I just finished a great book by Joshua Becker called Clutterfree with Kids. Here are my favorite thoughts...
"Since deciding to live with less, I have less clutter in my home, less stress in my life, more time for my family, more generosity in my spending, more energy for my passions, more contentment in my heart, more gratitude in my soul, and far more opportunity to pursue things of greater worth...
Why would I want what everyone else has when they all want what I already possess?"
Also, a couple of people he quotes in the book:
"Comparison is the thief of joy." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy." -Richard Holloway
I don't feel like I have any thoughts of my own to add that could contribute much to that. SO well said already. Plus it's late and I'm tired :)
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Balance
I'm re-reading The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. It's a book I read when I got home from my mission. I was facing hard times and stress and insecurity like I never had before.
This time around I'm getting something totally different from it. I love books that offer new insights every time I read them. Here is what struck me a few weeks ago...
"To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously."
Nothing magnifies the difficulty of living this way like the first months of new motherhood. Which I am staring down right now. My kitchen is a mess. My to do list is dusty. I am carrying around 15 extra pounds. There are moments that living joyfully seems like a joke! I am trying to master keeping an eye on the future (and the glorious, glorious hours of sleep it holds) and living in the present. It is such an impossible task. But sometimes, when I'm sitting in a quiet room, holding this little guy...I close my eyes and take some slow breaths...and it seems possible for just a moment. This is, after all, what I've been praying for and crying over for the last two years...
This time around I'm getting something totally different from it. I love books that offer new insights every time I read them. Here is what struck me a few weeks ago...
"To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously."
Nothing magnifies the difficulty of living this way like the first months of new motherhood. Which I am staring down right now. My kitchen is a mess. My to do list is dusty. I am carrying around 15 extra pounds. There are moments that living joyfully seems like a joke! I am trying to master keeping an eye on the future (and the glorious, glorious hours of sleep it holds) and living in the present. It is such an impossible task. But sometimes, when I'm sitting in a quiet room, holding this little guy...I close my eyes and take some slow breaths...and it seems possible for just a moment. This is, after all, what I've been praying for and crying over for the last two years...
Monday, March 23, 2015
More on Gratitude
I read this in a book called The Crucible of Doubt a few months ago and have been wanting to share it ever since...
"My grateful mental state lets in a different view of reality than is otherwise possible...And when I am thus conscious of my life and the world as a gift, I am less preoccupied with self. My attention focuses elsewhere. I am more alert to other people's needs and virtues. I find my wonder awakened by just about everything: the engineering behind the physique of a a cricket or a fly, for instance, or the beauty in even a pebble. In other words, when I am grateful, I tend toward a higher mental (and spiritual) state. I take things - people, order, air, roundness, everything - less for granted. Hence I notice things otherwise invisible to me. It is as if I have a sixth sense, taking in more context, more reality. If my temporary taste of gratitude becomes a disciplined habit, an ongoing attitude and state of mind, I am 'smarter,' more aware, than if this were not so. To the extent that I become a habitually grateful person, I engage a different and richer reality than the 'me' who is less grateful."
-Philip Barlow
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"My grateful mental state lets in a different view of reality than is otherwise possible...And when I am thus conscious of my life and the world as a gift, I am less preoccupied with self. My attention focuses elsewhere. I am more alert to other people's needs and virtues. I find my wonder awakened by just about everything: the engineering behind the physique of a a cricket or a fly, for instance, or the beauty in even a pebble. In other words, when I am grateful, I tend toward a higher mental (and spiritual) state. I take things - people, order, air, roundness, everything - less for granted. Hence I notice things otherwise invisible to me. It is as if I have a sixth sense, taking in more context, more reality. If my temporary taste of gratitude becomes a disciplined habit, an ongoing attitude and state of mind, I am 'smarter,' more aware, than if this were not so. To the extent that I become a habitually grateful person, I engage a different and richer reality than the 'me' who is less grateful."
-Philip Barlow
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