say thank you

photo courtesy lettersofnote.com

photo courtesy lettersofnote.com…entertaining letters by famous people

Apparently John Lennon wrote thank you notes. Jimmy Fallon is also a fan of thank you notes. And I want to thank Jimmy Fallon for bringing his version of gratitude into the limelight. They elicit a type of joy that probably isn’t what Emily Post was after.

I’m also a big fan of letter writing, especially thank you notes.  Once upon a time I even ran a website called ‘letters and paper’ and got to spend all of my free time writing about writing. Heaven for a writer, unfortunately not a very profitable use of time (luckily I spent enough time at the drafting table to compensate). Regardless of profitability, the handwritten note is  worthwhile because it creates a significant and pleasurable impact on both the writer and the recipient. The recipient gets a momentary break from their frenetically digitalized workday, and the writer experiences the moment of joy that any flight of gratitude offers.

There are plenty of reasons to hand write those notes in your business as well as personal world.

  1. Feeling grateful elicits happiness, so finding a reason to thank someone will make you happy.
  2. After a job interview a handwritten thank-you note tells the interviewer something about your humanity…bosses like to hire humans. And this will set you apart as the type of human that bosses like.
  3. If you want to leave a lasting impression, write a thoughtful note of thanks for a favor done or a gift received or time spent. Lasting impressions are like money in the bank of your future.
  4. Congratulations are a great opportunity to connect, and may inspire a thank-you note in response which makes two people happy (see number 1).

I create and keep notecards and stamps at my desk for both personal and professional note writing. Apparently I’m not alone…thank you notes even made the New York Times.

Keep in touch,
Leslie

ps: I just found these awesome notecards for booklovers…I wouldn’t suggest using them professionally unless  you are in the publishing business…but if you run into my husband you might mention that his wife is a book lover, hint, hint…;)

 

 

seven generations

“In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation… even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.”

~Great Law of the Iroquois

picjumbo.com_IMG_9868

Earth Day is April 22.  I’d like to respectfully suggest that we take the law of the Iroquois into our own hearts and start again. Let Earth Day be a new beginning of doing at least one more thing (or one less thing, depending on the thing), that will benefit those who come behind us. Here are a few suggestions.

Consider one, or all, of these 22 eco-conscious habits.

Up the health of a school. Start or join a project for Green Apple Day of Service.

Wear nothing new.  Or take it a step further…buy nothing new (except consumables, duh).

Eat slow. One of the markets I shop in lists the distance that their produce travels to get to their shelves. Buy produce that travels less than 500 miles…that way you know it is in season.

Take out your lawn and plant a garden. Cultivate it with your children, friends, neighbors…spread the wealth!

Have a great weekend….sending some special love to my sis today,

Leslie
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happiness creates success

happiness

This morning I needed a happiness shot.  Not for any particular reason, but I just did and I got it from Shawn Achor, a psychologist and the founder and CEO of Good Think, Inc. He gave a TED talk a few years ago that reflects the way that I parent, which is great, but in the moment I sometimes forget that it should direct the way that I live as well.

As a society we tend to believe happiness will result from the completion or acquisition of something. We will be happy when we are successful. I’ve spent my parenting career telling my children that a new phone or toy or dress or friend won’t make them happy. They will be happy when they choose to be happy with the toy or dress or friend or phone that they already possess. So why, then, do we think that we will be happier if we, as adults, are more productive or successful in our jobs? In fact, it’s just the opposite.  We will be more successful at our jobs when we look at life through a lens that allows us to be happy.

According to Mr. Achor, if you can be happy in the present, you will be more successful at work.  He says the ‘happiness advantage’ provides:

  • more success securing a job
  • ability to keep a job
  • superior productivity
  • more resiliency
  • less burnout
  • less turnover
  • greater sales

If you want to train your brain to be positive you should do the following five things for 21 days straight. Randy Scott Hyde experimented with the five for 30 days.  They worked for him (and he draws some pretty awesome stick figures along the way).  I’m starting today….why not do something momentous on April Fools Day?  Seems like the perfect time to me.

  1. write 3 gratitudes
  2. journal about 1 positive experience from the day
  3. exercise
  4. meditate
  5. do something nice for someone else

Want to join me?
Leslie

here’s the video….worth the 12 minutes, I promise!

ny and dc recommendations?

map

Tell me where to go (and be nice!)

I’m off to NY and DC this summer for a quick visit and a wedding (aack….what are they thinking?…planning an east coast wedding in the summer is a little bit mean!). 5 days in NY split between Miller Place on the north end of the island and Brooklyn/Manhattan.  Do you have a recommendation for a hotel in Brooklyn? We’ve always stayed with family and are looking for a bit of adventure. Also, where must we eat? Then 5 days in DC.  I’ve never been to DC so am looking for food recommendations and anything else you think I should know. Help me people!

Thanks,
Leslie

lipstick

elizabeth street

photos courtesy elizabethstreetcosmetics.com

lipstick

I know…..this is not a lifestyle site and I don’t usually write about things that won’t interest the genders equally, but Elizabeth Street Cosmetics is a local company (Noe Valley people!) and I love Kelly’s lipsticks.  I don’t wear anything else ever.  It feels as good as my cherry chapstick.  And if the lips are happy, they are more likely to kiss you!  Check it out if you are a lipstick wearer….you’ll never go back to whatever you used to wear.  Short and sweet….okay?

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

never let me go

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.” 
~ Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

This is the beautifully written story of a group of private school children, completely isolated from the outside world, in a very unique circumstance. The prose is lyrical and in striking contrast to the children’s destiny.  Read it without reading any reviews or seeing the movie….it needs to begin at the beginning to really be appreciated.  If you don’t intend to read the story (a pity), you can watch the 2010 movie.  The trailer is below.

about reading

 

book4

I love books.  Not just reading, but actually the books themselves.  I buy books everywhere and keep them forever…even my grandmother’s 1953 Encyclopedia Brittanica collection.  Growing up we had 2 massive bookshelves in our family room and my mom was an avid reader.  As a teenager I preferred laying on the rug under the piano reading to being outside with friends (I was a bit of a late bloomer).  So in my house we build bookshelves.  When I’m starting a project my first stop is always a book.  When I need to relax, I find a book.  When I’m making dinner, I’ve got a book on the counter.  When I’m standing in line, I’m reading a book.  There aren’t enough bookshelves so books are stacked on tables, on top of other books, littering my desk.  Steve laughs because I can read anywhere, even in the middle of my family’s chaos.  And I’m always bringing more books into our not so huge house.

book1

For those of you who are also readers, ‘good reads’ is a place for me to share books I’ve read and loved.  Check back to see what’s on my bedside table.  And let me know if you read something amazing so that I can read it too.

book2

 

where I live

my house, circa an hour ago

my house, circa an hour ago

the Brunner house, circa 1935

the Brunner house, circa 1935

15 years ago we bought the ugly duckling house on the beautiful block. All we saw was the charm and potential of our little Victorian.  Based on what little bit of research I’ve done, our house was probably built in the 1880s by two young Irish brothers named McElnay.  The original footprint was a single story 4 room house.  It probably didn’t have much of a kitchen, and the potty was out back.  It was built simply in the style of the time, but simply at that time included plaster walls, beautiful wood trims and moldings, and high ceilings with ceiling medallions. Before we bought it, the house was added to and remodeled so that what was once a 900 square foot home with a wrap around porch grew to nearly 1800 square feet.  Not big by today’s standards, but definitely big enough for us.  Between 1880 and 2014 we believe that 4 families have lived in our house.  First the McElnays, then the Brunner family, before us the Kahlers, and finally my family.  The earliest photo I have of the house is above, from about 1935 when the Brunners owned the house.  See the cobblestone street?  Grandpa Brunner was apparently very proud of his roses and grew them in both the front and back gardens.

During and after WWII the house was subdivided and most of it was rented out to servicemen. We have found 3 different locations for kitchens during the course of our renovations.  Grandma Brunner lived in the front bedroom at one point and used the closet for a kitchen (I presume her husband had died).  Sometime during their tenure much of the wraparound porch was enclosed to create a sunroom on one side and a closet on the other.

this is one of three doorways that has the original trim

this is one of three doorways that has the original trim

But back to the ugly duckling part.  When we bought the house everything was pink, the windows were all aluminum framed, the 12′ ceilings were dropped to 10′ and a step and wrought iron railing were added in the living room.  The fireplace was gone (presuming there was one), there was vinyl flooring and shag carpet everywhere, and the beautiful wood trims had all been removed and replaced with 3″ flat oak trim.  Apparently the family before us was enamored with the tract home style of the 60s, and I don’t mean the cool designs of people like Eichler.  So over the course of 15 years we’ve moved a few walls, remodeled every room, updated systems, replaced windows and tried to fix what was ugly and broken.

the before....like the beige/pink laminate everywhere?

the before….like the beige/pink laminate everywhere?

The final room (and it’s really silly that it’s the final room since it’s the room we use the most) was the kitchen.  We began that remodel in late 2011.  I’d done a virtual remodel at least 2 dozen times (tearing down a wall in Autocad is much cheaper than it is in real life).  We settled on a plan and our god-like general contractor came and executed it. Unfortunately my dad got ill mid-remodel and we took a bit of a hiatus before being able to finish.  Last year Steve and I finally installed our tile backsplash to finish (well almost….I still need to add undercab lights) the project.  Now I have a beautiful kitchen to go with the rest of our once again adorable Victorian home.

And I’m going to enter it into the This Old House reader remodel.  Once I take some photos with something besides my iPhone, I’ll upload them.  Suffice it to say there is no pink.

Keep in touch (and enjoy the California rain),
Leslie

happy, successful and maybe even wealthy

pharrell-happy-music-video-0

I think that most of us want to be happy and successful (whatever our version of success is), and some of us aspire to wealth as well.  So the lists I’ve posted over the last few days share the wisdom (hopefully) of others’ research into the habits we need to develop to get there.  The lists include 21 habits to be happy, 10 habits to be rich and 7 habits to be successful.  There are only two habits that all three lists share:

·         exercise regularly
·         help others

Successful and wealthy people have an additional habit they share:

·         keep learning

And happy and successful people share a few more:

·         eat well
·         sleep well
·         listen well and maintain personal connections
·         find a spiritual connection

Do you maintain any of these habits?  Or maybe all of them?  I’m putting these 7 on the top of my priority list and aiming to include a few more from the happy and successful lists.  Happy people also need to listen to happy music…so be happy with Pharrell’s jam!  Now I’m off to yoga….happy Monday!

7 habits of successful people

that’s my daughter graduating high school….see her in the front left? yea….kind of hard to make out.

Before I could begin the search for a list of habits of successful people, I had to define for myself what success is.  My definition of success, at least for this purpose, is from the free online dictionary:  the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted.  So here we are in this life trying to make some kind of a go of it, and whether we want money, happiness or something else, it is the achievement of that thing that defines success.

I think that Dr. Stephen Covey hits the nail on the head.  He published his remarkably popular book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ in 1989.  His habits number 1-3 allow us first to define that ‘thing’ that signifies our success. Dr. Covey breaks his habits down into 3 categories:  Independence, interdependence and continuous improvement.  The descriptions that follow are my interpretations of Dr. Covey’s explanations.

Independence

  • Habit 1: Be Proactive.  Take initiative, make choices and take responsibility for your choices and the consequences that follow.
  • Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind.  Discover and clarify your most important character values and life goals.
  • Habit 3: Put first things first.  First things are those things you, personally, find of most worth.

Interdependence

  • Habit 4: Think win-win.  No one need lose in order for another to win, there is enough to go around so genuinely strive for mutually beneficial solutions.
  • Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.  Learn to listen empathically.
  • Habit 6: Synergize.  Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork in order to achieve solutions no one person could have found alone.

Continuous Improvement

  • Habit 7: Sharpen the saw.  Create a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life (physical, social/emotional, mental, spiritual).  For example, 
    • physical:  beneficial eating, exercising, and resting.
    • social/emotional:  making social and meaningful connections with others.
    • mental:  learning, reading, writing, and teaching.
    • spiritual:  spending time in nature, expanding spiritual self through meditation, music, art, prayer, or service.

So habit 7 is pretty huge.  That’s why this list is so much shorter than the prior 2 lists for wealth and happiness. Next post is a comparison of the three lists.  I’ve already got a few habits that I’ll be wanting to focus on.

 

21 habits of happy people

Meet Rita....that is one happy walk!

Meet Rita….that is one happy walk!

George Carlin says that trying to be happy by accumulating things is like trying to conquer hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.  Love that quote.  Of course it’s full of truth that I sometimes neglect when walking by the shoe department.

There is an actual psychology of happiness and doctors who have been studying it for years.  Dr. Marty Seligman is the founder of ‘positive psychology’ and the director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Seligman finds that there are three types of happy lives:  the pleasant life, the life of engagement, and the meaningful life.  The pleasant life is one filled with the pursuit of pleasure and is the least fulfilling.  HuffPost put together the following list to aid us in living a life of engagement and meaning.  It’s a long list, but I figure if we take these things one at a time and see how they feel it’s doable.

  1. Surround yourself with happy people.
  2. Cultivate a happy thought and smile about it.
  3. Develop resilience.  Get up when you fall down.
  4. Try to be happy.
  5. Be mindful of the good.
  6. Appreciate simple pleasures.
  7. Devote some time to giving to others.
  8. Let yourself lose track of time.
  9. Nix the small talk in favor of deeper conversation whenever you can.
  10. Spend money on other people.
  11. Make a point to listen, really listen.
  12. Maintain in person connections.
  13. Look on the bright side.  Find the silver lining.
  14. Listen to uplifting music.
  15. Unplug.
  16. Find a spiritual connection, a place within something bigger.
  17. Make exercise a priority.
  18. Go outside.
  19. Sleep well and regularly.
  20. Laugh out loud.
  21. Walk with your head up and your arms swinging.

Tomorrow I’ll find some info on habits of smart people.  Then we can compare and contrast and see if rich, smart and happy have much in common.  Have a happy Wednesday!

10 habits of rich people

summer attire: me, my sis and my aunt in 1963

summer attire: me, my sis and my aunt in 1963

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this.  Actually I am….I feel kind of creepy.  My parents were both depression era babies so I grew up in a home that was very thrifty, where happiness was based on things that had nothing to do with the things that money can buy.  Although we were comfortable, when we traveled we stayed at Motel 6 (when it really cost $6) or at a relative’s home, and a big night out to dinner was at Denny’s.  And I occasionally got a stern “not this time Les” when I tried to order the prawns.  Being rich was never something that I aspired to.  If anything both  the thought of aspiring to wealth and having wealth make me feel uncomfortable.  In our house we buy what we need, give what we can, try to teach our children that stuff doesn’t make people happy and generally focus on other things that we truly value.  

But some people do aspire to wealth.  And Tom Corley has written a whole book about it.  He has a list of 10 things that rich people do (and  poor people don’t).  Although he freely admits that this is a work in progress, his methods have been heavily questioned, and in my opinion rightfully so.  But I’m not posting this because I agree or disagree.  It’s just a list.  Tomorrow  I’m going to find and post habits of happy people.  The next day I’m going to see what I can find about habits of successful people. Then we can compare and contrast and see if we all think that wealth, happiness  and success have anything to do with one another.

Before we start, do you want to be rich?  If you were rich would you be happy?  And what do you think success is?

1. 70% of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day. 97% of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day. 23% of wealthy gamble. 52% of poor people gamble.

2. 80% of wealthy are focused on accomplishing some single goal. Only 12% of the poor do this.

3. 76% of wealthy exercise aerobically 4 days a week. 23% of poor do this.

4. 63% of wealthy listen to audio books during commute to work vs. 5% for poor people.

5. 81% of wealthy maintain a to-do list vs. 19% for poor.

6. 63% of wealthy parents make their children read 2 or more non-fiction books a month vs. 3% for poor.

7. 70% of wealthy parents make their children volunteer 10 hours or more a month vs. 3% for poor.

8. 80% of wealthy make Happy Birthday calls vs. 11% of poor

9. 67% of wealthy write down their goals vs. 17% for poor

10. 88% of wealthy read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons vs 2% for poor.