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Monthly Archives: May 2015

Be True to You!

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Character, Confidence, Integrity, Maturity, Self-Control, Self-Respect

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Authenticity, Maturity, Self-Respect

When I was little, my mother told me that it was much more important to be myself than to seek the acceptance or permission of others, altering my behavior and beliefs accordingly. She assured me that I would always be alright and loved as long as I first maintained my own integrity by being genuine, self-accepting and self-loving. And so it is with life, (another “Mom” point I have had to give her), we are supposed to develop who we are from within; assessing our thoughts, words and actions in accordance with what we know, learn and process.authentic-quote

We’re meant to determine for ourselves what it is that we believe and live within the confines of those beliefs. We’re supposed to discover our own talents and abilities based on what it is we can do, regardless what others have as gifts and natural talents. We’re meant to learn and to develop our minds, our bodies and our spirits as we’re able to, as we’re all unique and individual. We aren’t meant to listen to the prevailing dialogue, or be swayed by the winds of the times as though what we know or believe has no weight. We are not all supposed to think alike, dress alike, walk alike or talk alike! We might change our beliefs and adapt our skills according to our experiences and by what we’ve learned over time. We might even have significant shifts in what we hold to be true based on just growing up or having lived through certain life-changing moments.  But we’re to be true to ourselves, regardless the influences of others or the pressure they can exert. If we aren’t true to ourselves, not only will others find us unappealing, but we won’t even have the comfort of liking ourselves!


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So the surest way to be in life is 100% okay with who we are as people. If we act in ways that we cannot accept or which compromise our integrity, we’ll note within a sense of unbalance or ill-rhythm. It is inevitable, as my mother promised . . we must first develop the core of who and what we are from within; building a solid foundation on which to create our lives. Then we are to live our life in the manner in which we’ve set our beliefs, established our boundaries and determined our abilities. Let no one dictate to you their moral sense or lack thereof. Let no other person make you feel bad for having a varied set of beliefs or for making mistakes.  Accept the responsibility for choosing to live in accordance with your own values, beliefs and abilities; as well as the consequences for faulty choices in the process. Let no one tell you how to live your life! It is yours to live, even with mistakes, chances and mishaps. Own it all and live it with a determined will to be faithful to who and what you are!


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Many these days are involved in censoring and even condemning others for values, beliefs and lifestyles which differ from their own; yet in their censorship or condemnation, they still cannot take on the weight of the responsibility for success, failures or consequences outside of their own. Learning to live with confidence and self-assurance, as well as self-acceptance, enables us to better mind our own business; as our security with our own life choices makes us better able to give others the same level of respect in theirs!  Signature02

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Human Rule . . .

30 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Celebration, Choices, Faithfulness, God, Humility, Lessons

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creation, God, Humility

The saddest thing is to watch a world built upon miracles and Divine thoughtful creation render itself freely and by choice, more meaningless and marginalized by the mere assumptions of our mortal, human and limited minds. How can we possibly believe that we as humans stand as the ultimate end of the universal spectrum, rendering ourselves “god” and “judge” over all this world? Yet it happens, when even one of us decides himself or herself the center of his or her life.

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Without God at the center of each life, life itself is marginalized to just the level we humans can assess and equate with our own limited thinking as well as our experience. Imagine the ego it takes to be so certain that no higher power or being exists which created such magnitude and majesty in every single cell, in every single being and in every single matter of creation?? What value is placed on life when only we all-too-human and flawed mortals determine its value??image2

I would suggest that with God, the value of everything and every creature is unimaginable and infinite. For His efforts and His estimation of worth is so much beyond our limited scope of appreciation. And so it is sad to watch the destruction and the ruination of life progressing and increasing in the hands of humans who are unable to grasp the value in each and every speck of matter, living and not. The more humans there are who ignore, renounce or deny His hand, the more ego-driven, contentious and mad the world will become! Not one of us is able to preside or rule fairly over others, nor are we capable of assigning value to life itself through eyes focused only on ourselves or the things of this world. AW-Tozer-Quote-God-Dwells-in-his-creationWe are designed by Him to be a part of His kingdom, for His purposes and for His will. We are meant to know our infinite value through Him, not through our own limited sense of understanding. My prayer is that more will come to know and love their Father, to have a relationship with Him, their maker and their source of love as well as value. May God watch over us all and forgive us our ego-driven insolence, thinking we’re ever capable of being the “ruler” of our own lives. Fortunately for all the world, God is patient, faithful and most of all, loving! He wants us to turn or return to Him, so much so that He’ll forgive us repeatedly for being such ego-driven, sinful and unfaithful souls. 

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Sailing On, With Hope and Faith . .

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in aging, Attitude, Choices, Courage, Faith, Hope, Life

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Faith, Growing Up, Hope, Overcoming

I used to believe that life’s simplicity emanated from an earlier, easier time. Now I realize that nothing has really ever been “simple”, it was just how I processed life happening to me and around me that has changed. When I was a child, even the biggest ordeal or disappointment soon faded into hopefulness with a childlike sense of promise for what was yet to come. As an adult, we are able to process things with a much deeper analytic nature; we view life through lenses of regret and “what if”. We consider consequences, and have experienced many more of the hard knocks life often brings just by living. So we understand our mortality, life’s wear and tear, as well as relating to our perceived failings and shortcomings. We also should understand our measure of success better, and even bring light to them via a different perspective.  imagesZFNKFINA

To “grow up” means not only a physical renouncing of what once was with our bodies, but it also means that we have accepted change within! We should know as adults that if all things were easy and safe, our lives would not have amounted to much at all in the way of inner development or growth, much less wisdom! We then should readily accept our role as student in life’s giant daily classroom. Our day as student didn’t end when we left the safety of our kindly teachers and friends in adolescence. It didn’t end when we walked a field to receive a significant diploma.    motivation-98015-1024x640

Life only progresses to bigger and more arduous learning experiences, for which we should consider ourselves suitably able to face rather than to dodge! When we dodge those challenges, walk safely without meeting them head on, or even when we accept ourselves as failures for not overcoming them, we are settling for less in life!

Life is for the over-comers! We are human beings, but we have to learn how to be human doers as well. We have to accept life coming at us like a series of uncertain waves, hitting our vessel (our being) as we venture out into the uncertain seas of circumstance around us. We may not know for sure our ability to handle all that comes our way, but trust we must and have faith we shall! For the waves of this life won’t stop until breath has left our bodies. If we look at life through our grown-up eyes, the reality is not always what we would have liked; but we had better choose to make the most with what we have while we’re still afloat! So my advice is this: sail onward all ye over-comers! Start by seeing life’s waves as opportunities to rise up with a new, improved you. Let hope and faith be your guides as life leads you onward into more complex and uncertain times and tides. Call upon that inner child’s hopeful spirit if you must!

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The Seed of Hope Within . .

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Conquering Fear, Faithfulness, Lessons, Positivity

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Faith, Hope, Perseverance

If you allow yourself . .  search and find through every struggle, during each test of willful patience and persistence, and in every trial, the counterbalancing measure of hope which can and will develop within if you only let it! We are born that way, we are designed to persist with hope and by faith. If we don’t vanquish our hope for the sake of our weary, worn-down resolve to quit, to give in, to let go, or to harden our hearts and minds.   download (1)

When something is pushing us down, our natural inclination is to push back in self-defense. We’re not naturally inclined to be quitters. Each breath of life and every heartbeat confers that spirit. In each of us is tenacity for the sake of survival, for the sake of developing life wisdom and for the sake of persevering through challenges meant for our betterment. But we all too often let what was an opportunity for growth become an opportunity for fear, doubt and negativity to take root. And in those moments, we design ourselves anew, with fear, doubt, negativity and hardness taking hold!  persistence

Let the seed of hope which is rooted within you be the one which you nurture and feed when the going is tough! If you give hope your faithful attention rather than focusing on feeding your fears, doubts, sense of failure and negativity, you will have a full stockpile of hopeful intentions, thoughts and emotions upon which to call when you need to strengthen your resolve; to push forward and to overcome all the rest of the world! Hope lives within us all as a counterbalance for the rush of life against our living vessel. We are pushed, thrown, plunged and even emerged for what seems eternities in rough seas quite often in life. But it is only when we give way to those forces rather than developing our stick-to-it-ed-ness and willful determination, that we quit on life.  quotes-hope-01-samuel-johnson-600x411

Life is hard, often seemingly it is downright impossible, yet here we all are! Within us is a great strength and willful determination to live, to persist, to thrive and to move forward . . if we just call upon that hope from within rather than fostering what won’t help us in the end! Next time life hands you a challenge, or you are overwhelmed by some set of circumstances, consider the seedling which is pushing back within you for your very own sake. Let hope grow until it breaks through the surface with purposeful intent! Let it fill your mind, heart and spirit with willful and purposeful tenacity, strength and perseverance for the test and whatever lies ahead.   Signature02

The Heart Decides . .

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Celebration, Choices, Gratitude, Joy, Positivity

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Appreciation, Gratitude, Love

A calendar may designate a date, but the heart decides how often, why and when we’ll celebrate each one of our blessings! The heart needn’t stick to the calendar when it comes to showing our gratitude for all of our “gifts” past and present; or in honoring others who’ve brought such joy, love and pleasure to our lives.   DSC00166

A birthday, an anniversary, a remembrance, or a day set aside for special consideration are on the calendar usually once a year; but every day in between can be an equally important reminder of why we consider those earmarked days so significant! It’s the love and gratitude which fills our hearts and minds that dictates the meaning and significance of something or someone, not just a date set aside. And it only takes a change of circumstance to teach us the real meaning of a date on a calendar after all.

I only really learned to honor Father’s Day when the actual day set aside for that no longer applied to me in the same regard; when I could no longer have my day of celebration with him or give him gifts, the calendar day no longer meant a thing to me without him physically present. In fact the holiday caused me some pain for the loss of him for several years after his passing, watching others celebrate with their dads in ways I could no longer with mine. Now Father’s Day for me is every day I can spend time remembering him, it’s not just one day a year in which I am grateful or filled with memories or a sense of loss.   birthday-flowers-greetings

The human heart decides the meaning of our days, not a calendar. That is just a physical tool which serves to remind us of the meaning we already understand and appreciate from within. May all those people and reasons for which we find a day worthy of celebration know first how much gratitude and love we have for them every day, not just that one we’ve earmarked so conveniently or blatantly upon the annual calendar!  Signature02

Live For Today!

02 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Contentment, Happiness, Lessons, Positivity

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Hopefulness, Joy, Optimism

Here on the cusp of Summer . . which I always mark as the season which begins with Memorial Day, persists through the 4th of July and sort of ends (although not officially on the calendar or even by temperature) with Labor Day . . I wonder how it can be that this year is already almost half over? Soon it will be Mother’s Day, then Memorial Day; there’ll be talk of vacations and the thrush of Summer activities like picnics and 4th of July fireworks festivals. There will also be talk of swimming pools, lakes, oceans, suntans, sunburns, adventures and back to school. Everything seems to slow down and life sets itself upon a new pace of easy and breezy. But even in that altered pace, life goes on!  images

If we aren’t stopping to mark and to make each day we are alive special in some way, all we’ll be able to see is the multitude of x’s we make as we cross off our precious days with no recollection of having truly lived them! And live them we should! Each day is ours to toil and be busy, with gratitude and a sense of purpose; or to toil and fill it just for the sake of awaiting expectantly and hopefully some other day more than this very one. If we toil hastily, hurriedly and with our hopes waiting for another day, we might spend our precious days into waste. How many Summer seasons pass so quickly because we make plans for months in advance, only to wait upon our special plans so eagerly, that we miss enjoying the days leading towards them? How many parents dread the end of school, wishing for school to restart just so that their lives are made simpler again? Such a shame we cannot learn to give equal precious weight to every day we’re given, as none is promised but the one we’re living!  labflowers

This day matters, this one counts most, this one is meaningful and this one is all you truly have. Before you mark it as over and done on the calendar, make it something which matters! Don’t wish your life away waiting on some better day, or expect better days ahead rather than making this one your best so far!   Signature02

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Cheryl Ries-Author & Model

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