Last week, I was forced to deal with the sudden death of one of my uncles.  It seems that it is maybe an event that shouldn’t have happened - at least not at this time.  Whatever happened, he is now gone and we are forced to grieve his loss and think of his memory. 

Death has been something I have had to deal with a lot over the past six weeks.  First, it was my friend Ron.  Now it is my Uncle Robert.  One thing is certain, we all face death.  It is inevitable.  Sure, science has advanced and people live longer now, but we still can not live forever on this earth. 

Being forced to face death so much has caused me to ponder about life more and reflect over my life.  What can death teach us about life?  Can peace abound in the midst of death?  Sure it can and I believe it should.

So what can we learn from death?

1.  Tomorrow is never guaranteed.  The next hour is never guaranteed.  Life is short.  So what is guaranteed?  Only this very moment.  So the question arises, “What are we doing with this moment?”

I’m not sure of the author, but this is a great quote brought to my attention by my friend David B. Bohls of Slow Down Fast:

Now is mine.
I can do what I want with it.
I own it, for better or worse.
What I do now, in this present moment, is what makes up my life.
My whole life is only a succession of nows.
I will take this moment and do something with it.
What I do with each now will make me or break me.

2.  The biggest thing I have been reflecting on is, “If I were to die right now, how would my epitaph, my eulogy read?  Each of us are writing our eulogy now - at this very moment.  So what is it saying?  Take some time now to reflect on that thought.  I will be doing that over the next few days.  Stephen Covey talks about the importance of doing this in his must read book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

A Thought to keep in mind….

Each moment is a stepping stone or building block to the summation of our life. 

If your stepping stones or building blocks could speak what would they say?  Are they applauding you for a job well done and making your life beautiful and full of peace or are they all crumbling to the ground screaming for help to be re-stacked into a sturdy structure and masterpiece?

A while back, I came across this short, but incredible movie that illustrates this point so well.  It’s worth a look.

3.  How can someone have peace as they face death?  Inner peace is about facing death confidently - knowing you are living the life you are meant to live every day of your life.  It is about living life for God not yourself.

Life is not about staying alive.  It is about being prepared to die at any moment.

WB School is a great resource I have found.

4.  Facing the death of loved ones has taught me not only the importance of reflecting on my life at this time, but to also take the time on a regular basis to do so?  Am I living the life I want to live is a good question?  If not, why not?  If not, then what can I do about it?  What can I do different?

5.  “It’s all in YOUR mind.”  This last one is directly from my uncle Robert.  One of the men presiding at his funeral told the story of how he was making excuses to my uncle.  Speaking about something he was doing, but didn’t feel like he was doing well, the man said to my uncle, “I just don’t feel like I’m making a difference.  I just don’t feel like I’ll ever be any better than I am now.”  My uncle said to him, “Just remember that’s all in YOUR mind, not anybody elses’.”      Thought:   What are you telling yourself?

Homework:

Write out your eulogy.  This is not to be a morbid experience, but rather an exciting one as you lay out how you want to live your life and what you want to be remembered for.  Keep breaking this down into smaller and smaller achievable daily steps and take action to achieve it.  Refer to Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People if needed.

At the end of every day, ask yourself, “If I could change one thing about today and the way I lived it, what would it be?”  What one thing would give me a stronger sense of inner peace?”  Write it down.  Resolve to put that into practice the next day. 

Have you ever had your head spinning because you had so much going on, so many things to do? Chances are you have. Why is that? Why is life so cluttered with so much? Well, it doesn’t have to be. It wasn’t designed to be that way? So why is it? Let’s discuss….

The topic of simplicity has been prominent in my mind lately. I’ve been thinking about how we will have so much peace in our lives if we simply simplify.

How much time do we spend chasing after things that aren’t even important? How much time and energy do we spend chasing after money and material possessions? It seems that often that is what makes our lives so complex (not always, but often). “So you mean to tell me that we actually have control over the chaos and craziness in our lives? - that it doesn’t have to be so crazy and complex?” Absolutely. You always have the power to control how you live your life and to fill it with peace. But…. I know, there’s so much you have to do. I know… I know… I really do understand.

My husband and I were shopping for a clothes dryers a week or two ago. The one I wanted was a Fisher & Paykel. Ever heard of them? I hadn’t until about a year ago. They are the best on the market. They are a New Zealand company? What makes them so great? What does this have to do with anything? Fisher & Paykel are the best, yet they are the most simple machines out there. They have seven moving parts? Why? “The less moving parts, the less parts to tear up” is their moto. Well, I didn’t quiet want to pay the price tag on that dryer, so we bought a good ole American made dryer with lots of very cheap moving parts that will only last a few years. Maybe in about 5 years when my dryer breaks down, I’ll break down and shell out the dough for something that will last for more than five years.

So what can we learn from Fisher & Paykel? Simplicity - They have simplicity mastered. They have eliminated the unnecessary parts and only kept the absolute necessary ones for the dryer to work. So how can we eliminate the unnecessary things from our lives so that there is less to tear up or break down?

1. It is first of all important to understand why we make our lives complex. People are looking for peace. They are looking for happiness. They are looking for contentment. They are looking for approval. Because they don’t have these things on the inside, they look for it in outside - in things like possessions and activities. Working on making ourselves beautiful on the inside will eliminate the need for so many possessions and things to do on the outside.

2. Reducing our lives to the absolute necessary things by laying out what is most important to us is crucial if we want to have any semblance of sanity. Knowing what is most important is key to eliminating what is least importanat. This is such a liberating thing to do as it will free up so much time - time that we didn’t know we had because we were spending it on things that were’t even important to us to begin with.

3. Remember that the more things we have and buy the more responsibility we have and the more we have to worry about and be concerned with. The more things we have the more of our time and energy is required to tend to them. I know that when I was child I didn’t have a lot of toys - I had some, but not a ton of them, and I loved life as a kid. I didn’t need a lot of “things” to make me happy. I was content to go outside and play in the dirt or the woods beside my house. These days, kids have so many toys they could never possibly play with all of them and they never do. They can’t even fit them in their room or garage.

4.. Here are some questions we can ask ourselves to help simplify life:

• “Which of the things I have and am doing now are the least important to me? Which are the most important to me?”
• “If I were only given one month to live what would I spend my time doing?” What about one week? What about one day?
• Before buying something, ask yourself, “Is this going to make my life more complicated? Will this free up my time to do what is really important or will this take time away from the things that are most important to me?”
• “Will this thing or activity add value to me or to those that I love or will it take away value?”
• “What did I enjoy as a child?” Chances are those are still the simple things that will still bring joy to you.
• “How can I accomplish my goals and be the most effective with the least amount of time, resources and money?”
• “Is this important or just urgent?”
• And to sum it all up: “What can I do or elimate today to make my life less complex and enjoy it more?”

For more information on simplification I recommend these posts:

7 Ways to Eliminate Emotional Clutter

5 Axioms of Life: A Pathway to Happiness

5 Qualities I Find in Successful Entrepreneurs -  especially quality number 3.

Well, for some reason I can’t get this last link to work.  Simply go to http://yes-to-me.com/ and scroll down on the far right hand side to “Best of Yes to Me” and click on the first link there.  Point number 3 is the one I was drawn to on this post. 

Peace is not something you wish for: It’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.

- Robert Fulghum

Welcome!  Come on in and relax.  Take a deep breath.  Deep breathes help release that pent up energy and stress we store in our bodies and minds.

Since we will mostly be discussing peace or inner peace or peace of mind at the new place here I thought it would be appropriate to first give some definitions of peace so we know what we are talking about. 

I took the ole’ Webster’s off the shelf and dusted it off and looked up the word “peace” to see what it had to say.  The definition we will be interested in here is “an undisturbed state of mind; absence of mental conflict; serenity: in full peace of mind.”

But, what I find most interesting is that many of the definitions talked about an “absence of” or “freedom from” something.  That will be mostly what we focus on - the things or mindsets or attitudes that we need to get rid of in order to have peace of mind.  And to go deeper we will discuss how to get rid of these things.  I beleive it’s the Latin form of the word peace that means “to confirm an agreement.”  That was particularly fascinating to me as it brought me to think about how peace is when all our thoughts and all of our actions are in agreement with one another or in congruity with each other.

I decided to make a list of some things that will help us to define peace.  Here are some of these things (in no particualar order  - mostly just a stream of consciousness of what I have been thinking of over the last few days):

absense of or freedom from:

harmony - what we think and believe and what we do is in harmony

living out our priorities

listening to our needs and taking care of them.

satisfied with all aspects of our lives.

calmness on the inside, no matter what is happening on the outside

tranquility

consciousness - living purposefully and happily in the now

feeling free to state your opinion or needs

simplicity

It’s really interesting, as I wrote out this list and over the last few days as I was pondering over these, it really struck me that it’s about opposites.  On the other side of the “absences of” or “freedoms from” is the answer to what peace is.  Just an interesting thought.  So if we can define the absence does that mean that we can define the answer…… ? Just something to think about. 

I asked my husband what peace was to him.  His response was “flying in an airplane.”  That certainly did not surprise me as everything is about airplanes to him.  He’s just like a little boy when it come to planes.

So now my questions for you are: 

What is your definition of peace or what is it to you? 

What makes you feel peaceful?

Your answers may help me write some future posts…..

I was driving home from buying groceries last night at about 11pm when I was humbled so deeply. It’s something that has changed me forever. No, I wasn’t in a car accident or didn’t witness one, but that was a good guess.

A Lesson on Gratitude
I was driving down the interstate in my great little Honda Civic going about 65 or 70 (which is slow for me:)), and I had a car full (literally almost) of groceries - a huge surplus of food. I had my dog (the best dog in the world) in the backseat, a 35 pound bag of dog food in the front with me and I was driving home to the most wonderful husband in the world. I was going home to our beautiful brick house which is only a year old. I was going in to all the comforts of it - to a garage, central heat, hot water, a beautiful kitchen, nice furniture and so many things I can’t even count them all. I was so humbled. Who was I to go home to all these things? Who was I to deserve these things? The truth is I could never do anything to deserve them, yet God has chosen to bless me with them any way. I consider myself so fortunate.

I began thinking about my selfishness and self centeredness and how I have had this attitude of “I deserve.” “I deserve this, I deserve to be treated this way, I deserve, I deserve, I deserve…..” What was funny is I thought I had been doing really well with my humility :), like I was bringing it under control, but last night I realized I had been failing miserably.

What’s important?
I was also humbled as I was walking through the store in my usual very fast pace with long strides rushing here and there. I began to think about how I’m always in a hurry - in a hurry to use “my” time for “my” things and the things I want to do. I often don’t pay attention to the people around me because I’m in such a hurry to do “my” thing. How rude is that? Not that I don’t need to be working toward something, but where’s my priorities? What’s important? Is what I have to do so important that I can’t make time for the people right in front of me? Who’s time is it anyway? I realized that my time was actually God’s time. How does He want me to use it? If I considered it His time to use for Him, how would I do things differently? I began asking myself what would he want me to do with His time? How could I use His time better?

I began to view myself outside of myself and my own little world. Am I here to just serve myself in my own little world? Can I really make a difference doing that? What if I view myself as being here to help make a difference and enhance other people’s lives - especially those right in front of me? Will I really get what I want out of life serving myself or will I get what I want by serving others selflessly? I’m pretty sure God did not put us here to serve ourselves. It may seem like that, but when we do we are only miserable. It’s funny I have seen my purpose as one to help people and that is what I have been trying to do, but it appears I have been choosing who I wanted to help and it was not necessarily in the right order. Who have I been “helping” at the expense of someone right in front of me? Are those closest to me and right in front of me screaming for my help and I’m pushing them off to the side to help someone else. Have I had tunnel vision? Perspective……. The BIG picture……. Without the big picture we just go through life in the wrong direction….

What happened is I began to see the big picture. I began to see myself as an extension of everybody else - as a way to improve this world one person at a time - with the most important people in my life first. It all goes back to the question from the last post….. Is it urgent or important? I’m going to make my life important…..

I was just thinking about this special day of love. I remember I used to hate Valentine’s Day because I never had anyone to share it with. Now, I am the most blessed woman in the world to have a husband who loves me so much.

I’ll be honest I haven’t put much thought into this Valentine’s Day - a little, but not a lot.

Anyway, the point I would like to make here is that love is a choice. You can choose to sit back and feel sorry for yourself and wonder why your spouse won’t do anything for you or you can choose to love him/her with all your heart and choose to focus on what pleases him/her and take actions to do it. It simply takes selflessness, attention to what they like and action. It’s amazing that if we choose to give love we get so much love back (but, not if you’re seeking to get it back.)

Learning To Love

Along our journey to finding happiness we must not forget that taking care of our health is crucial. It’s definitely the time of year when everyone is thinking about their health and how to lose weight and take better care of themselves. Some people have probably already given up on their attempts to be healthier this year. Some are still going strong.

The thing to remember is that living healthy is a lifestyle change, not a diet. Diet implies something temporary. Being healthy is about replacing old bad habits with new good habits. The great thing is that when we form new good habits then they basically become second nature to us and we feel good all the time. It’s a permanent change and a wonderful one.

Let’s make a lifestyle change for the better!!!

This one is just for fun. It is an amazing, outstanding hilarious mix version of the 12 Days of Christmas.

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