Meg Evans

When I was a child, I had an umbrella with panels in different colors of tinted plastic. That umbrella made it great fun to go out in the rain, holding a panel of a particular color in front of my face to see everything around me in that color, while pretending I had traveled to the Purple Planet or the Blue Planet for the day.

The world didn’t seem as colorful after I got older and spent most of my time just getting things done, rather than letting my mind wander wherever it liked and having fun playing pretend. It took me a while to realize that they are not in fact mutually exclusive options. There’s no reason why we can’t get things done and have a playful mindset too, whether it is a rainy day or not.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Okay, I haven’t really gone exploring in the desert recently; but the way I see it, a little prodding in the direction of a more adventurous mindset is all for the best.

Comfort zones do have their benefits, in that having predictable routines helps us to avoid stress and be more productive. Still, it’s important to find a healthy balance and not get stuck there!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Sometimes it gets kind of scary in our fast-changing world. Even when we just keep on doing the things that we enjoy and are good at doing, all kinds of doubts pop up. Jobs can disappear, skills can get obsolete, and the culture can change so much that others no longer appreciate our talents or see us as being useful. There’s no way of knowing what might happen.

Even though the future is uncertain, we shouldn’t let ourselves get overwhelmed. The world is full of amazing possibilities too, and changes that seem scary can end up opening doors for us that we never imagined. Instead of letting those doubts get to us, we need to trust, and just keep on.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

With so many things changing around us in today’s world, sometimes we can feel unsettled not because of any problem in particular, but just because it seems like there’s no way of knowing what might happen next. It’s hard to imagine what the future might look like when living in the present is so complicated already, and getting more so all the time.

But the upside of all this complexity is that we have more options than at any time in history, and every few years they increase exponentially. Even if we haven’t yet discovered what many of them are or will be, somewhere in that ever-changing future, if we keep an open mind, we can expect to find creative ways to shape our lives into new and wonderful patterns.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Although I’ve been contributing to the Nurturing Thursday blogging community for the past three years, I have to admit that there are days when I don’t feel as inspired to create nurturing posts as I would like to be. Maybe it’s the weather (the seasonal blues got to me this past winter) or maybe it’s other distractions. Random stuff happens, and we don’t always know why.

But, even at times when I feel low on creative energy, putting together a short post for Nurturing Thursday generally leaves me feeling better. After all, it doesn’t have to be perfect—or even particularly inspired—to be much better than the alternative of not doing it.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Sometimes when I feel like I am wading through a bog of dull adult practicalities, I lighten my mood by rereading stories that I loved as a child. That’s easy to do with my Kindle because e-books don’t take up storage space in the house and many of them are priced at only 99 cents. I keep a velvet-covered print copy of “The Secret Garden” on a little shelf in the kitchen next to the Kindle, to set the right ambience.

Reading grown-up fairy tales can be fun too. At present I’m reading “Fairy-Struck” by Amy Sumida, an urban fantasy romance in which a thoroughly modern heroine discovers she is a long-lost fairy princess, although she never wanted anything of the sort and has no intention of giving in to her attraction to a handsome fairy lord. That’s about as far from practical as a book can get—which is, of course, the whole point. Wishing all my readers a fun, lighthearted Thursday too!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

I hadn’t yet gotten around to writing my Nurturing Thursday post by late afternoon when I went to get groceries. While I was in the supermarket, my thoughts started wandering along self-critical paths such as that I’d been writing these posts for three years and working on self-nurturing and positivity in general, so I really ought to feel happier than I was, and what had I been doing wrong to mess myself up?

Then I walked out to the parking lot after sunset, under a gorgeous deep blue sky. The blue reflected so beautifully from the metal on my car that I was just standing there thinking, “Wow, this can’t be my car, I don’t have blue trim.” And all those pointless other thoughts drifted away.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Waking up on a sunny morning toward the end of winter, when the sun already is well above the horizon and the birds are singing cheerfully, leaves me feeling that the day has gotten off to a good start. Even if the outside air is still quite chilly, spring is not far away!

Of course, the birds will sing anyway, even if it is cloudy and rainy, because nobody ever told them that meant it was dreary. They’re just happy that it is nest-building season and the earth is bustling with new life. Those birds could teach us a useful lesson about starting the day on a good note!

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Although having so much access to information in the modern world can be a wonderful thing, one of the drawbacks is that we’re always seeing media stories about people who are more successful in one way or another. That can leave us feeling unsure of ourselves and doubting our abilities. If we took the time to look back over the years and list all our accomplishments, then we might realize that the list looks pretty good; but instead, we’re likely to read stories about celebrities that leave us wondering why our lives are not as glamorous, even if we wouldn’t really want to be them anyway.

Rather than worrying about how we measure up to all those totally unrealistic cultural standards, we’d do better to reflect on how much we are actually capable of doing—which is, in truth, far more than we know.

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.

Although I don’t work in a scientific field, I enjoyed this amusing bit of word-art sent to me in a coworker’s email recently, so I decided to share it for today’s post:

And while we’re on the topic of atoms, I couldn’t resist adding a music video of “Atomic Dog” to this post. Just go ahead and sing along with that old-school funk, and forget all about being a responsible adult; that’ll give you a smile for Nurturing Thursday. Bow wow wow…

Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.