In the spirit of Thanksgiving I’d love to share with you the benefits and power of two simple words. THANK YOU.
They are two words that have the power to transform our health, happiness, athletic performance and success. Research shows that grateful people are happier and more likely to maintain good friendships. A state of gratitude, according to research by the Institute of HeartMath, also improves the heart’s rhythmic functioning, which helps us to reduce stress, think more clearly under pressure and heal physically. It’s actually physiologically impossible to be stressed and thankful at the same time. When you are grateful you flood your body and brain with emotions and endorphins that uplift and energize you rather than the stress hormones that drain you.
Gratitude and appreciation are also essential for a healthy work environment. In fact, the number one reason why people leave their jobs is because they don’t feel appreciated. A simple thank you and a show of appreciation can make all the difference.
Gratitude is like muscle. The more we do with it the stronger it gets. In this spirit here are 4 ways to practice Thanksgiving every day of the year.
1. Daily Thank You Walk
I wrote about this in The Energy Bus. Take a simple 10-minute walk each day and say out loud what you are thankful for. This will set you up for a positive day.
2. Meal Time Thank You’s
On Thanksgiving, or just at dinner with your friends and family, go around the table and have each person, including the kids at the little table, say what they are thankful for.
3. Gratitude Visit
Martin Seligman, Ph.D., the father of positive psychology, suggests that we write a letter expressing our gratitude to someone. Then we visit this person and read them the letter. His research shows that people who do this are measurably happier and less depressed a month later.
4. Thank You at Work
Doug Conant, the CEO of Campbell Soup, has written over 16,000 thank you notes to his employees and energized the company in the process. Energize and engage your co-workers and team by letting them know you are grateful for them and their work. And don’t forget to say thank you to your clients and customers too.
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for YOU.
Did you know that January 21 is National Hug Day? I love hugs—both giving and receiving them.
What is any better than a hug from a child or grandchild? My husband and I went to a movie last week with all of our in-town family, and three-year-old Eden sat on my lap for most of the evening. Near the end of the movie, she put her head on my shoulder. And then I felt her arms slide around my neck in a big bear hug. I felt so loved.
Hugs can be used in a variety of ways. There have been many occasions when someone I love has received a scary health diagnosis or has lost a loved one, and I haven’t known what to say. I’ve found that sometimes a tight hug says it all.
I’ve given hugs during times of joy. I remember when a dear author friend won an unexpected award—one that isn’t usually given to authors of children’s books. At the end of the event, we flung our arms around each other in a giant celebration hug that was accompanied with squeals of excitement.
As a mom, I’ve given many hugs during times of fear, often during the middle of the night when one of my sons awoke from a nightmare. Hugs can provide security.
Hugs are often a way to say “thank you” to someone who has blessed you, when mere words don’t seem enough.
Hugs can say, “I’m sorry,” or “I’ve missed you.” They can reflect sadness when you know it will be awhile before you see a loved one again. Watching those hugs from military families as their loved ones leave for deployment always makes me cry.
Hugs can also say, “You’re welcome here.” Macie Bailey was the official hugger at my church. Nobody came through the doors of Trinity Baptist without receiving a hug from that precious elderly lady. It was sometimes comical to see the expressions when Mrs. Macie wrapped her arms around unsuspecting first-time visitors, but they always left with smiles.
And some of the best hugs ever are the ones from heaven when we’re going through difficult times, and then it seems like God just reaches down and wraps His arms of comfort around us.
I’ve been blessed to be the recipient of many hugs, and it makes me sad when I think about folks who don’t get hugs very often. Of course, you don’t ever want to make anyone uncomfortable when dispensing them, but they can provide love, emotional healing, compassion, and joy. And they’re free!
Stop and think about it: How long has it been since your elderly neighbor had a hug? Can you imagine how long it’s been since a homeless person or someone in prison received a hug?
National Hug Day would be a great time for us to be extensions of God’s hands (and His loving arms) to someone who needs to feel love or compassion today. And that’s my challenge for all of us: Who do you know who could use a hug today?
I’ve been a gardener for years. I grow vegetables, have a few fruit dwarf fruit trees and putter around with some flowers. It relaxes me, gives me pleasure and feeds both my belly and my spirit.
When I think of myself as a gardener, I don’t think myself an expert or even particularly experienced. Instead, I think of the Japanese term kaizen, which means continuous improvement.
The literal translation of kaizen is “change for the better,” and it is cited in business circles in Japan as well as being used a principle for personal growth. The implication that this type of growth and change is ongoing and perpetual is deeply appealing to me both in the garden and in the rest of my life.
Past a certain age, opportunities to learn new skills feel fewer and farther between. In my garden life, I seek out ways to experience a beginner’s mindset, learning a new skill and getting the opportunity to improve slowly, incrementally but continuously every day.
This year, I’ve stepped up my flower game. Morning glory seeds went into the soil at various points around the house. A climbing mandevilla is winding its way up a hand-painted trellis. And a parade of patio pots hold all my flowering experiments in an ever-shifting array of bloom, dead-heading, water management and—as they grow—relocation.
In my way, I feel I am continuously improving not just my garden but my positive outlook. Kaizen doesn’t mean that we need to be perfect—not to put too fine a point on it, but if we were perfect, then how could we possibly continue to improve? But what it does capture is the goal of positive living, the aim to continue to seek out and strive toward more peace, more love, more joy and more success—however you define that.
What can you approach in your life with this mindset? It could be an entirely new skill, like learning a foreign language or it could be something you’ve been doing for years but are ready to embrace with renewed commitment to continuous, steady, imperfect, satisfying improvement. Even old pastimes becomes new again when you infuse them with this uplifting, forward-looking view.
There are so many memories from childhood that slip away as the years pass. But some that have stuck with me are my Halloween costumes. The sassy power I felt in a bandana and boots when I dressed as a cowgirl. The imaginative pleasure of being Yoda, posing for a photo next to my sister, Oscar the Grouch. And possibly my favorite—the frilly dress I wore with a ghoulish mask the year I went as a Gremlin bride.
Actors and other theater folks often talk about how integral costumes are to the process of becoming a character, inhabiting a role. Halloween costumes, especially for children, are less laden, perhaps, but no less of an invitation to visit another world, another life, for awhile.
“I love costumes,” the actor Alessandro Nivolo is quoted as saying, “I love getting dressed up because it helps my imagination make the leap to believe that I am who I say I am.”
This quote makes me think of something I’ve heard at most Halloween parties I’ve attended as an adult. Someone always comes in regular clothing, saying, “I’m dressed as a grown-up/parent/professional/regular person.”
The comment is a joke meant to deflect their failure to come up with a clever costume idea. But isn’t it also accurate? Don’t we all dress up every day in a costume of sorts? Outside of Halloween season, our costumes typically reflect the identity we want to project into the world—the confidence we hope to imbue, how we hope others will perceive us. At this time of year, we might enjoy trying on a completely different identity—an animal, a fantastical creature, a scary beast—just because it’s fun to take a break from everyday life.
But regardless of what costumes we wear, Nivolo’s words can guide us toward a positive view of what people see when they look at us.
Who do you say you are? With the right costume, your imagination can help you make the leap to believe in that person.
I was lucky enough to be on a Florida beach earlier this year, and one evening, I managed to catch the sunset from the shoreline. It was beautiful—I watched the clouds take on pastel purples and creamy oranges. It was peaceful—the lapping waves and some quiet conversation were the only sounds. And at the moment the sun dipped below the watery horizon, it became inspiring, as the handful of people gathered on the beach broke into spontaneous applause.
It was such a simple gesture, clapping our hands together like that. But tears sprang to my eyes at the surge of happy gratitude I felt connecting the group, family members and strangers alike, all facing westward and celebrating the colorful end of another day of our lives.
The writer Sharon Rene calls the sunset “nature’s farewell kiss for the night.” There is sadness in farewells, of course, but part of the joy of experiencing a sunset is the faith we share in the idea that our parting is temporary. All we need to do is turn around to see sunrise approaching, just hours away.
I reflected that in applauding the sunset, we were praising an occurrence that had nothing whatsoever to do with any human being. The Earth turned. The sun stayed still. Nothing about the form of the day was in our control. Nor was it different from any other, scientifically speaking.
But of course, that day was utterly unique, as was every day before it and every day afterwards. Each day might last the same number of hours, but each day is filled by each of us in different ways. Some of that daily content is up to us—what we ate, what work we completed, what fun we had, how we made a difference to someone else—and some is not. But no day is like any other, and neither is any single sunset.
At the end of each day since that warm Florida sunset, I’ve tried to conjure some version of that feeling of applauding the sunset. After all, the sun sets every day, without fail. So why can’t I be as steadfast in my commitment to looking back over the past 24 hours with gratitude, celebration and positivity?
I grew up in a family that believed strongly in the power of the thank-you note. Not only was it considered a necessity of a well-mannered life, I was taught that thank-you notes are acts of completion. A gift is not fully received until the giver has been thanked. An experience is not fully shared until gratitude is expressed to those who made it possible.
It turns out, my family was really onto something. Recent research published in the journal Psychological Science, found that people who receive thank-you notes felt notably happy. In fact, the word “ecstatic” was often checked on the questionnaire study participants filled out after receiving a thank-you note.
This could not be less surprising to those of us who know that expressing gratitude has emotional and even physical health benefits.
But here’s what surprised me about this study—the senders of the thank-you notes predicted that the receivers would score a “3” on the questionnaire’s happiness index. In fact, those who received notes scored between 4 and 5.
The researchers dub their finding “undervaluing gratitude,” and it suggests people feel that thanking someone for a gift, a visit or a kindness is a meaningless chore rather than a profound way to impact someone’s feelings of worth and appreciation.
If thank-you notes intimidate you, don’t fret. A short note—hand-written or emailed—impact receivers deeply if it expresses warmth and genuine gratitude. In fact, the researchers suggested a different name for the task when they were instructing participants what to write. They said, “write a gratitude letter.” The participants did, taking an average of five minutes to finish the job.
If you rethought thank-you notes as “gratitude letters,” would you write more of them? If you knew they were likely to materially affect the happiness of the person on the receiving end of your note, would you sit down and get writing?
And perhaps most important of all, what do you suppose that experience, regularly practiced, might do to your own happiness?
I can’t end this post, dear reader, without thanking you for reading and for joining me on the positive path we are trying each day to walk together.
When I was very young, a figure representing Santa Claus held sway at the top of our Christmas tree. Fitting over the tree’s top like a cone, this Santa had a flowing white beard, but his countenance was more dignified than merry. Instead of a cheerful red suit, he wore a robe of pinkish brown with a pointed hood.
“That is not Santa Claus,” I announced to my mother one year, pointing to the top of our tree.
“That Santa was on my tree when I was a little girl and on Gran’s childhood tree before that,” she said. “It’s traditional. We love it.” So much for my rebellion.
More than 70 years have passed since I was a boy. And tradition still holds its own. The solemn Santa continues to reign in his honored spot atop Varner family Christmas trees.
Yet even as I respect it as a treasured family keepsake, I secretly harbor my old suspicions: Who did this robed figure think he was, passing himself off as Santa Claus? I did, that is, until one spring day while on a cruise to the Middle East.
Our ship docked in southern Turkey and I took the opportunity, guidebook in hand, to wander the ancient land. Strolling in the garden of a beautiful 11th-century Byzantine church, I stopped in surprise.
Before me was a life-size statue of a dignified man with a flowing beard, garbed in a hooded robe with a peaked top. Statues of a little boy and girl stood beside him.
He reminded me immediately of our Varner family Santa. But what was this statue? My guidebook enlightened me. I was in St. Nicholas Church and the statue before me was of one Saint Nicholas, who “became the patron saint of children to whom he brings Christmas presents.”
Back home in Manhattan, I did a bit of historical digging. I learned that Saint Nicholas was a fourth-century bishop of Myra, which is now in Turkey, and although few verifiable facts exist about his life, legends abound.
Saint Nicholas was said to have performed miracles (including riding out a terrible storm at sea in his hat), shown great courage in the face of religious persecution, and done good deeds.
Over the ensuing centuries he became one of the most admired of all saints, with churches named for him in Asia, Europe and eventually America.
Nicholas was the patron saint of Russia and the subject of many a medieval play; artists loved to depict him too. His popularity grew even more when in 1087 Italian traders brought what they claimed were his bones to Bari, in southern Italy, and the city became crowded with pilgrims.
Was it a myth that he gave gifts to children? I can only say that some legends become greater than their source—but are nonetheless founded on genuine acts of generosity and good will.
As the decades rolled on, it was inevitable that Nicholas should come to America. He arrived with the Dutch settlers who founded a city they called New Amsterdam. They called him “Sinter-Klass”—Santa Claus—and honored him on his feast day, December 6.
By now he was wearing a bishop’s robe and riding on a donkey, just as he had in the Netherlands, bearing gifts for well-behaved children. When the English took over in 1664 and renamed the city New York, they went back to calling him Saint Nicholas.
In 1809, Washington Irving published Knickerbocker’s History of New York, in which Santa was described as an old man in dark robes on a flying horse. In an 1821 poem called “The Children’s Friend” the horse was supplanted by a reindeer.
But the changes that appealed to me most were wrought by a professor at General Theological Seminary, Clement Moore, who in 1823 dashed off a Christmas poem for his children. A houseguest sent it to a newspaper and when printed it became an overnight sensation.
A Visit From St. Nicholas—“’Twas the night before Christmas … ”—portrayed the Saint Nick I envisioned and was drawn to. Round of belly and full of merriment, his “twinkling eyes” and “cheeks like roses” looked anything but somber.
His sleigh was pulled not by a single reindeer but by eight, who waited patiently chimney-side while the “jolly old elf” made his remarkable descent.
Moore had switched Santa’s appearance from December 6th to the night of the 24th, but it was clear the gift-bearing interloper was still Saint Nicholas. In the 1870s political cartoonist Thomas Nast illustrated his idea of Santa Claus for the pages of the popular magazine Harper’s Weekly —Santa, lolling on a snow-capped chimney smoking a long-stemmed pipe. Nast established Santa’s home at the North Pole and gave him elves to do his manufacturing. As the turn of the century approached, young Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to the New York Sun to ask if there really was a Santa Claus, and the editors answered with a resounding “yes” in an editorial that is still reprinted in Christmas Eve newspapers around the country.
I’ll always be fond of the Santa who is round and red-suited, full of fun and plenty of ho-ho-ho. But now I’m aware of a new dimension to that rollicking holiday figure. At last I feel friendly toward the monk-like Santa at the top of our family tree, and this Christmas I’ll look at the old codger with new and appreciative eyes. What as a child I mistook for dourness was really the saintly piety of his Christian origins showing through. We may have given Saint Nicholas a secular makeover, dressed him up in a bright red suit and transformed his simple kindness into roistering jollity. Yet the gifts he brings down the chimney to good children still echo God’s gift to us of his only son.
What could be making that racket? It sounded as if someone was banging on a drum outside my kitchen door.
Tat a tat tat!
I stepped outside into a brisk spring morning, my gaze following the sharp noise to a decaying 50-foot maple behind our yard. About half way up the tree perched a huge pileated woodpecker, black and white stripes down his scrawny neck, and a bright red crest on top. This was not a bird I saw hanging around every day. This bird stood out.
More than because of his (or her?) appearance, however, the bird stood out because he (let’s just say) was working so industriously. His beak hammered away at the tree trunk, dust and chips flying.
He had already carved a perfect round entrance hole and was diving inside, excavating a cavity for the nest in the dead wood. He worked diligently for hours, and then he was at it again the next day, and the next.
And, as I caught a glimpse of him out the kitchen window, I couldn’t help but feel a bit humbled by his determination, compared to the devotion I put into some of my efforts.
Sometimes I try to do something difficult, only to end up feeling like I’m hitting my head against a brick wall–or an old dead tree.
How often, then, do I quit? If only I would keep pecking away, I would more likely find success. Anything worth doing is worth putting forth my best effort. Especially my relationship with God. It doesn’t honor him to whisk through my day, say a few rushed prayers, and thank Him for His loving care while I’m flitting off to do something else.
Today, I’m taking time to slow down, focus more intently and sit with the Lord, giving him my full attention.
Even though it’s difficult sometimes to understand His will for me, to keep making the right choices when facing things that are difficult, to keep praising when times are tough, I know that the only way through it all is through Him.
All it took was a hard-working woodpecker to show me.
One of my favorite verses of the Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Powerful words, aren’t they? They remind me of how important it is to give children a firm foundation. Show me a successful individual and I’ll show you someone who had real positive influences in his or her life. I don’t care what you do for a living—if you do it well I’m sure there was someone cheering you on or showing the way. A mentor. I’ve had that push in my life, going back as far as I can remember. Here’s how mentors can make a difference. Here’s what they did for me.
Start dreaming.
The first push outside my own home came at the Boys Club in Mount Vernon, New York. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. My parents couldn’t always be home when I was done with school. They were too busy working. My mother worked in beauty salons. My father was a preacher. He had a couple of churches—one in Virginia, the other in New York. In addition to that, he always had at least two full-time jobs.
From the time I was six, the Boys Club was my whole world. I learned how to play ball there and how to focus and set my mind on a goal. I learned about consequences and the difference between right and wrong. At the heart of the place was a force of nature named Billy Thomas. He made each of us feel like we were something special.
I was so impressed with him that I started to imitate him. I would walk like Billy and try to shoot a foul shot like Billy. I would try to sit like him and treat others with respect like he did. I even practiced signing my name like Billy. There was a real flourish to his handwriting and I used to copy it so much I can still see it in the way I sign my own name today.
One of Billy’s great innovations was to hang college pennants from the walls of the club’s main hall—one for each school his “kids” went on to attend. The deal was, when you graduated from high school and went away to college, you had to send Billy a pennant, and he’d put it up proudly on the wall for the rest of us to see. Boston University, Syracuse, Vanderbilt, Marquette. Schools I’d never even heard of. I used to look at these names and think, Man, anything is possible!
Gus Williams, a great ballplayer from my neighborhood, was a couple years ahead of me. He went out to USC on a basketball scholarship and I can still remember standing out in that hallway, looking up at his USC pennant, thinking, If Gus can make it, then I can make it too. I’d never been anywhere—didn’t even know where California was—but if a guy from Mount Vernon could get a scholarship to a great school, why couldn’t I?
Get to work.
On Third Street in Mount Vernon there was a barber shop called the Modernistic, run by a man named Jack Coleman. I started working there at the age of 11 or 12 because I wanted to make some money. Jack Coleman took me on as a kindness to my mother, I’m sure, but I thought it was the best job in the world. I was Mr. Coleman’s clean-up guy, but the real money came in tips from customers. They’d step out of Mr. Coleman’s chair and I’d be on them with a whisk broom, brushing off their collar, saying, “Man, you look good. Is there anything I can do for you?” There were rewards all day long, especially if you were respectful and solicitous.
I also got to see how hard Mr. Coleman worked to make his business run. He wasn’t just the head barber. He was like the Modernistic’s master of ceremonies, presiding over a wonderfully eccentric parade of souls. He was a strong individual and true to his word. The shop used to close at six-thirty so the barbers could get home to their families. I’ll never forget what he said once when someone walked in there at six-thirty-five. “Am I late?” he’d asked. “No, you’re early. You’re first,” Mr. Coleman said. “You’re the first one up tomorrow morning!”
See a whole new world.
For high school I got a modest scholarship to a prep school called Oakland Academy in upstate New York. There were only about six of us inner-city kids—kids who might be labeled “troubled youth.” Truth was, we weren’t troubled so much as we were caught between school and the streets. I never knew how my mother managed it, scraping by to meet the tuition balance. Years later I was shown the old accounts ledger from Oakland, and there next to her name were the oddest numbers: sixteen dollars, thirty-seven dollars, one hundred nine dollars. I looked at those figures and saw my mother, breaking her back to lift me up, one small payment at a time.
At Oakland I had an English teacher named Mr. Underwood. He always had us start the day by reading The New York Times. In the beginning I’d just thumb through the sports pages, but over time I started to read some of the other sections. That opened up a whole world to me. I started caring about what was going on outside my own small protected environment. Vietnam was winding down, Watergate was ramping up, people were struggling to make ends meet—and I was soaking it all in through the morning paper.
Look for guidance.
I ended up staying close to home when it came time for college. I went to Fordham University in the Bronx. At first I thought I wanted to be a doctor, then a lawyer…then maybe a journalist. Midway through my junior year I was asked to leave Fordham for a while until I figured out what I wanted to do—which is a nice way of saying I was on academic probation. But before I left I took this public-speaking class. I’d heard it would be an easy B.
I don’t even remember the name of the old guy who taught that class. I just remember his legs were always wrapped in Ace bandages that would come unraveled. He might have looked scattered, but his mind wasn’t. What he really loved was Shakespeare. One day he asked me to do a scene from Hamlet. I was terrified. I didn’t think I could do it, but he must have seen something in me that I didn’t see in myself. At the end I was ready to race out of that classroom as fast as I could. I promised I’d never to do something like that again.
But that summer I was a counselor at camp and I performed on stage with my kids. We did skits, and I started to really like being onstage. Maybe this was something I could do. After a performance a man came up to me and said, “Have you ever thought about being an actor?”
“Well, you know,” I said, playing it cool, “took a class in college. Played Hamlet.”
Believe in yourself.
My second go-round at Fordham I switched to the school’s midtown campus where they had a real drama program, and I became passionate about acting. Bob Stone, my English teacher, was involved in the theater program and knew his stuff. He’d been on Broadway with stars like Paul Robeson and Jose Ferrer and had accomplished a lot. I told him I was serious about becoming an actor and he encouraged me. More than that, he believed in me. After I appeared in a student production of Othello he wrote a letter of recommendation for me to grad school. What he basically said was, “If you don’t have the talent to nurture this young man, then don’t accept him.” I must’ve read that letter a hundred times. Each time I thought, Wow! If he thinks I’m that good then I’m going to have to live up to those words. He put a fire under me. For years I kept that letter in my pocket—still have it. Whenever things became tough, I read it. There were times I wondered if I’d ever catch my first break, but Bob’s words kept me going. I kept telling myself, It’ll all work out; something big is coming. Yes, I worked hard, I made some sacrifices until I finally made it. Yes, you could say I had some luck.
But I also had tremendous help along the way. That was a huge blessing from God. Behind every great success there’s someone and often more than one person. A parent, teacher, coach, role model. It starts somewhere. As the Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” There’s no reason it can’t start with you.
Having spent my business career in Cincinnati—and being a fifth-generation Buckeye—I have a natural interest in Ohio history. The other day I picked up an article entitled “The Real Johnny Appleseed” and got the surprise of my life.
Like most people, I had accepted the story purveyed by Walt Disney and poets such as Vachel Lindsay, picturing Johnny as a wandering frontiersman who scattered apple seeds from Ohio to California and did an occasional good deed for pioneers heading West. Johnny seemed mostly a romantic myth, like Paul Bunyan or Mike Fink.
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Not so. The real Johnny Appleseed was a businessman—a good one. His life is rich in lessons for businesspeople who want to succeed by combining know-how with ideals. At times Johnny even mixed business with an earnest appeal to his customers to remember the importance of God in their lives.
I, John Chapman, (by occupation a gatherer and planter of apple seeds)—that is how he described himself in 1828, when he was selling a town lot in the center of Mount Vernon, Ohio.
He was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, on September 26, 1774, and left home in 1797 at the age of 23, heading west in search of land and opportunity. Eyewitnesses described him as standing about five feet nine inches tall, with a stocky, vigorous frame.
John Chapman adapted well to the lonely, dangerous life of the western wilderness along the Ohio border, exploring the rivers and creeks in dugout canoes.
He planted his first apple trees in western Pennsylvania, not because of some attachment to that particular fruit, but because it was the quickest and easiest way to prove that he was cultivating land on which he had staked a claim.
When the frontier moved into Ohio, he moved with it, and at first followed the same pattern, planting trees on land that he hoped to farm. But at some point in those early years, Chapman realized that apple trees could be made into a business that would serve a vital need and suit his own skills as a frontiersman.
Today we have forgotten the importance of the apple to pioneer farmers. It was one of the few year-round foods. Apples were buried in late autumn before the ground froze, and dug out every week or two during the winter and spring. They were sliced and dried to be used in pies and cakes, side dishes and sauces.
Apple butter could be kept for months without spoiling, and was a necessity in every pioneer kitchen. Even more important was cider, which was a money-maker, with guaranteed sales to the nation’s growing cities.
For the pioneer, the problem was where to find decent apple trees.
The apple is a strange plant. It is not native to North America. It does not reproduce true from seed. Instead, almost every seed produces a new variety of apple, often inferior to the one from which it came. Apple trees can be improved only by grafting and through other skilled forms of nursery care.
There was no room for apple trees in the crowded wagons in which most families moved west. But John Chapman saw that if he preceded the frontier by a year or two, planting seeds and starting nurseries at strategic points, the farmers would have trees ready for grafting and cultivating.
From the beginning, Chapman was a well-organized, extremely hardworking businessman. He sold his trees to arriving settlers for fippenny bit each, about six-and-a-half cents. This was not a bad price at a time when land was selling for two dollars an acre.
Working alone, he transported hundreds of thousands of apple seeds he had collected from cider presses in western Pennsylvania. Traveling along the rivers in a canoe, he usually ended his 200- or 300-mile journey lugging the seeds on his back through the forest that covered almost every foot of Ohio.
The woods swarmed with wolves, bears and wildcats. Often Chapman met Indians in the forest. He soon realized he had nothing to fear from them as long as they were not on the warpath. He won their respect, and they taught him how to survive in the woods when food ran short—the wilderness traveler’s biggest worry.
Although he never married, John Chapman had a strong sense of home and family. He persuaded his father and stepmother to move to Ohio with their 10 children and made their home his base of operations.
During the War of 1812 Ohio was invaded by English troops and Indians from Canada. John Chapman volunteered to serve as a scout, prowling the forest in search of war parties.
Once he was spotted and pursued for miles by 17 Indians. He escaped by plunging into Lake Erie and breathing through a reed. Again and again he played Paul Revere, warning settlements of oncoming raids in time for farm families to flee to the safety of nearby forts.
When peace was restored, John Chapman resumed expanding his chain of nurseries. Eventually he supplied seedlings to 100,000 square miles of farmland.
In 1819 a Frenchman who visited Ohio remarked that “under every tree were large apples, so thick that at every step you must tread upon them, while the boughs above are breaking down with their overladen weight.”
Chapman’s nurseries were a forerunner of the chain store. It was all the more remarkable in an era with no decent roads and only primitive communications—there were just a few scattered post offices. Chapman’s business depended on his reputation for honesty and a quality product.
Today, running a company with factories around the United States and Canada, I find myself emphasizing these basic ideas that Chapman pioneered so many years ago.
The war’s bloodshed made John Chapman a religious man. He became a follower of the Swedish Christian theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Chapman began to carry Swedenborg’s books and would read from them to farm families he visited. He called it news from heaven.
Hospitality was a strong tradition on the frontier. Some people would send their youngsters to bed hungry rather than deny a visitor a meal. Yet Chapman refused to accept any food until he saw that the children had been fed first.
Sixteen-year-old David Hunter of Green Township, Ohio, never forgot an encounter with Chapman in the early 1820s. His parents had died, leaving him with the responsibility of raising eight brothers and sisters. The young man poured out his woes to Chapman. “Have you planted any apple trees yet?” he asked.
Hunter shook his head. “I don’t have the money.”
“Take your wagon tomorrow and go down to my nursery at the big bend of the Rocky Fork. Tell my brother-in-law Bill Broom you have an order from me for sixty trees.”
“I can’t pay—”
“You’ll pay me when you can. This year, next year.”
David Hunter went home filled with new hope. The Hunter orchards flourished, the family prospered.
Chapman operated his business on trust. A handshake and a promise to pay were good enough for him. He collected most of his debts in a reasonable length of time, enabling him to keep expanding his nurseries.
His method was an early version of the installment plan, made popular in Ohio about 100 years later for the sale of pianos from the company founded by a music teacher and devout Presbyterian, Dwight Hamilton Baldwin.
Recently I negotiated a contract with a huge Japanese company. As we signed the documents our lawyers had prepared, the CEO remarked: “I suppose these legal forms are necessary, but in business the fundamental thing is trust.” I thought of John Chapman and nodded in agreement.
As he grew older, Chapman gradually became indifferent to making money. He earned enough to support himself. The rest he was inclined to give away.
Once he gave $50 to a stranded family, which enabled them to buy 100 acres of land. Often he would “accidentally” allow five dollars to fall out of his pocket, letting his hosts find it like manna from heaven after he was gone.
John Chapman extended his sense of caring to animals. On the long trip west, horses often broke down. The pioneers usually had no alternative but to turn them into the woods, where they eventually starved to death.
Chapman regularly rounded up such horses and fed them through the winter months. In the spring he would find new homes for them, giving them away to anyone who would promise them decent care.
In his later years, Chapman often invited the sons of the pioneers to join him in a forest camp, where they learned to share his sense of harmony with nature. They lost their fear of howling wolves and screeching owls in the night.
The youngsters also got used to John Chapman’s simple diet, which was largely potatoes, cornmeal, forest nuts and berries. Like Henry Thoreau at Walden Pond and John Muir, the creator of Yosemite and other national parks, Chapman liked to stress how little we really need to stay healthy and happy.
As he neared his 71st birthday, Chapman heard that one of his nurseries on the St. Joseph River had been damaged by wandering cattle. He set out to repair the fences, ignoring cold, snowy March weather.
He reached the cabin of William Worth, near Fort Wayne, Indiana, exhausted and sick, and died of pneumonia two days later on March 18.
A few weeks after, apple blossoms whitened on the millions of trees born from John Chapman’s nurseries. It was almost inevitable that he became a legend. Even before his death, people called him Johnny Appleseed. But businessman John Chapman deserves to be remembered for more than his apple trees. His enterprising spirit, his devotion to God, his reverence for nature, and his generosity are spiritual seeds that a modern businessman can plant. Who knows what remarkable things may grow from them?
Take a moment to absorb this quote by the Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Tagore said, “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
This idea is ripe to contemplate during the holiday season, when we think about brightening the world around us by giving and receiving gifts, gathering together with loved ones—and reflecting on how we can be of service to our communities.
If you’ve ever volunteered at a food pantry or shelter, you know that direct service impacts both the giver and the receiver. You might have even thought about it as a “feel-good” activity to donate money or collect items that are needed following a natural disaster or community challenge.
But if we read Tagore carefully, we discover an even deeper feeling around serving others.
We discover joy.
Identifying a need that you are able to meet, and then meeting it, is more than satisfying, more than helpful, more than fun. It’s the stuff that joy is made of.
And if life is both joy and service as Tagore outlines, we have opportunities to access this joyful wellspring every single day—especially during the winter holidays.
When we reach out to a friend who seems lonely during this time of family gatherings, we are serving them by showing we care. When we prepare a thoughtful gift for a neighbor or family member, we are serving them by showing we see them clearly. When we participate in a community service project, we serve by sharing from our time, energy, and inspiration.
So many ways to serve—and such joy to be found in each and every one.
Why is it so difficult to make friends these days? Busy lives, digital distractions, lingering pandemic isolation—so much gets in the way of lasting friendship. Yet friends matter more than ever. Last year, the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory about America’s epidemic of loneliness. Calling isolation a “profound threat to our health and well-being,” he urged Americans to reconnect with loved ones.
Jesus called his disciples friends. “The greatest love you can show is to give your life for your friends,” he said. Perhaps the book of Proverbs says it best: “A friend loves at all times.”
Amy Weatherly and Jess Johnston know what it takes to make friends against the odds. The two writers met online and bonded over shared interests (including a passion for queso), forging a friendship that has survived hectic schedules, two long-distance moves and a global pandemic.
In their new book, Here for It, Amy and Jess share their wisdom about making, keeping and deepening friendships. They draw on their own relationship and the experiences of 1.3 million followers in their popular Facebook community, “Sister, I Am With You,” a forum for all things friendship.
Guideposts asked Amy and Jess to recommend four ways our readers can overcome problems and strengthen friendships in their own lives. Here’s what they told us:
1. Be flexible, forgiving…and honest.
Jess: Not everyone has the same capacity for friendship. And people’s capacity changes throughout life. Kids make friends easily because they have tons of free time. Grown-ups busy with work, kids and errands? Not so much.
Forgive friends when life gets in the way. Be honest when your capacity gets squeezed. But also look for friends who share your emotional needs and abilities. If you’re a mom with small kids, it’s a good bet another mom will not only get you intuitively but have the same friendship expectations—and amount to give—as you.
Amy: Jess and I met in an online writing group. We had a lot in common in ways that made it obvious our capacity for friendship was the same. We both had small kids. We’d both just moved. We both needed to build our confidence as writers.
The first time we met in person, Jess ordered a big hamburger and fries and made no apologies about enjoying it. Sometimes women make a show of nibbling on a salad. Not Jess—or me. I love burgers too.
Somehow we got to talking about queso, the Tex-Mex melted cheese dip.
“You like queso?” I said.
“Love it,” said Jess.
“With American cheese?”
“Of course!”
Maybe being grounded in God let us not obsess over appearing perfect. We quickly shared details about our lives.
And that helped us know that we had the same capacity for friendship. We still do!
2. Be a good listener.
Jess: Do you feel nervous meeting new people? Ever wonder what to say to strangers?
Try listening. When you let someone else take the lead in a conversation, a burden lifts. Remember that the person you’re talking to was created by God and is loved by God. What a privilege to talk to someone like that and learn about their life!
When in doubt, ask questions. Expressing interest in the everyday details of another person’s life goes a long way. People love to be heard. Your interest signals that you believe someone matters.
Remember when Amy and I first met in person? During that dinner, Amy asked our waitress how she was doing and complimented her work. By the end of the meal, we were all talking and laughing. I was amazed at how Amy’s genuine interest in someone she’d just met turned a stranger into a friend.
Amy: Talking to someone new, I look for things in common. Not so I can jump in and share about myself, but so I can ask better questions. Let’s say I learn someone’s a teacher. I have kids in school. I’ll share a small detail about one of my kids’ classes, then say, “How are things in your class?”
Asking questions works especially well with a quieter person. If you’re one of those quiet people yourself, listening first gives you more material to respond to.
I want to go back to what Jess said about our waitress. I asked her questions, but I also paid her compliments. Jess did the same thing for me in our writing group. One of the first things she said was, “I really like the way you write.” That felt so good!
Jess: A good friend says: “I’m here for you when you fall apart.” A really good friend means it.
When people fall apart, they say things they regret. They’re full of drama, and they focus way too much on themselves. A good friend is there for it all. Because remember: One day you’ll fall apart too.
When my kids were little—that all-consuming toddler phase when parents feel especially alone—a line in a sermon one Sunday gave me an idea. “If something in your life is lacking,” the pastor said, “plant seeds of generosity in that area.”
I was falling apart as a parent and way too busy. Who had time to be generous? I decided to try anyway.
My husband and I started inviting other young couples over for dinner. Our house got crazy with all those kids, but everyone had fun. And guess what? Those other parents were all falling apart and feeling lonely too!
A seed of generosity to people who need one can blossom into friendships that bless you too.
Amy: I’m the kind of person who makes friends easily but finds friendships hard to keep. I thought there was something wrong with me. Did I skip some essential life class on friendship?
Gradually, I realized that no one is born great at friendship. Each friendship is its own life class. You have to figure it out and do the work. Which means hanging in there when people fall apart or have less to give or seem less invested. Maybe what you interpret as lack of interest is just awkwardness—or lack of time.
Remember that God is your first and best friend. God loves you and never gives up on you. And let’s face it. None of us is as good a friend to God as he is to us. He loves us anyway.
With God as your foundation, you can handle it when friends fall apart. Or when they are too busy or drift away. Remain open. Stay generous. Be forgiving. Pray.
4. Remember that everyone sees things differently.
Jess: No one sees 20/20 when it comes to friendship. We all have our own quirks, tastes and stories. We all have our own brokenness. We have wounds that no one can see (maybe not even ourselves), and we take them into every relationship.
Amy and I met right before the pandemic. During the first months of our friendship, we were excited to meet a fellow writer. Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction.
Then, in early 2020, the world changed. There we were, both of us recent arrivals in the places we lived, trapped with small kids in the house, wondering if things would ever go back to normal.
The only way for our friendship to survive was to remember that, though our lives are similar, we are different people with different backgrounds who react to stress in different ways.
We fell back on the friendship skills we’ve already discussed. Lots of questions: “What’s happening where you are?” “How are you handling it?” “How much venting can you tolerate?”
Patient listening. Lower expectations during a crisis. Total honesty. No pretending we had things figured out. Our friendship survived intact, maybe even stronger.
Amy: The biblical word for what we’re talking about is grace. And maybe grace is the ultimate foundation of all successful friendships.
Grace is the foundation of God’s relationship with us. When it comes to God, I’m pretty sure any of us is a terrible friend. We ignore him much of the time. We disregard his good advice. We prioritize ourselves and give God the emotional leftovers.
God not only never gives up on us but also does everything in his power to rescue us from our worst selves. He puts up with our faithlessness and patiently brings out our best.
The key to finding and making friends turns out to be pretty simple. God shows us the way.
Listen. Ask questions. Express interest in everyone. Compliment people’s achievements. Be patient and understanding. Don’t walk away when things get hard. Be honest about your own struggles, and don’t pretend you’re perfect. Offer grace.
We hope that you find and sustain those treasured friendships that are one of God’s greatest gifts.
