“Gratitude is the single most important ingredient to living a successful and fulfilled life.” - Jack Canfield Without gratitude, life is just bleak. You can be rich or poor, healthy or sick, lonely or loved, but only appreciation will assign value to that which you possess. James Clear, an expert on making habits, uses the power [...]
For that one moment, I stretched far into the future. We stood in a circle, about fifteen people at the east corner of the room, holding opposition against a group twice the size of ours, standing far on the other side. We had been asked by the leaders of the Oregon chapter of the National [...]
I have been back in America for only a week, and I must confess: I love it. Everywhere I go, everything is laid out to make it easy to do what I want to do, or to have what I want to have. After living for three years in the secluded jungles of Costa Rica, [...]
I rise at 5 am. My alarm goes off 15 minutes prior, and as I snooze, I lie in bed reciting affirmations to myself, through the open door of my subconscious mind. "I love my life." "I believe something wonderful will happen to me today." "I am so grateful for my life." "I breathe in [...]
My 6-year-old girl really didn't know. While discussing the differences between policemen and firefighters, I used a word Indilea had never heard before. She has acquired the excellent habit of asking for the meaning of any word she doesn't understand. "What's a gun?" she asked. "You know," I said as I mimed a gun. "Kapow." [...]
I often suspect this is the case. Two runners were jogging in the surf this morning, going opposite directions. I was walking through the sand, on my way to the beachside restaurant where I chose to work today. The joggers met each other and embraced joyously, and from fifty yards away, I could see within [...]
After waiting for nine months, we are ready for the baby. Any day now. The holidays are done, the cradle is set up next to the bed, we have a supply of diapers and blankets; now we are just making minor tweaks to our plans. This is our third child. After going through [...]
It was within predictable circumstances that I achieved a moment of enlightenment. The house was silent, and I took a scalding hot bath, soaking for half an hour. I spent the time feeling grateful for my life, from the grand unexpected circumstances that brought me to living in Costa Rica, to the small [...]
I never knew Steve Jobs. But my life has been forever changed by his works. After unsuccessful career moves and a frustrating decade of PC proficiency, I bought my first Macbook Pro. I delved into the design, the usability, the ease of computing. I started a hobby, and then a career, as a web designer [...]