Cheryl Wright

Step away from neg­a­tiv­i­ty

Neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tions and peo­ple are en­e­mies of the state-our state. They suck the life out of our days and leave us list­less, afraid and with a false sense of in­ad­e­qua­cy. Of­ten beat­en and ex­haust­ed from their re­lent­less pres­sure up­on us, we sit in a cor­ner and wish they would go away but it takes more than wish­ing to make this hap­pen. We have to step away from these en­e­mies. It may re­quire that we loosen or sev­er ties to peo­ple, stop cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties that eat-up time we should be spend­ing on per­son­al or pas­sion­ate in­ter­ests and change how we view our cir­cum­stances and how we treat our­selves.

Dwell on the good stuff

Look for and fo­cus on the pos­i­tive threads in life's tat­tered fab­ric. De­spite what may cap­ture the spot­light, the "good stuff" will lift our spir­its and spur us on to pos­i­tive ac­tions. The Bible lays it out in Philip­pi­ans 4:8. "Fi­nal­ly, brethren, what­ev­er is true, what­ev­er is hon­or­able, what­ev­er is right, what­ev­er is pure, what­ev­er is love­ly, what­ev­er is of good re­pute, if there is any ex­cel­lence and if any­thing wor­thy of praise, dwell on these things."

In­spire some­one

Trav­el­ling alone has its perks but for the jour­ney to be worth­while, in­ter­est­ing and pleas­ant, we must meet, de­vel­op, nur­ture and in­spire oth­er peo­ple along the way. The ex­pe­ri­ence of re­la­tion­ships on the road to our dreams-shar­ing sto­ries, brain­storm­ing, help­ing one an­oth­er re­cov­er from set­backs-makes the jour­ney, as well as our achieve­ments rich­er. What makes up your dai­ly to-do's-house­hold chores, fam­i­ly ac­tiv­i­ties, work as­sign­ments, back-to-back ap­point­ments, com­mu­ni­ty re­spon­si­bil­i­ties...?

Give your to-do list a new look with these five sta­ples that go from day to day and have no dead­line.