Sunday Purrs

Sunday Purrs: A Change of Scenery

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No matter how much you love your life, your environment, and your routine (and I do), sometimes, it’s good to have a change of scenery. Changing your environment can get you out of a rut and stimulate your creativity. A change of scenery can be as small as taking a different route to work and as big as a trip around the world.

I got to do something somewhere in between the two last weekend: I visited friends in New York City. New York City is my favorite city in the whole world. I love that you can walk everywhere you need to go, there are a so many great restaurants on every block, there’s Central Park, and there’s the incredible energy of a city of millions of people. But my primary purpose for this visit had a cat theme: I got to meet my friends’ new kittens for the first time!Continue Reading

Sunday Purrs: Principles to Live by, Just for Today

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Wouldn’t it be nice to have just a few principles that, if you were to follow them every day, would ground you in the here and now, help you weather the storms life throws at you on a daily basis, and make your life happier? Short of becoming cats, who have already figured out that ultimately, it’s always about living in the moment, these five simple principles can help.Continue Reading

Sunday Purrs: Don’t Complain About Your Life

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However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun
it and call it hard names. – Henry David Thoreau

I frequently write about adopting a positive mindset in my Sunday Purrs columns. I believe that it helps you cope more easily with whatever life throws at you. I think Einstein had it right when he said “the most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” Adopting a positive mindset is a conscious choice.Continue Reading

Sunday Purrs: Are You Making Summer Memories?

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Summer is my favorite season, and I always feel that it passes much too quickly. So far, it’s been a great summer. Even though up until last week, I was buried in a deadline for my two new books (I turned them in to my publisher last Friday), I still made time for summer pleasures. Now that my schedule isn’t quite so intense, I’m going to make sure that I savor each warm, sunny day and make plenty of memories to get me through the cold, dark days of winter.

Think back to some of your favorite summer memoriesContinue Reading

Sunday Purrs: Feeling Overloaded

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I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take
so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up. – Erma Bombeck

This past week, I’ve been feeling a little overloaded. The manuscripts for my two new books, Tortitude: The Little Book of Cats With a Big Attitude (due out February 2016) and  Purrs of Wisdom: Enlightenment, Feline Style (due out spring 2016) are both due to Mango Media the end of this month. I’m in the final stages of revising, editing and polishing, and I know I’ll make the deadline, but I’ve been working much longer hours than I normally do. Continue Reading

Sunday Purrs: Simplicity

tortoiseshell-cat-window-seat

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the
wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit.
Henry David Thoreau

For most of us, life these days is anything but simple. We live in a world where being busy is considered a badge of honor. We’re drowning in information as we’re trying to manage the endless flow of it from our multiple devices. We’re urged to buy more stuff, get more done in a shorter amount of time, and do it all while being bombarded with messages from the media that are designed to scare us into complicating our lives even more by trying to protect ourselves against every possible calamity that might befall us. Many of us are stressed, overwhelmed and frightened.Continue Reading

Sunday Purrs: Why Change Is Good

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Let go of fear, embrace change, and move toward joy. – Buckley

I have a love/hate relationship with change. I often think that one of the many reasons why I love cats is that they are creatures of habit who don’t like having their routines disrupted. I like my life, and I like my routines. At the same time, most, if not all, change in my life has always been for the better. And yet, I still can’t quite seem to embrace the fact that change is good.Continue Reading

Sunday Purrs: How to Motivate Yourself

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Ever have one of those days where you just can’t seem to get yourself motivated to do anything? You’re not alone. I bet even Tony Robbins occasionally has one of those days. Whether it’s starting to exercise, or tackling a huge new project, sometimes, it’s just tough to get up and go. These motivational slumps are not to be confused with clinical depression, which requires intervention from a medical professional. I’m talking about those “blah” days that most of us face at one time or another. Continue Reading

Sunday Purrs: Cats Create Human Connections

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We all long for genuine connection with other human beings. Connecting with others not only makes life richer, it appears that we are actually wired to form relationships with others. In Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, psychologist Matthew Lieberman explores groundbreaking research in social neuroscience, revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental than our need for food or shelter.Continue Reading