When Things Turn Out Not As Horrendously As You Thought They Would

Have you ever tried something new – scared to death as you went into it, but once you were in it, or once you were out of it, you realized it was a pretty great experience?

Sometimes, when you are about to try Brussels sprouts or fried calamari for the first time, you are bracing yourself for the nastiest taste your taste buds will ever come in contact with, but then you take the plunge, and lo and behold your taste buds feel happy!

Sometimes the plunge you are about to take is the literal one that entails jumping out of a soaring airplane. You are strapped to a big strong guy who knows what he’s doing, but your timbers are still shivering, clear up until the brief moment you’re crouching down and leaning forward out the wide-open airplane door… You’re like “holy %@$#!& what am I doing here!? mommy!!!!” But then, before you can blink one more blink, you’re careening thousands and thousands and thousands of feet downward in crisp clean cool fresh air, at a top speed of 130 miles per hour, with your facial skin attractively flapping in the wind. You safely and gently land on the ground, and you’re like “when can we do that again!?” ……and then you embarrassingly realize you’ve been hugging your big strong tandem instructor anaconda-style for literally a couple of minutes…… (because there’s just so much adrenaline still pumping full-blast in your blood, and you’re just so appreciative of him for helping you have the swellest skydiving experience ever!)

Sometimes you ask a handsome gentleman out on a date, face to face. For good reasons that have nothing to do with you, you get rejected, but you don’t feel dejected. On the contrary. You feel uplifted. Delighted, even. Obviously not because you just got a date, but because you and the gentleman both had just politely and respectfully communicated a conversation that was born with two inherent and distinct potentials: the potential to turn awkward, and the potential to improve the acquaintance you already had with each other. Your conversation ended up doing the latter; you both may have been nervous while talking, but after you had finished talking and parted ways, you eventually discovered that the future was filled with further mutual conversations during which you and the gentleman felt more at ease than ever before, because you both had effectively broken the ice once upon a time when you asked him out.

Sometimes you are a college freshman, and your adorable Tennessee roommate begs you to try out for the university’s cheerleading squad with her. Your initial response is “are you phreeking kidding me? don’t you understand how inadequate I am for that? I never cheerleaded a day in my life!” Oddly enough, though, you surprise yourself by going to the tryouts anyway. Your former-high-school-cheerleader roommate ends up making the team, and you expectedly don’t, because the painful truth is that you can’t tumble, toe-touch, or rhythmically clap while cutely yelling if all of the universe’s inhabitants depended on you and you alone to save them from their rapidly impending and inevitable atrocious doom. But there is something really neat that you took away from your mostly-ridiculous audition: you triumphantly learned the slick trick of being a backspot, which means you learned how to steady the tiniest cheerleader’s feet as she stood straight up, high in the air, for all the world to see, and then you caught her under her armpits once she gracefully and artistically fell back down. After the mostly-pointless tryouts were over, you went home not feeling utterly and completely humiliated; rather, you went home feeling like you learned a nifty skill—a forevermore useless skill—but a nifty one, nonetheless.

So I asked it once, and I’ll ask it again: have you ever tried something new, which you were astoundingly afraid to do, but you did it anyway, and you walked away from it feeling positively empowered? I wouldn’t be shocked if you have done this.

In the future, we will unavoidably happen upon more opportunities to try new things—opportunities that will deliver ants into our pants just thinking about them. When those opportunities present themselves, we can remember when we’ve successfully accomplished previous scary or milestone things. We’ve accomplished before, and we can accomplish again!

The Truth About Awkward

It’s whenever I catch myself in an accidental awkward situation that I automatically remind myself to be strong, by remembering and accepting that awkward happens to all people.

Today at lunch I ordered utterly-delicious lemon-pepper salmon with a side of totally-awesome asparagus. It was a cafeteria that I was in. A very nice cafeteria, which was run by very nice people, and frequented by very nice and nicely-dressed folks.

I brought my tray of fish and vegetables to a checkout counter. Any ol’ checkout counter would do. At this checkout counter, the cashier was a nice lady who spoke softly and somewhat slurred her words together. It was loud in the room. She pushed a couple of buttons on her machine, looked me in the eye, and said “$7.05” (“seven-oh-five”). That uncannily rhymed with “salmon and a side”…

Having just heard in my ears and mind salmon and a side, I looked her in the eye, and emphatically and proudly replied “Yes!”

And I stood there. For enough seconds for it to be awkward. She dumbfoundedly kept looking at me, clearly wondering when in the heck I was going to fork over the 10-dollar bill that was snug in my left hand. Then suddenly it hit me: she had said “$7.05”! SEVEN. OH. FIVE. Oh mercy.

And so I hurriedly gave her my money and my thanks, snatched my change, and ran away. I vowed to not visit that lady’s checkout counter for a while. You know, so she could have enough time to forget about how I was a dweeb.

We all find ourselves in awkwardville every now and then. If you’re one of the probably-many people who easily feel mortified immediately after having experienced even the briefest and flimsiest awkward moment, I challenge you to fix that. Don’t sweat those little things, because there are bigger and more embarrassing things you could accidentally do that are far more worthy of mortification. ;) But don’t sweat those too badly either. Everyone makes mistakes, but everyone also always has the chance to learn from their mistakes and become better, so long as they are a living, breathing organism in this world. The key is trust in Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ, forgiveness of others and of self, charitable brotherhood and sisterhood, and the belief that man and woman can improve.

Anyway, keep up the great work in your awkward-moment chagrin conquerings!

The Key to Why Blind Dates Are Frustrating (Guest Post)

Something great that my good friend wrote, and I'm giving it a happy home!

The Key to Why Blind Dates Are Frustrating

The following is a guest post from J Washburn.

The other day my mom looked at me, and I could tell she was hesitant, practically holding her breath. And then she blurted out, “I want to tell you about someone, but I get the feeling you’re tired of being set up on blind dates.”

She went on to tell me how one of her friends knows this girl and she thought I should meet her and so on.

I don’t know why, but I’m lucky to have had a lot of friends (and acquaintances) thinking about me lately. Just like my mom, they’re eager for me to be happily married. And, believe me, so am I.

So let me explain why I might appear frustrated about blind dates.

On my first blind date ever (this was my sophomore year of college), I was sitting at a table in a Hawaiian restaurant across from a very beautiful girl. I casually asked her, “So how do you know my friend L?” (L was the one who’d set us up.)

“Actually, I don’t really know her at all,” my blind date replied. “We’re just in a class together.”

I was shocked. And I immediately felt a little mad.

L had led me to believe that this girl was the cream of the crop, hand-picked from among many options, a date that was practically guaranteed to be the one.

But she wasn’t.

I don’t remember many more details, but I remember it was a short date. And I don’t believe I ever saw her again. Not that she wasn’t a nice person, but we had very little in common.

So here’s my point. Maybe I can best explain with a metaphor:

Getting set up is like is like having a friend recommend a movie.

I love movies.

But I don’t love all movies.

And I definitely don’t want to see every single movie that gets released just because there’s an off chance that it may become my new favorite movie ever. I’m not that desperate. I just want to see the best movies. (And I’ll choose my favorite from among them.)

Of course, everyone likes different movies. And sometimes I admit my tastes are a little quirky. I do love a lot of the same movies as my brother, but some of my favorites aren’t his favorites and vice versa. For example, I love TRON, which my brother would say is not one of the best movies. And I hate Prince of Persia, which my brother liked. And I don’t know how to explain that other than to say, “There’s no accounting for taste.” But just because people’s tastes are sometimes random—or partially random—doesn’t mean that people’s tastes can’t be partially explained or predicted too.

I want you to compare these two movie recommendations:

AMIGO ONE says, “Hey, there’s a new movie in the theater and you should see it.”

You can see the reaction on my face right now, can’t you?

It’s not pretty.

AMIGO TWO says, “Hey, I know you like sci-fi movies. Apollo 13 was one of your faves, right? Well, guess what?—there’s this new movie out called Gravity, and I really think you’ll like it. I recommend seeing it in 3D too, even though that’s not normally your thing. Just trust me. It’s a wild ride though, so don’t sit too close to the screen.”

Ha ha. Wow. By the time he’s done giving me that recommendation, my palms are already getting a little sweaty.

Whew.

Of course, the metaphor breaks down here a bit, because when you’re setting me up with, say, TRON, and you think I might like her, you also need to hope that I’m TRON’s type. (And I’m sorry to say that, as charming as I am, there are plenty of movies who don’t like me much.)

I hope that helps you see things from my perspective a little better. To my mom and everyone else wanting to set me up lately: I’m glad you care about me and that you want to see me happy. And I know that even though blind dates are a long shot, they sometimes work. (I have a sister who’s proof of that.) I guess I’m just saying that I love recommendations when people put some thought into it.

So the short answer is that I’m okay with being set up.

But please only set me up with the ones that seem like my type of movie.

— J

J Washburn is the author of several books, including an adventure novel called ECKSDOT. You can learn about his other quirks at www.jwashburn.com. And if you enjoy reading, you’ll want to sign up for his monthly letter, which includes a free ebook.

Kingdom

Animalia.

Chordata.

Mammalia.

Primates.

Hominidae.

Homo.

Homo sapiens.

Humans.

That’s what we taxonomically are. First and foremost we are taxonomically classified as animals. Indeed, we are creatures. We are beautiful creatures—each one of the 7-or-so billion of us. And I’m here to tell you why we are, in all seriousness, the most interesting and incredible creatures that breathe upon the planet.

My philosophy is that we humans are the only earthly creatures that are capable of philosophizing, being religious, being literate, purposefully making art and calling it art, and falling into true and heartfelt love.

Some may argue that we are not the only ones capable of employing strategy and persuasion, for the rattlesnake shakes its rattle to strategically persuade predators to keep their distance. But we are the ones who have the real ability to influence people to change their minds and their hearts.

Some may argue that we are not the only ones capable of speaking languages, for elk speak elk and whales speak whale. But we are the ones who communicate in verbal, nonverbal, and written form, to influence the world’s citizens in ways that the rattlesnake cannot.

Some may argue that we are not the only ones capable of nurturing our children, for the mother bear and mother moose both aggressively protect their young from any perceived danger. But do the mother bear and mother moose have dreams for their babies; rather, do they have dreams of their babies growing up to become fine and respectable adults that do many worthwhile things in their lives? Who are we to say those mamas don’t? However, there’s also not enough evidence to say they do.

Keep Mama Moose and Mama Bear in the back of your mind as you focus your attention again on us humans. Do we members of humanity dream for our rising generations to evolve into top-quality people? Do we not hope for them to be bright spots for the future? Is not this why we teach them polite manners, encourage them to do their best in school, and support them as they pursue their own worthy dreams? The youth of the rising generations can’t brighten the future without our help and the help of each other. In fact, since none of us are ever really done growing up, and since we really never run out of opportunities to brighten the world around us, we all need each other’s positive influence to accomplish goodness. No darksome situations will ever experience betterment if we don’t provide our positivity.

One of my favorite quotes of all time was first given by Marjorie Pay Hinckley:

“We are all in this together. We need each other. Oh, how we need each other. Those of us who are old need you who are young, and hopefully, you who are young need some of us who are old… We need deep and satisfying and loyal friendships with each other. These friendships are a necessary source of sustenance. We need to renew our faith every day. We need to lock arms and help build the kingdom so that it will roll forth and fill the whole earth.”

(Marjorie is the wife of Gordon B. Hinckley, former President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)

This wonderful woman mentioned a “kingdom” in her quote. Was she talking about the “animal kingdom”? Did she mean that Kingdom Animalia would “roll forth and fill the whole earth”? How could she mean that, when animals have been going endangered and extinct left-and-right since the dawn of time?

I’m going to tell you something now that you may or may not have ever heard before, and I’ll try to explain with as much accuracy as I can. The kingdom she referred to was a human kingdom. A kingdom that is ruled by a person—a remarkable person who is eternal, yet has flesh, bone, and blood like any other person. This person is a perfect person. This person is all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present, everywhere in everywhen. Since you are a creature—a beautiful one—it must imply that you were created, right? Right. And there’s a person responsible for the beautiful creation of the miraculous being that you are. It’s the same person who is behind the creation of the glorious earth and majestic heavens.

Sounds like this person is basically the center of the universe, huh? Well, it’s true. He is. In case the description of this person has been coming across to you as a riddle, I just gave away the detail that this person is a “he.” This person is God. Our Heavenly Father. And when I say He is “Heavenly Father,” I mean it. I mean that we really are His children. I’ve already said He has flesh, bone, and blood like us. He also has a face and a body like we do. We were created in His image. We look like Him. My mortal eyes have never seen Him, but some of the biggest and most important beliefs I dearly hold onto are these:

- I resemble Him

- I am His daughter

- He loves me perfectly and forever

I believe these things for myself, and I believe them as they relate to all other people besides myself. Heavenly Father, who is God, loves each of us eternally and perfectly. And He knows us perfectly. He knows what is best for us. He has a plan of happiness for us—the best plan of happiness there is. The way we can make this plan of happiness our plan of happiness is by following His beloved Son, Jesus Christ. This is the same Jesus Christ who dwelled in Israel just shy of 2,000 years ago. This Jesus no longer physically lives on earth, but He still totally lives. He has the same heavenly parents that we do (who are also very much alive), which makes Him our brother.

Yes, we each belong to this heavenly family. The key point I want to drive home to you is that this heavenly family is an actual unit of actual people who love you way, way, way a lot. They are a divine royal family. The Royal Family. And since they’re your family, honest to goodness, there is divine royalty in your soul, meaning you have fantastic potential to be truly great as they are.

This Royal Family’s kingdom consists of the planet we live on. They want their kingdom to be filled with the kind of pure love that they offer us daily. In order for the filling of this love to come to pass, we children are responsible for making it happen. Since the task can be difficult at times, our benevolently generous Royal Family has provided us the means of prayerful communion with Heavenly Father. By staying in touch with Heavenly Father like this, in the name of Jesus Christ, we can access the awesome aid of the Holy Ghost as we try to fill the kingdom with love, and thus “build” it, as sweet Marjorie Hinckley said.

Remember the way this blog post began? Remember how it used to be discussing taxonomy and Animalia and whatnot? That may seem like a long time ago ;) Why do I say humans are the most interesting and incredible creatures? Well, what other creatures have this type of amazing familial connection with Deity?

If you regard yourself as a member of the “animal kingdom,” I hope I have just convinced you to more strongly deem yourself as a divinely royal member of God’s family and kingdom. It’s the greatest kingdom there is.

Since I highly doubt I even began to scratch the surface as I’ve attempted to describe all of the above, I sincerely invite you to learn more about the kingdom and how you can significantly help build it. Answers to your questions can be found through The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is colloquially called the “Mormon Church.” If you have any Mormon friends, they’d probably be very glad to help teach you. Maybe you could go to church with them! That would probably be a pretty darn cool thing to do! You can also visit these websites:

www.mormon.org (this is my page: http://mormon.org/me/2RHQ/Alison)

www.lds.org

Have a super day, you super child of God you! :)

The Story Behind The Stems: How Running Received My Forgiveness And Conversion

As a four-year-old I ran in the children’s foot races at the summertime family reunions. I was always the last kid to cross the finish line. Maybe second-to-last, if one cousin of mine was fortunately misfortunate enough to trail behind me.

Deep in my heart I never really wanted to run the races, but my parents always encouraged it, and so I did it because I guess I liked being a submissive child, and I loved playing with my siblings and cousins more than almost anything else. But my good reasons for running did not diminish the slight sorrow I felt each time I realized I was the slowest.

I don’t remember ever crying about being the loser; I think I’ve always been skilled at keeping a smile on my face, even as a little tyke. That doesn’t mean it never hurt my heart, though. Losing always hurts, even if it’s only a tiny bit of pain.

Speaking of pain, let’s travel to a fateful day in my middle school adolescence, shall we? Get this:

One day, when I was twelve or thirteen, it was 50 Yard Dash Day in P.E. class. Miss Knight and Miss Morris were the teachers. They divided us girls into pairs and had us all line up to wait our turn for the Dash.

Soon came mine and my opponent’s turn. I don’t remember who my opponent was. Just some girl who, naturally, was faster than me. Miss Knight did her loud “Ready—Set—Go!” thing, and we sprightly runners sprinted off. I’m pretty sure my opponent made it all the way down to the finish line, without noticing that I had collapsed in agony to the ground at probably 20 yards. I fell in anguish not because I was a wimp, but because something was legitimately wrong with me.

My legs felt like they were on literal fire. My calves and foot arches, personified, were screeching and wailing as if they were tied up and burning at the stake. It was the worst physical feeling I think I have ever felt in my whole life, even till this day. Remember how I never cried about being the loser at the children’s foot races? Well I was crying now, not because I was the technical 50 Yard Dash loser, but because my lower limbs were atrocities. All my peers may have been gawking and stunned at my sudden fallen state, but my physique felt too slaughtered for me to blush in bashfulness. All I wanted to do was go home. Or die. Oh my.

Now I understand why I was invited to join Miss Morris’s awesome and elite weightlifting class that spanned for the second half of the school year. Not necessarily because I was an elite youth, but because the P.E. teachers pitied my legs and wanted to help strengthen them.

See, here’s what the deal was with my legs. If you know me personally, one of the chief things you know about me is that my legs are two of the longest your eyes did e’er behold. Since the dawn of the Alisonian dynasty, likely from my infancy onward, my leg bones grew remarkably faster than my leg muscles did. In fact, the muscles ate the bones’ dust, and it eventually took a real toll on me, in junior high, as I have just described to you.

Back in the day, when I was that four-year-old at the family reunions, I would walk around on my tippy-toes all the time, as if it were a method to somehow alleviate the leg issues that were then unbeknownst to me and everyone else. Fast-forwarding to the time when I had just had my 50 Yard Dash incident… My parents and I explained to the podiatrist that tippy-toes was the primary way I walked when I was itty bitty, and the occasional way I currently walked. The podiatrist said that that made sense, and he gave me a couple pairs of special shoe inserts, which were designed to comfort me in my coping with actually painful growing pains. Additionally, he showed me how to do certain calf stretches that would aid me significantly. All his help and counsel worked; I faithfully did what he prescribed, and I turned out just fine. Even nowadays I continue to do the stretches because it just plumb feels good (when back in that yesteryear it felt like a %&*^#$@!).

It took many, many moons for my feet and my legs’ muscles and bones to finally become kosher with one another. When I had morphed into a high school student, my friend Tyler wished for me to join the cross-country team with him. He invited me to train with him during the final few summer weeks preceding the upcoming school year. I tried it out, but very quickly decided to quit. I bailed on him. I felt bad about bailing on him, but I did it anyway. I still had a grudge against running, largely because of what running ferociously did to me on that disgustingly horrific 50 Yard Dash Day eons prior.

I didn’t evolve (dissolve) into a lazy tub of lard, though. I stayed pretty active, even though my activities didn’t have much to do with running. I was a karate kid, a hiker, a hooligan, a swimmer, and a volleyball chica. But running was still my bane. And would continue to be my bane until…

…a year-and-a-half ago or so. Yes, less than two years ago, a really, really, really strange urge bloomed within me and caused me to register for a gazillion 5K’s, 10K’s, and half marathons (I do not think I am ready for full marathons yet). Registration season has lighted upon us again, and now I have at least three noteworthy races all queued up. What in the world? What in heaven’s name has gotten into me? Why, if Younger Alison could see me now, Younger Alison would keel completely over!

But the Alison Of The Now is happy with her new running lifestyle. Exceedingly glad. She (me) still doesn’t consider herself to be a “true runner,” for she apparently would rather just up n’ run down a mountain for thirteen miles than rigorously train for it. However, several people have said they do consider Alison Of The Now to be a true runner for the same reason!

At any rate, I do get such a joyful kick out of running races, especially when the course weaves down majestic mountains, through gorgeous nature, on a pleasantly warm and sunshiny day. And now that running has received my conversion—as well as my forgiveness, for all the hullabaloo it had put me through—I somehow feel like a more well-rounded person, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I feel like I can successfully accomplish hard things in life when need be, because half marathons are hard, and I can accomplish those quite niftily.

I also feel like I’ve built friendships that will last forever, because of the running lifestyle I’ve chosen to live. Some of my dearest friends are those who have shared many a glorious finish-line experience with me, and are the proud recipients of the same medals of honor that I own.

MAN it’s a great life, with its foot races and all its joys, and I can’t wait to run some more “halfies” with some more “dearies”!