"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude" - Maya Angelou

I mentioned the other day that I was hoping to share some good news with you this week. And indeed I do have good news, although not the exact good news I was planning on sharing with you. Anyway, good news are good news.

I have done a lot of work on my attitude for this good news to come my way. A few months ago I would have had split feelings about it, but now I absolutely love it. So, what is it?? I just landed a new job. It is an ordinary job, working at a customer service. But it is a good job, a good company that has a lot of focus on both costumer care and staff care. Exactly how I like it! And I start on Monday already.

So what did I have to work on to get this job? Well, I had a lot of negative feelings about phone work, due to a previous job I've had. But I have felt more and more for some time that it is time for me to move on, from my current job. However, I do not believe in leaving things to move from them, I believe in moving towards something new and better. I still love my current job, and my bosses are some of the best people in the world, and I have had such a great time working with and for them. So how do I move forward to something better than that. All I knew was that I felt stuck, and even though I love my job there is nowhere to go within it. That was a fact that I couldn't change. But leaving there was a thought that scared me, so I had to change my attitude about it.

I sat down and gave it a thorough thought what I wanted that I do not have at my current job. And I thought about what I like with my current job and would love to improve even more with my next job. And I realised that I wanted to send my CV in to this company.

However, like I said I had a lot of negative thoughts and feelings about that kind of job. So I started out by comparing this new job, with the job that gave me all those thoughts and feelings, to see what actually is the same. And not many things are, as it turns out.

So, I used some EFT on the areas that I needed to change my attitude in. Like, working full time. Or, doing daytime job monday to friday. And that a job sitting down will make me fat. After using EFT on these areas, I started to look at things differently. And I realised that I am actually quite bored NOT working full time, and if I work monday to friday I will have the whole weekends off with my Sweetie, instead of only Sundays as it has been for almost all of our relationship. And I realised that it is not the sitting down that makes me "fat", because I spend a lot of my days off (I've hade 4 days off every week for the past two and half years) sitting down and I am slimmer on those days than I am on the days I work (when I stand up the whole day).

So, having started to realise those things I sent my CV in. They weren't currently looking for staff, but the hire every now and then. And on Monday this week I got a call asking if I was interested in coming in for an interview on the Tuesday. And after that interview it took only half an hour until they called and offered me the job.

I will be working Monday to Friday! Welcome free weekends!! I will more than double my wages! Welcome savings account, and spending time! Welcome shopping! I will not even have to work the same hours every single day, but will work in a weekly three shift (early, middle, late one week at a time). I have always wanted to work that way because I get bored when it is the same routine day after day. And I will have to either walk or ride my bike two out of three weeks, since it will be either too early or too late for the bus. This means I get my daily exercise built in in my daily routine.

So, to sum this up! I didn't like my situation, so I change it. But, at first I didn't like my options, but I couldn't change them, so I change my attitude about them. And because I did, I am now heading to a new bright future that will change parts of my life, in a oh so good way. Hello manicures and nice, colour full clothes. Goodbye dish water and black clothes. It will be a change in the quality of my life, not just in what I can get for money but in time with my Sweetie, my social life, daily exercise and so much more. The only thing I will get less of is free time, but I will still have plenty of that.

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude" - Maya Angelou

Love
Carina

"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities... because it is the quality which guarantees all others." – Winston Churchill

Do you have courage to make use of your qualities?

Courage, to me, is to do something even though you are scared of doing it, or if you don't know where it is heading. To take that step, or maybe even a big leap, into the unknown is courage. Without courage that first step would never be taken, ever or by anyone. Without courage no other qualities count.

I'm experiencing this at the moment. I had a meeting yesterday that might lead to a job doing a lot of the things I dream about doing. I have never done any of those things before, professionally, but if I get the job offer I will most certainly jump on the opportunity and I will do my absolute best to do a fantastic job. And it takes a lot of courage, will and love to take such a leap in a career, and I'm really scared.

Those of you that know me, and those of you that follow my blog, know that my dream is to make money, and support myself, writing. You also know that I can be very social but also a lone wolf at times. This job would include all of those aspects, as well as proof reading and a bit of editing of what other people have written. Something I've been doing my whole life (due to a mother that was proof reading for the local newspaper and a step father that worked as a printer at the same paper when I grew up, always correcting every little error that occurred in everything I wrote or said), and usually do without even thinking of it. Correcting spelling and grammar is natural to me.

Now,  if I wouldn't take this opportunity, if given to me, if I wouldn't be courageous enough to do it then it wouldn't matter how good a writer I am, or how good I am at spelling or if I would be a charming interviewer because I wouldn't need those qualities.

If the Wright brothers hadn't had the courage to try their flying invention then they would never have known if it was working and the world would be a completely different place from what it is today. That first courageous step is what makes all the difference, it is what is needed to change the world, your life or you into something better than it is. It is what gives you the opportunities to use your other qualities.

Courage comes from your within, it's all inside you and has always been there. You just need to start using it. You need to trust yourself that whatever happens you will be great. I don't need this job, but I would LOVE to get it. If I don't get  it I will still be great. I will keep writing and I will keep taking the chances that come my way. If I get the job and it doesn't work out, at least I will know that I was courageous enough to give it a try and I will not have to spend the rest of my life wondering what could have been.

So follow your heart, find your inner courage and trust that whatever you do everything will be great, one way or another.

For more information about Sir Winston Churchill follow this link or this.

Love
Carina

"Success is steady progress toward one's personal goals" - Jim Rohn

Keep working towards your goals and love every part of your life, and you are successful.

What is success to you? When do you reckon someone is successful, or has a successful life? Do you think of yourself as successful? What are your criteria for success?

Whether you are successful or not is all up to you and how you define it. For me it is about being happy in all areas of life. You are not successful if only one or two areas are a success, although you are on your way. Everybody has to start somewhere.

If I take myself as an example, I believe that I am successful and that I have a successful life. I am constantly growing as a human being and I am working towards my personal goals. I have two jobs that I love, I've enrolled to a writer's course that I want to do and I am learning the language of the country I live in. Career wise I am a very busy woman right now and I love all the things I do. Unfortunately, that is not ideal because I do not have enough spare time or as much time with my boyfriend as I would like to have, but it is only for another month. The reason we don't have much time together right now is that he works daytime and I work night time. But we always have Sundays when we are both off, so it is workable for the short period of time it lasts. Why am I doing this? Well, it is so I can get the money for my courses and to bring in some extra money for the winter when I will be spending a lot of time writing and studying to get an even better life in the future. The Spanish classes will make it easier for me to find a good day time job and the writer's course will eventually help me support myself writing. I consider myself successful career wise because I am doing something I love so I can do something else I love even more in the future. I am, in short, happy in my career and that makes me successful in my work life.

I am also happy in my life in total which makes me successful there as well. I have a fantastic man that I love and that loves me, my son is doing well and I have an amazing family and wonderful friends. I love where I live and I love myself, just as I am, but I am always striving to get better and to make my life better. I am working for abundance in all areas of my life and I am happy when doing so. That to me is success.

So, are you successful in all areas of your life? What do want to change, and what do you need to do to change it?

Read more about Jim Rohn here.

Love
Carina

"When you don’t know what to do, get still. The answer will come." – Oprah Winfrey

I don't live to work, I work to have a good life.

Do you ever do nothing? Or are you the kind of person that has to have something to do all the time? Do you not do enough?

I believe that the right combination of keeping busy and being still is necessary to be able to enjoy all parts of life. If all you do is work hard, spend time exercising, doing your hobbies, cleaning the house, feeding the family, driving the kids you have no time to really enjoy any of it. If you on the other hand don't do anything at all, just lay around the house all day, every day then you don't appreciate that either. I think that you need both to enjoy any of it, to enjoy life.

Life is supposed to be enjoyed, and all the different parts of life are supposed to be enjoyed too. You have to appreciate the details to appreciate the completeness of it. And you have to appreciate the completeness of it to appreciate the details of it. It's all about abundance, everything goes hand in hand.

To appreciate being busy you have to have moments, times when you are doing absolutely nothing. When you can sit back and just dream. You need time to sit back and long to do something, time for yourself, time to drift away in fantasies, a book, a film or inside yourself. Time to listen to music or to your own heart beat or breaths. Time to relax and just be lazy. Being lazy is good sometimes!

On the other end of the scale is being very busy, and that is just as important. If you are never really busy you will have a hard time appreciate being in stillness. You need days, maybe weeks or sometimes a couple of months of being busy to really enjoy being still and do absolutely nothing at all. You can work hard 6 days a week, as long as you don't do anything, don't have a lot of have-to's on the 7th.

You need to keep busy to learn, but you need the stillness to grow. To be able to make use of what you learn. You need to love every moment of being busy, because you know that you would want so badly to be busy if you didn't have anything to do at all. You also need to love every moment of doing nothing because you know you would give everything for a few hours of peace and quite if you had too much to do.

How much of everything someone needs is all individual, everybody is different. But a person can not grow as a human being without both being busy and being still. Make sure you have both parts in your life, it will make your life richer and it will make you a stronger and happier person.

I ususally say; "I don't live to work, I work to have a good life and if I don't enjoy my work I won't enjoy my life" Make sure you enjoy every single part of your life!

To read more Oprah quotes I’ve written about just look here, to learn more about Oprah read here or here.

Love
Carina

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." – George Bernard Shaw

Your life is your creation.

There are so many ways to look upon life, and every person has their own view or views. I have more than one view and this quote states one of them. Those of you that have been following Quality Inside And Out knows that I am all about personal responsibility of your own life. It is all up to you how your life was, is or will be. You create it and you create yourself. There is no blame, only lack of knowledge.

So, who do you want to be? What kind of person do you admire? What would you like to do? What type of partner do you want to spend your life with? Do you want to spend your life with someone? What is happiness to you? Do you think you are lost in life? How much money do you want to have? What would you do if you had a lot of money?

These are all good question that are worth asking yourself. I can only help you answer one of them. Do you think you are lost in life? If you think so, you are wrong. Life isn't place where it is possible to get lost, because you control it. You control where you are and who you are. So stop looking for yourself and start creating yourself.

Personally I believe that as soon as you acknowledge the fact that you are in charge of yourself, who you are and where you are in life, you will start to change automatically and by default. You can't help not to. I believe that we all have an inner urge to be the best that we can be. Sure, there are some people that will fight that feeling because they are unsecure and scared of what might come out of it. Don't be. I don't believe it is possible for people to change into something worse then they are if they are striving to be better. The trip might not be straight ahead full speed the whole time, but at times it will be. Sometimes the road will be very bumpy and sometimes the road you're on will be closed so you will have take a detour. That is not a bad thing. That is when you will learn the most about how to create yourself into who you want to be.

I've been on this trip as long as I can remember, and I will keep being on it for the rest of my life. I change, the world around me change, my needs and wants change, my inspirations change, well, everything change. I love changes, because changes allows me to see and/or do something new, it will create new visions and new goals. Or it will give me a new way to get to my goal. What I do with it is all up to me, I will create the end result of it.

I am creating me, and I know I will love the end result. I know so because I love every step on the way, whatever it is that I want in life I am getting it because I only want what I love, so I will love the end result whatever it will be. Will you be pleased with the end result of you?? Or will you love it?

To learn more about George Bernard Shaw follow this link, or read here or here.

Love Carina

The Optimist Creed (part 10,11 and 12)

If you're true to who you are, the world is always on your side!

* Promise yourself to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
Do you spend a lot of time and energy worrying about things that might happen? Do you get angry a lot, or easily? Do you fear certain situations in life? Are you troubled about something? If you are worried, angry, fearful or troubled (one or all of them) you are not doing yourself a favour. The person that is most affected by any of those feelings or states of mind are you. And for what purpose, worry never leads anywhere, anger creates more anger, feeling fear holds you back and if you're troubled you spend your time thinking negative thoughts instead of focusing on the positive things in your life. Be too large for fear, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble and I promise you, you will be a much happier person.

* Promise yourself to think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.
I am my biggest fan! Not in a bragging kind of way, but the fact is that nobody can ever make a better job being me, than me, so why shouldn't I be proud and impressed and think that I am awesome. Now, I'm only proclaiming this here so you will get the point in this, I don't usually go around telling people that I'm the best. One reason is that, hopefully, to them it's not true. To them they themselves should be the best. I know I can do whatever I want to do, if I have my heart set on it. I know that I am fantastic in most ways, and I don't have to tell people that, because I act it so they already know it. If I act in the best way I possibly can, nobody will think badly of me, but most important of all. I won't think badly of myself. So I think well about myself and act accordingly. That is all that is to it. That is how I proclaim my greatness to the world.

* Promise yourself to live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

Do you ever feel like the whole world is against you? I did, but I've come to realise that that is not the case. The only thing, or person, that can be against you is you. Or, nothing can be against you unless you are against you. Do you ever feel like something is unfair? Well, it's not. As long as you are true to the best that is in you, the whole world will be on your side. Sure, you will still experience loss and sorrow because that is a part of life, that is for us to learn and remind ourselves of the life we're in. I learned that when my dad died, because the one wish he had was that me and the rest of his loved ones would live the lives of our dreams, that we would be happy and love each other and ourselves. He didn't wish for himself to be well and stay alive. He wanted us to follow our dreams and be true to ourselves. The world is never against you, unless you allow it to be, it is your choice. If you can't change the situation, change how you think about it. Be true to yourself, and believe that the world is there for you, if you want it.

I try to read "the Optimist Creed" (here is the creed and everything I've written about it)  by Christian D. Larson more or less every day, to remind myself of who I am and who I want to be. I think that if you try to live your life following these "rules", you're life will be amazing. I want my life to be amazing. My life actually is amazing already, because I live it by these "rules". My doctor used to say; "You should be in the driver's seat of your life, nobody else can get you where you want to go". Take control, be in charge, love yourself and your world and the world and your life will love you back.

The Optimist Creed by Christian D. Larson, 1912

Christian D. Larson

Promise Yourself ...

*To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

*To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.

*To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.

*To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

*To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.

*To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

*To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

*To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.

*To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

*To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

*To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.

*To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

 I will "discuss" the Optimist Creed in the the next few days, so I want you all to read it carefully and think long and hard about it. This is how I try to live my life! Have a great Friday everyone!

Love / Carina 

“Quality begins on the inside – and then works its way out” - Bob Moawad.

This quote tells a lot about who I am, because this is a strong belief of mine. It doesn’t matter how much money, time or effort you spend on your outside, if you don’t work at least as much on your inside it is all done for nothing. And if you do work on your inside you will find that you don’t have to spend, by far, as much money and time on your outside. Now, when I say work on your inside I mean all of it, your feelings, thoughts and health. Mind, soul and body. The whole package. Because it all has to be in abundance, you can’t leave one part of you out. If you do, you will never be completely happy. And to be completely happy is what this blog, and my life, is all about. Inside and out!

Working on your inside, to me, means to get to know yourself. To know what you love, so you can choose those things to be in your life. To know what you don’t like, so you can choose to keep them out of your life. It is about knowing what makes you smile and make use of those things when you need them the most. It is about loving yourself for exactly who you are. It is about changing the things about you and your life that you don’t like. It is also about getting to know and love your physical body. To learn what makes you feel good, what to eat, how to exercise, how much you need to sleep and so on. In short, it is about taking responsibility for you.

This isn’t something that happens over night, quite the opposite. This is something that will take you your whole life. There is always something you find you need to work on or change, because you change and your circumstances change. This is the absolute beauty of life, to me, because it gives my life a life long meaning.