SMART Living 365

Ideas to create a more happy, peaceful and rewarding life--365!

Don’t Take Anything For Granted & Share Your Love—365!

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Filed under: Meaningful, Thankful

 

Kloe

This week Thom and I experienced a dramatic reminder of this truth—don’t take anyone for granted and share your love with those you love every single day.   While most all of us would agree that this is an important part of SMART Living, everyone—me included, can use a reminder

Our “lesson” in this regard came this past Monday evening.  There was nothing special about the day—nothing bad, but nothing amazingly wonderful either.   We’d finished dinner and Thom was in the kitchen doing dishes.  I could see that the sun had finally set so I knew it would be getting cooler outside.  Our small mixed-terrier dog Kloe was watching me closely to see if it was time to go to the dog park before dark.  But right before we did, Thom decided to take the garbage out to the trash bins with Kloe trailing behind. [Read more…]

A Simple Path to SMART Living 365–Just Smile!

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Filed under: Meaningful, Thankful

Do you have any idea how powerful a simple smile is?  I sure didn’t.  Last night I watched the attached TED Talk where Ron Gutman, the CEO of HealthTap, explained the benefits of something we can do every single day—smile.

Gutman said he got his start from a study done at Berkley that tracked graduates over a 30-year period.  What they did is first examine and then measure the smiles from students found in their graduation yearbook.  From the smiles they measured they were able to predict how fulfilling and long-lasting the individuals married relationships would be, how well they would score on a standardized test for well-being, and finally how inspiring they would be to others.  Wow—makes you wish you could go back and take that photo again right? [Read more…]

Meaning In Life—Explaining the M in SMART Living

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Filed under: Meaningful

Happy SMART Day Everyone!

In order to be happy and fulfilled, all people everywhere share one fundamental need regardless of their background, race, religion, education or any number of cultural differences—that one thing is “meaning.”  When we have meaning, we believe our life has a purpose and that our being here matters.  In other words, in order to live SMART every day, a sense of meaning is critical.

One of the champions for the value of meaning was a man named Viktor Frankl.  As a three-year survivor of the horror of Nazi concentration camps, he eventually became an eminent psychotherapist.  While many of Frankl’s fellow prisoners died in the camps, he believed that a key reason for his survival was the inner strength he derived from meaning.

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