L.I.V.E. Life Inspired Views for Everyday

Send us Fan Mail My mom has dementia. I called her on Saturday night after writing this podcast and asked her if she remembered what happened this week in our government. She told me that she didn't remember. When I reminded her that a new president had taken over, she remembered a bit, but said she couldn't place exactly what it was all about. Then she said, "That is what this memo...

Send us Fan Mail You've probably heard commentators speak to the untruth in the old childhood adage, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me." I wonder how that saying ever came to be. It was probably meant to give courage to a child to deal with or stand up to name calling or intimidation. But we all know it is not true. Words can hurt. Words can cause li...

Send us Fan Mail The Japanese art, Kintsugi, is the practice of putting broken pieces of pottery back together to create something not only beautiful because gold is used to outline the cracks, but the piece is stronger than before and radiently embracing the flaws and perfections. Kintsugi has often been used as a metaphor for healing, because in the process of repairing, something more beautiful...

Send us Fan Mail In a text from which I taught from once, there was a wonderful line which read, "No one rises to low expectations." This doesn't mean we strive to be perfectionists about all we do or become, but I think it gives us a meaningful challenge to give our learning, living, and our loving the best from ourselves.     I have often said that I live by two philosophies of li...

Send us Fan Mail If you asked me, "What does fun look like in my world?" I would probably say, (in no specific order), 1) entertaining in our home, 2) playing rescue with my 4 y.o. grandson, 3) attending a party 4) laughing until I cry at something someone says or does, 5) and playing games. Those are the things that involve others. I also have fun when I 1) research and write my podcast...

Send us Fan Mail I love the story of Josef Szajna, a designer and famous director of theatre in Poland during World War II. He was imprisoned in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He survived. But while in the concentration camps, he was confined to a "standing cell," 4 feet by 4 feet, made of cement block with no windows, and a ceiling open to the sky. During the long...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever given away to some one a thing that was of great value to you? Has anyone given you something that was of great value to them? Giving generously and spontaneously is easy for some and hard for others. But when it is done, the reward in one's spirit is  wonderful.  Giving and receiving...like the beating of a heart...blood in and blood out...to give and sustain l...

Send us Fan Mail I love the quote attributed to Saint Basil (A.D. 330-379) when he said, "[Those] who sow courtesy reap friendship, and [those] who plant kindness gather love." It's so true, basically simple and yet so often we struggle.  Today the models of sarcasm, snarkiness, and rudeness can be seen all over the airwaves of television, movies, memes, FaceBook, and more. You can&...

Send us Fan Mail Tis the Season! The holiday seasons during this time of year have become some of the most wondrous and yet intense of times. Expectations are  key...nostalgia fuels expectations, traditions fuel expectations, relationships fuel expectations, hence intense. How can we maintain a perspective that will allow us to engage so we can enjoy and cherish the time and memories made? I came...

Send us Fan Mail Has anyone said to you or have you said, "You have my word?" We take the power of words for granted, don't we? They can bring people together, tear relationships apart, make people laugh, start wars, teach the fundamentals of life, bring entertainment...it goes on and on. They truly hold power! But this week I want to encourage you to think about their ability to le...

Send us Fan Mail We have a painting in our home by Canadian Artist Ron Christiansen called, Sunset. It depicts four members of the Ojibwe tribe sitting in a circle in a grassy field at sunset. It's rich in color and line. What I like about it is that you can tell that the artist intended to depict a group in conversation with each other. They sit as they must have sat many times simply visiti...

Send us Fan Mail When I have counseled people who have had struggles with communicating with someone who is angry with them, I often suggest that when they are at an impasse and neither is listening to the other, that they ask the other person, "What do you need most to hear from me?"   We are in the days of "post election." We all scan the news feeds or listen to the reporters...

Send us Fan Mail During this election season, we have all had to mentally reframe what it would be like if one or the other presidential candidate was elected. It's been a tense time. But as I often do, I lean into a powerful quote by Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl who said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any gi...

Send us Fan Mail These are intense times for our country. I often turn to the wisdom of people who have lived and led through times like these with love and grace. One of those people is Desmond Tutu, who led South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, after Apartheid ended. In the book, Believe , that shares many of his inspiring messages, I found this quote, "A time of crisis i...

Send us Fan Mail Our daughter, Maria, and I have ongoing descriptions of our differences in certain areas. When it comes to experiences, Maria reminds me that she holds no expectations so that she is never disappointed and only pleasantly surprised. In life, she says, she strives for contentment, but that I strive for euphoria. We laugh, but it is probably true. Though I look for the best and posi...

Send us Fan Mail There is a Yiddish verb for complaining, kvetch. Its literal meaning is, to squeeze or to crush. When I think of the definition in reference to a person who is chronically complaining, or kvetching, it really fits, because a chronic complainer always squeezes joy out of the moment, crushes someone's spirit, wears on people listening, or simply makes others decide not to spend...

Send us Fan Mail How do you deal with things that you cannot understand? Things that are a mystery. It can be fairly frustrating in this day and age when we can get answers at the tips of our fingers...via the internet. However, we are also faced with the conundrum of inaccurate answers, too. Much like folklore...answers were often made up to help people contend with the great mysteries in their e...

Send us Fan Mail I have a book entitled,  Wisdom from The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Whohlleben .  In the page on "Patience," he writes: "Acorns and beechnuts fall at the feet of large 'mother trees.' Dr. Suzanne Simard, who helped discover maternal instincts in trees, describes mother trees as dominant trees widely linked to other trees in the forest through their fun...

Send us Fan Mail I love telling the story about a mouse sitting with a dove in a fir tree during a blizzard. The mouse asks the dove what the weight of a snowflake is, to which the dove replies, "Nothing." Then the mouse tells the dove a story about a time when he was sitting on a branch during a blizzard and decided to count the snowflakes as they fell to the branch. When the number rea...

Send us Fan Mail For many years I taught piano based on the Suzuki Method, developed by Shinichi Suzuki. Its basis is repetition with little steps at a time. The process allows the learner to build one skill at a time by repeating and repeating the step until it is mastered. The beautiful thing that I learned in studying the Suzuki Method is that it is based on love of the child first because then...

Send us Fan Mail A long time ago, I found a book in my Dad's library by Elbert Hubbard called,  White Hyacinths (1907). In the front flap of the book was this verse, "If I had but two loaves of bread, I would sell one of them, and buy White Hyacinths to feed my soul." When I told my friend, Bill Hamm, that verse, he immediately recited, "If of fortune be bereft, And in thy stor...

Send us Fan Mail Starting in my late 30s, I seemed to collect a variety of groups that I spent time with. I had a coffee group, The Java Sisters, which included teachers who met at a bookstore for coffee after school. Then there was the Planning Committee, who planned nothing but got together to talk about leadership and entrepreneurship over a bit of red wine. The Card Club stopped playing cards...

Send us Fan Mail To introduce today's podcast, I searched the word, "sounds," on the internet. I found a 12 minute YouTube recording of all sorts of sounds. Quite fascinating. I remembered a sound I forgot to include in my podcast, the sound of a baby nestled on your shoulder, and remembered with awe, the sound of a baby's breath close to your ear and those wee sounds they make...

Send us Fan Mail Making mistakes feels pretty bad sometimes. One often wonders what good can come from them. I remember a big mistake I made many years ago. I was in a musical ensemble and another member urged me to share their opinion that the ensemble really was not sounding good at all. I did just that, even though it was not my own, and I ended up embarrassing and hurting the director terribly...

Send us Fan Mail People have often asked why I can always be so happy. I tell them that I live by two philosophies of life. One is that every day I look forward to something. It can be as simple as my morning cup of coffee. The second is that when I'm 108 years old, I don't want to look back on my life and say, "Why didn't I?" I don't want to regret. So, when given an...