I want to share with all of you about Not Looking Back:

Unfortunately It’s something that we all do...a lot!  I, myself
have caught myself looking back at all the things that I’ve
done in my life that was either - wrong, crazy, hurtful and
way to much more that I don’t even really want to think
about.  A number of years ago I realized that I had a tendency
to always look back at the negative things instead of the
positive things that I did.  Why do we do that?  We tend to
always look back at the negative and not the positive.

We’re all growing and learning were here on earth to learn and
grow, we’re not perfect.  So, that’s why sometimes we do those
crazy things like looking back at the negative instead of trying
to find out what was really good to and think about all those
good things we did.

Now, looking back on the negative is only a good thing when
you going to try and learn from it, when you’re going to try and
make better choices and maybe change direction in your life
and really be on a good path and maybe even trying to change
your behavior or anything like that.

But, it’s really not a good idea to look back at the negative and
then torture yourself about the bad things that you’ve done, and
it’s just a natural human tendency that we have.  We’re not taught
as little kids to look back the things that didn’t go right or the
things that we’ve done wrong and try to learn from it.

I think they need to teach all these things in school,  even as
early as elementary.  What do you think?  Let me know.

What impact it’s having on our lives when we think about all
the negative things, or just the whole idea of looking back at
the negative is kind of scary.

So, what impact is it having on your life, let me ask you that.
So think back at the last time you looked back at your past
and depending on how old you are, you can have many, many
years on things that you’ve done that maybe you wish you
could change.

Of course we can’t wish and we can’t change the past, but
think about things that you’ve thought about recently that
you’ve done in the past and it was really negative, and then
it just got you down thinking about it because, that’s one of
the things that looking at your negative past does to you - if
you’re not using it to help correct your life now and you’re just
trying to beat yourself up about all the bad things that you’ve
done.   

When was the last time you thought about that and what did
it do to you?

Did it put you in a state of depression?

Did it just want to make you eat sugar?

Did it just want to make you scream?

Think back to when the last time it was, it could have been
today, it could have been last month, who know!  We have so
many thoughts that go through our head every day that it’s
just amazing.        

Each podcast I always say “write everything down, get it out
of your head”, by now I hope that you actually have written
things down.  Maybe you bought a notebook or created your
own.  Write it down, it has such an amazing effect when you
physically write it on paper verses on your computer or smart
phone.

I’ve talked about this many times in my different episodes.
But think about it, write it down - what was the last thing that
you thought about that was negative and when was it.  Think
about how you could actually turn that around and make it so
that it could actually help you in your life verses just using it
to torture yourself, because that really doesn’t help you or
anyone around you.

Because when you start to get depressed or frustrated, we
tend to take it out on the people that are the closest to us -
our family and even sometimes friends or if you work.  If you
have a job around a lot of other people and somebody’s irritating
you, you might just want to take out your irritation on them.

Think about that, what is that thing that you keep thinking about?
A lot of times it’s just a couple of things, sometimes we don’t
think about the many, many things we did, but somethings
there’s a couple things that we tend to torture ourselves with.

I know because I’ve actually done that, I’ve realized that it was
usually just a couple of things that I used to torture myself with -
thinking about how stupid it was, why did I do that it made no sense.

Who knows what else, I don’t even want to remember the
thoughts that I was thinking at the time.

What you have to remember is that we’re human and we have
to learn all these things, nobody teaches us these things when
we were little.

So, if you’ve never been taught how to do certain things, now’s
a good time to start taking notes.

I always encourage people to listen to these episodes more
than once because you can always learn something new when
you listen to each episode more then one time, because there’s
so much content involved and so many things that I’m talking
about.

So, start by writing things out and just go back in your mind.
If it’s to hard, then maybe you have to work yourself up to
thinking about it instead of just trying to go back there in your
mind.

Sometimes if you think about it, when you actually can get it
out of your head - get it out of your thoughts, it’s easier to let
it go.  We like to hold on to every good and bad.

It’s not really healthy for us to hold on everything that’s not
working for us.  It’s a good start, it’s a good practice to have -
to write everything out.

It starts the process of you recognizing it and then eventually
you’ll have the ability to let it go.  Well, you actually have to
want to let it go first before you can let it go.

I would say, after you get it out on paper think about why you
were even thinking about that because sometimes when you’re
doing something, there’s always a trigger somewhere.  When
you’re doing something or you’re in a location or you’re around
certain people, there’s those triggers that pop into your head
and reminds you of the past of those negative things that you’ve
done.  Sometimes it’s a place or a person that is the cause of
this, we have to take responsibility ourselves for inappropriate
actions.

Sometimes if there’s another person involved, it could be the
other person just making you crazy and who knows you could
have said something really horrible or if that person was irritating
you, you could have just snapped and said something that really
you shouldn’t have that really hurt that other person.

Who knows, there’s endless possibilities of things that could
have happened.  Catch yourself too, as you go about your daily
life, really catch yourself in everything that you do.  Think about
the things that you say and the places that you go, think about
what  you’re doing and if you’re starting to say something that
you know you’re going to regret!  Then try to catch yourself and
stop yourself from saying something that could be really harmful
to somebody else and the more you practice that, the easier it
becomes to start catching yourself.

Of course, it is a little bit of work, but once you get that habit
going  - always thinking about what you’re going to say first.
It really will make a big difference.

I’m one of those, that I like to speak my mind so sometimes I
don’t think about what I’m saying, I just open my mouth and I
realize that I shouldn’t have said that.  Now I really try to work
on thinking about what I’m going to say first.  I’ve been to places
where I’ve said things and then I thought “oh” and if my husband
was with me, he would tell me later “why did you say that!”  I
would just be in a state of shock like “oh, yah I don’t know why
I said that” and of course he’s either embarrassed or he’s just
confused as to why I say the things I say.

Sometimes we do that to our spouses, (but not on purpose)
It’s a give and take right! ;)

I just want to encourage you to try and catch yourself whenever
you’re going throughout your day and sometimes it doesn’t
even involve anybody else when you do things that really are
negative and sometimes it’s just you.  It’s O.K., just know t
hat you’re human and you’re just like everybody else who’s
trying to work through this life and learn and grow to become
a better person.

If you can just start with these few things, it will really make you
feel good.  I didn’t realize how good it made me feel when I
realized a while back that I was doing this crazy thing on just
torturing myself about all the negative things that I’ve ever done
in the past and it really was eye-opening and now I’m so glad
that I recognized it and I’m trying to work on not torturing myself.
I’ve come a long way, it’s taken a while.  I don’t want to feel yucky
like that anymore and sometimes there’s no better word to use
then yucky, because yucky is just kind of a mishmash of a whole
bunch of feelings.  You just get tired after a while of feeling yucky
and you just don’t want it anymore.  You got to figure out why
you’re feeling yucky and one of the things that make you feel
like that is just looking back on all this negativity.

Try and make it an effort, you might even want to make it a
practice every day to start looking at all the positive things that
you’ve ever done, the people’s lives that you’ve impacted the
things that you’ve accomplished or anything that’s good.

Start cheering for yourself, start celebrating the wonderful things
that you’ve done.  Celebrating yourself, it doesn’t have to be
this big celebration that’s not what I’m talking about, but of
course you can do that if you want.

Just celebrate with yourself or with a friend or your family or
anybody.  Go out and get a snack or go get a bite to eat and
just celebrate and talk about the positive and you’ll be really
amazed at what a difference it will make and how you’ll feel.

I really encourage you to take this step forward because this
kind of looking back stuff really prevents you from moving
forward in your life.  It’s really hard to overcome things and
accomplish great things and great things are different to
everybody, but it’s really difficult when you’re constantly
looking back at the negative.

Try and NOT look back and try to work towards focusing on
the positive.

I promise you, you’ll be really happy and might even feel some
excitement that “hey, I can do this”.

Again I would ask you to please share this podcast with anybody
who you think would get great value out of it, maybe you know
somebody struggling with something that maybe listening to
any of these episodes will help them. 

I thank you again for listening I really appreciate you being here
and I hope you have a fantastic day.

a hui hou malama pono - until next time, take care

I hope you are enjoying listening to this podcast!

Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts,
so that you'll never miss an episode.

Please Rate, Review & Subscribe!

Mahalo for listening.

Aloha, Janin 

Music by: Dennis Pavao
Song: Ipo Lei Manu
Album: Wale No
Produced by: Pilialoha Production

I want to talk to you about service.
What comes to your mind when you hear that word?  
I’m talking about the kind of service that you would render to someone.

Service brings all kinds of thoughts to our minds.  Sometimes people
haven’t had the best experience with service and some people haven’t 
had any experience serving.

Everything that we do has some kind of impact on other people’s lives, 
whether you’re working at your job, or in a community.

Let me ask you another question.  Have you ever been a recipient of 
someone doing service for you or to you?   

Serving someone if one of the greatest things you could ever do in your 
life and I can say that because I have experienced it, I have talked to many,
many people who give service and have received service.  I have found 
that serving other people is not something most people think about on a 
daily basis.  

Now, I’m not talking about the kind of service that you sacrifice your health, 
family or anything like that.  That’s why the word service scares people 
because that’s what they think will happen; if you serve in any capacity 
you’re going to have to sacrifice those things.  But...I’m talking about 
the kind of service that would help, uplift, make a difference in someone’s 
life.  It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant or extreme that’s not what
I’m talking about.

There’s not enough talk about being of service.  I know it’s because people 
are so consumed with their own life that it’s hard to think about being of 
service to others and that’s a natural feeling, that’s how things are now 
and everyone is really busy.

Everywhere you go, you see people rushing around, rushing to and from 
work, rushing to take their kids to school and then to their extra-curricular 
activities and sports practices.  Rushing home to make dinner.  It’s really 
hard sometimes to be of service when you’re doing all these things for 
your family.

I get that because I’ve been there too.  My kids were young at one point 
and I was driving them all over the place.  But there needs to be more 
talk of service and there needs to be more “doing” of service as well, 
you can’t just talk about it, you actually have to do it and experience it.  
There’s something that you really get when you serve somebody and 
it’s not even something that somebody can explain to you how that 
feeling is when you give service.  

I want to give you one small example of service from my Grandmother, 
this is what I witnessed growing up that she did.  She was the greatest 
example of someone giving unconditional service and unconditional 
love, and kindness and caring.  

When I was little, my Grandmother used to take one of her cousin to 
work and he worked at the University Of Hawaii, and I live here in Hawaii.  
She lived only about 10 to 15 minutes away from the University and he 
worked there in the maintenance department and he wasn’t able to drive.  
He lived with his siblings and parents, which was only a few minutes away 
from my Grandmother, so she would go every night - because he worked 
in the evenings and pick him up, take him to the University so that he could 
go to work and then she would go and pick him up from work and take him
home.

I was blessed and lucky enough that I used to go with her a lot when she 
used to pick him up and drop him off to work, I was a really little girl - I don’t 
even remember how old I was when I used to go with her.  I know I was 
in early elementary and maybe even younger, so you’re talking a long time
ago(that’s beside the point!).  I always remember sitting beside her in the 
car and it was always fun to be with my Grandmother anyway and I still 
think about that till this day.

I don’t remember how many years she did that. She is no longer here 
and she passed away about 11 years ago.  She was my greatest example 
of just doing things that would help somebody, something so small and in 
her eyes it was no big deal, but I’ve witnessed what a great impact it had 
on her cousin and his family because his family members didn’t drive either.

I’m just in awe of someone giving up that much time, now I don’t know-how
many days of the week she did that or any of that, I didn’t keep track and 
I know that she did that for many, many years.

But I still think to myself about how amazing that was, where she never 
complained, she just did it because she knew he couldn’t drive and I knew
there were times when he caught the bus as well.   There were many, many 
times and years that she picked him up.  

The kind of service that I’m talking about can be something like that if you 
do have the time and you do have the resources to go and do that.  But 
service doesn’t have to be that big, it doesn’t have to be where you pick 
somebody up all the time and take them somewhere, it could be taking a 
meal to the if you know they’re sick or not feeling good or if somebody 
just had a baby you could go and take a meal and just be of service - it’s 
amazing, the feeling that you’ll get.  

Because I’ve had this great example all my life from my Grandmother, I’ve
done those things myself just naturally without even thinking about it, and 
I’m so grateful that I had that example because I don’t think I would be doing 
or have done any of the things I’ve done to give of myself and to give service 
to people that need it.  Sometimes we think that we don’t have time and it’s 
such a hassle, but if you actually make your first attempt if you’ve never, 
ever given service to anyone, I would definitely encourage you to try it at least 
one time.

If you know somebody that needs a meal, if they’re having a rough time 
going through some kind of really stressful event that happened in their 
life or a death in the family - go and take them a meal, just drop it off and 
let them know that you’re thinking about them.

It’s just so amazing and like I said earlier, I was a recipient of people doing 
service for me as well, like when I’ve had my children I had many wonderful 
friends bring meals for me and my family when I got out of the hospital and 
just little things like that and another friend who offered to take my other 
children to school because I had just gotten home from the hospital after 
having another baby.

It really makes you feel like everything is going to be O.K. because sometimes 
you go through life and you just wonder… are you doing to make it?  You 
have times where you feel like… I just feel like doing this anymore!  Or you’re 
frustrated and you have no idea how you’re going to get over that frustration.  
Life is hard sometime, sometimes it can be harder than others and so you’ll 
never know what kind of difference you’ll make in somebody’s life.

I’ve actually had people tell me so many times - “thank you so much what 
you did it really made my day, I just was having a hard day.”  I’ve done so 
many things over the years and people have thanked me before and I didn’t 
really keep track of those thank you’s because it just makes me feel good, 
so it’s not something that I needed to write down.

But those things and those feelings and gratitude from other people never 
leave you, it just makes you feel really good and it makes you actually want 
to give more service as often as possible.  This is something that I think we 
need more of and I think it’s something that we need to do more often and 
the reason that I say that is that we’re so caught up in our own lives, and it’s 
really difficult to think about other people when we’re stressed out and some-
times we think that if we have an idea of doing something nice for somebody, 
sometimes you’ll have a thought “oh, they don’t need it they’re fine”, “they’re 
tough” or “they’re a really strong family” or “that person’s really strong they’ll 
survive”.

We have thoughts in our head that we think that when we have that little 
thought come into our mind about “oh, maybe I should ask them to see if 
they need anything”.

Sometime the automatic response and thought that you would have is “oh, 
they probably wouldn’t want anything from me anyway”, you might even 
have thoughts of like “well, why would they even want anything from me?”  
We always think that so many other people are better than we are and
they don’t need anything from us or they have more money than we do so 
they can buy whatever they need, but that’s not always the case. Even 
people that do have more money than you, still need service and love 
and compassion from others because money doesn’t buy happiness - 
money just gives you more options.  Money gives you more opportunities
and things like that, but the true source of happiness really comes from 
service and giving and sometimes I think we need to give more than we 
take.  

I’m talking from experience, I’ve had moments years and years ago where 
I don’t think I was serving very much - I was trying to take as much as possible 
from others, not in a bad way but because I had things going on or life was 
stressful at the time.  So now I feel like I want to make up for all of that taking 
that I did, but sometimes we do need to take but we need to view it as receiving 
verses taking because when you receive, it’s a very different emotion and thought
and a way of living versus just taking.  Taking, is all about just what’s in it for you, 
but receiving is allowing the other person to feel good as well as - me feeling good 
for the gift that somebody else is giving me and in the gift of service.

So, think about that for awhile.  I really hope that you have a desire to serve, and 
like I said if you’ve never served or done anything like that - I really encourage you 
to try it at least once.

I would really love for you to tell me what kind of service you’ve done and any of 
you that are listening, I would love for you to share with me some of the things 
that you’ve done as a service or some of the things that you’ve received when 
someone has given service to you.  It doesn’t have to be anything major, some-
times we think our stories are not significant, but you’ll be amazed at how significant 
they really are.  

I would love for you to connect with me at janin@fashionablefinance.com and 
even if you have a comment too, I would love your comments and if you have 
anything else that you would like me to talk about and create another episode, 
I would love for you to share that with me.

Please share this podcast too with other people that you know who you think 
would be able to benefit from the things that I’m sharing.  All the things that 
I share is always the things that I’ve learned and gone through in my life and 
learned by experience and so please share this message with other people, 
you’ll be amazed at how it could really help someone when you didn’t think 
it could.  So let them know where they can listen to this recording, they can 
go to iTunes and they can search for Fashionable Finance or they can go to 
my website at fashionablefinance.com and it’s right there on my website, you 
can listen to it as well over there.

I would appreciate it if you would go to iTunes and give me an honest rating 
and an honest review, I would really appreciate that and it lets me know what 
you folks are liking and not liking and what you think is of value.  I only want 
to share value, I don’t want to share anything that’s not worth your time.  

I want to sum it up by saying that service is one of the greatest things that 
you could ever do in your life and I know that for sure because I’ve witnessed 
it and I’ve done it myself and I’ve been the recipient of service as well.   I know 
the countless number of other people who have been the recipient as well 
and they’ve shared with me the blessings and relief that it’s brought to them.

Get creative and think about what is one neat thing that you could do for some-
body and it doesn’t have to be a meal, it doesn’t have to be anything extravagant - 
you can even pick up the phone if haven’t talked to somebody in a really long time, 
let them know that you were thinking about them and how they’re doing and just 
wanting to know if everything is O.K. It could be something as simple as writing a 
card to let them know that you’re thinking about them if you don’t want to call.

There’s so many ways that you could give of service and even though writing a 
card and calling somebody on the phone may not seem like a service but… it is! 
 Trust me, I’ve heard from many people who have felt like it was such a great service 
to them.

Brainstorm on paper, remember I always say “write everything down, get everything
out of your head and on to paper”  Just jot down a few ideas that you might have 
on what kind of service that you could offer to someone.  It will make you feel good 
and it will help you sleep really good at night.

I thank you so much, I really appreciate you being here and listening to this episode
and listening to me, I want to send out some wonderful Hawaiian sunshine to all of 
you listening out there and I appreciate any new listeners that we have. 

I want to thank you.

a hui hou malama pono - until next time, take care

I hope you are enjoying listening to this podcast!

Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts,
so that you'll never miss an episode.

Please Rate, Review & Subscribe!

Mahalo for listening.

Aloha, Janin 

Music by: Dennis Pavao
Song: Ipo Lei Manu
Album: Wale No
Produced by: Pilialoha Production