• Regular phone calls and frequent visits. Everyone likes to be in the loop with the people we love. If you’re too busy as an adult to make regular contact with your parents, you are too busy. Something about your life probably needs re-assessment.

• Room for your parent to think and to speak and to tell stories, you, the adult son or daughter, may well have heard a thousand times. Stories are obviously a powerful link to past and serve to re-ignite the soul. Your parents’ repeated telling of the same stories are providing a valuable service.

• Opportunities to be with your children. While a grandchild is not a commodity to be passed around, he or she is the promise of hope to a grandparent. As much contact as possible should be encouraged. Of course there are exceptions. If your parents are relatively sane and sober (when your child is present) then there is much to be gained from encouraging contact.

• Hearty celebrations of milestones. Ignoring or forgetting a parent’s birthday is the same for some as ignoring the parent. If your parents’ birthdays are something you regularly forget there’s something deeper going on with you that may need your attention.

• An honest person; one who lives with a clear conscience
• A growing person; one who learns from mistakes
• A kind person; one who is aware of the needs of others
• A loving person; one who loves without being possessive or jealous
• An educated person; one who is aware of the world and its fabulous beauty
• A forgiving person; one who initiates forgiveness even when it is not necessarily deserved
• An outgoing person; one for whom no one needs to remain a stranger
• A self-starting person; one who seizes opportunities, especially those that enhance the common good
• A reflective person; one who examines his of her life and makes necessary changes
• A well-mannered person; one who knows how to treat others, even those who can do nothing in return.

Healthy people employ healthy boundaries. They are able to see the distinction between themselves and others. They know people require space and separation as well as togetherness and connection in order to function well.

Healthy people have a sense of direction. They plan a future and watch it unfold with a sense of excitement and expectancy.

Healthy people offer others a high degree of cooperation. They can work toward declared goals both alone and with others depending on the needs or task at hand.

Healthy people are unafraid to express their thoughts while also aware that everything they think doesn’t have to be expressed.

Healthy people can lead others and follow. They are not fixated on hierarchy or titles. They want the equipped or qualified person to do a job despite rank or the lack of it.

Unhealthy people are invasive, entitled, dismissive of legitimate authority, and constantly threaten to “go to the top” if things don’t go their way. They are injustice collectors; they are easily offended and easily bruised. They hold grudges and are slow to forgive. They crave attention – positive or negative. They work hard at derailing happy and productive people.

The challenge remains: bring your healthiest self to work everyday.

On this particular day may you….

• Be unafraid, unafraid to dream great dreams for your life and to work every day at making it exceptional. World changing and exceptional people do not wake up one day and discover they are key figures in the betterment of the world. They work at it every day. They work at it for many years before it becomes a reality. They design blueprints that stretch years ahead.

• Be adventurous and embark on some new area of discovery, be it some area of personal research or on some literal journey to a new place. May you go somewhere you have heretofore been unafraid to venture. In so doing, may you find some degree of fulfillment or even of healing, healing you may have not known you needed.

• Love in ways you have not loved before. May you reach out in fresh ways to those whom you have loved for years in ways that surprise you and others. May you also find love for the stranger, the men or women whom you have previously excluded from your social circles, the “them” and “those people” – may they hear from you (and from me) in ways none of us expect.