Ideas to create a more happy, peaceful and rewarding life--365!
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.
Let’s keep our problems in perspective.
Some of the posts here on SMART Living 365 might lead you to believe that SMART Living is merely keeping a positive attitude. You might also think that once you embrace what I have been calling SMART Living that nothing unpleasant or bad ever happens in your life. Actually, while it might be nice if that were true—it’s not. SMART Living isn’t a place you arrive at like taking a trip to Hawaii and never coming home. Instead, SMART Living is a journey of discovering that no matter what happens, you have the consciousness, understanding and tools to deal with whatever comes your way.
Kathy, Kloe & Thom
Just over six months ago Thom and I added a new family member to our household—a puppy we named Kloe. To be sure, a puppy ads havoc, lots more work and a great deal of responsibility to anyone who cares for them. However, the increased value and joy Kloe brings to our lives more than compensates for any inconvenience. Not only does Kloe make us laugh on a daily basis, there is plenty of proof that she is also good for our health.
“Research has shown that people with a greater sense of vitality don’t just have more energy for things they want to do, they are also more resilient to physical illnesses. One of the pathways to health may be to spend more time in natural settings,” Richard Ryan.
Trees are alive too!
As some of our friends and family know, Thom and I have been renting a house for a month every summer up in Idyllwild for around 17 years. Idyllwild is a very small mountain town, (less than 2,000 permanent residents) about an hour from our home in the desert. Back in 1993 we did it for the first time because, quite frankly, we couldn’t afford any other type of vacation. It seemed like a good way to escape the desert heat and was a great bargain as well. Little did we know back then that the experience would be so rewarding, that we would still be doing it 17 years later. Now, not only do we consider it still an amazing vacation value, we are living examples of the restorative power of spending time in nature. [Read more…]
“It took some good calm thinking in order to get myself to calm down and stop throwing myself against the boulder.” –Aron Ralston, mountain climber and author
Yesterday Thom came across an interesting article on Huffington Post about the lack of common sense in the world today. The article by Dr. Jim Taylor said, “common sense is neither common, nor sense. There’s not a whole lot of sound judgment going on these days… so it’s not common.” We both agreed with his suggestions on how to bring more open and rigorous thinking to our decisions, but there was something else missing. Maybe that final ingredient to all common sense should be some “calmNsense.” [Read more…]
Happy SMART Day Everyone! Today is a great day to talk about the “R” in SMART Living—even if I am temporarily skipping a couple of letters to do it. That’s because the R stands for “Responsible” and one way of being responsible is being “response-able.” That’s right folks, although there are a couple of ways we believe that SMART Living asks us to be responsible…when it comes down to it, unless we are consistently able to respond in a way that creates peace and happiness we will always be susceptible to circumstances, events and other people. Once we take full responsibility for our actions, and yeah it isn’t always easy, then we can decide how we will proceed.