side. Really! If you’re faced with a big decision or a big problem, wait. And then wait some more. Focus on something you enjoy or feel in control of and let time bring the solution to you. When I do this, I give the problem to the committee in the back of my head. That’s my personification of my intuition – you can use my term or create your own. Each time I start to ruminate abou...

Is it right for you to want to be happy? When you want to be happy, is it tough to find happiness? How often do you actually look for happiness? And is life supposed to be happy all the time? It might surprise you to know that it isn’t. Life isn’t about being happy all the time – it’s in the setbacks, heartbreaks, and yearning for more that we stretch ourselves and grow. It’s in the reaching for m...

Do you know the word godwink? Maybe you say “happenstance” or “synchronicity” or “coincidence” – all are similar words for the special little things you notice that are somehow special to you. Some people see a butterfly or certain kind of bird and feel the presence of a departed loved one. Some see matching numbers like 333 or 1111 and feel a connection to the infinite. Think of what your special...

Do you make yourself small? I spent a big part of my life trying to fit in, to adapt, to be part of…whatever. I was making myself small. And then I discovered that we were never meant to be small. People who cared about us taught us to adapt and fit in because that’s what they’d been taught to do. When we focus on fitting in, we limit our own bigness. We were born big – full of wonder and curiosit...

Are there people in your life that get on your last nerve? People you avoid when you can and dread being near when you can’t? Maybe you even think they’re bad or evil, so you are justified in disliking them. They may not deserve your good thoughts, but you deserve your good thoughts about them. Face it, everyone has at least one redeeming quality – you owe it to yourself find it. When you can find...

How do you feel? Seriously, stop what you’re doing to NOTICE how you feel. It sounds weird, I know – we’re so used to our own feelings that often we forget to really feel them. It matters to notice what you’re feeling as you feel it because so many of our feelings are patterns we’ve gotten in to that we don’t notice or question, and many of them don’t serve us very well. When you get in the habit...

Do you often feel self-conscious around people you don’t know well? Guess what? That’s perfectly normal. Most of us spend a lot of our lives feeling like others are judging us and not coming to a very flattering conclusion. Does that sound like you sometimes? Maybe this will help - people don’t focus on you as much as you think they do, because they’re too busy focusing on themselves. Really take...

Have you ever had the experience of being with someone, you both experienced the same event, yet you came away from it with different ideas of what happened? You look at the world through the sum total of your life experiences. The other person looks at the world through the sum total of their experiences. Both of you processed the event through what the experiences in your life have taught you. N...

Do you feel stressed a lot? For some people, stress is chronic, which can be devastating to relationships and to their health. Want to know the secret to stress relief? It’s not having a stress-free life, it’s having a stress-free outlook. What happens around you happens. You’re not in control of red lights, gridlock traffic, rude clients – none of it. You can’t control what happens around you – y...

Are you the best you that you could be? Probably not – we’re all human and we all have our weaknesses. Are you pretty awesome anyway? Probably so – though you might not think so. Nearly everyone downplays their strengths and focuses on their weaknesses. If you have a tough time taking a compliment, that’s one indication that you might want to learn to focus on your awesomeness instead of on your w...