Daily Gratitude: I absolutely love this quote – as a writer and as a photographer. But also as just a human being

The basic concept applies to all of life.

In our hectic worlds we stay way too much on the periphery of situations. We rarely have or take the time to enter into them with any depth.

Can you take a deep breath right now and ask yourself if this may apply to you. Just an introspection, not a confession to the world.

I would bet that every single person on this call has a phone that can take pictures. I could be wrong, but….

Would you be willing to try an experiment? I think it would be fun. You can do it for a week or a couple of days or whatever you want. Just remember that if you think it would be fun or useful, you’ll need more than a day or two to get your brain used to it

What if you took at least one picture each day and preferably more so you could choose the right one later. This would be a picture of things that catch your attention. It could be sitting in traffic and the cars lined up in front of you – for instance, yesterday after a meeting I was comiong home and it was “rush hour time” AND there was a train so I was stopped for maybe 5 minutes – and you know as well as I do that that 5 minutes seemed like an hour. But I could have shot a picture of all the cars ahead and around me.

I could also have taken a picture of the 4 of us friends meeting.

Or my sitting and waiting at the ophthalmologists office

Or maybe you’d take a photo of your desk at work, your family at dinner, maybe your running gear if you’re a runner

Anything will do and as I said, the more the better.

Then, and this is the “tough” part – at the end of the day. Or, if you’re like me and much more of a morning person you could do it the next morning.

Pick one of the pictures you took and write about it. Use a notebook or your phone or your computer, it doesn’t matter.

Take a few minutes and look at it. Really look at it. Quickly jot down the FEELINGS you noticed when you looked at it. Can you tell if they were the same feelings you had when you took the picture. For example, if I had taken a picture of the cars backed up and looked at it today or last night, I wouldn’t have felt the same frustration. I probably would have looked at the differnent cars and then even thought about how grateful I am that I can still afford gas, can still drive and that I have a place to drive to. That would have led me to thinking about the meeting I had and how I love my friends and what a great idea we had come up with and how great it is to be a part of something new. And that would have taken me to thinking more aobut my friends and my purpose. You can see how this would flow

Being deeper into the things that happen to and around us enriches our lives so that we’re not just doomscrolling through our daily activities because with everyting on turbo we are living just like we’re viewing social media. Next, next, next….

Try this and let me know what you think

Daily Gratitude: When you’re bored with all that’s going on in your life, remember this quote.

Decide to create one…or more…challenges. What would you like to discover? Take some ordinary aspect of your life and think about how you can make it less ordinary, less boring.

Take my walking for example. I get very bored in the “off season” because I walk on the greenway near my house. Yes it’s long. There are over 20 or 30 miles I could explore. But inevitably it’s the same 10 mile stretch. Fortunately I’m now in the training season but I’ve noticed that I am even getting a bit bored with the training routes I have for vol state training.

However, it’s much easier for me to look at my training route with new eyes.

How?

By deciding on a specific intention fot each day’s walk. Right now it’s walking without stops but it could be to do some other exploration along the same route to find other hills.

“Having new eyes” simply means looking at things differently, from a diffferent perspective.

Back to the off season walks. I have to dedicate some of my walks to flowers or trees and by that I mean taking pix of them rather than worrying about how I’m walking.

How about your career? Almost all my life I made my jobs fun. My last 26 years were in an administrative position. You’re probably thinking – oh my god how caould that possibly be interesting? 26 years? Ugh!

But I was working with people’s lives even though it was on paper. There were always things to figure out. So I adopted the character or either Murder She Wrote or Columbo – google them if you’re too young..

Each case was a mystery to me. Something to be solved. How could I figure out what was really going on? The people who didn’t last long in that job were those who just saw words on the paper and then judged the picture painted by those words. They never questioned the words and often that was where the real truth was.

How can you look at your work or home life differenlty? Find something that bores you and try this out.

Daily Gratitude: Good ole Albert was such a wise man. Remember that there is a difference between being smart and being wise. Lots of people are smart (accumulation of knowledge) but not so many are wise (knowing how to apply that knowledge in accordance with the laws of the universe – living).

So. No matter how many times you have to do something over, keep doing it. People say I am persistent because I just kept applying to medical school no matter how many times I was rejected. I don’t think of it as persistence. I had nothing else to do with my life….plus God had told me I was going to he a doctor.

I had what Napoleon Hill calls your definite purpose (or your definite chief aim..you can use whatever term works for you). Nothing was going to get in the way of my achieving that!

Of course I would have failed had I stopped applying but I didn’t. There were so many reasons the universe knew it wasn’t the right time for me to get in. I didn’t know any of that and so I was bitter and angry. I even lost all my faith in God. But surprisingly I didn’t lose the desire He had planted deep in my soul.

If you want something, keep trying. Find a way!!!