**God determines who walks into your life…it’s up to you to decide who you let walk away, who you let stay, and who you refuse to let go.  God doesn’t intend for them to be in our lives forever.  It’s the lessons in those relationships He intends for us to keep.

Mother Clutter

Feeling anxious about throwing away a perfectly good whipped topping bowl?
Does going to bed without doing the dishes leave you sleepless with guilt?
Are you feeling like a failure because your apartment is a mess?

Take a minute and revel in the notion that this is not your fault—it’s your mom’s. Okay, back to reality. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is only you can fix it. Sometimes in order to address a problem, we need to know where it came from first.

For many of us, we hear our mother’s voice somewhere in our subconscious telling us not to be wasteful or messy and to clean our rooms. Mothers who take their parenting seriously understand it is their responsibility to teach us the rules of the adult world and how to take care of ourselves.

When moms do their jobs well they instill in us a Superego. This is part of the Id-Ego-Superego construct put forth by Freud. The Id is the part of us wants to satisfy basic urges like food and sex. The Superego is our conscious that tells us what we “ought” to do. Our Ego is stuck in the middle, trying to satisfy with Id within the rules of the Superego.

My favorite example of how the Id-Ego-Superego all work together was presented by Dr. Narina Nunez while at The University of Wyoming. This is very much a paraphrase but it went something like this:

You see an attractive person.  Your Id says, “I want to have sex right now.” Your Superego says, “Sex before marriage is wrong.” Your Ego says, “Well, at least let’s go over there and say ‘hello.'”

Following this idea, when we come home and kick our shoes off, drop our coat on the floor, and leave dirty dishes in front of the television, we have completely given in to our Id. The Id hates rules. The person with an overly strong Superego is an anal retentive person, which we have all had to deal with in our lives or very well might be them.  The Superego believes that following the rules and “being good” proves an individual to be worthy of love and respect.

When it comes to clutter, let your Ego do the talking. Don’t let everything go, but don’t worry about perfection. I am a firm believer in the idea of “good enough.” My friends will often comment on how clean my house always is. I look around and see dozens of things I need to do when I can get to them, like washing the blinds or cleaning the ceiling fan. However, if other people can look at my house and things appear clean and orderly, it’s “good enough.”

My mother’s voice is quite insensible. My Superego is intact, but I do not think it rules my Ego with an iron fist. I know that many people do not have the astounding good luck to have been raised by reasonable people. If your mother’s voice is too loud and demanding, nothing you do is “good enough.” This can lead to feelings of inadequacy and failure. It can also lead to unrealistic expectations.

These problems can result in one of two extremes: Breaking your back trying to keep your living space perfect or simply giving up because it will never be “good enough” to satisfy your Superego. This is when the emotional consequences of clutter can come in.

My advice: Unless you and your mother still live together, it is time for your voice to be louder than hers in your head. Take the good lessons she taught you, decide what you believe is reasonable for you and start managing the stuff in your life the way you want to, not the way you think you should.

Remember:  you are YOU, and NOT your mother!

Step One

 

Responsibility

 

1.  Being in control of your own behavior.  Stop blaming others for all the reasons your life has gone wrong and move on.  Only you can change you.

 

2.  Being trusted with important jobs.  Part of being responsible is being able to start a task and see it through to the finish.  Every job is important.  Remember that.  From the fry cook to the fireman and the peanut seller to the President.  We all have a purpose.

 

3.  Having your work finished on time.  Again, start to finish.  No space in between.  When you procrastinate you become stagnate. 

4.  Doing your part when working together.  Being responsible means its time to grow up and stop putting everything off on others and taking the credit.  For example:  You still live at home with Mom and you lean on her for every thing in your life and you’re 30.  When you are going to do your part and live your life and let Mom live hers?

 

Step Two

 

Respect

 

1.  Treating others the way you want to be treated.  The Golden Rule.  It’s simple.  You’ve heard the saying, “What goes around comes around.”  It’s karma.  If it happened to another, it’s could happen to you and if it happened to another because of you, it WILL happen to you, eventually. 

2.  Showing kindness and consideration.  Stop cursing in public.  Have manners. No one has manners anymore.  People curse, act out and are rude just to be that way or to gain a reaction from others.  Be polite.  Home is for whatever you do behind closed doors. Use common sense.  If you wouldn’t act that way in front of your mother then just don’t.

 

3.  Liking yourself enough to be yourself.  Does being yourself mean acting out like in the above?  Perhaps you think so, most likely its putting on a front for something you refuse to deal with properly.  Look in the mirror.  What do you see?  Is the person looking back you or just a shell of what God intended?

 

 

4.  Accepting others for who they are.  WOW!  Can anyone REALLY do that?  Yes, anyone can.  Some people in life are just crotchety and bitter and they are convinced that nothing in life can or will change that.  If they can accept that, so can you. 

Does that mean you have to include that person in every aspect of your life?  No.  Distance makes the heart grow fonder I have heard.  Whether that be another state or another state of mind.  Accepting them for who they are and knowing you can only change you will save you a lot of stress.  If they go their entire lives and they never catch on to the fact that they do not have to be that way.  It’s sad, yes.  But its their life.  Live yours!

 

Step Three

 

Caring

 

1.  Saying nice things and sharing compliments.  Don’t wait for someone to say something nice to you.  You start.  Trust me when I say, there is satisfaction in letting others know when they are appreciated or when they look nice or they do something well. 

2.  Being considerate, kind and respectful in all your actions.  Again, you are in charge of you.  No one can make you feel something.  No one can make you do something.  You have a choice to confront (and there are times where that will be necessary) and there are times when you need to walk away.  Choose your battles.  Sometimes saying nothing can be the most forceful thing of all.

 

3.  Lending a helping hand to those around you.  The only time you should ever look down upon a person is if you are giving them a hand up.

 

4.  Being the person others can count on.  That does not mean you have to run out there and save every soul you encounter.  Knowing you have integrity and heart are two characteristics that will enforce your self-worth. 

Step Four

 

Effort

 

1.  Achieving goals through commitment and hard work.  No one is going to hand you anything in life and if you’re lucky, they won’t.  There is something very uplifting about achieving a goal that you stuck with, never gave up on until you got it.  Having it given to you takes the blessing and the lesson out of getting there.

 

2.  Giving your best in everything you chose to do.  Give your 110%.  If you have done everything within your power and you still are not even close to being where you had hoped, re-assess your goal.  Maybe you need to break it down in to smaller steps to be able to achieve it.  Sometimes we see the finish line and set our goal plan to fly when we can only afford to walk.  We want to hurry up and get there and we forget that change takes time.

 

3.  Trying without giving up or giving in.  There may be times when things are not going according to plan and that’s ok.  It’s part of the lesson.  You will not know the whole lesson until you have reached the intended goal.  Never give up or give in.  RE-assess the situation.  Take a step back in order to go around the road block.  Detours are life’s way of showing us that there’s more than one path to go.

 

4.  Making the most of any situation.  Living life instead of letting it live you.  Living for YOU instead of all those around you.  Laugh at yourself.  It’s the best medicine there is.

 

Step Five

 

Honesty

 

1.  Being truthful to others.  What point is there to lie about anything.  The Laws of the Universe come back to bite you in the butt eventually.  And besides, you spend more time and energy focused on the lie and how to keep it going by adding to it and making it seem real than it would have to just be truthful in the beginning.  Only in truth are there any real details and you don’t have to make them up.  You just have to remember.

 

2.  Being truthful to yourself.  Same as above.  See things for what they REALLY are.  There is nothing wrong with seeing things how you would like them to be and setting forth some action to make that your reality.  Live in the now.

 

3.  Doing what’s right regardless of who’s around.  That is the definition of INTEGRITY.  Something a lot of people lack.  What are your beliefs?  What do you stand firm on?  Being a person of integrity should be on that list.

 

4.  Being someone others can trust.  What a concept!  Trust issues 80% of the time come NOT from being able to trust others, it comes from lack of trust within.  If YOU can’t trust you, how can anyone else?

 

Step Six

 

Choices

 

1.  Making every decision count.  Moments in life will happen where we might not be able to make a decision carefully.  But we must make it count.  The end result is just as important as the process it takes to get there.

 

2.  Thinking everything through responsibly.  As in the above example, moments in life may arise and we may think irrationally.  Try to weigh the pros and cons in any situation when possible to gain clarity on the situation.

 

3.  Exercising your freedom to choose.  One of your civil liberties.  If you choose not to choose, do you still make that choice?  Choices are the one thing no one can take away from you.  I hear people say, “I had no choice”.  Sure, you always have choices.  The outcomes may not always be ideal from choices that can be made versus choices that are made.  But you still have a choice.

 

4.  Deciding what is right and doing it.  Taking the slogan from Nike (TM) ‘JUST DO IT’  Whatever IT is.  Would you rather spend your life getting stagnant and living in a rut of total darkness and decay or live a life of color and promise and hope for a better tomorrow because YOU got up and got out of bed and DID something.  Anything.  If all you did was get up, you did something and that choice was yours to make and you made it.

 

Peace, love, light, LIBERTY AND CHOICES  to you all.

Amen

WHAT WE DO MATTERS: THE MEANING AND HISTORY OF LABOR DAY

Labor Day is a special holiday set aside to honor workers and the contributions that they make to their jobs and to society.

The History of Labor Day
There is some doubt and confusion as to when or by whom Labor Day was started. Here are some points of importance to how Labor Day Started.
 

• April 15, 1872 – Toronto Trades Assembly (TTA) (possibly the original labour body in Canada) organized the first North American “workingman’s demonstration”. Some 10,000 Torontonians turned out to watch a parade and to listen to speeches calling for abolition of the law which decreed that “trade unions were criminal conspiracies in restraint of trade”.
• September 3, 1872 – Members of seven unions in Ottawa Canada organized a parade that stretched for more than a mile long. The parade stopped at the home of Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald. They brought him into a carriage and marched to the Ottawa City Hall by torch light. The Prime Minister was aware of the discontent of workers with the laws which made unions illegal so he made this declaration that his party would “Sweep away all such barbarous laws from the statute books”. These laws were repealed by Parliament later that year and the tradition of holding parades and demonstrations was continued on into the early 1880’s.
• July 22, 1882 – The Toronto Trades and Labour Council (the successor to the TTA) organized the annual demonstration and parade. Peter J. McGuire of New York was invited to attend and speak at this occasion.
• 1882 – Matthew Maguire, later secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J. proposed a Holiday for Labor while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York.
• 1882 – Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor suggested a day to honor workers.
• September 5, 1882 – The Central Labor Union held its first Labor Day holiday in New York City. A second Labor Day was again held a year later on September 5, 1883.
• 1884 – The first Monday in September was selected as the holiday and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to also celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date.
• February 21, 1887 – Oregon passed the first bill to become law making Labor Day an official holiday.
• June 28, 1894 – The U.S.A. Congress passed an act making the first Monday of September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories including all Federal workers in all states. The individual States still had to enact their own legislation which 31 States had done already by this time.
• July 23, 1894 – The Canadian Government enacted legislation making Labour Day, the first Monday of September of each year into a national holiday.

Regardless of who, where or when Labour Day was started, it is now an important holiday which is now celebrated in many different countries. 

Even though Labour Day was born through the activities of the trade unions, which are still holding demonstrations and picnics on Labour Day, this is a holiday to be celebrated by ALL who labour and who’s efforts and skills at so many different jobs to give us the materials to fulfill all of our wants and necessities in society.

Thank you to all of you, who’s job it is to make this world go ’round.  Whether you are a soldier, a banker, a policeman, firefighter, social worker, healer, minister, teacher, maintenance worker, factory worker, cook, hotel employee, mechanic, accountant, doctor, nurse, lawyer, mail carrier, newspaper person, gas station attendent, fast food employee, grocer, baker or a candlestick maker… you make the world go ’round. 

 Babysitters, stay at home mom’s and dad’s, little league coaches and others that donate their time without much reward, you too are thanked because what we all do matters! 

God has given us ALL a purpose.  He wants us to prosper and live the life of abundance He has created for us.  It is up to us to pull the abundance in to us.  Work, prayer and giving of ourselves will indeed create prosperity and abundance for us in our lives.  Life is not lived by material things alone; however.  There are riches waiting for us in the place which God has created.  We will be rewarded for our work both here and in Heaven.

Whatever it is you do, know that you matter!  Your work matters!  Even on days when it seems like what you are doing is somehow pointless, know that it affects two more people, other than yourself.  You matter! 

There is a more important lesson to be learned here.  In Labor Day, we take a day off and BBQ, hang out with friends and enjoy the extended weekend as a means to celebrate and be rewawrded for the work we do all year long to make this world go ’round.  But when the job we do becomes less important than the title we hold or the money we make, it may be time to move on.  When you suffer burn out its impossible to do an effective job for the employer who employs you or the people you may serve. 

You matter, to someone and the job you do matters to more than one someone.  Labor Day celebrates the work we do and gives us that extra day…we owe it to our employers and to those we serve to give them each day we serve them, our possible best.  Even when we’d rather not.  What we do matters more to others than we will EVER know.

One last note:  one smile can fight off three frowns.  Make each impression of yourself a positive and lasting one.

We live in what is known as the ‘Free World’.  A land where every person has equal opportunity to live, strive to be their personal best, love, worship, work and be who they are.  Do you take that for granted? 

Before Sept. 11, 2001, many people wandered through their daily lives, just living in the moment or worrying about tomorrow.  It took a fatal and cowardly act to bestow patriotism in us.  But why?  On that one single day, we were ALL Americans.  We were ONE NATION UNDER GOD and under attack.  We all put the flags out and posted the ones our local newspaper provided for us in our windows.  We all were more attentive to many a thing.  We bought and wore anything that had to do with the flag.  We put bumper stickers on our vehicles with sayings like…’these colors don’t run’…and ‘red, white and blue-through and through’.  We all did something else.  We looked at people differently, in two separate ways.  One:  anyone who looked ‘like an American’, we looked them in the eye…said hello to passing strangers…we prayed for peace together without separation of Church and State.  We also looked at anyone who didn’t look like us as if THEY were our enemy.  We didn’t mean to.  It came out of confusion, fear and what to do next. 

Suddenly anyone who wore their clothing draped upon them, had turban-like head wear, appeared to be ‘middle eastern’ or had an accent that resembled anyone from the Desert was not of us. Again, we didn’t mean to.  We were frightened.  Untrusting.  In shock. We had questions that had no answers.  However, we know now that we still know not who our enemy IS and who it IS NOT.  We are, in our search for answers, in no different of a place than we were 6 years ago.  Possibly and hopefully, less judgmental.  See, they, who we looked at differently, had and still have their own questions and maybe if you ask them, their questions are no different than ours. 

Everyone who reads this knows exactly where they were, who they were with, what they were doing when they heard the news.  Some of us were in offices.  Some of us at home watching it unfold with loved ones.  And for some, talking with their loved ones who were aboard those planes and listening to their last words they’d ever hear from them.  Only for the deafening silence on the end of the phone as the picture on the TV was more deafening than the silence…the voice fades and becomes silent as the second plane hits the Tower and they watch in horror just realizing they just witnessed their loved one die.  Or to be having a conversation with their spouse or their child, trying to reassure them things would be OK.  And the phone conversation ends with no response on the other end as the TV confirms yet another plane has hit the Pentagon or crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.  They were there when IT happened…life as they knew it from those moments before had just ceased.  Or how about being at a bus stop in some other city in America and having the appearance of being Muslim, Islamic or Arabic.  Suddenly you find yourself being looked at in disgust as if people were saying ‘ how could you’ with their eyes.  Or being an infant child, not knowing 6 years from now when you begin Kindergarten and the life your parent or parents lead has been turned in to nothing more than an hour long documentary.  Maybe when you found out we were under attack, you were sitting idle at your desk, working a normal Tuesday work day when the roof, windows and walls of your office exploded and you found yourself and your co-workers lying under 8-10 feet of debris. 

Whoever you are…wherever you were and however you found out….you always remember and NEVER FORGET!

We were all victims that day.  Every single person here in America.  Whether citizen, visitor, immigrant or alien.  We were ALL victims.  The point is not not remain a victim.  Moving on with life does not mean forgetting.  Always remember who you are, where you were, what you felt.  If you feel, it means you are still alive to tell about it.  To learn from it and teach others what you learned.  Can we still be angry?  Yes, but if that anger consumes you and lessens the quality of your life you have left to live here, then what is the point of having those feelings at all?  Anger, when it consumes you, deadens you.  You are unable to feel anything real.  You become stuck in those moments 6 years ago, or in any trauma you have lived through, with no other purpose but to be angry.

Live THIS life.  We only get one shot at this life.  Stop worrying about how to pay this bill or that bill.  Prosperity comes because God provides.  Lift up your hearts, your burdens, your worries and discomforts to God and let Him be your ROCK. 

This year, when you remember 9-11, remember ALL of those who were here that day.  Not just the lives of the 3000 plus heroes we lost but ALL who were affected and remain affected by this tragedy.  Fly your flag proud EVERYDAY, not just in May (Memorial Day), June (Flag Day), July (Independence Day), September (Patriot Day and Labor Day), October (Columbus Day), November (Veteran’s Day) and December (D-Day)—but everyday–if you can.  If not, each day when you wake, and you thank God for giving you this new day, take a moment to reflect on what your life means to you and how you want to live it.  What will you do today to make a difference and serve your purpose?  Are you living the life you want to be remembered by?

Welcome to AskNorkee’s WebBlog.  A site that I hope will be insightful, give you things to think about, lessons on life you could learn from plus much more.

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Enjoy and welcome.  I hope my words can help you to START LIVING THE LIFE YOU DESERVE.

Blessings!