Category: Simplicity

Simplify not complicate

MidLife Heartbreak?

Spirit
Spirit

Midlife heartbreak or midlife opportunity.  Pretty simple.  Two choices.  You get to pick one.

If you and your spouse (and yes, want to acknowledge some readers will not be parents), worked hard all your life and played by the rules, and you gave birth to a child without eyes and never able to walk, which would you pick?

Mid Life heartache or mid life opportunity?

Well, there was a Family that had to make this choice.  They were featured on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition as well as numerous other media pieces, including a heartwarming You Tube Video feature, about 6 minutes long, available at the end of this post.

One of my “secrets” to unspeakable  joy is the daily effort to read, listen, watch, experience, think, do and reflect on the countless blessings that surround my ordinary life.

You have all these blessings too.  But in order to feel the Peace and Contentment that are the fruit of these blessings, you must become fully aware.

You must become willing to invest time everyday.  Even if it’s only six minutes. Will today be another day to postpone your new beginning?

If it’s not, click here.

What Would You Do?

No Easy Answer
No Easy Answer

Two simple choices:

  1. Ease up and just deal with whatever comes your way
  2. Proactively, relentlessly pursue a cure

They both have pros and cons.

Welcome to life – the real world.

Two Simple Choices. Pick One.
Two Simple Choices. Pick One.

Simple Midlife Simplicity

As Simple As Common Clover
As Simple As Common Clover

Do you often feel overwhelmed?  Me too.

And if you don’t, you’re either brilliant or clueless – I’m guessing anyway.

Human tendency is to complicate things. More is better.  Keeping up with what others have or do.  Newer.  Bigger.

Here’s how I alleviate, not eliminate, the stress of our daily burdens:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Simple. Wise. Powerful.

But there is a complexity we must break through in order to get to simplicity.

And it may take us a lifetime.

Mid Life 1980

Is That A Bicyclist?
Is That A Bicyclist?

Mid Life in 1980?

Hardly.  I was 21. A senior in college, and a dreamer.

There was a movie that shaped the mid life celebration vision.  A mother was videotaping herself while she spoke to her unborn child.

She was dying of cancer and would never meet her child.

She wanted her child to be able to see and hear, directly from the video tapes, what she wished for her child and what she thought her child might want to know about their mother.

It was in the following days, on the lazy, sunny, fall days in West Chester, Pennsylvania that I dreamt of writing a book for my children.

The book would contain all the secrets of life, learned through books, travels and experiences.

While the Mid Life Celebration website is two years old, the name and vision are the same, what’s morphed is Mid Life Celebration’s purpose.

And it’s more exciting than I could have ever imagined 30 years ago. Ever feel like that?

Do you have important dreams from long ago that are more exciting today than when you first dreamt them?

How did you go about keeping them alive all these years?  Or, how did you go about reigniting the flames?

Why?

Mid Life Lies

Life's Big Four
Life's Big Four

Do you lie to yourself?  We all do.

So?

So what are you going to do about it and when are you going to stop?

Mid Life Crisis.  Mid Life Celebration. Mid Life lies.

Life is about balancing life’s big four.  Life’s big four?

Yes. Life can be broken down into four basic segments:

  1. Mind
  2. Body
  3. Spirit
  4. Money

It’s simple.  People think simple isn’t important. Simple is the most important of all.

That’s why no one has focused on it relentlessly.

Until 1980.