I have been traveling around my area reading the Floppy Cat book to many of my area pre-schools and grade schools this week. What fun it has been to see all their different expressions and hear all their fun comments. The best one being - “I love Floppy Cat!” Floppy is so easy to like making the kids smile and laugh. Those are exactly the reactions I was looking for when I wrote the book. I love Floppy Cat too!
9th Oct, 2008
I Love Floppy Cat!
9th Oct, 2008
The Books are Here!!!!!
I picked up the books from the printer this last week and they look FANTASTIC! I can’t wait to share them with everyone I meet. It was so fun to finally see the the completed project. I had a certain picture in my mind right from the get go on how I wanted the book to turn out and I always wondered if it was doable or if I was going to be disappointed. Well I am amazed! The books turned out better than I ever envisioned. Everyone that I have shared them with has thought the same thing. You’ll want to get yours and see for yourself!
12th Sep, 2008
Fun times at the Kiwanis Club!
What a fun time I had talking with this great group! I don’t think I have had that much fun speaking for some time and I know it was because the room was filled with great attitudes! They loved everything about Floppy and I loved everything about them - their enthusiasm for life, their laid backness, their genuiness, their smiles and their conversations. They were telling jokes and silly stories, handing out fun awards singing old fashioned songs, saying the pledge. What a renewed appreciation I have for their generation. They exemplified what Floppy is all about and I know that’s why they loved him so much.
After leaving the meeting with such great energy, I decided I would make sure to find more friends like them!
Oh by the way, their mission as an organization is to make a change in the world - one child at a time. They thought Floppy Cat might be a good way to make some of those changes and so do I!
Have a Floppy Day!
30th Aug, 2008
“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken!”
I received an email today that used this Oscar Wilde quote, “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken!” as a heading. What a great reminder! I printed the quote off and plan to hang it in my office where I can see and read it all the time. It is so easy to constantly compare yourself to others thinking if I was like her or if I could speak like him or if had her talents, if, if, if… boy would my life ever be GREAT! The fact is, when I am being my unique self - having fun, being silly, letting go, listening whole heartedly to whomever I am with, saying whatever comes to my mind, smiling and telling my mixed up stories with lots of funny gestures, that is when I enjoy my life the most and it is also when others enjoy being around me the most. So why do I compare myself or try to act or be like someone else? The answer - my mind has me fooled!
You see, your mind thinks in pictures. You can fake your mind into believing anything if you put enough pictures of that which you want it to believe, in it. How many pictures of “perfect” people do we see in the media everyday? We are in a constant bombardment of photo-shopped babes, sculpted abs, breasts, and butts, perfectly scripted media and political images, soap operas portraying the perfect love lives, the list goes on. Even though you may realize most of this is not real, your mind doesn’t! Anything that you have seen and put any kind of emotional attachment to, your mind has locked in as reality. So you may try, try and try again, to believe in your confident self, but until you put real pictures of what you truly want to be into your mind, you will continue to feel inadequate. So how do you fix the problem?
Start putting the proper images in – lots of them!
30th Aug, 2008
Interesting Facts About Optimism
Here are some neat facts about Optimism that I found today. Thought they might be nice tibits to share!
- Optimism is defined as the skill of seeing the positive aspects of a situation - the belief that things can change for the better and that one can control the direction of one’s own life.
- Optimism is a skill that all children can learn.
- Optimism helps children solve problems, set goals, build confidence and find ways around obstacles.
- The more optimism is practiced the easier it becomes.
- Optimism leads to greater happiness and well-being.
- Parents and teachers can help children learn the skills of optimism.
Children who are optimistic:
- Have greater motivation, greater resilience, more positive moods, higher achievement and a greater sense of control
- Perform better in school
- Have better overall physical health
- Have better relationships.
Children who are pessimistic may:
- Be more likely to become depressed
- Be more likely to experience anxiety
- Be underachievers
- Not do as well in school
- Be at higher risk for a variety of other negative outcomes
Source: Reivich, K., J.E. Gillham, T.M. Chaplin, & M.E.P. Seligman, from “Helplessness to Optimism: The Role of Resilience in Treating and Preventing Depression in Youth” (2005) in S. Goldstein & R.B. Brooks (Eds.), Handbook of Resilience in Children (pp 223-237). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
17th Aug, 2008
Floppy Cat In The News
Another exciting day for Floppy Cat! One of the local television stations called today. They had heard through the grapevine about Floppy Cat and thought it sounded like a great story to feature on their network. They are coming next Wednesday to interview me. I will let everyone know when the story will be aired!
16th Aug, 2008
Floppy Cat Helping Children Around The World
Wow! What an exciting day! I had a fantastic meeting with the management of the pediatric unit of one of the most progressive and largest hospitals in the region. They are in the middle of building a new children’s hospital that has a great story book theme and is designed to look like Cinderella’s Castle. It is an amazing project and will be quite the building to see when it is all said and done.
What fun conversations we had about Floppy Cat. I really didn’t know what to expect going into the meeting. I just wanted to get together to see what ideas we could come up with to help children learn and apply the concepts that Floppy Cat teaches. The directors that I met with surprised the heck out me! Their enthusiasm was almost overwhelming after I had shared some of my thoughts and ideas of how we could collaborate. Not only did they like Floppy Cat and my ideas, they immediately started to come up with several of their own ideas that were very exciting as well. Needless to say, this is a very big deal, and is exactly the kind of reaction I was looking! Some of the ideas that were mentioned took Floppy Cat across the Nation and eventually internationally! Yipee!!!
I just know that Floppy Cat is going to be well known all over the world. He represents such a great message that so many people are looking for and need. I have no doubt that Floppy Cat is going to be known world wide - REAL SOON!!!!
15th Aug, 2008
The Jekyll and Hyde Child: Targeted Behavior Problems
For many children, behavior problems are not universal; they’re targeted. Targeted at dad, at mom, at the stepmother, at the fiancé, at a sibling. The following two case studies reveal how normally charming and compliant children can become defiant or even abusive with one person in the family. READ MORE….
14th Aug, 2008
Back to the Future!
Today I was extremely challenged with a task I was trying to accomplish. I had been working on it all week with very little progress and was getting extremely frustrated. The task seemed so easy to everyone else, why was I making it so hard? Every time I would sit down to work on it, I would run into one road block after another and to top it off, I hated the little work I was getting. Ugh!!!!
It is so amazing to me, that after all the studying and teaching that I have done about the mind and how it works, that I continue to run into these mental challenges. Why am I so surprised? I’m not sure. I know the mind is a powerful thing and I have allowed so many thoughts into it, that shouldn’t have been! All those old thoughts and ideas are hiding in the corners of my mind just waiting for their cues to resurface and when they do, they always come loaded with plenty of ammunition. The exciting thing though, is that through all my training and studying, I do know how to defend myself. I realized, that I was up against a very strong army this time, and I was going to need some backup. So with the help of a great friend, we fought a great war and won! I finally accomplished my task and actually liked my results! I won the fight this time, but I also realize that the war is not over. There is much work to be done to kill all those old paradigms off, once and for all. Finishing the task was the best thing I could have done! I moved through the challenge and I know that each time I do it again, the task will get easier and easier. What’s really cool, after getting through all the frustration, I realized that this challenge was a good thing. It was a sign of growth. I am moving to another level and am greatful that this challenge was put in my path to help me move forward in my life!
Take a look at what you are doing today! If your day is filled with easily accomplished tasks, and you feel pretty comfortable, it would be a good idea to assess what you are doing. In order to grow and become all you can be in the future, you must put yourself on the path of constant and never-ending improvement.
11th Aug, 2008
Floppy has a new web site!
Floppy Cat now has a new look and feel and we’d like to know what you think. Please post your comments here on Floppy’s blog or you can send us a meesage here.