A Useful Book

     One of my favorite things to do is to share a great book with someone who I know will really benefit from it.  Of course, Amazon makes this easier than it's ever been.  Rather than simply recommending a book to someone, I can just have it sent to them as a gift.  Tonight, I did just that.  

     I was thinking about one of my favorite business books, one that I have mentioned a couple of times to a person I know.  I realize that when someone tells me about a book, I don't always get it right away.  I figured that if I sent it to him as a gift, he'd be more likely to read it, and as a result, to get the benefit from it sooner.

     While this might be slightly off topic, it's on my mind so I'll write about it and tie it back to kindness:  One of my shortcomings (along with millions of other people), is that I get too wrapped up in professional teams that I root for.  I say "too wrapped up" because I realize, intellectually, that to allow the performance of some people, who I don't even know, to affect my mood or state of mind is completely inane.  And yet, it still happens far too often.  When my team is playing well, I feel great, and when they're not, I get frustrated and annoyed.  I've learned to manage this process to where I can keep the feeling of annoyance down to a matter of hours instead of days, but it's still pretty silly.

     One of the things that I've also realized is that when we feel bad, whether it's because of something stupid like a sports team or it's for some other reason, one of the best things to do is to focus on helping and being kind to others.  This seems to take the focus away from my own pity party and enables me to put things in perspective.  I suppose it's why being kind to others is always high on the list of actions that the happiest people all seem to do.