LifeNotes: Thoughts and ways guaranteed to improve your well being

By Sheldon Pickering

Do you ever feel like there's just too much to do. Like you can't keep up, and if some days it even matters? 

It's normal. We all feel this way at times. LifeNotes is a series skills, lessons and experience that have helped many and can help you get your mind, heart, and life closer to where and how you want it to be.&nbsp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: May 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685152734

Sheldon Pickering

Sheldon Pickering is a small business owner, a musician and composer, and a community servant. The father of five, he loves family time, history, reading, learning from people, counselling, travelling, biking, and will grab any excuse to hit the road.

Book preview

Introduction

I planned on having this book ready two years ago. Sometimes life is like that. Sometimes it’s decisions we made or didn’t make or the waves of life and occasional tsunamis that prevent us from reaching our dreams. Do you know what? I did it and it is done now and now, is better than next month or next year. So many times we beat ourselves up in life instead of lifting ourselves with grace and mercy. At times we are horrible tyrants over our own selves as we expect exactitude and perfection. Maybe you feel or have felt this way. Perhaps you understand this feeling all too well. Don’t let falling down keep you from looking up, marching forward, and reaching for the stars of your dreams. You may not find my LifeNotes on a best seller’s list any time soon. But if you see them anywhere it’s because someone, somewhere got back up and tried again. That’s what LifeNotes are all about. Experiences and lessons learned along the path of hard knocks, challenges, joys, successes, pain, love, adventure and endurance. So keep walking and running and riding and living the path of Life the best you can because we only get one ticket and one ride on this life. Let’s make it the very best we can -Together!

Choose Kindness

I forget so many things: dumb things, useful things, old things, new things, and many other things I really want to remember. As I age, names I should have on the tip of my tongue rather embarrassingly elude me. Appointments, dates, passwords, pin numbers, usernames – I have forgotten them all. I’m packed with a lifetime of stuff to forget.

One of the few things I rarely forget is the way someone in my life made me feel. For example, I will never forget the awful feeling one dark day back in high school when my (future) wife ever so kindly made it clear she had no interest in me anymore. I’ll never forget the day a few years later when she said yes. I’ll never forget a nurse, staying late on her shift to see our child safely into the world, looking at my wife and assuring her everything was alright. (I thank God to this day my wife couldn’t see the heart rate and oxygen levels that the nurse and I saw.) I’ll never forget how I felt almost 20 years ago as I sat on the side of the road in my little truck, with no tools to take care of a flat tire, seeing someone pulling over to help. I’ll never forget the way Grandma made me feel, feeding me food while she helped heal my hurting heart. I’ll never forget the way it felt when our first client gave me a chance. I’ll never forget the way Joice Donald made me feel so special, the way Ed Armstrong took time to show my son his classic car collection, or the way my great-aunt Mary Lou made me feel like I was the most important person in the whole world. I’ll never forget the way I felt when a visiting concert pianist called the little children from the audience up onto the stage, sat me on his lap, and used my right hand to play part of a masterpiece. I’ll never forget the way he made me feel when he came to town again 12 years later and, after I played for him, invited me to his masterclass in San Diego!

In a world of trinkets, newsflashes, hype, hysteria, crazes, fads, Kardashians (yes, I said it), and constant buzz and bother, the way we make people feel can make a lifelong difference, one of the few things of lasting value at the end of the day.

Can you remember a person who made you feel special, cared for, present, alive, or important? How can each of us do that for others around us? Some people rather condescendingly insist, We choose how we feel in any given situation. Tell that to the person who just got dumped, or the person who just got fired from the career they thought would carry them to retirement, or the person who just lost a loved one, or who just got a bad diagnosis. The people around us need our help when they feel broken and alone, and we need the lift and help that comes from the special attention they give back.

Like the sun, the moon, and the seasons, the daily grind is pretty much the same for most of us. Time goes by and we often hardly notice what happens. We take most things for granted. Acts of kindness, help and attention, and the way we make others feel are like occasional and glorious full moons, magnificent