Finding Your Positives: Your Personal Plan for Facing Life’S Challenges

By Steve Ward

Finding Your Positives is a refreshing, inspirational way to learn to cope with life changing events along with lifes daily challenges. The struggle is the day-to-day coping to begin to heal to a path of recovery. Learn to control your mind instead of your mind controlling you with confusing; conflicting emotions putting at risk your well-being and balance.

Your life changing events creates the choice of which path to choose to manage the struggle of your event. The illustration of choosing a path paints a picture to assist you with your decision.

Finding Your Positives couples with inspiration nurturing a mindset and igniting a flame in your heart for appreciation, empathy and compassion for others trying to cope with their challenge and hoping to achieve a healthy well-being and stable balance.

Follow the easy to use system to track your progress throughout your journey to recovery. A snap shot will emerge illustrating your progress of doing well or needing to focus more. No matter the state of your progress, do not give up, as today is important with tomorrow being more important for brighter days and a brighter future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475931259

Steve Ward

Steve Ward earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. The author of Finding Your Positives, he is also a motivational speaker. Ward and his wife have three children and two grandchildren and live in St. Louis, Missouri.

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1.  Identifying Your Challenges

Chapter 2.  Implementing Your Positives

Chapter 3.  Your Positives Every Day

About the Author

Appendix  A.  Positives Worksheets and Samples

Appendix B.  Measuring Your Positive Progress

Glossary

Thank you to my wife, for thirty-eight joyous years, and to my family for their support and touching my heart when things seemed so dark. Also my empathy to the millions of us struggling to overcome life’s toughest challenges every day.

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

—John Quincy Adams

"Live today to illuminate the

dawn of tomorrow."

-Steve Ward

Acknowledgments

No author can write a book alone. He or she needs the help of many others. My wife, Julie, the woman I have loved for thirty-eight years, was the one who made this book possible. Her unbridled love, friendship, support, encouragement, and good sense of humor during the writing process proved invaluable. As in everything, she is my best and truest friend.

Special thanks go to my entire family as well. Their support and encouragement meant so much to me. They are one of my go-to positives, always giving me meaning and purpose while warming my heart.

I would also like to extend my heartfelt gratitude for everything that all the doctors, the staff, and my fellow cancer patients did for me during my treatment at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital. Their unselfish caring, kindness, and compassion helped inspire me to write and share the thoughts and ideas expressed in this book, all with the hope of benefiting others in their time of need. A special thank-you goes to Siteman’s Man-to-Man support group.

Last, but certainly not least, my gracious thanks to all those that trusted me to share their personal struggles with their challenges and for their encouragement, guidance, and inspiration to turn this plan into a book designed to encourage others to begin to cope with the struggle of facing and overcoming life’s toughest challenges.

Thank you to all.

Preface

Finding Your Positives is a self-help book with an easy to understand plan to help those with the struggle of coping day-to-day with life’s toughest challenges. Throughout our life, we face various challenges or are struggling with and trying to heal from the trauma of a recent challenge. A few of the possible challenges we are forced to face are; cancer, divorce, addiction, abuse ( mental, physical or emotional), cheating spouse, job loss, foreclosure, death of loved one, loneliness, physical or sensory impairment, disease, etc.. The list of challenges is long. Try not to become overwhelmed, as the Finding Your Positives plan will help you to overcome these challenges. Coping day after day and month after month with the effects of the emotional hurdles we face becomes the struggle impairing our ability to manage our journey to healing.

Finding Your Positives is an easy-to-use guide that helps people overcome and recovery from life’s personal challenges. My challenges included the suicide of a close friend, assault of a dear friend, friend becoming a quadriplegic from a car accident, family’s struggles with cancer and heart issues, death of loved ones, mother’s dementia and now in a nursing home, job loss, and now my cancer.

The Finding Your Positives plan is the result of years of trial and error to formulate an effective, easy to follow plan to help those with the struggle of coping. The plan needed to go beyond positive thinking and a positive attitude. For people to maneuver and manage their hurdles to healing, the plan required personal responsibility, accountability and measurability to be effective.

•  Identify your challenge

•  Introspective search of your heart and soul to identify your positives

•  Why are these your positives and how do they effect you

•  How to use your positives

•  A method to measure your progress

My personal success with the Finding Your Positives Plan has me living each day to its fullest and looking forward to tomorrow. This success has created a passion within to share my story and a plan for others to have brighter days ahead while illuminating the dawn of their tomorrow.

Steve Ward

Introduction

Nothing is worth more than this day.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life can be difficult at times, with curveballs seeming to come out of nowhere. Death, illness, job loss, divorce, and many other challenges must be met and overcome, but that’s sometimes much easier said than done. Challenges can be physical, psychological, or emotional, or they can be a combination of all three. Whatever the mix, meeting a challenge requires determination, dedication, discipline, patience, and perseverance on a day-to-day basis. The process may be demanding, but it can lead to gratifying rewards, such as a brighter outlook on life.

Life’s challenging events create defining moments that are engraved into our minds and our memories, forcing us to live with the event every day. This in turn initiates a daily