New Year's Inspiration Archives

December 29, 2016 No Comments

Welcome 2017, we’ve been waiting for you. You can’t scroll down your Facebook without seeing something about how 2016 was the worst year ever and it should just already be over. How we can’t wait for 2017 to start because maybe it will be better. Most people are probably saying that in relation to the election. Some have just had it because we lost some really memory attached people in the last year and the last couple days. Its true, some really sad things have happened. We lost David Bowie, Antonin Scalia, Harper Lee, Joey Feek, Nancy Reagan, George Martin, Patty Duke, Muhammad Ali, Christina Grimmie, Anton Yelchin, Florence Henderson, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (and there are many more). The election was volatile, people rioted in the street and took time off from their school classes to cope.

But you know what, 2016 was full of some amazing things as well! I found a list, did some research, and wanted to share a few things with you.

A new study showed that since 1990 woman and children dying in childbirth has halved.
Malawi achieved a 67% reduction of children acquiring HIV
Thailand became the first country in the world to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV and syphilis
World Hunger reached its lowest point in 25 years.
Homelessness in the US decreased by 35%
McDonalds announced it removed corn syrup from its hamburger buns and removed antibiotics from its chicken months ahead of schedule.
The average number of large oil spills in the world went down from 24.5 in the 70s, to 1.8 in 2015.
Manatees are no longer endangered
Yellowstone’s grizzlies made a miraculous comeback
Sea World agreed they would stop breeding captive killer whales
Giant Pandas were taken off the endangered list
2015 was America’s most generous year…and 2016 is on track to be even bigger!!

And this is just a blip on the list of all the amazing things that happened this year! So I challenge you to stop and think about all the amazing things that happened to you and your family in 2016. Dwelling on the negative and sad doesn’t accomplish anything good in life. Our newsfeeds are filled to brim with ugliness, divisiveness and sadness. People make a statement about how they feel and people make a choice to get into an argument online with them, whether its controversial or not. So many people, including myself, fled Facebook during this time. What was supposed to be a connector of people was pushing people further away. We focused on the negative, the terrible, and fought about it openly with people.

So I challenge you for 2017, make a change. Share happiness, share the fun in your life, use Facebook to connect with someone you’ve been missing. Share pictures of your day, vacations, your kids or something you did. Find something positive that happened and share that. Pick up the phone and call someone, write a letter, keep a positive thoughts diary. 2017 doesn’t have to be terrible, and neither do your memories of 2016. That’s a choice that we can make, and I encourage you to make a positive choice.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up,

just as in fact you are doing ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:11

post signature

My New Year’s Non-Resolution

This first week of the new year is always full of facebook posts, blog posts, news articles and other such things that talk about Resolutions. What are going to do or accomplish this year? I’ve never really done a resolution before. I sort of feel like it would have set me up for failure. The resolution is almost like the grand gesture, or the naturally high that comes from doing this one-time great thing. Then, after time…..it just slowly fades away. Life happens really. There are errands to run, laundry to do, kids to feed and husbands to try to spend time with. I can however find something that will inspire me for the year.

This year I’m participating in a blog challenge with my bloggy pal over at AnotherGirlyBlog. I happened to stumble upon her blog in December and saw that she was putting this together. I’ve never done anything like this in the several years that I’ve been blogging. This year I really want to write more from my heart, get more personal (as personal as I can while trying to maintain OPSEC and PERSEC); and I think that doing this type of thing will really help. Not only that, its a sure fire way to find some other amazing bloggers out there that might be a good part of a my New Year’s Inspiration….my New Year’s Non-Resolution.

So here’s mine….

Be healthy
I want to be happy and healthy! I don’t want to constantly be ragging on myself for my body. I don’t want to think, “I feel fat today.” I don’t want to cry because I don’t feel good about myself. Being “skinnny” like some heroin-looking Calvin Klein model isn’t my thing. There has never been a time in my life when I was that. Spending my time looking at pictures of that and thinking that’s what I need to look like is crazy. That’s not my body type. It’s not how I was made. Enjoying life, working out because it feels good, my new found love of running….that is what I want my year to look like.
post signature

A New Year is Coming…..

My New Year’s Non-Resolution