Two things define you. Your patience when you have nothing & your attitude when you have everything.   Pinterest is one of my favorite social media experiences. It’s fun to see what people like and repin.  I have oodles of quotes there, but I’m sharing this one because it is the most shared and re pinned quote on my boards.  Some days it says everything.

Living a deeper life can’t always involve a lot of slow-paced pondering and internally focused curiosity or some people might implode of frustration or boredom. I get it! We aren’t all put together the same way. There are countless ways to seek meaning in our experiences that don’t require psych manuals and intense inward study. It can be as simple as using any or all of the five generally-recognized senses: see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. Savoring life through your senses is pretty simple. Consider these thoughts: 1- How do you experience your senses? 2- Do you take them for granted? 3- Have you considered how your computer keyboard feels beneath your fingers? 4- Do you ever look at things without actually seeing them? 5- Do you make it a point to taste everything you put in your mouth versus just consuming? 6- Are you likely to think about how that living room...

Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life. -Pema Chodron

Puzzles are loads of fun and downright brutal to put together. It depends on how the pieces look and how many we’re talking – 50, 500, 5000? When you can’t seem to put together a puzzle in life as you seek truth from someone else, it’s because you are missing pieces of the truth. You are looking at a puzzle without all the pieces. When you allow yourself to see this – it can be easier to let go of one of the frustrating aspect of being hurt. It’s the fact that nothing can actually make sense when bits of truth are missing. You can’t force clarity. You can just use those moments to get clear with yourself about what is and isn’t working around you and either embrace it or move along. Here’s the thing…  Those pieces of truth? They might be missing for ALL involved parties, because not everyone has the same value system. For...

I once heard the idea that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. It didn’t work for me at the time. It felt like I was being told – if you don’t like crying stop chopping the onion.  Uh – Ok.  That’s all it takes?  I was annoyed because it sounded trite and judgmental which only compounded the hurt I was feeling. It didn’t seem to fit. Suffering was so uncomfortable. I was restless. I had to claw my way out so I could feel like it was potentially survivable. I began ruminating not just about the initial pain, I began to try to figure out my suffering. I was essentially mixed up in my own mind. Then one day, I woke up tired of myself. I needed new ideas to build new memories and help dissolve my runaway thinking. That meant I had to walk step by step thru my suffering. I investigated why I hurt so much. What was the source of that kind of brutal internal...

I do enjoy things beyond thinking about self-improvement and writing. I like to buy things… specifically inspiring jewelry. I make it and I love to support others who make it. It serves as a good vibe reminder. It’s super for centering. It gives you something to touch after something tosses you off center. Plus, it’s just good mojo. When you take in positive words – it’s good energy. These five thoughts do a great job of offering up where I stand as a person and priorities for places to improve…specifically the one in Gaelic. Aon imni translates to – no worries. The others are:  What would love do?, This too shall pass, One day at a time, and Happy Camper.

Life isn’t fair and I’ve struggled with the futility of it all here and there over the years. When you think and feel deeply – I don’t see how you don’t find yourself in that spiral once in a  while. As a result, I now land confidently on – life is indeed a gift – which can play like an ‘I’m shutting down from this happy chat immediately’ cliche. But – there’s more. You can’t always control what happens to you … which is where the unfair can sting so terribly. The thing is you teach people who you are and you learn about yourself in the recovery… the bounce back.  Is it perfect? Hardly. What is? To those who would dare say life is fair – I wonder…   Do they dislike themselves and think they somehow deserve awful things they endure? Or have they just not had anything that awful...

Reality, release, respect, relief.  This is the process I have walked through to make peace with forgiveness. A couple of posts back I talked about my distaste for the word forgiveness merely because there’s so much weight to it and such definition around it that it doesn’t honor the organic ebb and flow process that really feels like forgiveness. When I shed the idea forgiveness is a goal – as if there’s a win, lose aspect of it all – I found myself allowing forgiveness space to be in my experience.  I let it breathe. Here is the process I observe in myself: Reality – Accepting the reality of what is. We can talk all day about whether or not there actually is a reality and I love philosophy – so have at it – but not here and now. Since you are reading this, you accept that you have a day to day life that requires you understand you are...