Immigrant

Mom, what’s the Plan?
Mom: plan is complete five Salesforce certifications in the next two years.
Mom, weekend plan?
Oh’ yes! On Saturday get up at 4am and do three hours study with my study buddy from east coast.
Mom, you are awesome! What about fun?
Mom: I am just an immigrant, fun would be, hopefully i become a Salesforce developer in two years?  dreaming Salesforce career, singing “ Tuje Dekha to ye Jana sanam” pretty much every day, to make sure you don’t forget your Indian parent, Jonathan. 

Note: For a California kid use reverse psychology. Every time he talks about video games, discord chats, antique telephones and cars, every time I talk about exam fever, failed test, study buddy, breaks in my career, and singing songs in several Indian languages to add to the confusion( singing is stress release).Picture of my two boys, my right eye and my left eye, my heart, my world.
— “Himmi & Johnny’s Mom”, wannabes Junior Salesforce Developer. 

#learneeveryday#developer#career#appbuilder#certifications#salesforceohana#immigrantstories#momslearn#salesforce#mombrand#personalbranding#learninganddevelopment,

Thank you ma’am.

RIP, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Learning never stops.

Well! Hello,

I haven’t been active on my blog since last year. A lot has happen since then. Like every other parent i set to have written down a few new year resolutions and goals at the beginning of 2020. None of us anticipated the CIVID-19, crisis, nor did we ever imagined being stuck at home for as long as six months. There is good and bad to everything. In my case a lot of good, more than I expected, I should say. Well! I normally do not really expect much to happen even though I make a long list of items to accomplish. Anyways long story short, a nice pleasant surprise is to get my hearing back. It still tickles my heart when I come to think of it. Because, a part of me lost all hopes of every revering my hearing. I will talk more about it another time.

Now let me share what got me excited about wring this blog today. I have always been a geek, awkward, and uncomfortable in social situations for a long time in United States, wondering how to cope, how to present myself elegantly, like I could do back home in India. Of course, I have several years of training and grooming from my mother to behave like a lady in India. That did not really help me much over hear in the west, since the culture, customs, etiquette, language, etc, everything is absolutely very different. So, I have been looking for a course work to take, to learn and to feel more confident in a very formal social situation.

I did a six weeks program from the school of affluence. An online finishing school for women. I am happy to share my certification below.

Dave Ramsey – Baby Steps for Financial Peace

It’s been a year-long journey since I first heard about Dave Ramsey’s book “The Total Money Makeover”. My husband and I took the nine weeks Financial Peace University program towards the beginning of this year. Followed by me taking five months to complete Master Coach Certification.

Being an immigrant is not easy, going deaf is not easy, financial stress can cause havoc in marriage, and personal finance is an important knowledge to possess since we live very long lives thanks to great healthcare, preventive care available to us. As part of the festival season and giving back tradition, I am offering free one-hour consultation, message me, to make good use of it.

No more money fights! With Financial Peace University, you and your spouse will learn how to create (and stick to) a budget, save for emergencies, and make a plan for the future. Doesn’t that sound peaceful? I’m offering FPU at Campbell United Methodist Church just for you starting Sunday, January 12, 2020. If you’re interested in learning more, send me a message! You can also visit fpu.com/1104478 to sign up!

Tiger

It has been a month since Tiger passed away. No, I have not cried yet. I feel dry, weird, lump, stuck, angry, annoyed, mad and nothing, sorta empty, when I am alone, I have the time to think about Tiger. My big brother, the first one, Tiger, the dashing, intelligent, smart big brother we all the rest of the siblings adored. We have always looked up to him, wanted to be just like him, while growing up. I am also mad at my self right now. So, is that it? I just forget like nothing happened and get on with my life? or go back down my memory line and try to remember all the good memories and bury the bad once? After my Mum and Dad, Tiger and his wife, whom I dearly call Vadina, had the single most influence on me. Because I grew up with them. Here are the few things that come to my mind.

1. Tiger was a perfectionist.
2. Tiger introduced me to Telecommunications, HAM radio.
3. Tiger also introduced me to Computers.
4. Tiger introduced me to Basketball.
5. Tiger introduced me to Engineering, JNTU.
6. Tiger introduced me all the Hollywood movies.
7. Tiger taught me multiplication tables, with terror, when I was a little girl, no excuses you have got to memorize them, period, end of discussion.
8. Tiger encouraged me to DREAM. Tiger knew I was a dreamer and encouraged me to be me.
9. Tiger was an extremely responsible big brother a little sister can have.
10. Tiger loved his family, very much.

Enough for today……..I love Tiger, and he is going to be missed.

 

Goals 2015

I am really good at setting goals and doing it. I ❤ it.

I have got a list of 24, for this year even if I do half of it, I am happy.

Anyways I have two goals done already, booked my ticket to India to visit amma for Christmas, wanted to get of out here every month, once month, for a weekend, Wes and I just did that last week.

I wanted to share how I do it.

Rule @1: Write all your goals list every single day.

Rule @ 2: Email your list to of your best friends beginning of the year and commit to it.

Rule @3: Have someone to talk to about your goals, a very positive, encouraging person. Wesley agrees to my goals 99% of the times. 1% he says Radha be careful don’t trust all these people 🙂

Rule @4: Be relentless look at your goals list 5-8 times a day.

Rule@ 5: Meditate upon your goals 3-4 times a day.

Rule @6: Be super picky who you hang out with. They have to support your goals or they are out of the game period.

Rule @7: refine your goals list every once in a while some become less important and so you remove them and some you add as you go along.

I will add items to the list as I think of.

30 days of Gratitude – Day: 5

Ten things I am grateful for today.

1) My day here, is just another peaceful day, while parts of Europe and Middle East is in turmoil.

2) Meditation, that brings peace to my heart.

3) Another beautiful day for a nice long walk.

4) Glad my son is did well in his Math test, at school.

5) Solitude.

6) Social media that connects me to the world when i want to.

7) My mother, who I keep thinking quite often,  i think i learnt “Contentment” from Mom.  I have never seen her complain much. She is the most optimistic person I ever met.

8) Gandhi: I have learnt a lot more on Gandhi in recent years. I am still amazed at Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolent, peaceful resistance, that worked so beautifully in India. If it worked for India why can’t it work for rest of the worlds political problems? Why is there so much killing  and violence in this world?

9)  Good Karma. Enjoying all the goodness around me.

10) My self-confidence. Meditation gives self-confidence, self-assurance, knowing self, honoring self, making peace with self, where you are, what you are.  By the way meditation is Hindu/Buddhist spiritual practice. It should be learnt from a Guru, teacher. I am getting tired of this  mambo, jumbo that it is an exercise of the mind and such. I am sorry to tell you, but meditation is an eastern spiritual practice for   attaining enlightenment, period. If anyone tells and calls it anything else, they don’t know what they are doing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you God! Almighty!  Thank you so much for a wonderful day.

 

 

30 days of Gratitude – Day: 4

Ten things I am grateful for today.

1) 10431 steps walk at Vasona Park.

2) Pandit Ravishankar’s sitar music,

3) US troops.

4) Finding nice parking spots where ever I went today.

5) For my peaceful life.

6) My little boy making coffee to me this evening.

7) My wonderful family and friends.

8) All the new job opportunities coming my way.

9)  104.9 FM, KDFC classical music radio, San Francisco.

10) My son finishing today’s homework without my help and supervision.

Thank you, thank you, thank you God! Almighty!  Thank you so much!

 

30 days of Gratitude – Day: 3

Ten things I am grateful for today.

1)  10.313 steps Run/walk I took today.

2) Meditation.

3) My family.

4) Mobile communications, Google talk, Skype and  text, that keeps my family in constant contact and communication.

5) Fantastic weather today.

6) Polite and friendly friends and neighbors I met today for small talk.

7)  All the runners on the trail, that inspire me to run.

8) Nice and  long conversation with my son in Austin.

9) Great relationship i have with my two boys.

10) My gorgeous, supportive, caring, trusted, protective, loving and incredible life partner.

Thank you, thank you, thank you God! Almighty!  Thank you so much!!!

 

30 days of Gratitude – Day: 2

Ten things I am grateful for today.

1) My morning meditation.

2) Nice three day weekend with my family.

3) Awesome friends and neighbors.

4) My life Partner.

5) Gorgeous Sunrise this morning.

6) Safe, secure, very clean and lovely town of Los Gatos, CA.

7) My peaceful life.

8) Simple joys of life.

9) My excellent health.

10) Amazing summer time. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you God! Almighty! for my amazing fantastic life. Life is beautiful. Thank you so much!!

 

30 days of Gratitude – Day: 1

 

Ten things I am grateful for today.

1) My daily meditation practice from 20 mints to 2:30 hours. For some reason i haven’t been able to sit still for 3 hours straight. 

2) My Jeep Wrangler.

3) My two teachers, my two boys, Himmi and Johnny that make me try harder to be a better person, make me learn something new every day.

4) Vasona Park, Los gatos creek trail.

5) Silicon Valley, the number of awesome opportunities that are available here.

6) California, for it’s awesome weather all year around.

7) Scenic Pacific coast Highway California state route 1. I can never get tired of the coast.

8) Blossom Hills Elementary, Los Gatos, one of the best schools around here.

9) Living in Los Gatos, everyone around are very friendly, helpful, kind, professional, amazing and awesome. I love my neighbors.

10) United States of America. The best country for women of Indian origin to live, work, grow and thrive in their career. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you God! Almighty! for my amazing fantastic life. Thank you so much!!

 

Happy Friday.

Loka Samasta sukhino Bhavantu. May the whole world be happy

Sarve jana Sukhino Bhavanti. May all beings everywhere be happy

Sarve Janaas Sukhino Bhavanthu – Samastha Sanmangalani Santhu, Om Shanthi, Shanthi, Santhi:

(let everyone on the earth Be happy and have peace, Let every good thing come in your way, Let peace prevail everywhere, all the time)

-Amen.

Zen Sunday

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson.

Thank you for this day Lord God Almighty!

The world has enough beautiful mountains and meadows, spectacular skies and serene lakes. It has enough lush forests, flowered fields and sandy beaches. It has plenty of stars and the promise of a new sunrise and sunset every day. What the world needs more of is people to appreciate and enjoy it. – Michael Josephson.

  

In the end I had to add Giant Dipper, because my son Johnny sitting next to me on that ride, behaved very well compared me screaming at the top of my lungs with my eyes closed, when I am the one that is supposed to calm him and give him courage. After the ride was over he even said Mom I think I am ok 🙂

Zen Sunday

“Not all who wander are lost.” – JRR Tolkien.

Happy Mother’s day

 

 

Clouds and Waves – by Rabindranath Tagore

Mother, the folk who live up in the clouds call out to me-
“We play from the time we wake till the day ends.
We play with the golden dawn, we play with the silver moon.”
I ask, “But how am I to get up to you ?”
They answer, “Come to the edge of the earth, lift up your
hands to the sky, and you will be taken up into the clouds.”
“My mother is waiting for me at home, “I say, “How can I leave
her and come?”
Then they smile and float away.
But I know a nicer game than that, mother.
I shall be the cloud and you the moon.
I shall cover you with both my hands, and our house-top will
be the blue sky.
The folk who live in the waves call out to me-
“We sing from morning till night; on and on we travel and know
not where we pass.”
I ask, “But how am I to join you?”
They tell me, “Come to the edge of the shore and stand with
your eyes tight shut, and you will be carried out upon the waves.”
I say, “My mother always wants me at home in the everything-
how can I leave her and go?”
They smile, dance and pass by.
But I know a better game than that.
I will be the waves and you will be a strange shore.
I shall roll on and on and on, and break upon your lap with
laughter.
And no one in the world will know where we both are.

Happy Mother’s day to all Moms out there 🙂

Zen Sunday

 

The obstacle is the path.  – Zen Proverb.

Citizenship day – Naturalization Oath Ceremony

“Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.” — Barbara Grizzuti Harrison.

Heritage Theater in Campbell, California.

Oath of Allegiance -” I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

Pledge of Allegiance –    I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.To the new beginning……………………………

Zen Sunday

“A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment in which we see into the life of things.”
– R.H. BLYTH.

Zen Sunday

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. – Lao Tzu

Spring at Jikoji Zen Center

I find peace at www.jikoji.org

Satsangatve Nissangatvam
Nissangatve Nirmohatvam
Nirmohatve Nischalatattvam
Nischalatattve Jeevanmuktih.
–  Shankaracharya.

How To Be Alone

Language… has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone. -Paul Johannes Tillich.

Zen Sunday

“When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots – it is not yet painting Spring.”― Dōgen.

Almost Spring

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

from A Shropshire Lad (1896) by -Alfred Edward Housman.

I could not resist taking a picture of spring flowers,  when I went to pick up my eight year old son from school, yesterday. He was patient while I stopped walking, taking pictures and enjoying the signs of spring. While I am in no rush to hustle or hurry, my son is always talking about how he can’t wait to be sixteen and get his driver’s license. He wants to work, save up $$ to buy his own car. So, whenever we go to stores like  Safeway, Nob Hills, Trader Joe’s, he says to me I wish I could work here. He even asked the cashier if he can get a job at a couple of stores.  And I keep telling him, but you are only 8 years old, even if you save for your car you can’t drive until you are old enough to get your driver’s license. We have these regular conversations.  This little bird already has plans and getting ready to fly away from mama 🙂  Anyways I hope you enjoy the above poem by A E Housman as much as I do.

Zen Sunday

Don’t try to be someone you’re not, you may get arrested for Identity Theft. – Daniel Ritz.

Zen Sunday

Every path, every street in the world is your walking meditation path. -Thich Nhat Hanh.

  Spring is almost here 🙂  Happy Sunday!

Happy International Women’s Day!

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.  – Maya Angelou.

Zen Sunday

Have good trust in yourself – not the one you think you should be, but the one that you are. — Taizan Maezumi Roshi“

I quit Facebook 3/2/2013

“I will not be available via Facebook from this point on as I am deleting my Facebook account.”

“I can be contacted at radhikabauerle@gmail.com.

“Please delete any data in your Facebook account that involves me. This includes conversations we’ve had and photos of me that you can part with.”

“Please respect my privacy and avoid posting anything in future that personally identifies me.”

“Thank you.”

Happy Valentine’s Day!

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. – Mother Teresa.

As you continue to send out love, the energy returns to you in a regenerating spiral… As love accumulates, it keeps your system in balance and harmony. Love is the tool, and more love is the end product. – Sara Paddison.

Kindness in words creates confidence; kindness in thinking creates profoundness; kindness in giving creates love. – Lao-Tzu.

On reflection, one of the things I needed to learn was to allow myself to be loved. – Isha McKenzie-Mavinga.

The best portion of a good man’s life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts, Of kindness and of love. – William Wordsworth.

To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; whenever you’re right, shut up. – Ogden Nash.

If you love something, set it free; if it comes backs it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was. – Richard Bach.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving — by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done. – Aldous Leonard Huxley.

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.- Theodore M. Hesburgh.

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it. – John Lennon.

Zen Sunday

Prayer is your speaking to God and meditation is allowing the spirit to speak to you, but it speaks in silence and it then manifests as intuition. Inspiration … the word means ‘in spirit’… [the word] enthusiasm [is rooted in] “en theos” … ‘To be in touch with God.” -Deepak Chopra.

Sunset of the day

California Coast.

Enthusiasm.

Meditation creates, keeps enthusiasm alive. This is my fundamental belief and observation. Do small 10min  meditation about 4-5 times during the day, I recommend it because I am practicing it. Happy Friday. Have a great weekend!!!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

 I can still hear my Mother reading it to me, and explaining.  We had no Youtube you see, to watch and to feel snow. I have to only imagine….Imagine and visualize  a lot of things in my mind, spend hours imagining,  how they all might look like, about all the things alien to my life in India, my Mother was reading to us, the stores,  the poetry of distant lands so very different from what i was surrounded by at that time in my little town of Gadwal.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

-Robert Frost

What do I do? Good question.

http://www.wyse.com/

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”- Siddhartha Guatama Buddha

When you need a little bit of inspiration…..

I work in sales, I just finished my first quarter at work. I am just not happy and satisfied with what I have done so far. Well! we all need some inspiration, some prep talk to cheer us up every one once in a while don’t we? Here we go….

“With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” -Dalai Lama.

All the best to you in what ever you aspiring to be….Have a good weekend!

Zen Sunday

 

Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein (26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951).

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,400 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

UNICEF

I wish Anjali all the success …May all her dreams come true…..I saw this inspiring picture to day. I thought I will share this with you.
“She (Anjali) is talking to another girl by eye contact and saying…”Being girls we will have to face so many challenges in life. Like every girl should be wanted child, rights to education, rights to food, to get same place, same importance like my brothers have in family, not be neglected, not to be rejected, rights to choose my life partner and finally to remove this gender based discrimination from my society….Yes, will face them with smile and take them as opportunity to learn, to get experience so that we can change our life, society, India and rest of the world”…-in Chayas words.

Nine-year-old Anjali Kumari in her class room in middle school in Supaul district of Bihar.
Photo Credit: UNICEF India/2012/Dhiraj Singh

Christmas at Dell

I get really excited about every day stuff, just like my little one Johnny. It is one of those things I made a habits, from reminding and staying in “NOW”. Thanks to Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey. I was attending “New Earth -Webinars” Oprah did a while back, I believe in 2007.

Anyways each time I pass I smile when I look at our Christmas Tree at work. Did I ever tell you I work for Dell? Selling Cloud Clients/ Thin Clients. By the way we came of up with new product first of its kind “Cloud Client Manager”. You guessed it 🙂 I love working for Dell.

David Garrett.

 Happy Thanksgiving every one. I am listening to David Garett’s music tonight. I thought you might like it too 🙂

Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

 Tagore’s portrait is by Sasi kumar Hesh.

Feng Shui Flowers

 

Orange Lilies at Feng Shui love corner at home. Helps me get back my attention to here and NOW.

How are you all doing?

God Bless America.

Nice morning! I went for my walk at Campbell Community Center Track. I made friends with two runners Juan and a lady. They both offered to coach me to run a half marathon. I love this American spirit. Random strangers become buddies for a common cause. God bless all those Angels, Teacher’s that come my way and teach me the things I need to survive and thrive. God bless America. It feels fantastic to live here 🙂

Solitude…………..

 

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
~ Henry David Thoreau.

Steve Jobs

7  Secrets to Success of Steve Jobs

1. Do what you love.

2. Put a dent in the universe.

3. Say no to 1000 things.

4. Kick start your brain.

5. Sell dreams not products.

6. Create insanely great experiences.

7. Master the message.

Solitude, Silence & Stillness

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.    –Montaigne-Michel de Montaigne.

Asha Stanford Holi, The colour Festival.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Mahatma Gandhi.

My child had a fantastic, fun time at the recent  Asha Stanford Annual Holi,   he calls it the color festival.  Asha for education a non-profit organization is doing a great job of bringing hope through education, in India. Please take a look at their website. I like their support a child project.  Support A child program efforts help sponsor the costs for health, living and educational costs for individual children.

It was a fun day for a wonderful cause and a nice way for my child to learn about India.

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”-Brigham Young.

It takes determination to make meditation as number one priority in your day!

In prayer you communicate with God, in meditation God communicates with you. –  Inner Space.

It takes determination to make meditation number one priority in your day. But believe me if I can do it you can do it too. I am going to blog more on meditation to help all of us, beginners, to stay on the path. I know it is not easy believe me it is never easy for me either. I am using one of my negative traits here in a positive way. Since I was a kid I am always called a very stubborn child, stubborn women, bull-headed. I thought why not I use it to practice meditation as my number one priority in a day.  And it has been working out very well for me so far.
Trust me if you make meditation as number priority in your day, be committed to practice it for one year you will get back to me describing all benefits you feel as part of the deal. My logic is you eat every day to maintain your body and know that if you exercise every day you optimize your physical stamina and so if you practice meditation for the spirit you become very creative and  strong spirited. Don’t we want complete wellness: mind, body and spirit?
Some of the benefits I believe I gained as part of practicing meditation are;  helps me to calm my frustration, my anger, helps me to accept change with ease, helps me to face a crisis with ease, and helps me to make peace with the moment. I figured that is what happiness is all about. If we are at peace with what is at the moment we are in a state of joy. I do lose my balance once in a while but I have wonderful friends all over the world to get be back up and rest of the ninety present of the time I am at peace and I give all the credit to making meditation a regular practice and number one priority in my day.

The final obstacle in meditation is ecstasy; you feel great bliss and happiness and want to stay in that ecstasy. Do not yield to it but pass on to the next stage which is great calm. The calm is higher than ecstasy and it merges into samadhi –Ramana Maharshi.

Gratitude – Focus on what is going well in Life!! One hundred things to be grateful.

1. Health and body
2. Work and success
3. Money and cash flow
4. Relationships
5. Passions, hobbies
6. Nature: Sun, planets etc.
7. Senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste
8. Speech
9. Books
10. Pretty Sunrises and Sunsets
11. Good Movie
12. Entertainment
13. Pets
14. Modern medicine
15. Any subject of your choice
16. Healthy immune system
17. Meditation, yoga, work out
18. Alert mind
19. Focus
20. Teachers in life
21. Internet connection
22. Healthy Heart
23. Hearing
24. Air conditioning
25. A good meal
26. A nice restaurant
27. Joy
28. Happiness
29. Love
30. Magical, surprise, random, pleasant events – bumping into an old friend/new friend
31. Siblings bond
32. Joyful experiences – memories, present day.
33. Rain
34. Animals, butterfly
35. Technology
36. Kind strangers
37. The Holidays (Christmas)
38. A good Margarita/drink
39. Cozy romantic evening
40. Vacations
41. Synchronicity
42. Your other half-Partner-Besties-Soulmate
43. Sharing a smile with a stranger
44. Winning a deal
45. Fun workout class
46. When you get something cool for FREE
47. Alone time
48. Grace
49. Friday nights
50. Sunday Mornings
51. Weekends, activities on the weekend
52. A good Party
53. Chocolate
54. A good dance
55. The ability to Dream – Write your dreams – Intend it.
56. Lunch dates
57. Date nights
58. Coffee
59. Kisses
60. Being able to set a goal and achieve it- Celebrate small victories
61. A good hug
62. Unconditional love – Dad, Mom, Grandma, grandpa
63. Good hair day
64. When someone compliments your work
65. When someone compliments you look pretty
66. Pay day/Bonus/ Incentive
67. Surprise windfall Money
68. Autumn colors
69. Snow
70. Respect
71. Sincere apologies
72. The ability to help others without expecting nothing in return – Good Karma
73. Great Boss
74. Great coworkers
75. Great business Partners
76. Teamwork
77. Traditions – Family Christmas
78. Forgiveness
79. Passion
80. Generosity of others
81. Seasons changing
82. Long drive on the coast
83. Fresh bedsheets, clean bed
84. A good swim
85. A good Hike
86. Learning from a Mistake
87. Strangers helping you
88. Surprise presents, flowers
89. Concerts
90. A good joke
91. Favorite comfort food
92. Almighty! God!
93. Healthy immune system
94. Compassion
95. Nice song on the car radio
96. Life challenges
97. Time
98. Travel
99. Favorite room
100. Magical moments – memories, present.

Top 10 Things to Be Thankful For

Thank You Daily

It’s Thankful Thursday on the Facebook page.  This week, I decided to create a list.

1. Waking up in the morning – Each morning is a gift. When our eyes pop open (or slowly creak open, if you’re anything like me) in the morning, the first thought we should have is “thank you”.

2. Shelter – No matter how grandiose or sparse, protection from the elements is a blessing.

3. A hot shower – I can’t imagine how I would feel about myself if I wasn’t able to bathe everyday.

4. Food to eat – If you’re a child of the 80’s, you most certainly were affected by the images of starving children in Ethiopia in the “We Are the World” video. Some of us spend energy every day trying to decide what to eat for lunch while there are others who have no energy and wonder when their next…

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