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Life Is Huge!
The Immense Power of Little, Everyday Moments
Here are a few messages from the book:
- When you notice THE PINK IN THE RUG Syndrome – laugh. It's all too human to fret over the 1 percent of a situation that bothers us and overlook the 99 percent that's fantastic. Jeffers illustrates this tendency with a story about lamenting to her friend Donna how she would focus on one little thing that was wrong instead of focusing on all that was wonderful. Her friend Donna understood. She had ordered a custom-made rug for her living room. When the rug arrived after many months, Donna discovered that the purple background she'd requested was not purple at all, but pink. Even though the rug was beautiful and it harmonized with her (also beautiful) living room, all she could see from that moment on was THE PINK IN THE RUG.
"No matter how hard she tries to blind her eyes to the PINK and focus on everything else that is perfect, the PINK looms before her," writes Jeffers, adding that she and Donna had a good chuckle over the ridiculousness of the situation. "What has helped me greatly is to laugh at this silly syndrome that so clearly symbolizes my need to control everything around me. When I am upset by something in my life, more and more I am able to recognize it as just another example of THE PINK IN THE RUG Syndrome – and I begin to laugh."
- Say "YES!" to adversity. YES is more than a word. It's a state of mind that says, "No matter what happens in my life, I'll make something wonderful out of it." In Life Is Huge!, Jeffers reveals how she said YES to breast cancer. When she was in the hospital after her mastectomy, she decided that rather than seeing herself as a victim, she was going to "find the blessing." And she did. Her diagnosis led to her marriage (when it brought out the inner nurturer in the man she was dating), helped her connect with her true sexuality (which has nothing to do with physical attributes), inspired her to let go of old anger and helped her appreciate the simple pleasures of everyday life.
"I know it's very easy to say YES when things go right for us," she writes. "But the trick is saying YES when things seem to be going badly. We can do this only when we realize there are blessings inherent in all things and our task is to find these blessings. I promise you that this attitude of YES makes all the difference between a life filled with misery and scarcity and a life filled with joy and abundance. I am forever thankful that I learned I had a choice, which we all do."