The past week in Bend extended some of the most ideal summer days. Clear blue skies, low eighty-degree weather and only, if any, the gentlest of breezes. Having lived in Oregon all but one of my 42 years, I also know wildfire smoke often drifts into the air stream, and our blue skies and air […]
“Find a way to do what you love and everything else falls into place.” —Adam Frost, British garden designer and Gardeners’ World co-host At first glance, the above quote may seem far too simple. And a doubtful reader may argue, Even if I do know what I love, being able to do it regularly is […]
“People can change and be happy from this moment onward . . . the problem is not one of ability, but of courage.” —from the book The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga “As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.” American folk singer Joan Baez certainly narrows down succinctly […]
“Let go of thinking and rest the mind in awareness. That is when we discover peace of mind.” —Andy Puddicombe Positive thinking is powerful, but forcing positivity can be exhausting as it ignores what is. Negativity and cynism is destructive and life depleting, and to walk through life with a jaded perspective closes our lives […]
“Discontent is the first necessity of progress.” – Thomas Edison True contentment runs like a river feeding our everyday lives with constant inner peace. Whether the weather for the day is a turbulent snow storm or a sunny Blue Bird day as we call them in Bend, the river of True Contentment continues to run […]
Something as simple as a sliver when removed, floods the physical body with immediate relief. As I stood in my bathroom with a tweezers and needle in my hand this past weekend, I gently pulled out a minuscule tip of wood from the inside of my thumb. Elation. A deep breath of an erasure of […]
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” —Joseph Campbell Gold is 19 times heavier than water and three times as heavy as iron. Knowing this basic fact would be helpful if you were actually paning or mining for gold. Barring […]
“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.” —Amelia Earhart It is easier to be kind when all is going well in our life. After all, the initial, unconscious understanding of kindness is extending something to someone else, thus reducing what we have […]
While it may appear that everyone outside of ourselves is living lives full of amazing, surreal moments from distant lands or dining out at amazing restaurants, even wearing the perfect item of clothing or experiencing bucket list events with every scroll on our social media apps, the reality is that we too are living an […]
“Finding an ease with what you are thinking, feeling, the world as it is, not necessarily accepting it, but not resisting it. This is contentment.” —Andy Puddicombe The truth about contentment is that it is different than being happy. We cannot know what it feels like to be happy if we have not known sadness, […]
~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #219 ~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate: iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio | YouTube | Spotify “Your environment, where you live and how you shape your surroundings, is the biggest, most important and most impactful thing you can do to favor your own happiness.” —Dan Buettner, The Blue Zones of Happiness Have you ever said to yourself – if only […]
“Pursuit of contentment is not the pursuit of an elusive tomorrow; it is the celebration of today. In that, it is the pursuit to end all pursuits.” —Majid Kazmi Spring is beginning to bloom in Portland this week, and so as I went on a couple of walks with the dogs, it was the blossoms […]
~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #181 ~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate: iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio “There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore, acquire contentment.” —Swami Sivananda Recently I overheard someone describe their weekend as boring, using the descriptor in a negative tone (remember this post on my thoughts about being boring?). Being […]
~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #162 ~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate: iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio “Focusing on happiness as our ultimate goal is self-defeating; being in a constant state of happiness is, simply put, impossible.”—Paul Hudson Place the word happiness on the cover of a self-help book and it will sell more times than it won’t (Amazon has over 40,000 book […]
As children and young adults, and possibly even as adults, we hear from innumerable persons the axioms of living a happy life: marry your best friend, live like today is your last, or life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Okay, seriously? Didn’t Diane von Furstenberg tell us to be […]
“You’ll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.” —Julia Child ~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #100 The oft mentioned quote regarding knowledge which has been attributed to both Aristotle and Albert Einstein goes something like this: “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know”. Why I share this quote […]
“The best way to conquer self-doubt is to follow your dream and work your ‘bass’ off.” – CBS Sunday Morning speaking of musician Meghan Trainor ~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #93 The highs in life that we each experience from landing the job we’ve been coveting for years, celebrating a hard-earned diploma, signing the papers on […]
“We are all just one small adjustment away from making our lives work.” –Paul Rudd in How Do You Know? A life well lived is one that involves discipline, reflection and the conscious awareness of our present actions on our future. It is quite easy in our day-to-day lives to enjoy instant gratification, after all, […]
“After a while, you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul. And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t mean security. And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises. You begin to accept your defeats. With your head up and your […]
A quote I have held on to throughout my life, attributed to Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism states, “Do not seek sanctuary in anyone except yourself.” Many people have taken his words and applied them in slightly different ways, and with much contemplation, much time on my own, as well as a […]
Sunday morning and, as is our ritual, Norman and I went walking. While we often return to favorite trails just outside of the Bend area and then enjoy the reward of a croissant with breakfast and a cuppa, from time to time, I will explore a new trail just to see where it leads. Not […]
“Throughout our development, we form adaptations to cope or deal with pain and fears. Yet these adaptations, which initially served as survival mechanisms, later come to limit us.”—Lisa Firestone, author of Conquer Your Critical Voice (2002) It takes 27 days for our skin to replace itself, to be fully exfoliated, revealing the new skin – […]
“Life becomes simpler when our lives become calmer.” —Andy Puddicombe With the first sighting of the word luxury or luxurious, the collective default tends to be toward excess. After all, the history of the word, stretching back to its Latin roots doesn’t exactly have a benign connotation. The word has morphed and been tweaked regarding […]
“If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. To begin with, you have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, and it’s not about your career, whom you want to […]
