Tag pay attention

Bread or Bead?

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Copyright: melaninaevgeniya

It’s always a good idea to read invitations carefully, as this story will emphasize!

My friend Karla received an invitation to a bridal shower. When she scanned over the invite, she read that all guests were asked to bring a bread to the event. In an effort to make sure that the bread she got was special, Karla trekked over to a bakery which sold Häsi bread, a specialty sourdough bread which is saturated with turmeric and butterfly pea flower to create a distinctive blue and yellow coloring which is both striking and delicious. Feeling quite proud of her selection, Karla made her way over to the bridal shower.

When Karla arrived at the bridal shower, she noticed that there were about 50 people there, but she didn’t see any other loaves of bread at the party. What she did notice was that there was a large tray on a table, filled with about 50 beads, some made of clear glass, some made of plastic, some made of stone. Karla asked the bride what all the beads were for, and was told that people had been asked to bring BEADS to the shower so that the bride could string them all together and make a keepsake necklace.

The best part of this completely true story is that the bride had celiac disease, and would have never asked anyone to bring bread to an event!

Paying Attention

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Guess-What-Butterflies-Made-From

If you’re like most people these days, you barely have a moment to catch your breath as you power through your day. You may be powering through meetings, working feverishly on projects, taking your kids to their activities, making dinner, etcetera, without pausing to wonder WHY you are doing all of those things. You just DO them, because you’re supposed to, right? You probably also tend to expect everything to run smoothly, which of course may topple over at any given time.

The thing is, if you never stop to wonder why those little glitches occur, you may be missing an important message. Sometimes things just line up in the oddest ways, and what you might think is a disaster is actually a wonderful opportunity to start fresh. Wonderful, magical, serendipitous things are always occurring, and if we pay attention a bit and slow our roll just a bit, we can begin to appreciate how amazing and frequent those moments are. Like a chain reaction, one small event can cause a cascade which opens many doors, changes your focus and direction so that you explore something you might never have thought to explore before, and enables you to grow as a person.

Pause for a moment, pay attention, and observe.