Positive thinking is something we all know we should do. It’s very simple, but easy to forget. I have a tendency to be very critical, and I’m working to overcome this. I want to fill my mind with positive thoughts: about myself, family and people around me.

One day, I found myself gossiping. It didn’t feel like that at the time, but I was casually criticizing others and allowing those around me to do the same. When I left, I felt awful about myself…Doubts crept into my mind about what I was doing in life and what people thought of me. I wondered why I suddenly felt so awful and remembered all that gossip. It was the direct cause of my insecurity.

After quick repentance, I felt much better. I want to focus on what I think about others, not what others think about me or what others think about other people. And when I think about others, I want to think only positive thoughts and allow all the bitterness to fade away.

Can you find my boys? At Bridal Viel Falls in Provo, UT.

Sometimes I rediscover play.

My son and I were outside playing. We used some old boards to make bridges for the swales (irrigation ditches really, but “swales” sound much more interesting).

After, I was looking around the yard and what looked to my adult mind like a pile of garbage had transformed itself into an opportunity. It became a fort. I was out there for almost an hour building a hokey, horrible fort. It was the best part of the day.

Play isn’t about results or achieving something. It’s just having fun.

How big of deal was the first day of first grade? It was so uneventful that I forgot to post about it. He went back to school, said it was pretty much like kindergarten and that was that.

The County Fair is the week before school starts. We went on the first night (because it happens to be a discount night for the carnival rides). See if you can spot the two youngest in this train ride:

There was a lot of animals after the rides. We like to compare our chickens, and our rooster is huge. Which is awesome, because it is the freezer now and will be dinner soon.

The boys and I went and visited the Church History Museum in Salt Lake, and also visited cousins there. The only complaint the whole time was having to leave.

Later in the week, we went and found a fun Geocache. It was a multi-cache with four different stops. It was full of dead sticks and thorny plants, so we really had to work together to do it. Even the little kids were a benefit as they could fit into the tight spaces. Joe found the first, Peter the second, Liz the third, and Curtis the final large one. It was a great experience for everyone except for Henry. He was tired.

I had a half-formed idea in my head. I couldn’t quite articulate it for awhile. I was watching a youtube video, and in the video he mentioned something that helped me finish the idea. That idea was the contrast of ideas vs inspiration.

Ideas: a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action. Going to the internet for ideas is draining. There are so many ideas out there: people to copy, projects to do, paths to take, ways to think. Many are good ideas, others just strange, and some are completely false. Ideas encourage us to copy a specific course of action. The ideas I often find often just leave me feeling discouraged, because my implementation will never quite measure up. It doesn’t lead me to be creative: copying others is never creativity.

Inspiration: the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative. I can get inspired from the Internet. The things I read or watch often inspire me to develop my own ideas. Inspiration doesn’t lead to copying. It helps me clarify and form my own unique ideas. I usually find inspiration in strange places, often from sources that are doing things drastically different from what I want to do. (Like getting inspiration for writing a gardening book from someone building a marble machine.)

So when I’m on the Internet, am I looking at ideas or am I gaining inspiration?