Helen

Helen Keller is pretty much amazing!

Look at some the things she has said..

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail."

"It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui."

            (I especially liked this cuz I learned the word ennui.
                 Pronounced ahn-wee..sounds like a french way of saying ornery.
            It means "a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting
                from satiety or lack of interest; boredom; displeasure; annoyance")


"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble."
          (...this makes me want to go to Romania.........)


"I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers."

"The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker."

"All the world if full of suffering. 

It is also full of overcoming."

:)

Path

"The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them 

changes both the maker and the destination." 

~John Schaar

You've probably heard quotes like this before. Do you ever feel like life's course is inevitable? I think there are things we can't change. Especially in the past--face forward. The future is as bright as your faith. 

What about when your faith doesn't feel bright enough to get you to where you want to be? You can get there :) Pray :) It works. 

:)

ha! :)

Living With Questions

Today on campus there was a forum by a man named Dr. Michael Wesch--twas super good!!!

I'll post it when that is available.

He had a lot of really good things to say--one of my favorite takeaways is that we should live with questions. In other words, learning is usually facilitated when you really want to understand something better.

Better learning=better actions.

When you live with questions you want to experience the world;

 living itself feels like a celebration. 

Keep wonder in your world!

We are interested in different things, but our wonder and desire to learn helps us connect to each other and see the value in everything and everyone.

Life is an action, something you can get better at.

:)

I'm reminded of Dr. Palmer--my Social Recreation teacher last semester. He was great at reminding us that as we grow up, we don't have to be boring. We can enjoy life just as much--or more than kids! Keep having fun! Keep your sense of wonder! :)

:)

Birthdays

I just have to get this off my chest:

I am awful at remembering birthdays. This leads me to waaaay over-think facebook haha :)

Let me show you why:

         Good ol' FB is fantastic because I can see when people's birthdays are!
                  The problem?
         Since I am not on FB everyday I get paranoid that I missed somebody's birthday

(You can tell how depressing and serious of a problem this post is going to address)

I used to have the philosophy that if I knew someone well enough to be FB friends, then I was good enough friends to at least leave a generic "Happy birthday!" on their wall. 

          Now I tend to work the opposite way ha...I rarely tell anybody happy birthday.

Over-thinking: what if I tell some distant friend happy birthday then forget to wish somebody significant to me happy birthday??

(Of course if they are truly significant, I will probably offer more than a generic "happy birthday." )

But what about those in-between people who you want to keep up with, but don't know well enough to have their phone number?

Sigh. 

There you go. A glimpse into my oh-so-conflicted self ;) And an apology, to everybody I ought to have wished happy birthday. Happy birthday. 

Hopefully when your birthday comes around I will release my mind from over-analyzing such a simple thing and wish you a more personal happy birthday :)

:)

Friends Forever :)

once upon a time...

twas just before the valentine's dance;
Haley's mind swirled round.
it was a girls' choice dance, a date needed to be found!

ok...maybe I wont finish this post in rhyme ;)

wanna know who I took to that valentine's dance about four years ago?
my pal colton kilmer! ha!



I remember being conflicted about asking him cuz we were just good friends; valentine's day is about love--should I let someone ask him who had more romantic intentions?

but, I knew we would have a blast, so I asked him anyway. we never dated, but we did indeed have a blast :)

funny to look back on that time in high school--I had no idea he would become my lifelong valentine :)

Colton Kilmer and I are engaged! forgive me if I sound a little giddy ;) :) :)

wowsa. life sure takes you down unexpected paths! sometimes those paths are incomprehensibly wonderful :)

when he got back from a mission to canada, he wasn't going to date for six months. I was getting ready to put in my papers for a mission. buuuuut we fell in love instead :) what can ya do? ;)

dating him rocks, but that can be a story for another time. since we are recently engaged I figured this would be a convenient place to tell that tale for anybody interested :)

I had one request regarding the proposal: I wanted to be surprised!

Mission accomplished :)
I had been wanting to go skating at the gallivan center for quite awhile. so we did :) ice skating is one of my favorite things ever. ice skating outdoors? even better. ice skating with my favorite person? cant beat :)

(Man skating was fun. It felt like we were dancing the whole time!)

(He helped me lace up my skates...cuz it is harder than it looks ha. Yep, love him.)

after that little piece of heaven, we headed to meet my family for dinner. so I was told. really, my family had no intention of ever joining us! since our dinner plans were now open, Colton decided to make a "last-minute" reservation at olive garden. a very specific olive garden, actually.

(you see, when Colton got home we went out to grab some food so he could tell me about his mission. no romantic intentions on either side, just catching up with a friend. that was the non-date that started it all :) )

(different day...but I felt like another picture was called for ha)

I was very excited--in a few days I was going to leave for a cruise with my family. what better way to soak up some last minutes with Colton than heading back there?

towards the end of the meal, our waiter brought out fortune cookies. that was the first time I got a little suspicious--fortune cookies have come to have a fun and significant meaning between us :)

but the waiter covered it great! he told us something about olive garden being a franchise, owning red lobster and several other restaurants (to which colton nodded and responded in the affirmative. I figured I had just never heard that before). the waiter offered us the fortune cookies as a promotion of the company's new concept, which was gonna be a chinese place. yep. tooooootally fell for it; suspicions lowered.

a sweet message from colton was inside :) then my man took a knee and popped the question :)

:) :) :)
I am getting married! I get to marry my Colton :)

after that, we hit up toys r us and temple square (re-creating that first non-date). it was blissful :) since I am always happy when I am with Colton I dont think I realized how happy I was til I saw someone in toys r us and it caught me off guard that they weren't beaming too :)

:)

P.S. I love the song Lost In This Moment by Big and Rich :)
one of the lines in that song says,
"lost in this moment with.you, I am completely consumed; I'm feeling so absolute, there's no doubt."
that is how I feel with him--complete, happy, no doubt :) just...good!

Wanna see something pretty? :)

:)

What's Your Secret?

I work in a hospital, so I see lotsa people :)

Many of those people are old; frequently they will talk about their spouse.

When they mention how long they've been married (often for decades upon decades), my response is always a lighthearted, 

"What's your secret?"

I get lots of responses :)

Some of them are humorous:

"Learn early to say 'yes ma'am,'" or "Realize quick who is boss."

:)

Some of them are packed with history:

"You never give up."

Wanna know my favorite response so far?

"Just love each other."

:)

Motivation

Saw this in one of my classes earlier this semester. Quite interesting!

Rewards as manipulations.

Pretty much the biggest thing I learned in this class is you can't change other people.
(But I'm studying therapy!)

Ahem. Pretty much you can only help facilitate environments in which others would be most willing to change of their own volition. Fine line. Cool stuff.

Worry about fixing yourself. Try to help others.

Trying to change others just gets them and you frustrated.

Wanna know what my excellent (and not-boring) textbooks were for this class?? :)

Why We Do What We Do (Edward Deci), Leadership and Self-Deception (Arbinger Institute), Anatomy of Peace (Arbinger Institue), The How of Happiness (Sonja Lyubormirsky), Learned Optimism (Martin Seligman).

Yep, I pretty much have the coolest major ever--love it :)

This video brings up autonomy (self-direction), mastery (getting better at something), and purpose (what gets you up in the morning).

Trusting people to rise up to an amazing potential gets yourself out of their way, and leads to crazy awesome results!

See people as people.

Life is good :)

PS
Random....but wanna hear about another study I learned about? I'll cite it if I find it...
Basically, some people think the more attractive you are, the happier you'll be.
Nope!
They had a bunch of people rate how attractive they thought they personally were, then they had a bunch of other people rate how attractive they thought each person was. (Don't worry, I don't think anyone got told their scores ha.)
The people that were considered attractive weren't happier than unattractive--the interesting finding:

People who thought they were attractive were happier. Even people that were unattractive or only decently attractive, but considered themselves attractive were happier than the good-looking people who didn't think they looked good.

Blind arrogance? I like to see it as self-assurance--people who are satisfied with what they've got are happier :)

We could all be skinnier/buffer/shorter/taller/whatever. We're all good in our ways. We just gotta believe it :)