If you are reading this blog when it is first published, chances are it is Monday. The day most of us start the weekly struggle. Sometimes by the end of the day we feel defeated. I know there are days when working with the public, or even just our bosses can make us feel like we took a real beating. You can feel worthless, insignificant, and lonely. At times like these it is important to remember you have already won! What on earth am I talking about? Have I lost my mind so early in the week? We will answer the first question as the second one is still open for debate. Have you ever stopped and thought about all that had to happen just for you to be here? Out of all the millions of sperm cells fighting to give you those chromosomes, and finding that one egg to pair with. Then all the medical challenges faced for you to develop healthy and whole. Were you born with a physical or other medical challenge? Pat yourself on the back even more. You see all of us have survived to see this day. You have made it to read this. We have made it through childhood, through sicknesses, through various dangers on the street. Some of us have made it through wars, or are police making it through dangers every day. Each day we come home to fall asleep and wake to start again we have conquered another day. Sure we may not have had our bosses reports done on time, we may have been late to work, not been the perfect parent or spouse, but we made it. We are undefeated! Each and every day things challenge us. From sickness, financial strain and even loved ones passing away. Each day we make it through we should tell ourselves how proud we are. For countless others who didn’t, we did. We made it through. So when you feel like you may have failed in some capacity, remember even before we tried we were already champions!
Tag: Health
A DIFFERENT KIND OF PRAYER…
Yesterday we spoke of challenges and seeing them as opportunities. Let me tell you, I sure got some practice at that today. Life is an amazing practice ground for maintaining a positive lifestyle. In addition to all things at my job at the post office. I discovered my aunt had lost her job and my uncle who is recovering from a serious injury may have taken a step back at least emotionally. In fact, it may even be affecting his relationship with his wife. Now, all these things are stressful. Most of them are either completely out of my control or involve the variable of other people and their personalities. So while speaking with my mother about this and hearing some of the challenges she encountered today we found ourselves discussing all the things and people we were concerned about. In this case ‘concern’ could be a quick replacement for worry. Well I am a firm believer in the law of attraction and focusing on other people’s problems, even if it is with the intent to solve them just sends more negative energy to the situation. It was then I remembered an idea I had read in a book I just finished. When there is a person with a problem, be it you or someone you care about, instead of focusing on their problem I have a solution that will not only help them I believe but it will feel better for you. In fact, I would go so far as to say it would feel good. That is exactly what I am talking about here. Say we are worried about a person who lost a job. Instead of focusing on how they must be worried about being able to pay the bills, and how hard it is to find a job, do something a bit more constructive. Close your eyes and picture that person in a job they enjoy being paid a decent wage. Feel their happiness and send them your happiness as well. Then, and this is very important, feel gratitude for that situation turning out for everyone’s good. Really feel it. Do this every time worry rears its ugly head. It won’t be easy, but it will make you feel better. If this is for somebody else and you think they would be receptive, encourage them to do the same. Then calmly keep your eyes open for that job. It can work with an illness too. Picture the person, or yourself, healthy. Don’t say “I’m thankful that illness is gone” instead say “I am thankful to see Kim healthy and happy” or Bob or Tom or…well you get the idea. The important thing here is the emotion. Really feel the joy, really feel the gratitude. You will feel better and you will be sending a lot better energy out to the world. Will it work? I believe it will. Not to mention it will feel a lot better than worry. Oh and if you want to be happy and grateful for my new-found wealth I would be ok with that too. Stay positive and stay grateful my friends!
QUALITY AND QUANTITY
There seems to be a statement that is brought to my attention frequently and it may be in the back of your mind as well. So today we are going to bring it up front and address it. Honestly before embarking on a life-long journey to live a life as full of passion and meaning as possible this very question plagued me as well. Ok, I know stop stalling and let us get to the question. The question I get is this. “Motivational and inspirational things are great, but they never last and they are never there when I need them most” Although I often feel the same about rum it had me thinking. Well to answer this I am going to quote the famous motivational speaker and author the late Zig Ziglar who said,
“Motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That is why we need to do it every day”
Following this blog is a great first step into having a motivational pick me up delivered right to your inbox, so be sure to click the link on how to follow this page to make it as easy for you as possible. I also suggest picking up some Motivational cds to listen to when in the car or if you have a free moment at home. A book or two would be great as well. Motivational movies like “The Secret” are good to have around when you just feel like you lose your direction or are just having a bad day. Feel free to print out your favorite posts from this blog to review when you need. Remember you are never going to agree with 100% of what anyone says, nor should you. Each of us has our own unique life and circumstances. Which is why it is so important to gather as many positive points of view as you can. Surround yourself with people who are positive motivated people who just might have slightly different way of going about the world. Keep your mind open to what everyone has to offer.
If we drink a cup of coffee a day (or diet coke or whatever works for you) to keep our bodies going. We should at the very least expose ourselves to something motivational or inspirational to keep our souls and spirits going.
ADD MORE PAIN…
Ok, I know what must be going through your head. “Isn’t the point of an amazing life to reduce the pain and increase the pleasure?” Normally I would agree, however we are talking about using pain to your advantage. That is one of the tricks of living a more productive and positive life. We can’t always control every situation in our life, but we can use it to our advantage. Let me give you an example. Just a few days ago I learned my current position at the post office will end in the first week of September. Now in the past my reaction would have ranged from anger to frustration and even a little worry and sadness. Well my reaction this time surprised even me. When the lady informed me of this situation I greeted it at first with a sense of indifference. I was just collecting information and not taking it personally. Then I thought to myself “ok, I have no control over this situation so what can I find that is good in it?” All this happened in my head without any conscious effort on my part. Ok, so I must confess the next thought was “Holy s#$t this stuff I am preaching works!” Which gave me one good point there. It provided me with proof in my own beliefs.
What about the pain? Great question. Obviously no body likes to feel bad, be it anger, sadness, fear or any negative emotion. In this case I looked at the situation and had to realize in the next two and a half months my future is very uncertain. So what to do with those feelings of uncertainty. Surely that is not something you would want to feel in an amazing life. Hold on, not so fast. In this case I realized perhaps this uncertainty was just a reminder to finish my book I have been falling behind on. Perhaps there is someone out there who could really use it and without the motivation of losing my position I would have not completed it on time? Pain of any nature is a warning symbol. When we touch something hot the pain tells us to move away so we don’t become further injured. The point here is to ask yourself “what is this painful experience trying to tell me and how can I use that to my advantage” This may sound a bit far-fetched for some of you, but trust me it works. What does the anger and hurt you feel after arguing with someone you care about tell you? First it tells you that you do care or it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Also there was some hurt that developed between you two and you have to learn what it is and how to prevent it in the future. It also presents you with a chance to increase your connection with this person by how you address and solve this problem. How about the sadness of the loss of a loved one? In 2010 I had unfortunately had to attend 5 funerals. Four of which were for people under the age of 40. What good can you possibly take away from situations like that? How about the fact that you should let people know you love them while they are here. That you really can question yourself on what is worth being upset about and what legacy you want to leave behind before it is too late. It has been said that in the pain of every failure lies the seed to our greatest opportunity. So next time a painful situation arises in your life, or if you are in the middle of one right now. Ask yourself these two important questions. What is this pain trying to tell me and how can I make it work for me? Have an amazing day filled with passion my friends!!!
THE POWER OF ENERGY
I’ve been asked various forms of the following question several times over the years, “How can I go around being happy when there are so many things in the world to be unhappy about?”. People ask me this about the economy, famine, war, genocide, and all of the other fine issues the evening news likes to highlight. It makes sense, how can we be happy when there are people starving on the other side of town? How can we walk around feeling great when we read about all of the jobs that are being lost? The answer really is in the question itself. When we are focused on the problems of the world and see fit to discuss them at length we are only adding our energy to them. It would be far better to send our sick friend in the hospital loving and healing thoughts while picturing them as whole and in perfect health. Then it would be to feel bad for them and say “isn’t it terrible how ill they are”. It is almost a force of habit to be involved in “isn’t it awful” type conversations. Quite often we start them up as a lack of anything else to talk about. “Isn’t that price of gas terrible?” “I sure hope the economy turns around quickly”. I must confess I find myself being involved in and sometimes starting such conversations. By doing so I am not only adding my focus and energy and focus to the very thing I am lamenting, but I am also dragging the other persons focus and energy into the same direction! How different would the world be if we placed our focus and energy on what we have to be grateful for and solutions rather than what we lack and the problems we have? Next time you find yourself engaged in a negatively oriented conversation begin to think of how you can turn that conversation around. Think of it as a game. Make it a fun challenge. Even if you fall short you at least have your energy and focus on turning a negative into a positive.
BE CAREFUL WHO YOU BELIEVE…
As the week draws to a close I am honored to share with you this inspiring story. A customer of mine at the post office has a son who had a stroke at the age of 48. As a result of his medical condition he lost his business, his home and his marriage fell apart as well. I know, not very inspiring, but it gets better. One of the first things doctors did was send him to a physical therapy unit. Based on the information they had, and the observations they made the first thing they said to this gentleman was “you will never walk again”. Now he is a very rational, practical man. His mother, not so much. She said to the doctors, “In this family we do not accept the word can’t and never”. Her son trying to calm her insisted these men were doctors, and they knew what they were talking about. He also told her he would learn to adjust. Well based on this diagnoses his therapy kind of evened out. This went on for the last four years. His mother kept saying “I see him walking I tell you”. Her son, either frustrated with his condition, or upset with seeing his mother’s false sense of hope, actually began to tell her to stop saying that. Well through a twist of fate, the hospital put out an article announcing they were starting a new physical therapy unit and were looking for volunteers. You can imagine the speed in which his mother signed up. In fact, she told me “he was patient number one”. Well with the new treatment came a new doctor. This physician reviewed his case and said “I see no reason your son cannot walk” he began by having him stand for 15 minutes a day. Then yesterday she came running in to tell me her son, who had been basically bed-ridden for the last 4 years, took his first 3 steps with a cane. His goal is now to walk into his old physical therapy unit to “show them his new cane”
While this story is very inspiring, there is also a valuable lesson to be learned. When I asked her why she thinks his condition changed so rapidly she replied “he just stopped believing he couldn’t walk”. Now this man had every right to have this belief. He was viewed by doctors, experts in the medical field. These men knew more than he did, yet they were wrong. Now do not misunderstand me, I am not by any means putting down those in the medical profession. They attend many years of schooling and their scope of knowledge is beyond what you or I can understand. One thing they can’t see is the power of belief. This man’s mind accepted his condition so his body did too. Do you have any beliefs that you have accepted about yourself or life as true? Maybe some that came from experts in that field? I’m not telling you to not take the advice of knowledgeable experts, just to keep an open mind. Do not only focus on a miracle, expect it! After all, as this story illustrates, miracles happen every day.
THE POSITIVE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING…
At first glance this may seem like a paradox. After all, how can negative thinking be anything but…well negative? Let’s face it, positive thinking can empower us to do a lot of things. Being positive minded 100% of the time is not only unrealistic, but not very healthy for growth either. I would say a good healthy mix is 95/5. So why are negative feelings so ‘good’ for us. They can serve to vital and very important purposes. First, they let us know what is not working. There is something in our life that is currently not meeting our standards. Why is this important? Let me explain it with a situation we can all relate to, going to the doctor. Why do you go to the doctor? The answer usually is “because something is wrong”. Noticing this means you have had bad physical feelings. Whether they are nausea, pain, or some other not so pleasant feeling it let you know something is not as it should be. If you are anything like me the very next question to the doctor is “How can we make this go away?”. That leads us to the second great thing negative feelings can do for us. They can motivate us into action. In the case of the doctor visit, to do what actions are necessary to heal our condition. The same holds true for any condition in life. If we notice something in our life is causing us a noticeable amount of grief, get excited! Excited about grief Neil? Are you crazy? Well, yes I am crazy, but here is why you should get excited. Our bodies are designed to use feelings as warning signs. Such as pain so you don’t leave your hand on the hot stove, or nausea so you don’t keep drinking the expired milk. These may seem like a pain at first, after all who likes to burn their hand? Yet if we didn’t have the pain we could leave our hand on the stove until it cooks right off. Interesting thing is our minds do the same thing. Ever wonder why certain things make you feel sad or angry. That is our mind and spirits way of telling us something is wrong with them. It is a warning sign, just like the burn on the hand. We must decide what is causing this upset and act to correct it. Now here is where negative emotions can be a double edge sword. When trying to discover what would work to eliminate our discomfort we must think in a positive, solution oriented frame of mind. For example, I had a friend who had recently given her all into a relationship that she felt had true potential, but when push came to shove the man she was in a relationship with did not feel the same. I heard her utter phrases like “I’m never going to get into a relationship again, that way I won’t get hurt again” Haven’t we all felt this way at one point or another? I know I have. In this situation she was willing to sacrifice all the pleasure a healthy relationship could provide her to escape the pain of another possible unhealthy one. This may seem like a solution on the surface, but what it really amounts to is giving up. If there is one thing you don’t want to give up on it is your own life. So make negative emotions our servants, not our masters. Let us use them for clarity and motivation, but not dwell in them. So next time you find yourself upset, remember the positive power of negative thinking!
HOW GOOD IS YOUR VISION?
In yesterday’s post we spoke of vision. Why is it important? How do we develop it? Why bother? Let us tackle the first question, ‘Why is it important?’ I can best describe this by using a story I heard about two different ships. On the first one, we pick a destination, map out a course fill it with a capable crew and an outstanding captain. Now, keeping the destination in front of them nine times out of ten it will get where it sets out to go. True that along the way the map might need to be adjusted and the crew may need to be replaced, but it will arrive where it was destined to. Now let us take a second boat, but on this book we will not say where it is going, we will not give them a map. There will be new crew and therefore no need of a captain. We will just fire up the engine and let it go. How far out of the dock do you think that ship will go? Where will it end up? This may seem like an extreme example, but ask ten people where there goal is to end up in 5 years, 10 years or even 20. Then ask then what their plan is for getting to that destination. Very few will have a concrete, worthwhile goal in mind and even less will have a plan to get there. There is another, more fun reason to do this. Rewards. How, if we don’t know where we are going do we know if we are getting any closer? Where is the opportunity to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done? Where is the motivation? Where indeed.
So if this vision is so important, how do we develop one? Well they come in many definitions. Companies call them mission statements. Some people call them goals. I prefer to just say “Discover your passion and then chase it with all your might”. If you are chasing a goal you are really passionate about two things happen. One, it seems more like an adventure then work. Who doesn’t like a good adventure? We pay good money to read about them in books and to watch them on the silver screen. The second thing is obstacles naturally turn into challenges. We will not anything stop us! So start your adventure now. Write down your destination. Begin to map it out and select your crew to assist you along the way.
KELLY’S WORDS OF WISDOM…
Proof that inspiration can strike you anywhere happened to me today. While I was getting my haircut today the wonderful lady doing the service and I began chatting about all things positive. She brought back a quote I haven’t heard since I was young. “It’s like my mom always said” she exclaimed. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” As she started rinse the shampoo from my head I started thinking. Which is pretty much all you can do while somebody else is washing your hair. That is a piece of wisdom a good many of us have heard from childhood. As I may have mentioned in previous posts, my good friend Jamie taught me to look at things backwards. Not saying anything mean certainly helps the people you are talking to, or about. What does it do for us? I began to meditate on this for a while. Not to intensely as by this time there were sharp instruments near my head. It reminded me of another quote from the Buddha that I particularly enjoy. I am paraphrasing here as I do have the exact quote in front of me. “Anger is like holding a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone else. You are the one who gets burned” Think about how you feel when you say something about that driver that cut you off. The lazy co-worker whose work you end up doing on top of your own. The in-laws that won’t mind their own business. In all of these cases we have a right to be upset, but while verbally lashing out may help us relieve some anger in the short-term, does it really help us feel better? After leaving the break room while either joining in or sometimes just overhearing a long session of gossip how do you feel? Now let us flip this around. We know what will make us feel terrible, but what about the first part of the motherly quote, saying something nice. Think about how you feel when you tell somebody how nice their spouse is. How does it make you feel when somebody gives you the same compliment. I have a good friend Cari, who is very kind and inspirational to a lot of mutual friends we have. At any given time when the friends are together without her, inevitably her name comes up. The funny thing is 100% of the time we trade stories telling how amazing she is and what joy she has brought to our lives. We all end up leaving feeling a little bit happier inside knowing what an amazing friend we have. Although the compliments are all for Cari and she may never even know they were said (unless of course she reads this post) all of us who said them also receive the gift of joy as well. It is the opposite of the quote from the Buddha. Instead of getting ‘burned by the coal of anger’ we are being ‘blessed with the gift of love and compliments’. So next time you are tempted to join in on some gossip, or curse at the bad driver in front of you. Do what Kelly told me, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” It will be better for those on the receiving end, but it will also be better for you level of happiness as well. Who knows, it may even make the world a little better of a place.
IT DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN
Sometime in our life we went from being the adventure seeking young child, to the adult waiting for life to happen to us. A view that also affects our view of happiness. I was told the other day that someone was “Never happy, but it’s not their fault because nothing ‘happy’ ever happens to them”. Here is when a slight change in perception can make all the difference. Going back to that adventurous toddler, when we are young, we seek out happiness, we don’t just sit in our cribs and wait for it to ‘happen to us’ much to the chagrin of our parents. When we grow older, however, lots of us just sit in the house and watch tv waiting for something happy to happen. Here is when a good definition of what happy means to you would certainly help. While enjoying a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks with a group of friends the other day, I asked them what would make them happy. There were two very different kinds of happiness expressed. There was what I shall call ‘high excitement’ happiness. The “brand new sports car” “winning the lottery” “night in Vegas” to the ‘low excitement’ variety, “having the dishes done” “a good book and a bottle of wine” “a nice long walk in the woods with my dog”. Although these answers are very different, they both work for the people who said them. So I asked, why are you not working toward saving for that trip to Vegas? How about working with you spouse to schedule some time alone for a book and a glass of wine. Sometimes we forget a little pursuing on our behalf, and a change in perspective can make all the difference. Plus, let’s be honest, we all deserve it! Have an amazing day my friends!
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 