I hope this quote gave you a little chuckle like it did for me. I think it is helpful to have something that is not only a little silly, but encouraging as well. A quote like this can start your day with a smile and a little boost. As for me, I am certain to accomplish the first part of the quote and as long as Margie thinks the second part is true, I will be good.
Life is full of challenging times and challenging people. Having a quote like this to help get us through could be worth its weight in gold. It would also be a great response to the question, “How are you?” or “How is it going?” Having an empowering answer to this question can have a great impact on your life. Why? Think about how many times a day someone asks you how you are. At the very least, it is something you will answer at least once a day. Having an answer that is positive and uplifting means that you will be saying that very thing at least once a day. It is like repeating an affirmation. Conversely, I have heard all manner of sarcastic and negative answers to this question. Why you would want to speak negative over your life is beyond me.
Find your empowering and silly quote now. You can use this one until yours appears. Think of a positive response you can reply with when someone greets you. If you can make them smile as well that is an added bonus. Think if you ask someone how they are doing and they smile and look at you and say, “Living the dream with amazing people like yourself!” That may very well brighten your day. The more you repeat positive statements, the more they seep into your subconscious mind. Doing this long enough, it becomes your reality. I would love to hear some of your ideas of positive and silly quotes below.
Have you ever read a great deal of negative news, or perhaps been a part of a very negative conversation? One so negative that you actually felt exhausted when it was over? That is because you have spent a great deal of your most valuable currency foolishly. We only have so much mental, emotional and spiritual energy. It can vary from day to day. Just like you have more physical energy on some days than you do on others. Maybe you didn’t sleep well? Maybe you have a physically exhausting job to tackle. The next day you may have gotten sleep, had an extra cup of coffee and are ready to go!
The same can be said for our emotional and spiritual energy as well. We only have a finite amount of it every day. Are we going to waste it on the negative news of the day? The sad part is that often we waste so much of our energy on the unfulfilling, that we are ‘energy bankrupt’ and unable to afford to give any attention to things that would fill our hearts with joy.
Mastering our attention does not mean being ignorant to the fact there are challenges in life. It is deciding how much of our energy and/ focus currency we are going to spend on them. It would be a good idea to use the 80/20 principle here. Spend 20% of our attention on the problem. Defining it clearly. Then, spend the remaining 80% of the time on possible solutions. It would be a great idea to start every morning giving our attention to something that feeds our soul. Read something from your faith. Find an inspirational website, such as the one you are currently reading. Begin each day giving attention to something positive. It would also be wise to devote your last bit of energy before sleep to something positive as well. This again could be reading something positive. It could also be keeping a gratitude journal, meditation or a host of other things. You will not only sleep more peacefully, you will wake up with more positive energy for the following day.
Think of this as you go throughout your day. Remind yourself you only have so much energy and focus currency. Ask yourself, “Is this really what I want to be spending my emotional currency on?” If not, acknowledge the issue and move along to something that makes your heart happier.
This quote and picture are obviously not just about candles. Before we get into what this means in our daily life, let us look at it from the point of a candle. You are in a dark room and you have a lit candle. It gives off a certain amount of light. Someone else walks in with a candle. The room becomes twice as bright. If you were to walk over to them and blow out their candle, the room would become darker. In addition, your candle would not burn twice as bright to make up for the loss of light. Suppose there were other unlit candles in the room. If you were to use yours to light them the room would continue to get brighter.
This all seems rather obvious from the point of candles. What the light of the candle really signifies is the light inside all of us. Some get jealous when they seem another person’s light shining and look to extinguish it. As if that would somehow make their light shine brighter. In only results in making the room, or this case the world, a darker place. Conversely, if you were to use your candle to light as many other candles as you could, the room would continue to get brighter and brighter. What this translates to is using your gifts, and the light inside of you, to brighter the lives of as many people as you can. If we fill the world with happy people, the world only becomes a brighter place. Just like the more candles you light, the brighter the room.
Next time you brighten someone’s day, know that you are really doing so much more. You are making the world a brighter place. The more people you do this for, the brighter the world becomes. Remember there are lots of people blowing out candles. They put people down, they are cruel and unkind. Therefore, you may have to light the same candle more than once. It takes a continued effort to keep all of the candles around us lit. It requires us always looking to empower and uplift each other. Let us work to make the world as bright as we can.
The last few posts we have been talking about gratitude, appreciation and such. These are not mere idle words. They are powerful ways of thinking. Roughly ten years ago, I began to change the way that I thought and viewed the world. It has created some radical shifts in my life. I gained the love of my life. I wrote and published 3 books. I started a podcast and YouTube channel. I began speaking. This was all due to a change in the way I thought. When you develop an attitude of gratitude and live in the present life becomes nothing short of magical. Even if your life is tough right now, there are so many things we have to be grateful for. Clean water, the ability to read these words, the fact we are alive when there are so many advances in science and medicine.
When you develop this attitude, that of gratitude, you will recognize that merely being alive is such a great gift! One way to really begin to appreciate all that you have in your life is to live in the present. Way too many of us are filled with regret for the past, or anxious about the future. One already happened, one hasn’t happened yet. Regret the past? The only way to do anything about it is to take action in the present to make up for it. Worried about the future? The best thing you can do is to take actions now to prepare for the future. Don’t want to risk taking things in your life for granted? Stop looking at your phone and take a look around you.
We can get so busy working to afford a life, that we fail to realize that life itself is the gift. It is in mastering our thoughts and choosing what to focus on that is the secret to an amazing life. We can choose to focus on what is right with the world, or what is wrong with it. They are both available at all times. Focusing on what is good in the world does not mean you are ignorant to the fact that there are things that need improvement. Just that you are not dwelling on them. This is a lesson I practice daily. I work long days most of the time. I have a wonderful lady at home that I will soon marry. There are times that my heart almost breaks because I miss spending time with her. If I were to focus on that, my day would be filled with sadness and heartache. Instead, I choose to focus on how fortunate I am to have someone I am so excited to come home to. That is a gift that not many have. I can be grateful that I have a job that I can work to help support us. Again, something not many have.
Even writing this blog and my next book. People ask how after working 56 hours at my day job, 5 hours on Sunday as a DJ, and going to the gym 3 days a week, do I manage to still have ambition to write? Still have ambition? How many people get to share thoughts for reducing stress, increasing joy and becoming the best version of ourselves to people in over 200 countries? It is a feeling of joyous obligation. Meaning I know people are relying on me to bring motivating and empowering positive thoughts to them daily. That is such a great blessing and opportunity. Does that make it easy? No. It makes it worth it.
Changing your thinking begins with mastering your thoughts. Until you do that, you can’t do anything. Once you do that, you can do anything. Mastering our thoughts means mastering our inner dialogue. Controlling the conversation that is going on in our heads and not leaving it up to chance or outside circumstances. This takes some discipline and willpower. It is certainly a skill worth mastering. When you do get control of your thinking, you will empower yourself to accomplish anything you are going after.
If you want to know the secret to an amazing life, start by mastering your own thoughts and emotions. It is a skill that will pay off more than anything else. More importantly, it will allow you to develop any other skill. If you fail to master your inner dialogue, you will forever be at the mercy of others and outside circumstances.
This idea is a mix of two of the ideas we have discussed in the past. By combining them, we get what I think could be the perfect gift idea! Being that the holiday season is fast approaching, you might want to read this and take some action. You will be sure to see a smile in the eyes of whoever you give this gift to. It is completely customizable and will have the person who receives it thinking of you all year long! Allow me to explain what this perfect gift is.
I was at work the other morning feeling a little down. It could have been lack of sleep. Maybe it was the first snow fall and the start of the winter season? Maybe it was because it was before 5am and I was at work. Whatever the cause, I was feeling a little down in the mouth as they say. My beautiful fiancé, Margie, was at home blissfully sleeping. As she is my main source of inspiration, I needed to do something quick, or I would be in for a long depressing day. I glanced over at my calendar. It is beach themed. This is one of the recommendations I make. Surround yourself with things that make you smile. Then, I thought of our most recent tip on how to develop an attitude of gratitude. I grabbed my phone and opened the picture album named ‘gratitude’. Pictures of Margie and I on vacation together, my mom and I at the state fair and many other such things greeted me.
Then I glanced back at the calendar to see how many days it was until my next day off. It was just then that the idea came to me. I asked myself, because often at work I am the best person for me to talk to. I asked myself, “Why not gather 12 pictures that make you feel grateful and turn them into a calendar?” A second voice in my head asked “Why not use collage and pick even more?” Then, a third voice that happened to be listening chimed in. “Why not pick pictures that remind you of why you are grateful for someone and make a calendar for them?” This was one of those times I was glad to have all of these voices in my head!
Granted on most days the voices in my head are not that spooky, but today I am glad that we all had the conversation. I think it could be a very touching an empowering gift. You could do pictures of fun times that you and the other person shared. You could do pictures of their accomplishments. You could do pictures of things you know they love. The possibilities are endless. Here is a cool part. Each month when they turn the page of the calendar, a new reminder of the awesome person in their life that gave them this calendar will pop in their head. That will be joined by the fun memories you shared if that is what you pick. If you pick all of their accomplishments, it might help them feel empowered throughout the year.
Whatever route you chose to go, putting the 50,000 pictures in your phone, or in my case your fiancé’s phone, to work will bring joy to everyone. It doesn’t just have to be a calendar either. You can go with a mug with a special picture you know they love or that will make them smile. Everytime they would take a sip of coffee, there you and the positive memories are. Not only will this bring a lot of joy to the other person, but it will probably strengthen your relationship with them. How is that for a great added bonus?
I heard something the other day that will be in my upcoming fourth book. I wanted to give you an abridged version here today. When it comes to improving our own lives, we have spoke volumes about adopting an attitude of gratitude. This is for good reason. You hear it so much it almost sounds cliche. The reason you hear it so much is because it works. We recently even discovered a new and almost effortless way to do this. That was creating an album of pictures (either a photo album or in your phone) that reminds you of what you are grateful for. Then, all you have to do is scroll through the pictures and you start to feel grateful.
This is technically not a post about gratitude. No, it is about gratitude’s twin sister. What are we talking about here? Let me explain. Gratitude works wonders on our relationship with ourselves, but what about our relationships with others? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a magic wand for improving them? There is and it is easy to use and will work on any relationship. Looking to deepen your love with your spouse? This will work. Looking to be on your cranky boss’s good side? It works for that too. How about conveying positive feelings to a friend? This is perfect for that! The more you get in the habit of using this skill, the more polished you will become at it and the more powerful it will work.
The secret power we are discussing, and gratitude’s twin sister, is appreciation. When you appreciate someone, you are telling them why you are grateful for them. This is not to be confused with flattery. That is false praise, usually delivered in hopes of gaining favor. You might think people can’t tell the difference. They can and nobody likes flattery. Appreciation is a genuine expression of gratitude for another person. Letting someone know you are grateful for them and exactly why is so powerful it can deepen the strongest love and soften the hardest heart.
Delivering appreciation is an art form. It takes a certain finesse. Using the right tone and body language. Maintaining eye contact without being creepy about it. This will all come with practice. Do not worry about being perfect. Appreciation is so rare today it is always treasured. Just be genuine and the results will be amazing. We are all out here trying our best and working hard. For someone to notice and let us know means the world.
When you start using genuine appreciation, I can promise you that every relationship in your life will improve. Who would not want that in life? When you think how interconnected we are in life, it is important to let others know how much they mean and how grateful we are for them. Start expressing appreciation today. Make it genuine. Make it sincere and it will change you life.
Today we celebrate a great milestone. This is the 2500th blog on this site. That means you could read one of these blogs everyday for almost 7 years and not repeat once. That is a lot of content. It has also spanned the course of 3 books written. Neither of these are the current goal that I am aiming for, but they are certainly worth celebrating along the way. Our current aim is to have a post for 1000 days in a row. We now sit at 873, which is very close. With your help and encouragement we will get there sometime next year.
When I sat down and made this goal on July 3, 2022, I never would have imagined we would be sitting here nearly 3 years later. There has been ups and downs. There has been writer’s block, illness, a busy work schedule and many other challenges. Yet there have been so many things worth celebrating along the way. We are now viewed in over 200 countries and on all 7 continents. That is quite an accomplishment. I have made friends in Italy, Lebanon, and many on the continent of Africa. Still looking for Greenland, but that will be another goal to celebrate.
In your life, when you are chasing goals, do not forget to celebrate along the way. Whether that is in your health, your career or your relationship. It is not all about the destination, but who we become on the journey. I would love to hear about the goals you are chasing and what you will celebrate along the way. Please share so we can encourage you and celebrate with you along the way.
The world can sure be a rough place. It can feel dark and overwhelming at times. It is then that we should think of this analogy. I ship in the ocean is surrounded by water, only a tiny fraction of which could sink it. Yet it can survive years, decades or longer without the slightest issue. Even an occasional leak can be fixed and the ship can continue to sail the oceans without succumbing to the water. We are not much different when it comes to the negativity of life. We are often surrounded by it. Some sink and some continue to sail through life unencumbered. What makes the difference?
The difference is, much like the ship, those people who sail through life have found a way to not let the negativity get inside of them. It comes down to having a good defense for the mental, physical and emotional challenges that we will come up against. The time to come up with this plan is now. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today. Do not wait until your drowning to learn how to swim. Yes, that was a lot of metaphors in a row, but I am hoping it helps get the point across. Life may be smooth sailing now, but a storm is always right around the corner. Yes, that was another analogy.
There are many ways to set up a defense. Some people meditate. Some, like my mother, walk in nature. My fiancé likes to shop and create. I go to the gym or write. You have to find a constructive way to keep the water, in other words the stress, out of your ship. Should a leak develop, and you start to feel the negative creeping in, patch that sucker and get back to sailing. Having a healthy stress reduction plan could be a therapist to talk to, a journal to write in, a friend to meet for coffee or a dog to go for a walk with. What is your defense against the ocean of negativity we are all sailing through?
Which one of us are not guilty of feeling insignificant at some point in time? I am a published author of 3 books that are owned by rock stars, movie stars and billionaires. I have a blog that is followed in over 200 countries. I say this not to brag, but to say that I have reached many people. Still, there are days I look at my beautiful Margie and ask her if I am really making a difference. Side note of this would be that I love engagement, so feel free to comment. My point here is that anyone can feel that what they do does not matter.
There are 2 things that I would like to mention in this post. The first is that what you do absolutely matters! If you are a server at a restaurant, you can make or break someone’s meal and often a special occasion they are celebrating. Maybe you are the person who cleans the same restaurant, can you imagine how you feel when you walk in a place to eat and it is dirty? It absolutely makes a difference. Are you a stay at home parent? You are raising the next generation and that makes a huge difference. There is not a single person who does not make a difference. It is not just about your career either. We will get into that next. Just know that you do make a difference.
Here is the other point I wanted to make. If you do not feel that you are making enough of a difference, there is a way to fix that too! Add more things that are impactful. These do not have to be big or complex. Make a point to smile more or to give someone genuine compliments. Let someone know they are appreciated and express gratitude wherever and whenever you can. Not only will this make those around you feel good, but it will have you feeling happy and abundant as well.
Remember you do make a difference, and there is always room to make more of a difference! While we are on the subject, a great thing to do is to let others know that they make a difference. To think you are alone in your struggle to feel significant, couldn’t be further from the truth. So many of us often fail to realize the difference that we do make. I am reminded of the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. By some miracle if you have not seen the picture, I will give you the theme in a nutshell. A man feels that he has not made a difference and is thinking of ending his life. He is allowed to see what life would be like had he never been born. He then learns how many lives he has impacted. Sadly, the rest of us cannot see what the world would be like without us, but trust me when I say each one of us makes the world a brighter place. You do make a difference. When you feel like you don’t, follow the steps above. Do simple things that make other’s lives better. Express gratitude whenever and wherever you can. Let others know what a difference they make.
There is a lot of fear and anger in the world right now. Many people are scared of what tomorrow may bring. That is not only understandable, in many areas it is justified. There is also a lot of anger in the world. The powers that be seem to be succeeding at dividing the people in a bid to control and conquer them. You are hearing more than the average amount of people bashing each other and their opinions or stands on many issues. This could be political, religious, climate or a host of other categories. What is the cure to all of this craziness.
At the risk of being anticlimactic, the answer is in the photo above. We must promote what we love instead of bashing what we hate. Another way of looking at this, is promote solutions instead of complaining about problems. It is easy to point out what is not working. It is far more difficult to actually come up with a solution for solving that problem. The first step in creating a solution for any problem in this modern age is to find a way to work together. That doesn’t mean have everyone agreeing on everything, but there does have to be a mutual respect. Ask yourself who profits from us hating our neighbor? Here is a clue, it is not you or your neighbor. When we learn to work together with a healthy dose of respect for those who differ from us, that is when we become strongest.
A more direct and simple way to happiness over fear and anger is to promote what you exactly love. Talk about what gets you fired up and what puts joy in your heart and a smile on your face. As an example, I do not care for 70’s folksy rock or disco. I do, however, enjoy classic jazz and 80’s hard rock. What doyou think would bring more joy to my heart, to complain and tell everyone how much I think one genre of music sucks, or to talk about my favorite bands and which songs I really like from them? Not only will that make my life more enjoyable, but I will be more enjoyable to be around. Nobody wants to be around the person who is constantly complaining.
Next time you find yourself filled with anger, fear or sadness, just start promoting what you love. Talk about and share what makes you happy. Here is a warning, there will be people who will tell you that what you enjoy sucks. There are just those people out there. Who knows, they might be filled with anger or fear and just not know how to express it. Instead of getting into a disagreement with them, just let them know you respect their opinion and end the conversation. You will not waste any energy and you will walk away a lot happier. An added bonus about expressing what you like is that you find people who like the same things. The same goes true for complaining, but what is more enjoyable, being in a crowd of people constantly complaining or people on fire with passion for what they love?
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 