Confessions

Today my post is brought to you by two lovely ladies that I am following: Lisette with Northern Belle Diares, and Catalyn with Confessions of a Northern Belle, they are having an "I confess... Wednesday Link-Up Party" and I am kind of nervous to confess things but I hope you enjoy it.

I confess..... that I am loving blogging but I am kind of overwhelmed.  I look at all of these talented bloggers and think I will never get there but really hope I can.

I confess.... that I secretly love watching the Bachelor even though some of the girls are really bother me sometimes but I just love all the drama!.  I don't ever miss an episode.

I confess.... that I LOVE spending money, even when we don't have a lot of money to spend.  For some reason I just have to spend money.  This year we are trying to be really good about saving money and paying some things off but it is so hard for me to do so. Here's to hoping I can control myself!

I confess... that I was so excited that my husband suggested we went out to eat dinner last night, I was trying to drop hints that I didn't want to cook dinner.  Either he caught on to my hints or he just really wanted to eat out, either way I was so excited that I didn't have to cook dinner!

I confess... that I have been having a hard time getting pregnant for a couple of years and really wish I had a baby of my own so for now I love everyone else's babies like they were my own!

I think that is all of the confessing I have in me for today.   What do you confess? And remember to visit Lisette and Catalyn's blogs to link up!  Thanks for reading!

Do You Know Who You Are?

One of my many struggles in life at this moment is knowing who I am.  I think for a long time I have grown up under my parents wing and not really known how to figure out how to be myself or who that really is.  Within the last couple of months I have been really struggling with who am I and who do I want to become? I feel like I am getting older and feeling like my old high school self when other people my age seem so much more grown up than I am.  Maybe that is due to the fact that they have kids and I don't, I am not sure why I feel that way.  Since I started this blog I have really tried to research some topics and get ideas on what to talk about and I feel like this is one of the biggest things that I need to figure out for myself before I try to fix all the other problems I have.

I was browsing through Studio 5 looking at past articles that they had for the 'Living Without Pretending' segment that they have this month and I came across exactly what I was looking for.  'Do You Know Who You Are' was a segment that they had a couple weeks ago and it was perfect for what I was needing.  Of course it doesn't magically make me realize who I am but it will help me in that direction.  Here is the video from this segment:


Karen Eddington who is a Self-Worth analyst made this very real and true comment: "We don't magically find ourselves, we create ourselves. We don't wake up one day and get it all at once and then keep that all-at-once mindset our entire life. Rather, we create ourselves through choices and being accountable for those choices. We fear making a wrong choice, we fear failure, and we fear rejection so we often try to remain neutral. We pretend instead of take a risk. We are fake because sometimes it hurts to be real. Don't pretend--choose."  I added a link to her website by clicking her name.

On her website she has a link to a worksheet called 'I Am.'  This is a great work sheet to start finding out who you really are.  I thought that it would be good to share my answers on this worksheet with you. So for the next four weeks every Tuesday I will be sharing a portion of this 'I Am' worksheet with you so stay tuned!  I encourage all of you to go on her website and download this and answers these questions for yourself either on a blog or in a journal.

The first piece that it talks about is Heritage: Where do you come from? I come from a great mormon family.  I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and raised in Bountiful and Centerville.  My mother is from Salt Lake and is such a talented lady.  She is the strongest lady I know, she had to be raising myself and four brothers.  My father was born and raised in Bountiful Utah.  He is the strongest, most loving father I could have ever asked for.  He has given me the life that I could have only dreamed of living, even though at times I may not have seemed grateful.  I think the person that I would love to be growing up and the person that I look up to in finding who I am is my Grandma Stringham.  She is the strongest, most talented, and spiritual person I know.  She has been through so much in her lifetime and I have not heard her complain once.  She loved sewing, painting, and making these beautiful dolls but arthritis has gotten the best of her.  She is not able to do those things that she loves anymore but I have never heard her complain once about it in her life.  I want to strive to be just like her and try to not complain about things in my life anymore no matter how big or small the trial may be.  That is only a little bit about my heritage, there are a lot more people that I look up to but that would turn into a novel and this is a blog post not a book.

So I hope you take time out of your busy day to first watch the video from Studio 5, download the 'I Am' worksheet and write up the answers in your journal or some where you keep safe.  Thanks for reading!

Bloglovin

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Today I was introduced to Bloglovin.  You can follow by blog on bloglovin by clicking the link above.  I love all this blogging stuff and am really getting into it! Thanks everyone!

You are what you listen to

Yesterday when I was browsing through Pinterest looking for ideas for my blog I came across this image:

Link to this image is here.

When I first saw this image I just saw the words and thought it related to something completely different than what it is supposed to relate to.  I took this to relate to us listening to ourselves and what our brain might tell ourselves. I think there is a great hidden meaning behind this. I struggle sometimes telling myself good things about myself or things that I have accomplished and instead focus on the things that I don't do right.  My husband and I have this thing that we do when we may have done something wrong or done something that might upset each other. This thing that we do is calling ourselves terrible.  For example if I spent too much money one month and my husband started talking to me about it I would automatically say, "I am sorry I am such a terrible wife."  We have been doing it for so long that I have actually started feeling that I am a terrible wife and that I can't seem to do anything right.  If I were to change that sentence around and say: "I am sorry for spending so much money, I will work harder next month to control my spending habits."  It may not have as negative of effect as if I said it the first way. If we are constantly listening to us calling ourselves negative names or focusing on things that we could be doing better in our lives it could lead to negative feelings and thoughts.  

So my goal for the rest of this week and beyond is to focus on telling myself that I may not be perfect but I am a pretty awesome person! Hopefully by doing this I can change my way of thinking and I can be happier a happier person, not only on the outside but also on the inside.  

May we keep the quote in our mind from the book and movie The Help: "You is kind.  You is smart.  You is important."

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Welcome!

Hello blogging world! My name is Kristin Schouten.  My dear friend Amberly Lambertsen (you can view her blog here: Life with Amberly and Joe) has been talking to me for a few weeks about her blog and what she has been writing and how much she has enjoyed it.  It got me thinking that I would love somewhere to share my frustrations, joys, interests, and thoughts, not only for myself, but also for the other people out there who might be going through the same things I am and can help me or others as well.

I was recently introduced to a program called Studio 5 that airs every day on KSL, a local news station here in Utah.  The wonderful person who introduced me to this show was my mom, and ever since I have absolutely loved watching it!  One of the segments on this show this month is called 'Live Without Pretending', one of the topics in the segment is 'Am I Fake?' This is the topic that got me hooked on the show.

All of us are fake in some way or another whether we mean to be or not.  Some of us wish that we weren't so fake, and others may not even realize that we are fake in the first place.  I'll be the first to admit that I am 100% guilty of this.  I have pretended to laugh at something when it wasn't funny, pretended to be someone's friend and then talked about them behind their back.  'Am I Fake?' has been a real eye opener and encouraged me to change the way I act toward other people.  I have been striving to not act fake in my every day communications and actions with other people.

It has also made me start to think about how I can be a better person in my life.  How can I strive to be all that I can be?  How can I be myself when I may not know who that really is?  And that's what brought me here, to my blog, 'Be You. Love You.'  I hope to post topics on here where we can talk, grow, and learn together about being ourselves and not worry so much about what other people think.

So I welcome all of you to my blog where I hope we can all feel comfortable talking about how to be true to ourselves and love who we are at the same time.