8 delightful habits to cultivate...in your home...during a pandemic.

 The essential qualities that make a healthy home...are simply true.  These qualities are timeless.  They help us see beyond our current and into a world that is rich.  They help us create homes and families that are nourishing, healthy and sustaining.  I hope you enjoy these quotes that I've gathered for you.  

                                          Happy Holidays, from my home to yours,  Denise

1.   Simplify 

"Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from it". – Joshua Becker

"Pare down to the essence, but don't remove the poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered, but don't sterilize."  Leonard Koren  Wabi Sabi

2.   Tidy Up

"It is not our memories but the person we have become of those past experiences that we should treasure. This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them. The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past"   Marie Kondo...the life changing Magic of Tidying up

3.    Breathe ...pause and breathe

“Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.”
― Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

4.    Add in Splashes of Joy

“A body of research is emerging that demonstrates a clear link between our surroundings and our mental health. For example, studies show that people with sunny workspaces sleep better and laugh more than their peers in dimly lit offices, and that flowers improve not only people’s moods but their memory as well.”
― Ingrid Fetell Lee, Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness

"And what does it feel like?" we asked. "Well," she said, leaning over to us like a secret,  "it feels like a gust of wind blowing inside your heart. It feels like bright yellow paint." Monique Duval  The persistence of yellow

5.    Practice Gratitude

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” —Albert Einstein

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” —Charles Dickens

6.    Cultivate your Beauty Muscle

"Beauty is abundantly present. In old things, brown fields, weary days, prickly people...the art of beauty is learning to see beauty everywhere, in everyone, everyday.  Seeing beauty is a way of seeing, a muscle to strengthen."  Denise Frakes

"Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness...Wabi-Sabi suggests that beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else.  beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view.  Beauty thus is an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace"  Leonard Koren Wabi Sabi for artists, designers, poets and philosophers

7.   Nature...bring it in and go outside 

“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” –John Muir

“I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put together.” –John Burroughs

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” –Albert Einstein

8.   LOVE!!!

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

— Morrie Schwartz

“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.” 

— Helen Keller

Of all things...I believe in us.  I believe in bluebells, curious calves, and how the mundane acts of everyday..is where life can become rich...or dreary.

What you believe is an essential quality of a healthy home...and joyful life.

What do you believe in...?

         Denise

Tiny Acts of Kindness...as a daily habit

   On my run this morning I passed one very intent dog. He was staring at something through the chain link fence. He looked at me then back to whatever had his attention.  When I got closer, I saw it was is ball.  Nothing mattered as much as this little green ball just out of reach.

  I picked it up and threw it back over the fence, to a very happy puppy.  As I watched the puppy get his ball back... an extraordinary thing happened...I was just as happy as the puppy.  

A tiny act of kindness gave me joy.   

 Research shows that kindness raises endorphins, reducing pain, enhances serotonin production, responsible for relaxation, happiness, and wound healing, and promotes oxytocin production, that reduces blood pressure, enhances heart health, and creates a surplus of loving feelings (www.randomactsofkindness.com). Even watching others behave in a kind fashion can make you feel good. You are then more likely to pay it forward to others, resulting in a “helper’s high” through being kind.   Lori Chortkoff Hops, PhD, DCEP)

How do you clean your house, wash dishes, unclutter your desk?  How do you cook dinner, pick up after your family and greet each other?  

In our normal, there are pockets of daily, habitual actions that can be cultivated into habits of love.  

What if your evening dish washing became a meditation in gratitude?  Your grocery shopping an exploration in color?  What if the act of making dinner became a nightly act of love?  What would happen to your life, to the lives around you?  What if every time you picked up something left behind, you sent that person a little love in your thoughts?  

I'm not saying every chore needs to be elevated.  But in a world where we can get lost in the nightly news. Or brain drained from too much screen and digital time... We need rebalancing habits...Habits of gratitude, wonder, kindness...

Simple actions done intentionally and consistently to reboot our sense of life

Start cultivating pockets of nourishment.. daily chores that transform the ordinary into extraordinary.

Try this...Pick one chore or daily activity.  Something you do everyday.  Brush your teeth and send love to those you love, do the dishes with gratitude, pick up the house thinking how lucky you are, cook dinner with beautiful posture and a smile, go for a walk look for wonder and wave at your neighbors.  Turn one little act into something extraordinary.  Practice gratitude in your chores.. and habitual actions.

 Do it everyday for 31 days...and just notice what happens.  Be curious, consistent and persistent.

From my home of chores and practices to yours,

             Denise