A few years ago – okay, more than 30 – I left Edmonton for Calgary, lured by the liberal arts education promise of being taught how to live. As the reality fell short of that promise, I began keeping my own record of what I was eating and drinking outside the classroom of life, mapping this academically unaddressed terra incognita of being.

As my intellectual, creative, and spiritual development began not to unfold, I realized that there was a distinct and important lack in my new life.

I was not ever going to be offered the experience of spending an unadulterated amount of time in Spain quaffing cheap wine and engorging an inordinate amount of tapas.

At the end of last year, I was offered this small window of opportunity. So I got on a plane to Barcelona and meandered until I reached a tiny southern village near the sea.

During this, my ‘Solo Sojourn in Spain’ , I had people writing to me saying that “I was living their dream life”.

It quite took me aback.

First, I did not really think I was necessarily living “a dream life” – I was just living my life.

And secondly, if this is what they saw as their dream life, why weren’t they living it?

After all, if you wait, all that happens is you get older.

Like Picasso said, “To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.” 

It may be because our present social media culture inculcates, perpetuates and intensifies our Fear of Missing Out (tweet as FOMO).

Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in the movie, “The Bucket List”, have forever personified this perceived scarcity.

They had 18 items on their pad of yellow paper and crossed off each as they accomplished them.

Now it goes without saying that most of us aren’t billionaires like the fictional Edward Cole, but that shouldn’t necessarily stop us from checking off our own bucket list.

Well, maybe not the skydiving one.

1. Witness something truly majestic
2. Help a complete stranger for a common good
3. Laugh till I cry
4. Drive a Shelby Mustang
5. Kiss the most beautiful girl in the world
6. Get a tattoo
7. Skydiving
8. Visit Stonehenge
9. Spend a week at the Louvre
10. See Rome
11. Dinner at La Cherie d’Or
12. See the Pyramids
13. Get back in touch (previously “Hunt the big cat”)
14. Visit Taj Mahal, India
15. Hong Kong
16. Victoria Falls
17. Serengeti
18. Ride the Great Wall of China

Yes, the world is continually letting us know how much we are missing out on.

Once known as “keeping up with the Jones”, these social media timelines bombard us with a crushing sense of perpetual urgency, making the satisfaction of our mostly ordinary lives almost non-existent.

Many cannot leave their phone unattended for more than two minutes in the fear that – what? They will miss a recipe for cucumber popsicles, a play that has finished its run, or that someone has burned their pot roast?

I’d give up sarcasm, but that would leave interpretive dance as my only means of communicating.

Faced with photos of vacationing in a glass-bottomed villa in the Maldives, wondering where one can buy that down-filled jacket the everyone is wearing, and why our desk doesn’t look like a Pinterest board, we naturally feel sub-par.
Our minds run wild with comparisons. If we are always measuring ourselves against others who broadcast a more exciting life than we could ever imagine and our lovability by the number of “Likes”, how are we ever to be content with our lives?

And who exactly, gets to decide you are or are not, beautiful?

In our always-connected digital world, many of us have become accustomed to the idea that we are the architects of our days. We make our appointments and set our schedules, all the while kvetching that we are just too busy. Our overscheduled lives proclaim to the world and ourselves that we are super-indispensable. Gosh, we hardly have time to thank the barista for our morning coffee, never mind making time to share it with a friend.

We have books like, “25,000 Places to Pick Olives Before You Die”, people claiming the necessity of walking the five major routes of the Camino, running with the bulls in Pamplona, throwing ripe tomatoes at tourists in La Tomatina, or learning to dance the flamenco…

Gee, some of this sounds like fun.

I’ll be right back.

Okay, I’m back. Seems like I was a little late for some of them.

Now where was I?

Right. FOMO.

Now, there are five approaches to this.

One. To fall into its eudemonic Venus trap causing yourself immense agony, as you feel that somewhere else is where you should be, somebody else is who you need to be, and something else is what stimulating and beautiful people are doing – the ones who have exactly the life that should be yours.

Many people start this process with the disadvantage of having recently been at an Ikea store, itself an emotionally destabilizing experience filled with anxiety.

I mean most of us can barely work the toaster. Do you put the bread in first? Or do you push the lever down first? Like, what if you do it wrong?

Two. Understand that is it rampant to listen to the heart of one’s friends, learn to cope well with being alone, appreciate the consoling power of nature, and be able to talk with a eight-year-old child.

Consumerism and noise beleaguers us at our every turn. The art of stillness is harder and harder to attain, and for some, often terrifying. What adds fuel to the fire is the difficulty to ever be sufficiently alone in order to sort out our thoughts and feelings. We can, for example:

Let our thoughts merge with the grandeur and scale of an ocean.
Visit a graveyard that helps us remember the brevity of our lives.
Spend some time in a desert to realize that we are but a tiny element in something far larger.
Or look up to the stars.

One can miss out on extremely important things if one is rushing a little too intently searching to find excitement elsewhere.

First, we have to know what is missing in order to find it.

Is it an experience, a change of vocation, a new sofa?

All of our actions are tapping into the same central question: What do I want to do with my life right now – today? 

It is fine to be stirred and inspired by one another, but it’s another thing to compete and compare ourselves against these Photoshop expectations.

We need to value our unique and different abilities. We also need to be aware of our particular propensities, unlike the person who shows up with her famous casserole that is famous for all the wrong reasons.

It might sincerely be possible for someone to decide not to take the higher paying job, not to buy an expensive car, not to seek political office – and to do so not because they didn’t have a chance, but because – having surveyed the externalities involved – chose not to have them.They may have instead, with no loss of dignity, opt to become a little poorer and a little more obscure.

Everything has its price; the relevant issue is the value of the article and whether you are going to haggle over its price.

Think of your life as three buckets.

The first bucket is called Vitality, and it’s about the state of your mind and body.

The second is Connection; this one is about relationships.

The third, Contribution, is about how you contribute to the world.

The fuller your buckets, the better your life. When all simultaneously bubble over, life soars. That’s what we’re aiming for. But the flip side is also true. If any single bucket runs dry, you feel pain. If two go empty, a world of hurt awaits. If all three bottom out, you don’t have a life.

It is not only the young that can be creative or those we deem as creative beings. All of us have each other’s permission to be creative and to think outside the box, to see what in the world needs to change, and to work to change it.

Jean Vanier says that his work is never about changing the world; it’s about changing ourselves.

Most people with new ideas and innovations are almost always rejected by mainstream society. Martin Luther King, Frida Kahlo, Schopenhauer, Marcel Proust, Walt Whitman, Georgia O’Keefe, Louis Riel, Ghandi, James Dean, Rudolf Nureyev, Rosa Parks, Lenny Bruce, Apostle Paul, Mary Wollstonecraft, Vincent van Gogh, Galileo, Harvey Milk, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer…who Einstein called “geniuses in the art of living.”

Our fear of change, of the unknown, of humiliation, of being judged or ostracized; all fears that can lead us astray from our creative and whole selves.

We cannot change the world. We can’t fix everything. It’s not even our job. All we need to do is our part. Maybe just one thing.

Could we not be too busy to cheer a weary soul, give some words of reassurance, a small gift, an act of service, or the gift of our welcoming ear?

Sr. Simone Campbell – lawyer, nun, poet, and a bit of a religious rock star as the face of the “Nuns on the Bus”, calls this “the walking willing.”
It was Roosevelt who said that in any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning oneself.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

We need to take the initiative to make our visions a reality.

Which brings me to Christmas tree decorating.

Yes, that was quite a leap. But I’m not generally known for beating around the bush, or tree.

So. The tree.

It is difficult to replicate the experience of pulling on long johns, three pairs of socks, ski pants, trail gaiters, the hand-knit reindeer sweater you got from Aunt Mabel last Christmas, Sorrel boots, a down-filled parka, toque, two scarves, a pair of gloves stuffed inside wool mitts, and rummage through the bowels of your basement to upturn an axe and some rope. You warm up the car, drive 57 minutes out to the country – getting lost twice – and then trudge through knee-high snow for another hour painstakingly searching for that one special ‘Charlie Brown’ Christmas tree.

Sweating profusely while engaging in a goodly amount of profanity, you slowly drag it back through the dense bush, suffering minor scrapes and bruises attempting to retrace your circuitous steps. With turgid fingers, you manage to rope it to the roof of your car and stop no fewer than four times along the road to re-secure it.

Now if you think outside the box, or better yet, inside a box, you can go into a big box store and in under five minutes, bring home either a white, red, pink, blue, silver, or purple tree. Lights included.

And the extra benefit? You can still imbibe from your whiskey flask while decorating. Although now you don’t need it to thaw out your innards and out-ters.

And the tree pretty much stays upright. Even if you are having trouble.

Which brings me to decorating the tree.

Do you really want to, yet once again, drag out those old and faded, cracked and crumbing, red and green decorations?

No? Then think outside the box.

Or inside the box.

Augment those decorations of sentient and sentiment, the others that have been passed down through the generations, and even – yes, some red and green ones – and then buy some ‘new’ antique ornaments, the ones you had as a child back in 1658.

Now given you may actually want a green tree, you can decorate it with irreverent, I mean irregular, colour combinations of no more than three or four colours. Vary the shapes, sizes and textures of the decorations and fill it to overflowing.

I know. High in optimism, low in reality.

If you are now more than overwhelmed, sufficiently unconcerned, or have a tendency to break things that you did not think could be broken, I can innocuously pop by and decorate your tree, just like these Trees I Have Known and Decorated for clients thus far this Season.

Or be a non-conformist and use “out of the box” ornaments, like a tree decorated with Matryoshka dolls, balsa-wood fish, handmade fabric dolls, feathers, ceramic flip-flops, hearts, starfish…

Be impecunious with a tree laden just with holiday lights, making your life low in stress and high in meaning.

It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than “Try to be a little kinder.”       ~ Aldous Huxley

Despite living in a small northern Alberta town, we had a large class. Approximately 110 students started in Grade One, and with a couple of exceptions, the same 110 were there in Grade Twelve.

In first grade, there was one boy who was quieter than most. In the interest of confidentiality, his name will be “CHRIS”. He was small, shy, unobtrusive. He wore the same nondescript clothes we all did. He said little and did nothing that made him stand out. He was never late, or early – and probably never missed a day. He did not have any distinctive features or mannerisms. Except for one thing.

Chris was a non-white. Metis. The only “visible minority” child in that whole pod of 110 children. In fact, the whole school.

So he came to our school and was our classmate. And in all those years, I don’t remember anyone being mean to him or treating him badly. In fact, we were kind.

Kind – by completely and cruelly ignoring him, day in and day out, year in and year out. I do not recall even one person speaking to him in all those years. Not one person ever made him his friend.

One day upon returning from our Christmas holidays, our Grade Four teacher made us each of us stand and tell the class what we received for Christmas. Today this request seems like something out of the Dark Ages. One by one, we dutifully obeyed – some of us with bravado, some of us with trepidation.

Then it was Chris’ turn.

He slowly rose from his desk – and stood there. Silent. Unspeaking.

After two uncomfortable minutes, the teacher asked him to sit down.

And then — one day he was gone.

That was it. No tragedy, no big final good-bye.

One day he was there, next day he wasn’t.

Why then, decades later, am I still thinking about him?

I lament what must have been his unimaginable loneliness with this deliberate alienation. And at the same time, I now marvel at his composite bravery to show up day after day despite it all. I often wonder what he has done with his life. Did he succumb to the despair of living in and through those times, or did he become a most courageous person? Was he really that strong, or were his parents stronger by insisting he continue in the face of these circumstances? Did they even know? Was there any other choice? What was the kindest thing?

Here’s something I know to be true.

What some of us probably most regret in our lives are our failures of kindness.

There have been perhaps, moments when another human being was in front of us, suffering, and maybe we responded… sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or maybe we didn’t. We ignored them. It was kinder. It was easier.

So, a question. Who are those people that you remember with the fondest memories?

I garner it was those who were the kindest to you.

Kindness has been given a lot of press lately. Like it’s something new that has just been invented.

Bumper stickers saying “Practice Random Acts of Kindness” because for some reason we need to be reminded. We buy posters and teeshirts with inspirational quotes, and deluge social media with posts of what should be unheralded occurrences.

In our culture kindness has now become a sign of weakness. It looks old-fashioned, indeed nostalgic, a remnant from a time when we recognized ourselves in each other and felt empathy because of our kind-ness.

Kindness is now seen as a virtue for losers – someone who can’t make the mortgage payments or has a lot of extra time on their hands. Practicing the art of kindness sounds bizarre, even eerie. It may be praiseworthy, but it is not that normal.

Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes, as the saying goes, can be very uncomfortable. 

I am astonished that people are astonished by the deep pleasures and rewards of kindness.

It seems that kindness has virtually gone underground. It has become a forbidden pleasure. Nowadays when we extend a kindness to someone, they somehow feel they are entitled to it, oblivious to the giver.

Common courtesy and reciprocation have gone by the wayside. Our culture deems that we need to be kind to our family, but not necessarily to other people, or even ourselves.

All children are born kind. What happens to our natural state of kindness as we grow older?

Whatever disagreements we may have with religions, they do not stop trying to encourage their followers to be good. They remind us of how kind we want to be. Dismissing the goodness of religions, we now may have thrown out the baby with the holy bathwater. Maybe that is why we continue to download inspirational sayings – we constantly need to be reminded of our better nature.
Kindness, it turns out, is hard —that is, the ability to bear the vulnerability of others, and therefore of oneself.

(However, given what we’re really like deep down, we should spare others too much exposure to our deeper selves.)

It is this paradox that we are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us.

But by denying our own kind impulses and making ourselves vulnerable enough to be kind, we also deny ourselves the powerful pleasure that our acts of kindness can produce.

Kindness — the foundation of all spiritual traditions — is nonetheless one of the most satisfying pleasures we will ever possess.

We’ve grown so good in some areas (landing on the moon, the faithful return of Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes every Thanksgiving, making sure our internet connection works on our hopeless little screens, etc.), we’re still ever less able to deal with things that still insist on going wrong – like traffic, American presidential elections, other people…

Kindness is a way of knowing people beyond our understanding of them.

Kindness, like most things, is about action.

Kindness is about what you do with that kindness.

So the question is always: what can we do

What if this season we focused on affairs of the heart?

To lean in and listen. Generous listening, holding space for another. Because anyone can have any size of heart they want.

What of we were to press beauty out into the world?

Small gifts. The kind that are contagious.

It’s only kindness that matters. The smallest seeds of kindness from strangers, from neighbours, from a friend, can heal the world a little bit at a time.

A single act of kindness has a ripple effect, spreading from person to person and growing as it goes. Heck, it may even make you happier.

All it requires is PRESENCE.

Have a conversation with one stranger every week. Give them 5 minutes of time you don’t think you have.
Thank someone older and younger today.
Make a donation of any amount to something or someone.
Tell someone that you love their smile.
Let that car merge ahead of you in busy traffic.
Wave at the mailman.

Start your own Kindness Revolution. Powerful, and culture-shifting.

Kindness can expand to include . . . well, everything.

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

– Naomi Shihab Nye

Some hold the questionable belief that Christmas decorating should only be embarked upon from the middle of December. Or like the Nordstrom stores who have a policy of “No decorations before Thanksgiving — it’s a hallmark of Nordstrom.” (American Thanksgiving).

They clearly have Strong Opinions.

I happen to be one of those people who love Christmas. But even more than loving Christmas, I love decorating for Christmas. (This should not come as a complete surprise.)

And I decorate earlier than Nordstrom. This is partly because I have one daughter born in the middle of November and another in the first week of December, so it always just seemed more efficient to decorate for Christmas in the middle of November. (It took them years to realize that fresh pine garlands on the dining table was not de rigueur for a little girl’s birthday party.)

The other reason is that I Iove the smell of fresh greenery, the twinkle of fairy lights, and low-fat eggnog. But mostly it’s because Christmas trees are so hilariously expensive that having one for just two weeks feels like a Saturnalian decadence.

Some of my clients feel exactly the way I do, which is why I’m starting two Christmas decorating jobs next week.

But who can afford to give their home a completely new look every year? Not many of us. But there are ways to have a beautifully decorated home every year.

I start a new Christmas decorating project by first selecting the decorations that I want to use from the client’s existing stock. (whereby my first two words are usually, “Good Lord!”)

I then source a stock of new decorations for the tree, fireplace mantle, tabletops, bannisters, exterior; whatever areas we decide upon. These decorations can now be used year after year; their original investment depreciating substantially with every passing year. (My math skills cannot be overrated.)

I often go back each Christmas season using these self-same decorations, sometimes adding, or not using a few items, augmenting with fresh greenery for any interior and exterior areas.

Sometimes clients start with a set budget the first year (yes, designers do use that word), and then I purchase more decorations the next year, and then the year after that…
Sometimes they feel they can handle it themselves after the first year as they now have a cache of well-selected and colour coordinated decorations.

If you dream of a stunningly decorated home this Christmas, give yourself the Gift of Time and Beauty, so you can spend your precious holiday time stress-free with friends and family. After all, Christmas is about celebrating with the people we love.

From the simple to the sublime. It’s bespoke styling just for you. The gift that keeps on giving.

I look forward to making your home a solace of comfort and grace – the best and most beautiful Christmas you have ever experienced.

Did you ever have one of those days where you wonder whether you should have made arrangements for your future care?

Today I had my car stolen out of my garage.

Well…it turned out that it wasn’t exactly stolen.

I just kinda forgot where I left it.

It was like this.

My regular route of walking to Starbucks through the park with the two dogs was impossible, as it was under reconstruction with the planting of trees, smashing of ground, and digging of trenches. Instead, I put both dogs in the car and drove to the end of the park to walk the long way around.

On the way I called one of my daughters to see if she had time to meet us at Starbucks. She did.

While waiting for her to drive over, I saw a Pour Over Brewer and Mug that my friend had been looking for, so I texted her to see if she wanted it.

She said yes.

She asked how much it was. I told her.

She said that was fine.

I asked her if she wanted me to buy it since I was there.

She said yes.

I asked her if she wanted more than one.

She didn’t.

So I bought it for her…as well as a package of iced passion flavoured herbal blend mango ice tea, one short extra hot cappuccino with light whip and a dash of cinnamon, one tall not extra hot soy latte, and no muffins. I went across the street to buy the muffins because Starbucks really doesn’t have…

These really aren’t excuses. I’m just trying to come up with one.

In the middle of our coffee and our much better muffins, my daughter was called to a job site, so all four of us jumped into her car and she drove us home. Arriving to my house, I opened the garage door to find it – empty.

We all sat there staring.

Well, the dogs weren’t that interested.

Someone had stolen my car and my wallet! (I know my wallet was stolen because it was in the stolen car. As well as two and a half pairs of gloves, a set of booster cables, and a box of pistachio nut chocolates.)

In a panic, I phoned the police.

In the midst of giving the calm and patient officer my vital statistics and a few extra, I suddenly remembered where I left my car.

Horrified as to my immediate and future capabilities, I profusely apologized, put a leash on the dogs and walked the full length of the park to retrieve my stolen car.

Please discuss this because I don’t even understand.

I know. You are no longer making the effort to roll your eyes.
But the day wasn’t a total miscreant, as on the way back to my car, I saw some great carved pumpkins and houses decorated for Hallowe’en. 

Then I thought – what better way not to add another misery to my already burgeoning day, than to write about carving out a space for yourself, or at least a pumpkin.

Now there are some salient coring principles involved when undertaking such a fundamental endeavour.

Number One: Ours is a culture that measures our worth by our efficiency, our decisions, and our ability to decorate great pumpkins.

 Number Two: Allow yourself the luxury of changing your mind.

We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on the latest Etsy products, Facebook posts, or how Anthropologie is decorating their store this year, without investing the time and thought to come up with our own ideas.

Cultivate that capacity for negative capability. Just say, “NO”, and take your God-given poetic licence to ask someone else to carve the pumpkin this year.

I mean, once you start overachieving, people expect things from you.

Number Three: Expect anything tasteful to take a long time.

It’s hard to capture something so fundamental, yet so impatiently overlooked as decorating the best pumpkin, yet the myth of the overnight pumpkin success is just that – a myth. Thus our present definition of success needs redefining.

For example, no matter how arduous a task it may be, it’s a good idea to be honest with oneself. (You do not want to sit next to someone at dinner who will not admit this.

Well, that’s all I have for today, unless you want to know about attaching metallic studs to pumpkins and I’m going to assume that’s a no.

Basically what I’m also saying, is that there may be a minimum of 6,403 more interesting things on the internet today than this post.

We are in the season of gratitude, and thank goodness for that.

I don’t remember exactly how I got the idea. It could have been from Sarah ban Breathnach, Oprah, Jesus, or the Aga Khan, but all I knew is that I had to do something.

In 2000, I had been forced to be the major breadwinner for my four children and myself, so I picked up my interior design career after a fifteen-year hiatus, while continuing to navigate an ever-escalating mountain of school and sports activities.

Adding to the milieu of soccer balls, badminton rackets, swimsuits, diving towels, gymnastic mats, field and floor hockey sticks, track shoes, rugby cleats, skates, riding pants, basketball uniform, volleyball shorts, both kinds of skis, and dance costumes, there was what was to become, a harrowing and lengthy divorce that rivalled any entry in The Guinness Book of Records.

At the same time, whether it was Blind Luck, Destiny or Divine Intervention, the Land of Bright Ideas found me pioneering a new industry – Home Staging.

And if this wasn’t enough, I once lost my corkscrew and was compelled to live on food and water for several days.

So I began a gratitude journal.

I knew not what else to do. I needed help and there was nowhere, nor no one I could turn to.

Thus every night before bed, I diligently listed five things for which I was grateful.

At the beginning it was difficult. I could only come up with something like, ” I was grateful for…the sun today…or my four girls…or another new client.” Or “the gift of another day.”

Not that these are things you shouldn’t be grateful for, but they were pretty secular and the same things tended to be repeated – a lot.

Sometimes the best thing that happened to me that day was finding the lid to a Tupperware container on the first try.

Or for the first time my hygienist didn’t tell me I needed to floss more.

Or when I finished my laundry and all the socks matched up.

It wasn’t easy, but that’s the point.

“Intentionally bringing into awareness the tiny, previously unnoticed elements of the day.” – Mark Williams

It’s easy to be grateful when things are going well, its definitely more difficult during trials of life, rejection, and failure. But by bringing gratitude to your crosses, is one of the best ways to get through them.

But I have to say it was probably the single most important thing I’ve ever done, and the only thing I can attribute to getting me through some difficult, difficult years and trials. Literally.

Soon, listing things to be grateful for became easier and easier. In fact, I would have to stop myself at 10, then 15.

Then I learned that I needed to be specific and focus on exactly why I was grateful. For example:

Vague: ” I liked meeting Mrs. “X”.”

Specific: “I appreciated her manner, but wonder what I had done to deserve her company and how I might avoid her in the future.”

Yes, you say, keeping a gratitude journal sounds cheesy, too simplistic, too cliché. You say that you’re too busy. It’s a waste of time. That this is for the kind of people who religiously pin 50 photos on Pinterest every day, the kind of people who don’t let their cacti casually die on the windowsill, and the kind that make their own granola with 10 different kinds of organic nuts.

Even if you’re sceptical and think you lack the discipline, do it anyway. Even if it’s only once a week. The trick is what we learned in Finding Nemo – Just keep swimming.

Our lives are strung out between the merely imperfect and the truly awful.

The thing is, people aren’t hardwired to be grateful. Like any school skill worth having, gratitude requires practice. Gratitude is a skill and a habit you can cultivate. Just because it doesn’t come naturally doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.
Louisa Jewell, the President of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association says, “In the caveman days, we were always scanning the environment to see if there was an animal lurking. If a berry had made someone ill, an innate negativity bias meant humans could catalogue that information as a means of survival. Negative experiences weigh more on the minds of humans than positive ones, so much so that some psychologists have estimated it takes three good emotions to balance out a single bad one.”

The practice may just save you from defenestration. (The act of hurling someone out of a window.)

Gratitude is like a muscle that you have to keep exercising, taking baby steps to get stronger.

So after a while, I learned to add gratitude as demonstration. I didn’t have much money, but I had time.

I started to make a practice of sending little thank you gifts and cards to each and every person that I worked with or referred me.

Then I added the simple gesture of endeavouring to thank one person a day, whether in person or by email, letter, text, or a phone call.

The only secret is you must mean it. Faking gratitude won’t achieve the benefits.

It also turns out that small things and moments generate more satisfaction and happiness than large ones, but I didn’t know that then.In your gratitude journal, try subtraction, not just addition.

Consider how much better your life with is without something, rather just tallying up the good stuff. Be grateful for all that hasn’t happened — for all those close shaves with “disaster” of some kind or another, all the bad things that almost happened but didn’t.

The distance between them happening and not happening is grace.

The goal of gratitude is to remember a good event, experience, person or thing your life. For example, you could:

• Thank the barista that makes your morning coffee instead of staring at your iPhone and ignoring everyone around you. This doesn’t mean shooting off a perfunctory, “Hey, thanks”. It means a concerted and consistent effort to notice and appreciate what you have been given.
• Say a simple hello to a stranger on the street.
• Be grateful for every drop of water that runs from your faucet. 1.1 billion people have inadequate access to clean water and will never have this experience.
• Stop and really look at the clouds in the sky today. Make note how each cloud is different, the colour, the shape, the many nuances of weather. Open your eyes. Look at that.

Appreciate all the good things flowing to you. From the crunch of autumn leaves, to the azure sky to, yes – October snow.

Gratitude shouldn’t be a once a year kind of thing.

Gratitude can also help us temper our urges for instant gratification. Thinking of the good things in your life as gifts, guards against taking them for granted.
The best thing about gratitude is that when you really feel it, the first thing you want to do is share it.

When we truly understand gratitude, it helps us recognize our link to other people.

“I can live two months on a good complement.” – Mark Twain

But this is only half the story. While the person who receives the compliment enjoys it and feels valued, the giver can also bask in the connection.

But there is a downside to gratitude.

Like:

Loss of pity parties
Inability to stay stuck in a miserable state
Absence of limiting and soul-sucking beliefs
Lack of ability to blame your parents for everything that’s wrong with youYou know you’ve reached the crowning glory of gratitude, when you lay writhing on the floor in pain from food poisoning and say to yourself, “Well, it could be a lot worse. At least it’s not appendicitis.”

No matter how big or small, be thankful and embrace.

Gratitude just may take over your life.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, it’s official. I am capable of getting lost in my own bathroom.

Yesterday I decided to walk to my workout at the Talisman Centre. While meandering through Mount Royal rocking to my i-Pod dance playlist, I somehow (I wonder how that happened?) inadvertently made a full circle back to my house, consequently missing my class – and looking like a drowned rat as it had started pouring midway.

Or what I surmise as being halfway, as it is now beyond obvious that I would have no idea what is halfway.

I may be able to navigate superbly around rooms in client’s houses, but seem to lack the necessary skills to manage my neighbourhood, and seemingly other neighbourhoods around the world.

When I tell others of my inbred misfortune, they shake their heads woefully, as a non-existent sense of direction is as incomprehensible to them as reading a map is to me – no less comforting and much more frightening.

Had I been leading the pioneers in Westward Ho!, we would still be going in circles somewhere in New Jersey. I tell people if they want to know what direction to go – go the opposite way that I think it is. Sometimes I follow my own advice and I’m still wrong.

Nevertheless, these episodes make for a ready story when dinner conversation lags, and gives me 622 more words for this discourse.

Besides, nobody wants to hear that – Yes, everything went according to plan.

Where‘s the story in that?

Yes, I can get lost in large elevators. But I do try to stay out of areas with high winds, lots of ice, stairs, and places where there is country and western music. 

I so envy those blessed with an innate sense of direction – people who can find their way back to a Starbucks passed over an hour ago.

By the way, you are the only one I have ever told this to – well, the second – so I would appreciate it if you kept this information under your hat, as it’s not the kind of information that endears one to many.

Kafka, the great patron of self-criticism, captured this pathology perfectly: “There’s only one thing certain. That is one’s own inadequacy.”

It doesn’t help when I ask for directions and they answer with a vague wave of their hand, saying, “Oh, it’s just over there.”

I also have never mastered the adage of “When in doubt, refrain.” or “When lost, go back the way you came.”

But in the end, I may have found more.

Many of us are not very good at looking; we see what we expect to see. We may see it, but we don’t really look at it. This may be from desuetude, denial, or inattention. Or maybe because we cannot risk staring at our own desert places. What are we avoiding/

Our main job is to keep our receiving equipment in good receiving order. Miihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes that it’s such a lucky accident to have been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention. Attention is the doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. To be alive means to respond.
And it’s amazing what you can find by looking.

Like last week. I came across two shops I had not seen before – a butcher shop and a pharmacy. So now if I cut my hand slicing pork chops, I can get some antiseptic and bandages.

The question then, is how to get lost.

There is an art to getting lost, for not knowing what to do. Pre-Socratic philosopher Meno asked, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” The “not knowing” is what drives life. This curiosity is what makes you get up every morning, driving you forward, wondering what’s next.Somewhere in between lies discovery; of places, of ideas, and the store with that great pair of shoes you saw yesterday.

ME: “I’m back.”

YOU: “What?”, you say quizzically at the Other across the breakfast table. “I didn’t know she was away.”

ME: “Yessss…I was in Ireland and Newfoundland (which incidentally is an outpost of Ireland), continuing to work on a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

I mean, ewe didn’t even miss me?”

YOU: “Ummm….”

Yup, I just stepped out for a breath of fresh air and the next thing I knew I was in Newfoundland.
Before we get down to the whole point of this, which incidentally there probably is no point, the point of my trip was to first hit the Writer’s Festival at Woody Point, Newfoundland.

Oh, there’s no apostrophe in “Writers”.

Probably one of the reasons I needed to go.

Well, you know you’re ‘ere in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, when you get into your rental car and The Irish/Newfoundland Music Show is playing on CBC radio.

A minute later you drive past your second Tim Hortons…

and then realize that the only vehicles you are seeing are pick-up trucks.

When you roll in to get some breakfast, being gut founded and right crooked at 4 a.m.. Calgary time, but it’s 9 a.m. (9:30 in Newfoundland).

Newfoundland is so unlike the rest of the country, it might as well be the moon.

And they also do strange things to the Queen’s English, whipping up a sentence that would leave the best scholar reeling – but oh, such an enduring quality and so charming.

Although I had not sailed with ‘cod oil, passengers and chests’, I blearily hoped to unpack my meagre belongings and rest, as my eyes were like a captain goin’ offshore. But it was too early to check into my hotel, so some had to beaten the pat.

It was good day on clothes, so I decided to seek its colourful past and present.

Jellybean Houses to be exact.

I was soon to find out “that of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world”, and of all the villages in all of Ireland, I would soon be living in a village uncannily like St. John’s.

The Colourist Movement 

In 1963, San Francisco artist Butch Kardum began combining intense blues and greens on the exterior of his Italianate-style Victorian House. His house was criticized by some, but other neighbors began to copy the bright colors on their own houses. Kardum became a colour designer. He and other artists/colourists and house painting outfits began to transform dozens of the grey houses into “Painted Ladies.” By the mid 1970s, the “Colourist Movement”, as it was called, had changed entire streets and neighbourhoods.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you probably have heard of the KonMari Method for tidying up your home permanently.

According to Ms. Kondo, Japan’s tidier-in-chief and moi, tidying is a special event and should be done just once.

There are two types of tidying – “daily tidying” and “special event tidying”.

Daily tidying is simply putting each item back where it belongs after you use it.

Tidying this way is your ticket to nirvana. Now you are free to have someone visit at the drop of hat, (as long as you pick it up and put it back where it belongs), head to the beach or fly off for a weekend in Paris – always having, and returning back to, a tidy home.

“Special event tidying” is that one special time when you tackle your house within a short space of time.

Your first cry of cavil is that you will never be able to keep it this way. This is because the majority of people are the “can’t-throw-it-away, can’t put it back” type.

Part One: All you need do is take the time to examine every item you own, decide whether you want to keep or discard it, and then choose where to put what you keep.

Part Two: Then put everything back where it came from immediately upon usage.

Effective tidying involves two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things. Of the two, discarding must come first. – Marie Kondo

The cornerstone to the KonMari method is DISCARD FIRST.

The system is that you need to do a complete analysis of everything you own. You need to ask, “Does this spark joy?”, of every item.

If it doesn’t, you’ll feel free to donate, sell, recycle or otherwise dispose of it. There are naturally some things that don’t spark joy, but you still need to keep, such as tax returns and your toothbrush.

Instead of asking yourself, “What should I get rid of?”, you need to ask yourself, “Why should I keep this?”

For example, can you think of a compelling reason to keep old cheque books? Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deep in a closet that you have forgotten its existence?

It is important that you physically handle each item, once and only once, by making an immediate decision on its fate.

All points bulletin.

Tidying by location is a fatal mistake.

The reason is that most people have the same kind of item in more than one place.

Instead of tidying by one room at a time, tackle clutter by category in the following order: clothes (since it’s the least emotionally loaded of one’s things), then books, papers, miscellany, and then things with sentimental value, otherwise you’ll suddenly be down a rabbit hole of nostalgia.

Clutter happens for two reasons: too much effort is required to put things away or it is unclear where things belong.

But most importantly, arrange your storage so that you can see everything at a glance.

Process: Put all your clothes on the floor in one giant pile. This means clothes from every closet, drawer, shelf and room, including the attic and basement, otherwise they’ll continue to creep from room to room, and you’ll never rein in the clutter.

A cursory glance in your closet or drawer will not do. After all, what is the point in tidying if you are not going to do a through job, once and for all?

Repeat the process for each category in the order as above.

Miscellany is the things you keep “just because,” like small tools or accessories or those electronic cables you can’t identify anymore.

Sorting Papers

There are three categories paper falls into: currently in use, needed for a limited period of time, or must be keep indefinitely. “Indefinitely”, means things like your will and up-to-date passport.

True story. A few years ago, I was travelling with a group of friends to Costa Rica (actually 88 of my closest friends), when one of my friends arrived at the check-in desk to discover that she had grabbed one of her old passports instead of her current one. Needless to say, I now was travelling with 87 of my closest friends.

Towels for the Guest That Never Comes

You shouldn’t own more than two bath towels per person. Pare down towels to only your best of the best. Set a goal of just two bath towels per person, two hand towels, and several washcloths. Any more is unnecessary.

The reason I’m writing a Stampede newsletter in June is because it’s a well known fact that during the Greatest Show on Earth, 50% of the population will be far away from here, and the other 52% will be deeply ensconced in discussing the meaning of life in some loud honky tonk bar in downtown Calgary, as will I.

So now that I have your attention, I would like to discuss the merits of mediocrity.

In styling a home.

Now that the dust has settled (literally) on a long winter, and spring has bypassed us yet again, it may be time to survey the Ponderosa with more than one eye open.

Besides, if you never try anything new, you can never fail.

If y’all are completely flamboozzled on how to style your home – or even what styling is – you need to know that you have to get the best posse in town, because there are a few out there that couldn’t drive a nail into a snow bank.

You know the type…faded blue jeans, pearl button shirts, worn-at-the-heel cowboy boots, wearing hats with sweat lines, and driving rusty pick-me-up trucks with a couple of dented bumpers.

“Just ’cause you’re following a well-marked trail don’t mean that whoever made it knew where they were goin’.” – Texas Bix Bender

Don’t gamble on your establishment looking like an envelope without an address on it.

Given most of you have lived in your home so long, there are probably things you no longer even see…things suggesting an element of brooding malcontent.

Many will say that they have an eye, good taste, definite opinions, and they like things done well, but still wouldn’t have a clue where to begin, second-guessing themselves.

You don’t have to spend a fortune for good design. People think they are buying good looks. What they discover is that they get more than that. When a space functions well, it enhances your life. Think value not price.

As Kafka, the patron saint of self-criticism, said, “There’s only one thing certain. That is one’s own inadequacy”.

I do have to tell you, though, that my biggest excitement today (and I am using the term loosely, so this should really be an indicator of how little is going on with me), is discovering that the word cenosillicaphobia means the fear of an empty glass.

Oh, the times I could have used it – at bar-b-ques, pancake breakfasts, hanging around the peanut bowl at cocktail parties, and the like.

If only I could pronounce it.

One thing is fo’ sure – updated kitchens bring one of the highest returns on investment, and they may end up being the deal-maker or deal-breaker whenever it comes time to sell. This is one room you want to deck out in its best finery. After all, you spend an inordinate amount of time in it, unless you order in a lot of Mexican.

Kitchens are pricey to redecorate or rebuild, so they rarely receive annual overhauls or frequent up-dates, even when they deserve them. Consequently, these rooms can slip into a time warp that echoes the era when the home was originally built or when you moved in.

Granite or quartz work surfaces can really eat into the budget (I don’t advise installing granite or quartz countertops if the cabinets are dated), so in order you don’t have to rob a bank, there are tons of attractive laminates as a less expensive alternative.

Backsplash tile is the jewelry in a kitchen. Installing new backsplash tile is the best area to give punch to a kitchen. It’s a relatively small area, so this is where you can splurge to make the kitchen look more expensive, as well as updating and pulling colours together.

Simple and less costly updates are to update the cabinet hardware or install a statement faucet.

Not since the 1980’s have we seen this degree of popularity for gold-toned bath faucets, lamps, light fixtures, and doorknobs. In the ’80s it leaned toward polished brass, and now the gold tones are ranging beautifully towards a soft bronze-gold. This emerging trend may leave the popular silver and brushed nickel metals in the dust.

“If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.” – Will Rogers

Your ace in the pocket in styling your kitchen is to keep small appliances tucked away. 

One of life’s little embarrassments is the Sunshine Ceiling.

For me, that’s right up there with screen doors, deep-fried anchovies, and over-ripe tomatoes. Not in that order.

Lose the sunshine ceiling and and light up the kitchen properly with adjustable pot lights, and if you don’t already have it – under cabinet lighting. Essential.

Oh, and Popcorn Ceilings.

I quote: “It’s dingy, if it’s not painted it fades, and it can get stained easily and especially if you have any water damage, it can start flaking off; it attracts cobwebs, dirt, and soot, and it’s just one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.” – Jim McCue, owner of Professional Drywall Services.

Removing the popcorn ceiling is one of the best improvements you can do to any home. You can quote me. After all, this isn’t my first rodeo.

Another bane of my existence are unframed, fraying posters curling at the corners and hanging onto the wall for dear life. If you can’t bear to part with your beloved posters, mount them in a deep frame so the character of those well-worn corners comes through, but the overall look is polished.

No matter how much or how little space you have, there’s always room for style.

Make your home the “Greatest Indoor Show on Earth.” It’s a one shot go for broke performance.

Call me.

I mean it.

– Karyn ‘Dead Eye’ Elliott,

Notorious Stylist of Fine Mercantile Establishments

‘”There’s two theories to a arguing with a woman. Neither one works.” – Will Rogers

It is worth noting that my blog has been read by a decreasing audience since it’s inception in 2001.