On Wednesday night when I was watching the fireworks on TV, I saw the owner of @beauscoffee talking about the American Spirit. If you are not familiar with them, they are a coffee shop located in Wilmington, NC and Charleston, SC. However, they are not just any coffee shop. Bitty and Beau’s Coffee shop is run by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

I wrote several weeks ago about my niece Courtney and others in my family that have Down’s Syndrome. If you have never experienced a Down’s Syndrome child, then you are missing out. Not only are they the most loving, funny and special people on the planet, but they will melt your heart each and every time that you see them. Now, imagine having that warmth and compassion greet you every time you walk into a place of business.

I am always amazed by people who have the foresight to treat developmentally and intellectual challenged individuals as they should be treated. They incorporate them into every day work situations where they are able to thrive, prosper and share their unique way of making someone’s day with just a smile and most often a hug. Rather than treat them as different, they are treated as equals and as a result are able to live the full life potential that they should be afforded.

There was a time where people with disabilities were treated as pariahs and outcasts and placed in homes to live out their life because people just didn’t understand them or know how to deal with them. Fortunately, society has changed and we are now understanding while they may be different in action, in reality they are just like us. In fact, they often show more compassion, kindness and love than we will ever be capable of.

I am sure there are other businesses out there like Bitty and Beaus and our heart and thanks should go out to each and every one of them. If there were a place in my area like that, it would be my first choice to patronize. If I won the lottery, it would be the first business I would open. So here is to all the organizations that believe that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities should be treated as human beings and afforded all life’s opportunities that they deserve. If you live near one of these wonderful businesses, patronize them. Visit and experience for yourself something that is magical.

Have a great weekend and remember to be the reason someone smiles.

Ron

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Yesterday, I was in Bryant Park in New York City and I happened to glance across the street at a building where this flag was flying. It said “Do What You Love”. Something so simple, yet so powerful just flying there in the breeze. It got me to thinking.

As we go through life we are presented with all kinds of choices; careers, relationships, hobbies and a multitude of other things. How often are we making choices to do what we love? Doing what is comfortable is easy, whether it makes us happy or not. Where we expand on the quality of life is when we stretch ourselves to get out of the mundane and focus on doing what we actually love.

Picture a life where we get up in the morning and we look forward to going to work. We turn over and adore the person laying next to us. We spend our free time doing things that thrill us while nurturing and enriching our lives. When we lay our head down on the pillow at night we are content with what we have accomplished through the day and look forward to getting up the next morning and doing it all over again.

We always want the best for our family and friends, why wouldn’t we want the same for ourselves? Sometimes we may think that we don’t deserve it. But indeed we do. No one has an obligation to us more than the obligation we have to ourselves. Happiness and contentment are always in our hands and we have to take the opportunity to make it the best that it can be.

At the end of the day we have to live life, enjoy life and love life. We only do that by making choices that enrich our lives. No matter how old we are it is never too late to make that one change that is going to make your life magical. We only get one life to make it all that we ever want it to be and tomorrow is never guaranteed. That is why it is so incredibly important to make it your own and do what you love!

Have a great day and remember to be the reason someone smiles.

Wishing everyone a very happy 4th of July. As we celebrate this day of independence, we find ourselves in a very different country than we have ever experienced in the past. No matter what your political affiliation is, it is important to remember that we are not the Republican States of America, the Democrat States of America or even the Independent States of America, we are the United States of America.

From the early days of the revolution to gain our independence, we have always been a nation of forward thinking people striving to make the country a little better for the next generation. Wars, elections, unthinkable events, causes and issues have separated us for periods of time. However, at the end of the day the American spirit always prevails and we always come back from that period of time stronger and more determined to create a new day.

Our forefathers had the insight to create a country that was “one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all”. Countless women and men (including myself) have fought to maintain that liberty, justice and freedom. We did it because we believe in an America where everyone can be free to be who they are, live the life that makes them happy and work to make a better world for those that come after us.

Today we will celebrate in different ways. There will be picnics, BBQ’s, fireworks, song and fun. For a moment in time we will be what was always intended, a free people coming together to celebrate a common purpose. For 242 years it has been that way. IF we could somehow capture the spirit of those celebrations and carry it forward into every day going forward, we would be on our way to being a united people again.

Discourse and disagreement are good. They are what brings about change, new ideas and new ways of living that benefit all. For it to be effective it has to happen with a level of civility, respect and common decency as we navigate the uncomfortable maze of change that surrounds us. Building each other up and upholding the very principles that this country was founded on makes us all a stronger people, inhabiting a stronger nation.

While we find ourselves today in one of the most unique periods we have ever experienced on a Fourth of July, we have to remember that this too shall pass. For this day and every day, hug your family member, friend and neighbor. Eliminate the labels and come together as a common people to celebrate the independence that was so bravely fought for. Eat a little (or a lot), laugh a little, cry a little and celebrate the fact that no matter what we face, may we always choose to be a country of the people, for the people and by the people. We deserve that.

Have a great day and remember to be the reason everyone smiles.

Ron

My friend Tim always finds the best sayings and this one he posted yesterday gave me the inspiration for today’s post.  “My goal is to build a life that I don’t need a vacation from”.  Wow!  This got me to thinking about life as a whole and just what kind of life we strive to live?

We all make choices in the different components that make up our life as a whole. The work we choose, the friends we have, the activities we choose to do and the people we select to go on life’s journey with us. When you sit down and take a good look at those components, are the choices we are making filling our lives with things that enrich it and make it enjoyable? Or, are we filling it with mundane tasks and people that in the end just make us want to take a vacation from it all because we really want something different?

We have absolute choice over the life that we live. The problem is that sometimes even though we are in life situations that we don’t like, we are so comfortable in the mire of it all that we either don’t know how or just choose not to change it. We stay in bad jobs because we need the paycheck. We choose unhealthy relationships because we are afraid of being alone. Having someone, anyone is good enough. We involve ourselves in activities because it is “what we are supposed to do”, not because it is actually something we enjoy. We even get ourselves into situations because we don’t know how to say no, even though it is something that has no positive impact on our life.

When you come in contact with people who truly love their lives and live a life full of meaning and purpose on their terms, they are wonderful people to be around. They have found the art of making choices in their life that fulfill and enrich it, while living a life for themselves rather than a life that someone else wants for them. It is not easy and there is an art to it. However, once you master it the benefits are amazing. It doesn’t happen over night and it is always a work in progress.

So, in a moment of self reflection, take an inventory of your own life and evaluate what kind of life you have chosen for yourself. Will the things you do today be things that enrich your life and make it better? Or, will your activities and the components you have chosen for yourself keep you living a life that causes a constant need for a vacation? The choice is ours, the question is will we make the right one?

Have a great day and remember to be the reason someone smiles.

Ron

One of the most beautiful things about true friendship is that you are able to be yourself in a safe environment without judgement or consequences. This includes both good and bad situations that may happen in our every day life. Never was that more evident for me than with three of my friends over the past week.

I have mentioned in the past that I love the game of Mah Jongg. I learned to play about a year and half ago, play in several groups regularly and whenever I have the opportunity to play with my out of town friends. I am somewhat competitive by nature, well maybe very competitive and who doesn’t like to win? However, in this game it is so possible to get into a slump that lasts for weeks, which often causes you to question your own playing ability and even gets to the point where you start to question whether you want to even play at all. Then all of the sudden the slump passes and play returns to normal.

However, playing this past weekend I took slump to a whole new level. I am not sure exactly how many games we played, but suffice it to say a lot. Let’s say it was 30, and out of those thirty one member of trio won at least 25 (which is unheard of), three to the second member and two for yours truly. Add that to my recent slump and all those doubts and fears of being able to play the game came rushing in like a Tsunami, which did not make for a wonderful mood. I had a similar experience earlier in the week at one of my regular weekly one on one games and had convinced myself that I was just fooling around. But after this episode I decided maybe that wasn’t the case. My mood was neither comfortable for me or for my friends who had to endure.

The beautiful thing about friendships is that when you have those sour moments true friends allow you to be you and accept you for who you are warts and all. In doing so, they provide you a safe environment to acknowledge your actions, talk about it and make way for self reflection that gives you the opportunity to address it both externally and and internally and move on. The inner soul searching that comes from being able to be open and honest provides you the opportunity to be true not only to yourself, but to your friendships as well. This doesn’t apply to just the game of Mah Jongg, but to our every day lives as well.

So L and F and B, thank you for giving me the opportunity to be me without judgement and reservation. It is the fact that we are true friends that helps me build the foundation of a better friendship. You remind me that it is OK to lose and in the end it’s not about me or my abilities, but rather the true luck of the draw. True friendships have healing power and I appreciate that power more than you will ever know. When you have those moments with your friends, see them for what they are, learn from them and let them go. That is how the foundation for true, long lasting relationships are formed.

Have a great day and remember to be the reasons someone smiles.

Ron

Photo by Flickr on Pexels.com

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

What do you do when you complete a successful campaign?  Well, you start another one of course. Our recent “Smiling 50” campaign was a smash success.  Because of our wonderful card and postage donors, we were able to deliver cards to senior communities in all 50 states!  Now that we have that one under our belt, we are pleased to announce our next campaign, “Random Acts of Smiling”.

Were going to cross all 50 states again but this time in reverse order.  We will randomly select a senior community and deliver cards to their residents starting with Wyoming. Because of our current card levels we believe this campaign will take much longer as we continue to meet the obligations of our regular deliveries. However, at Bring Smiles to Seniors we love goals, especially meeting and exceeding them.  As we close in on 20,000 cards delivered this year we thought this was the perfect time to kick off round two!

Thank you all for being on this journey with us and here is to more smiling seniors!

Ron

I thought I would end this week on a lighthearted note with a story that everyone who has ever had a cat will understand.  Cat’s have their own unique individual personality. They have this way of making sure that they let us know regularly that they are the ones in control of the house, not us.

Our cat Moochie recently turned fourteen and has inflammatory bowel disease for which he takes prednisone every other day. This seems to have everything under control, but the medicine has increased his appetite and this makes for an interesting morning when it is time for him to get his wet food.  His morning plan goes something like this:

Day 1

5:00AM – Mooch’s stomach tells him that he is hungry and he needs to sit outside the bedroom door and begin the yowling routine that he has learned over the last six months.

5:15AM – Mooch can’t seem to get his dad to stir from his sleep so he takes the next step of entering the bedroom and taking his place on the bedside table where he beings to meow loudly.  Again no response from dad.

5:30AM – Having decided that isn’t working, Mooch decides to move to plan C.  Let’s try walking across the pillow and dad’s face and see if that works. Unfortunately, dad just turns over the other direction.

5:45AM – Having tried Plan A, B and C – maybe plan D will do the trick. Mooch proceeds over to the window blinds and starts running his paws up and down the blinds to make as much noise as he can.  Surely this will do the trick. Drats, no luck!

6:00AM – As a last ditch effort he moves to the final plan, which is to sit squarely on your chest, start licking your nose and pawing your arm.  BINGO, that was the trick that finally got the wanted reaction.

Day 2 – Repeat Day 1

If only we had the ability to get people to do what we wanted like cats do.  They seem to know exactly what is required to be just annoying enough to get their desired outcome and then heap loads of love on you so they get away with doing it over and over again.

At the end of the day they are our family and friends and we have an obligation to care for our relationship with them as we would any other. Even on the days when you want them to just leave you alone, they bring their own unique enhancement to your life that would be difficult to replace.  As long as we realize and accept that they own the home, even though they have no job nor do they pay the bills or the mortgage, all will be as it should be.

Have a great weekend and remember to be the reason someone smiles.

Ron

Do you ever have those days when no matter how hard you try for a period of time you are just sad and somber? You can’t seem to break out of it and then just like that in a flash it just moves on. Sometimes you can’t really pinpoint the reason for it and there are times when the reason is obvious, but it seems to come and go at a whim.

For me that seems to happen about once every 4-6 weeks.  For about a two day period I wake up feeling down and when there is really no obvious cause for it. I try to shake myself out of it, but it continues for about 24-36 hours and then as quickly as it came in it passes.

This has been happening to me for some time and when it first started happening it startled me. I couldn’t understand why it was happening regularly and why it always seemed to come within a certain time interval. However, as time went on I learned to embrace that time for what it was worth and put it to good use.

Most of the time I am pretty positive about life and do what I can to nurture it and make it the best I can be. Week after week I go and go until I get to the point where I feel like my body and soul just need a rest. I have come to learn that these periods that happen for me are my body and mind’s way of telling me to stop and slow down. By enduring those somber periods where I don’t want to seem to do anything, I am being provided a time to just chill and recharge for a period sometimes devoid of emotion. I think when my body feels like it has sufficiently recharged, the mood passes and life moves on.

It is also during these times that I deal with the things that make me sad.  It is almost as if my brain is thinking that I am sad anyway, so why not deal with all the issues that contribute to sadness and see them for what they are and let them go. It prevents me from having to do so for the others days when life is good.

The point of this story is that it’s ok to be somber and sad for short period of time. I feel like it is a healthy time to deal with the things that adversely affect life if you use the time wisely. It is when the sadness finds it way into weeks, months and even years that it becomes a problem where one might ultimately need a little help to address it.

So, the next time that you feel sad and somber, put that emotion to good use.  Use it as a time to deal with the things in your life that are contributing to making you feel that way.  Take a good long look at them, work through them and let them go. It will make all the other days of life that much brighter. Sadness is a normal human emotion and yes, it is normal to occasionally be sad.

Have a great day and remember to be the reason someone smiles.

Ron

One thing for certain in the Bring Smiles to Seniors program is that we get to be around Seniors….a lot! That is one of the things that I love most about what we do. In the early months of the program we were able to deliver cards to residents individually and that resulted in us being able to see seniors in a variety of living situations and having many interactions with people. One thing we learned early on was that we should never take a negative interaction personally and that dealing with seniors requires a different level of patience, compassion and understanding than what is required in our everyday lives.

As I move into my mid-50’s I am starting to feel changes in my body that aren’t always positive. Getting up and down isn’t as easy as it used to be. Getting up from sitting on the floor and sorting cards is more difficult than tasks in the past. Little aches and pains here and there are popping up unexpectedly that cause you to face the reality that things just aren’t the same. Now imagine another 20 – 30 years in the future and having to deal with even more of that, sometimes without relief for days on end and you begin to realize that seniors are going through experiences that are only yet to come for us.

Waking up every morning with ailments that last throughout the day or dealing with the fact that age is getting the best of you when you still want to be young, is a much different mindset that what we have in our younger years. There are seniors that take it all in stride and have the most positive outlook that you want to be just like them. There are others that aren’t dealing with the aging process so well and have a much more difficult time coping. If you compound the aging issues with the fact that many who enter senior communities never again see the outside of the four walls that they live in, you can start to see why we have to have a little more patience in dealing with them.

When we encounter a senior, we have no idea of what they are going through or their history. We don’t know if they still have family involved or if they have been left alone. We aren’t aware that they may be dealing with a debilitating disease or pain from an illness that is affecting their mood. That is why we treat each and every senior that we come in contact with as we would our own parent or grandparent. It is why we show them a sense of respect and compassion that they have earned the right to have.

While we have a compassion for seniors, we also have a compassion for caregivers who are with seniors day in out. They have to deal with a multitude of different personalities that make each day different and challenging, but in the end rewarding for what they do. Out hats go off to them.

So, the next time you encounter a senior and things aren’t going quite as smoothly as you would like, take a deep breath and attempt to put yourself in their shoes. God willing, one day we will all be seniors ourselves and then we will truly understand why patience is a virtue.

Have a great day and remember to be the reason someone smiles.

Ron

P.S. Thanks for Renee for giving me the idea for today’s post.

Do you ever feel sometimes in life that you have set goals, made plans, created tasks and no matter how hard you try you just can’t quite seem to get there? Despite persistence and perseverance, completing the list just seems like it is out of reach. You may finish some, but your list of “to do” items for yourself just never seems to get finished.

Now assume you take that same list and review it with a different approach. If you were to give that list to someone you knew and they didn’t complete each and every task, would you consider them a failure? If the answer is, ‘Of course not”, then just maybe you are asking a little too much of yourself and therefore becoming your own worst enemy.

Working a full time job and running this program in the morning and evenings often causes me to create enormous task lists. The unnecessary pressure that I put on myself sometimes causes me to stop and take a look at what I am actually asking and requiring of myself and readjust to be much more realistic. We can’t add stamina to what our bodies are already capable of and we certainly can’t add more hours to a day.  So, why do we put that unneeded pressure on ourselves that isn’t necessary?

I believe at the end of the day everyone wants to be the best at what they can be. However, sometimes the level of best that we have set for ourselves is unrealistic and unattainable.  How often does anyone else really care that we haven’t obtained an objective other than ourselves?  Who is waiting there with a clipboard, doing a double check on us to make sure that we have completed what we have told ourselves to complete?  Usually, no one but ourselves and therein lies the possibility of becoming our own worst enemy.

If we allow ourselves to require that we accomplish more than we are capable of, we only set ourselves up for failure from the very beginning. When we shorten the list, accomplish what we can and then add more as time and stamina permits, we build a firm foundation of confidence that ultimately makes us a happier and more satisfied person.

So, if you have become one of those people that have turned into your own worst enemy, there is a fix for it. Be kind to yourself as you would to others. Set realistic goals and add only as you accomplish. Reward yourself for positive steps that make you successful in your endeavors. Most of all, be your own best friend instead of your own worst enemy.

Have a great day and remember to be the reason someone smiles today.

Ron