Tag: gratitude

Not an Obligation but a Celebration!

Are you a dog owner? If you are than you know that taking at least 2 walks a day is the standard of care. Dog owners are more consistent than the Post Office Deliver guys and gals. We walk in the rain, sun, snow, sleet, and fog. We walk in the blizzard, hurricane winds and blistery heat. I don’t always look forward to my daily walks but I always feel good when I return. I just got home from my morning walk with Fenway and she is passed out on her bed. I am reflecting on the emotions raised by this simple morning walk that often feels like an obligation I need to complete before I get on to the important tasks of the day.

This morning while out for a walk, I got to see what Mother Nature had to share with me in the wild suburbs I call home. The calendar may say it is April and the season is spring but it is flurrying and the temperature is in the 30’s! Ah, life in the Finger Lakes of Central, New York!

The Wild Suburbs!                            Image by Ian Wilson from Pixabay

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25 Years is a Long Time

On April 19 2014 I moved back to the Finger Lakes after 25 years in Massachusetts. Trust me, 25 years is a long time. Long enough to live in at least 12 different houses with many different roommates. Long enough to have a 20 year career and supervise too many people to count. Long enough to fall in and out of love a few times. Long enough to make wonderful friends that will last a lifetime, despite living 350 miles away.

Living closer to family and the lake is what drew me back to the Finger Lakes five years ago. I can’t believe it has been five years already! Five years is a long time too. Long enough to have a couple of jobs, move in with my honey, start my yard-work side-gig. Five years is long enough to have put down new roots and make more friends.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

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Sharing Some “Tude”

 

I have been writing a lot lately about choosing health and how that means a lot more than simply eating a good diet and exercising. One of my goals for 2019 is to write a gratitude journal as a means to choose mental health! Expressing gratitude is a wonderful way to bring inner peace, to get outside of negative thinking and to simply focus on the good. It is too easy to get sucked into “Stinking Thinking“, negative energy, bad vibes and the horrors of the daily news.

Today, I want to share a gratitude letter that I wrote at the end of 2018 to a former boss and mentor. I mailed this letter to her and she called me within a few days of receiving it. We had a great chat, caught up on life and shared more than a few laughs. Maybe reading this letter will encourage you to share your gratitude with a special person in your life!

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Who did you follow around as a kid? Is it time to thank them?

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Can You See Your Life?

2019 is in full swing and it is time I finalized my annual goals. I try to live my life strategically, spending as much time figuratively and literally in my happy place (My Little Blue Kayak) where I make my best decisions in pursuit of health, wealth and happiness. When sitting in my kayak, I can really see my life. I can see how it mirrors the life I want to be living and where it comes up a bit short! Writing annual goals is one way I try to make course corrections to keep me on my path. I use health, wealth and happiness as my goal categories and loosely define them as:

It doesn’t have to be blue!

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Sharing a Gratitude Letter

2018 is winding down and I have a few goals I haven’t yet reached. One of my happiness goals is to complete a 7 Days/7 Gives. Every day for 7 days I plan on doing something for another person, an animal or the environment. One small  step every day for 7 days. I haven’t yet figured out what steps I will take but I figured I could get myself in the mood by sharing something I did last year in an effort to not quarantine gratitude.

Last year, I wrote a letter to my friend Sue who was my first boss when I was in high school. She and her husband Chris (who has passed away) ran the one and only local restaurant and I worked for them all through high school and college.  Both of them have had a tremendous influence on me and I wanted to express my gratitude to her for everything they did for me. If reading this inspires even one person to write a gratitude letter themselves, I will be thrilled!

So happy I wrote it

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Is Your Bucket Overflowing?

My local library has a huge book sale twice per year in a warehouse. Wandering the aisles is entertaining and you never know what you will find. I bought and just finished  reading “How Full is Your Bucket?” by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton. It is a short, easy to read book that uses a metaphor of a dipper and a bucket to help us increase our happiness and improve our relationships.

According to the book; “Each of us has an invisible bucket. It is constantly emptied or filled, depending on what others say or do to us. When our bucket is full, we feel great. When it is empty, we feel awful. Each of us also has an invisible dipper. When we use that dipper to fill other people’s bucket – by saying or doing things to increase their positive emotions – we also fill our own bucket. But when we use that dipper to dip from others’ buckets – by saying or doing things that decrease their positive emotions – we diminish ourselves.”

Let’s fill each other’s bucket!

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Are You My Mother?

Today is Mother’s Day 2018! Who should you thank for Mothering you?

 I am Child # 8 out of 9 of an Irish Catholic family. I grew up with 2 loving parents, with a mom that stayed home to take care of the family and the home. My dad was a NYC police officer who retired when I was about 9, and my parents moved from Long Island to Upstate NY with the 4 youngest  kids.

Can you imagine raising 9 kids? Personally, I never felt the pull of motherhood. I think at a young age I recognized that it was hard work. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids and enjoy spending time with them but at then end of the day, I am happy to return to my quiet home to walk my dog.

This is more my speed

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Do You Love the Water?

I have been hanging out in Florida this week with Mother Fran and Child #7. The weather has been ok but regardless, it has been nice to get away from the cold and the snow. They live in what feels like a pretty congested area with busy roads full of traffic and every store you can think of within a 10 minute drive. Usually I would hate this type of area but they have something I crave with every ounce of my being. They live on the water. Don’t get too excited, it isn’t the ocean or even a lake; they live on a small pond. They share the pond with a bunch of other houses, each one faces the pond with their back porch.

Mom’s  back porch is screened in and the entire thing overlooks the pond. It has a table and chairs, small couch and comfy chair. You can also walk out the porch door and set up a lounge chair on the grass when the need overtakes you.  You can’t swim in this pond or even toss in your kayak (apparently that is frowned upon) but people do fish and enjoy the view.

The pond looks like this!

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7 Days/7 Gives

Do you know what it feels like to be stuck in a rut? Every day seems the same and the Joy Meter is reading empty. I hate when I get stuck like this. It is a gnawing feeling in my gut and an emptiness in my mind. I go through the motions of living but in reality I am just trying to get through each and every day. I think that in order to get out of the rut, we have to do something different. We have to step out of our comfort zones and take a small step in the direction we want to be going.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be something huge but it has to be out of character. It has to be something that makes you think, feel, believe just a little bit differently than you do when stuck in the rut.

How to break free?

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Embracing the Gray

Growing up in the 1970’s as Child #8 out of 9 meant I was always one of the “little kids”, always one of the youngest. When my whole family gathered, I  always sat at the kids table, always got booted off of the couch for someone older, always wore the hand-me-down clothes. I spent my childhood wishing I was older – like a teenager! I wanted to go out at night with my siblings, I wanted to stay up late eating ice cream with Mother Fran, I wanted to babysit the neighbor kids to earn a little spending money. I seriously remember thinking “when I’m big, I am going to eat cake and ice cream for breakfast”!  I knew how to dream BIG.

Chocolate please!

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