​Habits: Be the master of your habits or they will master you.
So often we think of habits as bad things we do - and sometimes they are and we need to break ourselves of them. However, it’s good to have good habits! Setting a routine to follow can be a good habit and allow you to make progress. It’s a balancing act to set good habits, but not allow them to overtake and control you to the point they are bad (eg - good habit - not stopping until the work is done becomes a bad habit if it turns you into a workaholic.)
 I had purchased an e-scooter for my summer travels, and enjoyed it so much. Then I realized I was becoming lazy and only using the scooter instead of the regular bike. This August I set a goal of biking a certain number of kilometers each week.This was hard to do at first until it became a habit to get the bike out of the shed each day at a certain time to spend half an hour on it. Once it was routine, then it wasn’t so bad. You get out of a good habit and it becomes hard to do. On the other hand, a bad habit can be hard to break - often takes at least three weeks to prune it down successfully. Life is full of balance - and that can be hard to do sometimes. We act like a pendulum and swing from one side to the other instead of having a good balance in many areas of our lives. It’s a good challenge for me to try to better myself in my habits.

​Gossip: A tongue three inches long can ruin a man six feet tall.
How true this is. Why is it so hard to control our tongues? I know my tongue is way too quick to speak. I appreciate quiet people; they know how to guard their tongues, which means they don’t have to make amends for stuff they didn’t say! I could learn a lot from them. I’m pretty good at putting my foot in my mouth. Thankfully I have a God that forgives and gives me a new day every 24 hours to start over again and try to do better.
Another thing I’ve noticed about gossip - it’s a one-way street most of the time. We quickly talk about others on the negative side of life; why don’t we talk about others with the positive things? Just think how good it would be to be the first to tell others about how great someone was, or how nice they’d been? This past summer I had numerous people be extra generous to me in various ways. That’s the type of “gossip” I need to be spreading!

​Giving: You can’t take your money to heaven, but you can send it on ahead.
Money in heaven? I think this quote is symbolic in that money means an item of value. I know I used to feel bad that I didn’t have a lot of money to donate, to tithe. I felt I had so little to offer in comparison to many. But then someone took me aside and said, “Money isn’t the only item of value. You donate your time, your energy - that’s of as great of value as money is. Don’t be ashamed of what you can give financially; you give in different ways.” It shocked me for a bit, but made me feel better once I processed what they’d tried to get through to me. Now that I’m older I can see what they meant better. God sees the heart, not just the $ signs. Whether we give financially to missions, or go on missions or help in Sunday school, or visit the elderly in our communities - the value lies in our hearts as we lay up our treasures in heaven God’s way.
​PS - The money is leftover change from the different countries I was in. 

​Forgiveness: Is not making others happy, the best happiness?
I thought this was a very interesting quote. Does happiness and forgiveness tie together that much? I saw another quote as I was pondering what to write about this one - “very little is needed to make a happy life.” Having seen these quotes I can say that habouring bitterness would be the biggest dissent to being happy; therefore forgiveness is definitely important. You can’t have those two emotions at the same time. “Let go, and let God” is another saying that ties in to this. But forgiving is sometimes a lot easier to say than to do - especially if you have been truly wronged and perpetrator doesn’t even care. Yet, forgiveness is essential to being happy. It brings you peace of mind. Then you can reach out to do things to make others happy, which in turn, as you see their joy in what you did for them, makes you happy! Most of the times we talk about being in a hamster wheel when it seems like you just go around and around and don’t acomplish anything new. But this would be a great hamster wheel to be caught in - the wheel of forgiveness and happiness. What goes around, comes around! It’s a bit like the fall leaves. Everyone oohs over the gorgeous colours, yet that beauty is coming from dying leaves. Forgiveness takes the deadly bitterness and creates beauty out of it.

​Faithfulness: Consider the postage stamp. Its usefulness lies in the ability to stick to one thing until completed.
How is your “stick-to-it-ness”? Personalities can be so different. Some people like to do one thing, and one thing only until they are done. Then they move on to the next item/project. They faithfully commit to focus on that one thing. Others, like me, often have five projects on the go all at once. So maybe it seems like nothing is happening because I move from project to project depending on the time and ability to do what I can on each one. However, as I keep circling from one to the next, each time the circle gets smaller, and voila! Suddenly all five are done and I’ve picked up some new projects to work on.
I don’t think your style of working makes a difference as long as you are faithful in accomplishing what you purposed to do. A dog is the first picture that pops into my head when the word faithfulness is mentioned. To me the canine species has that characteristic down pat. At the school where I work, I have a student whose dog is the most faithful animal I’ve seen. She’ll walk over to school with him in the morning, and in the afternoons, she’s waiting to greet him as he leaves. She’ll allow other children to play with her, and pet her if he doesn’t come outside right away, but her focus is totally for her master. As soon as he appears, the dog is over to him. I’ve watched her interact with him and thought, “I bet God wishes I would exhibit such faithfulness to Him.” It’s a challenge I need to keep in mind!