Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Judy Mosley

Stop.  Take a moment wherever you are and listen. Close your eyes.  Let yourself be quiet.  What can you hear?  What have you been missing amidst all the daily hustle and bustle that weʼve all fallen into?  Now, take a deep breath.  Draw it in like a cool drink of water.  Let it out slowly with intentional delight. The next breath is yours as well.

I want to ask you something.  You will need a pen and some paper.  I want to know . . .

Whatʼs right with your life?

Itʼs so easy to be negative.  Every day, we are bombarded with whatʼs wrong in our world.  Today it’s the economy, jobless claims, fear of recession to name only a few.  We listen to the news, hoping for valuable information, but walk away feeling powerless. We take it mostly because we think itʼs what we should be doing, but also because weʼre used to it.

So … how will you respond?  Whatʼs right with your life?

Read More »

Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Judy Mosley

Life is full of challenges.  All of us have, at one point or another, decided how we are going to live our lives.  Itʼs the journey that everyone makes.  But, it can be difficult to do when there arenʼt many people around us to model our lives after.  

Still, we push forward.  We lose 50 lbs., learn to organize our home, develop healthy relationships, or we find our dream job.  Weʼve conquered the various mountains that have stood in our path.  Yet, after the fact, we might feel reaching our goal is anticlimactic or even feel at a loss.  

What now?  Whatʼs next, now that weʼve achieved what weʼve set out to do?  Wasnʼt mastering the challenge the point?  Or, is there life afterwards that we hadnʼt thought of? Read More »

Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Tamara Belinc

Bill Morgan believes you should walk through life with a smile on your face, a prayer in your heart and outstretched hands to help those in need.  When Bill believes in something, he acts on it.

Growing upon a cotton farm in Anniston, Ala., Bill, 64, suffered from rheumatic fever and was paralyzed for a time. “I know what it’s like to be left out,” he said, “so I made it my goal to be sure that no boy is left out that I can help.”  With that goal in mind, he has been the Past Master of the Masonic Orders and also the past president of his local Shriner’s chapter. He also served as an ambassador. “I’ve taken kids and their parents to Nashville to catch a bus to go the Shriner’s hospital,” he said. Read More »

Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Judy Mosley

It’s a simple signal - a little growl in the stomach or the sudden urge for “something.”  Human beings are superior for knowing when we are hungry.  Even if we aren’t exactly starving, we will snack as much as possible to keep hunger at bay.

There is another part of us that needs just as much attention.  It can’t be seen on an x-ray or an ultrasound, but it’s still an important part of who we are.  We’ve all felt its’ many signals … from unwarranted anger, the loneliness that creeps in while we’re in a crowded room, to the feeling inside when we have nothing left to give to those around us, just to name a few.

It’s our soul speaking to us in different ways, and it’s telling us it’s hungry. Read More »

Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Marie Monroe

Let’s begin with an acknowledgment of the human brain – that powerful bio-computer that does all those wonderful things so well.  It is in there that I want to say gratitude works its magic.

How?  I’ll have to leave that to those who understand neurochemistry, but I can make some guesses with my intuitive understanding and a few facts about how the brain works at other times.   

As I considered gratitude, I found myself thinking about other things, things we deem pathological even. Things that occur in the brain like seizures and bipolar disorder.  An odd and circuitous route to the subject of gratitude, but one that makes some sense to me. Let me explain.  In seizure disorders, a phenomenon called “kindling” can occur in which the brain ‘learns’ to have seizures more quickly and more efficiently.  A similar thing can happen to the brain in bipolar disorder.  The brain ‘learns’ to have manic episodes more quickly and more efficiently as well.  Not such a good thing if you suffer from these maladies, but an interesting schema for other events in the brain.  Perhaps we can kindle all sorts of other things. Perhaps this is one of the basic ways in which the brain learns anything?

Kindling is often likened to the ignition of fire – using small bits of wood to catch larger pieces on fire.  It is a sort of fine tuning.  Ignition of a process becomes more and more refined as the brain experiences the process more.  In pathological conditions we hope to delay kindling.  In positive experiences, why not cultivate it?  This is how my circumambulation brought me to gratitude. Read More »