I once heard someone ask the question, “Do you think Michael Jordan would have let comments on Twitter?” The point being that people like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant in the sports world, and investors like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in the business world, are too busy working on their own lives to concern themselves much with the opinions of others. If you have time to be upset for hours, maybe even days or longer, with what someone else is doing, or maybe even said, your life could use some more attention.
When I am in the middle of constructing my next book, which I am about 2 weeks overdue starting, I seldom have time for much else. When I am working on putting together a seminar, or what I am going to say on a television appearance, like I will be shortly, it does not bother me what Bob or Betty are doing with their lives. Why should it bother me anyway? My life has so much opportunity for growth and improvement, every second I do not spend doing that, is one more mine of gold I am not tapping. I am not so much worrying about Bob and Betty as I am not worrying about Neil. That is far more costly.
This week as we go forth into our working world, let us keep the focus where it should remain, on our world and improving our lives. It is only then that we will discover the secrets to an amazing life.
Boy what a week I have had! One of those weeks where you get to practice your character building skills. It is easy to be a positive motivating person when all is going well. It is when trouble shows up that positivity is put to the test. This week, there was both a large amount of snow followed by temperatures well below zero. For those of you who know me, these two elements alone would be enough to test my optimism resolve. Oh, but there was so much more.
On Saturday morning at 4am, when I am heading out to work the exhaust of my car was detached by driving over some snow. My mechanic is not open until Monday and so for the weekend I drove a vehicle that was loud enough to summon creatures from the underworld. Embarrassing, quite. What was worse was not being able to take it in. Alas, I did on Monday to discover it would be $653 to repair. Less than 24 hours later, my power steering decided to take a vacation somewhere warmer. Back to the mechanic and $250 later that was fixed. I was happy to have my car back. I drove to work without a concern. On the way home, however, there was another great warning light greeting me.
This, my friends, is the oil pressure light. It is not good news. Calling the mechanic as I drove, his response was, “That’s not good.” This was one bit of car knowledge I did already know. Today is Friday and the poor gent was on his way to a funeral. That means I will not be able to take my car in until Monday. This weekend, I had hope to run a few errands and just be able to transport myself from one place to another. I also work tomorrow and DJ on Sunday. These things are impossible to do without a vehicle.
As trying as this story may be, it is not the purpose of this post. In the middle of all of this chaos, I have still been able to go to work. My dear mother, bless her heart, picks me up at 4am and drops me off 30 minutes away. Keep in mind the temperature has been around zero degrees. Then she picks me up. We even had a 3 mile walk in the woods and a fun trip to the grocery store. Although the walk was a brisk one, as you can see in the photo below, it sure was some great exercise. This I am missing, as I have not been able to make it to the gym.
We go from colder than frozen, to really hot. You guessed it, I am talking about my lovely lady, Margie. This poor lady has had to put up with someone with Seasonal Affective Disorder, in the dead of winter, whose car keeps breaking down. She has done it all while making amazing warm meals to warm up my stomach and smiles and love to warm up my soul. Although we had plans to go out and enjoy each other’s company, we have had plenty of fun staying in. We watch a show on the Bahamas, which we plan on visiting next month. We also have read together and enjoyed each other.
In my life, there are people who have the ability to assist me a great deal who choose not to. Then, there are these two wonderful ladies who are super busy themselves, but give from their hearts. We often spend so much time trying to find ways to get even with those who have wronged us, or even those who have not helped us. This takes a lot of negative energy and leaves both parties drained. Can you imagine what life would be like if we only focused on getting even with those who have made our life better? We would be spreading love and appreciation to so many! I am so grateful to have so many souls that treat me so well. As I wait to decide how to proceed with my car, I will busy myself with getting even with these two wonderful ladies.
I am so excited to bring you today’s strategy for an amazing life. It will be featured in my upcoming book, but you will get a preview here today! This secret to an amazing life only takes a mere 5 minutes a day. Does that sound to good to be true? Trust me, it is not. You may be tempted to dismiss this as too easy, you should not. In fact, do this for a month. Prove to yourself that it works. When you do, I would love to hear your experience with it back here on this site.
Here is the first step. Find a five-minute period in your day that you can regularly count on. This could be right after you get out of work. If you are ambitious, it could be first thing in the morning. This can be risky as you never know what things may crop up. It is also when people are usually rushing. A great time would also be five-minutes before you go to bed at night. Pick what works for you, but make sure it is a time you can regularly count on.
Next, set a timer on your phone for 5 minutes. If you do not have a phone with a timer, anything will do. Look at the clock, whatever works for you. Here is all you have to do – for this amount of time, think of what you have to be grateful for. Another post about the power of gratitude? I hear that everywhere! Do you know why you hear that everywhere? Because it works. Gratitude is a superpower. In a world that does its best to make you feel fear, anger and depression, being able to focus on what you are grateful for, takes discipline. It also takes your life to a whole other level.
Let us look at the science behind this and why it will actually make such a profound difference in our life. We have around 60,000 thoughts a day. According to the National Science Foundation, 80% of those thoughts are negative. That is alarming in its own right, but add this fact to it and it becomes down right scary. According to Dr. Fred Luskin of Stanford University, 90% of our thoughts are repetitive! That means we are thinking of the same negative junk over and over every day. It also means that a mere 10% of our thoughts are new and focused. That is why it is imperative that we take complete control of those thoughts. Say for like 5 minutes a day. If we do that, and focus on gratitude, that will become part of our 80% that are repeated. Can you imagine if we could eventually flip the script and have 80% of our thoughts positive? Even getting that negative percentage down to 49% means that our lives will be more positive than negative. It only takes 5 minutes, but will have a compounding effect. Doing it at that same time every day will make it more of a habit and likely to succeed.
Don’t take my word, or the word of science, try this out for yourself. Do it for 30 days. Remember that our thinking is the result of years of behavior and that changing it will take a little time. If we can accomplish this in only 5 minutes a day, how powerful could that be? You have 1440 minutes in your day, 5 of those is only .004% of your day. Yet, by doing this, you can radically shift your mindset! I would love to come back to this in 30 days and hear your results.
There are many axioms that I use to help myself live an amazing life. These are the ones shared on this website, the Living the Dream with Neil Panosian podcast, as well as my books. One of my favorites, that was featured in my second book, Living the Dream, was the power of two questions. Whenever I find myself in a challenging situation, I ask myself to empowering questions. First, I ask myself, “How can I use this?” This takes the challenge from being a liability to being an asset. If you can use a challenge in some way, than it has become a gift. The other question I ask is, “What is good about this?” This question comes second because it can often be hard to see what is good initially. After finding a way to make it work for us, it can be a little easier to find something positive in it.
These questions have served me quite well over the years. They have helped me through many of life’s challenges. We are going to introduce another question that was brought to my attention that I am going to add to my repertoire. As I was posting one of my blogs on LinkedIn (feel free to follow me at the link below) one of my connections had mentioned a question they use in their life. That question is “How can I use this to serve others?” What a beautiful thing to consider! My life’s mission is to help others become the best versions of themselves. If I could find a way to use my challenges to do just that, they would cease to become challenges at all. They would then become tools to use to serve others and the greater good.
How about you? Do you have empowering questions that you ask yourself in challenging situations? How about adding the one my connection on LinkedIn brought to my attention? Actually, using all three of the questions we mentioned here will make challenges something that you use, instead of something that uses you.
In life we all have many challenges. One of mine is the weather where I live. Especially in winter. It seems the older I get, the harder it is to deal with the cold and snow. This year, I vowed to make the best of it and try to maintain a more positive outlook. For a while, mother nature seemed on board with this. The weather was unseasonably warm, and the snow was slight. My attitude seemed to remained elevated. This was good news for my family and friends. I thought to myself, “Neil, you just might do it this year!” Then, mother nature had a wicked grin.
I leave for my day job a little after 4am Monday to Saturday. This morning I woke up to over a foot of snow. As I trudged my way to where my car was parked, I saw it also was covered in snow. Upon reached my car, I discovered it was more ice than snow. Nothing starts the day off right like spending ten minutes chipping ice off your vehicle just to climb inside. Once inside, I began to defrost the windows. Once they were clear, I headed out. Trying to focus on the fact I was grateful to have a vehicle that ran. The plow that went through left a small ridge of snow in it’s path. I had to cross it to get out of the parking lot. As I did my car erupted in a chorus of sounds. None of them were very friendly. It would appear the snow had damaged some vital part of the exhaust. This happened on a Saturday. My mechanic is not open until Monday.
Driving around with a car loud enough to wake the dead is embarrassing enough, but now the temperature, which was doing just fine, is going to drop to ten degrees below zero. This makes my loud car, should it start, quite necessary. It would appear that my resolution to maintain a positive attitude is receiving quite the test. I must remember that is what the world does. I refuse to let it get the upper hand. This is not done alone. My friend CJ jokingly reminded me that some kids are trying to make their cars louder, in essence, I just gave myself a free upgrade. My friend Kurt offered his mechanic. Of course my lovely lady and her smile will keep me warm on the inside. There are my self-improvement skills I not only teach, but practice myself, that will keep me humming along.
All of this serves to remind me that tests are a part of life. They give our resolve strength. They require us to change our focus on what we do have to be grateful for in order to make it through them. It also gives us a platform to demonstrate to others, by our example, that they too can make it through their challenges. When we embrace life’s challenges and put them to work for us, we grow. When we let them get us down, we become less of who we could be. I am going to do my best to grow from this challenge and I invite you to do the same with the challenges in your life.
This may be an analogy that has been repeated all too often in self-improvement circles, but it has value in repeating. As you are given a safety talk in an airplane, they tell you to secure your oxygen mask before helping other around you. Why? You are really unable to help anyone if you are unable to breathe yourself. How many of us forget to apply this common sense knowledge to the rest of our life? It is easy to put our own mental, and often physical, health at risk for the benefits of others. Done long enough and we could have a breakdown, either a mental or physical.
Here is something else to consider. A slightly different lesson to be had in all of this. Do you know what happens when everyone puts their own masks on? You have a bunch of people breathing. That is always good. What happens if you have a plane full of people who are more concerned how Bob puts on his mask, or how Betty’s hair looks when she places the mask over her face? Suddenly, they find themselves struggling with their own breathing.
In a quick recap, here are the two lessons to be had in our airplane service talk. First lesson. If you do not take care of your own mental and physical health, you will be ill-equipped to assist anyone in theirs. Dare I say, the better your mental and physical health, the better you will be able to help others. This being said, an investment in yourself is also an investment in the well-being of those you care about. Second lesson. Focusing on others lives instead of your own, only causes pain and suffering for yourself in the long run. Make sure your life is in order before spending too much time worrying about what Bob or Betty are doing in their lives. Sense our life is one never ending journey to improve ourselves…you guessed it…don’t worry about what others are doing. Just focus on being the best version of yourself and you will have an amazing life.
I want to share with you a lesson I learned and some examples that came to my mind when I heard it. I was listening to some motivational/inspirational videos while on my way to work. This is a practice I recommend for everyone. You never know when you will either hear something new, or a reminder of something powerful you already know. This one falls into the latter category. In this particular video, the speaker referenced a quote from Jim Rohn, who I enjoy anyway. I am going to share that quote with you below.
The pain of discipline verses the pain of regret. Discipline weighs ounces, regret weighs tons. We can all grasp what that means to a certain point, but I wanted to give us a few real life examples to drive the point home. The first one that came to mind was eating pizza. Why? Mostly because I am always thinking of eating pizza. It is my favorite food to eat. If I could, I would probably have it seven days a week. Here is the thing. Eating pizza tastes good in the moment. It gives a quick boost of the ‘feel good chemicals’ in the brain. Putting off the urge to stuff your face with a delicious slice of sauce pie in favor of something slightly more healthy is not as fun. It takes…you guessed it, discipline. That’s a little painful. Say, ounces. If we are constantly giving in to the urge to eat pizza, or just unhealthy for that matter, we may feel good in the moment. Fast forward a year or so down the road. Our clothes have to be in a larger size. When we get out of the shower and look in the mirror, our hearts sink. We don’t feel as confident out in public. That is merely the outside. Inside, our arteries are clogging. Our heart is being forced to pump harder and our liver is working overtime dealing with the processed food. We can find ourselves depressed about how we look daily, or in the emergency room dealing with a heart issue. Then we would feel…regret over our choices. That ways a ton.
There will be actually two more quick examples. This can help us grasp this concept better and see where we are paying tons instead of ounces. Working out is another great example. Going to the gym is not fun for most people. It is stressful on the body, you get exhausted (although you actually gain energy on the back end) and you get sweaty and gross. (except for my lady who manages to look amazing after a workout) Taking time to go to the gym and spending the effort to put in a workout takes discipline. Especially when you really don’t feel like it. A life devoted to sloth and binge watching Netflix sounds more appealing on the surface. That takes very little discipline. You don’t have to pay those ounces. What happens as you grow older? Your bone density weakens and you are more likely to fracture something should you fall. It takes you far longer, and for more breath, to simply climb a flight of stairs. You must sit out times with your children and grandchildren, letting those memories slip away. You regret not keeping yourself in better shape. That weighs tons.
Our last example hits home for many of you after the holidays. Credit cards. They are super dangerous because they allow us, temporarily, to live beyond our means. “You mean I can get this thing even if I do not have the money yet?” is the thought many have. It can remove the pain of being disciplined and waiting until you earn enough for it. Those who like to skip the ounces required when it comes to paying your bills can find their credit card debt climbing. What starts to happen is the interest and late fees take up most of your payment with very little going to the actual amount owed. You look regretfully at the new pink Stanley mug, or whatever you bought. Suddenly, you find yourself pondering taking advantage of some of the bankruptcy lawyer commercials you see on television. As you can see in the picture above, that regret can feel like a ton of weight on your back.
Think of examples in your own life where you chose the weight of regret over the weight of discipline. You may feel like you are escaping in the moment, but it seldom leads to a good outcome. It reminds me of a quote by another amazing speaker, Les Brown. When people first hear this quote, they may not understand it, or dismiss it, but the examples above prove it to be quite valid.
There is so much going on in this picture that gives clues to living an amazing life. At first glance, it may not seem so. Let us take a dive in to discover the secrets that are in this picture. Starting with the obvious – the saying in the picture. “Use Sunday to reconnect with a place from your past.” What a great idea! My mother and I often discuss things that we did that seem like a different lifetime ago. We used to go to a great encampment they held at the local VA grounds. That no longer occurs. We talk about restaurants we used to frequent that have went out of business. Then, after a few more sips of coffee, we talk about places we just haven’t visited in a long time for various reasons.
Reconnecting with some of these places could bring back some really interesting memories. It also helps you stay grounded. Connecting your present with your past can help us be both nostalgic as well as present. Reflecting on memories of the past and noting how life has changed can be insightful. Looking around to see how the place has changed can have us living in the present. When we reflect on memories there is one thing I find interesting. At the time they were being created, we usually never know they will become memories. We are just enjoying the moment. This is a reason why it is helpful to take pictures, especially now that they can be stored digitally. I find it also helps to use as many of our senses as we can. Soak up every moment of our lives. We never know which ones will become our favorite memories.
The other item is what the saying is printed on. It is a day-by-day motivational calendar. I purchased it while visiting the mall to see my friend Nick, who manages the coffee shop there. Every day it supplies an inspirational thought for me. That is one source of positive inspiration added to my life and all I have to do is tear off that day. Considering how many negative influences come into our lives, without any effort on our part, it benefits us greatly to add as many positive ones that do the same. There are apps that send motivational messages to your phone. There are affirmations you can listen to on YouTube. There are so many influences that we can add. This leads us to the final thing we will mention in this picture.
The last thing you might not have noticed in the first picture, is the hand that is holding the calendar. That hand belongs to my lovely lady, Margie. Recently, I saw a meme about how picking the right woman makes a big difference. I would like to change ‘woman’ to ‘partner’ as this holds true across gender. Margie was kind enough to take this picture because mine had a big shadow in it. Much like adding as many positive influences in your life, the same can be said for positive people. I enjoy hanging out with my mother and going for coffee. Speaking of which, my friend Nick and I are long overdue for getting together. Even at my day job, where people can be ‘sunshine challenged’ I seek out those who do have a brighter outlook. I feel we support each other. How about your life? Adding, and spending time with, as many positive people as you can will fill your life with more joy than you can do on your own. As a bonus, the more time you spend around positive people, the less time you have for those ’emotional vampires’ that suck the life out of your soul.
In this one picture, there are 3 ideas I put into action that helps me to live an amazing life. It was a powerful reminder. How about you? Share a picture of things that bring joy into your life and help you live an amazing life. When we share, we all benefit!
As I write this, we are in the middle of a wicked snow storm. My lovely lady and I stopped at the store to grab a few things last night. It was packed. People were shopping like the world was ending. Another reason I would love to become a best-selling author and move to San Diego, but I digress.
A thought came to me as I watched people with their carts full of supplies. Why do we not prepare, at least with the same enthusiasm, for the storms of life? We act as if self-care, and the things that go with it, are for when we need them. In essence, we wait for the storm to arrive before we act.
Why not act like all of the crazy shoppers and prepare for the storms of life? Compose a list of songs that lift your spirits and save them in a Playlist. Have a list of movies that make you laugh. Have a collection of inspiring books.Whatever other items will help you make it through the storms of life.
Here is what I know for sure. The storms of life can come during any season and often with less warning than any extreme weather. We need to have preparations for our mind and spirit just as we have for any storm.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 