Words from a book I am reading... The Four Agreements

Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about "me."

During the period of our education, or our domestication, we learn to take everything personally. We think we are responsible for everything. Me, me, always me!

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one you live in.

Taking things personally makes you easy prey for those predators who try to send you emotional poison. They can hook you easily with one little opinion, and feed you all their emotional garbage. When you take it personally, you eat it up, and now it becomes your garbage. But if you don't take it personally, you are immune to their poison; you will not eat it. Immunity to emotional poison is the gift of this agreement.

When you take things personally, you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts. You make something big out of something little, because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong.

You try hard to be right by giving them your own opinions. But what you say, what you do, and the opinions you have are according to the agreements you have made and these opionions have nothing to do with the people around you. Your point of view is something personal to you. It is no one's truth but yours.

In the same way, others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system. Nothing they think about me is really about me; it is about them. If I understand this, then when you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself. I am the excuse for you to get mad.

You may even tell me, "Miguel, what you are saying is hurting me." But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way that I can take this personally. Not because I don't believe in you or don't trust you, but because I know that you see the world with different eyes - with your eyes.

- The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Crap, I need to update this thing

Blog slackers, raise your hands! Lately I just read blogs more than I update them, but I have been slacking in that area too- just have recently re-priortized my time and I have not been making time for my cyber scrap book like I intended to this year. At the beginning of the year I was planning on doing what Amylee and my sister do with their blogs- put them into a book. But in order to do that I needed to keep up.
Well I'm making time for my lil' blog tonight and my couple of readers- so here is the recent happenings and going ons of our family:
Brody with our cute dude Cam Cam-

He's been, and I've been, drinking this...


and feeling so great, it is incredible! You may or may not know Brody has Crohns disease. He says he has never felt better because he has more energy, sleeps better, he can eat the food he wants including fruits and vegetables that he could not before, and he is not in pain. So for the last four months I have been a very happy wife, because I have a HaPpY husband!



I have been enjoying, and even my knees enjoying, RUNNING! I love it, I never really knew I was a runner until I started training for the Wasatch Back coming up this June. I'm on a team my sis' Andrea put together and I am so dang excited!
My track is just outside my door- right along this view :)

Makes me smile- this environment, and of course some good tunes to keep my pace.
This weekend I'm running in my first race ever- a 5K charity run down in Las Vegas. Good timing for a nice getaway Brody and I need. Road Trip! I think Brody and I have some of our best talks on nice long drives! Ha, he can't get away from me!
So Taylor has been up to:

Taylor's first time on a snowmobile. She and her dad had a great day together! Me and Cam missed out.

Kali and Taylor- this two year old does not cooperate for pictures

This girl is starting to really resist napping- please no :{
So when she finally falls asleep after what I would think an hour and a half of boredom, I find her in weird positions- not in her bed.

And this is what Cam has been up to- although I don't have many pictures of my cute man unfortunately- he is rolling all over, and startin' to rock on his hands and knees! His sister just makes him laugh so much- we LOVE it and to see them love each other is priceless!


Cameron James, why must you always have this weird look on your face. I swear this kid does smile, but when he looks at the camera he always pulls this face.



By the way

"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."
~ Gaylord Nelson, former governor of Wisconsin.