With the last couple posts about being self-disciplined and driving for becoming a better version of yourself, many people may get the wrong idea. Wanting better for your life, your relationships, and the world we live in, does not mean you are in a constant state of wanting or unfulfillment. Quite the contrary. Gratitude is one of the most powerful motivators. Here is a secret to an amazing life – if you want more to be grateful for, work your butt off. It is a tricky balance. Like the photo above says, “Be happy with what you have, while working for what you want.” I would replace the word happy with the world grateful but the idea is the same. Are you grateful you have that special loving person in your life? Good. Feel grateful, but be self-disciplined enough to continue to work on making that relationship healthier and more loving and you will always have something to be grateful for. Are you happy your healthy? Good for you. Appreciate your health. It is one of the most underrated forms of wealth. Guess what happens if you don’t continue to push to maintain and improve your health? You lose it. The same holds true for your relationship, your job and any other area of your life.
Spend some time, first thing in the morning always works well, to feel and express gratitude for what you have in life. Spend the rest of the day working to make it better. There is nothing in our life that maintains if we do not continue to work on it. Our fitness, our mental health, our relationships and even the plants in my house. Do some soul searching. What in your life are you most grateful for or happiest with? What do you think would happen if you just ignored that area of your life? I can promise you it would not get any better and in all likelihood, it would begin to break down. While you are working on improving any area of your life, thinking of how grateful you are for it can be a great motivating factor as well. Imagine your life without it. That will keep you working to improve it. What areas of your life are you most grateful for? How do you plan to improve them?
This is one of those post titles that sounds absolutely ridiculous, but if you stick with me, I believe you will appreciate the wisdom. Love can be a crazy and difficult thing at times. Doing your best to make sure your partner is happy and satisfied could, and should be, a full-time job. Put that responsibility on top of your job and you can feel worn out on occasion. In many cases, we use certain opportunities to wow the love of our life with some meaningful gift. Maybe jewelry, flowers, a new car or some other grand gesture. These are all well and good, but I do not believe they are completely necessary and often miss the boat when it comes to what love is truly about.
We often few love like we do these grand gifts. We see the romantic movies and have read the fairytales. We look for kings, queens, castles, and someone to come sweep us off our feet. Like love is either this grand thing, or it is nothing. Not only is that not realistic, but it is not sustainable. Yes, love can do amazing things, and yes, love can make you feel like royalty. Those moments are great, but they are the exception to the rule. What is love truly about? It is about toothbrush covers. What the heck does this even mean? Love is about being for someone day in and day out. It is about taking out the garbage when you are already tired from work. It is about taking time to listen to your partner’s day when you barely have energy to get through yours.
What does any of this have to do with toothbrush holders? It is those gently daily reminders that someone loves you that mean the most. We can often take them for granted. While diamond jewelry is certainly able to blow us away with romantic feelings, how often will we wear that necklace? How often does it get taken out and appreciated? I am going to share a little personal story about a gift that my love lady, Margie, got for me. One day she came home excited from the store and exclaimed, “I got us toothbrush covers!” Seeing the appreciative, although less excited, look on my face, she went on to explain. “You know all of the germs flying around your bathroom and how they can get on your toothbrush.” I must confess this is something she is far more concerned with than I am. Still, I thanked her and put the little device on my toothbrush. Months later, I happen to be brushing my teeth (I brush them everyday, this thought just took months to occur) when I took a second to look at that silly toothbrush cover. I thought about how concerned she had been about the germs we might get on our toothbrush and how excited she was to have found, and purchased a solution. In her way, she was showing how much she loved me. Every tooth brushing (Which I must again stress happens twice a day) I think about how much she cares and loves me and it is because of that toothbrush cover.
Gifts do not have to be large. If we look behind them, we can see that some of the greatest love is given in some of the smallest gifts. Twice a day I am reminded that my lady loves and cares about my health. You might not view a toothbrush cover as romantic, but that would be your loss. Perception drives performance. How I perceive that gift of the toothbrush holder makes me feel loved and cared for. When I feel that way, guess how I treat the lady who gave it to me? With love and appreciation.
How on earth can I be saying “Happy Birthday” to myself today when I was born in July? Well, a year ago to the day I had open heart surgery. During this fun and exciting (small dose of sarcasm) experience, I had a brief flirtation with death. To my good fortune, the Creator, much like every hotel I have ever been to, didn’t have my room ready when I checked in. So, back I came to the land of the living. Apparently, I still have some work to do before my shift on earth comes to an end. Some of the folks at my day job started referring to me as Lazarus, the friend that Jesus had raised from the dead in the bible.
You would think the whole ‘coming back from the dead’ thing would have you waking up to a radical shift in the way you view life and the world. I can tell you, at least in my case, that is not how it worked. I did have a new appreciation for the song Living Dead Girl by Rob Zombie. Beyond that, I was more focused on what was occurring in the present. Namely, the healing from the open-heart surgery and other exciting things that came with it. This is all chronicled in my third book, The Beat Goes On, which you can pick up at the link at the end of this blog. You can read what happened when I did briefly cross over and how it affected me. It is a fun and entertaining read I promise you.
Initially, there were far more changes to my thinking before the whole dying and being resurrected than after. I realized how what I left behind would end up being far more important than what I would take with me. That is something you can understand on the surface, but when you face the real possibility of not returning tomorrow, you wonder and worry if the people around you know how much you care about them. Did you leave enough life lessons to those who will come behind you? Did you say all that you had to say? Are all aspects of your life in order? There is a sense of urgency that develops. That is why I love the Native American saying “Today is a good day to die.” Meaning, if you live your life everyday as if you would die, then when it does happen, you will be at peace with it. As the days ticked down to my surgery, I also realized how fleeting life truly is. We never know how much time we have left, but we know it is less than the day before. It is like watching the sand go through the hourglass. We don’t know how much sand is on top, but we know it is getting less all of the time. This may sound a bit doom and gloom, but it really is not. The knowledge that one day you are going to die and it could be sooner than you think, is one of the best motivations to live life to the fullest.
One of the most interesting things that has happened since I came “out of the darkness and returned to the light” is that the lessons seem to continue you to come. I recall the first being the day I got out of the hospital. Having lunch with Margie and my mother, I recall looking around and realizing that few, if any of the people realized the lessons I had learned facing death and then returning from it. I wondered how many people knew about the hourglass? How many were focused on what they were leaving behind verses what they were taking with them? My greatest ‘birthday gift’ I received that day, was not only the revelations and lessons that were brought home emotionally and not just mentally, but the overwhelming desire to share as much of that knowledge with others. It began with my third book and continues with these daily blogs.
It should not take dying to realize how precious life is, but sometimes it does. Next time you look at an hourglass, I hope you develop the same urgency to make the most of your life that I do. Next time you spend a romantic evening with the one you love, or share a fun evening with friends, I hope you don’t pass on the opportunity to convey how much they mean to you. After reading this, I hope you focus a little more on what you will leave behind, and a little less on what you will take with you. If you want to help celebrate my second birthday with me, give me, and those you care about, the gift of sharing the inspiring words we share here with them. The more souls we can touch, the greater the impact we can make on this world. As a bonus, I suggest checking out the song Life is Beautiful from the band Sixx A.M.
This was me a year ago. Ok, a little less than a year ago. January 12 of last year. Shortly out of open-heart surgery and after a brief flirtation with death. Notice the tube coming out of my neck. I think that makes me look like a tough guy. The whole thing seems like a distant dream at this point. There are a few lingering effects, but I am getting better every day.
What I want to talk about today was what did change. Shockingly, not a lot. At least not right away. In reflection, this is what shocks me, it took a while for changes to occur. You would think waking up in the operating room after open-heart surgery, knowing you briefly passed on, and then going through some crazy rehab would have you walking out of the hospital a different man. Nope.
Here is what I did notice. A lot changed before my surgery and near death experience. The humorous part about that was that I didn’t realize these changes until well after my surgery was over. A lot came to my attention while writing my journey in my third book, The Beat Goes On. As I was writing about a visit to the movies with Margie only 2 months prior, I realized my focus had changed. I was facing a possibility of a dramatic change in life situation and my thought was what I would leave behind if I did not make it. Not what did I want to eat, where I wanted to go or things I wanted to do. No, what was really emotionally pressing as I was facing possible death, was making sure the people that I loved knew that I loved them and what legacy I was going to leave behind.
The picture above is an example of that. It was the last picture Margie and I took before I walked out the door to go to the hospital. I wanted one last picture. It wasn’t that I was even attempting to be noble. It was the thought that if I died, would it have mattered that I made one more trip to the Nite Owl for a hamburger? I would be dead. Wouldn’t even able to talk about it. Unless of course you can come back and haunt people and let them know where to eat the best burgers in town. I realized if I wanted to be immortal, that would depend on what I left behind and not what I took with me. It reminded me of a great quote I heard from the actor Denzel Washington, “You never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.” It is not what you take with you, but what you leave behind. While I was feeling all of these emotions (As you can read in The Beat Goes On) I wasn’t aware of why I was feeling them. It wasn’t until I was writing and reflecting that this truth came to light.
While I was going through this whole life-changing event, I did not fully grasp the magnitude of what was transpiring. I was still the goofy author who found humor in what was going on around me. Like this sign warning people not to put their hands in the toilet. I was not aware this was a temptation that had to be fought. Good to know that one could get injured that way, I suppose. Nicole, my favorite nurse that I had, warned me that I would be more emotional after the procedure. I did not feel much different until after I left the hospital. I recall wanting to go to Panera for lunch before going home. I love their hazelnut coffee. I recall sitting in front of my protein bowl looking around at the other people in the restaurant, including Margie and my mother, and thinking that somehow I was now different. I had the experience of slipping through the great beyond. Gleefully, that was temporary. Still, I felt like a foreigner in the world. Very hard to explain.
Looking back, I am sure there will be more lessons that will come to me. Even such a traumatic experience as heart surgery and death do not always give you the lessons right away. In my second book, Living the Dream, I wrote about lessons I was still learning from my Grandfather who has been gone quite some time. Life is like that. This is why it is so important to give yourself time to reflect and just think. This is also why sharing your story, whether that is in a book or blog for the world to learn from, or just in a journal for your own private use. There is something magical that happens when you put pen to paper. Lessons you never knew that you learned suddenly leap from the pages. I would love to hear some of the lessons you have learned in life after reflecting.
One of the most ironic things that I hear as a life coach is that people do not have the time for self-care and self-improvement. The misconception here is that it is somehow a separate area of your life. They will say things such as “I know I need to take better care of my mental and physical health, but I really need to focus on my money situation.” or “I would love to spend more time improving the way I deal with stress, but the kids keep me so busy.”
Do you know what the common denominator in your money, your parenting, your career as well as every other area of your life is? I give you a really big clue, you can find it in the mirror. You are the common ingredient in every area of your life that you are trying to improve. Worried about your health? Here is an interesting fact, do you know that you are 11% more likely to have a heart attack on Monday morning than any other day? How can that be? We hear about smoking, alcohol consumption and diet being risk factors. None of them would make Monday worse than any other day. What the data tells us is that life and job dissatisfaction is one of the main risk factors for heart attacks. When you are going to a job that is killing your soul every week, it might be killing more than that. If you are having an issue dealing with work stress, not taking the time to get help and learn to use stress in a healthy way can end up costing you a lot more than just medical bills.
How about money? Everybody needs to focus on their finances. What would we need to be more financially healthy? Energy? The ability to deal with stress and change? Focus? The ability to perform better at work? How are all of these obtained? We could focus on each area one at a time, which a lot of us do, but there is a quicker way. That is to focus on you. If you improve yourself, you will be a better parent, a better employee, a better business owner, a better friend and a better lover. When we improve ourselves, our lives improve. If you bring a better ‘you’ to any area of your life, that area will improve.
In closing, we need to stop treating self-care and self-improvement as a separate area of our life. Instead, we need to understand by focusing on improving ourselves, every area of our life will improve. If we focus on our physical health, for example, we will be sick less often. This would allow us to use less sick days at work. It would give us more quality time with our children and our spouse. That would make us better parents and lovers. If we improve our mental health and ability to deal with stress and change, that will help us be a more patient and attentive lover, parent and coworker. If we work on improving our listening skills…well, you get the idea. Focus on yourself. It is one of the best things you can do for everyone else.
As the year draws to a close and we look forward to 2023, I would invite you to do one thing. Introduce yourself. This blog is called Secret2anamazinglife. It is a place to both give and receive. We are followed in all but 8 countries in this amazing planet of ours. We are followed on all 7 continents. That means there are so many of you out there with secrets that help you live an amazing life. It would benefit us all to know them. That is why I would like to extend an invitation to introduce yourself. Tell us where you read these posts of inspiration and motivation. Let us know a little about yourself. What do you enjoy about what we share here? Most importantly, share your knowledge. What do you do to live an amazing life?
Each of our lives, whether that be our personal experiences, the country we live in, the people we know, the jobs we hold or the pets we have, hold secrets to living an amazing life that are worth sharing. I get regular feedback from my friends in Italy, Greece, and Lebanon. I would love to hear from people in every country we are followed in. By all of us sharing, we can help each other live a more amazing life. We have over 4000 followers in India alone. 1000 in South Africa. Each one of you is awesome and a great asset to this website. In the coming years, I hope to meet a lot more of you. Certainly, my followers in Fiji and the Maldives can host a book signing. I would be happy to come out and shake your hands. In regards to our friends in France, Peru, and Kenya, as well as everywhere in between, it would be wonderful to meet you at the very least virtually. Tell me what you would like to read more about. Tell me what you enjoy about this site and what is important to you. In what ways do you benefit from what we share? In what ways could we improve?
Lastly, I invite you to share this site. The more people we can reach, the more we can spread the positive, motivational and inspiring messages we share here. Share the posts you enjoy on your social media pages. Invite others you think could benefit from learning secrets to an amazing life to be a part of our family. That is what I consider all of you, a family. We all gather here to both discover and appreciate the true miracle we are all living. Let us introduce and meet each other. Share a little about yourself in the comments below and please continue to do so all year long. Your interaction only makes what we share here stronger. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
As a bonus, you are all invited to become a part of my new Podcast, Living the Dream with Neil Panosian. Here you will hear me read sections of my books and get the behind the scenes information as to what went in to creating them. You can also listen to inspirational messages as you drive in your car, go for a walk, workout at the gym or whatever else you may be doing. Just click on the link below to listen and subscribe. It is an opportunity to become part of another inspiring community of like-minded people.
The above picture was taken in fern Gully Jamaica in 2019. Margie and I had met this very nice lady, I think her name was Stephanie, on the tour we were on. It was truly a wonderful vacation where we met a lot of nice people. I often reflect on what a good time we had and miss being somewhere tropical with my love. We are currently planning on taking another trip in February to somewhere warm and sunny. It is tricky not to have my mind back in 2019, or look forward a couple of months to our next adventure. It certainly helps to do that when the temperature was well below freezing and the weatherman was cautioning you to stay inside.
Having these little mental vacations is not only helpful, it is recommended to maintain your sanity. They were only made possible by creating those memories in the moment. In a world where many of us post pictures of every meal we eat, it is just as important to slow down and enjoy the meal as we eat it. What good would it do us to look back at a picture of a mouth-watering meal and not remember what it tastes like? The picture from Jamaica was taken because we really enjoyed this young lady’s hospitality and wanted to remember the good time we had.
Here is another picture from a trip Margie and I went on. This one was to a city about an hour or so from where we live. We did so many fun things while we were there. One of my favorites was discovering a coffee shop that employed people with mental and physical challenges, giving them valuable experience in the workplace and an opportunity to feel how important and valuable they are. I even have a sticker from that coffee shop on the laptop I write on. If I would have stayed focused on how much I enjoyed our Jamaican vacation, I would not have been able to enjoy this one to the fullest. That would have been a shame. Not to mention, I was lucky enough to enjoy both of them with this beautiful lady.
During the holidays, this can be tough advice to follow. Especially, when we lose someone we really care about. Above is a picture of my grandparents. I recall a house full of people. My grandmother, and other relatives, making enough food for at least twice as many people as were present. It seemed the whole family got together. They have long passed away. The family does not seem to gather like it used to. I not only miss them, but those moments. Then I remind myself to do one thing – look around the table. It is very hard not to let our sadness of missing those we love overcome our gratitude for those we still have in our lives. This is brought home every time that I scroll through my friends on social media. I notice how many people, young and old, are no longer with us. It would be a shame to be missing them and not be able to appreciate the long list of those still with us. While our hearts are longing for those who left us, please let us look up and feel a great deal of love and gratitude for those who we are still blessed to have in our lives. Next year the list may be smaller and it would do our hearts good to know that we took the time to appreciate them while they were here. Loss is painful, but it is only made worse by regret.
One way to ease the burden of loss is to know that we lived, laughed and loved with those who meant the most to us. It will not only help us ease the feelings of loss we have for those who have already gone, but help that same feelings of those we will tragically lose in the future. Love who you have as much as you can and your life will be full of joy and peace.
I love this picture for several reasons. First, I am a huge fan of Winnie-the-Pooh. Second, the quote by Hans Christian Anderson is amazing. Last post we spoke about changing perspective. Can you imagine viewing a lot of our everyday things as miracles? To some of you that may seem like a stretch, but really it is not. Take the simple act of eating. Food grows using the power of the sun. It is composed of complex molecules of all different sorts. We mash it up using our teeth and swallow it. Somehow, inside of our stomach it is transformed from a piece of broccoli, or in my case a slice of deluxe pizza, to a source of energy that powers all of the processes in our body. This occurs without us having to learn or do a single thing. Pretty amazing if I must say so myself.
Here is another aspect of miracles, being grateful. When you think of the things mentioned above, they might seem like the basic items of life. It is true that everyone should have these items. It is also true, that the vast majority of people on this planet do not. If you are reading this, it is assumed you have an internet connection in some fashion. Think of the miracles of that! You can access knowledge of the ages in the palm of your hand, in the case of a cell phone. When I was young you had to go to the library and search through volumes of books called encyclopedias. Today you just talk into your phone and access Wikopedia in seconds. 100 years ago, electricity and running water was just beginning to be the norm. Today, in places like war-torn Ukraine, and many rural villages in Africa it is still a luxury. Many of the things we can take for granted can be ripped from our lives in the blink of an eye. As I write this, the western part of the United States is being subjected to a terrible winter storm. 40 people have already lost their lives and thousands more are without power.
This is not meant to be a doom and gloom post. Just a poignant reminder that many of the basic services will become a luxury if they are taken away. A mother in Kyiv would give anything to have a safe roof over her head and a place to raise her children without the fear of a bomb falling on them. Do you have that? Be grateful. Somewhere in western New York, a family was wishing they had heat to be able to stay healthy and enjoy the holidays. Did you have that? Be grateful. There is a tired cliché that we do not know what we have until it is gone. For most of us, that is uncomfortably true. As the year draws to a close, I invite all of us to consider the ordinary things of our lives and how miraculous they truly are. Think of what many of us take for granted that others would be so grateful to have.
This is a view from the hotel that I took my lovely Margie for her birthday 🎂 Stepping back and looking at the city from this angle certainly changes how you view things. In the thick of things with the pollution, hustle and bustle you can miss some of the beauty of the architecture, the lights, and the cityscape itself.
The same can be said for life. In the middle of our work-a-day world, focused on working and paying bills, we miss a lot of the beauty of our lives. It’s not our fault. Life gets so busy it seems to fly by in a blur. We need to “push pause” and appreciate the beauty of our lives.
If life is so busy, how can we manage to do this? Who has time to step back and just appreciate life? Lately, Margie and I have been crazy. I’ve been working about 50 hours a week at my day job, plus working on my fourth book and of course bringing you this daily inspiration. Margie was finishing school, under the weather and still making delicious desserts to brighten people’s lives. We, like many other busy couples, fall into the habit of being too busy for each other.
I’m sure you have felt it. You both are working hard and feeling tired. Suddenly, you find yourself being irritated with the person you share a living space with. Everything you have going on and they want to spend quality time together? You may even snap at each other or speak in a less than loving tone. Not because you are necessarily upset with them but because there is too much life on your plate.
When this happens, that’s when you need to pull the emergency brake. Trust me, if you don’t notice it is happening, your partner may gently remind you it is. Here are some secrets to getting a new perspective. First, apologize. Explain that you lost focus. This is not a bad thing, but will let your partner know that life, not them, is what has your nerves frayed. Second, take a step back – literally. When you take a physical action, it can change your emotional state. There is a whole chapter about this in my second book, Living the Dream. Wherever you are, take one step back. Take a deep breath and slowly let it out while your at it.
Next, change what you focus on. Last night Margie made us quesadillas for dinner. I took a step back and watched her flipping them on the griddle. All i could think was “How is such a beautiful and funny woman also such a great cook?” That got me thinking how grateful I was that we were together. How she can always make me laugh,or at least raise one eyebrow.
In your life, take a step back regularly. The more you do it the more you will see a great deal of the beauty you may have missed while you were busy living life.
Just remember this holiday season, to leave kindness wherever you go. The holidays can be tough for many and your joy may be the only joy they see. Being kind to one another is the greatest gift we can give this time of year.
