My mother and partner Mayni likes to say: “There are two types of salary. One is earned in euros [dollars, pesos]. The other is the satisfaction over a work well done.”

I love these words of hers. How true. A great man, Gordon B. Hinckley, spoke about standing a little taller, and striving for excellence in anything you do.

How wonderful to live a life where you have no regrets. Where you know you did your best, every day. You did your work with excellence, being fully present in what you were doing, giving the best of yourself. Striving that what you do (and here it doesn’t matter if it was paid work or not) left the world a little better than you found it, made somebody’s day a little brighter, lifted somebody’s burden, made them smile.

Don’t hide your light! The world needs it.

My friend Markus mentioned once he was aiming at “Looking for opportunities instead of avoiding danger.”
That left me pondering.
It is far more frequent to play the “not losing” game rather than playing “to win.” Likewise, fear of loss moves us much more than hope of gain. However, if your main purpose is avoiding loss, you will hardly be able to win or make any noteworthy progress. You may only hope to stay were you are. Is that what you want for your life? If it is so, go ahead. But do it conscious of what you are really doing.

What is your attitude? What do you want from life?

The story to this is that I found the video (audio in Portuguese and subtitles in Spanish) and I loved it. Couldn’t find it on youtube in English. So I put the translations in there myself as subtitles.

The text is originally written by Walt Disney (I’ve found it in different versions).

Hope you like it as much as I did!

A friend posted this on Facebook and it really made me think. Stress depends on how long you have to bear the burden. What an amazing lesson.
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A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this glass of water?”

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything.”

It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses. As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don’t carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down!

At the end of June 2012, we adopted Kira, a 2-year old female black dog. She was extremely skinny (at the edge of death, for sure), nearly without hair, with dermatitis due to fleas, and terribly scared. She was picked up from the highway with 16 kg, she came to us weighing 25 kg, ate her way up to 32 kg and is still thin… She was indeed on the verge of dying from hunger! We gave her Bach flowers for her fears and she improved some. We gave her LifePak and her hair started growing and she got to be really pretty. But still afraid. Very afraid! With fear of everything: the wind, cars, people, noises, plastic bags… First we joked “This dog needs a psychologist.” Then it became a reality: this dog needs a psychologist. Who is a dog psychologist???

Our friend Jeannette Kok is aromatherapist for animals. She happened to come visit in February, to our apartment in Palma de Mallorca (Spain) and we started talking and mentioned this case to her. She offered to treat Kira.

In the first session, Kira stayed in a corner of the living room, smelling the essential oils briefly as Jeannette offered them to her, but a bit reluctantly. She indicated through her preferences that she had fears, traumas and also grief (our older dog Lucky was her good friend from June to November but died of age, and obviously she misses him). We saw a clear improvement, but she still had her ups and downs.

A week later we had the second session and Kira showed herself much more interested in participating, sniffing the oils and licking her lips. She relaxed, yawned… She even rearranged her posture in order to hold the small bottles between her paws. Then she followed Jeannette to the door! Wow. What an impressive change.
Aromatherapy interests me more and more. After seeing what essential oils can do to human physical health, and then all what they can do for animal emotional health, I’m getting all the more eager to learn these techniques.

If you want to know Jeannette and what she does, her web is: http://aromaticsforanimals.com/