Seize the Day! | Harvest Joyfulness! ~ Three Thoughts for Thursday ~ October 2025

~ Seize the Day | Harvest Joyfulness ~

I’ve been practicing the art of seizing the day—starting with a trip to LA where I reunited with old friends and finally met, in person, a dear friend I’ve spoken with monthly for the past few years. I revisited favorite places and basked in the sunshine. This was followed by a beautiful visit to Canada, and I have a San Diego trip on the horizon to meet long-time colleagues from BrainByDesign for the first time. This October, I’m harvesting joy in abundance!

I’m writing this as I sit at the Edmonton International Airport, waiting to board my flight home to Seattle. I flew up to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada yesterday to celebrate my Great Auntie Marie’s 90th birthday. Ninety! What a gift to celebrate with her! The sun graced us with two beautiful, crisp fall days filled with warmth and laughter and only added to the celebration.

When I arrived, we met for lunch with her eldest son and daughter-in-law. Later that afternoon, we wandered down memory lane, flipping through old photographs of my great-grandparents, my grandmother in her youth, and Auntie Marie’s young family. In the evening, we played Bingo and Rummy Tiles, and I was struck by how her zest for life continues to shine.

She looks decades younger than 90—or as the socks she cheekily pinned to her back proclaimed, she’s “18 with 72 years of experience.” Residents stopped her countless times to wish her a happy birthday. Her picture scrolled across hallway monitors—not only in honor of her milestone birthday but also because she’s on the Welcoming Committee, of course!

The following day, we had a lesson in using Uber as we made our way out for an adventure. As we walked through the Muttart Conservatory gardens, she reminisced and shared stories, we admired the beautiful flowers and basked in the moment. Auntie Marie radiates joy—she always has. She’s the embodiment of light in our family—a spark of sunshine wrapped in kindness and humor. When asked her secret to youth, she laughed and said it wasn’t fancy creams, she’d never used any of those. Her secret, she told me, is keeping busy. And she does keep busy—but it’s more than that. It’s the kind of busy she keeps. Her activity is fueled by meaning, connection, and joy.

That word—joy—has been sitting with me ever since. We talk so much about “being happy,” but happiness feels different. Happiness is what happens when life gives us something good. Joy, though—that comes from within. It’s steady, sustaining, deeper somehow. Happiness reacts; joy radiates. Auntie Marie radiates. From the twinkle in her eyes to the purple highlights in her hair (which she did herself, naturally), she glows. She looks for joy, she chooses it, and she finds it again and again. She cultivates it. And in doing so, she glimmers from within—from her vibrant health to the twinkle in her eye and the purple streaks in her hair (which she proudly shared she did herself).

As I sat with her, I realized how much I want that—joy not as a fleeting feeling, but as a way of life. I want to wake up each morning with a sense of fullness, not because everything’s perfect, but because I’m connected to something deeper. Being with Auntie Marie nourished my soul. It reminded me that joy isn’t accidental; it’s intentional. It’s a daily practice, a way of being.

I left feeling renewed. Being with her inspired my own journey towards joy. I want to live like Auntie Marie—with joy as a lifestyle, not a fad diet.

So, here’s to living like Auntie Marie—finding joy in the ordinary, laughing often, making it a point to spend time with those you love, and living as if each year is just another layer of experience added to a life well-loved! May you seize the day and abundantly harvest joy!

Questions for Reflection: 

When was the last time you experienced pure joy? What made that moment feel different from simple happiness? How does joy show up in your body—your face, your energy, your presence? How do you currently cultivate joy in your daily life—and how might you create more space for it? What external circumstances tend to spark happiness for you, and how might you anchor those feelings more internally? Who in your life embodies joy the way Auntie Marie does? What have they taught you about living fully? How does your definition of “busyness” compare to Auntie Marie’s? Is your activity life-giving or draining? How do you distinguish between moments when you’re reacting to happiness versus resting in joy? In what ways could you reframe your routines or responsibilities to find deeper meaning and joy in them? What might your life look like if joy were your default state, rather than something you chase? How can you bring more intentional joy to others the way Auntie Marie does—with presence, kindness, and playfulness? Who in your life models joy the way Auntie Marie does? What about them inspires you? How can you intentionally build more moments of meaning and connection into your everyday life? What would it look like if you lived as if joy were your default setting?

Quote(s) I’ve Been Pondering:

Book I’ve Been Reading: 

Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence

By Rick Hanson, Ph.D. 

My Key Takeaways and Reflections (so far…):

Let me be clear—I’m not interested in toxic positivity. I’m not talking about plastering on a smile or pretending everything is fine when it’s not. What I am interested in is exploring the brain’s incredible wiring and plasticity—how we might gently rewire some of those old pathways to better support ourselves in today’s world.

Our brains are wired with a negativity bias, a feature that once ensured our survival. Thousands of years ago, the person who remembered where the danger was—the predator’s den, the poisonous berries—was more likely to stay alive. That bias helped our ancestors survive. But today, the “threats” look very different: uncertainty, change, information overload, burnout. And yet, our brains still react as though a tiger is chasing us.

We live in a time that demands flexibility, adaptability, and emotional resilience. The world is changing faster than ever before. So, I’ve been asking myself: what can we rewire to keep ourselves not only alive, but vibrant? How do we stop sinking into despair or unnecessary conflict—responses that may have once served us, but now hold us back?

For me, it keeps coming back to energy. Joy, I’m realizing, is a renewable energy source. It fuels our adaptability, creativity, and capacity for change. Change takes energy—lots of it – and we have a choice in how and where and why we use our energy. And if we aren’t doing the things that fill our tanks, it’s easy to slip into exhaustion, overwhelm, and burnout. So lately, I’ve been wondering: how do we rewire our brains for joy? How do we “hardwire happiness”?

And by joy, I don’t mean fleeting pleasure or the next shiny thing that briefly distracts us. I mean the kind of deep, sustaining joy that builds resilience and confidence—a quiet, inner current that keeps us steady when life gets turbulent.

I’ve started thinking of joy not as the cherry on top of a decadent sundae—something extra we could probably do without—but as the broccoli of emotional nutrition and well-being. Essential. Strengthening. Life-giving. What if joy isn’t indulgence, but sustenance?

To explore this, I picked up Rick Hanson’s bookHardwiring Happiness to learn more about how to invite calm, contentment, and confidence into daily life. In the introduction, Hanson writes that the book is “about one simple thing: the hidden power of everyday positive experiences to change your brain—and therefore your life—for the better… to turn good moments into a great brain, full of confidence, ease, comfort, self-worth, and feeling cared about.”

That resonates deeply for me. I want to grow the inner strengths needed for well-being, not just coping, but thriving, and success—to meet my essential needs for safety, satisfaction, and connection, and to create joy that’s independent of external conditions.

This isn’t about masking pain or avoiding discomfort. It’s not about quickly reframing hardship to make it more palatable. Instead, it’s about cultivating a foundation strong enough to hold all of it—the joy and the grief, the satisfaction and the sorrow. It’s about building an internal well of sustenance so that when the hard moments come (and they will), I don’t become rigid or fragile, but remain elastic, grounded, and alive.

Hanson offers a simple framework for creating more positivity and happiness—aptly summarized as HEAL:

H – Have a positive experience.
Pause to notice moments of goodness, however small—a kind gesture, sunlight on your face, the sound of laughter.

E – Enrich it.
Linger in the moment. Let it expand. Feel it fully in your body.

A – Absorb it.
Allow the feeling to sink in—let your brain register it. This is where rewiring begins.

L – Link positive and negative material.
Hold both at once—the difficult and the good—so that over time, the positive begins to soothe, balance, and even replace the negative.

I love this as both a practice and a metaphor: small, intentional moments of joy as nourishment for the nervous system. Joy, like broccoli, may not always be flashy like that red cherry on top—but it might just be what keeps us truly alive and thriving. And so, I’ve picked up this book to learn a little more about rewiring my brain for more joy!

What Amazon has to Say:

With New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Hanson’s four steps, you can counterbalance your brain’s negativity bias and learn to hardwire happiness in only a few minutes each day. 

Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of being appreciated? Because your brain evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences and slowly from good ones, but you can change this.
 
Life isn’t easy, and having a brain wired to take in the bad and ignore the good makes us worried, irritated, and stressed, instead of confident, secure, and happy. But each day is filled with opportunities to build inner strengths and Dr. Rick Hanson, an acclaimed clinical psychologist, shows what you can do to override the brain’s default pessimism.
 
Hardwiring Happiness lays out a simple method that uses the hidden power of everyday experiences to build new neural structures full of happiness, love, confidence, and peace. You’ll learn to see through the lies your brain tells you. Dr. Hanson’s four steps build strengths into your brain to make contentment and a powerful sense of resilience the new normal. In just minutes a day, you can transform your brain into a refuge and power center of calm and happiness.

Podcast Connected to My Ponderings and Wanderings:

I’m excited to share with you a new podcast! I was recently introduced to the podcast, Hidden Brain, by my friend, Mary Beth, and I am loving the contents!!! 

Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world.  

I believe that we are the authors of our stories, the narrators of our past, present, and future. How we narrate the past determines how we will narrate the future. If we want a different future, we need to make peace with the past, take from it the meaning we want, fire the old narrator and hire a new one to tell the story of our past in a way that empowers us to write the future we want to create. This podcast spoke to me! I hope you enjoy!!!

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You can sign up to receive my Three Thoughts for Thursday post as an email on the third Thursday of every month by clicking here.  If you’ve missed any of my Three Thoughts, you can find them all on my blog.  If you enjoyed this post, take a look at September’s Three Thoughts. You may also be interested in reading my four-part Lessons of the Run series –Endurance, Resilience, Rest, and Grit. Take a look at my latest post, “YOU are the MISSING Piece!” and stay tuned for an update to this piece, along with a recent and new 5^th Lesson of the Run – Humility and Adaptability!If you are interested or know someone who may be interested, I also offer leadership and emotional intelligence coaching and workshops. You can find more information on my website, or you can use this link to set up a free 30-minute introduction to coaching session.

As I mentioned, the stroke I had in February 2018 was a pivotal event and valuable turning point in my life; you can read more in my commemorative post. Please join me in celebrating these milestones, turning points, and calls to “winter,” by taking time to celebrate your own milestones and by fully embracing the opportunities in front of you, the value in the little things, and the beauty that surrounds you in this wonderful, messy life. I will forever be grateful for my stroke and the path of integrity I found in its wake.

Over the course of the last two years, I’ve hosted a few local, in-person events here in the Seattle area, like Savor the Sweetness and the Serenity Retreat. The Serenity Retreat was another success! This relaxing and delightful even took place again June 14, 2025; learn more! Savor the Sweetness took place again September 20, 2025, and was also divine! I’m excited to play more in these spaces of creating opportunities for connection and reflection If you are interested in such local events, please contact me with any questions, or to join the invite list for future events!.

I have the privilege of hosting the Emotional Intelligence Special Interest Group for ICFLA.  We  kicked off our 2025 explorations and learning journey on February 25th with guest Dr. J.D. Pincus of AgileBrain, who walked us through The LA Wildfires through the Lens of Emotional Needs: Coaching in Times of Loss.   On Tuesday, June 24^th, we both revisited and explored emotional intelligence in coaching through our topic, Emotional Intelligence Foundations for Coaching and Workplace Impact, with guest Maribel Hines, MBA, SPHR, CPLP. Maribel offered her insights, wisdom, and perspective through her in-house leadership and coaching and EQ practitioner lens. It was a great session as we translated theory and emotional intelligence into action and impact! Stay tuned for more information on the August 26th session with Dr. Joan Flora on From Reactivity to Resilience: Coaching to Soften Reactivity and Strengthen Resilience and register today! Our final session for the year will be on Tuesday, October 28^th with guest speaker, Nicole Venner, who will be creating space to explore, discuss, and practice ways of holding space for Emotional Intelligence in Threshold Spaces

I have also joined forces with James Garrett at BrainByDesign, where I have had the distinct privilege of working with colleagues, Paula Miles and Sandra Clifton, to support aspiring female leaders in the workshop series, The Brain Science Advantage for Women Leaders. This 8-week course takes a deep dive into the brain science of habits, productivity, fear and happiness, and includes 8 live sessions with James, Paula, Sandra and me where we dive even deeper into related issues specifically relevant to women. Check it out and join us as we begin a new journey in September! Also check out the latest work at BrainByDesign – The Confidence Challenge and The Confident Finisher Program – and leverage neuroscience to overcome the roadblocks in your brain to achieve your most important goals!

If you are interested in joining and co-creating these learning communities, please use the links above to learn more about ICFLA’s Emotional Intelligence Special Interest Group, BrainByDesign, and the Women’s Events. I hope you will come along for the journey!

I’m always looking for new inspiration, new books to read, and new podcasts to listen to, so please send your suggestions my way or comment on this post to offer some new recommendations! As always, thank you for your continued support and readership! Stay strong, stay brave, stay true to you!

Wishing you a season of broccoli J, of harvesting bountiful joy, gratitude, and contentment from the seeds you have planted; you reap what you sow, and you see what you look for ~ seek goodness, wonder, and delight! Thank you for being a part of my journey!