Dear Friends,

Happy almost-end-of summer! Welcome back to Sip of Soup, my bi-monthly E-sip offering a taste of insight and lessons to add more joy, hope and balance to your life. I hope you've been able to incorporate some time each day to focus on your mental, physical and spiritual health. I'd love to hear how things are going with you. - LeAnn

Sip of Soup - July/August, 2004 Positivity TM Power Our lives get most out of balance when we are not living our priorities. What is the #1 priority in your life? Are you living it? I may challenge you a bit when I suggest that our priorities are not what we state them to be, but how we spend our time. We can't give lip-service to one thing and say it's our priority, if we spend our time doing something else. Clearly what we have decided to spend our time on is what we've chosen as our priority, right? We are always juggling balls of responsibility in our lives -- it's critical that we figure out which are rubber and which are glass. The rubber balls -- our "stuff," even our jobs -- can bounce back and be replaced. The glass ones -- usually our health and our loved ones -- are easily scuffed and marred and dented, and if broken, are irretrievably broken. Don't drop them. I read over 1,000 stories to choose the top 100 for Chicken Soup for the Caregiver's Soul. Doing so, I was awestruck by the devotion, the true commitment, of caregivers. They rearranged their lives to truly live their priorities. Lessons from LeAnn Make a list of what is most important to you. Include all areas of your life--family, friends, faith, finances. Then use this list each time you schedule things to be sure you use your time on what's most important in your life. If you say it's your priority, let me see it on your calendar. Soup for the day; a healthy quote: My #1 priority is keeping my #1 priority my #1 priority! ~ LeAnn Thieman ******* To read a story or get a signed copy of the newly-released Chicken Soup for the Caregiver's Soul, click on the link below.

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A Sip of Soup is written by LeAnn Thieman, LPN, professional speaker, and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul. Contact LeAnn at 1-877-THIEMAN.