Guest Post: Celebrate Small Victories

In this PLPT guest post, Lilou of the inspirational blog, Push and Soar, reminds us to celebrate the small victories in life. For a few years, I had found myself on a quest to find my direction in life. My chosen field of work simply didn’t feel like the right fit for me. So I decided to move on and explore other options. As I was on that journey, I spent a lot of time soul searching, learning about myself, exploring different options and working hard. But no matter what I did and how hard I worked I just felt like I was not progressing and that all my hard work was in vain. I mentioned this issue to someone in a conversation and she...

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Pretty Things: Blankets, Baskets and Books

  When it comes to home design, I have always felt unsure about how to best capture the sense of charm and welcome that I want to convey to my guests.  I felt like our house needed so much work to reach the level of sophistication that I wanted.  But lately, I've had a change in perspective. I look around my home and it's anything but sophisticated, but it tells me who we are as a family loud and clear.  We're a family of five living in a three bedroom townhouse with two kids in elementary school, one toddler and two working parents.  Organized chaos at its best.  And yet,...

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Love Note - Friday 2/24/12

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3 Reminders for a Healthy Love Life

source Whether you're in a relationship or not, it's so easy to forget how important it is to maintain a healthy relationship with yourself - first and foremost.  We can get so caught up in finding someone that we forget our values and boundaries.  If we don't go into relationships with a clear idea of who we are, we're bound to either lose our identities in the process or find that we've settled for someone who's not right for us.  Know Thyself and Be Whole: We have been taught that a relationship is a fifty-fifty proposition. A more accurate view is that two incomplete people can come together and find...

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Notes for When You’re Feeling Emotionally Bankrupt

There are some times when you feel emotionally bankrupt. You don’t feel up, you don’t feel down…you just feel empty; or you don’t know what to feel. And often it’s difficult to pinpoint why you’re so out of it. It is natural for our emotions to ebb and flow—due to hormones, or change in weather or just being plain overwhelmed. There are several ways that we can slowly, but surely, refill our emotional tanks and avoid losing focus or becoming depressed: Be still You can’t hear your inner guide if there’s too much external noise. Practice tuning out the world, and tuning into your inner awareness—this is where all the answers lie that will...

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Love Note - Friday 2/17/12

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Power Foods for a Flatter Stomach and a Healthier You

There are certain areas of the body that are particularly hard for women to keep toned, and one of those problem areas is the tummy.  Trust me, after three children, I lovingly refer to the bulge under my belly button as my mama pouch.  I feel like I look perpetually 3-4 months pregnant.  What's interesting is that it's a bit flatter in the morning and bloats out throughout the day.  Sometimes, by the end of the day I feel so tight in my clothes that I have to unbutton the top button of my pants.  Sexy, right?  On the serious side, there's more to consider here than vanity.  Studies show...

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Love Note - Friday 2/10/12

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Reflection Exercise: Are You a People-Pleaser?

In my quest to reduce emotional clutter in my life and make the best use of my energy, I'm always looking to eliminate patterns and habits that are counterproductive to this goal. In other words, I gotta get rid of some of this baggage, in order to make the most of my journey. Make sense?  To that end, this post is targeting one of my bad habits: People-Pleasing. Many of us complain of being too busy or being pulled in too many different directions. Sound familiar? Often, if we really took a closer look, we'd find that many of the things we do are because we just didn't want to say no. Or perhaps your calendar is full of...

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Why Even Mom Needs to Maintain Her Identity

Once they become mothers, some women find it difficult to maintain their sense of self, casting all their energy into a wide net around their children; there’s nothing wrong with this, but moms need to maintain an identity independent of their children. Why? Because children grow up, become their own people, and leave your net behind. My son is 12 years old and he is reaching a point where he is looking to Dad for guidance way more than he is looking to Mom. And yet, he is asserting his independence from both of us, preferring to hang out with his friends, shunning silly things like Halloween costumes; and he is completely and utterly embarrassed...

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Love Note - Friday 2/3/12

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PLPT Reading List - February

Read Kimora Lee Simmons has a luminous personality and lots of energy, which I admire because it is so different from my own rather reserved personality. Despite being very different than I perceive her to be, I love to watch how fabulously she carries herself. And so I took to her book, Fabulosity: What It Is and How to Get It out of curiosity about what it might hold, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a very positive book, geared at young women, that plants seeds of ‘girl power’ and high self-esteem. It is about much more than just how to be fabulous on the outside, but how to be fabulous on the inside as well. Kimora divided the book into...

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6 Reminders for the Frazzled Superwoman

1) When stressed, reprioritize what's really important. I am thankful for a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning and gutters that need fixing because it means I have a home.... I am thankful for the piles of laundry and ironing because it means my loved ones are nearby. ~Nancie J. Carmod 2) It's okay to make mistakes. Matter of fact, it's necessary. If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake. ~F. Wikzek 3) Don't wait until you are in crisis to pray. I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. ~Abraham Lincoln 4)...

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