1. Silence, the Final Frontier: Where No Woman Has Gone Before
2. The Undiscovered Side of Banking: Making Deposits
3. Parties: Going Without New Outfits
4. Man Management: Minor Household Chores Can Wait Till After The Game
5. Bathroom Etiquette I: Men Need Space in the Bathroom Cabinet Too
6. Bathroom Etiquette II: His Razor is His
7. Communication Skills I: Tears – The Last Resort, not the First
8. Communication Skills II: Thinking Before Speaking
9. Communication Skills III: Getting What you Want Without Nagging
10. Driving a Car Safely: A Skill You CAN Acquire
11. Telephone Skills: How to Hang Up
12. Introduction to Parking
13. Advanced Parking: Backing Into a Space
14. Water Retention: Fact or Fat
15. Cooking I: Bringing Back Bacon, Eggs and Butter
16. Cooking II: Bran and Tofu are Not for Human Consumption
17. Cooking III: How not to Inflict Your Diets on Other People
18. Compliments: Accepting Them Gracefully
19. PMS: Your Problem…Not His
20. Dancing: Why Men Don’t Like To
21. Classic Clothing: Wearing Outfits You Already Have
22. Household Dust: A Harmless Natural Occurrence Only Women Notice
23. Integrating Your Laundry: Washing It All Together
24. Oil and Gas: Your Car Needs Both
25. TV Remotes: For Men Only

Have you ever watched a child completely engrossed in a project? They have the unusual ability to be serious about what they’re doing without taking it too seriously. You can do the same with your life. You can live every day with more focus, and every week with more motivation.

Here’s what every child knows that you may have forgotten. See if you can apply some of these lessons to your adult life.

1. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Even when there’s not a prize in the bottom of the box.
2. Homework blows. Bring work home with you and it’ll ruin your night. And your marriage. And your family. And your life.
3. The only way to know how something works is to completely disassemble it. (This is still good advice when tackling a complex problem. Your plasma TV? Not so much).
4. There’s a reason they don’t give credit cards to 8-year-olds. You’re supposed to save up money before you buy a new toy.
5. Asking questions is how you figure things out. Lots and lots of questions.
6. The coolest adults were the ones who took the time to listen to you. You still want to grow up to be a cool adult, right?
7. Your body was designed for throwing baseballs, shooting hoops, and jumping off diving boards and stuff. In the secret language of children, the word “fitness” doesn’t exist. It’s called “having fun.”
8. Playtime is important and laughter feels good.
9. Too much of anything will give you a tummy ache. Like, say, bourbon.
10. Try to be the friend you were when you were 12: fun-loving and loyal, with no strings attached.

2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including “to be in Abraham’s bosom,” “just add maggots,” and “sleep with the Tribbles” (a Star Trek favorite).

3 No American has died of old age since 1951.

4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.

5 The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the “agonal phase,” from the Greek word agon, or contest.

6 Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.

7 So much for recycling: Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.

8 Alternatively . . . A Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this “ecological burial” will decompose in 6 to 12 months.

9 Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultures.

10 The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.

11 Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.

12 If this doesn’t work, we’re trying in vitro! In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.

13 During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.

14 Well, yeah, there’s a slight chance this could backfire: English philosopher Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died in 1626 of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if cold would preserve it.

15 For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.

16 Waiting to exhale: In 1907 a Massachusetts doctor conducted an experiment with a specially designed deathbed and reported that the human body lost 21 grams upon dying. This has been widely held as fact ever since. It’s not.

17 Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in “hospitals for the dead” while attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.

18 Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.

19 If you can’t make it here . . . More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.

20 It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans began.

1. You Too Can Do Housework
2. Learning When To Keep Your Mouth Shut
3. How To Fill An Ice Cube Tray
4. Understanding the Female Response To You Coming In Drunk At 4 AM
5. Wonderful Laundry Techniques
6. Parenting – No, It Doesn’t End With Conception
7. Get a Life – Learn How To Cook
8. How Not To Act Like a Butthead When You Are Obviously Wrong
9. Spelling – Even You Can Get It Right
10. Understanding Your Financial Incompetence
11. Reasons To Give Flowers
12. How To Stay Awake After
13. Why It Is Unacceptable To Relieve Yourself
14. Anywhere But the Bathroom
15. Garbage – Getting It To the Curb
16. You – The Weaker Sex
17. You Can Fall Asleep Without It If You Really Try
18. The Weekend and Sports Are Not Synonymous
19. How To Put The Toilet Seat Down
20. How To Go Shopping With Your Mate and Not Get Lost
21. The Remote Control – Overcoming Your Dependency
22. How Not To Act Younger Than Your Children
23. You Too Can Be a Designated Driver
24. Fluffing the Blankets After Farting is Not Necessary
25. How To Take Illness Like a Man

1) Record why you’re grateful. (Now you know I am all about recording things you are grateful for since every Monday we have the Grateful Monday Party here on the G.I.R.L.S. Blog) Jot down in a journal all the tings you have to be grateful for right now. Write them in detail; meditate on why they are worth celebrating.

2) Remember your dreams. Spend time regularly describing the things you are still waiting for and imagine the possibilities. At the same time, look for threads of hope in the things you already have.

3) Acknowledge the perks. Consider what unique advantages accompany the season of life you’re in now. What experiences are you having that other season will not afford you? What are you learning form these unique experiences that you can take with you into the next season? How can you celebrate the perks of this season?

4) Listen to those who know. What books have been written about the experiences of your life right now? Find authors who biographies read like yours and gain insights from their stories. Think about how you might write your own story.

5) Log your life lessons. Organize a file entitle” Lessons from My Life Thus Far.” Regularly fill it with the lesson you learn or are learning in this season.

If we were to do the suggestions by Lynette we would see a great change in our lives. Why? Because our focus would not be on what we do not have, but instead on what we posses right now, what we can enjoy right now, and how our life story right now will be of help to others as well.