One of our greatest powers as human beings is the power to connect with others. There are so many people that come to mind when I say this. My friend Nick and I could talk, with interest, for hours. My friend Curtis, whom I miss since he moved away, always gave me great ideas. Of course my beautiful lady, Margie, fills me with joy as we connect on so many different levels. Each one of these people, along with so many others I could name, bring something unique and special into my life.
If you think about the people you connect with in your life, I am sure each one of them brings something unique and special. Some people spark ideas. Some of them offer encouragement. There are people that challenge you and hold you accountable to your standards. There are those wonderful souls that just fill your heart with joy by being in their presence. Every soul that we interact with is a gift. Even those who may be an arduous task to connect with, give our character strength. They may also help us practice patience and restraint.
Today, let us take a moment to think of all the ways connections benefit us and give thanks for all of the wonderful people that share life with us. In my upcoming fourth book, I have received feedback from many of the friends that I value and look forward to sharing that with you. The connection they share with me has only made my life better. They say when two people connect, a third is born. Meaning a connection, ideas and actions that neither person would come up with on their own. Connections bless our world more than we know. That us take a moment to be grateful for them today.
These days it seems everyone is working to get rich and famous. From side hustles, to an attempt to go viral, it would seem that we are all chasing the brass ring. To this end, many people wish to use the Law of Attraction, or as it has become known, the secret. One of the most important aspects of this law is that you must be what you wish to attract. This gives many people, including myself, a headache trying to figure out.
When thinking about gaining wealth and fame, the question becomes, “How can I be and/or feel wealthy, when my circumstances would have me feeling the opposite.” With the price of everything from heat to groceries going up, that is certainly understandable. The ‘secret’ is contained in something we touched on a few posts ago. Our control is not in bending outside circumstances to our will, but working on the circumstances that exist between our own ears.
How can you feel wealthy with all of the bills coming in and the paycheck not getting larger? By focusing on all that you do have. This may sound cliche or positive thinking to many of you. In a way I suppose it is. That does not change that fact that it works. A brief glance at the world around us will remind us of how much we all have to be thankful for. Take our health for example. Even if it is not perfect at the moment, it certainly could be worse. Our friends are another source of wealth. We may wish we had more, or saw the ones we have more often, but the fact is having friends is a great form of wealth.
There are a million things from a roof over our heads, running water to access to the internet to read something like this, that we should be grateful for. Our lives are filled with so many blessings that often go overlooked. Spending as little as five minutes a day focusing on all we have to be grateful for can transform our lives. It can take us to living a life of lack, to living one of abundance. Don’t trust me, prove it to yourself by trying this today.
This may sound like a fatalistic post for uplifting Wednesdays, but it really is not. In fact, I debated titling this post “Everything is special” but decided on the one I did because it has a sense of urgency. Last week, we discussed how quickly things change and how the not so distant past can seem like a lifetime ago. Isn’t that true to some extent in your own life? I know it is in mine. Places you used to go are no longer there. Businesses you used to frequent have ceased operations. People sadly pass on. Animals become extinct.
Again,this is a little depressing, but it also provides us a sense of urgency. My friend Curtis gave me a great reminder about the power of being present. All too often we busy ourselves reliving memories and fail to pay attention to the ones we should be creating. Then, without a warning it seems, they too become memories. Consider this – each second of time is unique and will never occur again. The beautiful sunrise you are witnessing? Yes, the sun will rise again tomorrow, but it will look different than what you are seeing right now. That bouquet of flowers you received will be different than any you will get in the future.
One of the interesting things that I reflect on in life is how seemingly tragic world events change the way things are done. I recall what travel was like before September 11 of 2001. Recently, we all saw the effects Covid had on the way we socialize and do business. Life can change in an instant. Change is actually the only thing we can count on. That is why each moment is so precious. War has broken out in many places in the world and the lives of millions were upended ina heartbeat. The reverberations of that situation can be felt across the globe. Very few us could have predicted that was going to happen.
It doesn’t even have to be on a global scale. Think of all the people in your life. Above is a picture of my lovely lady and I. It was taken at my work’s holiday party. It was also a retirement party for one of my coworkers. That means it will be the last time he will be there as my coworker. Who knows if my work will have another holiday party or if this was the last one I will attend? A few years back during my open-heart surgery, it was almost the last time I spent with my lovely Margie. That story is shared in great detail in my book, The Beat Goes On, available on Amazon.
Challenges provide us great opportunity to see everything for the miracle it is. Recently, I shared the story about how my car was having trouble and my mother was giving me a ride to work. Although this proved to be far more stressful than we first thought, who knows when I will be able to share the ride and great conversation with my mother at 430am. Looking back, we had fun on my way to work. Who knows if those moments will ever happen again. I would much rather have a working vehicle, but the ride with my mom was a good memory.
Everything, and everyone, in life is fleeting. It may not seem like it, but as we discussed earlier, it can all change in an instant. Health is precious. Love is precious. So many things we can fail to appreciate until they are gone. Take a second an be present and grateful for everything in your life. Everything is a miracle. Everything is precious.
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.
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.
End of the first week of the New Year! What a wild ride it has been. As we jump into our goals for the coming year, we are going to take a few moments to look back at how we did in 2023. Above is a map featuring all of the countries that we were viewed in within the past year. We appeared on 6 of the 7 continents and in 148 countries. That blows my mind. I still recall writing my first blog 12 years ago and wondering if anyone at all would read it. I was one person who was struggling to learn the lessons of living a rewarding and fulfilling life. Using my passion for helping others, I continued to write. We are now have over 2100 posts on this site and have been viewed by almost 200,000 people!
Being able to reach so many people in so many places is such a rewarding experience. There are so many negative news outlets, that we want to continue to serve as a beacon of hope, motivation and inspiration. 2023 was great, but we are looking to do even better in 2024. We are going to reach even more people and bring the light of hope and positivity to even more corners of the world. If you like what you read here, feel free to share this site with your friends and neighbors. Print out posts you like and hang them up in the office. Share links on your social media timeline. The more souls we can reach, the brighter we can make the world.
Secret2anamazinglife wishes to thank all of our contributors, followers and even our passing viewers. You make all of this possible and worth it. We look forward to finding new and exciting ways to serve you in the future. Do not forget to check out the Living the Dream with Neil Panosian podcast wherever you stream your content. It is free and brings you the same great tools and strategies in audio form!
It is estimated that we have 60,000 thoughts a day. It may be hard to imagine, but when you think of how much our brain jumps from one thought to the next, it really shouldn’t be. As an author, I think that number might even be double.
This year, let us focus on making a good percentage of those thoughts positive and empowering. According to the national science foundation, 80% of our thoughts are negative. Somehow, that is the human default. Scary part is, 95% of our thoughts are repetitive. If you are keeping score at home, 80% of what we think is negative and we repeat that 95% of the time. Is it any wonder our lives are not ones of overwhelming joy and fulfillment?
This year, take some time, even 5 minutes a day, to relax and focus on something positive. I would recommend starting with things you are grateful for. Then even try adding thingsyou are looking forward to. Let us make this year one where we defy the numbers and have more positive thoughts and repeat them!
Today we are celebrating! It is the first time in this site’s 11 year history that we have had a post every day for an entire year. It was a goal of mine to bring more inspiration and motivation to all who read this. As many of us look to create our own resolutions for the New Year, we should take a look at why and how we were successful in having a post daily for a year.
First, start where you are with what you have. Although we have been talking about having a post every day for a year, this is actually the 546 straight day we have had a post. When I decided that was my goal for the coming year, it was sometime in mid summer of last year. Why should I wait for the first of the year to start? Part of the reason I was successful was I had a strong enough ‘why’. In having a post daily, I knew the audience for this site would grow. We are now over 100,000 views in over 200 countries. I also knew I would reach and engage with more people the more content I would put out. The more people reached, the more people could get an assist in living an amazing life. The more people living amazing lives, the better our planet would be.
Were there days I struggled with posting? You bet. Being an author, speaker, DJ and full-time day job as well, time is crazy. Another one of my goals was to improve the quality and depth of my relationship with my lovely lady. That takes time and dedication. All of these things could have been legitimate reasons not to have a blog. Then, I needed to use negative motivation for my goals. What is negative motivation? I needed to consider what would happen if we did not have a post here. There may be someone who was in a dark emotional place that was looking forward to reading what we have to say here. What would happen if they came to discover there was nothing to read? Hearing all of the negativity that the world seems to bring to our attention daily, I knew that this site needed to be a balance to that. If people were not given another source for knowledge and inspiration, I was not doing my part to leave the world a better place than I found it. This is, after all, my life’s mission, or at least part of it.
In closing, this accomplishment leaves me feeling just one way…grateful. I consider it a blessing to be able to share with you everything I learn along my journey of life. I am thankful for all of the souls who join me on this journey. There is nothing but gratitude for the friends I have made and the input they have given. I look forward to hearing from more of you in the year to come. 2024 will bring you my fourth book, as well as many other surprises including new episodes of the Living the Dream with Neil Panosian podcast. In addition, we will continue to have great and valuable content here to share with you. We always welcome your feedback and look forward to living an amazing life with you in 2024.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 