Playing Scrabble with my grandmother taught me that playing – and playing well - is fun whether or not you win. Which is good news because it took me 10 years to win! Looking back, I see that, as sweet as that long-awaited win was, the sweetness of that victory pales in comparison to all the time my grandmother and I spent together noodling around with letters and words. Every game we played, I learned. Every time we sat down, I got a little better. The practice was more meaningful, it turns out, than the results.
Part of a ringing in a new year can involve looking back on the year that is drawing to a close. It can be easy to judge a year as "good" or "bad" based only on one or two events that dominates your memory of the year. To do so would be to focus only on the "headline" and to miss out on all of the fine print that makes up your life. Perhaps a practice of "reading" beyond the headline of your days in 2025 can set the tone for a new year that is richer and broader than just its headline.
Tomorrow is the winter solstice - the day of the year that the darkness most outweighs the light. Perhaps this would be the perfect day for us to pause and notice all the flickering lights - metaphoric or actual - shining steadily in our midst. Perhaps tomorrow would be a perfect day to light some candles or a fire in the fireplace to feel cozy and held in the metaphoric or real-life darkness of the day. Merry Yuletide!
I hope you are basking in the grateful after-glow of a happy thanksgiving day. In that spirit, I offer you a different, super-simple take on a gratitude practice. It involves nothing other than holding still for a moment. Pause to soak in everything about the moment you are experiencing. There is nothing like holding still and paying attention to allow you to feel the thrill of being alive. And when you're thrumming with aliveness like that, any day can be a day you're grateful to be alive.
Just when I thought I'd heard all of my husbands childhood stories, he surprised me with one he'd never shared before. 99.9% of the time we simply do not know the whole story and it is likely that we are filling in many gaps. The same is true of everyone else. Is it any wonder we misunderstand one another so often? If we can allow others to surprise us more often life will be much richer. We can start with the folks we see every single day.
A blessing shared at the beginning of a yoga class - May you be filled with loving-kindness. May you be well. May you be peaceful and at ease. May you be happy. - has the power to deepen our sense of connection to the world around us, even in the most tumultuous times.
This essay starts with what just might be the oldest and worst "Dad Joke" and ends with a life hack. If you keep finding yourself in the same annoying situations and would rather not - read on.
When it turned out that skiing for the first time in ten years was not exactly like riding a bike for me I had a little meltdown. And then, thanks to my mindfulness practices, a part of me that was deeper and wiser than my dejected skier-self realized that I had to the power to choose how I would experience the remainder of our vacation. I am so grateful that I was able to let go and thereby free myself to enjoy the gifts we’d given ourselves by taking a family vacation - the rare opportunity to spend time together with all of my grown children and the even rarer chance to play with one another. I am thankful for the reminder that mindfulness really is a superpower.
I'm here today to tell you that the K.I.S.S. rule (Keep It Simple, St*pid) works. Read on to see how something so (forgive me) simple can help in simple, less simple, not-at-all simple and downright impossible moments. By the way, if it works better for you to soften the second “S” to silly or sweetheart, go for it!
