Tag: Kindness

Stir From the Bottom – Love and Gratitude

As the head chef of my household, the primary objective with all of my culinary creations is volume. How many days can one tolerate the same meal? And/or, can I freeze it for a future delight?

Check and check!

During the summer months, those meals generally incorporate the grill, but during the winter months it means homemade soups and sauces. Naturally, all the good stuff ends up at the bottom, so my instructions are pretty clear.

Stir from the bottom!

This has become such a joke in my family that I now have a cup memorializing my sage advice.

Over time it occurred to me, this is a great metaphor for how I find love and gratitude. I stir from the bottom.

For me, love is a very broad word. At the top of the list is how you emotionally and physically feel when you share love with a partner, spouse, child, and others. For now, I am leaving that aside.

The love I am talking about comes from giving or receiving appreciation, respect, kindness, excitement, friendship, and warmth. All things that rise to the top.

It is within the contentment derived from those feelings where I find the warmth of love.

Feeling the love in those times dishes up a huge helping of gratitude because they connect to each other. Just like an amazing appetizer is the start to a great meal. When love resonates with such ease, gratitude is a natural reaction.

When I was a kid, I heard I needed to count my blessings because there are others less fortunate. My childhood was not structured around religious conformity, so I didn’t fully grasp the intention of that until much later in life when I connected blessings to love and gratitude. (This is my personal experience and in no way a disregard to religious conformity nor the religious meaning of blessings.)

Embracing and connecting them as true feelings took a lot of time and maturity.

What if all the good stuff is at the bottom?

Can we find love and gratitude in despair or heartache?

Back in the days of my life when I often threw myself a self-imposed pity-party, I couldn’t find either. My backward way was so convoluted, that I would sit in troubled agony for days until my friends asked me the precise proper question. Not until then, could I unload my burden.

When they proclaimed, ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ My reply was always the same, ‘You didn’t ask.’

boy with brown hair pouting
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Fortunately, I haven’t thrown myself a pity-party in decades.

I outgrew that egregious behavior in my late 30’s and today, my overly sunny disposition finds something to love in everything, even when I must stir from the bottom.

If I stir from the bottom, even the smallest spec of light at the end of a long tunnel consumed by darkness can change my perspective. I have faced and endured hardships but if I focus on the spec of light rather than be consumed by the darkness, eventually I emerge to find myself in the light.

Love and gratitude don’t take away the hardships that indelibly exist, rather they provide a different lens through which to view them.

round mirror
Photo by Ethan Sees on Pexels.com

I have rationalized many things in my life to overcome the darkness. In the end the facts remain the facts, it is my perception of them that changes. In those times, the spec of light becomes a beautiful ray of sunshine.

Next time you make a gallon sized pot of chili or spaghetti sauce, be sure to give me a nod when you stir from the bottom.

Do You Find Good Luck or Does it Find You? 7 Strategies to Discover Your Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

As a kid I believed there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, that the elusive four leaf clover was magical and that the rabbit’s foot I wore around my neck while ski racing would deliver wins and keep me safe.

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I remember when there was something we didn’t want to do we would draw straws and whoever drew the shortest one had the unenviable responsibility to the duty. Luck, or lack of it, in the form of the straw’s length.

No strategy there.

If everything in life was arbitrary and unpredictable then there is no point in effort, persistence, confidence, positivity, or kindness. We could just sit on the couch day after day and wait for all of the good things to fall in our laps.

How miserable!

If everything in life is systematically predictable and not left to chance, is it worth changing our focus and mindsets?

Of course, I’m not talking about gambling, because that is the epitome of chance and luck for those that win big, but rather drawing positive, seemingly lucky, outcomes to ourselves.

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There are seven (wink, wink) consistent observations I see in people who seem to have all the luck in the world.

1. They are motivated as hell.

Motivation is the backbone of endless positive outcomes. If Rome wasn’t built in a day, then hard work, effort, discipline, perseverance, and motivation laid every brick. Gasping for each breath, it might be a sprint or a marathon, but motivation is what sustains us to the finish line.

2. They are quietly confident.

They do because they are. Confident people are not arrogant, they share the fortitude and focus to stay the course knowing and believing in their ability. They know hardship is part of the process. Their results are defined by who they are, not who they think they need to be.

3. They are positively positive.

If you believe like attracts like then positivity can singlehandedly transform a loss to a win. You don’t actually get the Gold medal when you didn’t even make it to the podium, rather, your perspectives on failure or not winning shape the future direction and choices. It adds another tool to the shed poised for the next venture or endeavor.

4. They focus on today not yesterday.

If yesterday’s tool is already in the shed, then we don’t need to dwell or wallow in it. We can’t look forward if we are always looking back, a path painstakingly paved with woulda, shoulda, coulda and overwhelmed by ginormous potholes waiting to swallow you whole. Focus on the now, because it is the only thing we can control and it will guide and steer the future.

5. They are tenacious and persistent.

Tenacity, grit, bravery or whatever cape you wear to enable your super powers, results from the culmination of all of the above.  The willingness to take chances, think outside of the box or simply proceed because you know in your gut you can is the place where your super powers thrive.

6. They are genuine, kind, and generous with their time.

Kindness breeds positivity and deflects negativity so none of the gestures in that regard are self-serving, they are giving and genuine. Good things may come to those who wait, but better things come to those who do good things and are kind.

7. Their conduct is worthy of emulation.

Individuality is important because it would suck if we were all mirror images of each other but emulating a worthy behavior(s) is the place where role models are born and an important step in moving toward your own pot of gold waiting patiently at the end of your rainbow.

Photo by Alex on Pexels.com

Luck is not happenstance; it is the outcome of an adaptable mindset. “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity,” a quote accredited to The Roman Philosopher Seneca.

Next time you say good luck to someone, know what might need to stand behind those words of encouragement.