“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life!”
— Omar Khayyam —

What are you waiting for? The children to be older? Your job to get better? A raise? Retirement? Perhaps you know for sure your life will be better once you lose 20 pounds or get a bigger house. Are you waiting to feel better? Heal? Do you believe that once all or some of these things—or whatever it is you’re waiting for—happen, life will be so much better. Finally, the time will come when you can be happy and start to live the life you were meant to live. Right?

So, I have to ask again, what are you waiting for?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Oh wait. That was last month. But…it is the most wonderful time of the year to lose weight. I know that’s probably your New Year’s resolution; even thin people want to lose a pound or two.

However, did you know 87.3 percent of those who set weight loss as a New Year’s resolution, do not succeed. Why? Well, the real reason is weight loss is a mental game. If you’re not ready mentally, it’s just not going to happen. But this year, let’s blame it on something else and take the pressure off. Let’s agree that people don’t stick to their weight loss goals because it’s just too complicated and confusing in this day and age.

“…a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones,
and a time to gather stones together”
— Ecclesiastes 3:3-5i —

Bob Dylan once said he couldn’t write the songs now that he wrote back in his heyday. “I don’t know how I got to write those songs. All those early songs were almost magically written. …It’s not a Siegfried and Roy kind of magic. It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic.”

There are many things in life that are uncertain.
Your word shouldn’t be one of them.
If you tell someone you’re going to do something, by God, do it,
and don’t make them have to remind you.

Having to remind you puts people in an uncomfortable situation, which usually results in them not asking you to do what you said—even promised—to do. This puts a strain on relationships because it breaks trust. If your word loses meaning to those you know and love, you begin to also lose respect, which is hard to ever get back. It is a true loss even though many times it’s not on purpose.

“Gratitude is tåhe wine for the soul.
Go on. Get drunk.”
— Rumi

I love Thanksgiving because it is a combination of two very heartfelt actions, thanks and giving. While Thanksgiving isn’t an exchange of gifts, it is an exchange of acknowledgement, connection, love, time, and appreciation—extra special things many of us tend to take for granted the rest of the year. The first Thanksgiving celebration was 403 years ago, and miraculously, we have managed to still hold giving thanks in high regard, even if only for a day.