About Pat

Posts by Pat:

4

Change is like a roundabout!

Posted by Pat on November 21, 2021 in Uncategorized |

The Arc de Triomphe in Paris is the queen of roundabouts with something like a dozen streets radiating from her hub out into the rest of the city.

My sister and I were rather in awe of it (no line markings!) when we visited it in Paris.

The poor misunderstood roundabouts, long beloved by motorists in France (with 30,000) and Britain (with 22,000), are still not universally appreciated by us Americans. This is despite the fact that with a roundabout we don’t have to stop and be at the mercy of a traffic light. And because we keep moving, we reduce traffic backups, save money on gas and cutback on pollution. And, we can’t really get lost. If we miss our turnoff, we can simply circle back.

And, just like in life, we are moving forward, but not often “straight ahead.” Because a roundabout isn’t a straightaway. There is a turning. A shift of direction.

And sometimes, we can find ourselves going around and around and around…moving, surely, but not moving any closer to our desired destination.

Are YOU in a Roundabout of Change?

Do you have questions about what you are now called to do? Do you think maybe you should be doing what you’re doing, but doing it differently? Do you want to change what you are doing but don’t quite see the way forward?

Fortunately, just like this new roundabout here in Walla Walla, each of us is likely handling a simple life compared to those who traverse the one in Paris! We have lane markers. We drive more cautiously than those taxi drivers in Paris.

We know that life is change, and even if we feel like we are going in circles we can keep moving. We are always experiencing “interchanges” with choices to be made, and it is a blessing to know that as long as we keep moving we have options!

The road we came in on isn’t the road that we may be leaving on. We aren’t on a straightaway. There is a turning. A shift of direction.

One might even say a discernment, refinement, or a distillation—if one were a word nerd!

3

Forget the noun, do the verb!

Posted by Pat on November 13, 2021 in Uncategorized |

As most of you already know about me… I love playing with words. And this post is fun for me! The difference comes down to whether a person thinks of themselves as a verb or a noun: are you defined by what you do or are you defined by what you are? As a parent […]

4

Have a rule in place

Posted by Pat on November 7, 2021 in Uncategorized |

The reason is simple…personal rules give us a foundational structure by which we can live our lives. They eradicate indecision, temptation, and distraction and (paradoxically) create more freedom for us to do the things we love. It’s one of the reasons why I respect vegetarians who live by the personal rule that “Under no circumstances […]

5

2 intriguing thoughts on money…

Posted by Pat on October 31, 2021 in Uncategorized |

I’ve found two very different thoughts on money that I want to share here! Number one: I read somewhere that money is “frozen time.” That the “stuff” we buy is free…that what we pay for is the peoples’ time to mine/grow/finance/ manufacture/manage/transport the stuff to us. Number two: what money can and does for us! […]

5

This old house…

Posted by Pat on October 24, 2021 in Uncategorized |

A story is told about John Quincy Adams that strikes a special chord with me after my career in real estate and my ever-increasing age! When a friend asked 80-year-old Adams how he was, he replied, “John is very well, thank you. But the house he lives in is sadly dilapidated. It is tottering on […]

1

Questions that haunt me…

Posted by Pat on October 17, 2021 in Uncategorized |

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, then doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed? Why, in winter, do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat? How can a […]

1

Paws with perspective…

Posted by Pat on October 10, 2021 in Uncategorized |

Murphy the Dog shares some delightful thoughts in his monthly column Murphy’s Dogma in the Science of Mind Magazine. I think you will enjoy this one! (And maybe see a lesson in it to be learned?) I have had some long talks with birds. All of them seem glad to have wings and beaks, and […]

1

Choosing can be hard

Posted by Pat on October 3, 2021 in Uncategorized |

One of the most confusing issues we face today is choice. We want choice, but choice can be more difficult than we think, because it works on a simple principle. And the principle runs like this: In order to choose something we have to eliminate everything else. This means that if we have 20 ice-cream […]

Have to or…get to?

Posted by Pat on September 26, 2021 in Uncategorized |

Every day you “have to” wake up, maybe you have to get dressed, have to go to work, and have to do a bunch of other things. What if you did not “have to” do any of it? There is one word that can change the whole way you think, act and live your life! […]

3

It’s a noisy world…

Posted by Pat on September 19, 2021 in Uncategorized |

We live in a crazy and noisy world. Every time we get in the car, we turn on the radio or CD. When we are home, we watch TV or get on the computer. The traffic going by on the street seems louder than ever. We live in a sensory overloaded world. When we are […]

Copyright © 2012-2026 Wisdom Enough All rights reserved.
This site is using the Desk Mess Mirrored theme, v2.5, from BuyNowShop.com.