What does the coming of spring mean to you? Does it mean that it’s time for spring cleaning – time to tackle a lot of work that you were able to put aside over the winter? When spring comes, maybe you feel it’s time to do a thorough house cleaning and possibly even a good sweeping and reorganization in the garage.

Spring cleaning is not just about what you can do physically, it can also be about what memories you want to keep and what ones you want to throw out. Spring might bring up memories of last year and things you wanted to do over the summer but never got around to doing. Now this spring, maybe you feel that hope again to accomplish those things and add some new adventures. Spring signals new beginnings, which also means cleaning out the old and bringing in the new. There is a renewal of the senses with the return of feeling the warmth of the sun, hearing the sounds of the birds singing and frogs croaking and experiencing the earthy smells of spring in the air.

It’s spring and it seems like everywhere we look there is something growing and people are talking about planting. Today at a Toastmasters International meeting the word that speakers were encouraged to use during the meeting was “cultivate”, which means to “improve growth by labor or intention”. It made us wonder, what are you planting?
When we returned home we noticed some plants growing in front of our house. Little green tender shoots of lily plants had worked their way up through the rock landscaping, peeking their heads up to say, “We’re still here”. With labor and intention, those bulbs were planted years ago and the plants survived year after year. We realized that what you plant and nurture, grows. What you have planted can also remain for years. Those realizations fit in with our life lesson today, so let’s explore further.

What’s happened in your life today that you are grateful for? That’s a good question and you might be thinking, “Nothing, nothing at all. It’s just an average day.” Or maybe not – let’s take a closer look. Here’s an interesting quote by Steve Maraboli, “If you want to find happiness, find gratitude”. It’s been shown that as people become more grateful, they also become happier.

I was fortunate to be a trainer for Drs. Martin Seligman and Ben Dean. In that program we helped people worldwide to have more gratitude and happiness. We shared a method called the “Three Blessings Exercise” from Dr. Seligman’s book, Authentic Happiness. Here’s how that exercise goes. Each day you look for three things:

Here’s something to think about: You don’t know what you don’t know. That might seem like a strange thing to say. In case you want to explore this more, Doug has a story to share that may clarify this concept.
Here’s Doug’s story: “I was ten years old and I’ll never forget that day. The school bus dropped me off in front of our farm house. I walked in the front door and realized there was nobody home. I saw a small rectangular box on the kitchen table. From the return address on the box, I knew it was okay to open it. Little did I know that what was inside the box would change my life forever! It was something I had been waiting for – a pair of glasses!”

How do you diffuse a tense situation or a disagreement? That’s an important question!
It’s no fun to feel upset and walk around on eggshells. It also feels awful to clam up and not say a thing when someone asks, “What’s wrong?” Often the response is, “Nothing, everything is fine,” when it is definitely not fine at all. Sound familiar? We all face some disagreements, so you probably have been involved in some similar situations. You might agree that life is too short to carry these uncomfortable feelings, so we’ll share a couple of ways we have used to diffuse a tense situation and feel better.

Have you ever had a time when you realized that you and another person just didn’t agree? If you say “yes”, you are not alone. We don’t all think alike and it is easy for misunderstandings to occur.

Doug and I were having a discussion while standing outside next to a feeder that hangs in our front courtyard. Yes, that is a strange place to have a dialogue. We wondered what you and other people would say if you were here with us. Motioning to the feeder, Doug said, “Do you know what this is?  I know what most people would think. They would think it’s a bird feeder – right?  Wrong! It’s a squirrel feeder!” I jumped in and asked him, “Why do you think it’s a squirrel feeder?”  He quickly responded, “The intended use of it was as a birdfeeder but the predominant use of it is as a squirrel feeder because the squirrel is here eating at it all the time, eating up all the food and there is usually nothing left for the birds”

Do you treat your loved one like a dog? We had better look at that a little closer so we will share a story to help clarify a bit. We had several dogs but we were past our “dog days” and we thought we shouldn’t get another dog. Yet, I (Lynn) was missing having a dog. Doug agreed to go out “just looking” at dogs and that, hopefully, would satisfy me. So, every Sunday we would go out driving and looking at some nice dogs. Then one day we went to an apartment and when we went in, there was this little grungy-looking, white greyish fur ball.