Words to Live By – Sharing

Hello everyone,
I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!! If you look up “egg on your face,” you just might find a recent picture of me. And I figure, if I have egg on my face, I might as well just be upfront about it. Then I can have a piece of delicious crispy toast with some rich butter and fruit preserves, accompanied by a piping hot cup of coffee!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a blog post – way too long actually, and I apologize. A lot has happened over that time for all of us. When I look back over the past 18 months, I realize that my life and work became all-consuming. And that’s not a bad thing for yours truly. I love what I do and don’t consider it “work.” So being laser-focused on it is not usually a problem.

Except. I fear I’ve let you down when it comes to blog posts and that’s where the apology comes in. For many years, I have had an intense focus on learning, growing, and sharing. And then…2020. And we all know what that means! I’m thankful to have been busier than ever since March of 2020, helping others learn and grow, too.

And along the way, I’ve developed a whole new way of sharing what I’m learning – a program I call Nibbles of Knowledge, which is a set of micro-learning, self-paced tutorials hosted on Niche Academy’s website (thank you, Regina, for suggesting this “new idea”!!). We cover topics ranging from patience (!) to being a new supervisor – and lots of other areas, too.

Talk about learning and growing – wow! I had never recorded my own presentations, never interfaced with someone else’s website, and never realized how hard it is to make sure each segment of a topic is truly “micro” so that folks have an opportunity to take bite-sized pieces (“Nibbles” – get it? *smile*).

If you’re a member of a Florida MLC (multi-type library cooperative) such as NEFLIN, PLAN, SEFLIN, or TBLC, they have made several of the Nibbles topics available to you. And if you aren’t a member, feel free to peruse Niche Academy’s website and look for my topics. I’ve gotten good feedback from participants and look forward to developing more topics in the future.

So, although I can easily track where a few hundred hours went over the past several months – and I’m happy to say it was a very educational and worthwhile process – I also have to be honest – I’ve missed you! Drop me a note at lfbruno@cfl.rr.com and let me know what you’ve been learning and sharing – or if you’ve had a chance to take advantage of any of the Nibbles of Knowledge offerings. I’d love to hear from you!

Until next time, be healthy and stay safe – and don’t forget to share with others what you’re learning on your journey through this thing we call “life”!

And by the way, it’s a perfect time of year to consider sharing other things – your time, your talents, your blessings!

Linda

Awareness

Hello everyone,

It feels good to be “back in the saddle” as they say, with my blog posts (if you see me at a workshop, remind me to tell you about being in a real saddle – at a dude ranch – in October of 2018…and I didn’t even break a bone!). As I meandered around my previous blog re-reading some of the posts, there were some words in there that I think are worth revisiting, especially since those posts were written so many years ago. Things change, we grow, we grow older, maybe we even grow up.

One of the words that immediately caught my attention is awareness. Without an awareness of whether we’re growing, we won’t. It’s that simple. And continuing to grow can be a vital part of a healthy life. In the community I live in, I am surrounded by folks who have retired. In my mind, that’s a wonderful thing IF you are still growing in some respect. That may mean taking one of the hundreds of classes offered here. Or it may mean you’ve finally found time to read more or garden or write poetry. Any and all of that qualifies as growing as far as I’m concerned. It’s when we stop even being aware of becoming stagnant that life loses its luster.

My husband had a quote taped to his computer monitor, where he spent much time while teaching online: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life!” From Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” Being aware of living rather than just existing.

Since I love what I do and it not only enables me to grow but sometimes forces me to do so, I don’t plan on ever retiring. Maybe slowing down a bit at some point, but not dropping out of the game altogether. That’s because I am aware of my own tendencies. I tend to need fairly regular stimulation for my mind – it goes places I don’t want it to go if I don’t keep challenging myself with new things to learn. I start dwelling – without even being aware of it – on the big questions of life that have no real answers and may end up just frustrating me. When I keep busy doing things I know will help others, it helps me stay grounded.

I’m also aware that I can take the learning and growing attitude to an extreme – when I immerse myself in my work to the point I become isolated. My awareness tells me that’s not healthy.

If you’re like me though, you may be aware of something but choose to ignore it. In that case, the question to ask yourself is, “Is this serving me well?” Although I am very aware that, as an introvert, being alone recharges me, I know that isolating myself doesn’t serve me well in the long run. I recognize that when I’ve been hunkered down in my office for so many days the mailbox is overflowing, I have been ignoring the importance of socializing – or at least getting out into nature to go to the mailbox! And to make good use of my awareness of my own tendencies, I make a point of scheduling lunch dates with friends and clients or I reach out by phone or email to others who aren’t physically close enough to sit across a table and break bread together.

There are many other areas where awareness will serve us well. Recently, as I was sequestered at my desk – no surprise, right? – I realized that I had eaten a half bag of dill pickle cashews – that wasn’t serving me well, either! I really didn’t want to quit – they are yummy. But my awareness of trying to eat healthy so that I have the energy and stamina to continue my work overrode my desire to see the bottom of the bag…this time.

For you, it may be an issue of working too much, overspending, overeating, being negative, watching too much TV, spending too much time around negative people, succumbing to the sometimes-detrimental allure of social media, or any of a number of things that may be a part of your life. The question becomes, will you choose to act on your awareness of that issue in your life or choose to ignore it? It is a choice, remember. And it’s YOUR choice.

Until next time, stay aware – then decide what you’re going to do because of that awareness. And if you need some help in that area, just drop me an email at lfbruno@cfl.rr.com – I’ll probably be sitting at my desk engrossed in my next learning adventure!

Choices

Hello everyone,

I have alluded to this word in an earlier post, but it’s a BIG, important word in our lives these days. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as a society, we’ve become accustomed to allowing people, events, or circumstances to decide how we live our lives…as if we have little or no control – and very few choices. In other words, those things make the perfect excuse when we can’t be bothered to adjust our attitude.

This thought came to me today when I received an email from a friend in the Midwest – the same Midwest that is expecting up to a foot of snow or more in some places, on top of the already-existing snow. In addition, there are predictions of possible large accumulations of ice and temperatures soon to drop below zero. Some of you reading this may live in the Midwest and wonder why that even comes to mind for me. Well…I moved to Florida in 2005 to escape not just the snow and ice of the Midwest, but also to escape seemingly unending days of dreary gray clouds. My husband and I craved sunshine. Although neither of us was ever “tested” for Seasonal Affective Disorder, had you been in our house during some of those rough winters, you would have been able to give us that diagnosis without any testing! Our attitudes reflected the skies.

That largely influenced our decision to move to Florida and I have never regretted that choice. Do I miss friends and family I left behind? Certainly. And another thing I miss is the change of seasons, primarily for the beautiful leaf colors! But for my own well-being, I needed to be where the sun shines more often than not. People even ask why I didn’t move farther south in Florida. Simple…I wasn’t looking for high temperatures, I was simply following the sun. That was a choice that made sense for me. And the sun led me to Ocala, which is also horse country – a bonus for my animal-loving self.

Certainly, there are other choices we make – some big, some small, all with consequences. If I decide to eat an orange scone from Panera every day (and believe me, I could!), a relatively “small” choice in the big scheme of things, there could be any number of consequences – extra weight, fatigue, diabetes, less money 😊, and the list goes on. So, I make the choice to only indulge with the orange scone as a special treat. That doesn’t make me a hero, obviously – especially since I sometimes then substitute Lindt truffles for an orange scone!

But it does help create a pattern of choices in my life that will benefit me as other choices crop up.

Every day, I have to choose to exercise and eat right. Most days, because it has become a habit, I choose well. Sometimes I don’t. When I don’t, I feel the difference, mentally, physically, and emotionally.

I try to choose how I will spend my money besides my basic living expenses. Yesterday, I splurged and bought a nice tea kettle, as I have decided a cup of tea in the afternoon is quite pleasant. My Keurig coffee brewer doesn’t heat the water very hot, so a tea kettle was a gift to myself…but it also was a non-essential purchase. Since I try to limit those, just like the orange scones…I try to reflect on whether something is worth the “sacrifice” of whatever I will give up – extra cash, energy, good health, etc. Then I make a well-informed choice.

Here’s the one thing I want to make sure YOU consider about YOUR choices. Your attitude is a choice. Plain and simple. It’s easy to fall prey to using what’s happening around us as an excuse for a poor attitude. I get it. And I do that from time to time myself, even though I try hard not to. I have to really ratchet up my self-awareness to make sure I don’t get mired there. Health issues, financial pressures, work overload, difficult people, too many obligations, relationship problems, the political environment, things on social media or the nightly news (FYI – I have made a choice NOT to watch the news) – need I go on? All of these can affect our attitudes, but ONLY if we allow it.

Are you going to allow it? It’s your choice!

“Talk” to you soon! And in the meantime, if you need me, I’m only an email away at lfbruno@cfl.rr.com.