From a post not long ago to the Jack’s Winning Words blog comes today’s inspiration –
“When you press the pause button on a machine, it stops, but when you press the pause button on human beings they start…to think, to reflect, to reimagine what is possible.” (Thomas Friedman)
So often life becomes hectic and we allow ourselves to be swept up in the hustle and bustle of trying to keep up, trying to make snap decisions and react quickly to the changes that are happening around us. What we need sometimes is our own pause
button for life. We need time to think and reflect, to evaluate things and, possibly, to reimagine our role and reactions to what is happening. How many times we think back to situations and from that new point of view, say to ourselves, “if only I had thought of this back then.” Perhaps you would have thought of that back then, if you had hit the pause button.
So maybe imagining that you do have a pause button is a good way to deal with things. Maybe we should hit pause and step back from the situation long enough to think and consider all of the possibilities and reimagine our future direction. Hurtful things that 
happen to us often elicit equally hurtful reactions from us and usually just end up compounding the problem. Problems that are so big that they overwhelm us too often cause responses that are overly ambitious and not well thought out. Pausing to see how to break the problem down into a series of smaller and simpler responses can lead to a much better chance of success.
In my life I have a built in pause button in my two dogs. We take four walks a day, starting with the first one at about 6 AM each morning. Those walks, each lasting about 20-30 minutes, require that I pause and give me time to think about things. The first walk of the day is my planning walk, in which I have the chance to reflect on what is upcoming during the rest of the day and lay out a plan of sorts. The two in the middle of the day provide a pause to reflect on what has happened, what things I ‘m faced with responding to or allowing me to make changes to my original plan in reaction to how the day has gone so far. The end-of-day walk allow for reflection upon the events of the day and the decisions that I made. That pause allow me to learn from the day’s events and hopefully to increase my store of knowledge on how to deal with upcoming events.
You really don’t need dogs to walk in order to pause in your daily life; but, you do need to have the discipline to hit the pause button a few times during your day, in order to give yourself time to reflect and make the best decisions on what to do next. The ability to reimagine what is possible is critical to good mental health. The alternative is to allow yourself to become overwhelmed by seemingly impossible situations and perhaps to 
slide into depression because you see no way out. You may wish to say a little prayer, asking for God’s help with the decisions that you have to make or perhaps you would finbd comfort in the little prayer that I use and have written about here many times – “Not my will, but thy will be done.”
Pause and think, reflect and pray – then reimagine your future. It’s the pause that refreshes.
Posted by Norm Werner 
labeled as an eccentric misfit in school. Look at what happened to her when she decided to keep being herself, instead of trying to conform to someone else’s idea of what was cool or proper.
accepted and to be considered cool. That never works. Instead we just end up looking pathetic in the eyes of those people that we are trying so hard to emulate and impress.
– “God help me be the best me that I can be today. Help me do the right things and focus my energy on doing better each day.” Then you could end the day by taking some time to reflect on your day and with another prayer, “Please God, help me see and understand the things that I could have done better this day; so that I can be a better me tomorrow.”
of winter to come; too remember roses in December; however, memory also serves to keep alive those who are no longer with us. As Thomas Campbell put it- “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
In our daily lives there are probably lots of people who do things for us that normally go unnoticed and unappreciated. There’s the bus driver who helps get us to work or maybe the guard at the guard shack who there to help insure our safety. Maybe it’s the day-care worker who takes care of our children while we work or the lunch room worker or the waitress who is there to server our noon-time meal. It may be the paper delivery person who has to get up at 4 AM in the morning each day to go get the papers and deliver their routes. Perhaps it one of the many retail people that we may encounter during the day.
these people blend into the background and become just a part of the environment to us. We only recognize them when something doesn’t go as we wish and we complain about it and them. We may call their managers in anger over some perceived slight in the service; but, how many call just to tell that manager what great service they gave us?
Sometimes this tendency to ignore and not appreciate them extends to our life partners, especially to the career-oriented men in the relationship. Call it complacency or just laziness, we sometimes become so self-centered that take for granted all that a spouse does for us to make our life better. The cooking and cleaning and housekeeping and laundry and child care all seem to fade into the background and become unappreciated expectations, rather than something that could be and should be acknowledged and appreciated. It takes only a moment of your time to give your partner a hug and tell them how much you appreciate the meal that they just served, even though you may have no real appreciation of how much time and effort went into the making that meal.
encounter to whom you can show appreciation. It should start at home, but there are countless other opportunities throughout the day to show appreciation to others and make their day better because of it. You may be thinking, “what difference can it make?”; however remember that the great majority of people just don’t make the effort. You can be the one bright moment in that person’s life today and that’s a great opportunity that will make you feel better, too.
I’ve used a prime example of the impact of our “at rest” faces in posts a few times – ex-Speaker of the House John Boehner. Most of the time, when you saw Boehner on TV in the background at State of the Union Speeches or in photos taken at the capitol he looked unhappy, or in discomfort – he looked dour. If you Google his name there are tons of pictures that pop up; but, only a few show a smiling John Boehner. He looks like a much more pleasant fellow in those smiling photos.
cause us to smile, so that our “at rest” faces look like that are about to laugh and are more inviting and pleasant.
higher by climbing over the backs of others. They see others as losers or obstacles to be overcome, defeated or discarded. Theirs is truly a sad existence.
The inverse of being nice to others is most often causing them some hurt, whether it be just their feelings or otherwise. Dismissing the abilities and contributions of others is hurtful to them and, in the long run, to the efforts of the team. Ignoring others points of view or their questions about your point of view on things is missing valuable feedback. If nothing else, a questions that seems to be based upon not understanding what you have in mind clearly points out that you have not been able to articulate your point of view or plan. If the person questioning your plan has those doubts or misunderstandings, then others will too and you need to rethink either the plan itself or how you explain it to others. That is a valuable insight that you need to take into consideration.
health of the participant. These were games in which you could find things that improved your health or things could happen to you which took away from your health. You could always tell whether something happening in the game was adding to or detracting from your health.
is little quote from the 
lot about us. Some don’t deal with rejection very well and may slip into anger or depression every time things don’t go the way that they and planned and hoped. Some are so flighty that rejections are quickly forgotten and they flit off in a new direction, seemingly oblivious to the rejection. Do you know people who react to rejection in those ways?
we paused and thought to ourselves, “OK, God didn’t want that to happen to me or for me; I wonder what direction He wants to take me in now?”
Maybe you can start each day with a variation of that little prayer that I suggested earlier. “God, I don’t know what you have in mind for me today, but help me accept the things that happen and see the new directions that you have laid out for me; trusting in You and your love for me, through your Son, Jesus Christ.”
(although Penny’s has held on longer than the others). These days stores like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Kohls are fighting to remain relevant in the on-line world of Amazon, Ebay, ETSY and Wayfair. Things continue to evolve and Creative Destruction continues to change our landscape.
Personal relationships also evolve and change over time and it is the couples that can’t seem to keep up with those changes that end up in divorce. Many marriages are based almost solely on the relatively narrow base of physical and sexual attraction. Once that ardor cools a bit, if there is no underlying foundation of friendship and common interests, the “love” that was professed cools and creative destruction can take over. Cheating in a marriage is a form of Creative Destruction.
Destruction? I think it takes a mindset that realizes that a marriage is something that will evolve and must be constantly invested in to keep it relevant and growing. The birth of children must be viewed as a new opportunity to share new things together and not as a threat to the relationship. The sharing of responsibilities and work in a marriage must be viewed and an investment in the relationship and not as a burden to be borne.
underrepresented countries around the world. What a shame it would be to limit our experience of the different contributions to our society that could come out of that program.
music to be played or certain types of art to be displayed. We become the poorer by restrictions limiting or censoring our experiences. In many countries experiencing the truth is limited by government censorship and in some, such as North Korea, reality itself gets distorted.
Yes, black lives matter; and yes, all lives matter. So where is the real conflict there? Which side is excluding the other? I don’t have to be wrong for you to be right.
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