TT#21: Excerpts from "17 LIES AND THE TRUTH THAT WILL SET YOU FREE"

A while back I bought and read the book "17 Lies That Are Holding You Back, And The Truth That Will Set You Free" by Steve Chandler. It's a great book that points out many lies that we tell ourselves, or find ourselves believing, and dismantles them with the truth. Here are 12 of the 17 lies from the book, and one truth.


LIE-- It's Who You Know: "Everyone says, 'It's who you know.' But it's not who you know. That's a lie. The truth is that it's wht you do....In the world of success, who you know is nothing. The doing is the thing that brings success." {pg. 27}

LIE-- There's Something Wrong With Me: "You've failed at some things, but there is nothing wrong with you. You are not defective. Not in any way whatsoever. It takes courage to hold on to this truth. But once you learn to hold on to it, it will give you your life back." {pg.44}

LIE-- I'm Too Old For That: "It's not your age that determines what you can learn, it's your energy. Your energy does not depend on your age, it depends on your sense of purpose." {pg. 51}

LIE-- I Can't Because I'm Afraid: "The truth is that every human has as much courage as the current purpose requires. Courage is always in us, like a heartbeat, like a breath. It's in all of us in equal measure." {pg. 65}

LIE-- I'm Sadder Now But Wiser: "It is simply not true that sadder and wiser are related to each other!...The real truth is that the wiser you are, the happier you get. Because wisdom does that. If one is becoming sadder, it's not because one is becoming wise, it is because one is quitting." {pg. 99, 100}

LIE-- The Longer I Have A Habit, The Harder It Is To Break: "Whether I've had my habit for two years or twenty years, the process is exactly the same. How long I've been doing something means nothing. The action I take to create a new self-perception means everything." {pg. 112}

LIE-- People Really Upset Me: "To say that someone upset me is a lie I'm telling myself. Because I could, if I wanted to, choose not to be upset. The reason I don't want to choose that is because it's easier to feel than to think...The lie is that she upsets me. The truth is that I can respond to her any way I want." {pg. 124}

LIE-- Winning The Lottery Would Solve Everything: "The reason that unexpected horrors fall upon so many lottery winners is that they have tried to equate their discipline problems with money problems. They tell themselves that money is the answer when it's not. The answer is action.... (P)eople could win the lottery, or theycould lose their legs.The two events would have the same effect on their happines in life. I think that proves that happiness is a separate thing. It's totally separate from outside events, good or bad. It's an internal adventure, and it's based on our ability to grow a sense of purpose that we can fulfill." {pg. 133, 134}

LIE-- You Hurt My Self-Esteem: "Self-esteem is a result of our own opinion of our own actions. There is no limit to the actions we can take. Even if the actions initially fail to get an immediate result, self-esteem can increase, just from taking the action! Self-esteem is always related to action, to what we do, not to what people think of what we do." {pg, 149-150}

LIE-- It's A Shame We Didn't Capture That On Video: "(T)o me, it's not really a shame that I didn't capture the past on video. It's a shame when I do not capture the present. That's the only true shame." {pg. 161}

LIE-- That's Just The Way I Am: " Selling myself on 'the way I am' keeps me locked in my own fearful childhood. I become heavy with a false claim of permanent personality... Self-imposed immaturity is when we deliberately lie to ourseles and become frightened children in the face of adult challenges, instead of becoming brave men and women who are simply challenged by the tasks ahead." {pg. 169, 170}

LIE-- What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger: The truth is, it just kills me! (That's my personal summary of the lie Steve presents. I'd like to quote the entire chapter here, there's such good stuff in it about the banality and death that is addiction.)

TRUTH-- "Look, you can stop lying to yourself any time you want. Your past is your past. You have a choice. You can live out your past. Act it out. Reenact it everywhere you go. Or you can create your future. It's up to you. But I think it's time you start creating the life you want. {pg. 224}

Six Quirky Things

I have been tagged by Cricket's Hearth for a list of Six Unknown/Quirky Things About Me.

It's taken me a few days to think about this one, because I don't consider myself a quirky person. I've always been the plain jane, adaptable person in the group.

I remember reading teen magazines many years ago when I was a teen, and finding out just how boring and uninteresting I really was, and probably still am. There would be articles featuring the teen of the month, and they would always be about girls who made their own clothes from old curtains and fabric scraps and vintage jewelry. They wallpapered their rooms with paisley scarves and seashells, and ate oysters with peanut butter for lunch. They loved obscure folk musicians and planned to major in The Use of Sculpture in Counseling.

Me? My clothes came from K-mart, or the most recent sack of hand-me-downs. My room was decorated with bargain store curtains, and posters that I pulled from the center fold of Pioneer Girls magazines. ("Smile! Jesus Loves You!" "Today is the first day of the rest of your life-- Start it right with Jesus!") I ate grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, and listened to my Bill Gaither Trio record that I won at a bible club. I hoped someday to be a teacher, because it seemed like cheating to say I just wanted to get married and have kids.

I've seen the same kinds of articles as an adult, where the interviewer asks some famous somebody all about their "Favorites." They actually had a favorite food, a favorite restaurant, a favorite recording group, a favorite famous person they'd love to talk to, a favorite book character, someone interesting they'd like to get stuck in an elevator with.

Me? I don't have a favorite much of anything. That's because I like pretty much everything, and even what I don't LIKE, I don't mind, so I have very few things I despise. (um. Let me think. I guess I don't care for raw onions. Or raw mushrooms.) Which makes me feel like I have no personality. Isn't personality defined by your likes and dislikes?

And I would freak out with shyness and embarrassment if some famous author/speaker/whatever would spend a few hours with me. (What do I say? What should I do?)

As for getting stuck in an elevator, please let it be my Hubby, or possibly one of my kids, or maybe even one of our friends. It would be a good excuse for catching up on conversation. But some stranger, just to have a captive audience? Never.

ANYWAY. As I started out to say, I had a hard time coming up with six quirky things. I mean, how do I know they're quirky? Maybe everyone does those things. Or what if they're not quirky, as in endearing, but quirky, as in just plain weird? I guess I'll just have to take that chance.

Six Quirky Things About Me

1) I loved school as a child, and one of my favorite things to do was play school. That playacting came true when I grew up and was able to homeschool all four of my children. I got to play school every day for many years! (Too bad my kids didn't like it as much as I did.... Oh well. Maybe this one IS "just plain weird.")

2) I read a lot, but mostly books I've read before, unless it's non-fiction. I like to go back and visit those familiar worlds I've come to know. It's a safe little vacation from life. Non-fiction is different-- I like learning new things. I rarely read a non-fiction book more than once or twice.

3) I like kids' movies and books better than the stuff for grownups. Kids' stuff is less complicated, and usually has a happy ending. Isn't that a great grownup fantasy?: more simplicity and more happy endings?

4) The music I like is not limited to a particular style. I also don't like everything of one style, just because it's that style. I tend to like songs for their message and if they "grab" me. So I have lots of favorite songs that sound strange back to back.

5) I can't stand it when what someone says and what they do don't match. It's confusing and disturbing to me. Or when their mouth says something like, "no, I'm not angry," and their eyes look like murder.

6) Most mornings when I wake up, before I open my eyes, I spend time writing in my head. I find myself thinking out essays, or letters, or emails, or just organizing my thoughts. I don't always get those thoughts actually down on paper, but I do a LOT of mental writing.

Now I need to pass it on, but first, here are the rules:


~Link to the person that tagged you
~Post the rules on your blog
~Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself
~Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs
~Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website


Six Five people about whom I'd like to know six things:

Michelle at Heart of the Prairie
Carrie at Chocolate The Other White Meat
PrayerMom at Green Room Serenade
Lizzy at My Ice Cream Diary
Ornery's Wife at Thoughts From Miller Manor

Energy Drink from Hell

Early this morning, while it was still dark out, I found myself in a dream, where I was with a large group of people, and we were all sitting around tables in a restaurant. One woman was trying to talk a young man into trying what she was drinking. It seemed that he was known for being a very picky eater and drinker, so when he actually drank some of it, everyone cheered and clapped, and he made a show of standing and bowing.

While the commotion was going on, I asked, "What was it that he was drinking?" The woman showed me. It was a large energy drink-type can, very flashy. She said, "It's my absolute favorite drink. I drink it all the time." I looked closer at the can, and saw it was some kind of cola. Very clearly it was labeled with the flavor: Catsup.

I said, "I'll try it." I poured a little into a spoon and tasted it. It was oddly sweet, not exactly a bad taste, but it made my stomach feel queer. It had little white, powdery clods of something in it, which was really strange, and when I asked what it was, I was told enthusiastically that it was cheese. It reminded me of feta cheese.

I took two or three sips out of my spoon, and declined more, against the insistence of the woman. I told her the drink was triggering my gag reflex, and I didn't feel so good.

And then I woke up, and discovered I felt nauseous and dizzy. At first, I thought it was purely the power of suggestion, but the feelings have remained all day. I have been treating myself with homeopathic cold & flu drops, and by now I'm feeling almost normal.

So my question is: which came first? The gag-gy dream, and it made me feel sick all day? Or was I coming down with something in my sleep, and it affected my subconscious?

Either way, I'm glad I'm feeling better, and I will NEVER again drink catsup-cheese flavored Coke!

Telephone Tag

Here's an interesting twist on an old game. Someone started a sentence and it's getting passed around the internet being changed one word at a time, and morphing into strange things along the way. Now the hot potato is in my hands, and I'm gonna play my part and pass it along quick!

***Fracas created this game, and because only one person gets to play at a time, consider yourself a real fraccer Here's what you gotta do. See those 3 asterisks at the start of this paragraph? Copy from there to the three asterisks at the end of the post. Then, add your line and change one word. JUST ONE. It's like playing the telephone game when we were little. Then tag ONE person and pass it on. If the game gets stalled at someone who doesn't play, fracas takes it back and sends it on its way again. For playing, you get links… and you get to take this badge and display it with a link back to the telephone page so your readers get to see your contribution!

If you want to be part of it, please leave a comment at the telephone page at fracas and fracas will add you the next time it comes back around to her, but please don’t just start doing it yourself as that will ruin the proper flow.

1. Fracas writes:
Never continue dating anyone who is rude to the waiter.

2. Mark @ Blogitude writes: Never continue dating anyone who is nude to the waiter.

3. Wiggy writes:
Forever continue dating anyone who is nude to the waiter.

4. Froggy @ The Road Less Traveled writes:
Forever continue dating anyone who is nude under the waiter.

5. InTheFastLane @ That's Life writes:
Forever continue dating anyone who is nude under the water.

6. Treadmillista @ Just Treadmilling Around writes:
Forever continue dating everyone who is nude under the water.

7. Christine @ Watch Me! No, Watch Me! writes:
Forever continue watching everyone who is nude under the water.

8. Candace @ not that i don't love my kids writes:
Forever continue scratching everyone who is nude under the water.

9. Fracas @ fracas writes:
Forever avoid scratching everyone who is nude under the water.

10. Bluepaintred @ Bluepaintred writes:
Never avoid scratching everyone who is nude under the water.

11. Shelli @ Shelli's Sentiments writes:
Never avoid kissing everyone who is nude under the water.

12. Judy @ Sugar Queen's Dream writes:
Never avoid kissing everyone who is nude under the blankets.

13. Trish @ Not Your Typical Granny writes:
Never avoid spanking everyone who is nude under the blankets.

14. Amy @ Amy's Musings writes:
Never try spanking everyone who is nude under the blankets.

15. Tense @ A Tense Teacher writes:
Never try shagging everyone who is nude under the blankets.

16. Chili @ The Blue Door writes:
Certainly try shagging everyone who is nude under the blankets.

17. O'Mama @ Life and Times of Organic Mama writes:
Certainly try shagging everyone who is nude under the bleachers.

18. Grammar Snob @ Grammar Snob writes:
Certainly try judging everyone who is nude under the bleachers.

19. Prof. J. @ Professor J's Place writes:
Certainly try judging everyone who is rude under the bleachers.

20. Shrieking Lizzy @ Shriekinglizzy's new digs writes:
Certainly try juggling everyone who is rude under the bleachers.

21. Fracas @ Fracas writes:
Certainly try ignoring everyone who is rude under the bleachers.

22. Linda @ At Linda's writes:
Certainly try ignoring everyone who is shagging under the bleachers.

23. Rotus @ Rotus writes:
Certainly try joining everyone who is shagging under the bleachers.

24. Linky Love @ Add Your Link writes:
Certainly try joining everyone who is linking under the bleachers.

25. Fracas @ Fracas writes:
Certainly try joining everyone who is leaking under the bleachers.

26. JD @ I Do Things writes:
Certainly try drying everyone who is leaking under the bleachers.

27. Jeff @ View From The Cloud writes:
Certainly try drying everyone who is moist under the bleachers.

28. Pat @ Annoyingly Boring writes:
Australians try drying everyone who is moist under the bleachers.

29. Fracas @ Fracas writes:
Australians try drying everyone who is moist under the barbie.

30. Carrie @ Chocolate The Other white Meat writes:
Australians try frying everyone who is moist under the barbie.

31. momhuebert @ Chocolate After Supper writes:
Australians try frying everyone who is caught under the barbie.

That’s all for now folks, but visit the telephone page later, and there’ll surely be a new twist! ***

And now-- I tag Miss Sniz!

Welcome Aboard

I would like to welcome my friend PrayerMom to the bloggy world. She has been blogging for all of six days!

You can visit her at her blog, Green Room Serenade, or at her forum AloneTogetherHope.

TT#20: 13 Household Hints That Work For Me

Thirteen Household HInts Last Thursday I listed thirteen ideas for a TT list, and a someone requested to see one of list particularly: 13 Household Hints. Well, I'm not sure these are traditional household hints. They probably would work better for a Works For Me Wednesday. But here they are for you, Thursday Thirteeners. 1. Each person has his or her own laundry basket. This means we do not have a general family hamper. If you undress in the bathroom for a shower, you take all your clothes back to your room with you and put them in your basket. The reason this is so helpful is because of tip#2: 2. Each person has his or her own laundry day. This means that today is LovelyDaughter's wash day, and she does her laundry. Tomorrow is my day, and I'll do my laundry. On the boys' days they do their laundry, with help according to their ages. No longer do I dump everyone's dirty clothes into an enormous pile and then sort by color. If any sorting needs doing, it gets done according to person. Do you realize what a time and sanity saver this is? No more sorting white socks! No more trying to remember whose shirt this is and whose jeans these are! And no more fights: "Hey, that's MY shirt!" "Who keeps stealing all my socks?" 3. I use clear plastic sandwich storage containers for leftovers. They are clear, so I can see what's in them. They are flat and square, so they stack nicely in my fridge, and seem to hold a lot in a small space. No more containers rotting away in a sour cream container because I thought it was sour cream. And no more sour cream rotting away because I thought it was leftovers! 4. Use cheap paper towels to clean the bathroom instead of rags that have to be washed. I know this sounds wasteful, but it has revolutionized my bathroom-cleaning habits. When my paper towel gets full of hair, I THROW IT AWAY and get a new one. When it gets dirty from wiping the base of the toilet, ditto. No germ worries. 5. Related to the last one-- Wipe down the bathroom after someone takes a shower. In our bathroom, everything is wet with condensed steam after a shower, and it is totally easy to quickly wipe dry every surface with a cheap paper towel, and the bathroom looks amazingly clean. Then every so often I'll do a deep cleaning with disinfectant cleaner, but the bathroom stays pretty presentable between major cleanings. 6. Here's a tip I used a lot when my kids were younger: Make chore cards. I still have a stack of colored index cards with chores written on them, like "take out trash," "vacuum living room," "sweep kitchen," etc. On cleaning day, I would sort through all the cards and choose which ones needed to be done that day. Then I would put them in stacks for the kids according to their ages-- fewer, and simpler, chores for the younger ones; more, and harder chores, for the older ones. As the kids grew, I adapted it and sometimes I'd just put all the cards out in a stack and everyone drew one off the top to do. When that job was done they came back for another. Each child had a number of cards they had to finish. This worked really well for quite a few years. 7. Five Minute Pick Up This is another thing I used a lot when the kids were younger. When the house needed straightening, I would gather the kids together, set the timer for five minutes, and then we'd all race to see how many things we could pick up and put away. I would keep a tally on the chalk board to see who "won." Sometimes I'd give prizes, like, a chocolate chip for every item. Forty-two chocolate chips is quite a snack...! 8. Room Inspection Once a week I used to inspect the kids' rooms and rate the job they did cleaning. I printed up some play money we called "Dino Dollars" and they could earn up to five bills, by cleaning to a list of standards I would check off. I kept a "Tuck Shop," which was a selection of treats that could be bought with the Dino Dollars; things like fruit snacks, or gum, or ice cream bars. Some of them cost only two dinos, but others cost five, and others cost up to ten, so there was some incentive to earn the full five dinos, while keeping instant rewards available. This worked very well for us, till the kids got old enough to no longer be motivated by earning play money, even for snacks. 9. Here's a homeschool-related tip: Keep each child's school books and supplies in their own container. I bought each of them their own Rubbermaid organizer tub, and in it went each child's text books, workbooks, notebooks, paper, pencils, math manipulatives... whatever they needed. This was another one of those time and sanity savers, because the school stuff stayed organized and put away, and each child knew exactly where their stuff was. And no more fights over pencils! 10. For the kitchen: I put my most-used recipes on index cards and then put them on metal rings. I have a ring of cookie recipes, a ring of dessert recipes, a ring of quick bread recipes. To use them, I bought a little stand for business cards and attached a ring to it as well. Then I got some magnetic hooks to hang on my fridge, and I hang the rings of cards, and the business card stand, on them. When I want to use a recipe, I flip through the cards and use the stand to display the right recipe. I love using my recipes this way. 11. Related to this: I also keep recipes in photo-organizer books. I have three slim volumes that have clear pockets for photos, in which I slide index cards with recipes on them. One book has main dishes, one has salads and side dishes, and the other has miscellaneous, like my chocolate syrup recipe. These are all my old stand-by recipes that have been culled from many cookbooks over the years. 12. Fold laundry directly from the clothesline. This tip is probably not helpful to anyone but me. We hang our laundry on our clothesline when the weather suits, and I've found that folding the clothes as I take them down is very handy. I grew up under the system of just throwing everything in the basket till I got inside the house, and THEN folding them. But folding things directly from the line is so efficient. Everything is already smooth and unwrinkled and laid out straight, and I've perfected the technique of folding things against my body. Plus, it's another excuse to stay outside for a little while. 13. Deal with mail immediately. I know this one is a tip all the organizing books recommend, but, incredibly, I was doing it before I knew the books were saying it. I bring in the mail, and immediately toss the junk mail. I put the catalogs I want to look at into our catalog basket. I put the bills into the bill section of my organizing basket. I put the begging letters in another section. I didn't realize how helpful this was till Hubby and I went on a trip and left the kids in charge of the house. Yes, they were old enough, but they didn't know how to sort the mail, and after a week, we came home to piles of papers and catalogs and junk mail and bills, all piled together, and it was a MESS! Since then I have been pretty pleased with myself and my one little bit of efficiency. What's your best household tip?

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Happy Birthday, MB3

Sunday was MB3's 17th birthday (my baby....oh, my BA-by.....), so Saturday evening we invited Swede and his daughter over for supper. The teenagers all watched a DVD while the grown-ups sat and talked. At midnight we realized we had a big day coming up on Sunday, and we'd better start getting ready for morning.

Now, when we're on the worship team on Sunday morning, we have to be at church by 9:00am for practice, so we have to leave home by 8:15 at the latest, and it takes 15 minutes to load instruments and get out the door, and 15 minutes to snarf a bowl of cereal, and then --how many people need showers in the morning, at 15-20 minutes each-- and then allow time to put meat and potatoes in the roaster, let's see, borrow 6, put down 2, carry the one...mumble, mumble.....um, that's... 6:30am! Set the alarm for 6:30!

Which I did, on my pda.

Sunday morning, I woke up at 5. Checked the clock. Five o'clock. Got an hour and a half till the alarm goes off. Go back to sleep. No-- go back to DOZE. Doze, worry, sleep (sorta), doze, worry, sleep, dream weird dreams. What time is it? When is that alarm going to go off. Any minute now..... zzz.

I suddenly bolted awake to check my pda. Time: 7:10am!! ????? Ack! I had set my alarm for 6:30PM instead of 6:30AM!

I'll spare you the frantic rush. We did remember to say "Happy Birthday" to MB3, but I didn't have time to put food in the pot to cook while we were gone. Rats. That meant dinner would be really, really late, because we don't usually get home till 1:30, and then to make food from scratch means we don't eat till 2:00 or 2:30. Or we end up eating burgers on the way home, if there's a little extra cash. Poor MB3. What a birthday.

We made it to practice just a few minutes late, and the morning went well from there. I cornered the pastor and told him it was MB3's birthday and asked him to embarrass him. What I meant was, go find him and shake his hand and tell him happy birthday and ask him interested, embarrassing questions, like "How does it feel to be seventeen?" What he did was this:

At the end of the service, right before the closing prayer, while everyone was still standing from the last song, he said "Where's MB3? Stand up MB3!" (MB3 doesn't always stand up when everyone else does, because, one, he's a teenager and must remain COOL, and, two, he's taller than everyone around him and he feels conspicuous.) From my spot on stage I watched MB3 stand up.

The pastor continued, "Raise your hand, MB3!"

Sheepishly, MB3 raised his hand.

"Happy Birthday!"

MB3 turned slightly red and grinned.

Afterwards, MB3 came up on stage while we were packing up. "So," he said. "Where're your wings?"

"Huh?"

"Your wings. Don't you have little birdie wings?"

I still didn't get it.

"Well, obviously, a little bird told SOMEBODY it was my birthday today...! YOU must be the little bird."

Quite a few people came up to us then and asked if we were having birthday parties (yes, plural...what's up with that?) that day. At that point I didn't know if we were having even one party, but I became convinced we needed to somehow find the cash and take MB3 out for a birthday dinner, and Hubby agreed.

We invited Swede and his daughter, and MandoNut (and a friend of his), who all were in church that day, and we took Swede's suggestion to go to Godfather's Pizza. And once we were there, Swede whipped out his card and insisted on paying for it. Thank you, Swede! What a great party we had. We all get a little silly when we're together, and I think people think we're drunk, even though all we're drunk on is Pepsi, or the euphoria of being with friends.

A couple of hours later we were the only customers left in the restaurant, and we decided it was time to leave. But the party didn't stop. We stopped off at Swede's house on the way home --at Swede's daughter's invitation-- and settled in to watch a movie. GuitarGeek went with MandoNut back to BigCity to take his friend home, and they took along ANOTHER friend from church so they could hang out together. Does this sound crazy to you? No? That's because you don't know that BigCity is an hour and a half east, from the town we were in, and MandoNut had just committed to driving out there, and back, and to another city 45 minutes west from our house, and then back to our house-- all in one short afternoon.

About six o'clock, Hubby and I were ready to go home, and realized it was supper time, and we also hadn't had birthday cake yet. So we asked Swede and his daughter if they wanted to come on over for supper and cake. It would probably be an hour and a half before time to eat, so DrummerDude and MB3 stayed there to play pool while we went home to make preparations, and they would come later with Swede.

When I got home, I called MandoNut in BigCity and told him the plans, and he said, "Right, we're leaving now."

With MandoNut and GuitarGeek (and a friend) on the way, scheduled to arrive in about an hour, LovelyDaughter and I kicked into high gear. I worked on supper, and LovelyDaughter made the birthday cake. (And let me tell you, that cake was AWESOME! Can you picture a rich gold cake with fudgey frosting, sprinkled liberally with chopped pecans and dark chocolate shreds-- all completely homemade....drool...)

When everyone arrived, including the friend who had gone along for the ride, we had a birthday party.

At nine, the friend needed to go home, and needed a ride. MandoNut had already planned to do it, but Hubby stepped in and offered to go, so he could have an excuse to drive our Z3, and of course, friend was not averse to that!

The rest of us played card games--with the new cards MB3 got for his birthday-- till he got back, and had a BLAST! It's so fun to laugh with friends.

Then MandoNut stayed for the night, so Monday morning felt like an extension of the party. It feels like we had a two-day party for MB3.

It's funny, because Sunday morning when I was worried about how to plan the day, I prayed and asked God if HE would plan a party for MB3, then all we'd have to do is carry out His plans. And you know what? He did! Thanks, God.