For years I’ve been making a list of 108 things I’m grateful for on Thanksgiving morning and publishing it somewhere. The idea came from Rev. Guy Williams suggesting in a class that we count out 100 gratitudes daily as a practice I grabbed what turned out to be a Buddhist rosary to help me count and they have 108 beads. This will be the first time I’ve done this on Medium.

The trick is to remember that small things count as well as big things.

I’m always tempted to edit my list, even more so this year, but my personal…

I’m one of those people who believes we have a great deal of control over how we feel. This is an attitude I’ve gradually adopted over years, even decades. Back in my 30s and even early 40s I thought ideas about being grateful were sappy. The idea of a gratitude journal or writing 3 things I’m grateful for daily often made me feel at least slightly nauseous.

In the late 1980s I was exposed to the idea that we could control our future through something called the Law of Attraction. As I recall I was mostly concerned with abundance and…

Richard said I wasn’t taking responsibility for my actions. I was truly puzzled because I’ve made taking personal responsibility practice for years. Although I have my moments where I consciously refuse to take any responsibility for anything for 10 minutes, generally I own up to my foibles and mistakes pretty quickly — maybe even more quickly than I should sometimes.

I trust this guy even though we haven’t known each other that long really. So I spent some time thinking about what he said. At the Zen center where we both live, we have a shared responsibility for picking up…

How long as it been since you raised your rates?

That long?

Wow!

Have you been trying to increase your income by working more? Since it’s been roughly forever since you raised your rates, I’m going to suggest you do just that, raising your rates, maybe by a lot. It’s one way to improve your income without working harder, just smarter. It’s not always easy, but it can be very effective.

The first time I raised my rates

The first time a mentor of mine insisted I try raising my rates she suggested I charge $100 or more an hour! Now this was back in the day and…

You know the drill. You call say your bank, or your cable or phone company. First comes the apology that the pandemic is the current excuse for poor customer service. Next we hear “All our agents are busy assisting other customers.” Then the Big Lie, “Your call is very important to us.”

I call total BS on this oft repeated phrase.

Sure you want my business, but not enough to arrange to call me back as some companies have finally figured out. Not enough to avoid putting me on hold with gawdawful music.

Do the people who order these kinds…

Yesterday I signed on to my autoresponder, GetResponse (yes, that’s an affiliate link), to do a quick newsletter. The whole dashboard had changed! Everything was different except the color scheme.

Perhaps they’d sent an email telling me of the upcoming upgrade; if so I’d missed it. I took a couple of stabs at finding my old templates — one of the joys of their service is I can easily build templates for use again and again. …

My guess is you're reading this post because you’re either a writer or hope to become one. Whatever you do, you know that words matter. You know their meanings can be obvious or subtle, and they carry an influence on those who say them, read them and use them.

Somehow it came to my attention that we tend to talk about our time in two distinct ways. Listen to others talk about their time and you’ll notice that some talk about how the spend their time while others talk about how they invest their time. Now, which way do you…

I am part of a writing forum where some of us create accountability by writing a to do list weekly there and then checking done things daily. Until recently I’ve sort of grudgingly created a list every week. I absolutely love checking things off the list in front of everyone in the group as it were, and I sort of cringe when it becomes obvious no one, even Superwoman herself, can get all the things done I’ve listed. My theory is I need to keep all those things in front of me. …