An Ode to the Simple Things in Life: 25 things I’m Grateful for This Year

The older I get, the more I realize that a meaningful life is made up of an accumulation of the simple, yet often seemingly insignificant moments and experiences in life. Sure, the grandiose things I often pursued when I was younger were thrilling, but it is the simple things I find I cherish and give thanks for most in times of reflection. These simple things seem to be the memories that imprint my mind and heart the most. 

As today is Thanksgiving in the United States, I wanted to take a moment to reflect and give thanks, for I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I hope that after reading my list, you’re also encouraged to do the same.

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An Ode To The Simple Things In Life

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1. A hot bath or shower.
2. A soft cozy blanket
3. A fabulous cup of coffee made from freshly ground beans and topped with heavy cream
4. Music that moves my soul
5. The feel of grass on my bare feet
6. A loving lick from my dog Jigi
7. The wind blowing through my hair
8. An intimate shared with another
9. A big hug (I will take these from anyone!)
10. A kiss; hard or soft, I love them all!
11. The feeling of playing hooky
12. A love letter slid under my bedroom door
13.  A long-chained swing
14.  My dear readers and clients I am privileged to serve
15.  A glass of wine with my favorite crackers and cheese.

16. A book I get lost in
17. Breakfast in bed (I crack up when I think of my kids proudly presenting me sticky oatmeal and                    scrambled eggs with a whole lot of shells! Perfect!) 
18. Intimate love making
19. A warm smile
20. A nod of the head that says “You got this, I believe in you.”
21. Tom surprising me with a fresh pack of my favorite gum, complete with a note
22. Thank you notes from grateful people
23. The feeling of a child’s hand in mine
24. Laughing and being silly
25. The incredible circle of people in my life who say “I LOVE YOU!”

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What is it for you? What are the simple things that leave an imprint on your soul in unforgettable ways? 
Help me create an ode to the simple things by sharing them in the comments. Let’s shout them out with gratitude. Because if we don't have them, life seems to lack a bit of luster, wouldn’t you say?

“If the simple things don’t warm your heart and cause a smile, then very often the big things won’t either.”

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family from Lease On Love!

Please Remember This!

My dear readers,

We are living in a time when many of our hearts and souls cry out in frustration, fear, and despair.

This week, many of us here in the USA have experienced one of the most turbulent elections in our history.  

We seem to be battling over who can save us, our values, our finances, our families, and our dreams.

I am sad to see that relationships of all kinds are becoming strained and some are even ending. Longtime friends and lovers alike are severing their connection with each other over their strong political opinions. 

Our household is no different.

We have family members who do not agree on which candidate should have been chosen to hold the presidential seat...but here are a couple of things to consider:

No one person, in my experience, has ever saved us as individuals, or as a country.  

We create the change we desire in the world within the walls of our own home and the communities and neighborhoods we live in.

The relationships being strained and severed over politics will leave more of a mark on our lives than a person who sits in the White House for the next four years.

I know, I know… we can all get riled up over gun rights, immigration (especially if you are an immigrant yourself), human rights, the state of our economy, and health care…I get it. These are challenges that we need to address but please remember that through it all, we are more alike than different. 

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Please remember through it all, we are more alike than different. 

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I strongly encourage you to search for the places we all have in common instead of the few ways we are different.

I have learned from my years of mediation that both sides of any disagreement possess a thread of truth and contribution regardless of how impossible it seems.

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“No matter how thin you slice it, there is always another side.” -Tony Robbins

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We are all humans, we all bleed red, we all want to feel safe, have freedom, feel hope in times of pain and despair and experience deep love and connection. Remember this!

Stay away from judgment and reach for curiosity about someone’s beliefs. You will then begin to have a sense of understanding and this understanding will lead to the threads of union.

In moments of connection, we seem more the same than different. We can gain insights into a soul even if it is just for a moment. This is love in its grandest form. Reminding all of us that at the end of the day, we all share the same emotions and have the same desires for a good and happy life for ourselves and our families. 

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The destination is the same, we simply disagree on the many ways to get there.

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Pour your love around right where you are. Let is spill over regardless of what is taking place in the world. This will pave the way for all of our hopes and dreams regardless of the road we choose to arrive at our destination.

There is magic happening all over the world. Someone is falling in love, right now! A child is laughing in pure delight, right now!

I urge you to connect with others and know it is you who will calm the storms of humanity. Yes, YOU! One connection at a time. 

My promise to you is this is the way to calm your fears, give hope to your heart, and freedom to your soul.

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Love Now & Dissect Later

"Everyone is preoccupied with trying to figure out what life is all about.  By the time they figure it out, the show is over."

-Leo Buscaglia

Tom and I were sitting in at least 10 lanes of traffic filled with cars as far as you could see, both in back of us, and looking forward. Moving side to side was also not possible.  
 
We were lining up to pay our $6 toll to cross the Bay Bridge into San Francisco and realized that we were in the wrong lane to pay with cash. We needed to move one lane to the right in this sea of traffic…simple enough, right?

Tom turned on his blinker and positioned the front of the car toward the lane next to us. Instead of the cars creating a place to merge into the cash lane, the cars began to tighten up, not allowing us to merge.

As we waited for someone to please let us in, we blocked the traffic lane we occupied. Drivers behind us began to honk their horns of encouragement to move so they could continue. It was a mess; we were stuck and nobody was willing to let us in.  

Just as our anxiety began to reach full panic mode, we spotted an arm waving to us six cars ahead in our much-needed cash lane. We were immediately filled with hope and an abundance of gratitude for this precious soul who saw our predicament behind her and made a choice to help out a fellow traveler.

We sped forward as this wonderful woman allowed us to enter the cash lane in front of her. To show our appreciation for her act of kindness, we decided we would pay her toll.  

It was now our turn at the toll both. We handed the man in the booth enough money to pay for our car and the sweet woman behind us.  The man in the booth said, “Okay, no problem.” And, Tom and I pulled forward, watching with anticipation in our rear view mirror for the man in the booth to wave the women through; a confirmation that she had indeed received our gift of gratitude.

We watched as the woman reached into her purse and handed money to the man in the booth…

What?!

Tom and I look at each other stunned as we tried to make sense of what just happened.

Tom blurted out, "The booth man took our money!" I replied, “He stole our money, what do we do now?”

Tom is and always has been the voice of reason and sees the good in any given situation. It is one of the many things I love about him.  

“You know babe, we don’t know what he is going through. Maybe he is sick, maybe he has a sick wife or child…maybe we ourselves would feel justified in pocketing money every chance we had for just needing to sit in that booth everyday. We just don’t know…let it go. Stay focused on the GOOD!” he strongly encouraged.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t let it go. Not because Mr. Booth Man took our money, but because the woman would never know how much her act of kindness meant to me. I wanted to be able to acknowledge her gesture in some way, for stepping up when no one else would. 

“What can I do to acknowledge and keep this spark of human compassion and kindness alive?” I asked myself. 

My answer came to me and I grabbed my wallet, pulled out more cash, and said to Tom, “Don’t worry, keep driving. I will find you.” He stared at me in disbelief as I opened the passenger door and ran with bare feet back through traffic to the woman’s car. 

The car was older and had seen many miles but the woman inside was bright, with a beautiful smile and a look of surprise as I knocked on her car window. As she rolled the window down, I flooded her with words of emotional gratitude, as well as explained how we had tried to pay for her toll.

She tried to refuse the money by saying it was really no big deal and not necessary, however, I insisted.  

Her eyes welled up with tears, and we were both crying in a sea of traffic on the Bay Bridge as two human souls connected for just a brief precious moment in time.  

I felt peace once again inside myself as I turned and began my search for Tom in the sea of cars.

"Stay focused on the GOOD!"  I remember Tom saying in the car.

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Love now, and dissect later. Otherwise, you miss the opportunities for connection with others. 

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Where are you focusing in your own relationships right now…on the good? 

If you’re not, don’t feel bad or beat yourself…just begin to look for the good, the love, the connection that is all around you waiting for you to embrace it.

Connection with others is critical to our happiness and wellbeing.

If you are having challenges with knowing how to create deep connection with others, I encourage you to dive into our blog series that begins with Deep Intimate Committed relationships. This series will walk you through the steps for creating connection. Begin the series here. 

Now get going.Don’t miss out on creating some love and connection in your life right now. 

And remember: Love Now & Dissect Later.

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Love is the most effective connection to all things.  It has the power to enlighten, heal, unite, enrich and restore.  All we need to do is be open to it. 

-Leo Buscaglia

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Let's Connect

I will go first.

Let’s tell the truth here...sharing personal information about ourselves is difficult for most of us; even for me. I am constantly challenging myself to open up and share more of myself with you.
 
I also know that when I open up and share, it paves the way for those around me to open up and share more easily.

Have you ever noticed when someone shares; you give yourself permission to do the same? 

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The sharing of oneself is the substance necessary to create connection. It is the stuff that relationships are made of. No sharing, no connection, no relationship.

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Because I value YOU, my dear readers, I wanted to take this time to reveal a little about myself and hope that you’ll be inspired to do the same.

So here goes, here are 10 personal details about me, Staci Welch-Bartley:

1. I am the youngest of five (I have three brothers and a sister). For the most part, we are thrill seekers, and capable of creating fun out of nothing. I can be very silly and ridiculous.

2. My father died of cancer at the age of 39 when I was only 7. I discovered that relationships and our lives are very precious things. We were very poor after the death of my dad, but I didn’t know it. My mom was simply gracious, bold and elegant with a whole lot of wisdom and sparkle. Mom was my first great teacher of relationships. I miss her. Mom died in February 2016.

3. I love animals. I currently have a hound dog named Jigi, and dreamed of owning a horse as a kid. The closest I came to owning a horse was traveling the rodeo circuit one summer with my uncle who was a “bulldogger” and my two cousins. My job was to cool down the horses after a competition. Horses smell so good!

4. I love nature and being outdoors a lot! To this day, I lay in the grass or sit in a tree whenever I can.

5. I love what I do. Lease On Love is my vocation, my calling, my life’s work. I LOVE the community, my clients, as well as my team that makes all this magic happen. And I can’t forget my latest project, Samba. It is a place for people to come to create toe tingling love in their lives.

You can check it out here:

Toe Tingling Love is Available to Everyone…it takes skills, not perfection or luck.

6. I have 6 children of my own. The first one I delivered at the age of 17. I currently have 11 grandchildren and counting, 2 step-children, and many others who I’ve claimed as mine throughout the years because of our time together and special connection.

7. I have been divorced twice. Once when I was 18, and again when I was 32. How do you count the others...the significant people that I loved and who loved me? Let’s just say there were a few. I had some growing up and reinvention to do.

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There is no such thing as a failed relationship, for all of them contribute to your life.

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8. I am a bit of a health nut and eat mostly raw/vegan food and study digestive health intensely. However, because food is used to create connection, I value relationships over the food. I never allow my food choices to keep me from missing opportunities to share and connect with others.

9. I began formally studying human behavior and relationships in 1996 when I become a hypnotherapist. I have studied and lived many chapters since then. Check out my about me page for a list.

10. I have lived and witnessed a lot of life…I know what it is like to experience sexual abuse, domestic violence, grief, interracial relationships, mental health crisis, addiction, single parenting, step parenting, and thankfully learned how to create SPARKLE, JOY, and most of all LOVE again anyway…and so can YOU.

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The solution for a lack of LOVE, Is to challenge yourself and LOVE MORE!

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Okay, I know I promised just 10 facts but those who know me personally know that I’m all about more, so…

11. Tom is my everything, my toe tingling lover. I met him when I was 14 and he was 22. I carried a secret crush on him for almost 35 years. How I met him was my sister married his best friend from the 4th grade. Now they are bother-in-laws. Crazy how life plays out. Tom is also an incredible teacher and mentor of relationships and contributes much more than I can list here to this body of work and my life, our families lives. Thank you, Tom…and I love you just crazy!

It all works out in the end you know, if it has not worked out, it is not the end!

Now that you know a few personal things about me, I would be thrilled to hear from you. How are we the same? Does any of this prompt you to ask me any questions or share your experiences with me? 

If so, DO IT! Reach out to me! Share with me…for this is how we connect with each other.

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Dating After Divorce: 6 Powerful Ways To Be Successful With Online Dating

You’re all excited to meet a “someone special,” and your friends have talked you into trying online dating. It sounds like it could be amazing…all those gorgeous guys and gals you see when clicking through free profiles that entice you to create one of your own are tempting for sure!

You hear many opinions both FOR and AGAINST online dating. Like most opinions, there is a bit of truth and merit on both sides. Perhaps for better insight into how to be successful with online dating we need to begin by exploring some interesting statistics that will help us to move from opinions to a greater understanding of this online dating world. 

Last year, Tom wrote about his shock and amazement at hearing this statistic about online dating in the US. At the time, it was reported that there were 1,500 dating sites and apps in use and 40 million people in the US currently using these dating sites.

Supply for potential partners is UP and growing!

Another study was released earlier this year, this time by the esteemed Pew Research Center. The report states that, “Usage by 18- to 24-year-olds has increased nearly threefold since 2013, while usage by 55- to 64-year-olds has doubled.”

These numbers don’t even begin to tell the whole story though. What is interesting to me is another study by Pew found that only 5% of Americans who are married or in a committed relationship say they met their partner online.  

So the number of online daters is increasing, but only 5% create a committed relationship from doing so.

Why is that?

While all of these statistics are encouraging to those seeking out alternatives to meeting someone new as the numbers of daters grow, this last statistic really stuck out to me:  

This means to me that 1/3 of the people with a dating profile meet someone online, communicate through the platform’s messaging system, and then never go out on an actual date. How sad! 

Online dating is a very different way of meeting people for many of us.  When you really think about it, online dating has not been around long. The first dating site, Match.com, was started in 1995; however, online dating did not become a popular mainstream idea until 2000.

Now 16 years later, the thought of online dating for many of us, still feels strange and makes our knees shake a bit.

I remember the odd nervous feelings all too well with my own online dating experiences after divorce and wished I would have had a guide or at least someone to provide a few super tips on how to navigate and manage the on-line dating world.

More than 3 years ago within my divorce mediation practice, I could see more and more the need for continued support for clients stepping back into the dating world again after the end of their committed relationship. Support with navigating the many changes of how you go about dating, as well as the reinvention of themselves along with new skills for creating a committed relationship once again.  

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This together with my own relationship journey back to love after divorce moved and inspired me to create Samba -- just for you. 

Samba is a program with tips and strategies for dating and finding that fulfilling relationship you really desire. The best part? It also includes a community where you can get feedback and live Q&A sessions where you can get real-time support as you navigate the dating scene. Have a question about a recent date? Join Samba and post it on our forums or connect with me during live Q&A!

I’m now giving you a sneak peek at some of the super tips we share inside Samba, sure to provide you with a newfound confidence for online dating, as well as ensure that you enjoy your dating experience overall. 

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Here Are 6 Powerful Ways To Be Successful With Online Dating

1. Set Time Limits: Decide how much time you are able to devote each day or each week to reading and responding to profiles and then STICK to it. Set a timer if you have to. It’s easy to get sucked into browsing profiles if you don’t have a designated time set and then before you know it, hours will have passed and you’ll wonder how that happened. Bonus: Setting a strict time limit will force you to rely on your gut instincts while weeding through messages/profiles more quickly. This means you’ll be less likely to have the time to convince yourself that you like someone you actually don’t have anything in common with. 

2. Define Your Deal Breakers: Spend time before you dive in to come up with a short list of your personal deal breakers. Click the button below to download the worksheet we created for you to discover them. If you spot any of them in someone’s profile, no matter how nice they seem, do not engage. It would be a waste of their time and yours. 

BEGIN HERE! Download our questionnaire: Define Your Deal Breakers Before You Begin Accepting Dates.

3. Judge A Book By Its Cover: Yes, it’s okay to let your eyes take the lead here. Take a moment to review all of the photos in a person’s gallery and if you don’t feel any physical attraction, move on. There is no need to read a person’s profile if you aren’t physically attracted to them.

4. Don’t Be TOO Nice: You do not need to respond to every message you receive. In fact, it’s perfectly acceptable not to respond to an initial message if the person’s profile doesn’t do it for you.

5. Keep It Short and Sweet: Don’t spend too much time worrying about how to write the “perfect” message when you’ve found someone you want to initiate contact with. A simple one or two paragraph message is great. Tips: Include one sincere compliment, a couple of details about yourself (they don’t need your life story right off the bat) and a comment or question about their profile that shows you didn’t just copy and paste your message. 

6. Make Time to Meet: Plan on asking to meet someone after you’ve exchanged a few messages back and forth AND had a phone call or two. You’ll get a much better sense of your possible connection in person and it’s best not to waste hours of your time communicating strictly via the computer or phone.

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You may be thinking right now…gosh, these 6 tips are kind of abrupt and unemotional!

Remember the statistics we talked about earlier…the part where only 1/3 of people actually go on a date? And only 5% actually find a relationship out of the millions of people online?

And remember when I said, there is a bit of truth in every opinion?

Well here is the truth…

There is a negative side of online dating. And, I wish it were not true, but it is that there are people who will attempt to take advantage of you and your kindness, and you need to be able to screen them out and remember, you are not online to please others, you are here to find someone you deeply connect with.

And the positive side…? The positive side of online dating, is you have more access to amazing people just like you, looking for someone special, just like you.  

But you need to know, online dating won’t find love for you. That is your job. But, it will provide you easy access for meeting other singles from all around the world. Supply and opportunity will not be a problem. Knowing how to screen and set your dates up in a way that help you find love in crucial for becoming part of that 5% who are successful with creating love again in their life.

If you will practice and stick to these powerful 6 tenants, your time spent meeting others online will be productive and meaningful and will help you avoid those who have poor intentions.

Online dating can be a fantastic experience. 

And who knows, your next special someone could be just a few clicks away...

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If You Would Like More Tips And Support Like These, Then You Must Check Out SAMBA! Coming To You Soon!

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