Daily Gratitude: “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”

This is a perfect description of friendship. When two people are in sync, amazing things happen. Everything is more than doubled. It’s as if there is a rocket in each one of us but the fuel level is extremely low. Then when another person with the same level of consciousness comes into the picture, the fuel pumps are open wide and each rocket’s tank is filled to the brim. Combustion and lift off are then almost automatic.

There’s usually only a few friendships in someone’s life that are that powerful. But each of our friendships should have a special current running through them – a current that unites both parties and strengthens each.

Two people can solve problems together much more efficiently and effectively than one.

Of course it’s like a farmers field. A friendship, like his field, has to be cultivated and nurtured or it will go stagnant and won’t produce healthy crops. So make sure you take care of your field, your friendship. As with everything else inattention will destroy what you’ve built. That maxim applies not just to things but to human relationship as well.

Daily Gratitude: “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”

It’s funny how this quote popped up now. I’m having problems with my training for Vol State. I usually love both walking and Vol State. At this point, I don’t love either. Although… I noticed that things felt better this past week when I started to vary my route.

This tells me I still love walking because i love what I see all around me. And that’s the key to everything joyous.

My last job in the navy and as a civilian for the army involved paperwork and just reading cases. Boring? Nope. I looked at each case as a mystery. There was always so much more to a person than what their paperwork showed. I acted like Jessica Fletcher in “Murder, She Wrote” (for those of you old enough to remember). And it made what I did something I totally enjoyed. Sure there were times it wasn’t “exciting” but when that happened, I still reminded myself that this was someone’s future that I was attending to and it was my responsibility to do the best by that person. I loved it.

When did I retire? When it stopped being fun.

What do you really love? Ask yourself that every day and then make sure you’re doing as much of that in your life as you can.

Daily Gratitude: “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”

I’ve written about this before but it’s so important that it bears repeating.

It’s funny. As I’ve been trying to vary my Vol State training route to combat the boredom I feel, I am traveling along the access road of a major loop here in San Antonio. It’s a loop that is constantly backed up for construction and seems to enrage or discourage so many drivers, myself included.

But now I’m able to walk on this access road because, lo and behold, they’ve added a sidewalk. This is the one thing of late that has brought me great joy. It’s only a tiny part of what the construction was all about, but it’s helped me see the value of construction despite the headaches. And next time I’m stuck in traffic with construction, I’ll be able to think of my walks and change my mood from unhappiness to understanding and compassion. I know you’re wondering how i can have compassion for construction but I do, especially the workers.

It’s all about how I’m thinking about the situation. If I stay upset, then it’s not making my day any better and it’s expending a lot more energy. If I think about the good results of what they’re doing then I’ll smile and my mood will be elevated and my energy level will rise as well.

Experiment with this. See if you can do it with little things and then move on to bigger ones.