"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

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.

"If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily." - Gerald Good

Make Gratitude your Attitude!

To be thankful for all that you've got and all that you are about to get, is not as easy as you might think. But it’s not as hard as you might think either. It's a matter of opening up your eyes and your heart to your life and focus on all the good things. Gratitude is a very important key if you want to be happy.

When I wake up in the morning I feel love and happiness for waking up next to the most wonderful man, and our cat. I feel grateful for it. As I look out the window and sea the Mediterranean Sea and the horizon above the roof tops, I feel thankful. I feel grateful for my diet that allows me to have cream in my coffee. Being thankful, feeling gratitude is falling in love. I fall in love with all the people, situations and things I feel grateful for. It's great to fall in love with my man over and over again, sometimes several times a day. It makes me happy that I am thankful for everything.

I know what I expect in the future, I know what I want for me in life and I am grateful for that. I know I will get it all, as long as I"m thankful for what is to come. If you think that I sound like a religious fanatic now, you are wrong. I am not religious, although I might be a bit of a fanatic. But here"s the thing. Since I started to be thankful for things in my life (big and small) my life has turned around. I used to be a lot more depressed; I used to think that life treated me bad and unfair. That everybody else was better off than I was. I used to think that I would never find what I wanted in life and that I would never be as happy as I wanted to be.

Do you think that your house is too small, or your clothes are too old? Or maybe your hair is too straight, or your teeth are too yellow? Be grateful that you have a house, and that you have clothes. Be thankful that you still have your own hair and your own teeth. There are possibilities to be grateful for everything, every little detail, in your life. All the things you feel bad about, there is something about them to feel thankful for.

I can't remember what put me on to try thankfulness, but whatever it was I am thankful for it. Today I am happier than I ever thought possible. My dream about living by the blue sea under the warm sun came true. My dream about writing has come true with this blog. My dream of being happy came true. My dream about finding the perfect man for me came true. I believe it all started with gratitude for what I already had, back then. I still have a lot of dreams to fulfill and a lot of dreams to expand. They will all come true too, I know that, and I am thankful for it. All my dreams will come true!! How cool is that?!

What are you thankful for in your life? List all the things in your life that you love, no matter how small and silly it seems. Those things are what you should be grateful for, that is what you should focus on. Be grateful, it will change your life around to the better!