Daily Gratitude: Be honest. What was the first thought you had when you read this? Something like “here we go. What now?” Or worse. I would bet that these words instill dread in most people as soon as they hit their eardrums. I recently had an amazing experience with this. I was sitting with a gentleman at ABODE hewhen he was eating. He is dying. He has a lot of pain. But he kept saying “why me? What did I do to deserve this?” Fortunately I’ve been taught to just listen, not having to come up with a response. But I was expecting it to be a “poor me” question and I certainly wouldn’t have had any negative judgment about it because after all he isn’t dancing on top of the world. But then he surprised the dickens out of me. He said “what did I do to deserve all this kindness and attention? I am being treated in a special way but I’m not special. I’m just me.” I still have goose bumps when I write or think of this. I only hope I can Have one tenth of the gratitude this man has when I’m dying. Do me a favor and say a prayer of thanks for him and his lesson in love and life. You don’t need to know his name.

Daily Gratitude: I don’t know about you, but this really hit home for me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there are only a few concepts in life but there are a million ways to hear those concept – just about “one way per individual listening”. I used to be annoyed when leaders kept repeating themselves. But now I know that it’s essential. Everyone learns differently and a leader’s job is to find a way to teach as many people as possible. What does that have to do with this message? It’s a thought, an idea, a concept we hear all throughout our lives whenever the word happiness enters the equation. For some reason, though, this way of explaining it hit me right between the eyes. Each day is like a bullet list of events, thoughts, and emotions. If we look at this list of bullets each night, we stand a better chance, perhaps, of going to bed happier. For example. My daily call/hotline has been worrying me lately but because I started it, the most miraculous thing has happened in my life. The universe brought this exceptional man into my world (or me into his) and we have fast become friends. The “happy” part of that started with me listening and responding to his daily calls and then vice versa. Soon we were having a great dialogue even though it sounds weird to call leaving voicemails for each other a dialogue. But you see- the fact that I could listen to his 3 minute call at 4 am was a bullet point. Then he would leave me a message in response to my call and that would be another bullet point. And on top of that I pretty much can count on the great Karin Ababenal to also leave me an uplifting response. In the space of about one hour I had at least 3 bullet points of happiness. I didn’t wait til the end of the day to “see” if I felt happy. I experienced those 3 wonderfully happy moments and that filled my heart with joy and love. How can this change in thinking help you?

Daily Gratitude: Wow. I always thought Colin Powell was brilliant. And even if he never said anything other than this quote, it would be enough. How often do we get tied up in the mixture of fact and emotion? That’s like taking a healthy meal and then adding all the processed foods that are quick and easy to use. How healthy is the result? One of the hardest, yet most useful things we can learn how to do is remove emotion (our ego) from our arguments. I am working on that but have a really long way to go. But if we can remove the strong emotions, then we have a better chance of really understanding what the problem is and what can rationally be done about it. We need people who could do that in our country but right now it seems to be being run simply by emotion -no matter which side you’re on. And that right there is a big part of the issue- we have picked sides. Like a buffet or like a bunch of schoolyard kids picking a basketball team. Why can’t we all come together? This is not a political post but an attempt to get us to look at what “we” (each of us) have at stake in everything we feel passionate about. I could just as easily be writing about the Yankees given how passionate most baseball fans are – you know “my team is better than your team”. Key words here – “my” and “your”. That’s the ego being attached to our arguments. Try to spot this in your everyday thoughts and conversations and see what you can do about it.