Fall in love all over again by remembering the positive.

When you think about your childhood, do you think about happy moments or do you think about hard moments?

I've learned that I could go back to a time when I was fighting with someone in my family or watching other people fight – like the time my mom turned the kitchen table full of spaghetti upside down and kicked us all out of the kitchen with no dinner (we deserved it!). But what if I chose to go back to a time where we were all sitting around the kitchen table and it was fall time? My mom had pulled out some tin cans and we glued different colored beans onto these tin cans in different shapes. We made turkeys, pumpkins, Santa, snowmen. We made flowers and various artwork pieces out of these different colored beans and a little bit of glue. Sometimes we even used cardboard, but we had a blast doing it.

Every time we think about our childhood moments it creates happiness or unhappiness inside of us.

When I think about my childhood, it was good until I think about the negative stuff. And then it's easy to just say, “Oh it was so awful”. When really there were a few things that were bad, but most of the stuff, in general, was pretty darn cool. Maybe I wanted more money. Maybe I wanted a nicer car (or to have a car at all). Maybe I wanted to be able to go shopping instead of sewing our clothes. Maybe I wanted to fly in airplanes. But if I had those things, I wouldn't have appreciated those things either. I would have looked for the negative so that I had something to complain about and to connect with others.

I would venture so far enough as to suggest to ourselves and our future generations to share the things of which they are proud.

I was taught not to brag because it hurt others feelings. But...it taught me that I should only talk about the tough times. So I only focused on the tough so that everyone feels included and has something to share. And they don't feel like their life isn't as nice as yours. The result...everything became tough. It was easier to find the negative in each situation so I would be allowed to have a conversation.

What if we taught our kids to brag? Be bold and brag. And share that which you're proud. If we all share what we're proud of and we teach not to just be "happy with what you have", but to be proud of where you are in life (instead of comparing, hiding and shaming ourselves)...how would our future kids feel about their experience here on earth and in our families??? More importantly...how would we feel about the things we do daily? Fall in love with you, your past fun moments, and your amazing future moments all over again by seeing the happy moments more often.



Exercise: Keep a journal and write your positive stories in the front and the negative stories in the back of the journal. It's harder to focus on the negative, because it becomes a challenge. Focus on the good...it's easier!