Talk about simple yet profound! This is really a secret to an amazing life. In life we will all experience hurt. There is no way around it. No matter how dedicated to living an amazing life we are, sometimes things just won’t go our way. What then? It is then that we approach a figurative ‘fork in the road’. We have a choice in front of us. One way will not only prohibit our self-improvement, it will actually lead to our decline. It will keep us stagnant. In a world that is moving and changing so quickly, being stagnant will mean being left behind. It will also add considerable mental, emotional and physical stress. Stress in all three areas, who would want that?
The other path in the fork in the road can lead us to a far different result. It can propel our growth in a far more rapid manner than before the hurt. It can not only not add any additional stress, it can transform the initial stress of the hurt into gratitude. This reduction in stress will lead to a greater sense of inner peace, a stronger immune system and better relationships. The rapid growth will lead to a feeling of accomplishment and a better relationship…with ourselves! Less stress, more joy and growth? Better relationships? Who wouldn’t want all of that.
In case it is not obvious. One path is focusing on the hurt, the other is finding the lesson. When we find the lesson in the hurt, we transform something that brought us down into something that can propel us forward. This is huge. Anytime you can take a negative and turn it into a positive, you win. This is one of those ways. You will reduce your stress and increase your feeling of accomplishment. I cannot count the times when I say to myself, or out loud, “That sucked, but it helped me become the person I am today.”
Today take the challenges of life and mine them for the lessons. The payoff will be nothing short of priceless. Instead of being stuck in the quagmire of hurt and sadness, you will be using them as stepping stones to move yourself, and your life forward!
When I read this quote, I immediately loved it. It seems so logical on the surface. You might think it is something that everyone with half a brain would know. You should be right. When we look at what happens between countries on a global scale, however, it would seem those in the greatest positions of power missed this memo. How much retribution are we seeing. This country, or group of people, attack another group. Therefore, that group has to pay them back. That payback generates a retaliation from the first group. It creates and endless loop of violence.
While the examples may not be so great on a personal scale, the formula is the same. Someone hurts us so we hurt them. When they get hurt do they stop and think, “Wow. That must have been what it felt like when I hurt them originally. I feel this is my sign to wake up and improve my behavior.”? My guess is the answer would be a solid ‘No’. They are then feeling hurt and want to get back at us. It takes a well-trained and calm mind to react kindly when someone else hurts us.
This is not advocating letting others walk all over us. Not at all. What we are talking about is living life with thoughtful action and not emotional reaction. You might want to read that last line again. Living a life of emotional reaction is what can lead to generational abuse, and increasing the hate in the world. The negative news in the world can be overwhelming some days. One way to counteract that is to respond to darkness with light. To respond to hate with love. It is not easy and you may feel it makes you look weak. I think we all can admit you have to be a much stronger person to do so.
Today, respond to whatever negativity you encounter with positivity. It will not only reduce your stress and increase your inner peace. It will brighten and clean the world. Remember the quote above. You cannot clean dirt with dirt.
The Law of Attraction, or LOA, has become one of those trending and hot button topics. There are books, YouTube videos and even entire channels dedicated to the subject. Since the movie The Secret came out, it has been a popular topic. It is also a very controversial and polarizing topic. Some people treat it like a religion, some people say it is just a bunch of new-age nonsense. Which is it? In my experience there is nothing magical about the law of attraction. It is a science based activity that focuses on using different parts of the brain to serve us. It is far from nonsense, but it also not a magical spell that will cure all of your ills in life. Let us look at exactly what the law of attraction is and how we can put it into use in our life.
I am currently in the market for a new car so this is an example that works really well for me. Have you noticed this? It really comes into play after you buy a new car, or outfit, or any other meaningful purchase. The greater amount of emotion attached to that purchase, the greater this seems to work. You bought a certain make or model of car and now you see that car everywhere. Did everyone else go out and buy the same car to be like you? Simple logic tells us this is not so. Then why does there seem to be more of them on the road? We will get to that answer, and why the word ‘seem’ was in italics, in just a second.
One more quick experiment you can do to show you how this works. It will only take roughly 60 seconds and can radically transform how you see, and can use, the law of attraction. You can do this right now, right where you are reading this. Get still and focused. Maybe take a deep breath or three. Now, pick a color. It doesn’t really matter which one. One of my favorites is blue, so we will use that for our example, but you can use whatever color you desire. You are going to do what I am going to suggest next before reading the following paragraph. If you really want to get the full effect and understanding you will try it out. After you do what I am about to tell you come back at read the following paragraph. Here is what you are going to do. Look around you and see every object that you can find that is blue. It can be any shade of blue. Note what the object is. Do this for roughly 30 seconds. Go ahead and do that now. Look for blue objects.
Now that you are focused back on what we are learning, let me ask you a question. Without looking up, how many red objects can you name that you saw? You are probably saying, “I wasn’t looking for red. I don’t know.” Now look up and notice the red objects. Were they just put there? Of course not. No more than everyone bought the same car as you. What happened was the part of your brain that filters what is and is not important to you determined what you saw. In the case of the car, it brought to your attention a certain item. That is the make or model of car that matches your own. In the case of the blue objects, it blocked out any objects that were not of importance. This could be brown, red or any other color object. This part of the brain is called the reticular activating system. It is the bridge between your senses and awareness. We used visual examples because they are the most poignant. It works the same for any of the other senses as well.
Just like cars and blue objects, the law of attraction works for business opportunities, meeting the ideal lover, or a million other things. If we were to create a list of traits we would enjoy in people and reviewed that list with emotion every day, we would begin to see people with these traits showing up in our life. Perhaps we might start to notice some of our friends and family developing these traits. They really didn’t develop themwe just placed an importance on noticing them and our brain followed suit. The tricky bit is that this filter in our brain works the same for positive and negative alike. If we are constantly telling others that we have no luck, or that life is out to get us, our brain will be like, “Wait! Let me show you an example of that!” Before you know it, it will seem that our life is full of negative situations. Of course our filter will be more likely to point them out and draw them to us.
Although the brain can bring things to our awareness through the filter of the reticular activating system, it is us to then take action on those things. If we are focused on noticing business opportunities but don’t act on them when we see them two things will happen. First, the results will not be forth-coming. We need inspired action once we tend to notice the new things. Second, if we continue not to act, the brain will decide this must not be that important after all and stop bringing these to our attention. The law of attraction is real. It is a scientific and conscious use of the mind. It also requires action on our end.
Do you want a fun activity that will change the world? Try this one – empower and encourage other individuals. Will this really change the world? To answer that question, we need look no further than our own life. When someone encourages you in whatever endeavor you are pursuing how does that affect your effort and results? Are you likely to persist more or give up quicker? Does it help you visualize a positive outcome? It matters little what the endeavor may be. It could be fitness, a healthier diet, starting your own business. Empowering and encouraging others works the same.
Here is a little extra incentive to offer support to others. When you do, it gives you a hit of dopamine. That is the feel good chemical in our brains. By encouraging and empowering others, it helps to motivate and increase our mood. In addition, those wonderful folks we assist will be more likely to do the same for us in the future. It is an investment that has compound returns.
We looked at some practical applications for uplifting others. Here is a more altruistic reasons. It makes the world a better place for all of us. Who wouldn’t want a more positive world? Who wouldn’t want to help people feel the permission to believe in themselves. I would love to hear your stories of uplifting others, or when someone uplifted you. Feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Despite what many of you might have guessed by this post’s title, it is not some sensual endeavor I have tried with Margie. Some people think it is about the tongue being the most powerful muscle in the body. It is not. That is actually the jaw muscle. What this quote from the Bible tells us, is that we have a power that we can literally save or end lives with. It is a power that can propel us forward or hold us back. This power can start revolutions and war, or it can make someone fall in love with us. The surprising thing about this power is that we all have it. The crazy thing is that most of us use it without much thought. Some even use it with no thought at all. Can you imagine how dangerous it would be to use something so powerful with such indiscretion?
The power that we are talking about, and the power in this quote, is that of the words we choose. Think of the strangers we encounter throughout the day. We can only judge their mood by their outward appearance. As we have seen all to often, a smile can hide a world of pain. Perhaps that lady taking our order at the coffee shop is thinking of taking her own life. What difference do you think a genuine compliment can make? What if we scream at her for ten minutes because we got 5 ice cubes instead of 4? We could move her further away from the edge or push her over. We may never know. Speeches throughout history have inspired wars and people to rise up in revolution. A poem or a well thought out card can swoon the person of our dreams. Even a heart-warming text can transform someone’s day.
Each one of us have tremendous power in the words we speak. Even our inner-dialogue can go a long way to defining our self-image. We must take control of this great power we have and use it for good. How do you use the power of your words for good?
This is an awesome way to not only approach the week, but life in general. It appears they didn’t call Ol’ Alex great for no reason. There are two parts of this to unpack, and they are really not all that different. Let us take a look at them one at a time.
The first part of the quote is to conduct ourselves that all men (people) wish to be our friend. This is an interesting task. When you think of the wide array of people in the world, how can everyone want to be your friend? That is next to impossible. What is possible is to adopt characteristics and live in such a fashion that any decent person would want to associate with us. I like to call it the ‘John Wayne way of living’. In the movies, Mr. Wayne always played an honest, straight forward man. A man who always did his best to do the right thing. How close the real John Wayne was to this character is up for debate, but does not really matter here.
What do you think are some universally admirable characteristics? Honesty for one. Even if you disagree with someone, if they know that you will tell them the truth, they will respect you. Doing our best to be compassionate towards others, especially those we differ with, is one of those traits we should adopt. We never know anyone’s complete story, so we should never assume to judge them. Working to continually improve yourself is another trait that should inspire people to want to associate with you. Everyone admires someone who not only acknowledges their faults, but is actively working to improve upon them. Staying humble and kind. Keeping a positive outlook, even in tough times, allows us to be a light for others. Who wouldn’t want more light in their lives?
The second part can be taken a couple of different ways. “and fear to be our enemies” Does this mean we should threaten and make people fear us? Not at all. Here is how I see it. When you develop the traits above, the world at large will develop a positive outlook on you. Many people will be happy and honored to call themselves your friends. If someone were to talk negatively about such a person, or to attempt to spread gossip about them, who do you think would end up looking bad? It would be the person doing the gossiping about a person that most people hold in high regard. Therefore, the best thing you can do to have people fearing to be your enemy is to be a friend to as many good people as you can.
Adopting this way of living will allow us to chart a course that will end in a life well lived. We will have blessed the lives of many while we are here and our memory will live on long after we are gone.
Do you know that feeling when you are on the top of the rollercoaster and it is just about to drop down? You know you are just seconds from having your stomach temporarily relocating in your throat. This is the same feeling I get when fall comes. I know we are only a short time away from freezing temperatures and nasty driving conditions. I am doing my best to find creative ways to embrace the cooler weather, but on any given day I would rather be sitting on a beach under a palm tree. Still, my beautiful lady loves fall. We are even planning a fall wedding in the future. I am going to have to learn to like it. Although, celebrating our anniversary in the Maldives would not be a bad plan.
The reason I bring this up, is that we all have challenges in life. It is our perception of them that determines their degree of difficulty. I know this intellectually. It is time I start applying it emotionally. Therefore, I have decided to be grateful for the cold weather. When I made this decision, a lot of positive things about that season came to mind. I tend to stay home more. For me, this means more time with the most beautiful woman in the world (I might be biased) and delicious meals she creates. It gives me time to write more. There is no better way to strengthen our resolve than when it is challenged. It is easy for me to be happy sitting under that palm tree, but what about when it is below zero and I have a snow shovel in my hand?
Will this have me looking forward to the temperatures dropping? Not at all. What it will do is strengthen my ability to find what I should be grateful for in any situation. It will allow me to finally complete my fourth book. We will reach the milestone of 1000 days straight putting out content. Whatever is challenging you in your life, find ways to put it to work for you. I would love to hear how all of you do this.
This quote pretty much explains itself, but let us take a little deeper dive into it. So many of us are trying to be the best at something. That is good. Improvement in one’s life is a virtue. What we often fail to understand, is that being the most authentic version of ourselves will put us in our own unique category. In addition, if we truly want to be the best, we need to feel free to be ourselves.
Being ourselves should be one of the easiest things we do. Unfortunately, it is not. In a world that is pushing you to conform, being yourself can be viewed as an act of rebellion. It is easier to not ‘ruffle any feathers’ and do what is expected of us. That way everyone is happy, right? Wrong. We are not happy. When the world is full of people who do not feel free to be themselves, and are frustrated with the person they feel they have to be, bad things can happen. In the best case, they do not treat people as nice as they could. They also do not bring as much joy as they could, because they are not happy with themselves.
This is why it is so important to surround ourselves with people who love us for who we, while encouraging us to become better versions of ourselves. You may wish to be like that stunning actress or talented ball player. Do you know what they could never be? You! It is you the world needs. You are the only person who can be you. It is that you who might be needed to inspire, encourage or motivate someone. They might only respond to your voice, to who you are. Trust me when I tell you that the best thing you can become is who you truly are.
Depending on its use, one phrase that can drive me crazy is, “It is what it is.” This is true in some regards which we will get to later. When used as an excuse not to take any action to change how it is, that drives me crazy. The only thing worse is people who constantly complain about their circumstances and expressing their desire that they were different. This takes away valuable time from making the most of them.
On a personal level, I was born with a few health challenges. I have asthma. This prevents me from doing some of the physical activities as good as I would like. I have a deformed heart that I was born with. This not only forces me to take a few more precautions that the average person, I also have to be routinely tested. Neither of these did I contribute to. They came with birth. Many people tell me how sad and unfair that is. In this case, I do say “It is what it is.” Nothing will change the fact that I cannot breathe that well or that I get nervous every time I have a pain in my chest.
That was the fate I was born into. I can choose to despise it, or I can love it. Why on earth would I love the fact that I was born with these issues? One, it helps me relate to others who have these, and other, medical conditions. It also motivates me to take as good of care of my physical health as I can. On the days when going to the gym does not sound like the best idea, I think about the fact I could die. When I don’t want to do cardio, I know the more I work my lungs, the better they will function. Not to mention, I have no urge at all to start smoking. If I didn’t have asthma, sometime along my 23 year journey of bartending or my time singing in a band, I would have picked the habit up.
When it comes to the life we are dealt, there is no use in crying how unfair it is. That may very well be true, but now what? If life knocks you down, that can often not be your fault. Finding a way to get back up is entirely your responsibility. Fate can be kind, it can be cruel. When we can’t control that, we can control our reaction to it.
Today is Friday the 13th. Many people view this day as a scary superstition. Do you know what I think is scary? Walking around with a dirty mind. No, not that kind of dirty mind. One that is filled with negativity and unnecessary worry. We are all a little guilty of that at times. If we look around at the world we are living in, it is no wonder. News, some things on the internet, even members of our social circle can have us seeing the storm in every rainbow.
What is the big deal about having dirt in your mind? Not much if you clear it out. If left to fester long enough, like real dirt, the consequences can start to mount up. It will affect your mental health. You may find yourself more on edge. You might experience brain fog or have difficulty concentrating. This can only add to the negative experiences in your life. Keep it up long enough and you will see physical results. You will feel tired and run down. You might develop ulcers or have a depressed immune system.
How on earth can you clean your mind? It is not like you can stick a cleaning brush in your brain. Consuming any kind of bleach product is not recommend, despite what you may have heard. Above we have some really good ideas. I would like to touch on a few. I would love to hear your suggestions as well. We can all benefit from sharing our ideas.
The first is to take a hard look at your social circle. I devote an entire section to this in my book, Living the Dream. It amazes me how many people tell me social media is negative. What they see is only drama and negativity. The same is said for what they hear from people. I stare at them blankly and ask them who controls what they see on their social media page? If there are people and pages that do not bring you joy, get rid of them! Better yet, add pages that bring joy to your heart. That could be things that make you smile or even just hobbies you enjoy. As for people? Keep your circle small. If someone is a constant source of drama, limit or eliminate the time you are around them. Better yet, spend more time around people you find uplifting!
Above you will see other amazing suggestions. These range from meditating to going for a walk in nature. I would love to not only hear which one is your favorite, but if you have any suggestion or ideas which help clear your mind.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 