14 Less Traditional Ways To Give Love On Valentine’s Day …or Any Day

Choose one …or a bunch!

1. Deliver candy, balloons, or cards to a local disability day care facility.
2. Give food to a local food pantry — call first to find out what their pressing needs are.
3. Go to a busy building that doesn’t have automatic doors and be the doorman/woman for 30 minutes. Smile at everyone and wish each a good day. If anyone asks why you’re doing what you’re doing, tell them, with a big smile, because it’s Valentine’s Day.
4. Deliver one or two dozen heart shaped cookies to an elderly couple or individual living in your neighborhood. Make sure you introduce yourself and get their names if you haven’t already. Also, make sure you leave a couple of really big smiles, and a compliment or two.
5. Spend 30 minutes visiting someone in a nursing home facility who doesn’t receive regular visitors. Ask the staff, they’ll let you know whom to visit. Don’t go at dinner/supper time.
6. Create or buy six Valentine cards and deliver them to a local nursing home. Write some fun, funny, or sentimental things inside. Leave them unsealed and unaddressed. Take them to the administration office or nurse station and ask if they would select six individuals and deliver them. They can add the person’s name and seal the envelope. (they’ll need to look inside envelopes from strangers — even nice strangers)
7. Deliver one or two dozen heart shaped cookies to the staff at a local DMV or post office. (or, make four dozen and combine numbers 4 and 7)
8. Tell someone that you love them — someone that you love very much, but you haven’t actually told them in quite some time.
9. Volunteer at a free meal site for a couple of hours. Usually, they can always use additional help.
10. Donate some of your valued and useful clothes to a local clothing distribution center that serves struggling individuals and families. Current season clothing is always best.
11. Smile and say hello to every person you make eye contact with for the entire day. Hold the eye contact for at least three seconds.
12. Help two people who appear to be struggling to accomplish a task (sweep, shovel, load a vehicle, etc., if you looking for the opportunity to help, you’ll find it).
13. Refrain from saying ANYTHING negative about ANY individual for the entire day — including YOURSELF.
14. Call an elderly relative or individual who has had a positive impact in your earlier life. Choose someone you haven’t talked with for some time, let them know that you were thinking of them, and are grateful for the influence they had in your life.

Note: If you partake in one or more of these love-filled gifts, they’ll be one additional love recipient …you!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

Past Choices

I hope you choose to Enjoy!

“Regardless of past choices, now is always the best time to start making better choices.” —Paul Mark Sutherland

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original graphic credit: unknown

Which Do You Usually Choose?

It’s always your choice!

Enjoy.

Some people encounter unexpected conditions and call them problems. Others label them as challenges. And some, consider them opportunities. Which do you usually choose?  —Paul Mark Sutherland

Do Anyway

 

Enjoy!

Anyway
The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith
 
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

photo credit: unknown

Why Not You

Enjoy!

Why Not You?
Today, many will awaken with a fresh sense of inspiration.
Why not you?
Today, many will open their eyes to the beauty that surrounds them.
Why not you?
Today, many will choose to leave the ghost of yesterday behind
and seize the immeasurable power of today.
Why not you?
Today, many will break through the barriers of the past
by looking at the blessings of the present.
Why not you?
Today, for many the burden of self doubt and insecurity
will be lifted by the security and confidence of empowerment.
Why not you?
Today, many will rise above their believed limitations
and make contact with their powerful innate strength.
Why not you?
Today, many will choose to live in such a manner
that they will be a positive role model for their children.
Why not you?
Today, many will choose to free themselves
from the personal imprisonment of their bad habits.
Why not you?
Today, many will choose to live free
of conditions and rules governing their own happiness.
Why not you?
Today, many will find abundance in simplicity.
Why not you?
Today, many will be confronted by difficult moral choices and they
will choose to do what is right instead of what is beneficial.
Why not you?
Today, many will decide to no longer sit back with a victim mentality, but to take charge of their lives and make positive changes.
Why not you?
Today, many will take the action necessary to make a difference.
Why not you?
Today, many will make the commitment to be a better mother,
father, son, daughter, student, teacher, worker, boss,
brother, sister, and so much more.
Why not you?
Today is a new day!
Many will seize this day.
Many will live it to the fullest.
Why not you?
—Steve Maraboli

One More Tomorrow

Enjoy!

The Day’s Work
Is anybody happier because you passed his way?
Does any one remember that you spoke to him today?
The day is almost over, and its toiling time is through.
Is there any one to utter now a kindly word of you?
Did you give a cheerful greeting to the friend who came along,
Or a churlish sort of “howdy” and then vanish in the throng?
Were you selfish, pure and simple, as you rushed along the way,
Or is someone mighty grateful for a deed you did today?
Can you say tonight in parting, with the day that’s slipping fast,
That you helped a single brother, of the many that you passed?
Is a single heart rejoicing over what you did or said?
Does a man whose hopes were fading, now with courage look ahead?
Did you waste the day, or lose it?  Was it well or sorely spent?
Did you leave a trail of kindness, or a scar of discontent?
As you close your eyes in slumber, do you think that God would say,
You have earned one more tomorrow by the work you did today?
                                                           —Edgar Guest

 photo credit: unknown

Ripples And Sunbeams

Enjoy!

 

Influence

Drop a pebble in the water,
And its ripples reach out far;
And the sunbeams dancing on them
May reflect them to a star.

Give a smile to someone passing,
Thereby making his morning glad;
It may greet you in the evening
When your own heart may be sad.

Do a deed of simple kindness;
Though its end you may not see,
It may reach, like widening ripples,
Down a long eternity.

—Joseph Norris

photo credit: Colin70  fotocommunity

Personal Rainbow

Enjoy!

No vision and you perish,
No ideal and you’re lost;
Your heart must ever cherish
Some faith at any cost.
Some hope, some dream to cling to,
Some rainbow in the sky,
Some melody to sing to,
Some service that is high.
—Harriet Du Autermont

graphic credit: deviantart.com

Be A Star

Enjoy!

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill,
Be a scrub in the valley-but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass,
And some highway happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass
But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,
There’s something for all of us here,
There’s big work to do, and there’s lesser to do,
And the task you must do is the near.

If you can’t be a highway then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail
Be the best of whatever you are!
—Douglas Malloch

photo credit: unknown

I Can Do

Enjoy!

I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
—Edward Everett Hale

photo credit: unknown