Happy Holidays everyone! For those of us who are aware of the abundance of holiday celebrations that occur during December around the world, it’s easy and SMART to admit how appropriate that greeting is for us all. It means no disrespect to anyone, and instead acknowledges that different people experience different ways to find meaning in their world. In fact, even if you have a favorite way to celebrate, acknowledging with love, kindness and compassion the diversity among us, just might be the most spiritual and enlightened way to celebrate and enjoy the season. [Read more…]
SMART Living 365 Recommends You Stay Grateful By Visiting Gratefulness.org
Happy SMART Day Everyone!
One of the core elements of living SMART 365 is practicing a thankful awareness on a daily basis. That’s why this week we are recommending Gratefulness.org. This website offers several touching and free ways to practice gratitude as well as education and support for anyone who wants to use gratitude as a regular spiritual practice. Just one of the goals of the website and organization is “to promote public awareness of gratefulness as a power for change in areas such as ecology, religious tolerance and intergenerational respect.” Surely, such a focus on gratitude can benefit each and every one of us every single day. [Read more…]
Three Simple Ways to Practice Thanksgiving 365
One of the shortest and sweetest paths to a happy and fulfilled life is the daily practice of giving thanks. From one perspective, no other single spiritual practice is more universally accepted than the idea of being consistently grateful. Not only is gratitude a fundamental element in most spiritual traditions, it is also an ongoing, reoccurring theme in most self-help, inspirational and motivationally focused books on the market. Even science is jumping on the bandwagon and has begun to study the practice of gratitude as a way to increase the health and quality of a person’s life on many levels. Simply put, being thankful 365 is the most important activity anyone can practice, at any stage of life, to create a happy, healthy and contented life.
[Read more…]
SMART Living 365 Recommends Your Local Public Library—For Free!
Happy SMART Day Everyone!
During the last couple of months SMART Living 365 has made it a habit to recommend a website or resource that brings richness to our lives. Most of our recommendations have been online businesses or charities—but today’s recommendation is something many people (at least those that live in the US) take for granted. And while some of our readers are international, and not every US citizen lives in an area with a large library system, we still want to point out the amazing benefits many of us can regularly use to increase the quality of our lives—and it’s mostly free! That resource is your local public library.
Who/What Are You Listening To Today?
How many times have you seen a movie or listened to a story where a person has an angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other? This example is classic because it’s universal to us all. At any given time, on any given day, we have either the voice of our higher more compassionate self who is whispering in our ear—or we have that part of us that is most selfish, small-minded and paranoid sitting on the other. The image of two little selves fighting for our attention is one that is graphically easy to remember. Which do you listen to the most?
Freecycle.org—The SMART Living 365 Recommended Website for 11/7/11
Happy SMART Day Everyone!
This week is “National Recycling Week” in Australia and in honor of that we thought that it would be great to recommend a website named Freecycle.org. After all, it is good to know that other parts of the planet are encouraging SMART Living just like us, and Freecycle is a excellent way to turn your junk into someone else’s treasure. Instead of throwing it in the trash, Freecycle allows you to post your items, and anyone who wants or needs it can come and pick it up for free. Not only does it keep trash out of our landfills, you get the added benefit of being both giving and generous with your neighbors—and that is very SMART indeed.
SMART Website for 10/24/11–Be Selfish, Be Generous–See Charity Focus.org
Happy SMART Day Everyone!
This week SMART Living 365 recommends two websites connected to each other. The first is CharityFocus.org—which encourages us to be “selfish” by being generous and kind to one another. The second sister-site is KarmaTube.org, which is a collection of inspiring videos accompanied by simple actions that everyone can take. These two sites run fully by volunteers, each attempt to put the statement made by Gandhi into practice when he said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Four Tasks For A Happy and Meaningful Life
Happy SMART Day Everyone!
According to a Cree Native American tradition that originated from the very beginning of creation, every morning when the sun comes up our Creator gives each of us four tasks for that day:
1) First we must learn at least one meaningful thing;
2) Next we must teach at least one meaningful thing to another person; [Read more…]
Monday’s Website of The Week 10/3/11—Thanks to Gary for Thx,thx,thx!
Happy SMART Day Everyone!
A great big “thank you” to our friend and SMART Living 365 reader Gary for his recommendation of the thxthxthx.com website. I’d read about it before but until Gary sent me the link, I never took the time actually check it out. In case you don’t recall, each week we want to reach out across the web and share good and inspiring websites with one another and thanks to Gary this is a short, but very sweet website that helps keep things in perspective. That’s right—thxthxthx is all about gratitude—and remembering how everything works together for good.
Don’t Stop Believing—Or The Creation of your Dream Life Starts Today!
I have a confession to make. During the summer, I started watching the TV series “Glee.” Maybe some of you have been watching it all along, but I never got into it even though I heard from a number of people that it was fun, touching at times, and worth the trouble. But because we were out-of-town for the last couple of months and away from our usual DVR programs, we turned to Netflix and I started watching the entire 22 previous episodes online. The main reason I’m sharing my new Glee addiction is because a primary theme of the show is “Don’t Stop Believing.” And that has me thinking a lot about what I do and don’t believe—and how that has helped co-create my life.