Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Jerry Spinelli

I was listening to Tony Robbins last night talking about how some of us find success but not fulfillment.

We often think we are not enough and true happiness comes with “more.” If we just get the right “more” we will be happy and fulfilled. Happiness and fulfillment don’t come from what we can get, buy, accomplish, it comes from our progress. Do we have meaning and purpose? I took my dog for a walk this morning.  A morning walk is a time for reflection on the abundance I have in my life. That the streets are safe to walk, that there are sidewalks, that my dog is healthy enough to walk and so am I. There is so much to be grateful for. I sip the coffee my husband made and was waiting for me when I got back from my walk. A small pleasure, we had a laugh this morning, another small pleasure.

There is so much to enjoy, and there is so much to complain about. This is our choice, do we complain or are we grateful for all the good in our lives. No matter what the circumstances are in our lives we choose to be happy or not. We may not be able to choose a lot of things in our lives but our reaction to all the bounty and beauty even if it isn’t as much bounty or beauty as we hoped for is a choice. The sunrise is beautiful, and we get one every day.

We eat and drink every day; we can enjoy this simple pleasure or wish it was in a better locale with better company. Even when we eat alone we should enjoy our own company. Things can and will be different, but will they be better? Isn’t a cup of coffee in Tuscany still just a cup of coffee, and aren’t our thoughts still our thoughts, and our companions still our companions?

What makes some people live fulfilled lives? Often these aren’t remarkable lives, they are happy lives. These are people who sing while they do their laundry, and whistle while they walk.

Plan for tomorrow, live for today.

Tomorrow – a mystical land where 99% of all human productivity, motivation, and achievement is stored. Unknown

The most terrible thing that could happen to us is we realize our dreams but don’t find fulfillment? How could this happen we ask ourselves. The answer according to all the gurus seems to be that because we take ourselves with us wherever we go our set point of gratitude, happiness, and fulfillment is always there. If we didn’t feel fulfilled with one hundred dollars in our pocket, what makes us think we’ll be fulfilled with more?

We feel entitled, but entitled to what? Happiness, joy, and gratitude are available to each of us no matter where we are born or what our circumstances. People live happy grateful lives in circumstances we can’t imagine. They are grateful for one more day, one more meal, one more laugh.

Unmet expectations are one of the things that hold us back from happiness. My husband told me the other day he doesn’t like arguing. It’s true some of our conversations get heated; some of our points of view are diametrically opposed. What about the fact we are lucky to have someone to share a point of view with? What about the fact we aren’t talking to four walls, listening to a clock tick?

There seems to be no middle ground anymore. If you aren’t for us, you are against us. What happened to you have some good ideas, but I don’t like them all. You have a point, but some of what you say is ridiculous. Don’t we all think that, even if we don’t say it?

Today is all we have, we aren’t promised tomorrow. If we don’t enjoy today because we are waiting for that perfect time, perfect accomplishment, perfect purchase, perfect person, perfect whatever far off in the future how will we ever be happy? We are missing our life, it is today. If we enjoy today, it is likely we will also enjoy tomorrow with whatever it brings. If we don’t enjoy today why would we think we will be grateful, happy, and joyful tomorrow?

Tomorrow never comes, because when it gets here it is today. Are we enjoying today?

My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Charles Dickens

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, love, joy, and happiness.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

If you purchase an item through the Amazon.ca link I may receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon.ca affiliate link.

See all 3 images

Notes from a Friend: A Quick and Simple Guide to Taking Control of Your Life Paperback – Aug 1 1995

by Tony Robbins (Author) 4.0 out of 5 stars 27 customer reviews

 See all 4 formats and editions

•  Audiobook 
  CDN$0.00Free with your Audible trial
• Paperback 
  CDN$ 18.9571 Used from CDN$ 0.019 New from CDN$ 11.221 Collectible from CDN$ 23.50

Relish the small pleasures in life. Life becomes celebration. Dilip Kumar

A long weekend spreads before us. I have to ask myself do I enjoy my life as much as I think I should. Do I notice and do enough to create pleasurable moments?

Last night someone on TV was saying he loves to sit out in the evening as purple twilight shifts to dark and watch the bats come out. My daughter says she has seen bats swooping around our back yard occasionally. I don’t remember seeing any. A small pleasure I’ve missed.

I thought about not writing a post today. I slept in, but then I thought why should I miss this small pleasure?

Sometimes the small pleasures in life are the sweetest. Karen Marie Moning

Even when our life isn’t going particularly well we can enjoy small pleasures. A friend going through a hard time is enjoying salted caramel lattes. Sometimes when we look back on times that were difficult we also see the small pleasures we managed while dealing with what we had to.

Life is full of small pleasures. We make our lives better if we recognize and include small pleasures in our life. My husband and I have been going for ice-cream over the summer, a small indulgent pleasure.

Our lives slip by quickly whether we enjoy small pleasures or not. If we punctuate our days with small pleasures we make everything better. What small pleasures can we bring into our lives? Are we stopping to smell the roses and all the other wonderful things to be enjoyed?

Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a person in the course of their life. Benjamin Franklin

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, small pleasures, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

If you purchase an item through the Amazon.ca line I may receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon.ca affiliate program.

See all 2 images

Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort of Joy Hardcover – Sep 9 2009

by Sarah Ban Breathnach (Author) 4.5 out of 5 stars 98 customer reviews

 See all 19 formats and editions

• Kindle Edition 
  CDN$ 17.99Read with Our Free App
• Hardcover 
  CDN$ 14.2362 Used from CDN$ 3.1013 New from CDN$ 14.23
• Paperback 
  CDN$ 19.7533 Used from CDN$ 2.4013 New from CDN$ 19.72

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing. W. Edwards Deming

This morning the sunrise is glorious peaking through the houses. If I could have had a clear view I’d have posted the picture this morning. Seeing the sunrise starts the day off right. This day will never come again. This particular day with it’s set of challenges, wins, moments of grace and wonder is ours to enjoy today.

Sometimes we don’t realize what a great day it was until we look back. Sometimes we think I will enjoy every moment, I will remember every moment, but often we can’t. We may try but the moments blur into one another as do the days, weeks, months, and years.

These happy golden moments are ours to cherish. Someday we may walk down memory lane and think of all that’s past. We may smile at who we were what we thought we would do, accomplish, see, explore, and experience. We did some of it but many of us had dreams and fantasies that if something came true something else could not. We’ve picked our way through life, choosing this, choosing that. Hopefully, we are looking back at a life well-lived. Maybe we’ve lived many places or few.

Maybe we’d change things, maybe we wouldn’t. Does it depend on what day we are thinking about it? A path we may wish we’d taken seems clear and uncomplicated now, but it didn’t look like that when we were choosing the path. The clear choice is often only clear in hindsight. We often say we wish we’d bought X stock back when it was cheap. No one knew then it would become what it has. It was in the middle of all the other stocks that might become something.

At the moment of choosing nothing is clear. We choose our partner out of the array on offer. Then we build our life making our choices as the twists and turns and forked paths present themselves. What if there is no right path, no right partner, only choices to make the best of. We can go to work or play golf, but we can’t do both. Most days we go to work.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thomas Edison

We may long for a life of leisure but they tell us it isn’t as great as we think it will be. Many people who could live a life of leisure fill their lives up with busyness of some sort or another.

My sister says if we all put our troubles on the line and we could take our own troubles or someone else’s we’d take our own troubles back. Maybe it would be the same for our choices.

We’ve built a life and there is much to be grateful for. This morning I thought as I made coffee and heard the shower running. How much we take for granted being able to shower in the morning. Not that many years ago, a bath, not a shower would have been all we could manage and not without a lot of preparation.

I have so much to be grateful for, my cup runneth over. We are so blessed to live with peace and plenty. We turn our stove on and voila we can instantly cook. We don’t have to gather branches to make a fire; we don’t have to kill something before we can eat it. We don’t have to pick something from the garden although it’s lovely if we can.

We may think the prices are outrageous when we go to the supermarket. My son was telling me of someone who decided to see if he could make his own bacon and tomato sandwich and how much it would cost. The cost was pegged at about fifteen hundred dollars. It would also take a lot of preparation.

He had to get the pig and raise it, grow the tomatoes, and wheat for the bread. He had to get started on this sandwich months in advance. It took him about six months to create his sandwich and all the ingredients from scratch.

If one was to be completely self-reliant we would have to create our own fire, our own implements which would make that sandwich harder, more expensive, time-consuming, and challenging to make.

Do we believe the myth and sometimes dream of being self-reliant? It is almost impossible and probably not very desirable to be reliant only on our self.

This is what our supply chain and working together gets us. Food and other products at reasonable prices, available where we live, and whenever we want them. We are told we’ve never had life so good; or appreciated it less. Sometimes it seems we are focused on what is not so good, instead of what is good. Perhaps this is how we got where we are. Had we focused on what we already had, what progress would have been made? Is it looking at what is and thinking why couldn’t it be better, or different that moves us forward?

All progress it is said is created by the unreasonable man. The reasonable person is happy and grateful, thankful for peace, plenty, bounty, and opportunity. The unreasonable person thinks couldn’t we make it better, couldn’t we do it another way, couldn’t we…

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw

Thank you for reading his post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

If you purchase an item through the Amazaon.ca link I may receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon.ca affiliate link.

See all 2 images

Self Reliance: and Other Essays Paperback – Mar 29 2016

by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Author) 3.8 out of 5 stars 23 customer reviews

 See all 176 formats and editions

• Kindle Edition 
  CDN$ 0.00 This title and over 1 million more available with Kindle UnlimitedCDN$ 0.00 to buy
•  Audiobook 
  CDN$0.00Free with your Audible trial
• Hardcover 
  CDN$ 26.401 New from CDN$ 26.40
• Paperback 
  CDN$ 8.631 Used from CDN$ 10.364 New from CDN$ 8.63
• Audio CD 
  CDN$ 39.002 New from CDN$ 39.00

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; There is only the meaning we give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person. Anais Nin

Yesterday I was listening to a video on YouTube. I don’t know the name of the Harvard professor talking.  He was talking about happiness, marriage, money, and children.

He tells us marriage makes us happier, and happier people are married. A Divorce he tells us also makes us happier. Is the answer to get married, divorced, married, divorced and ride the wave of happiness each of these gives us? He tells us happy marriages are better than good divorces for happiness.

Is the best advice then to improve our marriage but if that is impossible then get a divorce? Doing something to improve our lives feels better than doing nothing. Is it progress that we seek?

People tell us that money does not buy us happiness, but he tells us it does. Money in all their studies does not contribute negatively to happiness. It does not bring more happiness on a continuous rising scale. The amount of money at which most people are happy seems to be about forty to seventy-five thousand, then moving up the scale doesn’t buy much more happiness. Once our basic needs are met, most of our wants are satisfied and we have a little spending money the amount of happiness we may get from more money may be negligible, but never negative. More money does not detract from our happiness it just doesn’t add that much once we have “enough”.   

The path to happiness may lie in turning what we have into enough. So many of us look for ways to spend what money we get and turn it into an obligation. If more money buys us more debt, we have less security and more stress. If more money buys us more security, more opportunity for travel and experiences then we may be happier.

The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Children are surely what is needed, and one of our greatest sources of joy? According to his study having children and looking after children does not increase our happiness. But, we value what we invest a lot of time and effort into, and children require a lot of sacrifices, investment, time, and attention. We value them, and amidst the drudgery of looking after them, we have moments of immense joy that take our breath away and eclipse all other moments in our life.

It is not happiness children bring to us, they bring work and sacrifice. That work and sacrifice bring meaning. Meaning brings joy and purpose.  A life filled with the aimless pursuit of happiness would not have meaning, purpose, passion, and probably not much lasting joy.

He tells us that heroin brings us happiness. It makes us feel so good, that we no longer pursue any other sources of happiness. We no longer work, take care of ourselves, brush our teeth, etc. We will sit in a corner destroying our lives clinging to this one source of happiness.

A baseball game he gives as an analogy of happiness. We may sit inning after boring inning, no score, in the ninth inning our team hits a home run. Wow, what an amazing game, we are so happy. Eight boring innings are forgotten as we concentrate on the amazing win. We go home and when asked how was the game? We say it was amazing. One of the best games we’ve seen.

This is an analogy to our life with our children, during all the humdrum, sacrifice, crying, cajoling, and struggle. They look up at us with a smile and say, “you’re the bestest.” Our heart melts; it’s been the best day ever. During the heavy lifting years of child-rearing, we may not have a lot of time for other sources of happiness. Like heroin, we may give up almost everything else for our children. Unlike heroin, it doesn’t destroy us, it builds us, it creates the life we are proud of, giving us passion, purpose, meaning, and a legacy to be proud of.

The heart of human excellence often begins to beat when you discover a pursuit that absorbs you, frees you, challenges you, or gives you a sense of meaning, joy, or passion. Terry Orlick

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, purpose, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end. Please subscribe, comment, and share.

If you purchase an item through the Amazon.ca link I may receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon.ca affiliate program.

See this image

The Power Of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness Paperback – Dec 26 2017

by Emily Esfahani-Smith (Author) 3.9 out of 5 stars 8 customer reviews

 See all 9 formats and editions

• Kindle Edition 
  CDN$ 13.99Read with Our Free App
• Hardcover 
  CDN$ 27.9126 Used from CDN$ 1.4914 New from CDN$ 17.97
• Paperback 
  CDN$ 23.001 Used from CDN$ 9.991 New from CDN$ 23.00
• Audio CD 
  CDN$ 37.231 Used from CDN$ 65.715 New from CDN$ 33.71