Weekly Positive Newsletter (4/27)

In light of these challenging times, we’ve been sending out a weekly positive newsletter to our email list since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States mid-March. If you’d like to receive these weekly newsletters delivered to your inbox, please provide us with your email address. We hope you are all staying safe and healthy and that this brings you a bit of joy and happiness each week!

Photo of the Week:

Mackinac Island, one of our favorite destinations! For centuries, visitors have found this national landmark to be the ideal vacation spot. No cars. No chain hotels. Just world-famous Mackinac Island Fudge, historic Fort Mackinac, unique shopping, diverse dining and unspoiled nature.

Fun Facts about Mackinac Island:

• No motor vehicles! Motor vehicles were banned from the island at the end of the 19th century and the restriction continues today. The only modes of transportation are horses, bikes and your own feet!
• Mackinac Island was the second national park, then the land was given to Michigan in 1895. There are more than 70 miles of trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding.
• More than 500 horses are brought to the island every spring and taken off the island for winter. Many of the horses are used to pull wagons for guest taxis, maintenance supplies, island tours and business needs.
• Approximately 7,000 people live on the island during the summer months as tourist season brings many temporary workers to help at the restaurants, shops, hotels, bed and breakfasts and elsewhere. During the winter, only 400-500 islanders remain.
• There are 14 fudge shops on the island! So much fudge is made that more than 10 tons of butter is brought to the island every year!

Quote of the Week:

“The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.”

-Kobe Bryant

Story of the Week:

Rocks, Pebbles and Sand

A philosophy professor once stood up before his class with a large empty mayonnaise jar. He filled the jar to the top with large rocks and asked his students if the jar was full. His students all agreed the jar was full. He then added small pebbles to the jar and gave the jar a bit of a shake so the pebbles could disperse themselves among the larger rocks. Then he asked again, “Is the jar full now?” The students agreed that the jar was still full. The professor then poured sand into the jar to fill up all the remaining empty space. The students then agreed again that the jar was full.

In this story, the jar represents our life and the rocks, pebbles, and sand are the things that fill up our life. The rocks represent the most important projects and things we have going on, such as spending time with our family and maintaining proper health. This means that if the pebbles and the sand were lost, the jar would still be full, and our life would still have meaning.

The pebbles represent the things in our life that matter, but that we might live without. The pebbles are certainly things that give our life meaning (such as our job, house, hobbies and friendships) but they are not critical for us to have a meaningful life. These things often come and go and are not permanent or essential to our overall well-being.

Finally, the sand represents the remaining filler things in our life, and material possessions. This could be small things such as watching television, browsing through our favorite social media site, or running errands. These things don’t mean much to our life as a whole.

Moral of the story: The metaphor here is that if we start with putting the sand into the jar, we will not have room for rocks or pebbles. This holds true with the things we let into our life. If we spend all of our time on the small and insignificant things, we might run out of room for the things that are actually important.

Chuckle of the Week:

Quarantine has turned us into dogs. We roam the house all day looking for food. We are told “no” if we get too close to strangers, and we get really excited about car rides.