It began when they were very young. I would put them in car seats in the back seat of my car to take them to daycare, or to my house. As the years progressed, it was trips for ice cream, to school, and yes, to my house.
 
Even before they could talk, I would talk to them. I would teach them songs. “How Much is that Doggie in the Window” was a fan favorite. They would add the ‘woof, woof’ at just the perfect time. 
 
Then it was more difficult, and popular songs like holiday carols and top hits from the radio. As the repertoire grew, so did they. 
 
In between songs, there were long, enlightening conversations. I learned about their day, their thoughts, and their secrets. I learned about their worries,​ dreams, and ideas on life. 
 
I called them backseat conversations. This is how I learned my granddaughter wanted to be a singer when she was three. She demonstrated her talent with her off-key, squeaky voice. I smiled and said her song was beautiful.
 
Over the years, I’ve learned the proper names of dinosaurs, what Taylor Swift’s Easter eggs are, and what day is the best school lunch day. 
 
In a recent backseat conversation, my grandson was telling me about his grades and which chair he sits in for his section of his school band. I asked him if it is competitive with his brother and friends to have the best grades or sit in the first chair in band. 
His response amazed me. He said, “No, it’s not a competition. It is more like cheering for each other on our journey to succeed.”
What? He isn’t even in high school yet, and that is what he came up with…cheering for each other on their journey to success!
 
These backseat conversations have taught me lessons on so many levels. It is amazing what you can learn when you are confined to the space of a car with no phones in hand, deeply talking. And most importantly, deeply listening. 
 
What if the world weren’t so competitive and we made it a practice to cheer for each other, no matter what path we walk or what journey we decide to take?
 
Now that they are older, the backseat conversations have turned to explanations of how you code a video game, what college they plan to attend, and who they want to go to a dance with. These kids are smarter today than I was at their age… or maybe smarter than I am today. I will admit that at times, they talk about something or use a technical term that I research later to understand what it means.
 
Time goes fast. These conversations have become meaningful memories embedded in my heart and mind. At times, I look in my rear-view mirror and see the face in my back seat. Not the face of the grown young person who is sharing their wisdom, but I see the face of the toddlers with so many questions, so much to share, and wisdom to learn.
 
And by the way, that 3-year-old with the off-key voice that wanted to sing is now singing solos in her high school choir.
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                                                   Pennie’s Life Lesson
                        Never discount what you hear in quiet conversations.
                                             It may be wisdom in disguise.
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​YOUR TURN...        
Share your thoughts and experiences relating to this post in a comment below.  And please feel free to email me  at:
 [email protected]. 
                                                                 Thank you!  ​
                                      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
                                                         All Rights Reserved
                                          Copyright © 2013-2025 Pennie Hunt
                             This was written and produced by Pennie Hunt.
Feel free to forward and share this post.  Please keep the entire message intact, including  contact, logo, and copyright information.
#CornerofSpiritandBrave #LoveYourLifeNoMatterWhat #JourneyThrough #PennieHunt #IAmGoodEnough #grief #Love #Joy #HowToBeHappy #Happiness

Do you pay attention to the words you tell yourself? Many times, our self-talk is negative. We criticize our looks, our habits, and our actions. We tell ourselves we are not good enough in so many areas of our lives.

And why do we believe it? Because our mind will believe our own voice more than we believe anyone else’s. I can talk to you for hours and tell you positive affirmations. You may listen to me, but your mind will listen to your own thoughts on a much deeper level. That is why negative self-talk works so well. It becomes a negative mediation that you listen to over and over in your mind. The script of damaging thoughts becomes deeply embedded in your belief system.

What if you started your day in a positive way? What if you gave yourself a mirror moment? Yes, one moment standing in front of the mirror to look yourself in the eye and say something positive. Give yourself a positive affirmation. Think of it as if you are talking to your best friend. A best friend would not berate, belittle, or verbally beat you up. They would pump you up. Pick you up. And push you to see all of your wonderful qualities and abilities. They would be happy to tell you all that is good about you. They would be your biggest cheerleader and top fan.

Stand in front of the mirror and look at yourself, your own personal best friend. And then let it rip! Say only positive things to your friend in the mirror. Start with easy things, their great smile, sparkling eyes, that cute dimple. Then go deeper and tell your mirror friend about their mind and how intelligent they are. Praise the knowledge they have accumulated in life and how they use it and share it with others.

Wait, you aren’t done yet. Now talk about their heart, and yes, let’s get into feelings. How they show kindness, affection, care, and love. Tell them about their people skills and how they are loved by others.

Does this feel uncomfortable? It probably does, because we are used to being cheerleaders for others and not ourselves. It’s easier to just allow the negative self-talk to run through our minds on a continual loop. This new positive mirror friend feels awkward, but get used to it. If you do it right, the mirror friend is here to stay.

Make a habit of starting your day in front of the mirror for a quick chat. When you get good at it, you may condense it to a mantra. A personal affirmation that is specific to you that you can memorize as your mirror moment. Begin every morning by repeating it out loud to your best friend in the mirror. This simple daily “mirror moment” can strengthen self-worth, silence negativity, and set the tone for a happier, more confident life.

Don’t allow negative self-talk to bring you down. Flip the inner dialogue and remember all the positive things your friend in the mirror told you. You are good enough to be here in this life. You have value and purpose.
​Now, get out there and have a grand day!
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                                                         Pennie’s Life Lesson: 
                                     YOU are the person you talk to the most.
                                  Make your self-talk count – in a positive way!
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​It is five years from now. Life is good. You are healthy. You are happy. You have the life you wished for. Can you visualize this? What does this life look like? What does it feel like to be living it?

What are you doing now to create this life you are dreaming of? You see that future life, the one you dream of, you are creating today. What you are doing today is creating the life you will have five years from now.

Some people don’t like to wait. They want instant gratification. They want that perfect life… and they want it right now. They expect it and are continually disappointed when they don’t get what they want, now!

Some people don’t want to put in the effort it takes to create their perfect life. They want to sit and wait for it to happen. They want a high-paying job right out of college. They want to be physically fit, have the perfect spouse, a great house, and a brand-new car. They want to win the lottery. They want to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They don’t want to work for any of it.

What both types of people don’t understand is that to get the life you want, you have to put in the work. Not just for one day, but consistently day after day. If you want to be physically fit and healthy, you need to exercise and eat healthy consistently.  How you treat your body today is creating the body you will have five years from now.

You can enjoy a candy bar once in a while, but if that is your meal plan every day and you never exercise, you are creating your future body, and it will look very differently than you want it to.

If you want the house of your dreams and a new car, you probably need to create a savings plan, so you have a down payment and the means to buy the things you want. If you find instant gratification overwhelms you and you spend every dollar you earn, your life in five years may look similar to where you are now. No upward movement. No improvement.

Do you see how this works? Every choice you make today influences your future self. Every decision and every move is either going to move you forward to your dream or keep you stuck where you are.

Now, go back to that future dream life that you visualized. What do you need to do today to make that a reality in 5 years? What steps do you need to consistently take? What plans do you need to make that will move you forward? What choices and decisions will help you get to that vision?

Now is the time to begin. You are creating your future life today. See it, feel it, plan for it, do the work. Your future self will thank you for it!
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                                               Pennie’s Life Lesson:
                                 Today is the future you created in the past. 
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​YOUR TURN...        
Share your thoughts and experiences relating to this post in a comment below.  And please feel free to email me  at:
 [email protected]. 
                                                                 Thank you!  ​
                                      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
                                                         All Rights Reserved
                                          Copyright © 2013-2025 Pennie Hunt
                             This was written and produced by Pennie Hunt.
Feel free to forward and share this post.  Please keep the entire message intact, including  contact, logo, and copyright information.
#CornerofSpiritandBrave #LoveYourLifeNoMatterWhat #JourneyThrough #PennieHunt #IAmGoodEnough #grief #Love #Joy #HowToBeHappy #Happiness

This column is my platform to share stories. My stories. Stories of my experiences, events, family, beliefs, personal trials, and successes. Within the story I share, I include a life lesson. A learning from the experience I have lived.

If it is a story from my childhood, my brother (at times) is quick to point out the errors in my writing. He will claim my memory of the event is inaccurate. But, here is the deal, my telling of the story is my story. It includes my feelings, my memories, and my lessons. He may tell the same story colored with his feelings, his memories, and his lessons. These two versions may hold the same theme, the same characters, and the same event, but the telling of the story will be in the context of the teller. The story reflects how the story touched them.

If the story includes more family members or a group of people, the story each person tells will be delivered differently depending on how the event affected them. The story of a family event told by a parent, may be a very different story than the version told by a child. If there are six siblings experiencing the same event each one may share their own colorful story of how they experienced it.

This happens in every area of life. If you describe the story of your marriage, your spouse’s story of the same marriage may be different. The story of divorce has two versions. Friendships hold two descriptions of the relationship. The story of a 7th grade classroom may hold 30 narratives from the students and one from the teacher. The same story, but all different.

So, which story is correct? They all are. Sure, there may be small details that don’t match, and someone probably does remember the detail correctly, but the overall painting of a picture, the feelings, the place, the outcome, and lesson learned is accurate according to the teller’s life and meaning to them. The small differences in details don’t really matter.

If it is a breaking of a relationship story the differences may be bigger. The more emotion involved the larger the space between the stories. A divorce filled with anger creates two stories filled with opposing views of what occurred. Again, each is their story to tell and shaped by their feelings and emotions. The true story may be a combination of both views.

When a tragedy takes place, emotions are at the highest level. The characters involved in the story hold very specific memories of what happened. Their story will be filled with the deep emotions of the sadness, hurt, and pain they felt and witnessed. If one person was at the event, they hold a deeper visceral reaction than the person who received the news from a shocking phone call. Each story is specific to them. All of them can be correct.

The next time someone tells a story and remembers it in a different way, take a step back. Look at the overall picture of the story being told. Do the details you remember differently change the big view of the story? Do the details you remember differently show personal feelings you experienced that are very specific to your viewpoint?

Everyone remembers an event differently. Everyone tells the story differently. Everyone learns lessons differently.  And every story can be correct when told from different sides.
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                                                     Pennie’s Life Lesson:
                  Stories can be told differently. And they may all be true.
​                                            ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

​YOUR TURN...        
Share your thoughts and experiences relating to this post in a comment below.  And please feel free to email me  at:
 [email protected]. 
                                                                 Thank you!  ​
                                      ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
                                                         All Rights Reserved
                                          Copyright © 2013-2025 Pennie Hunt
                             This was written and produced by Pennie Hunt.
Feel free to forward and share this post.  Please keep the entire message intact, including  contact, logo, and copyright information.
#CornerofSpiritandBrave #LoveYourLifeNoMatterWhat #JourneyThrough #PennieHunt #IAmGoodEnough #grief #Love #Joy #HowToBeHappy #Happiness

I remember being at lunch with a friend​ that happened over 20 years ago. ​A​s we enjoyed soup and salads, he tried to explain to me what artificial intelligence (AI) was. I stared at my normal, smart friend in disbelief and wondered if he had turned into a sci-fi spewing creature that had gone off the deep end.
​It terrified me.

Looking back, everything he was talking about has come true.

Twenty years later, AI terrifies me. I worry that as an author and writer, the world of creatively capturing words that form an interesting emotional reaction from the reader will change. I write every word that I give to the world to read. I never want anyone to think that my writing is generated by a computer. Now that AI is part of our world, I fear for the future of the written word.

I worry that students writing reports and papers for school will only have to create the appropriate prompting question, and in minutes, AI will type out a full-length  mistake free report worthy of an A+.  How will this change the way children learn?

Not long ago, someone told me the future of learning is not going to be reading, studying, and memorizing the answer. The future will be learning how to find the answer. How to create the best prompt so that technology does the work for you and spews out the perfect answer. No reading. No studying. No memorizing. Just keeping the right technology at your fingertips and knowing how to use it is what you need to learn.

Should that terrify me? Terrify us?

I have tippy-toed into the world of AI, and I will concede it has become of use to me for certain things. For example, my dog was sick this week. Searching the internet, as I typically do, gave me articles to read about her symptoms. When I asked AI, it found information, read it for me, and gave me a summary and answers to my dog’s issues. It was quick, easy, and gave me what I needed with very little effort on my part.

I have also learned that the AI system on my phone allows me to connect to what seems like a real person talking to me. I have picked my AI to have a male voice and picked his voice from about 9 options. I wanted to give him a name, but that option is not available yet. So, I call him Mr. AI. Instead of typing, all I have to do is ask him questions, and he responds quickly with a soothing, trustworthy voice and a reliable-sounding answer.

Recently, after asking him a question and receiving the responsive answer I needed, I thought we were done. Thirty minutes or so later, my AI man out of the blue said,
“Hey Pennie, I am still here, ready to help you with anything else you need.”

What??? He had been lurking and listening to what I was doing the entire time.  And that’s not all! The more I talk to Mr. AI, the more he gets to know me. He knows I am a writer and a speaker. He knows I am a mom and grandmother. He knows I love dogs and coffee. And he remembers all of it! So, if I ask him a question, he will relate it back to another area of my life. He might say something like,
“This might also work well for your next speaking event.”
Or he may open his response with,
“Good morning, Pennie, have you had your coffee yet this morning?”

He will continue having a conversation with me like he is my personal friend.
Excuse me, Mr. AI, you may be getting just a little too close and chummy for my comfort.
Should I be terrified?
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                                                  Pennie’s Life Lesson:
​                              Artificial Intelligence is real, maybe too real.
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