In every day, there is a reason to smile. Sometimes we have to search harder than on other days. I would love to know your reason for smiling today. If we all share we can discover many more reasons to smile. So, what is your reason for smiling today?
This weekend, keep it simple. Fill your heart with gratitude and appreciation. The 3 feelings of gratitude. 1.) Gratitude for everything you’ve been given in your life. 2) Gratitude for everything your currently have in your life. 3) Gratitude for all the blessings on their way.
Keep your focus on being grateful this weekend and watch your heart fill with joy.
How many of these things could you accomplish today? Refuel your soul. How do you do that? It can be as simple as a walk in nature with someone you love. Time with just a good book and a glass of lemonade. Simply avoiding the harsh news and realities of the world for a day.
Be grateful for your blessings. We have covered this one several times in this site. Gratitude has life transformational qualities. There is always something to be grateful for. A few years ago we did a monthly grateful exercise. We are coming up on a new month, so why not get your practice in today?
Take a deep breath and relax. In our go,go,go world, we have lost the ability to have quality relaxation. I’m guilty of this. With 7 jobs i pursue, there is seldom a moment off. This is why learning how to make those moments quality ones is so important. Plus, researching the best way for you to relax can be fun!
Spend time with family, friends and a good cup of coffee. When you do this, keep the conversation positive. Don’t waste time discussing politics and other topics that can create stress. Spend the time encouraging and lifting each other up. Enjoy the smiles and the love.
This Sunday, recreate and recharge yourself. You deserve it!
Today is my birthday! This is not a post about celebrating that, however. It IS a post about celebrating. Once, listening to a talk by Michael Beckwith, I heard him suggest asking yourself 3 questions a day. I dive deeper into this in my second book, Living the Dream, but one of those questions is “What can I celebrate?”
Today, for my birthday, that’s what I’m asking all of you to do. Today, ask yourself what you can celebrate. There is always something. Do you have people in your life you love? People you can learn from? Do you have a way to make a living? Do you have something that can motivate and inspire you?
I certainly wouldn’t mind you celebrating the birth of a charming author and blog writer. Better still, I would like you to find and celebrate something in your own life. Don’t just acknowledge it, celebrate it! Please share what you are celebrating and how you are doing it! Add to my reasons for celebrating today.
Here is a great question to ask yourself daily – what can I celebrate? Living life in a constant state of celebration can certainly make it amazing. Truth is, there is always something to celebrate!
You can celebrate the birth of your favorite author (mine is next Friday) you can celebrate one of the odd holidays that they come up with. Just Google “what holiday is today” it will be national chilli dog day or some other celebration you can join.
These are all great ideas. (I especially enjoy the author birthday one) In my humble opinion, the best way to find something to celebrate is to ask the question, “what am I grateful for today?” Whatever answer you come up with, celebrate that. One thing you are grateful for a day and just find ways to celebrate. I would LOVE to hear what you are going to celebrate today!
I know, I know. Nobody wants to work on the weekend. You at probably thinking, “Neil, I just put in 40+ hours this week. I deserve a break. ” This is certainly true. What else you deserve is an amazing life. That is why I created this site, secret2anamazinglife.com, to share what I have learned in my 20+ years of research on the subject.
One of the best ways to start enjoying your life more is to stop and appreciate all the little things, as we refer to them. They are actually not little at all. You see the picture of a sunset i took while leaving the movies with Margie the other night. A sunset, a little thing. Yet, we could not recreate it with all the money in the world. It only lasted a few minutes, but is a memory that will last forever. So is the picture below of a wall I was on with my mom.
This weekend, your job is to stop and really appreciate one of the little Miracles in your life. If you would like, share with us what that might be, as I have shared my two with you.
If there is one trait that you should work on develop, it is gratitude. It is important to remember the greatest gift we receive is the opportunity to wake up another day. We may not have everything we want, but if we wake up, we have the potential to create it.
Today, as often as you can, take a moment and be grateful you are here. You have the gift of opportunity!
Middle of the week! In the middle of all our hard work, let us take a second, catch our breath and refocus. Most of us, myself included, do very well at focusing on what needs fixing and what needs to get accomplished. It should be apparent why this would be helpful.
Today, however, let us take just a few minutes for ourselves. Stop whatever we are doing (don’t worry this will be over quickly) and focus on what is going right in our lives. Maybe we are grateful we do not live in a place where there is a war going on. Maybe we are grateful to be healthy. How about the wonderful people in our lives that we love and care about?
Just do this for 2 or 3 minutes. Really do it. Stop whatever else you are doing and just think about everything that is going well and does not need fixing. Can you see how powerful this would be to do on your lunch break? Maybe even while you use the restroom? How about while you wait in line? A quick change in focus can refresh our attitude and our spirit!
This post could have been titled many different things. “My secret to happiness” and “23 years of training” were other considerations. Let’s talk about the title i did choose. “Everyone should do this once in their life. ” What should everyone do once in their life? I think everyone should work a job in retail at least once in their life. You should do this for several reasons.
The first reason is that you will have a lot more compassion for people who work in retail. When you may feel tempted to yell at a store clerk during the holidays or demand the coffee shop employee creates your beverage with a certain amount of ice cubes or anything that involves fractions, you will reconsider. You will personally know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that.
The other reason to work a job in retail is to expose yourself to as many different people and ideas as you can. Like anything in life, this can either drive you crazy or make you more open-minded and compassionate. It may be one of the best ways that I know to meet people in many different fields and with many different beliefs. You may discover things that you never knew you enjoyed about some of your fellow human beings. It is good training on managing your emotions when it comes to these same fellow human beings. It will also train you, if you use it for this purpose, on managing your own emotional well-being.
I was a bartender for 23 years. My next book will be my journey from that profession to self-improvement author, speaker and blog writer. In this profession, and just in life in general, one of the questions I get a lot is, “How can you be happy all of the time.” The short answer is that I am not. Margie can certainly attest to that. It also would make life pretty boring. We learn most when we go through challenges. That is where the growth comes from. The goal in life should not be to be happy 100% of the time. You will never achieve that and it may even increase the feelings of failure you have. The goal should be to reduce the frequency and intensity of the times you are not. You should also endeavor to learn from every situation you experience in life.
Learning from everything in life is what I do my best to do. I am always trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. When I think about what allows me to feel upbeat most of the time, a lot of things come to mind. First is gratitude. Developing a attitude of gratitude is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself. Surrounding yourself with what Les Brown calls OQP, or only quality people. These are the ones who will both encourage you and hold you accountable. Developing a routine of self-care is another thing that will pay dividends in the long run. I recommend all of these steps to each and every one of you reading this, but it was something I learned on my first day of bartending that made a huge difference.
Jimmy G was the man who trained me. He was one of the most respected bartenders in the city and taught me many things that I will never forget. I had the good fortune to work with and under several amazing men. One of the things Jimmy told me was “Nobody cares about your problems.” He went on to explain that you never want to walk into a bar with a depressed or even indifferent bartender. Whatever is happening in your life, for the time you are behind the bar you must put it behind you. “When you are done working you can go back to being sad, mad or whatever else you are dealing with. When you are behind the bar, you must act as if it is the greatest day of your life.” I used this same manner of thinking when it came to working the window area of the post office. Even if people dealt with me for a mere 60 seconds, I wanted it to be the best 60 seconds of their day.
What I learned by being ‘happy’ for an eight hour bartending shift, is that you can emotionally compartmentalize many emotions. I was forced to learn many methods and find the ones that worked for me. Doing this for the time I was working taught me that I could still have things crumbling down in my life and manage a positive outlook. In doing so, it allowed me to see opportunities and solutions I may have missed if I was in the whirlwind of negative emotion focused on what is wrong. This is a skill that has stuck with me. I am grateful for the chance to learn it. Having a positive outlook, even one that may be just ‘show’ for the public, can help us see ways in which to do so authentically.
Only seconds ago, I just completed my third book. My hope us to have it edited and in your hands by my birthday on July 29th. We will do our best to make sure that happens.
In the closing chapter, I came across this quote from Albert Einstein. Nothing could be more true. It is a shame most of us never realize this until we are facing a severe health challenge, or worse yet, facing the end of our life. We do not have to let it come to that. There are so many Miracles that come into our lives we have become desensitized to them. Merely breathing and how our bodies transform the air we breathe into a source to keep us alive. Don’t even get me started on changing food to energy and raw material. As an author, my body can change caffeine into words on paper or a keyboard! Trust me when I tell you that is a miracle.
Many people journal. I think it is one of the most powerful tools to positively transform your life. People do everything from gratitude journals, to just keeping a diary. What if we kept a miracle journal? Just record everything we considered a miracle in our lives? It would not only help us better notice the Miracles, but be able to feel the joy in realizing they are there.
I would LOVE to hear what miracle you have experienced or noticed today? Feel free to share with everyone in the comments below. My miracle is that I can turn my recent open heart surgery into a book that will hopefully positively impact the lives of countless people!
