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...

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...

Pumpkin pie, Aunt Mable Dallas Cowboys Washing dishes 4 a.m. shopping More pumpkin pie When it comes to the holiday season, overload is an American pastime. If you ask many Americans, they will tell you that while they like the time they spend with their family, they don't like what they perceive as the requisite activities. By the end of a what is supposed to be a day of experiencing gratitude for the non-material aspects of our lives, most Americans are exhausted, short-tempered, and ready for a second nap. So are we obligated to drive ourselves batty in making sure we arrive at the mall parking lot before the sun rises. Our actions seem to say we do. Maybe this won't be the year you will live up to your vow of simplicity for the holidays. That's okay. You can still monitor your sense of well-being by taking a short inventory of your physical and mental status. Take a H.A.L.T. Hungry Angry Lonely Tired If you feel any of those things, then b...

Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews 13:2 No doubt about it, these two Sister Angels showed hospitality and love to a stranger: me  This week, one of the sisters passed on to  entertain  the angels in heaven. I met the Sister Angels six years ago when I worked for the small college in the new town I had moved to. I was as lonely and homesick as I had ever been and spent many early days wondering what I had done to deserve this banishment to the remote desert of Southeast New Mexico. As a New Age Northern Liberal, I wondered  if I would ever again come across people who might satisfy the longing for connection I felt my new home lacked. Then one afternoon, Sister Angel Number One walked in to sell me advertising. Not an unusual solicitation for the position I held, but the aura about the sales rep made me take a few extra minutes to inquire about her work.   Details of the initial con...

The Process of Changing a life-style is more important than reaching a goal or measuring a performance--Theodore Issac Rubin What is a process? It's a series of steps or stages and it's most definitely the mixing of a variety of independent elements to make a new creation. So, the individual aspects of the process are important because the quality of them will determine the quality of the goal or performance. I pray that on a daily basis my individual interactions with others add up to a whole, quality life. SierraTradingPost.com, Great Deals. Great Brands.

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 Has your life knocked the breath out of you? No wonder, as multi-tasking has been tagged as the the working person's holy grail when it comes to getting it done.  But for all of the star treatment multi-tasking has garnered over the years,  efficiency experts  are now learning that focusing on one task at a time is more productive than attempting to complete many things. If you find yourself distracted and scattered throughout the day, spending a few minutes in paying attention to your breathing can bring back your focus.  According to integrative health physician  Andrew Weil, M.D. , "practicing regular, mindful breathing can be calming and energizing and can even help with stress-related health problems ranging from panic attacks to digestive disorders." Breathing by its very nature is a sing...