Nature's Details: Vibrant Colors, Bold Textures

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

The Importance of Attitude

Attitude is the fulcrum upon which lasting success and happiness are leveraged. Kindness and gratitude are universally appreciated thus making a positive attitude rooted in these virtues exceptionally beneficial to any individual but also to those within your proximity.

This passage from Charles Swindoll has been inspiring me and reminding me of the importance of a positive attitude since I was very young. I am grateful for his words and do my best to live by them every day. I hope they do the same for you.

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skills. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes."

Grateful Meditation

 Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit. - Jeremy Taylor

The power of meditation has been touted for centuries across many different cultures as a proven method for finding inner peace, relaxation, easing stress, and so on.

In my own experience, I have valued meditation for its powers of facilitating introspection. There is something to be said for tuning out the world, worry, responsibility and focusing solely on finding peace and balance within yourself. 

This is where I am challenged. I can never completely shut down all of my cylinders. My mental engine, in spite of my best efforts, will only allow me a few minutes at best of what I consider unpolluted clarity. But I have found a way to use this urge to continually process thoughts to my advantage. 

Grateful Meditation is something I do about twice a week. Typical with most mediation, I sit alone in a quiet space, relax my posture and breath deeply. My goal is not to clear my mind, but rather to fill it with thoughts and images of what I am grateful for. For thirty minutes at a time, I deliberately flood my mind with nothing but positivity. This focused thinking combined with the stillness and serenity of traditional meditation literally jolts my emotional fortitude and gives me a tremendous sense of comfort and security in light of whatever uncertainties I may be facing. It functions as a nutrient to my will power, allowing me to stave off negativity more efficiently and with an enlightened sense of logic. 

In truth, the experience was incredibly humbling the first time I approached grateful meditation seriously. I realized very quickly that there was more to be grateful for than I could process in thirty minutes. I was also reminded again and again of my various travels where I encountered people who subsisted--gratefully--on a fraction of a percent of what I require to maintain my home and life. 

If you open yourself to the power of grateful meditation, your life will be put into perspective. 

Meditation alone is a wonderful practice, but I encourage you to try meditating gratefully. The affects will be positive and you will be grateful.  

Being Grateful for History

History, despite it's wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
- Maya Angelou


I love history. To think of where we were five thousand years ago in relation to out present state never ceases to amaze me. Our planet is billions of years old, yet over the course of our paltry existence, humans have completely altered the course and rate of change. So many amazing inventions and accomplishments have catapulted the human race with remarkable speed far beyond our wildest dreams and expectations. Parallel to our rapid evolution though, have been many awful instances of violence and destruction; now historical scars on once gaping wounds. What ever you fixation may be, history is certainly available for study.

This brings me to personal history; our own unique set of experiences that dot the timelines of our lives. Looking back on my own, there are occurrences and periods of time that I once remembered with regret. There was a time when, if given the power to change history, I would have. But these feelings of regret have evolved into gratitude. 

History makes you who you are today and how you live today will influence who you will be tomorrow. If you fail to acknowledge this truth you will be affirming a famous quote by Georg Wilhelm Hegel: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history." For many, this quotes reigns true. For many others, the past is dissected and ultimately interpreted in varying ways based on different view points and biases. However you remember or absorb history is pointless if you fail to learn from and use that knowledge constructively towards improvement.

Regardless of what your history is, you must not forget that we are ever malleable and capable of choosing a path of positivity. It often takes numerous obstacles scattered along our timelines for us to come to the realization that had it not been for those obstacles, you would not be enlightened to the possibility of change.

Be grateful for history and control that knowledge for a greater good.


Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
- Robert F. Kennedy