How to Make EVERY day Valentine’s Day

Va­len­tine’s Day. The red hearts make us feel like love and hap­pi­ness is all around. We see im­ages of cou­ples hug­ging and gaz­ing in­to each other’s eyes and we want that. We go shop­ping at beau­ti­ful­ly de­c­o­rat­ed stores and en­vi­sion mak­ing our loved one feel spe­cial and cher­ished. And, se­cret­ly, we hope our part­n­ers are think­ing and do­ing the same for us. The spir­it be­hind Va­len­tine’s Day is beau­ti­ful. Don’t we all want more of it though?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could make our loved ones feel spe­cial most days of the year? Wouldn’t it be fan­tas­tic if WE felt that our loved ones cher­ished and tru­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed US most days of the year?

How, in this busy world of ours, can we keep the love­ly spir­it of Va­len­tine’s Day alive? Au­thor CJ Ma­haney of­fers some ad­vice on this to men, but it re­lates to wo­m­en as well. He says, “To learn how to touch your wife’s heart and mind, you must study her.” He then goes on to ask a poig­nant ques­tion: “Do you know how to sur­prise and de­light your wife in the fol­low­ing ar­eas?”

cloth­ing styles and stores?
jew­el­ry?
health?
ex­er­cise?
books and mag­azines?
movies?
the arts?
sports?
food and drink?
mu­sic?
en­ter­tain­ment?
places to vis­it?
in­tel­lec­tu­al in­ter­ests?
hob­bies?
va­ca­tions/get­aways?
It’s usu­al­ly the small things that make the biggest dif­fer­ence to us. If some­one takes the time to re­al­ly know you and show you they know and ap­pre­ci­ate who you are, then hap­pi­ness and the feel­ing that we wish for each and ev­ery Va­len­tine’s Day can be felt more of­ten than just Fe­bruary 14th.

Can this phi­lo­so­phy be di­rect­ed to­ward our chil­dren too? Ab­so­lute­ly! Who doesn’t like to be loved this way? Does your child men­tion a song or artist they love? Why not find it on iTunes and se­cret­ly down­load it to their iPod. Does your hus­band love a cer­tain type of food from his her­i­tage? Why not cook that for him as a sur­prise? Does your wife love ro­mance? Sur­prise her with a beau­ti­ful ro­mance nov­el and a rose one day.

It doesn’t take much, but the re­wards of do­ing lit­tle things for our loved ones — and do­ing them OF­TEN — are im­mea­sur­able. Study your wife, hus­band or child, then use this in­for­ma­tion to bring hap­pi­ness in­to your home on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, not just on the day when some­one tells you to.