Strength

I have a friend who has just recently had surgery on her knee. If you haven't had a broken something or ever had to have surgery, let me just tell you that it sucks. But after you recover, you are so much better off. Last year my social studies teacher tried to argue with me that there is something that directly effects you, doesn't kill you but it doesn't make you stronger either. He was never sucsefull though. You are always getting stronger. Even if it feels like you are about as low as you can get, just remember that you are getting stronger if you chose to. I saw something once that said something similar to "if you are going through the same things as you were a little while ago, it's Gods way of telling you that you haven't learned the lesson he was trying to teach you." I thought that was really true. Because if you don't learn from one thing you won't be ready for the next thing. Many things build off of each other, so you have to have one thing completed before you can start another. It's the same with seasons in your life. If you don't grow how much you were designed to grow through one season in your life than you are not ready for the next season. That's my thoughts. It seems to make sense to me. Now that's not saying that it's easy getting stronger. "Some of the strongest people have gone through the hardest  trials."
Now a knee surgery is my example for today. I know a lot of people who have lost a lot of the necessities they need to continue they're profession and that was hard on them. So if you're in a hard spot now, just remember that things do get better and you are growing and becoming stronger. You just have to keep your head up and have faith.
Have a wonderful weekend, keep your head up and know you have to learn before you move on!

I chose this song because it's the one that stated my teacher and I talking about being strong

Move forward

Everyone, no matter how old they are, has seen at least a few things that happened to them that they need to let go of and quit being mad about. Whether it is a person who hurt you emotionally talking about you spreading false information about you, or it is someone who hurt you physically, or even if you are mad at yourself for screwing something up. You have to let that go. Now I'm not by any means saying that it doesn't hurt when someone is spreading false information about you or if you get hurt physically, but you can't hold a grudge because that will end up controlling you until you let it go. Staying mad only makes you more miserable. You may think that it makes you feel better to try and get revenge on someone and be as mean to them as they were to you but in reality if their conscience is not bothering them, nothing you do can make them feel bad about what they did. Even if their conscience isn't clean you can't make them change. So what I'm trying to say here is if you have anything that you need to let go of just do yourself a big favor and move forward!!! Let it go!


I know this was kind of a short post, but there isn't much else to say. If you don't let the stuff that is bothering you go, it will control you. That's just the truth.

If you have something that you are mad about, and it is controlling you, there is a trick that really works. You need to write down what you are mad about, and get it all out onto a piece of paper, or you can type, but I like paper better, plus it's more dramatic! After you have everything written down, if you wrote it on paper, you can go and burn it. Throw it in the fire never to be seen again, and it helps. If you typed it, you can grab the file and move it to the trash can, after that, delete it from the trash and it will be gone forever.

Work Hard and NEVER give up

As all of the students and teachers are getting ready to get out of school for the summer, it is really easy to start slacking, and not finish strong but that doesn't work. You have to finish strong! My dad always told me to finish strong, and our family motto was "Yoder's finish strong" Even though we haven't really said anything like that lately, I still try and make that what I live by if you will. It's really tempting to not finish your work and then blame it on something or someone else saying that it is their fault. I know for me, that if I don't get my work do I want to make some excuse saying that I didn't get it done for a reason, good reason that is.

Work hard, and never give up an inch too short because that will come and haunt you for the rest of your life. If you are able to finish something strong, you will leave with a feeling of knowing that you did all that you could/needed, etc. When I was a 6th grader, we ran laps for gym class, well my brother, who is two years older than me, would always sprint the last lap as hard as he could. So, I thought why not, by the end of the year, four out of the six of us sprinted that last lap, and we were the ones who wanted to work hard and succeeded. That always gave me the feeling of finishing strong, because, sure the laps weren't hard, they were our warm up, but finishing them as strong as we could didn't necessarily make me feel better at the time, but not even halfway through, I knew that it was helping me get in the correct mindset for what we would be doing. Now, every time we run laps in the gym, I sprint the last one, and the other kids who are around started doing the same. I know that even if they're not sure why we always sprint the last lap, they'll figure it out, and we have my older brother to thank for that!
Next, NEVER give up! I know all of you have heard that so many times that you can't count, but please never ever stop trying. You may hit bumps in the road which force you to change the way you go about doing whatever it is that you are doing, but that doesn't mean you can stop, it just means you have to change a few things. As the picture above states  "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when the gave up." Thomas A. Edison What does that mean? Well, if you give up, you are stopping all of the chances of you finishing. If you give up, and then look back in 10 or 15 years, and see that if you would have only kept going you were so close to finishing, you're not going to be happy with yourself. so save yourself from that grief. Don't give up, and you won't see that you were so close, but never finished. That is its ties in with finishing strong!
So, what's the challenge for the week?
Finish everything you start and finish it better than you started.
Good luck, and have a wonderful week!

Friends

Everyone has friends, even if you don't think you do, there is always one...and that is Jesus Christ, but my point is, everyone has at least one friend. But are your friends true friends? I read a book last year, I actually ended up doing my book report on it, and a lot of what it talked about was surrounding yourself with the right people. (Sadie Robertson Live Original)  Everyone deserves to have a friend who truly cares about them, and will be there for them at any point, but you also need to know when to find better friends. If the friends you are around, are not helping you become a better person, and you are constantly battling with yourself trying not to fall into doing things you shouldn’t do, you need to remove yourself from that. This is a very hard topic but stick with me here, I’m still trying to figure it out also.

Ok, so now I'll get to the point. If you hang out with people who are very involved in their relationships, making poor decisions, and so on, you will be more likely to do the same, and make poor decisions also. If you hang out with people who are respectful and are well-rounded people, you will be more likely to become a well-rounded person. There are different sources that say "you are most like the 5 people you spend the most time with" this is very true. If you are hanging around, and talking to people, you will be most likely to start acting like that so you can fit in, unless you are a very strong willed person, and still even then you change subconsciously. So be very careful who you spend the most time around.

I send out emails every weekend, usually on Friday with a motivational video attached, if you are not getting it now, and you would like to, you can put your email down in the comments, or, you can send me an email LMYmotivation16@gmail.com so I have yours, then I’ll put you on my list.
Have a wonderful weekend!!!

The Problem Solvers...are you with me?

I wrote this last night for my English teacher. She has us write at least 400 words in a journal entry form every week. So I chose to write about this:

"We were driving through town the other day, and I saw a guy standing in the Home Depot parking lot. Not too weird right? Well, maybe not, but I figured I could make something out of it. He was standing by his car, but something was sticking out of the truck. It was a big box that wasn’t going to fit in his car unless he moved something around. Instead of getting straight to work, he just stood there looking at this problem. I started thinking, and that is what most of us do more than half of the time. We see that there is a problem with our grades, the way our job is working out, the way our relationships are working out, etc. but what do we do? Nothing. We sit there and look at the issue, but we don’t get off of our butts and do what needs to be done. How would the world be different today, if when everyone saw a problem, they tried to fix it as best they could? Would America be in this great dilemma in the way of finances? Would we even have the presidential candidates running that are running now? Would everything be so much better if when there was a problem we fixed it instead of just looking at it, and knowing that there was a problem? The answer is blatantly obvious, but do we do that? No. Especially in teenagers in America. We see a pen fall on the ground and just look at it. That may not be a big deal now, but that trains our minds that it is okay to see a problem, and wait for someone else to fix it. Truth is, that’s not how it works. I’m as guilty of this as any of you are, but we can stop that now. If we start to see a simple problem, and fix it, and that will carry on to all of the bigger problems, which will inspire generations to do the same after us. They will read in their history books that this generation didn’t let problems just sit around, they fixed them, and it didn’t only make the city, state, country better, it made the world better. That is the kind of generation that I would like to be a part of. When I am gone, I want people to remember me, and this generation for what we can be, The Problem Solvers. Are you with me?"

A smile....

I had to go to the orthodontist on Friday. I had to get braces when I was a fifth grader, and so I'm very familiar with that office, and all of the decorations in it. I was brushing my teeth in the office, getting ready for the people to work on my mouth, and I saw a sign that said, "A smile is the prettiest thing someone can wear" I had been looking for something to write about, and I wasn't succeeding until I read that. I thought about what that really means. When you first look at it, it doesn't look like there could be so much wisdom in that quote, but there really is. I mean, so many people, especially girls, and women of all ages, get caught up in how they look, and if this shirt makes them look fat? or does this eye shadow make me look better? These questions get asked so frequently, and it is sad that some people don't see how beautiful they really are. That quote really means a lot, because it is saying, it doesn't matter what clothing you are wearing, how your make-up makes you look, it really matters if you are happy. You can be wearing the most attractive outfit in the world, and it may fit you real well, but if you aren't happy, and your attitude is showing that you don't want to be there, doing that, or whatever, you won't look as pretty as you would if you were happy.
It isn't so much what you are wearing as it is the attitude you have. If you have a happy disposition, it will automatically make you look better than if you were acting grumpy.
So my advice to you is to be happy, and rock whatever outfit or new makeup you are wearing!!!

Commitment

You hear all of these motivational people talk about not giving up, and you just think what drives them to keep going. Talking about sports, fitness, or relationships, whatever it is, you have to be committed. What does it mean to be committed? It means that you don't give up. It means that when all the odds are against you and what you are trying to do, and you still keep going and don't ever stop.
I'm going to talk a little bit about relationships; in any relationship you want to last, you have to be committed to it. It doesn't matter if it's your spouse or girlfriend/boyfriend or just a friend, you have to devote your time to that person, in order to stay committed. Now, there are different ways that you can devote your time to a person, and they need to be different depending on how your relationship, is, and how you want it to be, but all in all, you need to be working on all of your relationships. Now, this isn't saying that you have to do all the work, and then if the relationship doesn't work out, it's your fault, because both of you need to be trying to make it work, but if you're not working, your not committed.
Now, I'll talk a little bit about sports; you have a sport that you really love, for me it's basketball. When you say, it's (enter your sport here) season, and it's time to focus only on that. I'm going to spend all of my time practicing, sleeping, eating the right food, all to make me a better player, team member, and person altogether. That is true commitment.
There are more examples for each thing that one could be committed to. It may be music, it may be school and education. It could be your job. Anything you do, you can be committed to it. My challenge to you is when you find something that you are committed to, stick to it, and don't let anything change your mind. Once you have a goal set or a commitment made, don't go back!
If you are going to spend all of your time working on that specific thing, you are committed to it, no matter what it is. Now, don't misquote me, and say that to be committed, you can't do anything but whatever you want to be committed to because that's not what I'm saying.

But, chose your commitments carefully because you can't be committed to a lot of things, and expect everything to work out. If you're like me you are extremely busy and have many different activities going on, and that is fine, you can do good at all of them, but chose which one you would like to excel at, and make that your priority, be committed to that!

Excuses

Hey, I didn't publish a post on Thursday because:  I was at my aunt's house and didn't have a computer to right down, then publish what I though, or I got so busy with my family, and school, that I didn't have time to write something down. 
Tell me, what was I just saying? I was telling you why I didn't post anything on Friday right? But what is that called? I tell this to my little brothers all the time, "they are excuses!!!" Maybe that was true, I didn't have accses to a computer, maybe it isn't, you don't know, the only reason you would belive that is because you trust me to tell the truth, which in reality are two totally different topics that we won't get to today. But the point is, I was making up an excus. Which brings me to my next question, why do we make up excuses?
First, we don't like being wrong. No one does.And once you are wrong, or something is your fault, we don't want to be resposible for it, so we make excuses to make it seem like it's not our fault. The truth is, you have to power to make something different. So if it's not, and your excuse is because things just wern't working out at that point, you're really saying that you didn't want to make it different bad enough, so it's still the same.

I found this speech by Eric Thomas that fits with what I'm trying to say, it's a really good speech, and you should watch it if you get a chance!!!