Daily Gratitude: Can you read this enough times that you understand it? I mean truly understand it. No, I’m not making fun of you. I just know from experience that it’s easy to read something without really seeing it. Most people think that excessive stress leads to illness and I agree. But often what leads to that excessive stress is the need to “get it done right now” (or yesterday would be better). It’s rushing from this activity to the next and then to another. No room to breathe. Are all these activities necessary? If they involve our kids, what are we really teaching them is important? Why do they have to be into everything? Is that healthy for them? I was just sitting here thinking about how I don’t feel great this morning (no, nothing major is wrong. I’m just old) and then I realized there could have been plenty of mornings when I felt that way in the past BUT I was always moving on to the next task. I never allowed myself to feel anything let alone not feel well. Of course that’s what landed me in the hospital for 5 weeks in 2017. I never stopped to think about what was going on in my life. Even the post shingles pain hadn’t made me stop to analyze that and let me tell you that pain was horrific and constant. How numb can we get ourselves? And then how dumb is it to be numb? In my case it was very dumb. I had missed all the signals and messages and there were many. I didn’t know how to slow down and be patient. So the universe taught me. Why don’t you look at your life and see where you could use a bit more patience? Then see what you can do about it? Hopefully preventing you from becoming a patient.