rewarding Archives — Page 2 of 2

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

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

By Kathy Gottberg
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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The R in SMART Living Stands For Responsible

By Kathy Gottberg
Filed under: Rightsized

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.

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What Does The “S” Stand for in SMART?

By Kathy Gottberg
Filed under: Sustainable

Happy SMART Day Everyone!

It occurred to me that it would be wise to go through and explain what I am attempting to include with each letter in the word SMART. As some of you know, Thom and I have been actively involved in the “green” and sustainable movement for the last couple of years. We never, or at least I never, considered myself to be a “treehugger.” I still don’t. But what I have grown to discover is that living in a green or sustainable way means that you take care of what you have, you aren’t wasteful or inconsiderate with what you use, you honor the gifts that are given and don’t abuse them, and you realize what you give out you get in return. Not only does that philosophy apply to how we treat planetary resources, it also applies to just about every thing we do–physically, emotionally and spiritually.

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