I picked up my girlfriend’s mom from the airport last night, and then we all sat around and had dinner. Doing that made me reflect a little bit.

I don’t spend much time with my mother, nor do I even know what habits I acquired from her. Sitting there watching my girlfriend and her mother together, though, made me realize from where a lot of my girlfriend’s habits come.

For example, she has a habit of eating lemons. You know, she’ll squeeze some lemon juice over her vegetables, then eat the lemon from the rind. So as we’re having dinner last night I sat there watching the two of them do this, and it was so interesting to see from where that habit comes.

After dinner I decided to take Daphne for a walk to give my girlfriend and her mother a chance to bond. My girlfriend asks me every day about whether Daphne has eaten and about when I fed her. It’s the same thing every day. When I thought about this, I realized that we get so many habits from our parents.

I haven’t spent much time with my parents as an adult at all. I’m kind of wondering now, though, which habits of mine I picked up from my mom and which ones I picked up from my dad.

It’s going to be a very fascinating couple of weeks…

Now on to today’s topic, Spend a night at home, grab a glass of wine, drink a beer – whatever you want to do – and delete numbers from your cell phone contacts list.

Your phone book is full of people that you don’t give a shit about. It’s so cluttered with people that you couldn’t care less about that by the time you are able to find someone in your contacts list, it’s too late to call them.

Maybe you’re driving from New York City to North Carolina, and you remember that you have two friends in D.C. that you want to catch up with. By the time you find their numbers in your phone book, you’re already in North Carolina!

It’s time to really clear your life – starting with your cell phone. If you clear your phone of extraneous numbers, you can start to savor the real friendships that you’ve made. You can get closer to the people that really matter.