“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”  ~ Abraham Lincoln.

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”  ~ Robert Byrne.

“The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.”  ~ Chinese Proverb.

Wouldn’t it be great if your life was an exciting cornucopia of new adventures? Just imagine! No more days where you wonder if there’s something better. No more hearing yourself complain about being bored.

Life is full of chores and routines, and sometimes you might find yourself just going through the motions without even realizing that you could be seeking out some excitement instead.

Even though there will always be chores and other required tasks, the time you have afterwards can be a fulfilling set of exciting adventures. With a little ingenuity and action, boredom can become a faint memory of your past.

Try the following ways to add excitement to your life:

1. Challenge yourself. It doesn’t matter what you choose to do, but find something that challenges you. Push your limits. Not only will you be adding excitement to your life, you’ll also end up accomplishing more that you ever thought you could.

2. Dare yourself to do something totally different. You may find excitement by just going in a different direction than you’re used to. If you take daily walks, try a new route. If you always enjoy a certain meal at a restaurant, pick something else or even a new restaurant next time. These small variances from the norm can be just the pick-me-up you’re seeking.


3. Expand your comfort zone. Summon the courage to step out of your comfort zone. It can feel quite exciting, get your heart pumping faster, and make you feel alive again. When you step outside your comfort zone, you open up a door to a whole new world of exciting experiences.

4. Do something you’ve always wanted to do. If there’s something you’ve been meaning to try, now is the time. Go for it with all the gusto you’ve got!

5. Make adventures a priority. If necessary, schedule excitement into your daily schedule. This will force you to take it just as seriously as your other commitments, but also give you an allotted time where your focus is solely on enjoying an adventure.

6. Meet new people. Meeting new people can bring you a new variety of adventure and excitement. When you make a new friend, they may introduce you to new interests, hobbies, music, food, and more. It’s difficult to stay bored when you’re letting new people into your life.

7. Go out more. Make an extra effort to get out of the house. Whenever you walk out that door, the possibilities are endless. Make every outing a new adventure!

8. Plan a grand adventure. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii or visit far away friends. You may have to spend a good amount of time saving up for the trip, but even the anticipation of the trip and planning the details can be exciting.

9. Volunteer your time. You may think that volunteering is only about the giving of yourself for the good of others. However, volunteering can be personally rewarding and even exciting. You may find that you genuinely enjoy helping other people, and you never know what you’ll discover in the course of volunteering.

Life can be as exciting as you want it to be. Take action to plan your time according to your priorities, and use these tips to help you take advantage of every moment you’ve got. You’ll be glad you did!

Perhaps you have heard about this saying “What the mind can conceive, it can achieve.”  Well, guess what? It’s true and nobody can deny it. If you put your mind and soul in everything you do, you will succeed.

This process of conditioning your mind for achieving success is necessary as the journey to success may not be smooth all the way. You will likely encounter many challenges and obstacles along the way. You might even experience failure before you can reap any reward of success. So, you also need to learn how to handle challenges and failures.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR A FREE E-COURSE THAT WILL TEACH YOU HOW TO CONDITION AND MASTER YOUR MIND POWER

Learning to successfully handle failures, setbacks and challenges begins with your approach to everything in life, more particularly the little things in life. You need to condition your mind to see things on the bright side so that you can approach everything positively. Conditioning your mind for success requires you to nurture and develop new habits, which are formed through all the little things you do, day in and day out.

Positive habits are essential to help you see through difficulties, challenges and setbacks during your journey to success. In order to nurture positive habits, you need to get rid of negative habits that can prevent you from achieving your goals. You need to create certain goals for yourself that will help you condition your mind to achieve whatever you desire. Positive mindset and habits are perhaps two of the most important factors in helping you to achieve your goals.

When it comes to goal-setting and goal-getting, your goals need to be specific, achievable and measurable. You need to be able to keep measuring your goal from time to time to see if you make any progress or not. Break your goals down into manageable tasks, prioritize them and tackle one at a time. Focus on your goals and ignore those activities that do not move you closer to your goals.

Also, assign a specific date to your goal as a deadline for its achievement. Make a plan and take action accordingly. The best way is to write down what you are going to do to achieve your goal and how you are going to do it. Visualize your goal every day. Be emotional and try to get the feeling you will have when you achieve your goal, what the achievement will mean to you, how you are going to celebrate your achievement etc. The more you visualize, the more you will strive to achieve your goals. Make it to become a passion within you as passion will fuel action.

When things are not going as planned, don’t give up. Adjust your plan and continue to move forward. One of the keys to success is to be able to remain focused and positive even when things are not going your way.

Whatever you have been longing for in your heart, you can have it as long as you put your mind and soul in it. Success starts with your mind. So, if you want to have success, start condition and calibrate your mind for success today. Indeed, what the mind can conceive, it can achieve!

Everyone will experience setbacks at some point in time. No matter how well you plan, there will always be unexpected problems cropping up. In fact, most of us are not going to achieve success without a few setbacks. They are part of success, so the best thing is to learn how to deal with them.

Here are three tips to help you deal with setbacks when they occur:

Tip #1: Acknowledge your setbacks.

If setbacks occur, trying to bottle them up or ignore is not going to help. If you encounter a setback, whether it is procrastinating a task, eating a food you’re not supposed to eat, or skipping a workout, try to acknowledge it. How do you feel about it? Are you feeling angry with yourself? Guilty? Sad? Disappointed?

Try to acknowledge any feeling associated with the setback and accept it as normal. Do not judge, blame or mock yourself. When we have a setback, negative emotions will crop up and cause us to think negatively of ourselves. The self-defeating thoughts can destroy your self-esteem.

So, the key to dealing with setback is just acknowledge that you made a mistake. Tell yourself that this is normal and you will learn from your mistake. Do not allow the negative emotions to overwhelm you.

Tip #2: Examine your setbacks and learn from them. 

Why did you have a setback? Was there an event that set you up for failure? For example, you procrastinate to start a project because it is too big. If this is the case, then you can try to break down into manageable tasks and list them down according to priority. That way it helps you to focus at one thing at a time, not to be overwhelmed by too many tasks.

This is how you examine and learn from your setbacks. You try to understand what caused the setback, how to work it out and what can you do to avoid them next time. In the previous example, you now know that you will suffer a setback unless you break down a big project into a manageable parts. This is empowering and will help you avoid setback next time. Just recognize that setbacks happen and they don’t have to be negative if you can learn from them.

Tip #3:  Focus on the positive sides. 

We tend to judge ourselves on our failures. It’s as if there is an inner voice that is blaming and telling us off. “you don’t deserve it”, “you’re not worth it”, “you’re stupid”, “you will never get what you want”, etc.. All these are self-defeating thoughts that can be very detrimental.

Therefore, you need to be aware of them and do not allow them to mock and scold you like that. Rather than focusing on the negative emotions, try to focus on the positive sides. Tell yourself that it’s normal to make mistakes, you will learn from your mistakes, move on and do a better job next time.

That’s how you deal with setbacks. Hope you find the tips useful.

In the modern society we’re living in today, many of us treat failure as an embarrassment. This notion has been wedged in our minds since childhood. We have never been taught how to deal with failure objectively and productively, neither from our parents or teachers in school.

For example, you have just received an email from a company you had a job interview with last week. The email informs that you’ve not been selected for the job. Now, most people will view this as total failure on their part. But, do you really fail? Is it fair to view such situation as a total failure?

I think not if you can try to look at the situation from a more positive angle. Ask yourself these questions… are you a total failure? Or is it just your performance/skills that make you fail? These questions allow you to view the issue in a better perspective. If it’s my performance/skill that lets me down, how can I improve upon it?

See the difference? If you can calm yourself down and view your issue positively, you will be able to deal with it more objectively and productively. You will treat the failure as a learning opportunity to improve yourself.

NEVER EVER think that you fail as a person. This can plunge your self-esteem into the lowest level and make you feel very depressed. You will start to label yourself as a failure and generalize this to other situations.

You see, failure is not a permanent condition, it’s merely a jugdement from a view or an event. Instead of labelling or blaming yourself as a total failure, look at the causes of the failure. Most common causes of failure can be eliminated.

For example, one of the most common causes of failure is poor social or interpersonal skills. And since these are “skills”, they can be acquired and hence the causes can be eliminated. Some of the most important social skills are:

• being sensitive to other’s feelings
• being empathetic and sympathetic
• being emotionally stable
• able to listen to others empathetically
• able to understand how people feel and how groups function
• able to give directions clearly and effectively
• able to give constructive criticism
• able to take criticism constructively

Note that all these are skills that can be learned, practiced and improved.

Of course, there are many more causes of failure; which is beyond the scope of this article to discuss all. The main message I want you to take home from this article is to learn how to deal with failure more productively. Do not fear failure and do not label yourself as a failure.

All successful people are able to learn from their mistakes, give themselves an opportunity to survive the defeat and come out to be tougher and more resilient to face life challenges more effectively. As the saying goes… “Failure is the first step to success.”

Hope you find the tips or advice in this article useful.

Happiness is a state of mind. Many of us are seeking happiness outside and it’s nothing wrong with it. But we must also realize that happiness without is impermanent; it will end as it’s time-bound. Impermanent and timeless happiness lies within us!

So, can we really live a happy life? Absolutely! if you’re searching within. Here are some ways to help you search within…

Assess your current life situation and accept it. If you can’t accept your current life situation, then you have the option to change it. Lamenting and complaining about what you don’t like is a waste of energy. Instead, use the energy to initiate change.

Decide that you want to be happy. President Lincoln once said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” If you really want to think yourself happy, then make up your mind to do so.

In the judgemental society we’re living in today, sometimes it’s very difficult to ask our minds to think positively. But this is not impossible to do. We all have been controlled and muddled by our own minds for eons. It’s time for us to take back control.

Remember that we’re the master of our minds, not another way around. Therefore, we must learn how to rise above our own minds and being an observer. It needs some practice and it’s practice that is worth doing. When you’re the master of your mind (instead of being slaved by it), you’ll be able to think yourself happy and live a happy life.

Here are some practical ways that can help you free yourself from your mind dominance.

• Practice meditation daily. Meditation is a great way to learn how to rise above your normal mind or thought pattern. Read this article: Easy Meditation Techniques.
• Don’t identify yourself from your past. Learn the mistakes from your past and move on, NEVER EVER dwell on it! Clinging onto the past is the main reason why people are unhappy and suffering.
• Whatever you do for a living right now, enjoy it. Focus on your actions instead of the prizes. Enjoy what you do and do it well, and the prizes will fall into place nicely for you.
• Don’t try to live in the future. Your future will be shaped by what you’re doing in your present moment. So, give more attention to your present moment instead of craving for something imaginary in the future. The more attention you give to the presence, the more appreciated with life you will become. You can only live in future by living your presence first, avoiding this law will give you enormous stress.
• Read a self help book. Sharpen your saw as Stephen Covey put it in his best-selling book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”.
• Associate yourself with positive people and stay out from negative people.

These are just few practical ways you can apply and practice daily to fill happiness in your life.

Our mind is a very complex and powerful system. I’m sure you have heard of the popular quote “What the Mind Can Conceive It Can Achieve”. However, in order to utilize the power of our mind, we need to feed it with good things; much like our body needs nutritious foods.

One effective method used in harnessing the power of our minds is known as Ultrasonic Subliminal. Numerous audio products have been developed and sold on the market to help people to improve their lives and get ahead in their careers.

To get a better understanding of what Ultrasonic Subliminal is all about, let’s take the two concepts apart and see how they work.

What is Ultrasonic?

Ultrasonic is an adjective of “ultrasound”, which is sound waves that have frequencies above the upper limit of the normal range of human hearing, which is about 20 kilohertz. Technically, a person can hear sounds between the range of 20 Hz and 20,0000 Hz.

The human ear itself doesn’t really react to frequencies of less than 20 Hz. However, these can be felt through the sense of touch. Some recent studies had also revealed a “hypersonic effect” – a term coined to describe the phenomenon which demonstrate that although humans cannot consciously hear sounds at frequencies above 20 kHz, the presence or absence of those frequencies has a measurable effect on their psychological reaction. You may not consciously perceive the sound but it can definitely have an effect on you.

What is Subliminal?

In Latin, the term “subliminal” stands for “beneath the threshold”. It represents information that is too faint for a person to perceive consciously. Nevertheless, it is recorded in the subconscious area of the mind. At times, the word subliminal can also stand for the pieces of information that the conscious mind has chosen to pay no attention to in favor of more interesting or more obvious details.

The subconscious mind is not equipped with the capacity for rational thinking, it will accept and record whatever you whisper to it. Therefore, it’s beleived that if we constantly send subliminal messages with positive affirmation to our mind, this positive messages will recorded by the subconscious mind.

Studies have found that people who constantly bombard themselves with positive affirmation or positive self-talk will have a more positive outlook in life. They will feel good with themselves and more confident as well. It relies on the principle that you can only become successful if you tell yourself “I can be successful” instead of saying “I am a failure.” Positive thinnking will produce positive results and vice versa.

So, essentially ultrasonic subliminal is a sound wave that transmits positive subliminal messages to our subconscious mind. By doing so repetitively, you are essentially feeding your mind with good things. This does not only affect your physical health but your emotional well-being as well.

Check out this program Brainwave Entrainment Binaural Beats to discover how to easily create and use ultrasonic subliminal or subliminal messages to empower your mind.

Want to develop a successful personality? Then read this article to find out how simple it is to develop the power of your subconscious mind for success.

It is said that the human mind operates in two levels: the conscious and subconscious level. We all are familiar with the conscious level of our mind, it’s the one we use to think, analyze and make decisions everyday. It’s also called the left-brain, majority of our life experiences go through this level. The subconscious level of our mind is believed to receive and record everything we say and think consciously but has been forgotten. It’s the one that shapes our behaviors and personality.

We use our conscious mind to choose and make distinction; success or failure, good or bad, fight or flight, poor or rich, healthy or unhealthy, and so on. However, our subconscious mind doesn’t know how to make such distinction, whatever you decide to think about or dwell on will go into your subconscious mind.

So, whatever you think and act consciously day in and day out will be fed into your subconscious mind and it slowly develops into a personality. That’s how your behaviours and personality are formed over the years. If you always feed thoughts of success into your subconscious mind, it will only know how to think success. On the other hand, if you feed thoughts of failure to your subconscious, it will only know how to think failure.

That’s why you are always advised to think positively because what you decide to think about will leave an impression on your mind that will effect everything you do day in and day out; month in and month out; year in and year out.

You see it’s very easy to teach and develop the power of your subconscious mind; if you want to achieve success, you must always feed positive messages or affirmations to your subconscious. And if you’ve done that long enough, your subconscious mind will know how to guide and direct your thoughts and actions toward achieving success.

On the other hand, it’s also easy to teach your subconscious mind to do otherwise. If you’re always complaining how hard your life is; looking for excuses to blame other people why you’re not successful; then your subconscious mind will direct you to think and do the things the losers do.

Are you beginning to see the power of your subconscious mind?

You are the master of your own thinking, you can control your attitude, actions, productivity, and results. The choice is really yours to think what you think and act responsibly. It may take some effort to train yourself to think in a positive way, but if you think that it’s wort it then I believe you can do it. And that will eventually translate into your subconscious mind and make you a better person.

Perhaps many of your friends will joke and laugh at you when you start talking about positive thinking and subconscious mind, BUT I can guarantee you that you will become more effective and more successful person if you just ignore those friends and follow the advice to develop your subconscious and positive mindset. It works; believe it.

It’s the same as taking care of your health, you know that in order to have a healthy body, you need to put in healthy food or eat healthy diet. Similarly, if you want to have healthy mind, you need to put in healthy thoughts in your mind.

Introduction

Self motivation is the ability to motivate yourself, to find a reason and the necessary strength to do something, without the need of being influenced to do so by another person. Inner peace has nothing to do with externals, which is why self motivation techniques fill a necessary gap.

Yourself

If you want to improve your self motivation or self esteem or improve yourself in any way, you need the desire and will to do it. You need self motivation to achieve, because if you don’t encourage yourself to accept opportunity and challenge, who will?

The very fact that you are here and trying to improve yourself shows that you are motivated. Start by setting small goals. Remember to give yourself positive rewards for each achievement.

Make a commitment to what matters to you; act on your priorities and your values; express to yourself and to others what you want and need in your life. What are your likes and dislikes?

The key to success is to be yourself; the key to failure is to try and please everyone. Success is defined not by what other people think of you, but what you think of yourself.

Success

The best way to bring success to yourself is to genuinely desire to create value for the rest of the world. It instantly begins with devising a plan for your success. Each small success will lead you to larger ones and you will finally reach the moon. Go ahead; reach for it! Opportunities for success are all around you. You just have to open your eyes and look; and listen. You will discover that even successful people do certain things each day to stay motivated.

You will find it easy to give your self motivation a boost with successes in your daily, weekly or long term activities. Self improvement results to inner stability, personality development and success. By making an effort to feel grateful, you’ll realize how competent and successful you already are. Fully appreciate the smaller things in life.

Goals

Training yourself to take any small step towards your goals is a great self motivation technique. Breaking this into small steps makes this even easier. Write down your goals and stick them on your desk or wall so you can see them. Create your self-awareness and latent skills to reach your goals.

Enjoy the self-assured confidence that comes from within, knowing you are achieving those goals that matter the most to you. Remind yourself of your goals and take some time to appreciate how far you’ve come in reaching them. You will notice the positive difference!

Conclusion

Keep a positive attitude: There’s nothing more powerful for self motivation than the right attitude. It gives you joy, the impetus to push further, and a sense of power. Self- Motivation is not an accident or something that someone else can give you — you are the only one with the power to motivate you. You have within you the unique power of deciding your destiny.

Author: Scott Allen Barker specializes in writing mental health/health related articles. For more successful tips on motivation, Free 30 Day Motivational Ecourse at http://www.MentalHealthDropInCenter.com/motivationalecourse.html http://www.MentalHealthDropInCenter.com

I am here to dispel a myth: While I am intelligent, I have not yet reached the level of Einstein. There you go. Now, could you please explain that to my family, friends, coworkers, and business associates.

I am not here to brag about how smart I am. This post merely exists to show you how you can look like a member of Mensa to the average American, with a minimum of effort.

1. Learn to use Google. Are you one of those people who Google stuff all the time, and yet never seem to find anything? What do you do? You go to a professional Googler, like me, and they find “used bungee cords” in a matter of seconds. How?

We know how to talk to Google. While Google is getting smarter, it still has a hard time knowing exactly what you want. If you type in the word “colour”, Google still does not recognize that it is the exact same word as “color”. Google can only process the information we give it.

How many of you have ever used the advanced search portion of Google? Probably 10% or less, and yet that is how you can drill down to what you really want. Is the page less than 10 days old, do you want it in a PDF or Word document? The more you tell Google, the better results you will get.

There are tons of resources online that will show you how to search more accurately. Just Google it.

2. Use spell check, but don’t depend on it. I wish I had dollar for every time I used “their” when I meant “there”, and vice-versa. Also, watch out for “too” and “two”, “who’s” and “whose”. It is also helpful to know the difference between “its” and “it’s”. Spell check will let all these past without a whimper, because they are all spelled correctly. A firm grasp of the meaning of these words will help you evade embarrassment, and give you a more polished image at work and play.

3. Know the difference between “i.e.” and “e.g.”. Want to see a film called “Revenge of the English Majors”? Misuse these, and I can guarantee you a front row seat. Many people use “i.e.” interchangeably with the term “for example”. This is technically wrong. The term i.e. translates from the Latin as “that is”. If you wanted to say “for example”, “e.g.” would be the appropriate abbreviation.

4. Have a basic idea of where things are in the world. When 50% of college aged kids can’t find New York state on a map, you know we’re in trouble as a nation. If you can tell someone that “Niger” is in Africa, then you will be considered a Geography genius.

5. Collect general knowledge, or as most people refer to it, “useless information”. “Useless information” is something of a misnomer. It is only useless if it is never used. You never know when you might need that obscure fact about the gross domestic product of Germany, or how to open a beer with your belt loop. So take great pains to obtain it, and use it to benefit your fellow man.

6. Don’t be afraid to break stuff. We are afraid to mess things up in our culture. You will find that you will accomplish much more than other people by overcoming the fear of screwing things up. Most people don’t build their own computers simply because they are afraid of damaging the parts. I babied every part as I gingerly put my first PC together. Now, I use “fragile” RAM as everything but a Frisbee, and it still works. Experience will teach you what you can and can’t do. So go ahead, take a plunge into the deep end.

7. Don’t be afraid to say “I have no idea”. If I could pass one thing on to you, it would be this. Once you know all this stuff, it becomes harder to admit that you don’t know everything. It’s even harder to watch a person who wanted an answer “right now”, go back to their cube with a dejected look on their face. In the long run, people will respect you for it.

It’s not like they can’t ask Google, right?

Kurt Hartman loves to collect obscure information. He puts it to use every day as an OTR Analyst. Trivia: What does OTR stand for? The acronym actually has two uses: In one usage, it stands for “old time radio”. The other usage is in the phrase “OTR Tires”, which stands for off the road tires . These are the types of tires that go on heavy equipment. Now you know.

“Girl, I wouldn’t even put up with that mess.”

You’ve heard it before and most likely have said it on an occasion or two. Well, I have learned that if you live long enough, life will make you recall that statement. Life sure caught up with me and I have had to recall and eat many statements that came out of my mouth in my younger, more carefree days.

Older folks would say, “She’s just wet behind the ears”. I never really understood what that meant. But I was wet all right… more like saturated.

Thinking back, I can remember listening to a girlfriend rant about what her husband did and how stupid she was for staying. Tears rolled down her face as she sobbed uncontrollably. She needed support; her heart was heavy.

“But I Love him” she said while she blew her nose.

All I could think of was, “Love don’t got jack to do with it”

Today, I’ve had to kick myself on a few occasions. Today…I am a different person.

It was a humid, sticky mid August afternoon in 2005…a typical normal, hot August afternoon. But normal it was not. At least it wasn’t for me. My life would never be the same.

Looking at the summons for my husband to appear before the judge for child support was more than I could handle at that time. We, as a team had just gotten caught up on our bills since his return home 7 months prior. To say it was a testing period for me was an understatement. The saying goes; If it’s not one thing it’s another. For me it went like this; If it’s not 5 things it’s 25 things. This was so relevant for my life.

There were days I would just literally scream and cry. It was as if the enemy had just zoomed in on me and I was his target for things I couldn’t even begin to explain. But it was evident: I was chosen to carry many, many crosses. Some crosses didn’t even belong to me. I had to send those back. The ones that were not mine had to get a RETURN TO SENDER stamp.

On this day, I looked at the summons and the name of the child that the support was being requested for. My breath became very short and at that moment, I needed air. It seemed like the room started to spin. My eyes began to fill with tears, my heart felt as if it was going to jump out of my chest. My knees buckled. I had to sit down.

I was all alone.

After I found a chair, my stomach started to turn and dizziness came over me like a rushing wind.

The enemy wanted me to lose my mind.

“How?”“Why?” These were the questions that began to surface in my mind.

It was bad enough to have a baby by a married man but to name the child after him was inexcusable to me. A junior? I would never do that. That to me was just mean. This was beyond my comprehension. I guess because I think differently.

I dialed my Pastor’s phone number. No answer – just voicemail. I dialed my 1st Lady. She answered. She knew who I was from the caller id. It was as if the words would not come out.

“Nicole” Silence. I couldn’t answer. I was in between sobs. “Nicole” The words finally came out but they were muffled. I began to blurt out what just happened.

“My God,” was her first response. “Okay, now let’s get it together,” was her second.

She was not having the pity party thing. For one thing – I was too far away from her (as my church is over 90 miles from my house). Second – she knew my potential. It’s a blessing to have mentors around you that see where you’re going before you see it or believe it. Our Pastors were sent to us for what we have had to endure. Pastors Clifton & Vicki Coward of Agape International Ministries Worldwide in Richmond, Virginia have been that bridge for us.

Pastor Vicki went on to encourage me and give me what the word has promised me.

Then, I called my girlfriend Lena. I remember the day like it was yesterday. Summons in one hand, phone in another, and standing outside on our deck. I was pacing back and forth at this time. She immediately began to pray. She was at Farm Fresh at the time. A few weeks later, she told me she was praying so loudly in the store that she had to go outside before the people put her out. (LOL)

For over a year I would not talk about it. I couldn’t. I would literally get sick just thinking about it. The pain was so deep…it was like an open wound that would try to close but couldn’t. As soon as I thought I was all healed, something would happen and those feelings would resurface and the tears would start flowing. Even my heart would begin the racing all over again. Panic and anxiety, were the twins out to get me. Sometimes I would think, “This is just too much for me to handle.” But the word of God says he would not put more on me than I can bear.

The child support was a subject by itself. Our household went without on many occasions because of the child support. At times, I thought it was so unfair. My children went without. That by itself really bothered me. But I would never voice it aloud. We as wives have the power to build up or tear down. It’s our choice. I knew what it was when I accepted my husband back.

This is a decision I made. No gun was put to my head. Don’t get me wrong. My flesh wanted to lash out. My flesh wanted to go up one side of him and down the other. I wanted to point fingers, accuse and blame. But my spirit would say, “BE STILL”.

One of my very favorite scriptures is Isaiah 61:7 – You shall have double for your shame”.

I quoted that scripture over and over again. The word, the peace of God and my Pastors – are what kept me during that period in my life.

Today, the little boy is a part of our family. He and our baby girl are just a year apart in age but you would think they are twins. They absolutely adore each other. I run around the house, play hide and go seek, and act goofy with him just like I do with my own. And he is the cutest little button. (He looks just like my husband).

By sharing this part of my life, my hope is to open a door for women who have had to endure similar circumstances. If your husband has had a child out of wedlock while married to you, please contact me. I want you to know that you are not alone. I would like to start a support group, especially for women who are being faced with this. The easy part is leaving. It’s harder to stay and endure.

Nicole Cleveland is founder of Breathe Again Magazine Online. She is on a mission to empower, encourage and motivate women by posting real life articles of women overcoming adversity. Visit her website at www.BreatheAgainMagazine.com.