Tag: blame

THE SECRET TO BEING HAPPY  ðŸ˜Š

We often make happiness some complex realm that takes years to get to. It is even a multi-billion dollar business. These three simple rules can supply you with more happiness than you can imagine. Can doing three things really bring you happiness? Let us look at them one at a time to find out how we can.

The first one is having zero expectations of others. This can be so helpful in any relationship from business to intimate. Expecting people to have the same standards and beliefs we have is not only foolish and unrealistic, it will lead to conflict and disappointment on our behalf. Everyone has experienced life differently. They have their own unique way of looking at the world. The best we can do is to kindly explain ours, and do the best to understand theirs. When we feel people have let us down, it would serve us a lot more to try to understand why verses condemn them. Communication and conveying standards is essential, but so is compassion and understanding.

The next is taking 100% responsibility for our own lives. Let me tell you how freeing this is. The more we place the blame for our circumstances in life on other people or things, the more we relinquish control of our life to those very people or things. If it is your boss’s fault you are having a bad day, than it is your boss who would have to change that. If the person in the blue car who drove across 2 lanes of traffic to turn in front of you (actually happened to me on the way to write this) made you mad, than they have the power to control your emotions. The more responsible for your life and your emotions you are, the more control of them you have. Would you not want control of your own life? If you need help on this, I would recommend the book, Extreme Ownership, by Jocko Willink.

The last is being grateful. If you have read anything that I have wrote, you know that I cannot encourage people to be grateful enough. Gratitude really does change your life faster than anything else I know. Look at the picture above and the multitude of things in life we have to be grateful for. The list is really never ending. Even when life seems negative, gratitude is the other side of coin. Take the worst situation in life – losing someone you love. When we are sad thinking about the loss, we can help ease our pain a little by feeling grateful for the opportunity to know and love them. Will it erase the pain entirely? Of course not, nothing will. What it will do is give us another perspective. You would not miss someone so much if you did not love them a great deal. Loving someone and being able to share a portion of life with them, no matter how great or small, is something to be grateful for.

Here is a secret. The more you occupy your mind and heart with gratitude, the less you leave room for negative emotions. If you are keeping score at home, that means more positive emotions and less negative emotions. That is a win/win situation and one that will lead to a happier life.

As you can see, happiness really can be had by utilizing these three methods. It will take some time and practice, but it can be done. The more you work on making these three things a part of your life, the more happy it will become.

1 FOR THEM… 3 FOR YOU ðŸ¤”

I am sure many of us have heard this saying growing up. When you point a finger at someone, there are three more pointing back at you. This is usually mentioned in terms of accountability. This is helpful to think about. Especially if we consider the law of attraction and how we create our own reality. Often, others behavior and words can depend a good deal upon us and what we bring to the world. Seldom people that are being fed a diet of positive and encouraging words will lash out and hurt others. In this way, we can be part of the solution instead of the problem. What is in our life is more about what we bring to it, than what is brought to us.

There is another aspect I would like you to think about. That is what we say about others. If we are projecting and bringing to light the positive aspects of others, what do you think others are more likely to say about us? If, on the other hand, we are constantly pointing out others faults and negative aspects, what do you think that shows about us? The same goes for how we look at situations. Are we the one always pointing out the negative? Are we the person trying to find the light in the darkness? What is our finger pointing at in life? Remember, what we are pointing out and accenting has a way of coming back to us. Make sure you are speaking and thinking positivity and light my friends. Remember, 1 for them…3 for you.

YOU ARE WHERE YOU ARE BECAUSE OF THIS🤔

Pick a situation in your life. It can be one you are happy with, or one you are not so thrilled with at the moment. Now, here is the fun part – start thinking backwards. The quote above is very true. We are where we are in life because of the choices we have made. This is a good thing. Taking responsibility for where we are gives us control. Many people confuse responsibility for blame. The two are not the same. When you blame someone, or something, for where you are, you give them or it control. When you take responsibility for your life, you assume control over it. What I meant about thinking backwards is looking at the decisions that have taken you to where you are currently, whether that is good or bad.

Even bad situations leave a key to success. Think about what decisions have left you where you are. Maybe you were not disciplined enough in your health and now you find yourself out of shape, or in a healthy crisis. Maybe you didn’t show up for work on time and now you find yourself on probation or looking for work. If you did not act loving and compassionate to your partner, you might be looking for a new valentine. Most people stop here. They might even stick around and beat themselves up over it. This gets us nowhere except feeling bad about ourselves.

Instead, look at how you can make better decisions next time. This is where the difference in blame and responsibility come into play. If you say, “Well, I couldn’t make it into work on time because they kept changing my schedule.” or “If the boss would have been nicer, I would have been more inclined to be there.” How about, “My partner was always nagging me so I snapped.” If you put the blame on others, you are more likely to make the same mistakes next time. Let us face it, finding the perfect schedule, boss or partner is impossible. If we did, they might not keep us around because we are not perfect. We also will feel helpless and not control of your own life. When take responsibility for your own role in your life, you know you can change it. You can show up on time, even if they change your schedule. If your partner does something to irritate you, there are better ways to communicate that and change it. You have control over all of those things.

Harry Truman, one of my favorite presidents, had a sign on his desk that said “The buck stops here.” Meaning, he was in charge of the country, so for good or bad, it was his responsibility. Imagine a politician with that attitude these days! We have been looking at how negative situations can be a great teaching tool, but what about positive ones? We can look at what decisions have helped us arrive there as well. Did we help someone in need and now they have helped us? Maybe we put in the work on a project and now we find ourselves done ahead of time and with a little freedom? We really worked to better ourselves and now we find we have more friends and our spouse is more in love with us than ever! We must look at what positive decisions we made. To take it to another level. See if you can apply these good decisions to an area of your life that may not be working so well. If you have been paying compliments and showing appreciation to your coworkers , but things are not going so good at home, maybe try being a little more attentive there. If you have been doing your 20 squats every day, but you are weeks behind on writing your fourth book (hypothetically) then apply making small efforts every day to that.

Taking responsibility for your lot in life is not blaming yourself. It is taking responsibility and control of your own life. It is using what you can learn from both the good and the bad to make the best out of the life you have left. What decisions have you made that you can learn from?

A LESSON I HAVE LEARNED

There are a handful of lessons I have learned in my life that really stuck with me and defined who I am to this very day. One of them I was told was that “If you hate someone or something you just do not know enough about it. If you learn about it and still hate it, that does not mean it is bad, it means you still have more to learn.” This is something I keep with me to this very day.

If we are being honest, we would have to admit there are lots of messages telling us who we should dislike, who the bad guys are and why. From politics, sports and even religion have messages telling us that there are people who are less than us. When we read about some violent episode conducted by a group of people it can be easy to say “Look this group of people are evil.” If we were to apply that same guilt by association to every terrible act that has been done I fear we would all belong to some group of evil.

How can we ever not harbor some sort of negative emotions towards people who by their very acts cause the death of hundred, or even thousands of people? It is a very difficult question to answer. Quite often we must look back in history for answers as to why things happen today. Was there an event in history where this group of people were made to suffer under the group they attacked?

Even personal history can shed some light on why people can do acts most of us would find unspeakable. Did this person suffer years of physical and emotional abuse? Did their family constantly remind them of judgmental or even hateful beliefs that hand been handed down for generations? Were they raised in a neighborhood that also promoted these beliefs? Maybe while attending school for 8 hours a day surrounded by peers their age they learned to adopt their beliefs? They might have even did so just to fit in at first, but after years of trying to fit in those beliefs became part of their spirit.

This can be even worse when an entire society is fed information that is hateful. We can use both Nazi Germany during World War two, as well as early America as examples. In the 1930’s Germany began a campaign against the Jewish people. This was not only political, but in schools, the media and in the home. An entire generation grew up being taught a terrible doctrine of hate and evil. This resulted in the death of over 6 million men, women and children of Jewish decent. In the founding years of America the same thing happened. Americans were told the native people were uncivilized and less than they were. They were told they were violent and threatened their safety. It was also said that the Native Americans stood in the way of the prosperity and freedom of the white settlers. Again, this message was delivered in the media, the government, the home and even the church pulpit. This resulted in the death of over 100 million men, women and children. What is worse is that often entire nations and cultures were lost. Medicine and knowledge we could use today are gone forever.

Does this mean we should hate the German people who did not stand up to their government? Should we hate those who acted on the beliefs they were raised on? Should we still hate the American soldiers who killed pregnant Native American women because when they were being forced to walk from North Carolina to Oklahoma they were going to slow? Sure those acts, among many others in history are hard to understand and even harder to forgive for some people.

We must not only view the history, but be careful not to view it through our own eyes. It may be easy to say “If I was in Germany back then I would have told Hitler to go to hell !” We can say that as somebody who was raised free and without judgment. If we had been told, and often given ‘proof’ as to how bad this group of people were from the time we were born, we might act differently. While there is plenty of proof of people who have overcome very challenging situations to be loving non-violent people, it is impossible to know how we would act in the same situation. In fact, we will never know as we will never have their exact life and genetic makeup.

In a world that urges us to blame and condemn, there is very little accent on compassion and understanding. Those two elements are essential if we ever hope to change the world we live in for the better. Let me be perfectly clear on one very important point. Understanding someone’s violent action does not mean Condoning it. We can certainly condemn acts that harm others, and we should, but without following that with an equal effort to understand why they happened in the first place history would be doomed to repeat itself.

MEA CULPA

The phrase above translates to “my fault”. Last post we mentioned how even the most ‘enlightened’ or ‘self-evolved’ of us can trip up and do things we know we shouldn’t do. When this happens, when you don’t live up to your own standards it can be one of the worst feelings. Not only have you often hurt or let someone else down, but you have done so by doing something that is out of character. As a fabulous bonus, you can also come across as looking like someone who says one thing and does another. In short, a hypocrite.

So this has all been very inspiring hasn’t it? So you have done great on your goal for so long. You have not smoked, you have controlled your anger, you have been more positive, whatever your goal is. Then you slip up. You have a cigarette on a stressful day,or you blow up when someone seems to push just the right buttons. Maybe you find yourself in a very negative and depressed state? In the past because I worked so hard on being the best I can be, and trying to set a good example for others i would beat myself up for days when i let myself down. Being an author and motivational speaker it is also bad for business. Do you know what is worse, however? Not moving on. If you wish to continue to work on your goal of bring a non smoker,or whatever it might be, you do not want to begin again with a feeling a failure.

So what do you do? Take a step back, catch your breath and confidently say “I screwed up”. Trust me it is quite liberating. If you spend all of your time trying to come up with reasons or justification for your actions you can quite often look like someone who can’t admit they’re wrong at best, or drive yourself insane at the worst. Just own your temporary moment of insanity and strengthen your resolve to do better. Find a better way to deal with stress than lighting up. Try to be more compassionate when someone pushes your buttons. Saying “it’s my fault” not only frees you from spending wasted time trying to excuse your bad behaviour, but also shows you have the character to admit your wrong. Now just focus on making things right!