Have you ever tried to figure out the rest of your life while sitting at the kitchen table?
You start with one reasonable question.
Should I make this change?
Then suddenly you’re trying to determine where you should live, what your purpose is, whether you’ve wasted the last twenty years, what God wants you to do next, and whether you should sell half your belongings and move somewhere new.
All before lunch.
I know that kind of thinking very well.
When my 35-year marriage ended, I was 60 years old. I knew something had to change, but I certainly didn’t know what my life was going to become.
I had spent years working hard. Very hard.
I understood business. I understood commercial real estate. I understood deadlines and responsibilities and getting things done. I knew how to keep pushing when something was difficult.
What I didn’t understand was how to listen to myself.
I wrote about this period of my life in The Unimagined Awakening. I described myself as a “spiritually-starved workaholic,” and that was pretty accurate. I had spent so much time doing what needed to be done that I hadn’t spent much time wondering what my soul might actually be trying to tell me.
After my marriage ended, I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life on that hamster wheel.
There had to be more.
The problem was, I had absolutely no idea what “more” looked like.
So I started asking questions.
I began reading. I listened to podcasts. I practiced meditation and mindfulness. I spent quiet time trying to calm the endless chatter in my mind.
Most importantly, I kept asking for guidance.
“How do I figure this out?”
Then I’d learn one little thing and ask another question.
“Well, what about this?”
Then another.
“How do I figure out the next thing?”
Sometimes a book appeared. Sometimes it was an article or a conversation. Sometimes someone came into my life who helped me understand something I hadn’t understood before.
Eventually, I began to recognize those little inner nudges, too.
At the time, I didn’t have some grand understanding of what was happening. I was simply trying to make my life better. As I wrote in The Unimagined Awakening, it was through the constant asking of questions that things really began to move along.
Looking back now, I can see the pattern much more clearly.
I kept wanting answers.
What I usually received was a next step.
There’s a big difference.
I think many of us become stuck because we believe we need certainty before we move.
We want to know the relationship will work before opening our heart.
We want to know the new direction will succeed before leaving the old one.
We want to know what our purpose is before trying something that interests us.
We want God, our guides, the Universe, Source, or whatever name feels right to you, to slide a complete itinerary under the door.
Preferably with confirmation numbers.
That hasn’t been how it has worked for me.
My spiritual journey has unfolded one piece at a time.
In fact, some of the steps I eventually took would have sounded completely ridiculous to the woman I was at the beginning.
I went from simply wanting to improve my life to learning to meditate and listen to my intuition.
Then came writing.
Then publishing.
Then traveling outside my comfort zone.
Then accepting that I could connect spiritually in ways I hadn’t previously believed possible.
Eventually, during my meditation time, my guides told me I had another assignment: a book that would become The New I AM Document, Volume I. They told me this was my life’s mission. When I jokingly pointed out that I thought my earlier books were my mission, their response was essentially that those books had been practice.
Practice!
Imagine if someone had handed me that entire job description when I was 60 and just trying to figure out how to get off the hamster wheel.
I might have said, “No, thank you. You have the wrong Janie.”
But I didn’t need to know all of that yet.
I only needed to take the step that was in front of me.
That’s something I think we forget when we talk about intuition and spiritual guidance.
Guidance doesn’t always arrive as a booming voice with a complete answer.
Often, it’s quiet.
It might be a thought you can’t quite shake.
A feeling that something is finished.
A curiosity about something you’ve never considered before.
A person you feel you should call.
A class you keep thinking about taking.
A book someone mentions three times in two weeks.
An opportunity that makes absolutely no sense on paper but produces that little feeling inside that says, “Pay attention to this.”
Those small things matter.
I’ve come to believe our job isn’t necessarily to understand the entire path.
Our job is to become better listeners.
That requires some quiet.
When I first started meditating, I didn’t have a fancy method. I didn’t use a special mantra, and I certainly didn’t spend hours sitting cross-legged. (Who can sit like that for long periods of time, anyway?)
I learned to relax and quiet my thoughts.
That alone changed something important.
Once I could loosen my grip on the worries, obligations, plans, and mental chatter filling my head, I could finally listen. Meditation became a key part of the spiritual journey that followed.
And you don’t have to call it meditation.
Sit quietly on the porch.
Take a walk without your phone.
Have your morning coffee without turning on the television.
Spend ten minutes in the garden.
Drive somewhere without filling every second with noise.
The point is simply to create enough space to notice what’s happening inside you.
Then ask a question.
Not twelve questions.
One.
Maybe instead of asking, “What am I supposed to do with the rest of my life?” ask:
“What needs my attention right now?”
Or:
“What is the next step?”
Then listen.
And don’t become discouraged if nothing dramatic happens.
You may not hear a voice.
You may not receive an immediate answer.
Sometimes guidance has been much quieter for me. Sometimes the answer has unfolded through circumstances. Sometimes another person has said exactly what I needed to hear. Sometimes I’ve simply had a knowing inside me that became stronger with time.
And sometimes I’ve had to wait.
I’m still not particularly fond of that method.
But I’ve learned that not having the answer today doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t one.
It may simply mean the next piece isn’t ready yet.
This is especially important when you’re in one of those in-between seasons of life.
Perhaps the children are grown.
Perhaps a marriage has ended.
Perhaps you’ve retired, or you’re thinking about it.
Perhaps someone you loved has passed and the future you imagined no longer exists in the same way.
Or perhaps nothing dramatic has happened at all.
Maybe your life looks perfectly fine from the outside.
Yet somewhere inside you there’s a little whisper saying:
Is this all there is?
I know that whisper.
I also know now that you don’t have to answer it by turning your entire life upside down tomorrow.
Start smaller.
Get quiet.
Ask.
Pay attention.
Then, when something feels right in your soul, have enough courage to take one step.
You can ask the next question when you get there.
That’s how much of my own awakening happened.
One question.
One answer.
One uncomfortable step.
And then another.
This week, give yourself ten quiet minutes and ask one simple question:
“What is my next step?”
Don’t demand the whole map.
Just watch for the next turn.
Have you ever had a feeling you couldn’t explain?
Something inside you said, Don’t do that.
Or perhaps it said, Call her.
Go.
Wait.
This is right.
You may have dismissed the feeling because it didn’t seem logical. I certainly did for much of my life.
We’re taught to use our brains to make decisions. We gather facts, make lists, ask other people what they think, and try to reason our way to the right answer.
Those things can be helpful.
But we have another guidance system available to us, and I believe it is one of the greatest gifts we’ve been given.
It is our intuition.
I think of intuition as communication at the soul level. It is that quiet knowing within us that can guide us through our human experience when we learn to pay attention.
The trouble is that many of us have become very good at ignoring it.
We’re busy.
We’re distracted.
We’re worried about what other people will think.
Sometimes our inner guidance tells us something we simply don’t want to hear!
So we push the feeling aside and keep moving.
Then, somewhere down the road, we find ourselves saying, “I knew I shouldn’t have done that.”
Sound familiar?
One of the teachings I’ve received is that this inner guidance system is already within each of us. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to be a spirit medium. We don’t have to become some great spiritual master who meditates on a mountaintop.
We simply have to learn to notice.
In We Are Pleiadian, the internal guidance system is described as something we experience through our feelings. The lesson is surprisingly practical: slow down, become quiet, notice the feeling, learn what different feelings mean to you, and then act upon that guidance.
Simple?
Yes.
Easy?
Well, that can be another matter.
The mind likes evidence.
The soul often gives us a nudge.
That nudge may come when you meet someone for the first time and immediately feel comfortable around them. You don’t know why. Something simply feels familiar.
Or perhaps everything about an opportunity looks wonderful on paper, yet something inside you feels uneasy.
Pay attention to that too.
Your intuition doesn’t always shout.
Sometimes it whispers.
And this is where our spiritual practice becomes part of ordinary life.
We tend to think connecting with God, Source, the Universe, our guides, or whatever name you use for your higher power must involve some elaborate process.
I haven’t found that to be true.
The real challenge is getting quiet enough to listen.
When I first began my own spiritual journey, I knew very little about any of this. I started meditating and spending quiet time because I was trying to figure out how to change my life. Eventually, when I could quiet all those worries and pressing thoughts running through my head, I discovered I could actually listen.
That changed everything for me.
You can begin much more simply than you might imagine.
The next time you’re faced with a decision, notice what happens inside you before you ask everyone else what they think.
How does one choice feel?
Then consider the other choice.
Does your body relax?
Do you feel peaceful?
Do you feel resistance?
Does something feel heavy or uncomfortable?
Don’t judge the answer. Just notice it.
The more you practice this, the more familiar your own guidance becomes.
It’s a little like learning a new language, except I believe it’s actually a language your soul already knows.
You’re simply remembering how to hear it.
And please understand, following your intuition doesn’t mean you’ll never encounter difficulty.
Sometimes the path we’re guided toward contains the very lesson we came here to learn.
Earth is a classroom, after all.
The easiest road isn’t necessarily the road that helps our soul grow.
But when we begin living in greater congruence with that inner guidance, something shifts. We stop feeling as though life is simply happening to us.
We begin participating in our own spiritual development.
We ask.
We listen.
We trust.
We act.
Then we learn.
And little by little, we become more of who we came here to be.
So here’s my challenge to you this week.
When you have a decision to make, give yourself a few quiet minutes before doing anything.
Put down the phone.
Turn off the noise.
Ask God, your guides, the Universe, Source, or your own higher power for guidance.
Then ask yourself one simple question:
What does my soul already know?
Don’t force the answer.
Just listen.
You may discover that the guidance you’ve been searching for has been quietly waiting inside you all along.
Have you ever asked God for something, felt certain you were headed in the right direction, and then…nothing happened?
No door opened.
No answer arrived.
No wonderful synchronicity appeared.
You waited.
And waited.
Eventually, you started wondering whether anybody up there was listening.
I’ve certainly wondered that myself.
We humans like movement. Movement makes us feel as though we’re accomplishing something.
Waiting feels entirely different.
Waiting can make us question ourselves.
Did I misunderstand the message?
Am I supposed to do something else?
Why is this taking so long?
Did God forget about me?
I’ve learned that there’s a big difference between something being wrong and something simply not being ready.
That difference is where trust comes in.
I believe our lives are much more connected than we realize.
One event leads to another. One person introduces us to someone else. An opportunity appears because of something we did months or even years earlier.
Sometimes, circumstances have to come together in ways we cannot possibly see.
That means the answer to your prayer may involve more than you.
Perhaps another person needs to arrive at a certain point in her life.
Perhaps an opportunity has to develop.
Perhaps something needs to end before something else can begin.
And perhaps you need a little more preparation.
That one can be difficult to admit.
I know I’ve wanted things before I was actually ready for them.
I thought I was ready, of course.
I had my timetable all worked out.
Apparently, the Universe had neglected to consult my calendar.
Over the years, I’ve learned that my spiritual journey has unfolded in stages.
I didn’t wake up one morning understanding my gifts, knowing my mission, and confidently communicating with my guides.
Far from it.
I started with questions.
Then I learned to become quiet.
I began paying attention to my intuition.
I learned to ask for guidance.
I was given writing assignments that stretched me.
Then I was asked to stretch farther.
Looking back, I can see that one experience prepared me for another. In The Unimagined Awakening, I share how my earlier books eventually became preparation for a much larger spiritual assignment. At the time, I didn’t know that. I was simply doing the work in front of me.
That taught me something important.
We don’t always know what we’re being prepared for.
Sometimes we think nothing is happening because we’re measuring progress by what we can see.
But spiritual growth doesn’t always announce itself.
Patience can be growth.
Learning to trust can be growth.
Letting go of control can certainly be growth.
Becoming comfortable with uncertainty can be tremendous growth.
Even an apparent detour can teach you something your soul needs for the next part of the journey.
I believe Earth is a classroom, and our experiences are part of our education.
If that’s true, then perhaps waiting isn’t an empty space between lessons.
Perhaps waiting is the lesson.
There’s also a practical side to this.
Trusting divine timing doesn’t mean sitting on the sofa waiting for God to deliver your new life to the front porch.
We still have a part to play.
We ask for guidance.
We pay attention to our intuition.
We take the steps that feel right.
We notice the opportunities that appear.
Then we allow the outcome to unfold.
That last part is often the hardest.
In We Are Pleiadian, there’s a teaching about opportunities and synchronicities that I find especially interesting. It describes circumstances being brought together for us, while reminding us that we still have to take the next step when an opportunity appears. Spiritual help doesn’t eliminate our responsibility to participate.
I think of it as a partnership.
Ask.
Listen.
Act when you’re guided to act.
Wait when you’re guided to wait.
And learn to recognize the difference.
Sometimes you’ll feel that unmistakable little push inside:
Go.
Call.
Ask.
Try.
Say yes.
Other times, no matter how hard you push, everything seems to remain firmly closed.
Perhaps that’s worth noticing too.
A closed door isn’t always rejection.
Sometimes it’s protection.
Sometimes it’s redirection.
And sometimes it simply means, Not yet.
We don’t have to understand every delay while we’re living through it.
Often the understanding comes later.
You look backward and suddenly see why the timing mattered.
Had that opportunity arrived six months earlier, you wouldn’t have been ready.
Had that person appeared sooner, you might not have recognized the connection.
Had you gotten exactly what you asked for when you asked for it, you might have missed something better that was still developing.
This is where faith becomes practical.
Faith isn’t only believing when everything is going beautifully.
It’s continuing to trust when you cannot yet see what is being arranged.
So if something in your life seems stalled right now, try asking a different question.
Instead of:
Why isn’t this happening?
Ask:
What am I meant to learn while I wait?
Then pay attention.
Maybe you’re being asked to prepare.
Maybe you’re being asked to release something.
Maybe you’re being asked to take one small action.
Or maybe, my dear, you’re being asked to trust.
This week, choose one thing you’ve been pushing particularly hard.
Give it a little breathing room.
Ask God, Source, the Universe, your guides, or whatever higher power speaks to your heart:
Is there something I need to do, or is it simply not time yet?
Then become quiet enough to receive the answer.
Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is take the next step.
And sometimes it’s trusting that the next step will appear when the time is right.
Why a Danish pastry isn’t really Danish
I was traveling through Scandinavia when I learned something that stopped me mid-bite.
The Danish pastry is not Danish.
In Denmark, they do not call it that.
They call it wienerbrød.
Vienna bread.
I asked about it, the way you do when you are somewhere new and everything is slightly unfamiliar.
And I got a story I have not stopped thinking about since.
As the story goes, Danish bakery workers went on strike sometime in the 1800s.
They wanted better pay.
They wanted to be treated like people instead of hands attached to an oven.
So they walked out.
But a city still needs bread.
So the shop owners did what shop owners do.
They brought in workers from somewhere else.
Bakers came from Austria.
And those Austrian bakers did not know how the Danes did things.
They only knew how they did things.
So they made what they had always made.
Dough with butter folded into it.
Folded again.
Folded again.
Layer on layer on layer, until it baked into something so light it shatters when you bite it.
The Danes had never seen anything like it.
Eventually the strike ended.
The Danish bakers came back to their ovens.
The Austrians packed up and went home.
But the pastry stayed.
The Danish bakers kept making it.
They adjusted it.
They added more butter, more egg, made it richer and sweeter and entirely their own.
And then they sent it out into the world.
Where everyone who ate it called it a Danish.
Because that is where it came from, as far as anyone could tell.
Now it sits in a glass case in every coffee shop on earth.
Nobody asks.
Nobody stands at the counter and wonders why a pastry born from a labor dispute in one country, using a technique from another, ended up carrying the name of neither one accurately.
It is just a Danish.
It has always been a Danish.
That is what it is called.
Except in Denmark.
Where they have been calling it Vienna bread this whole time, correctly, while the rest of us got it wrong for a hundred and fifty years.
I stood there thinking about that far longer than a pastry deserves.
Because how many things do I do exactly that with?
Here is what I keep coming back to.
Most of the labels in my life were not decisions.
They were assumptions I absorbed and never revisited.
The story I told about my marriage.
The story I told about why I burned out.
The story I told about what a woman in her sixties, and then her seventies, is supposed to want out of her remaining years.
I did not sit down one afternoon and choose those.
They were handed to me.
By family.
By the era I grew up in.
By a hundred small comments from people who meant no harm and did not know they were writing on me.
And I carried them.
For decades I carried a label that said this is who you are, this is what you do, this is what is available to you.
I never once turned it over to see if it was accurate.
Which is the strange part, when I think about it now.
I was a broker.
I was a general contractor.
I spent my working life reading contracts line by line, checking the fine print, catching the thing everyone else missed.
I checked everything.
Except the things I had been told about myself.
I think we stop checking because checking is uncomfortable.
A label is efficient.
It saves you from having to think.
If I know what something is, I do not have to look at it.
I can just reach for it and move on with my day.
That works beautifully for pastries.
It works terribly for lives.
Because the labels do not update themselves.
They get set young, usually by someone else, and then they sit there quietly running your decisions for forty years while you assume they are just facts.
I am too old to start over.
I am not the kind of person who travels alone.
This is what my life looks like now.
None of those were true.
Every single one of them felt like a fact.
I was in my sixties when everything came apart.
The marriage ended.
The business closed.
I was tired in a way that sleep did not fix.
And I remember thinking, well, that is that.
That was the label I reached for.
The one that says a woman my age whose life has just fallen apart is finished, and the rest is just waiting.
I held that one for a while.
Then, slowly, I turned it over.
And I could not find a single piece of evidence for it.
Not one.
It was not a fact.
It was just something I had been handed and never questioned.
So I put it down.
What came after was six books.
A running career that put me in the national top ten at sixty five.
More countries than I can list.
A version of myself I would not have believed was possible at fifty.
None of that was hiding somewhere far away.
It was all sitting right there, underneath a name that was never accurate.
Keeping an open mind is not a personality trait.
Some people talk about it like it is a temperament, something you either have or you do not.
It is not.
It is a practice.
It is the willingness to pick up something you have held a hundred times and ask, honestly, is this what I think it is?
You do not have to do it with everything at once.
Start small.
Pick one thing you have been saying about yourself for years.
Something that comes out automatically, the way a hand reaches for a cup.
I am not creative.
I am bad with money.
I have never been the adventurous one.
Now find the evidence.
Not the feeling.
The evidence.
Where did that sentence come from.
Who said it first.
How old were you.
Is it still true, or was it only ever true once, in a specific year, in a situation that no longer exists?
Sometimes you will check and the answer will be yes.
That one holds up.
Good.
Now you know it on purpose instead of by accident.
And sometimes you will discover you have been calling something by the wrong name your entire life.
Here is my actual suggestion, and it is a small one.
Tomorrow morning, when the coffee is poured and the pastry is on the plate, take one extra second before the first bite.
You are holding a hundred and fifty year old accident.
A strike.
A group of stand-in bakers who did not know the local rules.
A recipe that outlived every person involved and traveled the world under someone else’s name.
All of that, sitting on a napkin next to your cup, at seven in the morning, on an ordinary day.
That is what ordinary days are made of.
Small things with whole histories folded inside them, waiting for somebody to look a little closer.
This is the thing I most want people to understand about happiness.
It is not somewhere else.
It is not on the other side of the next big change.
It is in the ordinary morning, in the ordinary cup, in the ordinary pastry that turns out to have a story in it if you bother to ask.
You just have to be willing to look at what you are actually holding.
So let me ask you this.
What is one thing you have been calling by the same name your whole life, that you have never once gone back and checked?
I’d love to read your answer below.
Are you ready for your next adventure? What’s the purpose of an adventure? It’s more than you think!
Our life experiences shape us—mentally and physically. Practicing for a marathon changes our physical makeup so we can go the distance during that 26-mile trek. It also changes our mindset, often from day dreams to determination to completion of a goal.
Your adventures expose you to new ideas, new possibilities, and a sense of wonder. Hiking that trail or climbing that mountain, we experience the wonder of new vistas. Even if our body is tired and achy, our eyes feast on the newly-discovered views.
A challenge in business can be considered an adventure, too. Bringing you r vision to life can be exhilarating while stretching your capabilities to the max. Regardless of the end result—you will be changed during the process. You will learn, you will pivot, and you will grow.
That is the point!
Our earthly adventures are meant to do just that—challenge us to do better, teach us lessons, and shape us into the best version of ourselves.
Don’t be afraid of your adventures. Learn to embrace them for what they are—merely an exciting method for human transformation.
What will your next adventure be?
Remember this: Life is nothing more than a series of life-changing, sometimes, life-affirming adventures. Be well, have fun, and enjoy the journey.
Background: Sir Roger Bannister was an English neurologist and middle-distance athlete who was the first person to break the 4-minute mile. At the time, popular thought was that such a feat was humanly impossible. He trained in rigorous circumstances, never wavering from his goal. It was even more inspiring to know he was doing this training while attending medical school!
When I started my fitness journey in my sixties I was recruited to join a master’s running team. The term “masters” was used because we were all over fifty, not because we were so terrific. Being the oldest member (and slowest person on our team) it was a real stretch for my abilities. After about two years of participation, with the encouragement of my fellow team members and our coach, I participated in the National Senior Games. At age 65, I was able to finish in the top ten in my age group in both the 800-meter and 1500-meter races, proving to myself that it is never too late to strive for a new goal, even if it is to be a track runner.
During this time, I was starting to connect with others in the “soul realm” and thought who better to connect with that the first person who broke the 4-minute mile record. Perhaps he could give me some sage advice. Herewith is our discussion.
Janie J, Soul Connector: Did you ever get discouraged when training to break the 4-minute mile? If so, what did you do to keep your spirits up?
Sir Roger Bannister: Yes. I maintained focus and direction at all times. I knew I only had a small window on the timeline of my life to accomplish this. That in itself served as motivation for I knew once the time passed, my chance would be lost forever.
I wanted to go down in the history books for something with physical ability. I’m not sure where this desire came from. Perhaps within, as my family (father, most notably), wanted me to pursue a worthy vocation so I could ably support a wife and family as he and others had done. But I guess running was a first love to me. It brought immense joy and satisfaction. At times, I felt I was literally born to run. Maybe that’s it … maybe it was my goal in life — to satisfy my inherent needs and serve as an example to others.
Don’t get me wrong. It was immensely hard/difficult. I’m not even sure now how I did it other than sheer will and determination along with the hand of God guiding me. I asked constantly for guidance, probably to the point of being a pest. But it was only myself and intuitive mind (or higher self) to figure this out, so I used all means possible. It was like praying that never ceased. It was like talking to oneself and being your own teacher, cheerleader, and inquisitor (searching for answers) all in one.
I do feel anyone can do similar feats, but strong will, focus and daily habit are imperative along with assistance from God or one’s higher power. Constant effort. No letting up or “no excuses” as you folks say. Rough weather and minor ailments are not excuses to let up. One must push on through if greatness is to be achieved. No giving up despite great odds or seemingly insignificant progress. The effort is measured once the final attempt is made. All those intermediary steps seem insignificant until the final test or final run, where the goal is achieved.
If you are wondering if greatness is attainable by you or teammates, the answer is yes, by all means, but one must do the work with dedicated and unwavering attitude/mindset with no letting up. Follow my suggestions about determination and eliciting the hand of God to work in your favor.
Good luck, fellow athletes.
Sir Roger Bannister
These words came to me in my quiet time recently. Even though I have made huge strides since my days as a spiritually-starved workaholic, I was reminded to be even more intentional in the daily actions I choose.
Perhaps you are at the same crossroad in your life—busy “doing” and not “being.”
May these gentle suggestions remind you of changes you could make to live a life of more peace and harmony versus a life that leads you by checking off your “should” do list.
These are but a few examples of how we can be more mindful and intentional as we create our lives. It is your life; you get to choose what you wish to create. The best way to do that is to LIVE your life, not let it LEAD you!
Have you ever thought of your life as a garden? Sit with that idea for a moment. When you do, you’ll begin to see just how true it is.
A thriving garden needs sunshine, water, nourishment, and regular care. It doesn’t flourish by accident — it grows because someone tends to it with intention. Your life is no different.
Just as rabbits, birds, or unexpected weather can disrupt a garden’s growth, your life has its own challenges that nibble away at your joy. Negative self-talk, constant bad news, draining relationships, and old habits can quietly sabotage your progress. These are the weeds. And like any gardener, you must gently but firmly remove what no longer serves you.
When you clear out what’s harmful, you make room for what’s beautiful.
Your life blossoms when you nourish it with meaningful friendships, time with loved ones, acts of kindness, and moments of stillness. Every small effort — a thoughtful gesture, a heartfelt conversation, a decision to choose joy — is like watering your garden. It may seem simple, but it creates abundance over time.
And just like gardening, tending to your life has benefits beyond what you can see. There’s peace in the solitude, even if a bird chirps nearby or the neighbor’s donkey decides to make itself known. There’s healing in the sunshine, which strengthens both your bones and your spirit. Long before I knew the science behind it, I found myself outside simply because it made me feel better. I thought it was the weeding or the trimming, but really, it was the connection to nature — the reminder that growth is always possible.
A friend of mine, an organic gardener, even swears that gardening barefoot helps plants sense what nutrients we’re missing and encourages them to produce more. Whether or not that’s true, it speaks to a deeper truth: when we connect with the earth, something inside us shifts.
The more you reflect on it, the more you’ll see the parallels. Your garden and your life are intertwined. Both require patience, care, and the courage to remove what hinders growth. Both reward you with beauty when you show up with intention.
So here’s my challenge to you: be as mindful with your life as you are with your garden. Tend to it. Nourish it. Protect it. Celebrate it. Because in both soil and spirit, you will always reap what you sow.
Water. It doesn’t seem that important until you don’t have any!
While farm life is fun, it does come with certain challenges. Such was the case this week when our pump stopped working . There was electricity to the well/pump, but the water tanks were empty, and that pesky red “fault” light was blinking!
I don’t mind being without water for a bit. That little inconvenience occurred often when I lived in Turkey. While overseas I learned to take a sponge bath with bottle water. Now I have a huge bathtub in my backyard, commonly known as a swimming pool . I can survive just fine taking my daily bath in the pool as the waterfall flows.
But not my 20 sheep, 10 chickens, and 2 dogs. They need fresh water. And let’s not forget the three sprinkler clocks for all the grass, trees, shrubs, and flowers! I can’t imagine losing 18 years of my hard-earned gardening efforts.
Yep, we needed water…and fast. After a quick call to the pump company and a water truck delivery company (and a few bills in between), we were back in business. Everyone is happy and well-watered. I could even run the dishwasher later if needed.
How do I take all this in stride? First, I did the troubleshooting to find out which repairman to call and to give them an idea of the problem.
Then I counted my lucky stars that I had done several loads of laundry earlier this week, just cleaned and refilled all the animals’ water containers, and lastly had my hair done yesterday. Additionally, I reflected that this occurred while I was home and not traipsing the world. All in all, it was a good time to be inconvenienced, if there is such a thing.
But what did I learn from this experience?
-Don’t take little things for granted.
-I can handle life’s challenges.
-In the big scheme of life, this is merely a little bump in the road.
-The timing was good.
Lastly, I realized things could have been much worse…such as an electrical outage or no internet.
So, I’d like to ask you to reflect upon what you are taking for granted these days. Is it water, electricity, your family, your job, your health, or something else?
Perhaps it’s time we all learn to be grateful for the little things in life.
I remember my 30s and 40s well: I was working, raising children, and married to someone who often worked nights and weekends. I used to joke that I was a single mom with his paycheck. Life was incredibly busy and exhausting—physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Suffice it to say, if I were given the chance to relive those years, my answer would be a resounding “no.”
But what if I could apply the life lessons I’ve learned since those tumultuous years?
Maybe those years would have been better—perhaps even, dare I say, enjoyable.
What life lessons am I talking about? The kind that help us build more everyday joy into our lives. When we’re caught in a hectic routine, we rarely have time to step back and ask: How could I live with less stress? How could I enjoy this journey more?
Instead, we’re busy driving kids to soccer or doctor’s appointments, helping with homework, preparing meals, doing laundry, paying bills, and tackling everything else on the endless to-do list.
I remember my mantra from those days: “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” paired with my theme song, “I’m in a Hurry” by Alabama. If you ask my son what he remembers most about that time, it’s not making and decorating holiday sugar cookies—even though we did that often.
What he remembers most is the daily rush, the chaos, and that song.
Adding even a little daily “me” time and joy might have transformed my life, my children’s lives, and my memories of those years.
But how do you make time for joy when 24 hours already feels too full?
One option is to delay or skip a chore. If no one is out of underwear yet, the laundry can wait a day. Maybe dinner can be something simple—takeout pizza or even pancakes. No one will be harmed. Everyone will be fed, and you’ll gain a little time.
Ask for more help, even if you belong to the “no one can do it as well as I can” club. Your kids or spouse can load or unload the dishwasher. It may not be as efficient or organized as you’d do it, but it will get done. Parents or grandparents might also be able savoring a specialty coffee while strolling downtown can feel like a welcome treat.
The point is to find a way to add a little joy to each day—whether that means time alone, a true break, or a small activity that feeds your soul and helps you reset.
That is exactly what I needed in my 30s and 40s. It’s something I wish more millennials would learn to do now, while they are still in the thick of it.
A joyful life does not have to wait for retirement, a spiritual awakening, or a hard season. We should learn to live with joy early, so we have more years to experience how rich life can truly be.
I’m grateful I eventually learned to put this into practice. As the saying goes, better late than never.to entertain the kids for an afternoon or evening.
These small time-savers can make a big difference. They can create space for a bubble bath, a few quiet hours alone, a book, or a nap. Take a solo walk and enjoy the trees, butterflies, and flowers. Call an old friend. Try a new restaurant by yourself. Even
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