How people feel about themselves will determine to a large degree how happy or content they are on a day-to-day basis. Unfortunately, there are no universal words or mantras we can say that will make us automatically feel good about ourselves.
I recently spent 11 days in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan during the peak of one the snowiest and coldest months on record up there. My husband and I have a ski house there, and have been going up in the winter for many years. Now that we’re retired, my husband likes to spend most of the winter there, and he pretty much skies every day. I used to ski quite a bit too, but now I am not so interested anymore, and when I go up, I spend most of the time inside. And until these recent 11 days, I thought I was content to do so …
How much stress can a person take? Maybe it’s me, but there seems to be an ever increasing sense of anxiety to life! Everywhere one looks there can be found a quiet desperation arising, that’s underscoring even the most basic activities of living. This fact seems to be having a growing effect on our society, pushing everyone into an uncomfortable place. As we all know, stress instinctively causes people to feel threatened and to react in defensive ways …
What happened? That’s the great, unanswerable question. We are shocked – not just the United States, but the whole world – by Donald Trump winning our presidential election. Of many possible verbal reactions, the Brits have a word I think expresses it best – “gobsmacked.” We are gobsmacked by this unexpected event …