As a team leader at Bouchey Financial Group I’m always trying to provide guidance to my colleagues to make their physical and mental health a priority and remind them that their lives will be much richer if we also make taking care of other people a priority. This can be accomplished by simple acts. One act is thanking the cleaning people. Another is spending time with a team member who is struggling with something outside of work. Additionally, helping those less fortunate in our community makes a big difference.

I am not a very active Catholic these days but Pope Francis was a strong role model for me in living these values. He had a way of showing kindness and care while also being very humble. Although you knew his death was close, it was extremely sad to hear the news today that he had passed. He lived a life of simplicity. He showed concern for others and took care of the environment. He had always had a sense of humor and the courage to speak his mind.

When we lose someone like Pope Francis, it is always worth asking if we are living our lives correctly. We should consider if we are adhering to the moral code we espouse. For most of us, the answer is usually, we could do much better. This week, with all the coverage of his passing and his funeral, take time to learn more about his life. Think about his challenges. Consider his successes. Each of us should do a little soul searching to see how we can better model his actions. Although I am a firm believer in capitalism, he voiced and followed a theme to live life more simply. We often make our lives very complicated and make consumption a very large part of how we live. These actions tend to offer limited long-term value and can cause us a great deal of stress.

Recently, I heard on the radio that every day for the past 18 months, Pope Francis stopped whatever he was doing at 7 pm to call a church in Gaza where 300 refugees were living. He did this to simply to see how they were doing and let them know that he was praying for them. He did this until the last night before he died. It is an amazing act for someone who was so busy to stop what he was doing and share love and compassion with these people being affected by the war.

I was reading many of Pope Francis’s quotes and I encourage you to take the time to do so but I want to leave you with the following quote to enrich your day.

“We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.”