Category Archives: Of Living

Living With the Heart of a Child

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“Some memories are unforgettable, remaining ever vivid and heartwarming.” ~ Joseph B Wirthlin

It’s a wonderful thing to live as an adult with the heart of a child, still full of wonder.

We’re never too old to engage in childhood activities like taking a trip down the sliding board, pumping higher and higher toward the skies on a swing, wading in the waters of a rippling stream, getting messy with finger paints or diving into an ice cream Sundae with such zeal that it ends up all over our face.

A few years back my son took me to Michael’s Craft Store, looking for a picture frame. “Pick out a frame you are happy with,” said Marc, “it will complete the present.”

Before we were finished shopping my son said “Mom, did you see what’s at the front of the store? You might be interested. Go pick one out for yourself.”

“I followed his orders and have enjoyed being a child all over again – all wrapped up into something that used to bring me hours of pleasure as a child.”

According to this article from Business Insider, I am not the only one who is having fun revisiting my childhood!

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When I need to switch things up and do something different other than reading and writing, there are all kinds of creative activities I dabble with which bring me pleasure. Many of them I enjoyed in my childhood.

This blog is brought to you by the author of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected and short stories Lessons of Heart & Soul.

Welcome, Heart-Filled Month

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Did you know yesterday was Inspire Your Heart with Art Day? Being the independent spirit that I am, I’ll celebrate it today instead. It’s a good kick-off to this heart-filled month of February.

I am inspired by artists, working in any medium, who have the DNA to toil unrelentlessly to succeed. After all, art is not just living by one’s one creativity. From my observations, the most successful artists might sum up their lives this way:

Valentines-Day-Hearts- with sues artist quote corrected #2

 

Whew! Those are some tall work boots to fill! If you are considering an art career and this statement fuels your fire, I’d say you are in it for all the right reasons! To shed realistic light on the subject -as in any career, there will be both adversity and distraction but it is all part of the fulfilling equation.

If you are in any part of the writing or publishing process, you might enjoy this blog from BookBaby.com about not letting excuses and distractions get the best of you!

That’s more than enough philosophical ponderings for today! See you tomorrow on AllThingsFulfilling.com.

Click  here for information on EVVY award-winning author Sue Batton Leonard’s publications.

 

 

Spaces of Dreams

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“What you surround yourself with should bring you peace of mind and peace of spirit.” ~ Stacy London

Over the past few days blogs have been written about books with storylines about the planetary world. People all over the universe look to the skies and dream and wonder what’s out really out there beyond our earthly existence.

There is so much beauty on this planet Earth, and I love seeing photos of places where others live and the beautiful worlds that people create for themselves.

table top garden sceneI have a friend who looks like she might live a fairytale existence, but I know she doesn’t due to some real health challenges. She surrounds herself with joy, peace, serenity and beauty using her homemaking skills. and has a very special talent for doing it.

I think she’d tell you she has done better than she expected given her diagnosis twenty plus years ago. In my opinion, her beautiful home environment has something to do with it. Her challenges are still there but she dwells more on using her creativity to make a beautiful world for herself and her family – her husband, her two sons and their wives and her grandchildren. She puts so much charm into her environment, probably so she can more easily overlook the difficult stuff.vintage bike


Today, I’d like to give a shout out to my special friend in South Carolina. I hope someday soon I can go see her because it makes me sad that so much distance separates us.

This blog is brought to you by EVVY award-winning author Sue Batton Leonard. For information on her publication Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected and short stories Lessons of Heart & Soul.

Goodwill in the Workplace

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Parenting is the stewardship of the precious lives that come to you through birth, adoption or second marriages. Leadership is the stewardship of the precious lives that come to you by people walking through your door and agreeing to share their gifts with you.” ~ Bob Chapman

Any one who has read the award-winning memoir Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected comes to know through the story that the “saving grace” who appeared at a door one day became a valued and loved part of the family.

Sure, she earned a living working as household help but she played a significant role in the fabric of a family who was richly rewarded by the human traits she brought to the workplace. Her life lessons were shared from a unique and often humourous perspective.

Everybody-Matters-coverThe other day I came across an article called The Power of Treating Employees Like Family.  I share the article with our readers today because of the insight it gives into a business story and also into the goodwill that can be nurtured between human beings through their jobs.

Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve had several employers who have treated me as family. What it a difference it makes in how your feel about your job, your co-workers, your capabilities and your willingness to go above and beyond. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to experience that in the workplace. In my opinion, in makes a difference.

This blog is brought to you by the author of the EVVY award-winning memoir, an anthology of stories Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected and

short stories Lessons of Heart & Soul.

Conversations about Kindness

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Kindness is just love with its workboots on. ~Author Unknown

Do you think traits such as kindness and compassion can be taught or are some people endowed with these traits from the start (innately)?

Many educators feel character education is the only way to reduce bullyng in schools.

YouAreNeverAloneFoundation.org has found a way to involve children in their program “I Matter, You Matter: Let’s Start the Conversation.”

In fact, school kids put their most pressing questions down on paper hoping to help improve their relationships with schoolmates, their families and friends. Through practicing empathy and understanding other’s points of view, the goal of this program is to advance listening and compromising skills and provide help in identifying one’s own feelings, too.events_kindmatter_overview_logo Teachers, your school can become involved, and the questionnaire that is being used in schools to begin the dialogue between children can be downloaded on-line. 

Caring coins are also available with this program, which is an easy way to pass a message from person to person. More than 176,000 of these wooden coins have been shared around the world as a part of the YANAF mission. It started at the grassroots level to inspire caring connections in our community and the greater world by providing hands on opportunities to be kind.”

If you are concerned about our future generation of children, please spread the word about this program.

This blog is brought to you by award-winning author, Sue Batton Leonard.

Communications in a Different Era

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The first thing you can do is be right with yourself.  For me, that means spiritually and being right with God. ~ Condoleeza Rice

There is a store called A. Schwab Dry Goods Store in Memphis on Beale Street where history seems to have stayed still. It is filled with all kinds of merchandise from previous eras. Upstairs is a museum dedicated to old things such as old fashioned telephones, typewriters, 45 rpm records, roll top desks, vintage posters, evidence of the culture of the spiritual south, music history and more. A trip down the aisles of memory lane in Schawbs is fascinating but a bit sad because a little bit of evidence of racial segregration is upstairs among the artifacts.

crank telephone wooden with 2 bells signedI’m not so ancient that my life goes back to this kind of telephone, but I have lived through a variety of rotary dial and princess-style handsets, push button telephones, mobile phones and cell phone designs.

Do you remember picking up the phone and dialing 0 to ask a friendly operator about the weather forecast?  And for many, many years to make an out-of-state call you dialed O and asked the operator to place it for you. Sometimes you were even on a first name basis with the operator in your area.

I recently browsed a website called ClickAmericana.com and came across a 1972 poster from AT & T. On the poster it advises parents to teach their children an important skill – how to dial 0 on the telephone because “they’ll always have a friend.”dial-0-emergency-operator-oct-1972-1-620x918

 

It seems long gone are those days, but tomorrow’s story on All Things Fulfilling demonstrates there is still goodness in people and perhaps we judge too quickly. If we could listen with open hearts to neighbor and strangers alike, perhaps the divisions that have existed for generations would improve a little bit.

The truth of the matter is, America is not what it used to be, but there are lots of people who have old-fashioned caring values, you’ll see in tomorrow’s story.

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This blog is brought to you by

award-winning author, Sue Batton Leonard.

Here is information on her publications:

Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected and

short stories Lessons of Heart & Soul.

A Whip Stitch Character

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“The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.” ~ William Shattner

Who is your favorite audio book narrator?

What’s that you say? “You’ve never listened to an audio book yet?”

What is you, crazy?

Audio books are on the rise and are greatly appreciated by those who are on the run. They allow for multi-tasking – while driving in the car, exercising or cooking dinner. You need not do a thing, only listen.

Here’s a list of some of the favorite audio book narrators of all time. Narrators like Maya Angelou and Garrison Keillor and others are well liked because their voices are so memorable.

Valentines 2016It was a fulfilling experience narrating my own audio book because the central character, Fanny, had a dialect I could emulate so well.  It is what many readers say “drew them into the story in the first place.”

If she were here today, “she say, you oughts to put dem earplugs in yo’ ears, and listen to a story. You don’t knows what you is missin’.”

Oh, how I miss that lady who was the heart and soul of my story. She was some kind of special. One might even call her a “whip stitch.” Just thinking about her makes me smile. And she sowed my heart in more ways than one.

If you are looking for a fun, memorable experience listen to the audio book version of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected through Audible. It’s downloadable within a few minutes. Any one of the formats – the award-winning audio book, e-book or paperback makes for a great Valentines gift for yourself or for someone in your family.  After all, it is a love story from several different perspectives!

Also available are 10 short stories cut from the EVVY award-winning manuscript, Gift of a Lifetime. Lessons of Heart & Soul gives readers a humorous and touching glimpse into the love of a family, just like the first publication. .

Ticking Off the Bucket List

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“Better to see something once than hear about it a hundred times.” ~ Juurai Bayanjargal

Since it’s a New Year, we have been focused on new experiences this week on All Things Fulfilling. It has been said that there has been a movement away from amassing lots of material things, and replacing them with investing in unique life experiences. Experiential travel, which is said to bring increased happiness, has grown in recent years.  Perhaps living life differently, we don’t end up in our later years having big inventories of “things” to get rid of, instead our memory bank will be overflowing. Graham Hill speaks about living life edited in his TED talk. Take five minutes to listen to it!

I may not ever have the where-with-all make it to the moon in my lifetime to experience weightlessness in space, but I can now say that I have experienced it in a more contained environment here on Earth in a float pod. It’s terrific! To learn more about this adventure, read the previous two blogs – Practice the Pause and From Lightweight to Weightlessness.

heck yesWill you remove any “thing”  from your “bucket list” and replace it with a real life experience in 2016? If so, what is it? We would love to hear from you. Post your comment right here on All Things Fulfilling.

This blog is brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard, award-winning author of ~

Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected and short stories Lessons of Heart & Soul.

Will we see each other right here tomorrow on All Things Fulfilling?

 

 

Rock Solid Performance

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“Come on Dad! We’re going rock climbing!” My husband looked at my son and didn’t argue. He is always up for an athletic adventure.

“I’m coming too!” I said.

It was the day after Christmas. My son and his gal wanted to treat my husband to a new experience. Off we went to Stone Age Climbing Gym. After the three got suited up with harnesses, rope, chalk bags, belay and rappeling equipment we four stood looking straight up at the wall my husband was about to tackle. As he began his ascent, the man on belay (my son) yelled out instructions. “Go, Dad, go!” Terry look another step up.

“You are doing well!” Marc said with a grin on his face, after his father began to progress further. “Are you weary?”

“A little, mostly my forearms,” my husband yelled down.

“Then let go! I have you,” our son yelled out. I sat behind him on a bench watching my husband dangle from the rope, forty feet up in the air. In order to take a load off his legs, arms and hands he had to surrender himself from the challenge for a few minutes.  After a short break, Terry continued climbing.

“Reach higher, you are almost to the top!” Marc yelled up about 20 minutes later.

Marc turned to me and said “Mom, I’m really impressed. Dad is doing as well on his first attempt as young guys my age. There seems to be no fear of heights or falling!” It was interesting to see the role reversal between father and son. My husband has spent a lifetime coaching athletes.

Terry’s first attempt at a rock climbing experience was a great success. When I asked him if he’d like to repeat it, he said, “Only if I am with Marc.  There is a level of trust and faith in others involved in it.”

“I could see that,” I said, as I thought about my husband dangling from the rope only anchored by my son.

terry rock climbing

Trust

Come on back tomorrow, I will be sharing my own new adventure into the New Year. I’m a little apprehensive because I am not quite sure what to expect from myself. But, I’m entering this new experience with a positive outlook.

This blog is brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard, author of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected and short stories Lessons of Heart & Soul.

 

 

Surrendering to New Experiences

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I’ve decided to begin 2016 with a gift to myself by trying a new body/mind/spirit healing arts kind of treatment because as Winston Churchill once said “You create your own universe as you go along.” I like that concept.

Stay tuned to All Things Fulfilling after the New Year because I have plans to share my reflections on what some people who have tried the venture might say is a “divine experience.” I hope by getting tanked it will help me to think outside the box and arrive at some creative ideas for 2016. According to this article balance in our lives is important, so I want to begin January lined up for my very best year yet!

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What do you have in mind for the New Year that will lead to growth of self? Share your thoughts by posting a comment to this blog post. We’d like to hear from you.

Happy new year2

Do return tomorrow because I will be sharing some very exciting news that is well-worthy of a New Year’s Day feature!

This blog is brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard,  the award-winning author of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected and  short stories Lessons of Heart & Soul.