loveyourwaythroughit – Page 2 – Carrie Jones Books

BE BRAVE FRIDAY – BEING BRAVE FOR A DOG AND YOURSELF

On BE BRAVE FRIDAYS, we share other people’s stories (unedited) to build a community of bravery and inspiration.

Please let us know if you want to share your story with us and we’ll read it here and post it on our social media and website.

This life is too short to not be brave. We can do this together.

This week it’s Carden’s story that Shaun reads on the coast of Bar Harbor, Maine.

Carden’s Brave Story

Hey Carrie and Shaun!

I thought I’d love to share my story of being brave today! It fits the today’s “dog” theme, too.

So, today I went to the Can Do Canines campus, a service dog organization here in Minnesota, to do a walking evaluation with different dogs.

I was born with spastic cerebral palsy that effects muscle tone in my legs, and causes me lots of trouble with balance and walking comfortably.

Today was a BIG day for me, because up until now Ive been waiting for a mobility assist dog for up to 2.5 years — the first organization I applied for ended up not working out.

But Can Do Canines has gone much smoother.

Going in today I felt nervous, but also very, very excited! I’m a dog lover at heart, and getting to meet these dogs (even though they were already matched with their forever homes) made things feel that much more real. Then came actually walking with the dogs.

I felt a RUSH of anxiety because I had no clue how to walk a big dog, much less the commands and timing of getting the dog to walk forward with me, say “good doggo”, ya know, all that good stuff. It was SO NEW and different and also a little scary.

I felt somewhat in over my head, like “how am I going to be able to function and have a healthy relationship with a dog? How do I learn all these commands? How do I remember commands and to praise consistently? How how how?”

— a lot of it was fear of not being good enough. A good enough student, a good enough handler, a good enough person in general. Internal frustration bubbled up to the point where I wanted to throw down the leash and call it quits. But something else in me knew I could come through.

And then, just like that, I suddenly heard a voice in my head go “aahhh SCREW IT!” and I didn’t feel nearly as anxious!

I took some deep breaths, took some sitting breaks (it was a lot of walking), and made sure to look into the eyes of the 3 dogs I had “tried out”.

All I need to do right now is to focus on the task at hand: walking briefly with a dog to see which harness, height, and handle feel like the best fit for me….thats all. Of course new things, even things I’m looking forward to and that can help me live a more healthy life, can feel scary. But it won’t ALWAYS be scary. Having compassion for myself, and the new dog at my side that I just met minutes prior, helped me push through and enjoy my time much better!!

Carden, we are so proud of you and psyched that you’re getting a dog. You two are going to be amazing together. We know it.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.

Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

best thrillers The People Who Kill — The people who kill

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

The Dude Goodfeather Series - YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones — The Dude Goodfeather Series – YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Carden Levi Olsen

Love Your Way Through It

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂

So, I have decided that the problem with the world today is a lack of love and compassion for other human beings. Of course, by “today” I mean almost since the beginning of humanity, but the issue seems to be getting more exacerbated every day. This could also be interpreted as an overabundance of hate but since I believe that love and compassion can always win over hate, I think it is appropriate to say that we need more love and compassion in our world!

I cannot even fathom what drives some of the hatred in our communities or what motivates people to try and change history in an attempt to make their viewpoints the correct ones. I can guess, and if I was to do so, I would say that the biggest motivators are power, greed and for some ignorance, or rather a lack of educating oneself beyond the beliefs that they were taught while in an impressionable state.

Being human brings with it the fault of imperfections and I, being very much less than perfect, often times find myself rushing to judgement or adopting a poor attitude without much thought. However, as time ages me and I write more of these “Love Your Way Through It” blogposts, I do find myself trying much more often to put myself in other’s shoes and to not be so immediately judgmental, condescending or angry. This emotional slowing down actually makes me feel better as a human and more mature.

I have a hard time being mature sometimes!

My point is that we are all human. We all make mistakes. We all need love, compassion, empathy and acceptance as an equal to any other human. Please try to remember that spreading hate has an emotional cost to everyone, spreading love has no cost and the emotional benefits are endless!

Have a wonderful day full of love and compassion and remember to always Love Your Way Through It!

Shaun

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

You Lucky Duck

We are who we are and we choose how we live and how are lives work out. That is the bottom line really

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂

Do you believe in luck? Do you believe in karma? Do you believe that bigfoot is really an alien being in a less than carefully chosen disguise?

Well, if you have an interest in any of these topics, you should start listening to Loving The Strange, a live podcast that Carrie and I do every Friday evening at 7 o’clock Eastern Standard Time. We love doing it and if you listen, we hope that you will love it as well!

Luck, what is it? Is it a predetermined experience that is so wonderfully timed or fortuitous that we think that it can’t possibly be natural and therefore must be attributed to some supernatural force that has blessed us in a timely fashion? Is it something that we bring about ourselves due to how we think and how we act in our daily lives? Is it sheer coincidence of an occurrence during a time when we are so down that almost anything with a positive lean seems impossible?

I don’t know the answer to those questions, and I am not going to bother researching the philosophical definitions or musings of luck. I don’t really need to for the purposes of this blog because, in my worthless opinion, we are all lucky. Luck is not a singular or a repetitive happening in our life, it is our life.

We are ALL lucky!

We are lucky to be here.

We are lucky to be who we are and exactly how we are born.

I know that some of us were born with seemingly everything against us. I also know that some of those people have made the very best of their lives and have complimented other people’s lives with abundant positivity during their life, even if it was extremely short or extremely hampered by some obstacle of physical or mental acuity. We are who we are and we choose how we live and how are lives work out. That is the bottom line really.

Tragedy of the greatest kind has befallen many and they have dealt with it and decided to turn it into a positive moment or opportunity. There really are no excuses, we are all human and we all choose to deal and spread love and kindness or we choose to wilt and die off. Choose to spread love and kindness people! Choose to be somebody else’s good luck! Choose to take a chance that any random kind act that you perform can be somebody else’s good luck for the day!

Peace people and remember to always Love Your Way through It!

Shaun

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

It not just about thinking positive; it’s about doing positive.

We’ve all heard that if we just think positively everything will be better.

We have journals and lists that we create every night or morning of how we’re blessed.

Then there’s the mantra, “Change your thoughts, change your life.”

And sometimes when I see these things I get a little ragey because it isn’t always that easy. It’s hard to always think positively when your dog has just died or you’re in a war zone or your being hurt.

We’re all allowed to be a little ragey sometimes or sad or gleeful or even covetous. That’s because we’re human, but it’s also because of something even more important that we all need to remember.

WE ARE NOT OUR THOUGHTS.

We can think, “I am Jesus” all day long but that doesn’t make us Jesus. We can think, “I am Beyonce” or “I am the president.” But it doesn’t make us so.

What makes us who we are?

The things we do.

I have a friend who does one act of kindness after another, who cares passionately about the people she loves. But people can annoy her sometimes. Injustices REALLY annoy her.

And after she has a judgement-free rant, she’ll say, “I’m so awful. I know! I know!”

But that’s the thing.

She’s not awful. She’s amazing. She’s one of the best people I know. And that’s because who she is isn’t just about her thoughts. Who she is stems from her actions, her choices, her decisions.

When she needs to persist or overcome, she doesn’t give in to her thoughts of doubt, her insecurities, or even her anger. She acts. She makes a difference.

How cool is that?

Yes, it’s important and super healthy to have a positive outlook. But it’s not always possible, and when you don’t achieve that? It doesn’t make you bad. If you think you’re bad, then you’re just going to end up in another negative thought spiral.

You’re too awesome for that.

And you can’t sit around waiting to be happy, hoping that this will be the day where you aren’t in pain, or someone isn’t a troll, or the basement doesn’t flood. You have to make the choice to be happy and take the actions that help you feel that if that’s what you want to feel.

You can think about changing all the time, but actual change come from doing the work, the actions, making the choices and going for it.

You can do that.

So, how do you do that?

DO THINGS

Acting/doing/participating in something takes you away from negative thoughts and thrusts you into the action, gives you focus. People in Asia and Europe have talked about the flow state for a long time. People in sports tend to call it being in the zone.

But it’s a place, and damn it’s beautiful.

To get there though, you have to do the action. That might be running, writing, painting, climbing, figuring out a theorem, creating a blog post, but it happens because you are doing an action. Do the things.

PUT YOUR THOUGHTS IN THEIR PLACE

Really. This isn’t new either, but it works. When you feel that negative thought spiral coming on, call it out. Say, “Yo. Negative thought. Just because I forgot to close the bedroom door before we made the sex and forgot my avo and Aunt Rose Marie were coming over does not mean ‘I am so stupid.’ It just means I was so in the moment that I forgot to close the door.”

You’ve got to try to see those negative thoughts for the bullies they are and sometimes all they need to chill out is just to be noticed.

I have wicked social anxiety. It’s like a weird kind of stage fright. And the only way for me to battle it is to just act right through it. So I get in the car and drive to the party and tell my negative thoughts that nothing horrifying will happen and my actions won’t make people go to jail. I go to the board meeting. I do the live podcast. I buckle up and stare down the negative thoughts and once I’m doing the actions? It helps tamp down the anxiety. But if I hesitate? That fear builds up and up, gaining so much power that it’s a vicious battle to tamp it back down.

And I love people. I love the joy of public speaking. I love moving people and inspiring them in person, right? So, it’s almost like my fright is excitement gone terribly wrong. It’s almost like a part of me thinks, “Who am I to get to do this? To be this happy? To have people listen to me?”

For a kid with a speech defect (and now an adult with one), that’s a pretty amazing thing. Middle-school Carrie would have never imagined it.

Pay Attention To The World Like A Tourist or a Poet Would

I know! I know! Poets and tourists don’t seem to go together, but they both search for experiences and explore their worlds.

A Roman emperior, Marcus Aurelius, would detail the world like the best of writers or artists. Ordinary things became extraordinary under his pen.

Noticing things is an action. Seeing things is a gift. Empathy and understanding can be byproducts of observation. Be present. Don’t overlook the ordinary. You’ve got this.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

You don’t have to be perfect to be awesome.

Look.

You don’t have to be perfect.

Here’s the harsh truth:

You’re not going to ever be perfect to everyone.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to evolve, to care, to succeed, to be awesome, it just means that you can let your quest for perfectionism pull you down into despair.

When I was a little kid, I would sometimes be afraid to draw things because I would have to erase the mistakes every time I made Snoopy’s head a little wobbly. That only happened when one of my older siblings laughed at my drawing, told me it looked like crap, and to go put my head back in a book.

Now, I don’t care too much about drawing Snoopy perfectly. I just explore with form and e texture and color and those positive and negative spaces.

Here’s another not so harsh truth:

Every day is an opportunity to live.

That’s right. Each day we get is a day we probably have to work and deal with people, but it’s also another day to just get out there and live, to live each moment and think, “Holy poop. What’s going to happen next.”

When we worry too much about how we look in our bathing suit, we lose the opportunity to jump in a Maine lake with our friends.

When we worry too much that our book’s copyediting won’t be perfect, we lose the opportunity to share our story.

Our perfectionism about our work, our body, our minds, our selves keeps us from playing, from joy, from wonder, from living in the damn moment and living beyond that moment.

When your life goes a bit out of control? That’s when your perfectionism really does you in. You have to cultivate the playfulness inside of you that allows you to spend each day as an opportunity that you can approach with curiousity and wonder and maybe even joy.

I know! I know! What kind of wildness is this? Joy?

Yes, joy.

When you feel stressed because you feel like you aren’t good enough, try approaching yourself and the problem differently. Applaud yourself for every little victory you have the way we applaud toddlers for taking their first wobbly steps, first full word, first full sentence, or even first time they make it to the potty.

Allowing ourselves to approach ourselves with wonder and acceptance is really an amazingly strong and brave thing.

BE BRAVE FRIDAY – WE CAN DO THIS TOGETHER!

I spend a lot of time with a little hiccup of fear in my throat.

I’m afraid of hurting other people. I’m afraid of doing something wrong despite good intentions. I’m afraid of drama–like really afraid of drama and conflict–because I grew up with so much of it.

BE BRAVE FRIDAYS has always been about me doing something that I’m uncomfortable with, of being more authentically who I am, weirdness and anxiety and self-deprecation and all.

I know! I know! Nobody thinks self-deprecation is a good look, but whatever. Despite everyone’s emails telling me to not be open about my ‘issues,’ I’m going to still be open about my issues.

Why?

Because I don’t believe in hiding behind facades and lies and fear.

And because I have more emails from people who tell me that my being open about being scared or nervous or anxious helps them to be brave too. And that’s why next week we’re going to start sharing other people’s stories via video. We’ll read them. You write them. We want to build up a community where we share stories of triumph, of big and little steps forward.

Why?

Because there’s enough places that share stories of hate. And if we can push forward towards good, inspire one person? All the work will totally be worth it.

Love is a powerful force and that even when you rage and sob, even when anxiety makes you pace across the bedroom at 2 a.m., you can still survive and that love? Love’s the reason that you can. Love and hope and belief.

That’s why I do BE BRAVE FRIDAYS here and on social media. And why I want it to be about more than me, but about you too.

Here’s the painting I’m working on this week.

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

Want to be part of the team? Send us a quick (or long) email and we’ll read it here and on our YouTube channel.

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Loving Your Way Through It And Being Brave – SEND ME YOUR STORIES (please) – Let’s Inspire Each Other

I am not a therapist or a minister an influencer or a teacher, a psychiatrist or a medical professional. At all.

I’m just a normal human living a pretty normal life where there are ups and downs and cataclysmic events and occasionally monotony.

But I’ve learned something.

I’ve learned that love is a powerful force and that even when you rage and sob, even when anxiety makes you pace across the bedroom at 2 a.m., you can still survive and that love? Love’s the reason that you can. Love and hope and belief.

That’s why I do BE BRAVE FRIDAYS here and on social media.

That’s why we started the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast. It forced me to have a voice. And it forced me to listen to my own voice when I mixed down the audio and get used to that voice

And then we started a live podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which was even scarier because:

It’s live.
My face and my sloshy voice was out there.
You can’t control live things especially not when your husband is the other person there with you. And that lack of control? It can be scary.

LOVING THE STRANGE is important to us though and that’s because we truly believe that people should feel okay with getting their strange on, to fly their strange flag proudly, to own it, right? You get to love who and what you want to love. No judgement. Just love.

How cool is that? Now, it’s just about all of us inspiring each other to live that, right?

So, I hope you’ll take this journey with me and that you can embrace the love inside of you and around you and love your way through it, too.

Here’s my work in progress for art this week. Hey! Don’t forget we’re all works in progress, right? So, um, don’t judge too harshly?

Yes, I did paint on part of a box from Man Crates. Canvasses are expensive!

And I would love to start telling your stories about being brave. You can stay anonymous if you want. No story is too big or too small. I’ll start sharing them every week on my Youtube channel and here. Let’s all inspire each other, okay? This isn’t about me. This is about us — all of us.

What Is Perfect?

In order to find perfection you must be able to forgive

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s.

Have you ever made up your own definition of a word?

I think that in a debate situation I tend to do it quite frequently and that is really laughable but a sign of my ego and desire to be correct!

I am not talking about a debate situation here; I am just referring to everyday life and everyday words. The specific word that I am thinking about right now is perfection.

What is perfection? According to Merriam-Webster at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perfection, perfection is

“1: the quality or state of being perfect: such as
a: freedom from fault or defect : FLAWLESSNESS
b: MATURITY
c: the quality or state of being saintly
2a: an exemplification of supreme excellence
b: an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence
3: the act or process of perfecting”

My definition of perfection would be something more like the quality or state of being that is perfect in the eyes of the beholder regardless of any fault, defect or flaw. You see my point? How can anything ever be perfect except to the person, or group of people, who think that it is perfect?

Of course, I realize that my definition takes on the assumption that all things have faults, defects or flaws, and I believe this to be true. Especially when we are talking about human beings! While I may think that my wife is perfect, others may not. While that may make them stupid people in my opinion, the truth is that none of us are without flaws.

Therefore, it stands to reason that in order to find perfection you must be able to forgive. I know that I think that I am perfect, but I also know that Carrie does a hell of a lot of forgiving!

So, what is my point you may be asking in a frustrated mumble.

Well, it is basically that none of us are perfect. Nothing is perfect. And if you believe that someone or something is perfect than you are capable of forgiveness. I don’t think that a lot of people think about it in that simplistic form, but it is true. So, let’s start doing more forgiving, less criticism, much more loving and much less belittling! Basically, remember to always Love Your Way Through It!

Peace,

Shaun

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

I am Tired of Hiding.

Real love is when we see the crud in someone else, in ourselves, and we love our way through that anyway.

What if you weren’t afraid?

I know! I know!

Stay with me here. But what if you weren’t afraid to do things that you’ve always wanted to do, but have been holding yourself back because of possible ridicule or ‘failure?’

What if you weren’t afraid of your own goodness and light?

What if you actually believed in it, believed in yourself?

As most everyone knows, I was (and sometimes am) a person who gets scared of things a lot and I avoid them. I do Be Brave Fridays to force myself to show my art and that side of my creativity.

I write novels even though I’ve spent a lot of time being terrified of bad reviews.

I’ve talked a lot about my voice and my sloshy s’s and how that kept me from singing and acting and public speaking because I just couldn’t handle the potential ridicule.

I once had a teacher tell me that nobody would ever hire me or love me, that I’d never get into college or get married because my voice was so ridiculous. I was little. It hurt. I believed them.

To be fair, even as a successful grownup, people still mimic and mock my voice sometimes. It still hurts a bit, but mostly it makes me sad for them. Once I was lucky enough to talk to a man on NPR about just this and he said, “It’s better to have a distinctive voice. We love that in radio. It makes you stand out.”

Standing out can be scary, can’t it?

Anyways, that’s why we started the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE and then our LOVING THE STRANGE podcast. It forced me to have a voice. And it forced me to listen to my own voice when I mixed down the audio and get used to it.

But despite these bit leaps I’ve made in two years, I still notice things that I do that might be based in fear, that might be me trying to hide anything shiny in myself because of fear.

My fears:

Being super poor again.
Ridicule.
Being thought of as arrogant.
Hurting other people by being too vulnerable, out-there, shiny, honest, whatever.
Not making a difference

Those fears are probably why I have such a hard time with videos, why I assign my own daily motivational/inspiration thoughts to my dogs and cats on social media posts, why I’d rather be behind the camera instead of in front of it.

So, I obviously still have some work to do, right?

But that’s okay. Work is a good thing. Growth is a good thing. And allowing yourself to realize that you are more than adequate, that you can create yourself, that there is something shiny inside of you and you need to uncage that, cultivate it, let it flow?

That’s a big ass deal.

When you let your own self be shiny, be real, be kind, you give other people a chance to be lights too.

In a way, it’s selfish to hide your shininess, your belief because not only is it holding yourself back from making the biggest contributions to your family and your world, but it’s also teaching by example.

If I hide my light, you can hide yours.

If I show mine, you can show yours.

We all have goodness and crud inside of ourselves, right? Real love is when we see the crud in someone else, in ourselves, and we love our way through that anyway. Love and acceptance are huge things. So much of the darkness inside of us is about fear, anxiety, pain, trauma. And there are so many shiny, gorgeous humans who have been through so much and they still light up the world.

Shouldn’t we want to be one of them?

This is so important that I’m going to repeat it. When you accept how amazing you can be, how good you can be, then you show other people that they can do it, too.

People get addicted to fear. We watch scary shows. We search for the rush of adrenalin. But what if we could turn our stage fright, our minor anxieties into excitement? How cool with that be.

What if we could allow ourselves to see the good in ourselves and other people, to step away from judgement, admit mistakes, be okay with being embarrassed and transform?

I think we can. We can love our way through it, right?

best writing coaches — animal friends being shiny

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Beauty and Love are About More Than Makeup and Fashion

Sometimes Shaun is swoon worthy.

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s.

I am sure that there must be a name or a scientific explanation for what I am about to talk about, but I will tell you up front that I am too lazy to look it up and will be simply speaking from my own experience here. So, let’s get started!

If I was to title this blog post, I would call it, Humanity, the Gateway to Love. And not everyone may be able to relate to this because I think it takes some life experience, some maturity and possibly just some plain ol’ years on this planet to understand.

Beauty, what is it? The first answer that comes to my mind is that it is not the popular construct of television and social media. That is mostly makeup and great camera work! Real beauty is the ability to feel attractive and not have to wear makeup or feel pressured to do so. Real beauty is the ability to be secure in who are and not have to worry about people fawning over you all of the time. Real beauty is the ability to not even think about applying makeup, not worry about wearing the latest fashion or having the newest electronic device and still being able to leave the house, socialize and treat others as though they are your equal, nothing better and certainly nothing less!

But you know what real, real beauty is? It is the beauty that one individual sees when they look at the love of their life! It is the beauty that starts at a certain younger age and never changes through the years, no matter how much time passes! It is the beauty that allows an eighty-year-old person to look at their eighty-year-old partner and see the exact same beauty (or more) as when they were both twenty!

This is true beauty, not built on purely physical traits but rather the totality of the circumstances for which one fell in love. Personality, intellect, the ability to relate, the ability to deal with life’s greatest challenges and life’s greatest humors, and depth of soul and heart are what make up a human’s beauty! These should be the characteristics which we look at or for in another human.

Yes, this is a mixed bag post as I am speaking both of general socialization and interaction and I am also talking about love and partnership. Leave the physical qualities out of the picture and treat one another as humans who are something much greater than their skins. As a world we will all benefit from this approach and as an individual you will too. If you happen to be looking for love, this will help you find everlasting love. As someone who was lucky enough to check all these qualities off in another, I can tell you that the beauty of your partner will never diminish as a result, no matter how old you are!

Love Your Way Through It,

Shaun

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass .

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series. I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

Carden’s Brave Story

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

LET’S HANG OUT!

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

Like this:

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

LET’S HANG OUT!

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

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We are ALL lucky!

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

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HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

Like this:

WE ARE NOT OUR THOUGHTS.

The things we do.

So, how do you do that?

DO THINGS

PUT YOUR THOUGHTS IN THEIR PLACE

Pay Attention To The World Like A Tourist or a Poet Would

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

LET’S HANG OUT!

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

Like this:

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

Like this:

LET’S HANG OUT!

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

LET’S HANG OUT!

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

Like this:

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

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Have you ever made up your own definition of a word?

LET’S HANG OUT!

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

Like this:

Standing out can be scary, can’t it?

My fears:

So, I obviously still have some work to do, right?

LET’S HANG OUT!

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

Like this:

LET’S HANG OUT!

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!

Like this: