Daily Gratitude: “The measure of a life is not what you consume, but what you contribute.”

I’m sure there are better quotes to commemorate the life of Dolly Parton but this sums up her iconic 80 years. This woman contributed so much that many of us don’t even know about.

She was an amazing musician yes. But did you know she wrote over 3000 songs?

Her appearance took over and when people criticized or made fun of it, she joked – “people think I’m just a dumb blonde. That’s ok because I know I’m not dumb…and I’m not blonde”. Or, “it takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” She knew what she really was – deep inside. And that’s what she showed us with her philanthropic deeds.

One of the doctors who worked on the Covid vaccine said her gift of one million dollars toward vaccine research at Vanderbilt sped up its creation or production 10 times.

Have you ever heard of her Imagination Library? Her daddy couldn’t read or write and she wanted every child to be able to reach their dreams. She knew that would be facilitated via books. So, she sends books to kids all over the world and over 300 MILLION books have been distributed. It was her passion almost as much as singing was.

This woman was an astute business woman too as you can tell from all her business ventures.

She loved people and she loved her husband. I personally believe she died from a broken heart and she was ready to be with Carl.

Find me someone who didn’t and doesn’t respect the phenomenal Dolly Parton. May she rest in peace.

Daily Gratitude: “You can change in an instant. You can change your mind. You can change your timing. You can change your approach. You can change your words.”

Sometimes I think we forget this. It’s such a fast moving world now that we think we have to act and react just as fast. That leaves us no time for pausing…or thinking.

Plus there’s such emphasis on making everything automatic that we feel our reactions have to be automatic too. There’s auto-pay and auto-fill.

But there’s also good old autocorrect. How many times do you see people swear about some word autocorrect put down instead of the word they meant. It’s kind of funny that we get mad at a system other humans wanted (why else would it have been created) just because it didn’t do what WE wanted. We react often in ways we don’t really want and frequently wish there was a backspace or delete key for words and thoughts that just spewed out of our minds and mouths.

We have to understand that it’s all in our control and we can change. No more blaming what happens on others or on external circumstances. We are responsible for us! We are responsible for what we say and think and do.

Once you accept that, you’re much more likely to take the time to pause before responding. Why? Because you’ve accepted that everything you do, think, and say is under your control. And we want to get it right then.

Slow down. Think about what you want to change and what is the best way to do that. Come up with a basic plan knowing that you may need to revise that plan. If nothing else, vow to be in charge of all you want to change. Think about the power that gives you!

Daily Gratitude: “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

This is great. It’s a simple summary of how we should live each day. We should pay attention to as much as we can. That doesn’t mean to become easily distractible. It means to get out of ourselves. We usually live in a mall. Huh? Yes, a big fancy mall with no windows, doors at either end, and lots of shops.

We park our cars (get up in the morning) and head for a door to the mall (our life that day). Once inside we are pretty sure we know where we want to go. So. We don’t bother with the directory. If we did take even a short glance at it, we’d see many different options for us to explore and perhaps enrich our day. But, no. We traipse along, head down, hoping other people aren’t staring at us, and make our way to the Apple Store (our destination for today’s segment of life).

Once at the Apple Store we conduct our business interacting with other people perhaps, viewing all the bright shiny objects, and most importantly, checking our trusty Apple Watch to see if it’s time to go home.

At lunch we don’t even go outside. We take the escalator to the Food Court, and grab the same old dull processed lunch we had yesterday. We don’t consider another store. That would involve decisions and right then making decisions seems too hard.

Back to the Apple Store to finish out the day – 8 or more hours inside this mall, doing the same thing hour after hour. Breathing the same air over and over (supposedly it’s “recycled”), things feel stuffy.

It’s time to head home and out we go to our car. We’re surprised that it’s rained. And it seems there may have been some flash flooding (imagine you’re in Texas for this scenario).

But you’re so tired that all you care about is whether your route home is blocked. You don’t care about accidents that have happened, people who have been stranded. You just want to get home so you can start the entire routine again.

What did you pay attention to? What were you astonished by? Whom did you tell about your day?

Can you take one day or one portion of a day and skip the mall of life and go to the park (doing a hobby, perhaps)? Once you’re there, can you pay attention and find one thing to be astonished about (it may take some time but it’s possible)? And then go tell others about it?