THE SECRET TO AN AMAZING LIFE 🤫

It is mid-week, time for a little uplifting thinking! How about how to have an amazing life, or at least starting with the rest of the week? You deserve it and it really isn’t that complicated. It is finding ways in which to turn all of the negative energy in our lives into something to be grateful for. That may sound like a daunting challenge, but it is really an opportunity! At the end of the day, it can be a fun game to play with ourselves. Even endeavoring to find the positive in the negative will have us feeling better and looking at life in an entirely different way.

How to do it? That is the question. How do you turn the negative in your life into something positive? There are many ways. I am going to share two of my favorite with you and I would love it if you would share some of yours with the readers of this amazing blog, including yours truly. The first way I turn the negative into the positive is by escaping the situation. This is not always possible physically. If you are stuck at your work and the boss is in a bad mood, you are stuck there. Maybe, like myself, you live where the sun rarely shines this time of year. I think it has been over a week since we had a day where the sun came out for more than just a little while.

If you are physically stuck in a bad, or negative, situation, how can you still escape. By using a strategy that I teach and remind everyone of constantly. That there is no law of physics or biology that states your mind and body have to occupy the same space and the same time. The body, so far as we know, is limited. It can only be where you find yourself. The mind, however, has no such limits. The picture above may sound humorous, but I have honestly used this method to save my sanity on more than one occasion. How powerful is this really? There have been stories of holocaust survivors using this method to make it through one of the worst situations man has ever found themselves in. If it can work in that situation, it can work for you and I. Try it for yourself. Recall a vacation you particularly enjoyed. Do so using as many senses as you can. The scent of the ocean and the tanning lotion. The feel of the warm sun on your skin. The sound of the waves lapping against the shore. The vision of beautiful turquoise water. The flavor of some delicious island food. Take yourself on a mini mental vacation. Haven’t been on a vacation in so long you can’t remember these things? Go buy a bottle of sun tan lotion, make some jerk chicken for dinner or take yourself to a tanning bed while listening to ocean waves. Whatever it takes to make it real for you.

Next is to use the power of gratitude. I know, I know. You have heard about gratitude over and over. Oprah talks about it. It is in the movie The Secret. Apparently, even the author Neale Donald Walsh is in on the subject. Do you know why all of these people are talking about gratitude and why you are hearing about it everywhere? Because it works. Your mind can only focus on one emotion at a time. If you are focusing on what you are grateful for, even for just a minute, your mind cannot be focused on whatever negative crap is going on in your life at that moment.

Another thing that gratitude allows us to do is to get our head out of our butt. Look, I get it, when things go wrong, it is so easy to get fixated on what is not working in our lives. Even if 99% of our life is amazing, we will focus on the 1% that is bringing us down. As we discussed a few posts earlier, according to the National Science Foundation, 80% of our daily thoughts are negative. Those stats are for the average person. We all know people who would fall below average in this regard. Where do you want to be when it comes to your thinking? By spending even five minutes of our day focused on what we have to be grateful for, we begin to create a habit. It is that habit that will allow us to become better than average thinkers. It will have us feeling joyous and abundant.

Use these two strategies to change the negative situations in your life and become happier and more fulfilled than 80% of the population. Using mini mental vacations and the power of gratitude, we can radically transform our life for the better. I would love to know any tools or strategies that you use to turn the negative into the positive in your life. Perhaps they will be featured in a future post.

WHAT OPRAH CAN TEACH US ABOUT OURSELVES 🤔

Few people are as globally recognized as Oprah Winfrey. In fact, she is one of those people who are instantly recognized by her first name alone. Many people know the famous side of Oprah. Her role as not only a talk show host, but producer, actress, author and media business woman. She was not only the wealthiest African American of the 20th century, but once the world’s only black billionaire. These items alone can inspire people to action. A “If she can do it, so can we.” sort of cheer. We are going to break down how many different people Oprah inspired and close with learning something very important about ourselves.

Many of us know the successful Oprah Winfrey, but how many of us know what she overcame to get there? I want to take just a little time to share some of the struggles she faced, how it can inspire us, and what it can teach us about our own story. Oprah was born on January 29th 1954 in rural Mississippi. This was not only a time of great challenge in our country for people of color, but that was amplified in the deep south. Her unwed, teenage mother soon moved north and left her in the care of her grandmother. This proves people can overcome societal prejudice and lack of the influence of a biological parent to become successful.

Oprah’s grandmother, Hattie Mae, was extremely poor. So poor, that at a young age, Oprah had to wear old potato sacks as clothing. Many of us find it hard to picture the fashionable Ms. Winfrey dressed in a potato sack, but that is how she began. The other children mocked her for her clothes. Her grandmother was also a strict disciplinarian, often whipping young Oprah. She was also told there was no room inside the house for her to sleep. She made her bed on an outside enclosed porch. This is proof that you can overcome extreme poverty, and being ostracized at a young age and still make a great life for yourself.

At the age of 6, her grandmother became ill and she was sent to live with her mother in Milwaukee. Her mother worked as a maid and did not have the energy to raise young Oprah. At the age of 8 she was sent to live with her father in Tennessee. Her third home in her very young life. While she was there she was sexually abused by family members, as well as a family friend. Things got so bad, she ran away from home at the age of 13. At the age of 14, she became pregnant. Her son was born prematurely and died only a few days later. This means that moving around from state to state and parent to parent does not prevent you from realizing your full potential. Suffering a terrible childhood trauma like sexual abuse by a family member does not make you less than. Oprah later used that to let others know she had suffered the same fate they had and was able to overcome. Not only having a child at a young age, but then having that child pass away could be enough to break anybody. Oprah is proof that you can draw strength from a challenge like that.

By the age of 17, Oprah was in a far better place. Not only winning the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant, but landing a job at a local black radio station doing the news part-time. Considering what she had come from, this would be a success for most people. Ms. Winfrey was not done, however. She also won an oratory contest. This secured a full scholarship to Tennessee State University. She went on to study communications.

After television work in both Baltimore and Tennessee, Oprah found herself in Chicago. There are many good stories I am leaving out for the sake of brevity, I would invite you to investigate these on your own. Given a spot on a sinking ship of a show called AM Chicago, her passion and performance turned it into the station’s number 1 and flagship program. Soon, it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and syndicated nationally, continuing her meteoric rise to fame. There is a story I would like to mention here as well. When the show was syndicated, Oprah rightfully received substantial financial compensation. Her staff, which was largely female, did not. Upon discovering this, Oprah went into the offices of management and demanded her staff receive the benefits of the financial windfall as well. Using her voice to be a voice for others.

Imagine being a young woman raised in the racist atmosphere of the times. Being brought up in terrible poverty. Moving at the young age of six to a mother who had no desire, or energy to raise you, and starting a new life. Only to have to move again a few years later to a father you have not known to this point in an entirely different state. Once there, suffering sexual abuse at the hands of those who are supposed to protect you. Running away from home at the age of 13, only to become pregnant and eventually lose a child only a year later. At the age of 14, Oprah had experienced many conditions that would cause the average person to give up.

Despite all that she had faced in the first decade and a half of her life, today she is hugely successful. She not only had the highest ranked talk show for 25 years, but has her own network, her own XM radio station, her own magazine, has built a school for under-privileged girls in South Africa, and even received an Academy Award nomination for her role in the movie A Color Purple. That means she gives hope to not only African Americans and women, but to those facing discrimination, those raised in poverty, those suffering sexual abuse, and even those who have lost a child. As impressive of a list as this is, there is one more group that Oprah inspires that I feel touches the people who read Secret2anamazinglife.

When Oprah was covering the news, she would often be overcome with emotion at the stories she was reporting on. This caused her to do such things as break into tears when reporting about a family who had lost their home in a fire. As you can imagine, the powers that be did not find this a redeeming quality. She was informed this ‘character flaw’ made her unfit to be a reporter and so she was relegated to doing a talk show. I think we can all agree she made the most of that opportunity. What this shows me is that when someone tells you that your gift is a character flaw, you can use that gift to serve and help others in a very meaningful way. It also shows us that being empathetic to others and their suffering is a gift that is greatly needed in the world today.

Lastly, I want to bring to your attention what this all means for our own life. We all have stories. We all have faced challenges. Most of us, not to the degree that Ms. Winfrey has. Some of us have faced even worse. I highlight a few of these cases in my book Living the Dream. Oprah shows us that we do not have to remain victims to what has happened to us, but we can overcome life’s challenges and use them to serve others. The greater the challenges we face, the more challenges we face, the better we are set up to inspire and serve others. Think about your own life and what you have faced. How could you use that to serve others? With that thought in mind, I would love to leave you with this great quote from Martin Luther King Jr.

VISUALIZATION SECRET 🤫

There is plenty of talk about visualization these days. For good reason. It is one of the greatest tools you can use to help you reach and accomplish your goals. I know to a lot of you this may seem a little too “New Age”, but there is plenty of science behind it. In the simplest terms, if your brain is used to seeing certain items, people or situations, it is more likely to notice them when they happen in real life. Think about when you were going to buy a certain car and suddenly it seemed you saw them everywhere. Did everyone run out and buy one because you were thinking of getting one? As awesome as you are, I think we can all agree that is not a very likely scenario. Especially, because many of the people you did not even know.

There are some examples that we really can’t 100% explain with science, although quantum physics seems to be getting close. For example, when you are thinking of a friend you haven’t spoken to in a long time and suddenly that friend calls you. How does that happen? Some science behind that in terms of thoughts being waves of energy and traveling, but what we are going to talk about is a simple secret to get past one of the greatest hurdles in being able to put the power of visualization to work in your own life.

One of the greatest powers that visualization puts to work in your life is the power of your mind. Unfortunately, one of the greatest obstacles to this power working miracles in your life is the power of your mind. This can be explained by realizing there are two very distinct parts to the mind. There is the subconscious mind, which controls roughly 95% of what we do on a daily basis. It controls our bodily functions, our habits and our habitual thinking. Then there is the conscious or reasoning mind. This is the part that we have direct control over, although the degree in which we use this control varies from person to person. The only way we can communicate with our subconscious mind is indirectly, through the conscious mind. We can do this through tools such as repeating mantras or affirmations. One of the more powerful ways we can influence the subconscious is through visualization.

Here is where things get a little tricky. At least they used to for me. As great as my imagination and self-discipline are, I kept running into the same challenge. That obstacle was my conscious mind. See if this sounds familiar. I would have a mantra of “I am a wealthy best-selling author” and repeat that over and over. Maybe I would even visualize talking about one of my books on Oprah or seeing my name on top of the best-seller list. As soon as the words left my lips or the image came to mind, I would hear a voice say something like, “Not so!” or “That is a bunch of B.S.” This upset me. Who would have the nerve to shoot down my quest at influencing my subconscious mind? I was ready to correct that person until I realized it was me! My conscious and reasoning mind would object to any belief that was not yet supported by the five senses.

After years of frustration, I came across a solution in a book by Neville Goddard. I am going to share it with you in case any of you are facing the same challenge I was. Even if you are not, this can make visualization a lot easier and enjoyable. Instead of telling yourself “I am wealthy.” or “I am healthy.” Ask yourself how that would feel. This way, you still visualize yourself in the end result and your conscious mind does not object. In fact, it may go so far as to help you imagine. Asking yourself “How would it feel to have a million dollars in my bank account?” Brings up that situation. You can start to engage all of your senses. You can imagine how you would act. Where would you go and what would you be doing? You can make a game of it.

Next time you find yourself having difficulty visualizing an outcome you desire, simply ask yourself what it would feel like if that outcome was realized. Your mind will not object and will begin to go to work to find you an answer.

FOR MORE INSIGHT, CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT MY PODCAST!😀

ANGELS OF HEALING

As most of you know, I have been on the long road of recovery from my open-heart surgery. When I say long, it has only been about 4 months. It can safely be said, these 4 months have been some of the longest of my life. Being physically limited and having to “take it easy” as the doctors keep reminding me, is a very hard prescription for a man who goes to the gym 5 days a week. There are times that the pain and reduced cardiovascular ability can lead to frustration and at its most severe times, depression. Intellectually, I know healing from this takes time and due to some complications, it will take me even longer. Emotionally, however, it can seem as if I will never get better. I put on a smiling face and am truly grateful for coming back after my brief visit to the world of death, but it can still feel very dark and hopeless at times.

In the last few weeks there has been some return to normal. 4 weeks ago I was cleared to go back to the gym, although limited. 2 weeks ago I returned to work. It was good to feel like a productive member of society again. Several of my coworkers told me how good it was to see me again and that made me feel good. Slowly, this all helped return a bit of that feeling of normal I was missing. One of the best things about returning to work is the local Starbucks location by my work. In past blogs you have heard me discuss some of the amazing people there. First, there was Deb, who is not only friendly, but has one of the best attitudes for someone who serves the public that I have seen. I mentioned the man who runs the show, Nick, the manager. He takes a personal interest in you as not only a customer, but a person. There is nothing that will get return business as sure as making someone feel valuable. That is what Nick does.

It is not just Nick that does this, but a fair amount of his crew as well. Sydney has a smile that is at once both infectious and contagious. You are all but guaranteed to walk away smiling after chatting with her. If having a good feeling in your heart is what you are after, Kryssy will do that for you. Much like her amazing manager, she really gets to know you as a person. She shows great care and concern for you as a person. The group is rounded out with many other amazing souls like Andrea, Colleen and Erika. Plus, many others that my tired brain let escape for this second. The best part about all of these people is they are genuine. They are not trying to sell you, they are just being themselves.

They showed why they are one of the best group of people in two fabulous ways recently. In doing so, they not only gave yet another example of how amazing they are, but did a great deal to help my healing journey. The first touching thing was a package that they had put together to welcome me back. This location is so busy and has so many customers that pass through their doors, to be remembered and thought of in such a way gave a lift to my spirit that was just the thing I needed at this time. They had no way of knowing, but everything they put inside this little package fit me perfectly. The gesture meant such a great deal to me. By being great human beings, they gave this crazy author and blog writer a great deal of needed positivity.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, I walked in to discover they had made me their ‘customer of the week’. I am certainly not one to seek accolades (Oprah if you want to make my most recent book the ‘book of the month’ I would be happy to make an exception) but being recognized as someone who they find valuable made a real impact. Again, there are a lot of amazing people who pass through their doors and I am sure a great deal of them deserve to be ‘customer of the week’. For them to choose me, really made me feel welcomed and missed.

These 2 acts may seem small and little to the outside observer, but they made a world of difference to me. As my friends at the Oak Creek Starbucks showed, doing small acts of kindness with great amounts of love is what really changes the world. I encourage all of you who may be pondering doing something to show someone how much they are appreciated, to do it. While it may seem like something small to you, it can make a great amount of difference to them.

A DAILY PICK-ME-UP

How many times do we find ourselves grasping to hit the snooze button one more time in hopes for a few more minutes of blissful slumber? I can’t count the cold Wisconsin winter days I ask myself why I am leaving a warm bed and a hot lady to face the prospect of another day at work. Even while typing these words and reflecting upon these events I felt my energy start to drain.

How can we make sure we wake up ready to face the day? Two words – passion and purpose. Being involved in something that stirs your heart and engages your mind will give you much more motivation than even your favorite cup of Jamaican blue mountain coffee. If you don’t want to shell out the money for such amazing coffee then you are going to have to take my word for this.

If you find yourself about to tell me via your computer or cell phone screen that your job is not what your passionate about, let me assure you I understand. Working for the United States postal service does not exactly give me butterflies.

So what then? Pursue your passion on the side. In today’s busy and stressful world this may seem like another thing you don’t have time for. The ironic thing is that adding a hobby or side business that speaks to our passions will reduce the stress of our day job and give us something to look forward to every day.

A great law of physics that i make use of is as follows

Your mind and body do not have to occupy the same space at the same time.

Certainly there are exceptions. If you are a surgeon about to operate on me I would appreciate if all parties were working together. For most of us, however our minds are free to roam as our bodies are busy ‘working for the man ‘. While giving my best physical effort at the post office my mind is often looking for or pondering material for this website, my next book or my next YouTube video. Ok, sometimes my mind is also on a beach drinking out of a coconut, but I digress.

Whether your passion is creating material to help individuals become the best versions of themselves or it is drawing pictures of your dog, begin exploring that passion today. It will provide you a positive reason to get out of bed, fill you with more energy than caffeine and make the stress of the workday easier to handle.

I would love to hear some of your passions and how you work them into your daily routine to stay inspired.

ANOTHER MILESTONE!!!

Five years of writing this blog? Where does the time go? It was thanksgiving day 2012 I wrote my first post. That post, fittingly enough, was about gratitude. It is a subject often revisited throughout the years and hundreds of posts I have had the honor of sharing with all of you.

Why is gratitude such a hot subject? Why do I not only chose to revisit it so often, but it seems to be the buzz word on the lips of celebrities such as Oprah, Jim Carrey and others. It was one of the main pillars of the blockbuster movie the secret. This is why – very little, if anything, can change your life as much, or as quickly as gratitude. This may sound new-age or esoteric, but there I scientific reasons behind this. First, your mind can only focus on one thought at a time. You cannot feel stressed out, overwhelmed, angry and grateful all at the same time. Do not believe me? Try thinking of your favorite animal and the statue of liberty at the same time. Go ahead, I will wait. You will find your mind can bounce back and forth between the two, but cannot hold two different thoughts at the very same moment.

Another reason is it helps activate a super-power you have in your brain. Yes, you, the one reading this right now, you have this power. Like all powers, it can be used for good or for evil. This power is called the reticular activating system. For the reason it is hard to remember three such scientific sounding words and because super-powers need cool names, we will now refer to this as the RAS. In a nutshell what the RAS does is eliminate anything your brain says is not important and makes things you consider a priority stand out. The amazing thing is your mind does all of this without you having to do anything. It is like a computer program that runs in the background.

This still sounds like we are either in biology or a computer programing class. Let me give you an example of how this happens in your own life. You buy a new outfit or car. Suddenly, you see that outfit or car everywhere! Let me ask you, did the rest of the world see how cool you were, run out and buy the very same thing so they could be just like you? As awesome as all of my secret2anamazinglife readers are, unless you are Kim Kardasian, who may or may not read my blog, chances are the answer is no. So why do you suddenly see that everywhere? Once you purchased those items your brain said “Hey, we like this car/outfit let us find more!” or whatever language your brain uses to talk to you.

Most of us either are not aware we can control this power, or we do so for negative reasons. Such as “See, I told you I have bad luck.” or “I told you the world is getting worse!” Listen, whatever you focus on becomes your reality. If you focus on how much your life sucks right now, your brain will help you find examples of how much that is true. If you want to focus on how terrible the world is, it will help you find examples of that too. Sounds like our brain is out to get us? Not so fast!

We can use our powers for good! This is where gratitude comes in. Begin to foster an attitude of gratitude say through a daily gratitude journal or one of the many other ideas featured in my book A Happy Life for Busy People and your brain will begin to find examples of why you should feel grateful. Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself!

Back to the milestone we are celebrating here today. When I began this website I was just looking for a way to capture the best secrets in self-improvement I came across, which is still what we are all about, but never would I dream I would have gotten so much out of it. I began being followed by a few friends and family. Now I am followed in over 100 countries, with thousands of people who have read what I have shared here. I have had the great honor of connecting with people across this great planet of ours. To celebrate our 5th year at secret2anamazinglife.com I invite you to share who you are, where you are from and your favorite thing about this website in the comments below. It will not only help me know what you enjoy, but we all just might make some new inspiring friends!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for allowing me to share my motivation and inspiration with you these last five years. I look forward to the next five!

THE RICHES OF GRATITUDE

This is a quote from Oprah Winfrey, one of the wealthiest women in the world. In a day when we stop to give thanks she certainly has a lot to be thankful for. Before you start with feelings of jealousy or envy you may want to research her story. I’ll spare you the details but tell you she didn’t always have it all.
So what does this have to do with you and I? Are we saying here of you are grateful you will be as rich as Oprah? Yes and no. I cannot promise you the money, although that may very well come, but i can promise a feeling of wealth if you develop an attitude of gratitude. How do you do this?
Here is a very powerful exercise i share at my seminar. It will literally change your life in a major way in a short time. I know because i owe the turn around on my own life a great deal to this very practice. It is simple but extremely powerful.
Here it goes. Get a pen and paper and write five things you are grateful for and why. Ten sentences. Then read those ten sentences before you go to bed and first thing in the morning. Takes all of 3 minutes at the most. Not too hard so far right? Here is where the magic happens. Everyday write one more thing you are grateful for and why. Then continue to read your list before bed and first thing in the morning. This does two very interesting things. One, it keeps you focused on what is working on your life and two, it trains your brain to be on the lookout for things to be grateful for. Do this for three weeks. Even take the
weekends off if you like. I promise you after three weeks your life will never be the same! I invite you to share your results in the comments below

FOLLOW THROUGH

Take a look at the people featured here. Do you know what they all have in common? The all excelled in a field that they were specifically told they were a failure in. Not ok, not average, but terrible. Can you imagine television without Oprah Winfrey? How about the music history without The Beatles? Einstein not only became a great scientist, but changed the entire way we view the world. Walt Disney not only did have an imagination, but filled the imaginations of countless children when he was alive and his companies continue to do so to this day. You may be saying “Neil that is all well and good for these people, but what does that have to do with my life?” The simple answer is everything! How many times have you been told you were no good at something? How many times have you tried something a couple of times or maybe even once and failed miserably at it? I know I have countless times. What do you do? Do you stick with it? Perhaps you just say to yourself “Well that was nice, but I guess it’s just not for me” or do you believe the words of the so-called “experts” when they tell you that you will not succeed? Sometimes these sources can be well-meaning friends and family members speaking out of their own fears. I have a hard time imagining myself pursuing a career in professional sports if I was cut from high school team like Michael Jordan was, but he did and went on to become one of the greatest of all times. How many dreams have we given up on because we have been told that our dreams are too unrealistic? Or that we lack the certain talent needed to achieve success in that field? How many times have we tried something and failed at it only to move on to something else. Take another look at the list above and imagine how the world would be different if these people had given up on their dreams? That is of course unless you are like poor Mr. Disney and completely lack any imagination.

It’s all up to you…

When talking to people about increasing the joy and passion in their lives I often hear such lines as “If I had more money I would be happy” or “I just was born under a lucky star” or even “You don’t understand all the bad things that I grew up with”. It is no secret some people are born with more resources than others. More money, more education, a large support network, but these can be just as much of an obstacle as a gift. Sometimes being raised in such an environment can be as much of an obstacle as an advantage. How can being born in ‘all the right situations’ be an obstacle you may be thinking. Being raised with things that others do not have often robs us of that drive for a better life. That is not to say all people who are blessed with being born in the right circumstances are lazy, quite the contrary. Circumstances are what we make of them. For those of you shaking your head, let me give you some proof. First, let us flip this story around. What would you predict for a girl born to a 13-year-old single mother? Let’s say that girl after the age of nine is physically, emotionally and even sexual abused from the age of nine? What if that same girl finds herself pregnant at the age of 13 as well? Not looking so good is it? Now let us say this girl leaves her mother to find her father at the age of fourteen and 8 months along, and then shortly after arriving there gives birth to a still-born child. What would be your prediction for this young lady? Well that event could have destroyed, and rightfully so, any fragile teenage soul, but it only served to galvanize this young lady. She applied herself in school remained focused on her goals and while being employed as a journalist was offered her own daytime talk show. You see Oprah Winfrey did not let her circumstances define her. She knew the life she wanted, and when she couldn’t find it, went out and created it. So let’s do ourselves a favor and not cater to our present or past situations. Let us not be defined by events we had little or no control over. Let us be defined by our future, and by what we are yet to become! Let us create our own future, starting today.

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