New Year New Life!

 Greetings to however is going to read this :) 

Here is to a New Year, New Day and a New You! 

God bless you and your family! I really need and want to write more often. The truth is I often will get into a writing mood and do a lot more. It is where I need to do the work. Last year I started 15 minute a day writing challenge and got some good content in. Then I get lazy and stop doing it consistently. And sometimes I am not in the right mind set to write down anything lol! 

But I am starting it up the 15 minutes a day writing challenge and for this article I want to focus on a New Year and a New Life! About a year ago I created my new motto. This new one is a lot like my old one that I had since I was a teenager. That one is basically a daily mantra, "today I will be better than I was yesterday!" That is my motto :) 

Over the years I will admit that I failed on this motto at times. I have had some stressful times, personal freak outs, sadness, and times of extreme depression. I am not here to lie to you or sugar coat what I have been through. I have had to learn of tough lessons in my life and this was not without pain! I know you can relate. If not praise God! But let us also praise God for that pain because without it I would not know what I know now, and I would not be the persona that I am today. 

For many others as well as myself the 2020 plandemic fiasco was at times extremely stressful. I don't know about you, but it brought on some feelings of depression for me. This is not to say that other times in my life I have had the same problem. I am also very sorry for those who have lost loved ones I know how stressful that can be. 

But for me the last couple years was at times difficult for me in other ways. It was after all this that I created my new motto to help me and hopefully others to live their best life now. I decided that life is too short to spend any more time on sadness, depression, regret, self-loathing, fear and anger! And I know all of this very well I can admit. Oh, the time in my life that was wasted on all this negative attitude and emotions. 

I decided that I'm done, and I will LIVE MY BEST LIFE NOW! And a new motto was born, LIVING MY BEST LIFE RIGHT NOW! Not later, not tomorrow, not next New Year, but today, and right now! 

Best life now is not about the things we cannot change, but about the things we can change in our own everyday life. I have written a couple articles about this already and I will link them below for you. If we look back at our life, what would we want to change if we could? 

In the past I thought that was certain people in my life, but these thought only brought me more pain and sadness and did not make me a better person. I don't want to elaborate on that because that would not be productive to my message or my best life! Long after I'm gone these words may still be here for those to read as long as no one deletes my blogs. 

I learned a long time ago that regret is evil and only produces depression and sadness. In fact, the devil loves regret. When we regret our past no matter what mistakes we have made, we are saying that God doesn't have a plan for our life, that He doesn't have a purpose for our suffering. This of course if false and the devil loves it when we live by a lie. The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44) and every lie separates us from God.  

But to answer the question, when I look back honestly what I would want to change is my attitude, my thoughts and my feelings. And it just so happens that I, and you are in control of those things always! Never mind the past mistakes that have been made, we can't change that now. If you have hurt someone in the past go to them and apologize, do what you can now to make things better. But we cannot change what we have done in the past, but we can change what we do right now!

And that is where we need to spend our time, energy and efforts. I don't know about you but I waisted too much time in my life being upset about things either out of my control or upset about things that were in my control, but I did nothing to change it. Living our best life now is about empowering ourselves and knowing that our best life starts now! 

It starts with our thoughts, words, and actions! And that is something that we can control right now to give ourselves that gift. No more time wasted when we are living our best life now! 

Anyway, that is my 15 minutes plus much more spent on this. I hope that it was a blessing to you!

 Please let me know what you think. There is more to come! 

Thank you! 

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What kind of person do you want to be?

 I have often asked myself this question. 

What kind of person do I want to be? At times in my life, I don't think I lived up to who I wanted to be. I went along with my friends, or I allowed the world to tell me what to think. As I grew older and started to investigate things for myself, I started to become more of who I wanted to be. I think we all go through this kind of journey. It is how we grow up and become who we are meant to be. As we grow, I think we change a little every ten years. 

  The experiences we have in life also can change us for the good or worst. It is our choice how we allow circumstances to change us. We can regret mistakes and close our self-off to learning more. We can learn from our mistakes and discover ways that it can make us better. I have done both lol! But I keep coming back to that same person that I always was just a little wiser every year. I just turned 42 and still have a long life ahead of me even though I might be halfway through it lol! I don't know exactly where life will take me, but I know that I will keep growing into the person that I want to be. I am not going to just wait for life to happen to me anymore. 

  I want to make life happen for me. Do the best that I can with what I have right now! And never stop improving on things and making my life better. Every day is an opportunity to change something about your life. I see a post today and the women said to make three goals for the day and do it. I think this is a good idea and can bring us closer to our bigger goals in life. 

  For me every day my three goals are the same and I do pretty well at accomplishing them. I am not perfect but every day that I practice being the person that I want to be. I get closer every day to my bigger goals. Just got to improve a little every day. 

  What kind of person do I want to be? I want to make my own choices, I want to create an income from home helping others, I want to achieve my health goals, and most important I want to be happy. In the past I spent too much time eating like crap and being unhappy. Not anymore! I had to nearly lose everything to get this. Sure, some days I get angry because I wish some things were different, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason. I had to learn, and I keep reminding myself of that. Then just do what I can and don't worry about the things I can't control.

  Anyway, that is my 15 minutes today and a short post. These are my thoughts for the day. I hope that it can be an encouragement for you. I know it is for me and a reminder to keep moving forward. Life is what we make it, so let's make it a good one!

By Joanne Utke

What do you think? 

Are you the person that you want to be? 

 Let me know in the comments.

Thank you! 

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Practical ways to live your best life now!

  YES, YOU CAN LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE NOW! 

       In my last two posts I talked about my new motto, BEST LIFE NOW! I talked about what it means to live your best life now! In this post I wanted to just give to you reading this and myself of practical ways we can go about that every day. Sure, a nice motivational saying is great! But how do we go about practicing it? We need practical ideas that we can do every day that allow us to live up to LIVING OUR BEST LIFE NOW! So, I thought that is what I will do in this post. 

1. Adjust your mind set! 

     I am placing mind set as number one because there are some bad habits in our thought process that we need to change. I talked about this in the last post about getting rid of the "I will start Monday" Complex. You need to think differently! You need to know that the important things in your life can't wait for Monday, you need to do it now, today! You also need to BELIEVE that you are worth changing for the better. You are worth eating healthy, you are worth making the necessary changes that will dramatically change your life for the better! No more time needs to be wasted on not being the best version of yourself. Also included in mind set is staying positive. No matter what, you can look for the good in everything. You can stay positive and remind yourself that this will pass. And it will pass whether you are positive or not, so you may as well stay positive. I don't think I have to tell you that being negative and stressed will not make the struggles any less difficult to deal with. In fact, it will make the struggles worst. 

2. Have a plan! 

No matter what it is that you have to accomplish today, and, in your life, you need a plan. A long-dated plan is not for me. But having a daily plan is a great way to make sure that you are living your best life one day at time. Don't worry about your ultimate goal. You know you will get there after you have mastered your day first. It is certainly important to have those long-term goals. But if you don't concur your day first, you will not get to the end of the month or year. You know what it is that you need to accomplish every day to be living your best life. Every night before you go to bed write out a plan for the day. This is where a journal comes in handy. Make a list of tasks from most important to least important. Start your day with your most important tasks and then move on to the others. Healthy meals like salads, veggies, dips and dressing can easily be prepped the night before or in the mornings. Will you be scheduling time for exercise, work and family? When you have a plan, you take the guess work out of it and can just move on with your day. At the end of the day, you will see how much you have accomplished to better your life and will feel accomplished. 

3. Make yourself a priority

 We need to make ourselves a priority in our own life! I have learned, so I tell people that if you don't prioritize yourself, no one will! If you don't take yourself, your life, your beliefs seriously don't expect anyone else too. You need to star in your own life and the necessary tasks that make your life, your best life. No one will do this for you, you have to do it! This is not saying to be selfish, but if you are not doing your best, you are not going to be good for anyone else! You need to prioritize your life so that you can be a good example to those you love. And be healthy so you can be there for them when you are needed. Schedule time in your day for others so that it doesn't interfere with the time you need for yourself. You only have 24 hours in the day. That's why having a plan and then prioritizing your important tasks in absolutely necessary. 

These are my big three practical ways that you can do to live your best life now! I had a couple more, but I lost my post this morning. I hope this was helpful to you in some way! When I am inspired with more insights, I will include them in a post. Yes, we already know this stuff but let it be a reminder to you and an encouragement in your life. In a lot of ways, I have learned these lessons the hard way. We are all a work in progress and it is never too late to change your life for the better, as always God bless and thank you for taking the time to read this! 

By Joanne Utke

Thank you! 

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What does it mean to live your best life now?

     If you see this in LinkedIn or seen my first entry, in the 15 minute a day writing challenge, you know that my motto is LIVING MY BEST LIFE NOW, or BEST LIFE NOW! I created this to remind myself that life is too short for stress, anger, resentment and just being unhappy! In this post I wanted to explain what "BEST LIFE NOW" means to me. Maybe it can inspire you to live life more in the now rather than in the past, like so many of us seem to do. I've been heard saying "the past is gone, the future doesn't exist yet, all we have is right now!" 

     In the catholic tradition we have a prayer called The Hail Mary, which I love. This prayer has given me much comfort throughout my life. In this prayer we say, "pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death." We say "NOW" because that is the first most important time of our lives. The choices and decisions we make now will affect our tomorrow! The only way to change the future is to make those necessary changes right now. We are reminded to ask God for that guidance, willfulness and diligence in making the right choices, now. We say "death" because that is the second most important time if our life when we look back on our life, judge our self and go on to our eternal reward or punishment. 

    But what do I mean by Living your best life NOW? I mean not waiting to make those necessary changes in your life. Often, we wait until you "feel" like it. It's about not waiting until tomorrow to make your life what you want. Have you ever fell into the Monday complex? I have for sure that's how I know about it. You know you got to lose weight or start eating healthy. Here's the scenario, it's Friday but you say, "I will start on Monday." And then on Wednesday you realize that you didn't eat as healthy as you know you should have. So, you tell yourself, "I'll start on Monday." Before you know it the month, or year is over, and you are no closer to your goals than you were on the first Monday you said you would change. 

    This is a never-ending cycle of what I call the Monday complex! We will do ourselves well to get out of that way of thinking. The important changes that we need to make life better are just too important to wait, we need to do it now! This doesn't mean that the results will happen instantly or that it won't take time to get where we want to be in life. It just means we start now, not tomorrow! We don't procrastinate on a better quality of life or making those business calls that you need to make. 

    This is a cycle that we could avoid if we just LIVED OUR BEST LIFE NOW! Sometimes on YouTube I listen to a lady entrepreneur names Mel Robbins and she is big on not waiting until you feel like it and just doing what you need to do now.  She says, "you're never going to feel like it!" This is true you will never feel like exercising or eating a salad instead of tacos. No one wants to do the work that it takes to have the best life possible. We just want it now without the work but that is not what I am talking about. Sure, it would be great if we could snap our fingers and the work is done. But not how it works in the real world. 

     Life is what we make it, no one else! We need to begin the work now; we need to make better choices now and not wait for Monday to feel like it. This is what I think about all the time, so I decided to dedicate this post to it. We don't even know if tomorrow will come so why not live our best life NOW? And live life to the fullest and have the best quality of life we can. We don't have time for stress, anger, resentment, and being unhappy. I always tell my kids that if you want to be happy, be happy! Happiness is a choice that we make right now no matter what life throws at us! If you think life has to be perfect until you can be happy, you will never be happy. I am not saying to be happy about the horrible things happening in your life or the world. I am saying to find peace and happiness in spite of that stuff.

    That is a choice I had to personally make for myself. I realized that I spent way too much of my life being unhappy and not seeing the good in what was happening in my life. I chose to be happy in spite of it and my life has been much better for it. I still have a lot to work on but these days I want to make my life my best life, and I don't want to wait for it. I touched on this in my previous challenge post. I am 42 this month and if I die at 82, I'm already halfway through my life, and most people don't get that much time so what am I waiting for? I want to make my next 40, 50, 60 years my best ones! I would never want any different for anyone else. Let's LIVE OUR BEST LIFE NOW! 

    Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you are taking the 15 minutes a day writing challenge. You can start a blog or just crab a pen and paper. Get your thoughts down, at the very least it will be something to leave the kids. Maybe it can help someone think a little differently. It can certainly help you stay gowned and on track with your goals. It is not good to keep it all inside. Comment below to tell me what you think. As always God bless! 

By Joanne Utke

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