We are too hard on ourselves.  Women in general are too critical of our flaws, weaknesses, failures and shortcomings.  What is most important to remember is you’re never going to be who you most desire to be.  That may seem like I’m deflating your hopes and dreams but I hope you know that is not my intention in the least.  

My greatest desire during this 21 Days to a Happier You series is to help you take your happiness up at least a few notches.  Sometimes that requires a bit of a reality check.  Perfection is not something to be pursued.  It is a fleeting notion always accompanied by disappointment.  We as human beings were never meant to be perfect.  But we were, however, made to love, to be loved, to enjoy this life and create happiness within our lives and those around us.

If you accept perfection is not possible, it becomes a bit easier to give yourself a break for every mistake you make.  It becomes more acceptable to give yourself a pat on the back for everything you do right and to celebrate little victories every day.  Be proud of the person you are today, at this very minute, in this brief moment in time.  

If you are like me, you are not yet who you most desire to be, and there is much work that remains to be done.  But you are so much better than you once were and over time you will continue to grow and be molded into the person you were created to be. It is an ever-evolving proposition that will continue throughout your lifetime.  But right now, this very second, you are who you are and that is a beautiful person.  Appreciate that.  Be comfortable with who you are and confident in where you are going.

Removing perfection, or the pursuit there of, from the equation of your life frees you up to pursue what is truly important.  What is of the most significance in your life, your husband’s, your family, friends and those around you, can only be attained once you give up the need to be perfect.  Accepting that everyone around you is just as flawed as you are -maybe even more- should put a smile on your face and allow a softness in your heart.

On the flip side of this, accepting other’s differences and shortcomings, and not being critical or judgmental of them, will naturally allow you to experience more grace in your own life.  It is a reciprocal blessing received the moment you begin to accept people just as they are, flaws and all.

Before I close our this blog post for today, I’d like to invite you to take a brief moment to give a gift to yourself.  Simply pause and inhale deeply.  Take a deep inhale and hold it for a few seconds before letting our an equally relaxing exhale.  Repeat this as many times as you need until you can let go of everything around you causing any form of stress and simply whisper to yourself, “I am exactly who I am meant to be at this very moment and minute by minute, I will only get better.”  Now, spend the remainder of this day bringing that quote to life.

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!

JOIN THE 1,000,000 MEMBER CHALLENGE: If you haven’t already done it, what are you waiting for? Join the club! It takes only a few seconds and, of course, is free.

It’s a new dawn

It’s a new day

It’s a new life

For me

And I’m feelin’ good

These lyrics from the 1965 Nina Simone song, Feeling Good, is exactly how I hope you felt waking up this morning.  Every day is an opportunity for a new beginning.  Every morning a reason to be grateful for what you accomplished yesterday.  Taking time to appreciate the little victories.

There are often times when I feel as though I haven’t achieved as much as I’d like, when I’ve fallen short of a goal I’ve set, when I’m disappointed in how much I’ve grown in a specific area (or rather, not grown) and I have to remind myself of two things.  The first, is I may not yet be where I one day hope to be but I’m also miles away from where I began.  And the second is every day, is the first day, of the rest of my life.

Growth is a daily process.  Grace is a daily necessity.  We are all taught to be patient with others but are rarely taught to be patient with ourselves.  It is that patience, that grace, which allows us to grow to be the person we were created to be.  Reminding yourself daily of how far you’ve come, how many obstacles you’ve overcome, and how much potential you have will allow you to be grateful for all you’ve accomplished in your life thus far.  

“In our daily lives,” Albert Clarke once said, “we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.”  So often when we think about gratitude, and all the things we have to be grateful for, we look externally.  The sun, the moon, a roof over my head, food to eat, friends, family, etcetera.  But we forget to be thankful for something even closer to our hearts (quite literally).

For this moment, I want you to think about you.  I know that’s faux paux to suggest you think about yourself but it’s important in this process.  Don’t think about your flaws, your shortcomings or the things you have yet to achieve or receive in this life.  But rather focus on everything that’s great about you.  What are your greatest strengths, your best qualities?  If you can’t answer that question for yourself, ask someone who loves you. 

Take your list of qualities and ponder them throughout the day and be grateful for the person you now are and the person you are destined to become.  Be grateful for the progress you’ve made over the past week (possibly as a result of beginning this series with us four days ago) and make today the day you do nothing more than offer grace to yourself for your shortcomings of the past and offer gratitude for your bright future just around the bend.  Because the road to happiness, no matter which way we turn, will always go straight through gratitude.

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!

JOIN THE 1,000,000 MEMBER CHALLENGE: If you haven’t already done it, what are you waiting for? Join the club! It takes only a few seconds and, of course, is free.

Have you been enjoying our 21 Days to a Happier You series?  Hopefully, you already gained something in the first 3 days as we chatted about nutrition and exercise.  There are only three things that impact your happiness: Relationship with self, relationship with others and relationship with God.  Each week, we’re spending 7 days focused on one of these reslatonship pivotal to your overall happiness and success in life.

We began with nutrition because in order to elevate your happiness and achieve your life’s dreams, your mind must be in tip top shape.  Poor nutrition prevents this from happening and can slow you down in your advancement toward greatness.  Exercise goes hand-in-hand with good nutrition to boost your mind and body’s ability to work at their highest level.

What is important to remember in all this talk about diet and nutrition is getting in shape or losing weight aren’t the most important reasons to make the decision to improve upon these things today.  It’s not just about the person looking back at you in the mirror -although that’s important as it can adversely impact your happiness- but about getting everything in alignment so you look and feel great inside and out.

There are few things more frustrating than setting a goal and coming up short.  Most women pledge at the beginning of every year to lose weight, get in better shape and become more active.  And around this time annually, women realize they’ve failed at that goal…once again. Discouragement sets in followed by disappointment.  I want to encourage you to do one thing today to avoid such a let down.

Set a goal daily and celebrate each small victory.  If you previously set a goal earlier this year and are yet to achieve it, begin again today.  And begin small.  We underestimate how powerful it is to achieve a goal that has been set; no matter how small.  Remember the saying, “By the inch it’s a cinch, by the mile it’s a trial?”  Set small goals and then celebrate your achievements.

Have you ever seen the smile on a child’s face when they’ve achieved something great?  It’s priceless.  Invite that childlike wonder into your own life.  In the US, today is Thanksgiving and we generally fill our plates to the brim with high calorie foods.  If this is what you usually do, don’t change that.  Enjoy this wonderful day with your family.  But maybe begin your day with something light and healthy knowing you’ll indulge later.  Grab a few family members and go on a brisk post-feast walk together.  These are both small goals that can become important victories be the end of the day.

Each day, make a decision to set one small goal you want to achieve and then knock it out of the park.  Write down the goal on a post it note and once you’ve achieved it, draw a happy face next to it and paste it in a journal or on a board to keep track.  Soon you’ll have dozens or hundreds of small goals achieved.  That’s huge.

Be grateful for the little victories.  Celebrate your success daily.  There’s nothing quite like laying your head down on the pillow at night and knowing you completed a goal that day.  So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, be thankful for all you’ve achieved this year, show yourself grace for those areas in which you’ve fallen short, and be grateful for the days ahead because the best is yet to come.

Until tomorrow…make it a great Thanksgiving!

JOIN THE 1,000,000 MEMBER CHALLENGE: If you haven’t already done it, what are you waiting for? Join the club! It takes only a few seconds and, of course, is free.

“Exercise gives you endorphins.  Endorphins make you happy.  Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands.  They just don’t.”  These were the ditzy (yet wise) words of Reese Witherspoon’s character in Legally Blonde when explaining why she believed a client her law firm was representing was innocent.  

I use this quote often when explaining endorphins, much to Keith’s amusement.  Without fail, he always adds to what would have otherwise been a persuasive argument on why exercise is important, “She learned that from Legally Blonde.”  Thanks, babe.

Endorphins truly are powerful allies to our bodies; they’re natural pain and stress fighters.  Chemically, they are much like morphine or codeine, however, in this case addiction is a good thing.  The release of endorphins can change our mood instantly…and always for the better.  

In addition to a change in mood, some scientists believe endorphins make our immune system stronger, lower blood pressure and slow down our body’s aging process.  Maybe this explains why all the couples I’ve interviewed around the world, happily married 25-plus years, look as though they’ve been drinking from a fountain of youth for at least a decade.

Belly laughter for 10 minutes, a healthy sex life, spending time in the sun, and eating chocolate or spicy foods (e.g. chili peppers) are all triggers of endorphins.  But the most potent trigger is exercise.  Many years ago, I remember being incredibly stressed as an event productions manager.  I was working 12-hour days, 6 days a week and found myself a bit snippy with people (which, by the way, is an understatement) and my back was in an enormous amount of pain.  

I mentioned this to my colleague hoping to gain sympathy and instead was offered something different.  ”When was the last time you exercised?” she asked.  At first, I was offended she seemed to be minimizing my expressed challenges.  And then I began looking into how exercise works with our bodies and why it’s so important.

Today, we’re on Day 3 of our 21 Days to a Happier You series and it’s the second-to-last article dedicated to health and fitness.  I began the series with this important component because so much of our happiness is controlled not only by how we look but how we feel.  Poor eating and exercise habits can wreak havoc on our happiness.  If you can’t sleep at night, aren’t productive during the day, your patience is nil or all of the above, it may be time to look not only at what’s going on externally but what is happening internally.

As we discussed yesterday, any proven diet works.  No really.  It’s consistency -or rather the lack thereof- that causes diets to fail.  The same is the case with exercise.  You don’t need to spend money on a gym membership or a personal trainer.  The most effective exercises are jumping jacks and push-ups and both can be done for free.  You can go on YouTube and find thousands of great fitness videos at no cost.  

Exercising isn’t about fitting into a size 2 dress.  It’s not about being skinny.  Our bodies were created to be active and our sedentary lives -which oftentimes involve sitting at a computer several hours a day- are compromising our bodies and our overall happiness.  Get those endorphins flowing daily and see if you don’t feel an immediate uptick in your mood.  How you’ll look in the mirror will just be an added bonus.

If the way you look or feel physically is holding you back from creating the life you most desire to live, join me tomorrow as we wrap up the health and fitness portion of this 21-day series. I promise, you’ll be glad you did. 

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!

JOIN THE 1,000,000 MEMBER CHALLENGE: If you haven’t already done it, what are you waiting for? Join the club! It takes only a few seconds and, of course, is free.

There is a saying I love: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”  The first time I heard that, I had to pause a moment and repeat it to myself to capture the profundity of the statement.  Every mistake in my past…gone.  My future…bright as I desire it to be.

We’re on Day 2 of the 21 Days to a Happier You and as I mentioned when kicking off this series, there are only 3 things that truly impact the ability to create happiness in your life.  The first is the relationship with yourself.  How you perceive your worth in this world.  How proud you are of yourself in this moment and how great you believe you will become.  For this reason, I began this series with something you may not have been expecting: Food.

In 1826, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, 1826: “Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.”  Which translates to, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”  This is where we later got the more popular American phrase, “You are what you eat.”  Getting our nutrition right is important for a number of reasons, one of which is the stress we place on our body when we aren’t feeding it the nutrition it requires, which in turn creates additional stress that impacts how we look, feel and sleep.

It is estimated the U.S. weight loss market has reached $80 billion.  We may not know how to lose weight in the US but we certainly have figured out how to spend money attempting to do so.  A little more than 15 years ago, I lost weight using a book called Weigh Down. 

I don’t even know if that book is sold much now but the premise was you could eat what you wanted but only when you were hungry and to stop when you were 80-percent full.  I still subscribe to this all these years later and it works for me because I enjoy carbs, sweets and all the other things current diets tell us to cut out.

You can go on a cookie diet, a high-protein diet, a high fiber diet, any kind of diet will work.  What doesn’t work is inconsistency.  Failure on any diet is almost always due to user error.  It doesn’t matter what diet you choose, if getting weight off has been a challenge for you, and it’s keeping you from enjoying the life you were meant to live, remember that today is the first day of the rest of your life and you can begin anew.  

Don’t relish in your failures of the past, if you don’t have the energy you need to efficiently work toward your goals each day, change your diet.  If you are having a hard time sleeping at night, change your diet.  To effectively improve every aspect of your life, this is more important than you may think.  

You don’t have to be skinny to be happy.  You don’t have to lose 20 pounds or get to your ideal weight to be happy.  But you do have to know you’re on your way and you do have to signal to your body you’re making a permanent change for the better and command it to begin operating optimally.

Yesterday, I promised you a few tips to help jumpstart your weight loss that are right at your fingertips and will not cost you a penny.  Here are the first 5 things I did to jumpstart my diet more than 15 years ago (weight I’ve never gained back to this day):

1) Add more water to your diet.  You have likely heard you should drink 8 glasses a day.  That is a one size fits all and may not help with weight loss.  The amount you really should be drinking is your body weight divided in half in ounces.  So if you weigh 150lbs, you should be drinking 75oz of water which is a little less than 9 cups a day.  I weigh 120lbs, so I drink no less than 60oz a day.

2) Stop eating within 3 hours of bedtime.  This will help you sleep well at night as your body will be able to rest rather than keeping busy digesting and you will store less fat (you can Google the reasons why this is as it’s pretty well documented).

3) Sleep no less than 7 hours a day (8 hours is ideal).  Your body, especially your mind, functions more optimally with sleep.  You are able to make better decisions, be more patient with people around you and most importantly, be patient with yourself.  You are also less likely to overeat.

4) Add 1-2 apples a day.  It not only keeps the doctor away because of the high vitamin content but the fiber and water in the apple keeps your digestive system flowing better.  Fiber is imperative so if you’re not getting at least 20 grams a day, adding that will also help tremendously.

5) Wait until you’re hungry to eat.  And make sure you’re hungry and not thirsty.  Alot of times we mistake our body’s request for water to be hunger.  When you’re hungry, drink 8-oz of water.  If 10 minutes later you’re still hungry, then it’s time to eat.  And even more important than eating only when you’re hungry is to stop eating when you’re 80% full. The reason for this is it takes 20 minutes for your stomach to signal to your brain that you’re full.  By the time it does that, you’ve already overeaten and your body is storing the excess food as fat. 

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about becoming more active and how you can squeeze an effective workout into any schedule (even if you have 5 children you’re home schooling).  Don’t wait until January 1st to make a New Year’s Resolution.  Add these 5 simple things and you’ll see and feel a difference immediately.  

You may only lose 1lb a week with these changes but if you are patient, that amounts to 52lbs by this time next year and the entire time you’re working toward your ultimate goal, you’re giving your body the added gift of supplying what it needs so it can help you achieve your greatest hopes and dreams.

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!

Comments: With nearly 76,000 Happy Wives Club members already actively engaged on our Facebook Community page, what better place to share your thoughts? Join me there and let’s continue the conversation.

JOIN US: If you’re happily married, join the club.  It takes only a few seconds and is FREE!

In the amount of time it might take you to read this short blog post, pin a few pictures on Pinterest or comment on your friend’s posts on Facebook, you can eat a delicious crisp apple, snack on a pack of baby carrots, do several sets of jumping jacks and get on your knees for a few rounds of yoga push-ups. 

Today, we’re beginning a series I hope will revolutionize your life and kick your happiness up a few notches.  Being a happily married woman is one thing.  Being happy in every area of your life is altogether different.  But both are attainable, achievable, reasonable and are within your reach.

So why did I begin this article by talking about fitness and nutrition?  Because it is impossible, I believe, to get every area of your life together if your brain and body aren’t clicking on all cylinders.  In order to boost your life to its highest level of happiness over the next 21 days, you’re going to need all your synapses firing correctly.

Nutrition is more important than many of us give credit.  To think clearly and sleep peacefully through the night, we need to feed our body the nutrition it needs.  Now, I’m no health food junkie.  I eat more sweets and carbs than I probably should and can always do better.  But here is what I have done right since I lost 30 pounds 16 years ago: 1) I’ve kept it off without a struggle; and 2) I eat when I’m hungry and I stop when I’m full.

Most of us overeat without knowing that’s what we’re doing.  And when we overeat, we cause different organs in our body to overcompensate which decreases our productivity (if you’ve ever experienced a food coma after eating too much or a major sugar crash around 3pm, you know what I’m talking about).  When we give our body everything it needs to excel, it in turn propels us to do just that.

If you eat perfectly, are at your desired weight, are as fit as you’d like to be, sleep as well as you want at night, and have as much energy as you’d like during the day, my writing over the next two days may not be of great help to you.  So meet us back here for Day 4 of this series where we’ll move beyond the physical aspect of our lives and onto the areas that ultimately allow us to choose happiness daily.

But if you are deficient in any of the areas above, I’ve got a few “shortcuts” I’ll share with you over the next couple days that will help you become your best self in the area of fitness and nutrition (no need to wait to make another New Year’s resolution).  It is imperative to be your best self in this area because so much of our happiness can be snared every morning by what we see in the mirror.  And if I can help you be happy with your own reflection -and faster than you may think, using free materials you already have at your fingertips- that’s where it makes most sense to begin.  So if you’re in, let’s get started.

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!  

JOIN THE 1,000,000 MEMBER CHALLENGE: If you haven’t already done it, what are you waiting for? Join the club! It takes only a few seconds and, of course, is free.