​"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why  
we call it the present." - Bill Keane

I appreciate the quote from Bill Keane, an American cartoonist most noted for his work on the newspaper comic, The Family Circus. It seemed like such a small gift he gave the readers on a weekly basis, a family with 4 children going through the trials and joys of family life. Continually, the message was based on the gift of listening. Usually the mom and dad in the cartoon listened and the children asked questions or discovered something new in their lives needing clarification only a parent could give. Yet the message was certainly insightful and has remained current 60 years later. The gift of listening and being present reminds us of the true meaning of the Holiday Season, the gift of giving of ourselves.

​The "H" in Hope.  I had never heard the term before until my client Robin, while speaking of how things were getting better in her life said, "I have the 'H' in hope again." It made me consider how often in our lives just the "H" is present, but it can keep us going until the rest of the word shows up.    Life is not meant to have only ups and never downs. Even nature appears to have its downs: hurricanes, earthquakes, snowstorms and too much rain in Arizona. The news is rarely up and mostly down and people still struggle in relationships. Although much has been discovered on the benefits of being happy and cultivating a positive attitude, we tend to turn our cloudy days into hurricanes, shaky conversations into earthquakes, and low blood sugar into snowstorms and too much rain. The "H" drops out of our hope. 

Make a Daily List of What is Good in Your Present Life.  Here is my list: ...

​Repeatedly I am reminded there are no accidents. Instead our lives are always unfolding and evolving. As a business owner for many years, the changes occurring in the daily lives of running a business, including solving problems, staff and customer adjustments and the high-speed development of technology are constant reminders nothing stays the same. Good will probably come from the changes and pathways will open we may not have imagined.

In her article in the Science of Mind Magazine, No Accidents, Rev. Sally Robins wrote this: "Brothers and soap manufacturers Cleo and Noah McVicker invented a product to clean wall paper in the 1930's. Twenty years later, Cleo's son Joe heard from another family member, Kay Zufall, that the children in her nursery school loved playing with the product. They revamped it and sold it as Play-Doh.

​Growing up with traditional Mexican customs in a small Arizona mining town without television or radio, our connections to the supernatural were the stories that were told by the women in our neighborhood. After dinner, sitting in our back yards with only the lights of the stars and moon, the women regaled us with tales of witches, ghosts, the devil and those terrifying monsters that were sure to come and pluck us from our mother’s arms if we did not behave. We enjoyed the stories, the feeling of being scared and begged for more until exhausted by our imaginations and fear. We would run inside the house for cover…until the next time the stories were told.

​Many years ago on television there was a comedian named Flip Wilson who had a variety show. He dressed flashy and talked like a very sassy and naughty woman of the night named Geraldine.  Her confident character and direct language were brassy and full of mischief and her favorite saying as she placed one hand on her tilted hip and the other hand holding her purse slung back behind her shoulder, throwing her head back while a mange of curled hair tussled on her shoulders, was “What you see is what you get!”  Television viewers laughed and borrowed Geraldine’s slogan and in my youth I thought that was the truth about people. I thought, “What you see is what you get!”