Journey to Joy

“The challenge of life is to be awake in your life and constantly participate in your life.” Susan Sarandon Most mornings my husband reads Dear Abby as he goes through the morning newspaper. He often says, “Babe, you have to read this one; it’s good.” Usually that means one of two things. 1. Someone has…

“Learn to value yourself, which means to fight for your happiness.” Ayn Rand I think there’s an aspect to happiness that doesn’t get enough of our focus. It’s being in the state of happy anticipation of an activity, event, moment or day that’s around the corner. Looking forward to something is a huge contributor to…

“You can never love anyone to your own detriment. That is not love, that is possession, control, fear, or a combination of them all.” – Iyanla Vanzant For most of my 20s and a good chunk of my 30s, I had a unique skill. I was particularly gifted at finding men to date who were…

I interviewed Wayne Dyer a few years ago and he said something that stuck with me. “Worry is the most useless of emotions.” I jotted it down in my notebook and made a mental note to think about it later. Worry? Useless? So we should aspire to get rid of worry? Worry was one of…

I’ve committed a few conversational etiquette crimes in my 40 plus years. In high school, I would survey about six friends to validate my own opinions. I’ve always had a tendency to analyze things to death, and through the years, friends and family had to listen … a lot. Then there was that period of…

I consider myself quite chill. I smile a lot. I roll with things. You will never find me screaming at a gate agent in an airport … or screaming at anyone for that matter. My husband takes longer to order at a restaurant than I do. I know what my opinions are, but I don’t…

“Will you make the choices to enhance your spirit or those that drain your power?” –Caroline Myss I was never cut out to be a perfectionist. I leave rejected outfits on my closet floor in my frustration to figure out what to wear. I make a mess when I cook. I trip over my own…

I have more than 30 journals piled into an old trunk. I’ve been writing in journals since I was 10. I started with tiny diaries with a lock and key, and moved on to hardbound journals. The words never stopped flowing. If a teacher said we were going to have an essay test, I was…

Someone complained to me once that there is nothing to do in Dallas. Hmmm … the sprawling, metropolis that is Dallas, without a thing to do? And then it hit me, the quote I learned years before, “Geography changes nothing.” Wherever you go, your attitude goes with you. You can’t move away from you. Either…

“I went out with a guy who once told me I didn’t need to drink to make myself more fun to be around. I told him, I’m drinking so that you’re more fun to be around.” –Chelsea Handler My favorite people are blunt. I worked with a sales rep once who told me, “You are…