Consistency

The only person I can change . . .

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. . . is myself.

Just one more day of the old year.  I think my only resolution should be to remember that I can only make resolutions for myself.   I want to set the very highest standards for myself but refuse to apply those standards to others, to remind myself that people are (or at least may be) doing the best that they can, to carry out the description of love in I Corinthians 13:5:  “It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”  As I’ve said many, many times, I am the Queen of Grudge-Holders.  If I concentrated on just that italicized phrase all year I’d be much easier to live with.  (“If thou, O Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, who should stand?”)

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Life Lessons from a 21-Year-Old

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Cover of "Debt-Free U"Debt-Free U:  How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching Off My Parents by Zac Bissonnette, Portfolio/Penguin 2010.

Even if you have no kids going to college, or you’re not a kid planning to go to college, you should read this book.  (But you should also read it if you do fit into one of those categories.)

A couple of posts ago I wrote about Dinner:  the Playbook, and I said that book wasn’t valuable so much for the recipes or the specific information about planning meals as it was in promoting a general outlook that says:  “What can I do right now?”  A proactive approach.  Well, this is the same type of book, in that it contains principles that go far beyond making sound economic choices when it comes to college.

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“The Small Things that You Do Every Day . . .

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Sunset salmon 4 o. . . matter more than the big things that you do once in awhile.”  I write about this principle in the chapter on, surprisingly, “The Big Effect of Small Actions.”  Read that sample chapter here in my book Intentional Happiness. The picture is a good illustration of this principle.  It’s a shot of a plant called a “four o’clock,” something that gives you  big return on a small investment, namely a seed.  My mother used to grow these plants because she didn’t have much money.  I’ve grown them several times but never liked the colors much.  Last year I found a new variety, “Sunset Salmon,” from Park Seed, and they were just spectacular.  We came home from our vacation to find them loaded with blossoms.

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