“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”
— Benjamin Franklin

I recently received a thank you email from a reader and course student named Hope. She said our work helped motivate her through an arduous recovery process following a serious car accident last year. Although her entire story was both heartbreaking and inspiring, this one line made me pause and think:

“The happiest moment of my life is still that split-second a year ago when, as I laid crushed under a 2000 pound car, I realized my husband and 9-year-old boy were out of the vehicle and absolutely OK.”

Dire moments like this force us to acknowledge what’s truly important to us. In Hope’s case, it was her husband and son. And in the remainder of her email she talks about how her family spends significantly more time together now, sharing daily stories, telling little jokes, and appreciating each other’s company. “The accident made us realize how much time we had been wasting every day on things that weren’t important, which prevented us from spending quality time with each other,” she said.

It’s hard to think about a story like Hope’s and not ask yourself: What do I need to stop wasting time on?

Here are some things to consider that I’ve been examining in my own life: [Read more…]

Saying yes to happiness means learning to say no to the desires that drain you.

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for. I don’t think anything could be closer to the truth, and yet all too often we find ways of complicating things for ourselves. We look for happiness where it does not exist – in shallow goals and desires – in possessions, quick thrills, and impressing the wrong people.

Angel and I were recently reminded of this when we met a family of six staying at a hotel in near our home. We saw them hanging around outside the lobby, sharing stories and laughing hysterically. As we walked by, Angel and I said hello to them and asked where they were from. “Oh, we’re from here,” the mother said. “Our house burned down to the ground yesterday, but miraculously, all of us made it out safely. And that makes today a day worth smiling about.”

Talk about a wake-up call. Some people might say they had lost everything, and yet this family knew better – they knew they had it all. Because there really is nothing like joyful tears and deep breaths after a long, hard laugh with the people you love – nothing in the whole world like a sore stomach for the right reasons and a grateful heart to back it up. That’s a situation where true happiness is surely found.

And there are many other sources of true happiness as well. But as I’ve said, there are also lots of common traps – goals and desires that we think will bring us happiness, but actually do the exact opposite. Recognizing these traps is the key. In fact, I believe one of the best feelings comes when you realize that you can be perfectly happy without the things you once thought you needed.

With this in mind, consider the ten goals and desires (traps) below and how they may be holding you back. Each of them is popular in our culture, and thus common in our lives, but rather than contributing to our happiness, they rob us of it. [Read more…]

“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on… I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer

In the final decade of his life, my grandfather woke up every single day at 7AM, picked a fresh wild flower on his morning walk, and took it to my grandmother.  One morning, I decided to go with him to see her.  And as he placed the flower on her gravestone, he looked up at me and said, “I just wish I had picked her a fresh flower every morning when she was alive.  She really would have loved that.”

As you can imagine, my grandfather’s words touched a nerve in me.  And over the years I’ve often reflected on what he said that morning, and how his sentiment relates to everyone and everything I care about.  God willing, in 40 years when I’m in the midst of my 80’s, I don’t want to sit with needless regrets.  I don’t want to wish I had done things differently – especially something as simple, yet meaningful, as picking wild flowers for the love of my life.  Don’t you agree?

Regardless of your age or where you are in life right now, perhaps you will generally resonate with my thoughts here – some things I don’t want to regret down the road… [Read more…]

Let’s end this crazy year with a quick story about life…

Tragedy strikes a woman who isn’t yet old. A minivan traveling toward her on a dark mountain highway hits her car nearly head-on just after sunset. She grips her steering wheel as hard as she can and veers into the rocky mountainside until her car screeches to a halt. The minivan flips onto its side and skids in the other direction off a cliff, plummeting nearly 500 feet to the ground below. Inside, a young family of five on their way to grandma’s house for New Year’s Eve.

The woman doesn’t recall the events that followed during the next several days. She doesn’t recall the three eye witnesses who comforted her and assured her that it wasn’t her fault—that the other driver had swerved into her lane. She doesn’t recall how she got to the emergency room or the fact that she stayed there for over a week, well into the New Year, to treat a [Read more…]