One slightly redeeming quality about tragedy is that it provides us an opportunity to make a difference. A chance to step up and help our fellow human beings. Not only fellow humans, but animals, plants and the earth at large.
Recently, most of us know Jamaica was hit by a devastating hurricane. As I see stories of the aftermath, I am reminded how many different areas can be impacted. It saddens me to think many of these people who do not have much to begin with, have lost even that. At the same time,there are great stories of people and companies stepping up to offer free meals and assistance of all kinds!
This certainly isn’t the only place where people are suffering. The war continues in the Ukraine, there are many countries with human rights and starvation issues. Each one of these presenta unique opportunity to help. Make sure you are using a trusted platform to do so. Even if you are unable to do so with your time or money, offering focused thoughts and prayers for people in these affected situations can make a big difference.
Everyday the world presents problems. That means every day we have the opportunity to make a positive difference.
Everyone is looking for the next fad diet. Whether that is for more energy, more muscle or less weight. Here is a diet for more success!That’s right. If you want to get ahead at work, in your health or even in your relationships – start eating elephants!
Of course we are not advocating eating actual elephants. I’m rather fond of the big guys. No, it is a reference, as you see in the first picture, to tackling a big problem. Many of us, myself included, will approach a big goal or challenge and become overwhelmed.
This could be getting in shape, getting out of debt, cleaning up your diet, or even cleaning up the house. We see eight million things we have to do and can’t imagine getting them all done. Instead, we should focus on getting one of them done. You couldn’t eat an entire meal at once, nor can you do much of anything all at once.
Our good friends in the wonderful country of Jamaica are struggling to repair the damage brought by hurricane Melissa. The damage can seem overwhelming. I can only imagine what they are facing. The story is the same. The way to build back is clearing one tree at a time. Helping one family at a time and taking one day at a time.
Even if all you are dealing with is a house that looks like it was hit by a hurricane, it is still one step at a time. You got this!
This is an interesting thought. I’ve been clinically dead for a bit, but not sure how much my brain lived on before, during our after for that matter. If it is true, and I’m not sure how they came by this information, it brings up several important questions.
The most important one is rather obvious. What is your 7 minutes? Were they when you are younger? Have they come recently? Are they, as this quote implies, tied to a certain person? Have they Perhapscome at a certain location? Maybe your best 7 minutes was engaged in a certain activity?
I think if we view our life in 7 minute blocks, it can help us stay in the present. After all, 7 minutes is not a very long time. I can tell you there have been several 7 minutes in my life that I can recall. The first 7 minutes I spent in Jamaica with Margie. Knowing I had helped make one of her life dreams come true. Even the first time she was able to see a palm tree in Las Vegas. Recently walking hand in hand in the Bahamas shopping and making new friends was amazing. I recall a morning sipping my favorite iced coffee with my mother at the State Fair listening to a band play tropical music. That was an awesome 7 minutes! Speaking of the State Fair, last year I proposed to Margie there. That was a crazy and memorable 7 minutes.
As you can see, there are several people and locations involved in my 7 minutes. I also think of my uncle and I at the Iola car show, my grandfather and I at this rummage event. My grandmother and I playing cards for an entire afternoon. So many good memories! Each one of them is an amazing 7 minutes. How my brain will pick out 7 from all that will be a neat trick. Then again, I am not in a hurry to find out. Instead, I am going to focus on what I will suggest you focus on – creating more amazing 7 minutes!
Last post we discussed the single best self-improvement activity you can do. If you haven’t read that post, I recommend giving it a look. In my own life, gratitude has been one of, if not the, most powerful tools to help me live an amazing life. If you spend any time at all in the self-improvement arena, you have no doubt heard a lot about gratitude. It had a prominent role in the movie The Secret. For good reason. Gratitude can bring you peace. It can take you from feeling like you are constantly chasing the next thing, to feeling abundant and happy. That is without any change in outside circumstances. After developing an attitude of gratitude, even if things do go south, you will be able to weather them a lot better.
If gratitude is so powerful (it is) then why are we not all using it? If gratitude can transform our lives in so many positive ways (it can) how come everyone is not engaged in a ritual that will bring more gratitude into their lives. One of the reasons is the methods that have been suggested. They can seem labor intensive. Really, for the return they offer it is well worth it. Let us consider doing a gratitude journal. It is probably the most suggested activity. I even wrote a section about it in my second book, Living the Dream. You basically write 3 to 5 things you are grateful for every day and why you are grateful for them. This not only gives you the initial hit of dopamine, the feel good chemical in the brain, but rewires your brain. Knowing that you will be sitting down to write this list has your mind subconsciously on the lookout for things that you are grateful for to write down. This is a very good thing.
The problem with this method is that in a world where everyone is super busy and wants everything yesterday, taking 5 minutes to write in a journal or a notebook can seem impossible. This can seem like too much work even for people who spend hours scrolling through their phone. That brings very little, if any, positive things into their lives. This, however, is the secret to our new method. Sense we seem addicted to scrolling mindlessly, let us use it to our advantage! All you will need for this activity is a cell phone and an urge to feel more grateful.
Here is the secret method. In your gallery of pictures, create a separate album of pictures of things you are grateful for. This could be your spouse, your family, your dog, your car, a beautiful sunset or anything else that you are grateful for. Had a great vacation? Throw a picture of that in there. Love a particular restaurant? How about a picture of you there? Someone who just makes you smile by the thought of them? Maybe a picture of them or even both of you together? You could even have pictures of quotes that remind you to be grateful. The possibilities are endless. Then, in one of your scrolling sessions, open the album and look at the pictures. Much like the journal, done long enough it should train your brain to think of and look for things to be grateful for to add to this album. Even if you like other forms of gratitude, this would be a great one to add. I know I am going to start an album as soon as I finish writing this post. My first picture will be of Margie and I in Jamaica for the first time. I was able to make one of her dreams come true and I am grateful for that. Not to mention, I am grateful for her and the love we share.
I encourage you to create a grateful picture album on your phone today. The coffee shop I am writing this in is about to close which will force me to stop writing, go home and get some things done and start working on my gratitude album! What will be some of the pictures in your album? What are you grateful for? Please share your answers in the comments below.
Anyone who knows me, knows I love coffee. As I write this, I am sitting in a coffee shop. My computer has 2 local coffee shops advertised on it. Coffee, like life is very customizable. If your coffee is too strong, you can add cream. Too bitter? Throw a sugar or honey in there. Too weak? Use more grounds. Too thick? Use less grounds. Coffee comes in a range of different quality as well. You can get a can of store brand coffee for less than ten dollars. My favorite coffee is Jamaican Blue Mountain. This, will cost you around fifty dollars a pound. Life is like that. We can be blessed with a Blue Mountain coffee kind of life. Maybe our parents are rich. We have our health and a great circle of friends. That life may seem to taste great. We may also be given a ‘Chuck Full o’Nuts’ life. In case you are not familiar, that is a coffee that can be found on the more economical end of the spectrum. It also happens to be really fun to say. In the case of life, this can be a life where we grow up in a single home. Maybe our family struggles to pay the bills? Maybe you grow up with some health challenges? This life can seem to taste bitter and not so good.
Why did I use the word ‘seem’ in my mentioning of how life tastes? Let us refer back to our coffee analogy to better understand. If I have some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, which should happen more often, it does not guarantee that I will have a great cup of coffee. What if I left that coffee sitting open on the counter for several weeks? What if I decided that since I liked it so much, I was going to double the amount of grounds that I was going to use? Maybe I made the coffee with distilled water? In these cases, the coffee would not taste great. Same with a Blue Mountain kind of life. How many kids, who seemed to have it all end up with a terrible life? You may have a lot of money and decide to indulge in recreational drug use. You may have your health, but throw it away by partying every weekend, or more. You may simply focus on the material aspect of life and live an unfulfilled existence.
Just as having some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee does not guarantee a great cup of coffee, Chuck Full o’Nuts does not mean you will have a terrible cup of coffee. If you use just the right amount of grounds, if you store them correctly, if you use some great spring water, the coffee will taste really good. Do you know what else makes the coffee taste good? Being grateful for the fact you have some coffee. I grew up in what may be described as a Chuck Full o’Nuts life. My parents were divorced. My mom was a single mom with 2 kids which meant we never really had a lot of money. I had bad allergies and asthma growing up. This meant I often had to avoid certain sports and social activities. Does that mean I now live a bitter and bad tasting life? Not at all!
Just like our coffee example, I could have continued to drink the bitter coffee, but I did my best to make it taste good. My life was a little bitter, so I added the sweetness of my beautiful Margie. The obstacles were a little too strong at times with the allergies and asthma. I added the ‘cream’ of eating healthier and taking charge of my health. Now, my ‘Chuck Full o’Nuts life’ tastes better than many Jamaican Blue Mountain lives. It is cliché, but life really is 10% what you are given and 90% what you do with it.
I like my coffee, and my life, delicious. Therefore, I take the time to make them that way. What about you?
There are many things that influence my writing ✍️ and life’s mission. It began with a feeling that I was missing the true meaning of life. The United States Postal Service, as it so often does, informed after 10 years of service my job would be all but eliminated. At that point,I realized my focus, and to a large part my identity, had been tied to my job and my material success in life. When that was being taken away, I also realized what a poor life I had created.
That forced me to take a long hard look at both what is important in life as well as what truly brings us joy. Those years of reading, listening and attending seminars resulted in the creation of my first book, A Happy Life for Busy People. As I was writing this book it became clear that I was often the happiest when I was on vacation in the tropics. This should not seem like a shocking revelation, but it did bring up the question that would define the writing and work I was to do the rest of my life.
That question was this – How can you keep that vacation feeling all year long? When you are out shoveling snow in order to go to a job that drains your soul? How about stuck in traffic when you just want to be home with the love of your life. Two song lyrics and a smart ass response from a friend of mine helped provide some answers. The first lyric was from the band Kiss. The lyric was simply “You have to live like you’re on vacation.” While pondering that, I stopped into have lunch where a friend of mine worked. I asked her how her day was going. Her response? “You know. Living the dream right here at the ___”
The other lyric came from Jimmy Buffett, who sadly passed away at the age 76 yesterday. It was the song “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes”. It got me thinking about how different I felt stepping off the plane on a sun-drenched island 🏝 . Why did I feel so different and how can I bring that Attitude home with me? Listening to some of Mr. Buffett’s other songs offered clues to this laid-back beach state of mind.
It was attending a Jimmy Buffett concert that showed how people in the frozen state of Wisconsin kept that tropical state of mind. The parking lot of the concert was turned into a tropical paradise much like my trip to margaritaville, as documented in the picture above. There was people in swimwear. There was swimming pools full of rum drinks. Homemade beach signs and tropical colors everywhere.
Just to investigate further, I made a return trip to Jamaica and created as many memories as I could, including this one with another wonderful couple Margie and I met while we were down there.
The point of this is that we all need an escape. Whether it is writing about it in a song like Jimmy Buffett did, or even just listening to those songs. We need to escape, in whatever fashion we can, to the places that make us happy. It is not a luxury, but a necessity for our sanity.Where is your escape and how do you get there?
One of the saddest things that seems to happen as we age is that we lose an appreciation for the magic and beauty of life. It is no surprise. When we are young, most of the things we are exposed to offer an encouraging motif. Think of children’s programing. Most of it is a blend of encouragement of teaching and encouraging. I recall shows like Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood when I was young. I learned a lot, but there were also positive messages about myself, others and the world around me.
What happens as we get older? What we are exposed to takes a decidedly negative shift. News, crime shows, content on the internet and even that sent to our phones. Is the answer to stop using technology? Limiting our use of it may help somewhat, but that will not save us from interacting with other people. What are these other people exposed to? That’s right. The same negative influences we just mentioned. If you even attempt to be a light in this dark world, you will often be looked at as strange, weird or delusional. People will tell you things such as “You are looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.” or my favorite, “You just have your head in the sand. Can’t you see how bad the world is?”
What can we do to remedy this malady? Start doing something we may have stopped doing in childhood. That is looking for the beauty and magic that is all around us! It may not get the press and attention, but it is there. On social media, try subscribing to positive news stories and motivational pages. On your cell phone, download apps that send you motivational quotes everyday. These things really do exist! As for the sunshine-challenged people we share the planet with? Know most of them have just lost their ability to see the magic all around them. When they give you a crazy look or attack you, pity them. There life is one stuck in the darkness. In addition, add people who have the opposite mindset. Spend as much time around them as possible!
When you are looking to improve your life, it is always easer to add the positive than to eliminate the negative. You might want to read that line again. If you are trying to eat healthier, it would be easier to add a healthy meal than to starve yourself of meals that are not so healthy. The more you fill up on healthy food, the less room you will have for junk food. The same is true with everything in life. The more time you spend reading or listening to something inspiring is that much less time you could find yourself exposed to negativity. Adding smiles? Less time frowning. One minute of laughter? 60 seconds less of anger!
In regards to today’s post, spend more time actively looking for beautiful things in life. The more time you spend doing so, the less time you will spend noticing and dwelling on the negative. That doesn’t mean you are ‘burying your head in the sand’ and pretending they don’t exist. No, you are simply choosing not to dwell on them. As an example, above is my coffee as it was served to me at the pick up window at Starbucks. Not sure which employee took the time to do this, but it added a little brightness to my day. As I was in that sunny mood, I noticed the dandelion growing through a crack in the pavement right next to a dumpster. Proof that there is always a little light in the darkness. When we are children, we don’t have to look for the magic. It seems to show up at every turn. As adults, we need to train ourselves to get back to that. This may mean a little concentrated effort searching for the beauty in life. Done enough, it will start to show up in your life everywhere.
Another great idea is to keep images around you that remind you of the beauty you have and are currently experiencing in your own life. Above is a sample of mine. Great times with the beautiful love of my life, Margie. My mom celebrating Octoberfest. There is fun times watching a pig race at the Wisconsin State Fair and a very beautiful and loving sentiment that Margie wrote in the sand while we were enjoying time away in Jamaica. This not only reminds me of the beauty and magic in my life, it adds what could be the most powerful thing to create an amazing life. That one thing is gratitude. How could I not be grateful for all of these things? Being grateful and looking for all the beauty that is around us will positively transform our lives. Next post we will learn how to take all of this information and not only help others transform their lives, but create an almost automatic way to fill our lives with these things! Please come back tomorrow to learn all of that!
For those of you following this blog recently, you know that I have just returned from a week-long vacation to the sunny island country of Jamaica. What a fun time I had with my lovely lady, Margie. Today is my first full day back. Tomorrow I return to my day job at the Post Office. It was my first real vacation in 4 years and the first time I have taken a full week off of everything since…well…I can’t even remember when.
Ironically, when I was looking for things to write about, I came across this picture. It reminded me of something I think we could all benefit from. Stress, anxiety and overwhelm seem to be the status quo these days. Especially in “developed” countries. I put that word in quotes because we must ask ourselves what really is developed. Sure, our technology might be advanced. Does that make up for the lack of low-tech enjoyment? Our productivity might be at record levels, but what about the self-care that we all seem to sacrifice to get ahead? If our work output is developed, does that even matter when our spirit is not? It is time to change the focus.
Take the first item on this list. Humans were not meant to sit at a desk from 9 to 5. We really were not. We are meant to be physically active creatures. We were meant to move. Not only does physical exercise help reduce stress and release natural feel-good chemicals in the brain, it helps prevent and reverse many of the health conditions we all suffer from. You don’t have to slave in the gym for an hour, although I enjoy the feeling afterward. You can incorporate walks after dinner, bike rides with friends or even creating a dance routine to your favorite song when nobody is home. Moving helps us both mentally and physically.
The answer must be more relaxing right? The answer to that is both yes and no. While taking some time to unwind is something we should all invest in, how we do so becomes very important. Coming home to relax and watch a little television or a movie is not a bad thing. Bing watching for several hours every night is not healthy. Not only does it deprive us of the movement that is so valuable that we mentioned above, but it deprives us of time to accomplish things that will give us a feeling of pride and self-confidence. Again, this is not to say we should never relax with our favorite streaming service, just that we should do so with moderation. We should also mix in reading our favorite book, spending time with friends, taking a leisurely walk in nature and other relaxing options.
How about only exploring the world only 2 weeks a year? As discussed earlier, I am as guilty of this as anyone else. We need to get away and experience other cultures and people as often as we can. Not only will this broaden our knowledge of people and their circumstances, it may shed new light on our own lives. Look at this beautiful sunset picture I took over the ocean. A scene like that refreshes the soul. Talking with many of the Jamaican people, I learned that they were truly happy with a life that included a lot less than I was used to having. How did they do that? By focusing on being grateful for what they had. Seeing the poverty that many of the islands people lived in, reminded me to be grateful for all that I have. Even just hearing what is important to them and to their families allowed me to see life in a completely different light. Their friendly hospitality everywhere we went was amazing.
How about creativity? Adults seldom, if ever, spend time on creative pursuits. I believe this is for one of two reasons. First, they view such endeavors as wasted time. What does coloring a picture accomplish? I will tell you what it accomplishes. It helps save your brain from a meltdown! That is why I am happy to see the popularity of ‘adult coloring books’. Why do more people not do this? I think another reason is that adults are afraid of not doing things perfectly. If they look worse than their neighbor, they think they have failed. Not true. Picasso had people with square noses and he was considered a great success. The point is to just have fun and let lose. Keep that right side of your brain healthy. If I had to worry about being better than my neighbor, I would never do much. Margie is a very accomplished artist and can do almost any art thing better than I can. Still, I understand that we all have our own unique talents and shine in our own way. Speaking of Margie, she provides another clue to maintaining a creative outlet – surround yourself with creative people. The other night at dinner she stared at her blank placemat and exclaimed, “I need crayons!” She was serious. You need someone like that.
This plays into our last point. Not to have all your aspirations beaten out of you. In a world of online critics, this can be more difficult than ever. Remember this, someone who is truly happy with themselves will never criticize others. One of the most difficult critics to defeat is the one between your own ears. I remember when I thought about starting a blog, writing my first book, starting a YouTube channel or starting a podcast, I did my best to talk myself out of it. Luckily for me, I also had people in my life that pushed the issue. You want to write a book? Give it a shot! You want to become a fashion designer? Try putting together a few outfits. We function best when we are pursuing a dream. Never give up on yours!
As you read this, I’m heading back to Wisconsin from Jamaica 🇯🇲. It is a sad day for me as I love the warmth, sun and people of this island. We made many good friends here. We had a few adventures. We ate lots of good food. Most importantly, we made lots of good memories.
The important thing is trying to figure out how to take all of this back home with us. We made friends with another couple who live not far from us and I am going to send them one of my books when I return. We took lots of pictures that will help us recall the fun we had. Margie even bought me a fun matching hat and shirt that I will wear and recall this fun trip.
Like the first picture says, it is what is in your heart that matters most. That is why I feel it is important to have a plan forany major event. Know what you want to take away in your heart. The romantic drawing in the sand has been erased by the tide, but the feeling I had when I saw it coming out of the ocean is fresh in my heart. It is these sort of memories one should include as often as you can in life.
As I write this, I am in vacation in Negril Jamaica. Above is a Latte made by one of the employees here at the resort. It was one of the best I have ever had. As I sat in the large lobby enjoying it, the thought occurred to me that for me, being in the tropics, enjoying a great coffee with the lady I love was close enough to perfect. For a few minutes I sat and just soaked it all in.
This is the view from where we ate lunch. Another moment of soaking itall in. You never know when life, or even your vacation, can go sideways. You need to have these moments of peace and perfection to fall back on. Make sure you soak in the beauty of as many moments in life as you can. Until next time my friends, keep Living your amazing life. 😀
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 