Found our friend Allie Anderson!

Reception for the Department of Furnishings and Interiors

Sally's classmates - College of Family and Consumer Sciences

Sally's favorite Professor and her professional mentor - Sarah Zenti, MFA

Sally (voted Most Likely to Be on the Cover of Elle Decor) with her special friend Sam!

Sally's Chi O Friends

Good times in Chicago

Are we cousins or what! Love hanging with Mark and Cindy!

Time to suit up!

Life should be good, fun and easy

Monday is a good day to share a bit about my second point on "My Golden Five by which I Strive." My second guiding principle is Life should be good, fun and easy. It comes from a golf book called Conscience Golf by Gay Hendricks. The book is actually more about life and business, then it is about golf. The book is centered around three key 'secrets': (1) focus; (2) flow; and (3) intention. I'll take a minute to touch on all three, as they are all important. Life should be good, fun and easy is a by-product of the second secret, flow.

The first secret, focus, shows you how to focus in a way that saves you time, energy and effort. You learn about the number one cause of personal and business stress (non-completion) and gain a powerful tool for mastering it. The result in your personal and business life is higher productivity, more available time, and a greatly enhanced clarity of communication. In summary, the key to the secret is to keep your attention on the essential process until it is complete. I can share more about this later. This doesn't mean you finish every project you start, but it does entail clearly and realistically defining what you will accomplish each day and then staying on task. The author also suggest that you limit your daily list to no more than five things, and that you tackle the most challenging items on the list first thing in the morning. (You can always add more to your list, if you knock out your top five before noon!) When I make my top five each morning, I always put my workout goal on the list as a way of recognizing how important that is to my well-being.

The second secret, flow, shows you how to achieve your most important business and personal objectives with a sense of ease and harmony. You learn how to move from forcing results to creating and allowing desirable outcomes without stress. Just as a golf swing always works best without tension and stress, life is the same.

The third secret, is about intention. You learn why and how you produce both desired results and undesired results in golf, life and business. In golf, the ball sits still when you swing the club, and you put the ball in motion with your swing. The same is true in life. The moment just sits there, and we change it with action and meaning.

I want to say that while I try to live life in a good, fun and easy way, it is not an exact science and there will be times when life will be unfair, cruel and sad. This simply can not be avoided. But I do believe we can choose to approach all events in life in a positive and relaxed manner. When the inevitable bad breaks come our way, we can also master the art of 're-framing' the situation and turning negatives into positives. You should also look back at the tough times you encounter and try and determine if you were the cause of the difficulties. I certainly know that this can sometimes be the case, and I have tried to study patterns in my life that preceded difficult times. It might also be true that we are sometimes tested (perhaps by God) and often from our darkness comes our brightest moments.

We can learn to follow our intuition towards people and things that are good, fun and easy. Father Robby uses the analogy of the children's game where someone hides an item in a room and you try to find the item by receiving clues of colder, warmer, hotter, etc. You can learn to listen to your intuition in the same way. You will know when something feels good, fun and easy. You will also know when something is difficult, frustrating, and hard. Try to move towards the good, fun and easy. Try to move away from the difficult, frustrating and hard.

One last thought. Work is never going to always be easy. Sometimes work will be hard. That is why it is called work. You will have difficulties in your work. You will encounter difficult people. You will be challenged. But it is up to you to approach work with a positive attitude and energy, even when it is difficult. And it is always good to have choices when it comes to work. Don't ever think that you are boxed into a specific job or career path. That is something Uncle Ricky taught me many years ago, when he was running around with multiple jobs during his college years. Also, take a look at how your mom approaches her work. It is not easy doing everything she gets done, but she does it with a great attitude and she brightens up everyone whom she comes in contact with each and every day!

Next is number three: This too shall pass. Make it a great Monday!

Everybody has his or her own path

Good morning Sally. Today I will reflect on the first of my Golden Five: Everybody has his or her own path. I am not sure how I decided this was important to me, or how it became number one on my list. Each the others can be attributed to a specific person or persons in my life or to a specific book or author. 

"Life should be good, fun and easy," is from a book called Conscious Golf by Gay Hendricks. "This too shall pass," is from Aunt Dianne, your mom, and I suppose the Bible (2 Corinthians 4: 17-18). "Wear a smile, be a friend," is clearly Aunt Dianne - who scores big with two credits on my list! And "Stay whole" is from both Steven Covey (The 8th Habit) and Jim Loehr (The Power of Full Engagement).

If I had to give credit to someone for this idea that we all have our own path, I suppose it would go to Paulo Coehlo and his book The Alchemist, a book I highly recommend that you read again as you transition from college. (I think it was required reading in high school, right?) Coehlo is one of my favorite authors, perhaps my very favorite, and all of his books are best sellers around the world. Remember Santiago, the young Shepherd boy who follows his spiritual journey to the Egyptian pyramids in search of a treasure? 

In the book, we learn that everyone faces four obstacles when they set out on their path to pursue their dreams: (1) We are told from an early age that it is impossible to live our dreams; (2) Love - we know what we want to do, but we are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything to pursue our dreams; (3) Fear of defeats - once we accept that love is actually a stimulus, that those who truly love us actually want us to live for our dreams, we become fearful of the defeats that we meet along our journey; and (4) Just as we are about to realize our dream, Coelho says:

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle - the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Life is easier when you accept the fact that everyone has his or her own path. Think about that in terms of the four obstacles and remember everybody is going through this same process and we are all at different places in the journey. 

Psychologists tell us that we have a tendency to ‘project’ onto others and to see things in others that we actually struggle with ourselves. One of the most common areas in which we project (on others) are emotions that lead us to feel angry. Here's a good article on how we transfer feelings of guilt, hurt and fear, which leads to us to feeling and acting angry. (Note that anger is a secondary emotion to what is actually going on, not the primary emotion.) Here is the summary / conclusion from the article:

So, to fundamentally change what can be a never-ending vicious cycle, it’s crucial to comprehend not only the cause(s) of our anger but also its detrimental effects. Ultimately, feeling hurt—and consequently acting out a compulsion to retaliate in kind—is “kid stuff.” In such instances, then, can we learn how to hold onto our most rational adult self and “process”—internally—what’s happening inside our head? And to do this before we alleviate our feelings of guilt, hurt, or fear by turning them into anger? Can we begin to break a pattern that may well be hazardous to the relational closeness, harmony, and trust that we—like the rest of humanity—deeply crave?

There is a lot to process here and perhaps I am jumping around a bit inside of my own post. But I do know that life is easier if you can learn to accept that everyone is on their own individual journey. Try not to judge others and try not to project your own insecurities onto to those whom you encounter along the way.

“Continue in the direction of the Pyramids," said the Alchemist. "And continue to pay heed to the omens. Your heart is still capable of showing you where the treasure is."