Daily Gratitude: This should be good news to everyone. It means you can do something about your circumstances. The “bad” news is that you can do something about your circumstances. Why is that “bad” news? Because you have to accept the responsibility for that. You can’t continue to blame others or blame the world or blame anything. You have to realize that you can and should be able to change where you are in life and how you feel about it. It’s not easy. There isn’t a pill to take. You have to keep your eyes open and your brain aware 24 hours a day. You’re in the middle of a gigantic field. You see one path, a well worn path, right there in front of you. It feels cozy and comfortable- it should because you’ve traveled it so many times. In fact it’s the only path you’ve ever known. But you’ve realized you aren’t exactly happy and you wonder what’s on the other side of the field. After all it looks beautiful as best as you can see. You’d really like to see those trees and plants more closely. How are you going to do that? There’s no path. You guess you’ll have to make your own path. As you begin to make your way to the other side you note that it’s hard. There’s nothing plowed. You’re having to decide where to put your feet. It’s slow going because the weeds are high. Then it’s night time and you’re tired. You haven’t made it but a short way across the field. You head back knowing you can start again tomorrow. You get some rest and when tomorrow comes you decide to try again. This first part is a lot easier than yesterday because the grass has been stomped down and you can see a path beginning to form. You think “yeah I can do this”. A little bit later you come to the end of where you were yesterday. Now moving forward becomes hard again. But you’re encouraged by today’s progress. The same thing happens when you get tired and this process repeats itself until you get to the other side. Then when you look back, you see a new path. You can understand how to repeat this until you’ve seen all of the field and created all these new roads. You have grown!

Daily Gratitude: How true this is. What a succinct way to sum up life. How much time do we spend (which, by itself, is an interesting phrase as if time is a commodity that can be traded- for what?) trying to decide what to do or what action to take? We think we are being “smart” by weighing all the aspects of something. But most of the time I’d venture to say we’re just procrastinating. We think that is we go over all the possible outcomes and list all the pros and cons, that we’ll come up with the perfect answer. Ha! We are fooling ourselves into thinking that we are so smart and we can even out smart the universe. Big news flash here – we can’t. We should spend more time feeling this “thing” and making our decision to act based on how much we want to do something; how much it means to you. Then, once you have decide to go ahead with the “project” ( call it what you want), then you can relax, let go and be guided as to what actions you need to take to make it happen. Letting go is a theme in most of what I write about. Perhaps that’s because it’s one of the hardest things for me to do even though it’s getting better and I’m getting better at it. If this is something you’ve “felt” that you really want, then you will let nothing stand in your way. This I do know from experience. Being told I was going to be a doctor at age 4, I let none of the “tests” (obstacles) that were placed in my path deter me. And you won’t either.

Daily Gratitude: Does this seem stupid to you? It kind of sounds like a “nonsense” Statement but it isn’t. It’s more of a common sense statement. Let’s take my learning to love running as an example. I hated running – absolutely hated it. One reason i was glad I joined the navy was that I could swim for the physical fitness test instead of running. Then in 1993 I tore my ACL. 6 months after surgery I realized I had to see if I could at least run to “cover” first base as softball season was starting soon. Never in my wildest dreams did I think my immense love for softball would lead to my loving running. When i first tried, I couldn’t run any at all other than a couple of yards. I was fat, I smoked and didn’t care about running. But I did care about softball (there was my “why”). So I vowed to do this dumb activity until I could run to the end of the block (.35 mile) without stopping. That took me a week and by then I was hooked. The little decision to “just see if I could run” led to being hooked on it. There is lots more to the running story but the point today is that that one little decision ultimately led to my actually realizing my dream of trying to cross the USA on foot. What’s a little decision you can make today. Don’t think about where it might lead. Just make a small decision and then tomorrow make another one. See what happens.