Good Clean Reads

“I need to write about love. I need to think and think and write about love-otherwise, my soul won’t survive.”   -Paulo Coelho

It was four years ago at the New Year that I began my Positivity Quest, which became this daily blog for three of those years. At the same time, I also started a daily meditation practice, regular exercise routines and a high school club. Writing it all down during those...

“I believe that if you’re healthy, you’re capable of doing everything. There’s no one else who can give you health but God, and by being healthy I believe that God is listening to me.” -Pedro Martinez

We all want to be better than we are. I think this is the basic truth that drives the annual New Year’s resolutions, which more often than not barely last until February and too often leaves us...

“Lose your mind and come to your senses.”  -Fritz Perls

I was blessed to find myself soaking in the tropical waters in Hawaii this month and remembering again how simple life can be when we live through our senses rather than through our mind. My most magical moments were floating, fully immersed in the gentle surf with only my face exposed to the warmth of the sun. There were no thoughts that...

It has been four years since I began my Positivity Quest in Hawaii. Back here for a quick week, staying with my family who is much grown up over the last several years, has given me pause to reflect on how this work of positivity has transformed me and my life.

First, I think it is important to reflect on the inner work of positivity that began with a prolonged and, at times, desperate attempt to...

“Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.” -Ashleigh Brilliant

I have always been restless and prone to being busy. I love my work and have, for so long, confused who I am with what I do that most days I find myself doing from dawn until late into the night. Consequently, it has taken me years to learn the true value of rest. In this way, I am a...

“When we really let go, we become everything. At that point, we are identified with all things: the flower, the oak tree, the morning star.” -Dennis Genpo Merzel

This season I encourage you to celebrate the holiday season in the deepest way possible, and instead of accumulating more, focus the season on the practice of letting go. Start with the physical world and do a holiday closet clean out...

“Judgments that constrain your giving are the very demons that are keeping you from receiving.” -Martha Beck

Sometimes life demands that we bleed. It isn’t enough to feel our painful stories echoing around in our heads; and even the familiar spasm in our backs behind our hearts is not sufficient to release the historic injuries of our childhood, so deeply ingrained that they become us. Sometimes...

“The chemist who can extract from his heart’s elements compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise and forgiveness and compound them into one can create that atom which is called love.” – Kahlil Gibran

This last week has been punctuated by an emotional injury that feels like a pinched nerve between my neck and back. It is odd that this unique but persistent pain still catches me off...

Contributed by A. R.

(November’s Key to Gratitude Contest Weekly Winner)

Before each meal my little family says ‘thank you for this day, this food and _______’. It could be an A in chemistry for my daughter. Finding the lost wrench for my husband. Its little things – like forks, dirt roads, ice. We have to actually stop and consciously think about our answers. I have a neighbor with MS, so as I’m...