Category: Sunday Letters

I have a little present for you today, something you can do that will give you an increased sense of meaning, a bit of ordinary everyday magic that we, who are so blessed in so many ways, all too often overlook.   And that magic goes by the name of gratitude.

Willing to try a quick experiment?  Think of somebody you love—a family member, a friend, even a pet.  You can even choose someone from your past if you like.  Now just for a few moments, put your open hand over your heart, feel its warmth, close your eyes and holding your loved one in mind, allow yourself just to feel the sensations in your heart area.  Don’t let thoughts about that person take your attention; just sit quietly and feel your appreciation.  Go ahead and do that right now, then slowly open your eyes and come back to reading.

I asked you to do that because when we read about gratitude, we’re just feeding our minds.  I wanted you to connect with the heart-glow that gratitude gives you.  

Like all the positive emotions, gratitude is short-lived, fleeting.  And yet it has a unique and special power to enrich us and expand our sense of well-being.  It opens the door for other good feelings to enter.

What brought it to mind for me was a link a friend sent me to a heart-warming video about artist Lori Portka.   She decided to create 100 little gratitude cards and to send them to 100 people in her life.  In the video, she shares what she learned about gratitude in the process and you get to see the way that her experiment touched other people’s lives.  

It reminded me of the time a friend of mine in Japan sent a gratitude postcard to 30 people over the course of the month.  He, too, discovered the powerful magic that gratitude holds.

Gratitude can be both external and internal.  We can be grateful for things “out there,” such as other people, or our homes, or jobs, or a sunny day, or soft socks.  Or it can be internal, focusing on our gratitude for our health, for our breathing lungs, for the way we think, for our senses of humor, for experiences.

Once I wrote the story of a woman who made a practice of pausing for gratitude at the endings of things:

She uses endings that occur throughout her day as a trigger for remembering to tune in to her gratitude.  When a conversation ends, or a class, or when she leaves a room or a building, or completes a project or a task, she closes it by taking a few seconds to appreciate what she has just experienced and to feel gratitude for it.

Imagine what this practice could do for your marriage or your relationship with your kids or parents or a business partner or colleague?  Imagine taking a moment to feel gratitude every time you ended an exchange with one of them!  Powerful stuff! 

If you do nothing else to cultivate gratitude in your life, each night as you prepare to sleep, celebrate the day’s ending, letting yourself recall one or two things from your day for which you are grateful, and just as you did at the beginning of this letter, let yourself sink into the feeling of heart-felt appreciation and to relax for a moment in its glow.

Wishing you a week brimming with gratitude and joy! And let me add my thanks to you for reading the thoughts I share. It adds meaning and purpose to my life, and that’s a pretty special gift to give someone.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay}

Here in the northern hemisphere, spring has finally arrived. Spring! Spring! My personal favorite time of year. And what am I getting? Temperatures heading below freezing and predictions for snow! I could be downright ornery about that. I could stomp my foot and shake my finger at the sky and yell, “Boooo!! How dare you!” at the weather. But a lot of good that would do, hey?

It would make about as much sense as me trying to change Ted’s political views, or Rene’s religion, or Mary’s methods of handling money—as much they may differ from my own. No, the wiser course is to accept what is and love life anyway.

Most of us feel an inner friction when the world doesn’t match our stories about how things should be. We believe in the intrinsic truth of our stories. We identify with them and feel that they define who we are. So it’s all too easy to take it personally when we run across situations or views that contradict them. We take offense. We want to gear up for battle against what seems an attack—against the thing that suggests that we’re wrong to believe what we’re certain is right and true.

But is there another way to handle contradictions to our beliefs, besides fighting against them? I ran across a quote this week that said, “We can’t change what life brings to our door until we learn to change the way in which we answer it.”

I can’t change the weather (or Ted, or Rene, or Mary, for that matter), but I can take charge of my disappointment in it. I can begin by accepting that it is what it is (and that my friends are who they are). I can look at the situation and see what part of it is upsetting me, and with that information in hand, I can look for ways to address what I’m experiencing as a problem.

If I step back from my distress over the predicted freezing weather, I can see that what’s upsetting me isn’t the cold itself, but its threat to my baby tulips. Then I can set about protecting them.

Stepping back from my differences with my friends’ beliefs is a little harder. I have to admit that maybe their reasons for thinking as they do are as valid as my reasons for my own beliefs. Maybe they formed their beliefs the same way I acquired mine—from childhood experiences or training, from what they read or heard in school from trusted teachers, or from media, or friends. I have to accept that maybe I don’t have a lock on the truth. Maybe it’s different or bigger than either my friends or I suppose.

Regardless of why their opinions are different from mine, I have to ask myself whether the differences are bigger than our friendship. Aren’t there many other areas of life where we are in harmony?

With so many of us at each other’s throats these days over differences of opinion, maybe each of us needs to be looking at the way we respond to what life brings to our door. When what we find there doesn’t mesh with our own ideas about what’s right or true, maybe we need to give deeper thought to how we want to respond. We won’t solve the problems that all of us agree need to be solved by fighting against each other. As author Graham Greene once wrote, “Hate is a lack of imagination.” Let’s imagine that we can be more creative by working together, that we can identify the problems more clearly, that we can be more flexible about experimenting with possible solutions.

And if we can’t, let’s accept that our differences are part of the human condition and agree to respect each other nonetheless.

Artist Andy Warhol wrote, “Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, ‘So what?’ That’s one of my favorite things to say. ‘So what.’” There’s as much wisdom as humor in that. So your ideas differ from mine. So what? I can love you anyway. And the world will continue to turn.

Wishing you gracious acceptance of whatever knocks at your door.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by R. E. Beck from Pixabay}

I was out looking at the stars the other night, and once more I was filled with awe at the realization that our home is but one speck of rock circling one star amidst uncountable stars in one of an unknown number of galaxies. How small we are! And yet, how incredible our minds, to be able to grasp the immensity of it all, to compute the distances, to be capable of wonder and to marvel at its mysteries and order and beauty.

How can we be asleep to that? How can we take it all for granted? Why, when we’re gifted not only with intelligence but with the capacity to love, is our little world beset with such rancor and pain?

You know, there seems to be a trend afoot these days to pit us all against each other, to egg us into taking sides on every conceivable issue. Tensions and conflicts engulf our homes and work places, our neighborhoods and nations. And this, despite the fact that what the overwhelming majority of humans want is simply to get along with each other and to live our lives in harmony and peace.

None of us has the power, individually, to change the course of world events. But we can have an influence in our immediate corners of the world. That’s the place to start. From there, it evolves and spreads, of its own accord. It becomes the ripple that eventually turns the tide,

I heard a suggestion this week that I liked a lot. Instead of getting entrapped in the blame game, it said, focus on seeking solutions. Ask yourself what you can do to make things better and be willing to give your ideas a try.

Sometimes that can mean having to admit you were less than kind, or respectful, or honest. None of us is at our best all the time. We get tired, and crabby, and selfish. It’s part of being human to blame someone else for our lousy states of mind. But our ability to apologize is a part of being human, too.

Sometimes making things better means stretching beyond our comfort zones and trying on less-than-familiar behaviors—holding our tongues when we would normally confront, forgiving hurts, deciding to overlook other’s foibles instead of falling into irritation, looking for things to like in those whose opinions contrast with our own.

What can I do to make things better? That’s the solution-focused question. How can I create more harmony? More understanding? More beauty? More wholesomeness and health? What would be the kind thing to do? The loving thing? How can we work together to fix things?

“Be the peace you want to see in the world” the sage said. Every time you apply it, the world does indeed become a more peaceful place. One act, one person at a time.

Wishing you a week filled with beautiful solutions.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay}

Have you ever heard the statement, “What you focus on expands”?  It’s a fact of life, and a good one to remember. 

A friend of mine reminded me about it in a recent blog post she wrote.  She had attended a conference where one of the speakers, a brain scientist, asked the audience, “How many neurons over a lifetime have you dedicated to worry?  Or to fear, or guilt, or limitation of any kind?”

She said his choice of the word “dedicate” really caught her attention.  And rightly so.  The more you repeat a thought, the more deeply you carve neural pathways for it in your brain.  And the deeper the pathway, the easier it is for your thoughts to flow along it.  You’re dedicating those neurons with every similar thought. “What you focus on expands.” 

When you create pathways of limitation, they become launching pads for a nefarious secondary force I once heard named “the zucchini god”—the one who instantly appears when you think a motivated thought and convinces you that you need a nap or a bag of potato chips first, the one who wants you spend your life being a squash.

The way to avoid making life easy for the zucchini god is to purposefully design the neural pathways you want to create—the ones that will lead you toward the actions that are aligned with your vision of who and how you want to be, what you want to accomplish and attain. 

And the way that you do that is by getting clear about what it is that you want.  That doesn’t mean you have to set huge goals or create lofty or long-range visions.  Your intention can be as short-range as a day, or even less.  But decide what is it you want and put it into words for yourself.  Ideally, write them down somewhere that you’ll throughout the day as a reminder.  That adds the fuel of attention to your intention.  And attention plus intention is the key.  It’s the magic formula. 

The more attention you give to your intention—even if you only read it or remember it—the more you’re building the neural pathways that your thoughts can travel to take you where you want to go.

When you catch yourself traveling down a pathway of limitation, throw a big bright “Detour” sign into the middle of it and turn your attention, your focus, to your intention.  Remind yourself what it will feel like to be and do the things you want to be and do: kinder, braver, more persistent, more in control, more creative, more appreciative, more in charge of your choices. 

Then take whatever action you can to move toward the object of your intention, even if it’s nothing more than squaring your shoulders, slowing your breathing to relax into the moment, and putting on a smile.

You can continue to grow deeper pathways of limitation, or focus your attention on moving on a trajectory toward your true desires.  

It’s like the old American Cherokee story about the two wolves. One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

“One is Evil – It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

“The other is Good – It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Decide to dedicate your neurons to the things that bring you joy and satisfaction.  Name your intentions, then feed them with all the attention you can muster. 

And may your good wolf win!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Andrea Bohl from Pixabay}

I’ve been digging in my collection of quotes again this week and found one from Harry Emerson Fosdick that made me stop and think. I like it when that happens, when a sentence or two makes me want to take stock and see how I can add more sizzle to my life.

Here’s Fosdick’s statement: “Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world – making the most of one’s best.”

It reminded me of a story I once read about a man who was legally blind, yet, by training himself to focus on the small amount of sight he had, he was able not only to navigate his ordinary world, but eventually to drive a car. He went on to develop a highly successful system to train people with infirmities of various kinds to transcend their difficulties by devoting their attention to whatever abilities they did have. He took that “most interesting game” and played it for all it was worth.

He looked for the possibilities and made the most of the tiny sliver of sight that was his best. Then he saw the possibility of showing others how to do the same and made the most of that, too.

Have you ever dared to think of yourself as a “bundle of possibilities?” What if you did? What possibilities would you find? If you were going to make a list of the things that you considered the best of you, what would you put on your list?

And once you had such a list, suppose you looked at it and asked yourself how you could make the most of these things. What if you let your imagination run wild and blocked out all the “yeah-but’s” that tried to sneak in? What if you opted to play the most interesting game and to imagine how you could make the most of your best?

What would that look like? What would you do? How would you be?

The mere act of imagining your best self opens you to broader, more possibility-laden thinking. That’s a proven fact. Spend 20 minutes describing your best self in writing and see how you feel.

But what if you were to take it beyond mere imagining? What if you decided to go all in and play this most interesting game for real, to focus on something you did well, or were ardently attracted to doing, and made the most of it?

You could start with just one thing, one possibility, one of your favorite things about you and express it 2% better today than yesterday, by intention, because you chose to play the game. Then tomorrow you could do it 2% better than today, and so on. And the thing that was one of the best things about you would get even better and better, and it would pull some of the other things that are good about you right up with it.

Imagine how interesting life would become! And all because you decided to play this, the most interesting game in the world.

Wishing you a week of intriguing discoveries and ideas!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by InspiredImages from Pixabay}

I continued reading the “Sunday Letters” that I wrote back in 2015 and once again felt compelled to share with you the one that followed the letter I shared last week. Here it is:

First of all, let me share that my friend who broke his hip in the slip-on-the-ice fall last week is making great progress with his recovery and expects to return home this week. Thanks to all who sent him caring thoughts.

Because he’s had his bouts with clinical depression and often says, “Everything always goes wrong for me,” I’ve been grateful and relieved and very happy to hear the optimism in his voice and his anticipation of things he’ll be able to do for himself once he’s home.

There’s a creative power is positive expectation—especially when you learn to expect the best from yourself. I read a quote this week from an anonymous source that said, “When you become convinced that you can make a comeback from any adversity, then all of your creative forces will come to your aid.”

That’s more than a glib statement of positive philosophy. Our brains work hard to materialize proof of our beliefs for us, to find evidence for them. Wayne Dyer wrote a whole book about it called When You Believe It, You’ll See It.

From all the billions of bits of data that come to us from our sensory organs, our brains actively select out for our attention the ones that match what we hold to be true or that open doors or give clues about opportunities that we’re seeking.

It happens automatically, but you can speed the process along by asking Positive Affirmative Questions of your brain. Popularized as “afformations” by Noah St. John, PAQ’s generally begin with the word “Why” and then go on to state what you’re hoping to materialize in your experience. “Why am I feeling so confident today?” “Why am I healing so quickly?” “Why am I so creative today?” “Why am I so patient?”

The “why” part of the question sends your brain on a search to find answers for you. It can’t resist the challenge. Unlike ordinary affirmations, such as “I am so creative,” why-questions don’t give your brain a chance to argue with you or to dispute you. Instead, it begins to scour both its knowledge banks and incoming sensory data to bring you the proof you requested.

If your request is urgent, your brain will even go into a kind of hyperdrive to find answers. I’ll give you a personal example. I happened to drop a 20-pound log on my big toe last night. Hurt like the blazes. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” I yelled. But because I’d been thinking about this letter, I said to myself, “Why is my toe recovering so fast?” And even before I pulled off my sock to examine the damage, my brain said, “Because you put an ice pack on it right away.” And I did. Good thing, too; poor toe got smashed pretty well. But I do expect it to heal quickly, and I expect my brain to continue to giving me hints to help it along.

Creative anticipation is a powerful tool. It’s what’s behind the adage, “You get what you look for.” Look for the good, and give the process a boost with some Positive-Affirmative-Questions.

Now, why are you having such a fabulous week this week?

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Image by Anja from Pixabay}

Every Saturday as go through my day, I notice my mind casting about in search of the focal point for the letter I’ll write to you in the evening. I call this mostly subconscious process, the working of “the boys in the back room.” They’re the guys that put all this together, point me where to go, slide messages under the door and into my awareness.

I’m often quite surprised at what it turns out that I say. But I trust the process.

Today, I was inspired to go through a stack of my “Sunday Letters” from way back in 2015. That’s nine years ago. I opened it to March and pulled out a letter dated the 8^th of that year.

The parallels to events currently unfolding in my personal world were, to say the least, an amazing synchronicity. But beyond that, it put into words what I’ve been wanting to say for a while now.

I immediately felt compelled to share it with you. It’s meant for somebody special. Who knows? Maybe that somebody is you.

Here it is:

When the Bough Breaks

It was a week of sad news and an unexpected challenge.

The challenge wasn’t all that bad, relatively speaking. The drain for my kitchen sink froze, breaking a seam between two pipes, and before the squishy sound of the carpet under my feet told me there was a problem, my entire sink floor was flooded and water had seeped under the old tile beneath the carpet. I’m not happy with the situation, of course. But it’s nothing that can’t be repaired.

Besides, I’ve learned to bolster myself in the face of life’s normal challenges by flexing my bicep Rosie-the-Riveter style and defiantly snarling, “Bring it on!” Works like magic.

Sad news is a little more difficult to handle. On Tuesday, an old friend of mine called to tell me he was in the hospital. He had slipped on a patch of ice, fallen, and broke his hip. His general life situation wasn’t all that great to begin with, and this is going to be a serious setback for him.

I have two other friends who are enduring difficult medical situations, too. It’s hard to watch those you care about suffer. It’s hard even to watch the suffering of strangers half a world away.

But pain and problems are a part of life, a part of all of our lives. It’s almost as if they’re a necessary part of being fully human. They test our courage and our ingenuity and resolve. They keep us humble. They give us a chance to think about what really matters in our lives. They break our patterns and shift our view of things. They remind us that we’re mortal.

Confronted with my friends’ difficulties, I remembered Tara Brach’s helpful words: “This is suffering. Everyone suffers. May I be kind.”

When you’re the one who is suffering, it helps to remember that you’re not alone. Pain is universal; it visits us all. Be kind to yourself.

When you’re a witness to pain, let kindness be your unfailing flag. Be there, with a loving heart, for family and friends who are enduring pain. Bring them your patience and your cheer, your encouragement and your faith in their strength. Be there to listen. Be there authentically, with your whole heart.

That goes for emotional and mental suffering as well as physical ailments and injuries. Hurt happens on a lot of levels.

And so does healing. And the very best medicine is love.

Wishing you a week of kindness – given and received.

Warmly,
Susan

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Every year, I forget how deeply the beauty of winter trees touches me. Instead, I only remember how unpleasant I find the cold. But here I stand, in freshly fallen snow, in the midst of all these trees, bereft of their leaves now, and I’m caught in a spell of awe. I realize I don’t mind that the air is cold. And somewhere inside myself I quietly say, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

I say it to my spirit. “I’m sorry that I let what I labeled as discomfort eclipse the memory of the astonishing beauty of bare trees. And just look how the frost on this fallen leaf glistens in the morning’s pearly light!! “ Please forgive me,” I ask, “for overlooking such incredible gifts.”

Instantly, I feel a shower of bright, warm, unconditional acceptance wash around me. It tastes golden, like joy, and my face spreads in a smile. I am humbled by it, and I whisper, “Thank you; I love you.”

All this because of the forms of the trees, naked against the clouds, and the shimmer of light on this leaf. But beauty isn’t the only thing that evokes my appreciation. Sometimes encountering plain-spoken truth will do it. Sometimes it’s kindness in one of its myriad forms.

I happened to notice my copy of Letting Everything Become Your Teacher again yesterday. It’s been sitting on my coffee table for weeks, unopened. Seeing the title is often reminder enough. Everything brings the gift of fresh lessons.

For me, the lesson brought by February’s bare trees and frosted leaves is to be aware that not everything I label as unpleasant is so. In this case, I could see that cold was just a sensation. I could call it brisk or crisp as well as bitter or biting. Then, having reclassified it, I could let it go and see what else there was to see.

Remember the game I told you about where for five minutes you let yourself notice whether you‘re labeling things as either “pleasant” or “unpleasant?” (That’s all there is to it, in case you don’t recall it.) You just notice which way you’re judging things. Then you can turn the secret power-question on yourself, asking if your judgment about a particular aspect of yourself is true.

You know what you’ll find? You’ll find that it’s only a judgment, whether you currently agree with it or not. Realizing that’s the case is good because it opens you to options. It keeps you from overlooking things by slapping a judgment on them too soon. Things change. Our perception of things changes. The world truly is a kaleidoscopic place, you know. Try to see what’s in front of you with an open mind. Keep a good helping of openness handy. It will wake you up if you’ve fallen asleep. It will say “You think what?! Think again!”

You never know when what you thought was a barren February landscape was in fact a scene of stark beauty, alive and dancing. It could be. You never know.

Wishing you a week of newly renamed wonders,

Warmly,
Susan

Whenever I’m lucky enough to find myself walking behind an old couple holding hands, I feel my heart warm and my face smile. This is how I wish every Valentine’s story could end—fifty years down the road, having weathered it all, with a richer love than ever before.

It takes real commitment to make it happen. And it’s nice to see that some of us actually manage to do it.

If you’re in a love relationship, or hope to be, the key to making it last is appreciation. Did you know that?

Couples who stay together say five times as many positive statements to each other as negative ones. They find more reasons to praise and fewer to fault-find. They tell each other what they enjoy and respect and admire about each other. They thank each other for everyday acts of consideration.

If you’re not in a love relationship with someone, you can still benefit from putting the 5:1 rule into practice. It works in all kinds of relationships, and it even works for your relationship with yourself.

In fact, learning to appreciate yourself is one of the big keys to emotional and spiritual growth. A lot of us spend a lot of time beating ourselves up, pointing out to ourselves how we don’t measure up. My advice? Cut that out!

Kindness starts at home, and that means it starts with you being kind to you. Even to the parts of yourself that you don’t especially like. In fact, especially to those parts. They’re the parts that most need love if they’re ever going to heal. So you say to them, “Crabby part? I love you because you hold such high standards about the way things should be.” “Painful part? I love you because you’re crying so hard for my attention.” “Ugly part? I love your uniqueness, and the beauty of you that you don’t see, and the parts that you wish were different.”

Say “Hi, Sweetheart!’” to yourself in the mirror and mean it—because you are one, you know. Thank your fingers and toes and nose and knees for all they do for you. Take time as you tuck yourself in at night to appreciate all that you accomplished. Acknowledge the work you did, the things you enjoyed, the services you performed, and the kindnesses you bestowed. Thank yourself for your endurance and persistence. Thank yourself for your good intentions. Love the parts of you that were hurt or offended and comfort them; give them the understanding that they didn’t get anywhere else.

Commit to being your own best Valentine. And then pass the love along. I bet you five to one it will make your life sweeter and open the way to living happily ever after.

Warmly,
Susan

Image by Marzena P. from Pixabay

I ran across an article recently about the difference it makes in one’s career success to have a good natured personality. People who make other people feel good, it turns out, are not only well-liked, they tend to get compensated with higher earnings, regardless of their skill level. So keep flashing that great smile of yours, and do all those things you need to do keep yourself in tip-top shape. (You know–eat wholesome foods, drink enough water, get enough sleep and keep that body in motion.) You’re so much more fun to be around, after all, when you’re feeling really well.

But even if you’re feeling a bit dragged out, you can still lift others’ spirits. Practice looking someone right in the eyes and telling them something they did well that you noticed. Don’t simply compliment a trait like how nice they look or how smart or strong they are. Instead, specifically mention something that they did well, with efficiency, or thoughtfulness, with attention to detail, or with obvious effort or preparation, or with apparent ease or grace.

Practice on store clerks and waitresses, on your partner, on your kids. According to some recent research in positive psychology, this one skill generates strong positive emotions for both you and the person you noticed. It creates a feeling of genuine human bonding. We all like to be appreciated.

 Just looking someone in the eyes and giving them a sincere smile can lift their mood, too—and yours. When a sincere compliment about someone’s actions doesn’t come readily to mind, practice this as “Step One,” while you work on noticing things that others do well.

A second skill you can practice to increase your value to others is to take time to listen attentively; it’s a rare skill, and it makes other people feel that they’re real for you. In fact, philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich says listening is “the first duty of love.”

Humor and optimism, of course, are fabulous spirit-lifting tools. Keep ‘em tucked in your pocket all the time. They can bring instant perspective and relief to a huge range of situations. You don’t have to be a comedian, just learn to see the humor in everyday life. I’ve found it great fun, especially when it’s one of those days when everybody around you seems a bit crazy, to imagine you’re all characters in a sit-com. It keeps you from getting caught up in the fray, and when you’re lightened-up, it subtly impacts everybody around you. As for optimism, as I wrote a couple weeks ago, just hold yourself open to the possibility that everything may work out just fine.

Notice. Listen. Be of good cheer. That’s the formula. Give it a try. After all, as the poet W.H. Auden said, “We are here to do good to others.” Then he added, “What the others are here for, I don’t know.”

I have a feeling Mr. Auden was well-liked.

Wishing you a generous, spirit-boosting week!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by CreativeMagic on Pixabay}