"Never let the fear of striking out get in your way" - George Herman "Babe" Ruth

If you let fear control your life, you will never get what you want.

Do you chose not to do something because you are afraid of failing? I know a lot of people do and I sure have. I try not to think that way anymore though. I mean, what good does it do me to not even try to do something I want to do?

I have friends who dream about meeting the Right Man or Woman, most people do. Only these particular friends have bad experiences from bad relationships in the past and now they are afraid to give it another try. The problem with that way of thinking is that if they don't try again they can never heal and they will never find Mr och Miss Right. If you are one of those people you need to read this!

To heal from that sort of experiences you need to put yourself in similar situations and learn that every person you meet and every relationship you have is different. If you tend to choose the same kind of partner, that hurt you or treat you badly in same kind of way, over and over again then you need to have a good look at yourself, but you should never ever stop trying. The hard truth is that if you stop trying you will never get it right. You might not get hurt ever again, but you will not be loved, or love, the way you dream of ever again either.

I have been in plenty of "bad" relationships, I have never been physically abused but I have been mentally abused in a couple of them and cheated on in almost all of them. It has never stopped me from trying again and again; it has never stopped me from giving the next guy a chance. Although I have a fantastic boyfriend and an amazing relationship now, I still struggle with feelings of insecurity sometimes. I still fear that I am not enough, or that I'm not able to love the way I want to be loved and yet I KNOW that I am enough to my boyfriend and that he does love me the way I want to be loved. So, you see, I do have the fear but I am healing every day thanks to what I have today, thanks to my lovely Man. But if I hadn't given him a chance, I would still be alone, wounded and scared and I would never ever have found the Right Man for me.

The same philosophy goes for everything you want in life. My fear of striking out got in the way of my dream about writing, but I'm not letting the fear win anymore. Fear is something that is fabricated in one's head; fear is something you can control. You are in charge and the biggest way of striking out is to not even take the shot.

To learn more about "Babe" Ruth read this and 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

"Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear." - Albert Camus

Respect is one of the keys to a fulfilling and happy life.

Respect. One of the most important words and meanings of life. Respect is of utter most importance if you want to have a good life. The big question is what respect is. I know a lot of people misplace respect with fear. In my own personal opinion fear and respect are two completely different things. I even believe that they have got nothing at all to do with one another.

After the riots happening in the UK last month I've had more than one discussion about the cause of them, more than one of my British friends have expressed the opinion that the problem is that people have no fear for the police. They also thought that the kids don't fear their parents these days. When they were kids they wouldn't dream about doing anything like that because they were too afraid of the cops but even more scared of their parents. To me that sounds just as crazy as the riots themselves. The riots happened because the rioters have no respect for themselves or anybody else. They have not been taught to respect other people and other people's properties. I didn't fear the police and I wasn't scared of my parents, but I was taught to respect my parents and the police, and everybody else for that matter. But most of all I was taught to respect myself, and I would never sink to disrespect myself that much. And I taught my son about respect too, he’s got no fear for me and never had. He never did anything bad to anybody else, or himself, because he’s got respect for himself and others. Also, my parents respected me for who I am, and was, and I have always had a great respect for my son for being exactly who he is. That is one of the keys, you can not be respected by someone you don't respect. It all starts with you!

I don’t think that respect can be based on fear, because fear is fear and respect is respect. There is a big difference. I respect myself, and I do it because I deserve it. I have fought hard and done my best most part of my life. I have not always done the best thing and I have made a lot of mistakes too, but at the end of the day I have come out with both feet on the ground always learning how to become a better person in all areas of life. I respect myself tremendously for that, and because I earned my own respect other people respect me too.

Because I can respect myself I also respect other people. I know how to differ between respect for a person or for a person's act. I can respect an act without respecting the person, and I can respect a person without automatically respecting every act of that same person.

I would never be able to respect someone that tries to demand respect by trying to make people scared of him/her. By making people fear you, in my opinion, you lose all rights to be respected. Respect yourself and respect others, for who you are and for who they are, and people will respect you. It is as simple as that.

To learn more about Albert Camus, read this, this or this.

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

"Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can." - Elsa Maxwell

If you laugh at yourself first, people will laugh with you instead of at you.

Sometimes in life you find yourself in a strange and weird situation, or you do something clumsy in a situation where clumsiness doesn't belong. How do you handle those situations? You laugh at it and you laugh at yourself.

I am going to tell you a true story out of my life as an example on how to handle a situation like that. A few years ago I was sitting in my favourite bar with a few people I knew vaguely, I was waiting for a friend of mine to come and pick up some money from me, and I was also waiting for another friend to come and join me for a drink. This was a Thursday night and I had been to visit my son's school earlier that evening. In Sweden we have a kind of tobacco that is called "snus" that you put under your lip. It comes in little round boxes that look a little bit like ice hockey pucks. The type I was using comes in small portion bags. Anyway, the three other people at the table also used "snus" and since I was the only one that had any, I shared mine. After a while my friend who was picking up the money called to tell me that she was outside, but she had her daughter with her so she didn't want to come inside. I went outside to give her the money and I came back in after about 10 minutes. A while later we saw a police car pull up outside, which wasn't that unusual since they dropped in from time to time to see that everything was alright. Except that this time they didn't come inside. There were maybe 10 other people sitting in the bar, of which I didn't know four. Two women sitting in the bar and a couple of men sitting at a table.

About ten minutes later the two cops came in, looked around and came straight up to our table. They asked me if they could talk to me and I said, in surprise and fear, that of course they could. Had something happened to my son? Was the thought that went through my head. They then asked if I would come outside with them, and I said yes. They asked me if it was my bag on the table and I said yes. They closed it and took it with us. They asked me to sit in the police car and one of them got in at the front and the other one next to me in the back and then they started to ask me all sorts of different questions. Name and address and such things, had I been at the bar long, how much I had to drink, what did I do earlier that evening, how well did I know the people I was sitting with and so on. By then I was sure it had nothing to do with my son, but probably with one of the other people at the table. My mobile kept ringing in my bag but they wouldn't let me answer it and after a while one of them got out and went into the bar and came out with the people at my table and talked to them. By this time I've given up trying to figure out what it was all about. The police woman in the car with me, asked me if I was nervous and I answered her that I wasn't because I didn't know what I was supposed to be nervous about. She asked me if I had done anything illegal and I said, not unless it's illegal to have a couple of beer on a Thursday night. She laughed and said that it wasn't. I asked what it was all about, and she said that she couldn't tell me until they spoken to "the woman". I had no idea who she was talking about. After about half an hour they let me out, and gave me my bag back and they told me that one of the women sitting in the bar had called in to say that I was dealing drugs in the bar and that she's seen me go outside to give someone money. I started to laugh when I realised that what she had seen was me sharing my "snus" with the others. I offered the cops to go through my coat and my bag, but they just laughed and said that it's ok; they didn't think I was a drug dealer.

Funniest thing is that I have never, ever tried a drug in my life, except for alcohol and tobacco and everybody who knows me knows that. When I came back in, everybody wanted to know what it was all about and when I told them they all had a good laugh. By then 10 more people was in the bar, all people I knew. The woman that called it in stayed and didn't even come up to me to apologize. Unfortunately I didn't have any "snus" left; otherwise I would have walked up to her and in a suspicious way asked her if she wanted to buy some.

Now, this is a small town where everybody gossips about everybody and I knew that this story would be out in a heart beat. To avoid the worst of it  I just laughed at it and I made it a point to tell everybody I met about it myself, I also made it into a joke and offered people to buy some “snus” off me, since apparently I was the big “snus” dealer in town. People still talked about it, but they did it in a humourus kind of way instead of a gossipy way. Why? Because I was the first one to laugh about it!!

As a waitress I have use of this method too, whenever I make a mistake with a guest I admit my mistake, apologize for it and then I laugh and joke about it. Who can be mad at someone that handles a mistake that way? Not a lot of people.

Laugh at yourself first; it makes life more fun and a lot easier. And it makes others think more highly of you. Don't take yourself too seriously, if you do, other people will find it hard to take you seriously.

If you want to learn more about Elsa Maxwell, follow this link.

Love
Carina