The art of being sick is not the same as the art of getting well. Some cancer patients recover; some don’t. But the ordeal of facing your mortality and feeling your frailty sharpens your perspective about life. You appreciate little things more ferociously. You grasp the mystical power of love. You feel the gravitational pull of faith. And you realize you have received a unique gift—a field of vision others don’t have about the power of hope and the limits of fear; a firm set of convictions about what really matters and what does not. You also feel obliged to share these insights—the most important of which is this: There are things far worse than illness—for instance, soullessness.

Tony Snow succumbed to the ravages of cancer in 2008.

Let’s all appreciate the little things more ferociously, no matter our health and wealth.

“You’ve heard of people calling in sick. You may have even called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well?

It’d go like this: You’d get the boss on the line and say, ‘Listen, I’ve been sick ever since I started working here, but today I’m well and I won’t be in anymore.’ Call in well.” -Tom Robbins

Are you ready to call in well?

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” -Annie Dillard

How are you making your life better one day at a time? Please share with us below.

To trap a raccoon one can drill a small hole in a log, angle nails downward into the hole while still leaving an opening, and place a shiny object at the bottom of the hole.

Raccoons will reach their paw into the hole and grab the object. When they make a fist, however, they cannot pull their paw out of the hole because of the angled nails.

In order to get out, all they have to do is release their grip on the shiny object and their paw will then be small enough to slide out. But they refuse to let go.

When we’re focused on material things, we spend our lives looking for shiny objects. When we find them, we grab them and refuse to let go.

What we fail to realize is that we are surrounded by infinite shiny objects that we just don’t see. All we must do is release our grip on scarcity, embrace abundance, and we will have more freedom and more dollars than we’ve ever dreamed of.

Are you caught in a scarcity trap? If so, just let go!

Abraham Lincoln said, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend seven sharpening my saw.”

If you are constantly striving to produce, with no time for relaxation, you will start to become ineffective and will eventually burn out.

A bow that is strung too tight soon loses its spring.

Increase your productivity by eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep, and spending time relaxing.

Long-term productivity must be sustained through balance.

Suggested reading: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

“The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe.

Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.” -Tom Robbins

How do you get out of bad moods? How do you redirect that energy into something positive? Share with the community by commenting below.

Talk to a paramedic and they’ll likely tell you emergency calls have a strange tendency to come in groups of three.

Sometimes the same can be true in regular life.

You get passed over for a promotion at work. Your car gets totaled. A family member gets diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. And it’s not even Friday yet.

Before events like this happen, we often wonder how we’d deal with such a loss and keep the rest of our lives together.

When multiple meltdowns hit you at once, it becomes a race to put out the biggest fire first and take baby steps forward in picking up the pieces.

Sometimes the unexpected will roadblock the path we thought we were going down smoothly. We’re left sitting confused on the side of the road staring at a blown tire way out of alignment, wilted airbags and cracked windows. It’s clearly a total loss.

So why would an insurance company pay out a $11,000 total loss payment for the mess instead of the $9,000 for repairs? Is that a total loss for them?

Sometimes there’s simply more overall value starting fresh instead of trying to put things back together again. The insurance company can break even or even make a profit selling the parts from that car instead of paying for repairs that come close to the car’s value.

Similarly, sometimes we need aspects of our life to break down enough for us to realize that starting over makes more sense than gluing the bits back together. It reminds us to quit fidgeting with uncooperative details and remember the bigger picture.

Sometimes we need to sell off the parts and start over with that macro mindset.

Does that mean you simply give up when something falls apart? No. Breakdowns can be a part of building something up.

For example, if you have a serious fight with your spouse about moving for a job promotion, that doesn’t mean you hire a divorce attorney. Resolving problems can be the best thing towards a stronger end in many cases.

There are, however, times when ruin can bring opportunity for something better by starting at step one.

Let’s go back to that marital malfunction, for instance. A fight is rarely just about the topic at hand. It’s not just the job being discussed; it’s the entire relationship.

After a back and forth about cost of living issues, the challenge building new support networks, comparing school districts for the kids, and more, what comes to light is how a couple communicates.

And what might be best is to scrap the whole debate and take the valuable bottom line: how do we communicate about tough issues?

You could try to patch up every flaw in the plan and spend all day making pros and cons lists, but in the bigger picture, it’s the bottom line that matters.

In the greater scheme of your relationship, it probably won’t matter so much whether or not you took that opportunity. Others will come. But how you had that conversation will matter in the long-term sculpting of a life together.

You can walk away with more by leaving alone what matters less.

Scrap the unimportant in your life and don’t be afraid to start over when necessary. In fact, why fear the opportunity to scrap what you can and move forward on better grounds?

You should look forward to those disaster days; they’re the ones that will hone your character and shape your life.

How many of us can hardly stand to get up in the morning, yet we do it any way because we’re like a beast of burden pursuing a carrot that’s been dangled in front of us?

In the movie “Jerry Maguire,” starring Tom Cruise, there’s a humorous — yet saddening — scene that illustrates the destructive lure of “golden handcuffs.”

Tom has just been fired from his job, and as he’s leaving, he asks everyone in the firm, “Who wants to come with me?”

There’s dead silence for a moment, then one woman speaks up and says, “I’d like to, but I’m due for a promotion in three months.”

Like fish chasing bright objects, we’re lured by the temptation of greater pay and benefits to remain in companies and positions that contribute to misery.

This happens when we believe that money is power, and when we place more value in material things than we do in people.

A sure sign that we are not on the path toward reaching our full potential is if we are working only for money. If we’re not working to create the greatest amount of value in our present moments, then we must take deliberate action to solve this problem.

You have no idea how much your words will mean to someone else. Everyone could use some validation.

*If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or e-mail, you may need to click on the title of the post to view the video on our blog.*

Chapter 1. 
I walk down the street. There is a hole in the sidewalk. I fall in – I am lost… 
I am helpless – It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2. 

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3.
 I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in… 
It’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4. 

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5. 
I walk down another street.