The Daily Examen

Posted on May 25, 2025 by msw blog

Follows a simple five-step format:

I. Become aware of God’s presence.
Review the events of the day, asking God to bring clarity to his presence.

II. Review the day with gratitude.
Walk through your day with God, focusing on the gifts, joys, and delights.

III. Pay attention to your emotions.
What feelings did you experience today; what is God saying through them? When today did you feel far from God? When did you feel close to God?

IV. Choose one feature from the day and pray from it.
Ask God to point you to something He finds important in your day, and pray from it.

V. Look toward tomorrow.
What feelings come up when you consider tomorrow? Seek God’s guidance.

By implementing spiritual discipline and a reflective practice like this, you can sift through the day’s events, lift up cumbersome or stressful things to God, and grow in intimacy with the Holy Spirit. When intentionally resetting after a day of active accumulation, we gain access to a meaningful finishing to our day.  

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Smart Car Rental

Posted on May 25, 2025 by msw blog

Fortunately, there are a few different ways you can protect yourself to avoid finding yourself in this situation. You can:

Carefully document every detail of the rental transaction, including the time you pick up the rental vehicle, the car’s condition and the time of return.

Take photos and videos of the car before you drive it off the lot and when you return it — along with the location of the return. Make sure they’re time-stamped.

Save all of your rental car documents and read them carefully.

Take notes of everyone that you talk to, especially if you become involved in a dispute.

Try to return the vehicle to an in-person agent when possible so you can get written confirmation of the return.

Research rental car companies to make sure they don’t have a bad reputation for customer service.

By following these steps, you’ll hopefully have no mess to untangle when you arrive home.

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Follow the two-minute rule

Posted on May 24, 2025 by msw blog

Stick with me here! I know two minutes doesn’t sound like a lot (because it isn’t!), but there are actually a lot of little things you can do around your home in about that time. Don’t believe me? Here’s a list of some of the tasks that you can do in under two minutes.

  • Swap out a cracked light switch plate (it’s just two screws!).
  • Replace a burnt-out lightbulb.
  • Use WD-40 to lubricate sticky door hinges.
  • Use a candle to lubricate sticky drawers.
  • Fill a nail hole in your drywall.
  • Add felt pads to furniture feet.
  • Fix a scratch in your wood furniture.
  • Tighten a loose knob on your cabinet.
  • Add bumpers inside cabinet doors. 

Not so bad, right? Today, your Cure assignment is to choose one of the above tasks (or a two-minute task of your own!) and complete it. My best advice here is to not worry about what’s most important in your home — choose instead a task that is easy, so you can check it off and be done.

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Road Safety

Posted on May 24, 2025 by msw blog

If someone is tailgating you, it is best not to speed up because speeding can make it harder to avoid potential road hazards. Move over one lane and let them pass instead.
🚘 If someone is threatening you with a firearm or you believe you are being followed, don’t engage and call 911 for help.
🚘 If your car stalls or runs out of gas on the road, put your hazard lights on and release the accelerator. Don’t slam on the brakes. 
🚘 It can be safer to sit in the passenger seat while waiting for help in the right shoulder lane. Position yourself as far away from traffic as possible.

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Mindful Housekeeping: Laundry

Posted on May 23, 2025 by msw blog

Folding Laundry :The repetitive nature of folding, coupled with the quiet satisfaction of seeing the tangle of clean clothes transformed into a neat pile, makes folding laundry another good choice for a meditative activity.Use your senses to enhance the experience, inhaling the scent of fresh linens and feeling the texture of the fabrics in your hands.

Positively Purging-I welcome your feedbacks in the comments and your likes and passing the real life wisdom on to others as I embark on this new venture of “positively purging“, as I know each of these pieces represents something…

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