Persistence

Yesterday, I was thinking about Persistence. It came up in my thoughts a few times actually, and regarding different matters. So of course, I googled a picture, but I came across two that I like, and didn't want to choose between them.


Here is the first one:

This first quote, to me, tells you that it doesn't matter if you are not the stronger one, if you continue to do something, you will eventually get through.

Here is the second picture:

This is also an interesting quote. "If there is no struggle there is no progress". In other words, don't give up, if you don't struggle a little, you won't get any further.

One of the reasons I was thinking of persistence is with this fundraiser for Blood cancers that I was doing. There were many times when I could have given up. I was dedicated to raising $3500, and that's a lot of money to raise. I went out door to door raising a few times, and I'd say about 90-95% of the houses either answered and said no, or didn't answer the door at all when I could clearly see that they were home, either peeping through the windows or had about 4 cars in the driveway! One lady even came, opened the door and before I even said anything, she said "Not interested" very rudely and shut the door. Someone told me I should of said "Oh I was just coming to tell you that you won something, but if you're not interested, I'll leave again!" Haha, how rude though! I would have prefered if she would have been the one of many that just didn't answer the door at all!

There was one time I went out, and I was at the 5th house of either No's or Ignores, and I actually was right beside my car. I was so close to just giving up and getting back in the car and going home. Something nudged me to go on though, so I decided to at least finish the street, and you know what, the very next house donated $5! So then I was not so discouraged. There was even one man that had said no, and by the time I made it around the cul-de-sac, I was across from his house again at another house, and when I left the door to come back on the street (from yet another Ignore) He came out of his house over to me and gave me some change, he said "I had to give you something, I see you out here going to all the doors so I thought I would come give you some change". I believe I had tears in my eyes as I thanked him, because he could have easily forgot about me once he shut the door, and this was right after the rude lady. To me, this is persistence, to keep going and not give up, you don't know who may be watching, and what opportunities you may miss.

Speaking of opportunities. I will leave you with a note that an Arbonne leader gave us that someone told her:

A man told her that he believes when we get to Heaven, there will be 3 big screens in front of us. The first one will be all the wrong things you did in life. The last screen would be all good things you did in life. He feels that this screen will be much shorter then his first. The middle screen though, is the worse screen to look at. It's the list of all the opportunities that you missed out on.

Just something for everyone to think about! :)

Adversity

A friend inspired this blog today when she mentioned adversity, so I googled a good picture to go with it, and found this one. I think the picture with this quote is perfect to how I feel. "A bend in the road is not the end of the road...unless you fail to make the turn". Let me elaborate a little. In my mind, this means that yes it's true, you will not have straight perfect roads all throughout life, no one said life is perfect. There will be winding, bumpy roads at times. When you come to a turn in the road though, don't let it get to you, take that turn and see where it leads you. You never know what will be around that turn. Sometimes you have to take risks in life. It may not always work out how you want it to, but I'm a strong believer in the fact that everything happens for a reason. I learned that from my mother, and I stick to it.

You have to let adversity make you stronger. As the saying goes, learn from your mistakes, or what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The list goes on with these little "quirks" we hear, but truly think about these little sayings, and what they mean.

It's Over!

The long weekend is over! It was great while it lasted, but as always, could have been longer, lol.

I got my Halo painting finished! Here it is:

I'm getting lots of orders now for paintings, it's great! :) It feels good to be back into painting. It's been way too long. I'm here now waiting for 3 canvas' to dry, I could blow dry them, but the hubby is beside me sleeping, so don't wanna wake him up.

I got a run in yesterday, 10km. I was supposed to do 15km, but I ran out of water so I went home because I was getting dehydrated. Today was rest day, so I'll run again tomorrow.

Dinner at the sister-in-law's was great. Which brings me to another topic.. I was talking to my Mom this morning, and she had already known that I went to the sister-in-laws before I even said it, so I realized that she must have read it on my blog. That got me thinking; I wonder who actually does read my blog? So I want to try something out. If you are reading this from a post I put on my Facebook page, can you please "like" the post when you are done reading this. Pretty please? I'm just curious now as to if anyone's out there reading it. :)

Well I must run along now and get to painting a little more before bedtime.

Ciao!

Long Weekend!

Happy Easter Everyone!

What's everyone's plans for the long weekend? We are having dinner at the sister-in-laws tomorrow. I'm also hoping that this will be a productive weekend for me. I want to get a lot of paintings done, it's now crunch-time! Next Friday is my goal deadline for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society I'm raising money for. If anyone reading this would like to donate, here's the link! :D

http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=1053067&langPref=en-CA

I actually only need $400 more! The website hasn't updated yet because it's waiting on the Paypal to go through.

Anyways, I found a new salad I like! I bought one at Williams, and then I decided to make it myself to save money. It's mixed greens with strawberries and poppyseed dressing, scrumptious!

Here's a pic of it before I added the dressing. The one at Williams also has feta cheese and a few manderins and seeds. I didn't have that though, so I made do with what I had.

Trying to eat better. I've been eating oatmeal for breakfast lately. Some people don't like oatmeal, but I love it! Whether it's plain oatmeal, or Peaches and Cream, Maple and Brown Sugar, Berries Oatmeal at Tims or anything!

Well, I must go and start my productive weekend! I wish everyone a fabulous fun-filled weekend surrounded by friends and family!

Progress

I got home today, made Shake & Bake chicken, rice and caesar salad. Ate and cleaned up with the boys. Checked Facebook out for a bit (of course), fed fish, took out one that died :( Saw that one of the new ones I bought has Ick which is probably why now 2 fish and the new frog died since last week. Luckily I have Ick tablets handy from the last time this happen and hopefully it clears it up before wiping out more fish. Then I cleaned Zoeys litter, sat back down to the table with my laptop, and was going to just waste away the evening on the internet.


I thought about this though, and what I've blogged about, and said nope, not having another evening go by with nothing done, because once you get sucked in, time just flies by and before you know if, it's bed time. So I went upstairs to my Easel, and started painting. :D

I spent two hours on it, and this is what it looks like so far:



Halo Reach. What happened to the one-dimenional days of easy things that kids liked. Haha, would have been much easier to paint something like Sonic the Hedgehog! I have 4 more guys to do in this painting, then I start a co-workers cat, Pablo.

Motivation

This past Saturday, my friend and I went to an Arbonne training. There were 4 ladies who did speeches, such inspirational people! They told us how to stay motivated, even if you hear No just move on, don't let it get to you. One quote they mentioned is this one by Zig Ziglar:


In other words, you have to keep getting yourself motivated in order to be successful. It's human nature to lose interest in things, but if you want to keep going, then stay focused, keep motivated. They actually recommended to set aside at least 30 minutes a day to read (or listen to!) personal development and/or motivational books or CD's. Sure, what comes to mind when I think of the CD's is someone on the movies with head phones on listening to a self help CD. But you know what, it probably works! I believe I would prefer the books though, but whatever floats your boat, go with it!

Commitment

Since Spring is here, I decided to "Spring Clean" my blog. This picture above hit home for me. I'm someone that always likes to keep busy and do new things. The problem is, I have to make sure I commit to them. Like this blog for instance, take a look at my posts, I lose interest and stop posting. I have to make time for this blog, it's something I wanted to keep up with, because these days it's much easier to keep an online journal than it is to keep a written journal, since we're online all the time! So if I can be on Facebook for sometimes hours if I get sucked in like a lot of us seem to do, then I should be able to commit to my blog for even just 5-10 minutes a day. It's a healthy thing to keep a blog, did you know that? It lets you express your feelings, get them out in the open. For me it's probably healthy, because if I'm writing down what I'm thinking, then maybe I won't be up all night thinking of things and not sleeping like I always seem to do! Anyways, back to commitment. As you have seen in previous posts, I'm running a half marathon, and lately I'm not running as much as I should, mainly because last week I was feeling crappy, so I didn't do my runs, then of course you know what happens...COUCH POTATO SETS IN. Then it tries to take over, and boy, lemme tell you, it can easily take over. Then it's hard to get back into your running, but today on my lunch break, I forced myself to go, and bam! Just one run in, and I already feel much better. Now let me pick up for myself a bit though, it's not like I was a total couch potato these past couple of weeks. I did get things done. I'm raising money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada, and as a way of raising money I've been doing paintings for donations, so I've been working on that, but if I commited to it a little more, I would of got a lot more done in a shorter period of time, instead of watching TV and surfing the web. Anyways, it's bed time now, so I will get to bed and post again tomorrow..hear that, tomorrow, so I'm commiting to it! :)