This is a picture from a little Italian grocery store I visited while taking my aunt out to her old neighborhood. I love the suggestion on the bottom. “Best served in good company”. How many things should have this suggestion? Good company makes everything better.
On this evening, I was accompanied by not only my aunt, but my mother and Margie as well. We ate at my aunt’s favorite Chinese restaurant, shopped at this grocery store and relaxed at an independent coffee shop. All that would be a great night for me, but doing it with those you love make it even more amazing.
How about you? Have there been things you have done that are ‘best served in good company?’ What other products do you think should have this suggestion printed on them? My suggestion would be coffee. Sharing a good cup of coffee with a friend makes it taste that much better. What is your suggestion?
It is Friday! The day so many of us wait for. In some ways, seeing this makes me glad that I work 7 days a week. That may sound crazy to many of you but let me explain. When it comes to planning dates with my beautiful lady, or maybe just treating myself to a bit of self-care like a good cup of coffee and a book, I do not wait for the weekend, as I will be working. I carve little bits of time whenever and wherever I can find them. Quite often we go on a date on a Thursday evening. Maybe I will take Tuesday after work to stop by the local coffee shop and get lost in the current novel I am reading.
The point of all of this is that I do not wait for the weekend, 5 o’clock or any other designated time. Do not misunderstand me, when I go on vacation, I am on vacation. It is more important to find joy in the life you are living rather than working to escape it. When you wait for the weekend, you are essentially resigning yourself to the fact that 5 out of 7 days will be a burden and lacking joy. Can you imagine giving anyone else that advice?
How do we create a life that we do not need a vacation from? By doing the things we preach on this site. Practice gratitude. Be present. Understand that we do not get more life. Time is truly our most precious commodity. Once it is gone, it is gone forever. One day will be your last. Before that day, you will witness the last days of many of the people you love and care about. This is not to sound depressing, but to impress upon you the urgency of changing your perspective of life now. Coming home to Margie is a blessing I am grateful for everyday. One day, it will be the last time we come home to each other. Saturday I am having coffee with my good friend Nick. By listening to him, feeling and expressing the gratitude for the friendship we share will help me be present and fully appreciate the moment. I never know how many more coffees we will share.
How about you? Are you putting off your joy until you reach the destination or are you working on ways to enjoy the journey?
I love this thought. With life as busy as it is, many of the simple joys get pushed on the back burner. It is not only time to rediscover them, but to make a point of adding them into our life. These can be simple, inexpensive things that make us smile. Let me give you an example.
Whenever I go to a coffee shop, I’m there for one of two purposes. I’m either there to write. This could be the very blog you are now reading, or working on my next book. The second purpose is to connect and enjoy the company of others. After 23 years of being a bartender, my favorite place to meet friends is a coffee shop.
What does this have to do with simple joys? Those things do give me joy. What i forgot is the simple pleasure of a cup of coffee and a good book. Just relaxing and reading. Deadlines always looming, it makes it hard not to feel guilty about this simple pleasure. It is these simple pleasures that refresh our soul and allow us to face the world. What is your simple pleasure?
It is often when we are down that we fail to appreciate, and sometimes even notice, the little gifts that life provides every day. This can be when we are hurting, when we are exhausted or in my case Monday mornings, when we are tired.
Most of you know already that going from being a DJ to my day job on Monday I get about 2 hours of sleep. It can be tough to look around and appreciate the Miracles of life when you are that tired. It is exactly that which will give us the energy and keep our vibration from slipping lower. Draining us physically, mentally and emotionally.
This past Monday serves as a good example. As I was driving to work, cursing the lack of sleep and energy I was feeling my favorite song came on the radio. Being it is not one of the 10 the are paid to play on repeat all day, in fact it is quite rare, made it stand out. I felt grateful.
It was also a wake up call to remind me to focus on what was working and good in my life instead of what was lacking. After over 20 years of working in self-improvement and with the law of attraction you would think I should know this. As stated earlier, being in a depleted state can make you forget what you know.
The great thing was after that initial noticing, I started to notice other things to appreciate. The great cup of coffee that not only tasted great but would help me wake up. The car that helped me get to work. Even the work I was going to as so many others are looking forwork. Make sure you are always on the lookout for the little Miracles life sends you.
The title of this post, “That was a lifetime ago.” is a phrase that my mother and I utter to each other more often as the years go by. As we walk, or sometimes sit for coffee, we recall places we used to go and people we used to know. Quite often both of us feel like it was an entirely different lifetime. Have you ever felt this way? That activities that you used to engage in, or perhaps the people you used to engage in them with have disappeared from your life. In the rapid pace of change that the world now faces, entire industries can be gone and replaced by something else seemingly overnight. As we get older, the pace of change seems to quicken. Not sure why that is. Perhaps it is because we are more aware of the fleeting nature of life? It could be that we have experienced more and the more knowledge we accumulate, the more things seem to change.
Above is a spot in a local coffee shop. The table on the left is where a good portion of my first two books, and even a bit of my third, were written. This particular location is moving. Not that big of a deal. Still, the sentimental part of me had to take in this place one last time. I have had so many memories there. Margie, my mother and I stopped for one last coffee. Margie actually had an iced cherry chai. We reflected on many of the fun times we shared there and looked around at everything that was packed in to boxes ready to go.
The staff at this location have become friends of ours. Sam, who discussed how to make a cream sauce with Margie, is always amazing. Dakota has returned after moving abroad. Even the lady we just meant, Jen, was very kind and helpful. We are hopeful that they all we be at the new location. One nice thing is that we were able to have a heads up that this place would be closing. That way we could plan one more day there. As we all know, this is not always the case. People and places can leave our lives without warning. We are left with either regret or a longing for one more time. One way in which you can not only decrease the feelings of regret and loss, but enjoy the present more is to become more present. I mentioned we were given warning that this location was closing, but what if we had not? Had we always focused on being present and fully appreciating the amazing staff, decor and overall ambience of the place, we would be bummed they were leaving, but satisfied we made the most of our time there.
As true as this is of coffee shops, restaurants and other such places, it is even more true of people. When someone leaves our life, for whatever reason, it is not some grand thing we wish we could do with them. It is the mundane. Sharing one more laugh, one more cup of coffee. Maybe even hearing that story they told us a million times just one more time. It is with a great deal of irony that the things that annoy us can be the things we miss most about someone when they are gone.
This is why it is so vital we live in the present moment. Why we learn to appreciate every detail of the life we live. It is not some cliche self-improvement hack. It is a way of living. The Latin phrase, Mors certa, hora incerta, meaning “Death is certain, the hour uncertain.” reminds us that the end of anything could be right around the corner. The time to enjoy life, and all of the people and coffee shops in it, is now. Soak it all in. If you treat each day as the last you might do something, one day you will be right and you will be glad you did.
What a powerful message from Bob Marley, who would have celebrated his 80th birthday only a few days ago. In today’s age of being ‘internet famous’, so many people are trying their best to be the next big thing. What you run the risk of is losing yourself. Staying true to ourselves despite the world, and often others, pushing us to be something they think is better is one of the greatest challenges.
When we are not true to ourselves it can cause us all kinds of stress. Maybe you did something that went against one of your values or beliefs in order to look good in someone else’s eyes, even if nobody else were to find out, the guilt that would put on your conscious would be enough to keep you up at night. You might end up experiencing indigestion. Keeping doing that, or feel the guilt long enough, and you will end up with an ulcer and maybe worse.
Plus, keeping up an image of someone you are not takes a lot of work. You can never just relax and be yourself. After a while, you may not even remember who you really are. Talk about stress and confusion. This is not to say that if people do not like a certain aspect of you that you might investigate whether a little self-improvement is needed. Saying, “That is just who I am.” can be a very immature and unenlightened way of making excuses for not putting in the work on ourselves. Just make sure the person hating on you doesn’t have a good point. If they do, maybe even a little show of gratitude while you work on becoming an even more amazing person?
What happens when you are working very hard on being the best version of yourself that you can be and there are still those who do not like you or speak ill of you? Remember the picture above. You can be the best cup of tea, or the best version of yourself, and that person just might be a coffee drinker. Do you know what? That is alright. It is not our mission to be liked by everyone on the planet. There are over 8 billion people. Tell me one thing that every one of them likes. There is nothing. That includes you. As long as we are working on being the best that we can be, others opinions are none of our business.
Yes, this is a funny little meme. Yes, it is also the honest truth for me when it comes to winter. It is also a great suggestion for appreciating different aspects of what the cold weather brings. I mentioned a few posts ago that where I live the weather is dangerously cold. The news is recommending people do not leave their house unless they have to. Makes you wonder why I am not on vacation writing to you from the tropics. As you read this, there is a great chance that I am doing just what the photo above states. Sitting inside enjoying a good cup of coffee. Chances are that I am doing so with some wonderful company as well.
As much as I dislike the cold, there is something wonderful to be said about being inside looking out at it. Enjoying coffee with Margie, my mother or some other wonderful person becomes so much more of a blessing. The fact that we have the freedom and ability to do so is something we are all grateful for. While it is true that you can do this in the warm weather, it has a different feel when the temperature plummets below freezing.
Wherever you are, and no matter what the weather is like, may you enjoy the blessing of sharing a great cup of coffee with some wonderful company. Make sure you take time to be grateful for the ability to do so. In a world where things can change in an instant, it is fully enjoying the present that makes all of the difference.
It is hump day. The middle of the week and our energy might be starting to fade. One of my life quests is to find healthy sources of energy. In the life of a blog writer/author/DJ who also happens to work 50+ hours a week at his day job, sleep is rarely in smoke supply.
Imagine my excitement when I came across this list earlier this week. It was not only a great reminder of the many different healthy sources of energy, but the fact that energy depletion can be far more than physical. You can be depleted in one area and it can manifest itself as a physical lack of energy.
Take the example of studying for an exam. Nothing really physically taxing about that. Pushing a key on a keyboard, or turning the page of a book. You won’t strain a hamstring doing that. It will leave you mentally drained and you may very well need a nap after. Here’s what I find draining – political ads.Regardless of party, they are always like the chicken little “the sky is falling” theme. Sucks the life out of your soul after a while.
Next time you’re tired, before you grab a coffee or energy drink, make sure you try one of the items above. The source of your exhaustion could be mental, emotional, physical or even spiritual. Make sure to hydrate, grab a power nap, but maybe focus on gratitude and love as well.
Which one of the items on the list energizesyou the most?
Above is a picture from an Ethiopian coffee shop that Margie and I visited the other day. I’ve been drinking coffee for years, Margie had really just started to get into it. We have tried many different kinds of coffee. My personal favorite is Jamaican Blue Mountain. We have never had anything like this coffee before.
Not only was the coffee unique, but they served it with some incense and other details that set it apart. The atmosphere and service in the coffee shop was wonderful. There were small food items to try as well. We relaxed and had a great time.
The point of this post is to remind you of thebenefits of trying something new. Would I switch to this coffee everyday? No. What was nice is having this experience and sharing it with the lady I love. Keep an open mind and try something new in your world. Feel free to share an experience where you tried something new and the joy it brought you.
Anyone who knows me, knows I love coffee. As I write this, I am sitting in a coffee shop. My computer has 2 local coffee shops advertised on it. Coffee, like life is very customizable. If your coffee is too strong, you can add cream. Too bitter? Throw a sugar or honey in there. Too weak? Use more grounds. Too thick? Use less grounds. Coffee comes in a range of different quality as well. You can get a can of store brand coffee for less than ten dollars. My favorite coffee is Jamaican Blue Mountain. This, will cost you around fifty dollars a pound. Life is like that. We can be blessed with a Blue Mountain coffee kind of life. Maybe our parents are rich. We have our health and a great circle of friends. That life may seem to taste great. We may also be given a ‘Chuck Full o’Nuts’ life. In case you are not familiar, that is a coffee that can be found on the more economical end of the spectrum. It also happens to be really fun to say. In the case of life, this can be a life where we grow up in a single home. Maybe our family struggles to pay the bills? Maybe you grow up with some health challenges? This life can seem to taste bitter and not so good.
Why did I use the word ‘seem’ in my mentioning of how life tastes? Let us refer back to our coffee analogy to better understand. If I have some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, which should happen more often, it does not guarantee that I will have a great cup of coffee. What if I left that coffee sitting open on the counter for several weeks? What if I decided that since I liked it so much, I was going to double the amount of grounds that I was going to use? Maybe I made the coffee with distilled water? In these cases, the coffee would not taste great. Same with a Blue Mountain kind of life. How many kids, who seemed to have it all end up with a terrible life? You may have a lot of money and decide to indulge in recreational drug use. You may have your health, but throw it away by partying every weekend, or more. You may simply focus on the material aspect of life and live an unfulfilled existence.
Just as having some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee does not guarantee a great cup of coffee, Chuck Full o’Nuts does not mean you will have a terrible cup of coffee. If you use just the right amount of grounds, if you store them correctly, if you use some great spring water, the coffee will taste really good. Do you know what else makes the coffee taste good? Being grateful for the fact you have some coffee. I grew up in what may be described as a Chuck Full o’Nuts life. My parents were divorced. My mom was a single mom with 2 kids which meant we never really had a lot of money. I had bad allergies and asthma growing up. This meant I often had to avoid certain sports and social activities. Does that mean I now live a bitter and bad tasting life? Not at all!
Just like our coffee example, I could have continued to drink the bitter coffee, but I did my best to make it taste good. My life was a little bitter, so I added the sweetness of my beautiful Margie. The obstacles were a little too strong at times with the allergies and asthma. I added the ‘cream’ of eating healthier and taking charge of my health. Now, my ‘Chuck Full o’Nuts life’ tastes better than many Jamaican Blue Mountain lives. It is cliché, but life really is 10% what you are given and 90% what you do with it.
I like my coffee, and my life, delicious. Therefore, I take the time to make them that way. What about you?
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 