Ray of Sunshine: Slow Down

Slow down and you’ll find beauty in the details. When you’re open to wonder, you'll also find wisdom.

Blessings for your day and week. Spread sunshine. Be the light.

Ray of Sunshine: Focus on the Loveliness

There is beauty within and without, up and down, all around. Focus on that loveliness and you will find joy.

Blessings for your day and week. Spread sunshine. Be the light.

Sunday Sunshine: Slow Down

When the commitments on your calendar seem to increase and overwhelm, slow yourself down.

When the pace feels hectic and the demands fierce, slow yourself down.

Leave the hectic pace for just a while.

Slow. Down.

Slow down enough to pay attention. See the details. Slow down enough to take some deep breaths. Open your eyes – really open them -- and observe the beauty around you.

Each day is a blessing. Don't race through it. Be in a state of thanksgiving every day. Enjoy the joy of being.

Today, this week: Learn the art of slowing down. Enjoy the joy of being.

Sunday Sunshine: Bring Beauty to Your Day

I used to work with someone who frequently brought flowers from her summer garden to place in a pretty vase on her desk or display a beautiful orchid in an attractive container to decorate her office window during the long winter days.

What I learned from my friend was that we each have the opportunity to bring beauty to our day.

Perhaps it’s placing a vase of flowers on your desk. Perhaps it’s writing a note on pretty notepaper. Perhaps it’s knitting a sweater. Perhaps it’s piecing together an intricate quilt. Perhaps it’s creating an attractively garnished, healthy meal.

What it all comes down to is doing what makes your heart sing, what brings a smile to your face, what lifts your spirits, what brings you joy and beauty and meaning.

Today, this week: Bring beauty to your day.

Sunday Sunshine: Look to Nature for Nurture

So much in life is bright and beautiful, just as the season of spring shows us through nature’s magnificent palette. The loveliness found in a spring day refreshes and renews.

Look to nature for nurture. Get outside. Breathe in the spring air. Watch the loveliness of the season unfold around you. Then, carry that beauty of spring with you in your heart.

When you fill your mind and heart with spring-like thoughts and feelings of the bright and beautiful, you invite them to feed your spirit and positively affect your mood and outlook.

When you choose to experience the bright and beautiful in your day, your eyes will begin to focus on those moments more and more until they naturally become what you view.

Today, this week: Enjoy these lovely spring days and carry them in your heart.

Sunday Sunshine: See the Beauty

The experiences of our lives have a tendency to set the lens through which we see others and view future experiences.

What if we shed those preset lenses for just today and chose to see everything and everyone from a new perspective?

Try this experiment: See the unique beauty in everyone you meet and everything you encounter. Come from a place of openness. Come from a place of kindness. Come from a place of patience. Come from a place of compassion. Come from a place of respect.

At the end of the day, consider what you learned from your experiment. Then, give it a try again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

Today, this week: Focus on the beauty in everyone and everything you encounter.

Sunday Sunshine: Look Deeper

You've probably heard the adage that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. It's often true that what we see on the surface isn't the total picture. 

First impressions of people often don't give us a complete understanding of them.

When we encounter a difficult situation in our lives, it's easy to think it's all bad or all good. It's only when we look deeper that we see that our initial assessment was incomplete. Even the most difficult situation can hold a gift, something beautiful to take away from the experience.

Whether it's the first impression of a situation or of a person you meet, stop yourself before judging and making a sweeping decision. Instead, give yourself the time to look at the person or situation from a deeper, more complete perspective. 

By scratching below the surface, the beauty will reveal itself.

Today, this week: Look deeper. Allow yourself to see the beauty hidden where you may least expect it.

Sunday Sunshine: There's Beauty Everywhere

For years, I walked by that short row of arbor vitae evergreens, not paying much attention to them. They were located on my way to the building where I worked. I paid little attention to them because my thoughts were focused on my work day.

Then, one day after I had undergone some profound challenges in my life--my own illness and the passing of my mother, that same row of arbor vitae became new to me. It was then, finally, that I noticed the birds who lived in those arbor vitae. Every morning and every evening when I walked past them, the birds would sing and sing and sing to me. I had finally awakened. I was finally paying attention to the beauty that was around me.

As my eyes and ears became more aware, I started noticing the brilliant setting sun as I left work each evening. I stood, transfixed, looking out the window before an early-morning work meeting, watching the magnificent sunrise.

It was as if everything was new to me and it was beautiful. The challenges and sorrows that I had experienced in my life had given me the gift of opening my eyes, my ears and my heart to the beauty that was all around me.

At times, we admittedly have tunnel vision. We see what we think we need to see. We hear what we think we need to hear. 

Wake up! Look up! Listen up! There's beauty up and down and all around!

Today, this week: Pay attention to what's around you. Experience its beauty with gratitude and awe.

Sunday Sunshine: Focus on the Good

For Christians, this is Holy Week, the week that will conclude with Easter next Sunday. 

Whether Christianity is your tradition or not, you may resonate in other ways with this season of rebirth and renewal, this time for greening and growing, this opportunity for planting seeds and watching the natural world burst with color and spring beauty.

There is so much goodness for us to enjoy this day, this week and during this season of spring. There is so much beauty for us to witness all around us and to emanate from inside of us. 

When we focus on the good, more of it seems to become visible to us.

Today, this week: Focus on the good things and they will grow in abundance.

Sunday Sunshine: Spring Clean Your Internal House

The chatter can feel deafening. We are constantly bombarded by messages, both positive and negative. It seems, though, that we tend to dwell most on the negative messages. 

It's spring, the perfect season to clean your internal house. Remove the gossip, the mean-spirited words and the stressful news from your life as much as possible. 

Fill that newly cleaned space with kindness, love, joy, and positive energy and activities. Then, share that love, kindness and joy with others around you. 

Let the good energy flow out of you like unfurling petals of a bright spring flower. You have the power to bring such beauty to yourself and to the world.

Today, this week: Rise above the fray in this world. Bloom with love and kindness to everyone around you. 

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: See the Unique Beauty

The experiences of our lives have a tendency to set the lens through which we see others and view future experiences.

What if we shed those preset lenses for just today and chose to see everything and everyone from a new perspective?

Today, try this experiment: See the unique beauty in everyone you meet and everything you encounter. Come from a place of openness. Come from a place of kindness. Come from a place of patience. Come from a place of compassion. Come from a place of respect.

At the end of the day, consider what you learned from your experiment. Then, give it a try again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: Bright and Beautiful

So much in life is bright and beautiful, just as the season of spring demonstrates to us through nature’s magnificent palette.

Fill your mind and heart with thoughts and feelings of the bright and beautiful. Allow them to feed your spirit and affect your mood and outlook.

When you choose to experience the bright and beautiful in your day, your eyes will begin to focus on those moments more and more until they naturally become what you view.

Today, this week: Carry the beauty of spring with you, no matter the season. 

Discovering Beauty in the Ordinary

I love to read well-written prose.  Sometimes, I discover such writing in unexpected places.  I was recently given a magazine that featured writing so beautiful I've been re-reading it ever since.  Each time I open the pages, it's as if I'm receiving a warm welcome from a beautiful and eloquent friend who always knows just the right thing to say.  One well-chosen word woven with another and another form harmonious sentences embroidered with beauty that somehow pull me in and won't let me go.  I keep studying the word choices and phrasing, as if I'll tumble to some formula.  But, alas, the beauty of it all comes from the surprise of these extraordinary compositions about ordinary things.  Perhaps there's a comparison about life to be had in all of this, too.  We often find beauty in the unexpected places, word by word, encounter by encounter, moment by moment.