SMART Living 365

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

Do Know Your Well-Being Score? It’s Our Recommended Site for 12/5/11

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Filed under: Meaningful, Rightsized, Sustainable

Happy SMART Day Everyone!

Photo by Robo Android

An enormous part of the SMART Living lifestyle is the daily awareness of our overall well-being.  Do you know how you rate?  Conveniently you can now go to a website named “Twitter Well-Being Tracker” and take a short and simple online test that will give you a score.   Why is it called the “Twitter Well-Being Tracker”?  Probably because you have the option of posting your score on the Twitter website or not.  (Not sure why anyone would want to—but that is your choice.)  A big reason that we think this website deserves attention is that as the busy holiday season kicks in during the next few weeks, it will benefit everyone to stay mindful and aware about what truly makes us happy and content—and the Well-Being Tracker is great for just that! [Read more…]

Dear Costco—It’s Not SMART to Celebrate Christmas in September!

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Filed under: Rightsized, Sustainable

Happy SMART Day Everyone!

How many of you have noticed that Costco and a couple of other big-box retailers have already set up their Christmas decorations—and September isn’t even over?   That’s right, sometime during the month of September Costco began moving out the summer displays and setting up Christmas trees, neon-flashing Santa’s and boxes of wrapping paper, all designed to get you in the buying mood early this year.  And while I’m normally a fan of Costco, I consider their Christmas push to be obscene.  As a member of the “club,” this push is a great reminder that Costco’s, (and similar other retail store’s) primary agenda is not to serve customers—but instead to generate income.  And that is something very SMART for each of us to remember. [Read more…]

The Power Of Your Words

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Filed under: Aware, Meaningful, Rightsized

 “Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.” –Buddha

Do you realize how much power you possess every time you open your mouth?  Or what about when you post something on Facebook or send out that email?  Every communication we have with others carries with it the ability to bring a smile to someone’s face and potentially lift one’s spirit.  Or, we simultaneously have the power to create fear, doubt, or even worse.   While we usually can’t turn another person’s life around without their cooperation, we can, with the simple words we say or write, instantly shift the energy in a person or in a room.   Let’s start remembering that the words we share with others are like a wand bestowing blessings or curses.

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgi0t2ap-us[/tube]

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Resilience—Do you break, bruise or bounce when stuff happens?

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Filed under: Meaningful, Rightsized, Sustainable

 

            Drop a light bulb on the floor and it shatters.  Drop an apple and it bruises.  Drop a hard rubber ball and it bounces back—good as new.  What about you? Every single one of us experiences a variety of events every day.  Some experiences are smooth and pleasant, some merely okay, and others downright tough.   While most of us can sail easily through the good times—whether we shatter, bruise or bounce during the tough times are as individual as we are.   We all know a few people who are amazing at bounding right back.  Others—not so great.  The good news is that with the desire, every one of us can improve our bounce-ability quotient. [Read more…]

It’s SMART To Stay Open to the New and Possible

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Filed under: Meaningful

 

Has anything pleasantly unexpected happened to you lately?  Why not?  If your day is starting to look and feel like the movie “Ground Hog Day” then maybe you have closed yourself off from the new and possible.  Just holding open the possibility that something new and wonderful could happen today—might be what’s needed to crack open that door to a miraculous possibility that never before seemed feasible.

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SMART Living is seeing the Good AND Laughing on A Regular Basis

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Filed under: Thankful

Let’s face it.  We live in an amazing world filled with all sorts of incredible things.  Yet, because humans tend to adjust to just about anything very quickly, we usually forget how great our lives are.  SMART Living asks us to slow down, look around and pay attention—and then be thankful.   I found this great short comedy video on FaceBook today and I think it says something very important in a short, funny and irreverent way.  What do you think?

 

The “T” in Thankful Completes The Path To SMART Living 365

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Filed under: Thankful

Happy SMART Day Everyone!

The most important practice to living SMART 365 is to feel thankful and grateful on a daily basis.   Luckily, it is also one of the easiest.  Once you begin to put gratitude at the top of your daily to-do list, you will immediately begin to see positive changes in the way you look at your life.   My own experience shows it is impossible to be truly grateful and unhappy at the same time.  But I’m not alone in my thinking; these days there are books and studies that prove that the science of gratitude can profoundly increase the quality of your life. [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.

[youtube fD1512_XJEw]

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