Valentine’s Day is the hol­i­day of love. Well, at least accord­ing to Hall­mark. The stores are sat­u­rated in pink and red, the cal­en­dar has that pesky lit­tle fine print next to the four­teenth day of Feb­ru­ary, and the pres­sure is huge to com­mem­o­rate the big day with your sweet­heart. That often means roses, choco­late, a din­ner out…zzzzzz…oh, sorry, I drifted off there for a sec­ond. Valentine’s Day may be one of those oblig­a­tory hol­i­days, but it’s never a bad thing to show some­one how much you care, and it needn’t be bor­ing. Your honey deserves more than ho-hum! And the fun ideas that fol­low won’t break the bank, either.

1) Fill your sweetheart’s car or office or closet with bal­loons. Lots and lots of balloons.

2) Some­where between a mas­sage and a tickle is what I like to call “back skat­ing.” It’s like hav­ing your fin­gers ice skate across the back of your part­ner. Take turns draw­ing sim­ple pic­tures or spelling out words and see if they can guess the message.

3) Write a love mes­sage in soap on the bath­room mir­ror. Dry erase mark­ers also work beau­ti­fully (and wipe off eas­ily) on glass. Don’t for­get about adding lots of hearts. Or a funny mustache.

4) Get a box of those cheap kid­die valen­tines and hide them every­where: in the car, under the pil­low, in the lunch bag. Or make one grand ges­ture by fil­ing the sink or a briefcase!

5) Make break­fast in bed. But make it fun! Fash­ion a face out of the fried eggs and bacon. Or make heart-shaped pan­cakes, topped with sprin­kles or candy hearts. (And don’t for­get to use the good china.)

6) If you’re in the car together, kiss at every stop­light, or any­time you see a red sports car.

7) Slow dance to “your song” in the liv­ing room. Clothes are optional

8 ) Meet your honey for lunch with Happy Meals in hand.

9) If you live in a colder cli­mate, write a love note in the snow. You could use snow­balls, your foot­prints, or a spray bot­tle filled with col­ored water. Hooray for food coloring!

10) Replace the Chee­rios with candy con­ver­sa­tion hearts.

11) Get your sweet­heart a gift inspired by their favorite child­hood toy. It could be a t-shirt, cuf­flinks, a poster, or the toy itself, pur­chased on ebay.

12) Get a roll of cookie dough, but instead of bak­ing a dozen cook­ies, use it to make one BIG one!

13) Rent and watch a clas­sic love story from child­hood. Some­thing like Princess Bride, Beauty and the Beast, Lady & The Tramp, or one of my favorites, Karate Kid 2. (Fun trivia: Glory of Love by Peter Cetera was the first song Kim and I danced to as hus­band and wife.)

14) Make a pizza together — includ­ing the dough! (There’s some­thing roman­tic about being cov­ered in flour.) Arrange pep­per­oni in the shape of a heart and have a pic­nic in your liv­ing room.

What is your favorite FUN and THRIFTY way to say “I love you?”

by Jason Kotecki

One of the biggest bar­ri­ers to suc­cess — in any­thing — is lack of focus.

That we might be unfo­cused is also a hard thing to admit about ourselves.

Because being focused seems too lim­it­ing — too small. We’re cre­ated for great­ness, right?

“I want to get debt-free AND lose weight AND train for a half-marathon AND watch less television!”

“I have an awe­some prod­uct that can help any­one — I want the whole world to know about it!”

Wor­thy goals, to be sure. But when we spread our resources too thin, we end up falling short every­where. If you’re hav­ing trou­ble gain­ing trac­tion in some area of your life, per­haps it’s because you’re lack­ing focus.

A few years ago, a speak­ing col­league shared that he’d been strug­gling to get his busi­ness to grow. Try as he might, he could never get any of his four profit cen­ters to exceed any­thing but mea­ger growth. Then he took a dif­fer­ent tack. He focused all of his atten­tion on just one of the rev­enue streams, vir­tu­ally ignor­ing the other ones. The area he focused on grew like a magic beanstalk. Even more amaz­ingly, the other three areas grew as well!

He explained that if you drive one thing to the moon, the rest will come along for the ride.

A per­son who has focused on get­ting more dis­ci­plined with her per­sonal finances and mar­veled at how she sud­denly starts eat­ing bet­ter has seen this phe­nom­e­non first hand.

My speak­ing friend inspired me to do the same. At the time, our busi­ness had a lot of dif­fer­ent things going on and we had a new baby join our fam­ily. We were going in what seemed like a mil­lion dif­fer­ent direc­tions. We had a retail store, an online store, a mem­ber­ship pro­gram and a speak­ing busi­ness. My wife and I elim­i­nated a few things entirely and decided to focus on speak­ing, since that was our most prof­itable endeavor at the time. Much to our delight, our speak­ing busi­ness shot through the roof and the remain­ing rev­enue streams improved as well. Mean­while, we decreased our expenses, were less stressed, and our life became a whole lot simpler.

For me, it became a pow­er­ful les­son in focus that I’ve never forgotten.

Focus isn’t easy, but the more focused you are, the eas­ier every­thing else becomes.

by Jason Kotecki

I’ve been doing a lot of giv­ing lately. ’Tis the sea­son, right? But I’m not talk­ing about gift cards to Out­back Steak­house or the “I saw this sweater and thought of you” type of giv­ing. You see, just about two weeks ago, my wife Kim gave birth to our sec­ond child, a baby boy named Ben. (Wel­come, Ben!) Most of my time has been donated to help with dia­pers, feed­ings, cook­ing, clean­ing, and absorb­ing the atten­tion of a needy three-year-old big sis­ter. I give as much as I can and take sleep when I can get it.

Any­body who has kids knows this rou­tine. The first month (or more) can be hell. You give and give and give, while hold­ing up any gas-induced smile as real proof that this lit­tle being is truly appre­cia­tive of your unceas­ing effort. (It’s not, but it’s imper­a­tive to pre­tend that it is.)

Before Kim and I had our first child, many peo­ple warned us that we’d even­tu­ally suc­cumb to Adul­ti­tis once we became par­ents. They assured us that kids were the undis­puted CAUSE of Adul­ti­tis. We weren’t so sure, so we kept weekly jour­nals through­out our entire first year of par­ent­hood in order to stay mind­ful of our bat­tle with the “Big A.” The process was fas­ci­nat­ing, and even­tu­ally turned into a book that just so hap­pened to come into the world at about the same time as lit­tle Ben. (Wel­come, book!) When the boxes of them arrived from the printer, I opened one and landed on an entry I wrote six months into my first par­ent­ing foray. Here it is in its entirety: * * * *

My best friend’s sis­ter just had a baby. We’ve been hear­ing a lot of sto­ries about the new par­ents, includ­ing the stan­dard late nights and issues with feed­ing and pump­ing. It seems like all babies have some sort of dilemma to deal with at the begin­ning, some­thing that usu­ally overly con­cerns the par­ents, espe­cially new ones. The “issue” varies from kid to kid, but the fact that there usu­ally IS one is normal.

Any­way, hear­ing their sto­ries took me back to our first days. I couldn’t believe how much I’d already for­got­ten about that first month. How hard it was. And nerve-wracking. And tir­ing. Believe me, a six-month-old is no walk in the park, but I’d take it over a six-day-old any time (as far as the work part is concerned).

I sup­pose the for­get­ful­ness is God’s lit­tle way of keep­ing the human race going. It’s hard to imag­ine any­one putting them­selves though the trauma of labor and the first few weeks again if it weren’t for the mem­ory fad­ing a bit. Hap­pily, the good mem­o­ries remain, and the unpleas­ant ones lessen in their intensity.

But the real point I want to make, espe­cially if you are a new parent-to-be or a freshly minted mom or dad going through this period we call boot camp, is this: There is a light at the end of the tun­nel. It gets bet­ter. And eas­ier. I know, it’s a small con­so­la­tion if you’re smack dab in the mid­dle of it, but it’s true.

The work is hard, but the rewards are great. I already miss the early days when Lucy was that small – sweet and help­less and awe­somely new.

I miss those days enough that I’m begin­ning to con­sider the prospect of going through it again. Eventually.

* * * * I intended for that jour­nal entry to be a ray of hope to other moms and dads. Lit­tle did I know I was also writ­ing to myself.

Re-reading it has helped me to remem­ber that although giv­ing is always part of the gig, it will not always be this tax­ing. And it reminded me to pay atten­tion to the lit­tle gifts I get along the way: Feed­ing my new son under the glow of the Christ­mas tree, the smell of his lit­tle fuzzy head, and the irre­sistible grunts and squeaks that only new­borns can make. Indeed, giv­ing always rewards the giver in unex­pected and boun­ti­ful ways.

That’s how giv­ing works.

by Jason Kotecki

“Would you like fries with that?”

This sim­ple yet bril­liant ques­tion helped McDonald’s make billions.

It even­tu­ally mor­phed into, “Would you like to super-size that?” which became a sym­bol of our culture’s nasty habit of overconsumption.

Indeed, we are con­di­tioned to want more stuff. Big­ger homes. Bet­ter appli­ances. Faster cars. Fancier vaca­tions. I’m skep­ti­cal whether we are bet­ter off because of it.

But there’s one ques­tion we should ask our­selves more often. It has the ben­e­fit of not only leav­ing our waist­lines intact and our homes less clut­tered, but would decrease our over­all stress lev­els as well:

“Would you like fun with that?”

I’ve never encoun­tered a study alert­ing us to the neg­a­tive effects of too much fun, and indeed, the world is aching for silli­ness. But Adul­ti­tis has us con­di­tioned to believe that fun is merely a sliver of the over­crowded pie chart that is life bal­ance. You work, you run errands, you do chores, you chauf­feur your kids to soc­cer prac­tice. If there’s enough time left at the end of the week, then maybe, just maybe, you are allowed to have a lit­tle bit of fun. And once in a while, the cal­en­dar gives you per­mis­sion to do things like dress up in silly cos­tumes or blow stuff up, but only if the date hap­pens to be accom­pa­nied by fine print that says some­thing like “Hal­loween” or “Inde­pen­dence Day.”

But wouldn’t work be bet­ter if it came with a side of fun? What about errands? Or chores? Or those every­day road trips with the family?

In case you’re scor­ing at home: yes, yes, yes, and um, yes.

What would your life look like if you always made it a habit to ask, “Would you like fun with that?”

It might inspire you to make some ugly cook­ies to share with your coworkers.

It might inspire you tell a funny joke to the check­out per­son at the gro­cery store.

It might inspire you to make crazy bets with your spouse to see who has to do laun­dry this week.

It might inspire you to insti­gate reg­u­lar Chi­nese fire drills with your family.

When we take the time to ask this sim­ple ques­tion, and when we take the lit­tle effort it requires to answer said ques­tion with a big, fat, unapolo­getic “Hells yeah!”, we end up cre­at­ing what I like to call “scenes.” And even though we may spend most of our days fret­ting over seri­ous things like the econ­omy and health care and the war on ter­ror, when you get to the end of your life, and have gath­ered your friends and fam­ily around your death bed to share your last days and moments, those big, seri­ous things never seem to make the con­ver­sa­tion. You know what does? The lit­tle things. The scenes we cre­ated with one another.

It’s the scenes that mat­ter most in the end.

So do your­self a favor. Every time you’re faced with some seem­ingly mun­dane or oth­er­wise unex­cit­ing use of your time, ask your­self this sim­ple question:

“Would you like fun with that?”

And don’t for­get to super-size it.

by Jason Kotecki

My favorite child­hood Hal­loween cos­tume may have been the Spi­der­man one. Granted, it was nowhere near as cool as the ver­sions kids have the priv­i­lege of wear­ing today, what with the form-fitting span­dex, built-in mus­cles and mask that cov­ers the whole head. (In my dreams!)

Mine was made of the loose-flowing, ill-fitting cheap plas­tic that resem­bled Spiderman’s paja­mas way more than proper crime-fighting gear. The mask, too, was plas­tic, and only cov­ered half of my head, held there by a flimsy rub­ber band. And the mus­cles were my own: 100% nat­ural and unde­tectable to the naked eye.

But I’m not bitter.

The weird thing is that even though my cos­tume was severely lack­ing in authen­tic­ity, it never really mat­tered. As soon as I slipped that mask over my face, I was no longer a skinny shy kid named Jason. I was Spi­der­man. Brave, heroic, and thanks to all the plas­tic, uncom­fort­ably sweaty.

Although Adul­ti­tis still tries to med­dle with and ruin Hal­loween — hav­ing to wear jack­ets over cos­tumes, any­one? — it makes me happy to know that dress­ing up in a cos­tume is not the exclu­sive domain of childhood.

Peo­ple of all ages love dress­ing up for Halloween.

But why?

It’s fun, of course. But it also allows us to be some­one (or some­thing) else for a lit­tle bit.

For a sin­gle night you can be a super­hero, a wiz­ard, a bounty hunter, or the undead…and tomor­row you can go back to your com­fort­able life.

We’re allowed to “try on change” with­out any per­ma­nent ill-effects.

We crave the end results that come with a mas­sive change, but can become over­whelmed and dis­cour­aged by the sheer mas­sive­ness of it. Why bother with some­thing that seems impos­si­ble? And yet growth, improve­ment, and a bet­ter life can never hap­pen with­out change.

But what if you incor­po­rated this spirit of Hal­loween all year long? What if you made “try­ing on change” a reg­u­lar prac­tice? Instead of com­mit­ting to run­ning a full-blown marathon, what if you just took the stairs instead of the ele­va­tor at work?

Instead of buy­ing an expen­sive cam­era, why not bor­row a friend’s, or shoot 10 pho­tos a day with your lit­tle point-and-shoot?

Instead of quit­ting your job to fol­low your pas­sion, what if you spent a half hour a day for a month work­ing on build­ing a lit­tle side business?

Instead of throw­ing your TV out the win­dow so you can write that 500-page best­selling novel, what if you swapped a half-hour of TV watch­ing for writ­ing time?

Instead of becom­ing a hard­core min­i­mal­ist, what if you threw out or gave away one thing a day for two weeks?

Instead of elim­i­nat­ing all sugar from your diet, what if you just started with one less can of soda a day?

Instead of pledg­ing to be the best spouse that ever lived, what if, before you went to bed, you just thanked your sig­nif­i­cant other for some­thing spe­cific he or she had done that day?

The nice thing about “try­ing on” change like this is that if you don’t like it, you can go back to your com­fort­able life soon enough.

You never know, though. It might just stick, and before you know it, you’ll end up doing things that once seemed down­right superheroic.

by Jason Kotecki