Great Life Gifts

A lovely sunset A glass of water Freshly mowed grass Your first kiss Your last day of a difficult set of circumstances. From a simple sensual experience to a complex dynamic of relationship interactions, our level of gratitude will determine our ability to navigate or appreciate the moment. Something to consider: write a note of gratitude for any experience you encounter each week which engages you in a positive or negative way. The positive builds memory for times of challenge and the negative reveals the character we build along the way. The negative teaches an opposite way to be and the positive re-enforces it. Without the negative the positive can't exist. Without the negative all we have is neutrality, stagnation, and complacency. And if that's all there is, then that's all there is. You have the capacity for more: GRATITUDE

Winners are good to hang with. They come out ahead. They have drive and focus and when they have spare time they volunteer on boards and city commissions and sometimes write large checks for art programs. But their winning is predicated on someone else losing and once you’re behind it takes a superhuman, supernatural effort to get ahead. If you’re lucky like some of the popular underdog turned superdog stories out there, you’ll sell the right product out of the trunk of your car on the right corner of the right city. With enough drive and perseverance, they tell you, you’ll come out on top and then you can sell your advice, books, and DVDs to the adoring teeming masses. But what if you don’t have a car to begin with. Or an Internet Connection. Or any Connection. Then what?  You stand in line.  At the Welfare Office,  At the Food Pantry, At the Salvation Army. That is if you’re still able to stand in line. But what if your days of driving and standing are long gone. Th

With a mid-week holiday, it can be challenging to feel the at the top of our game when we return to work Thursday and Friday. As the year winds down and you begin making commitments for improvements for your lifestyle, consider drinking more water to be one of your top decisions for 2014. Start Thursday and Friday as an experiment and see if it doesn't help diminish some of the sugar plum and Santa cookie hangovers you might be experiencing. With all things being equal for new year's resolutions, drinking plain water everyday is the simplest action we can take to make an overall improvement in our health across the board. You'll know you're drinking enough water because when you pee your urine will be of no color. If it's yellow, then you're too mellow with your water.  Here's a partial list of reasons to drink more water. 1.   Improve exercise time and lose weight--water is a temperature regulator during intensive exercise and it's an appetite su