I hear a good deal of people lamenting the amount of stress they have in their life. In the photo above, there are some good points why that stress exists. Taking a few actions in our life can eliminate a great deal of stress. It may take a hard conversation or hurt feelings on the part of others, but that might be exactly what is needed.
Past relationships should stay in the past. If they continue into the present, it will only lead to trouble. It is like trying to drive while looking in the rearview mirror, you will eventually crash. Prioritizing your self-love is vital. The only person you are guaranteed to spend the rest of your life with is you. If you do not like the person in the mirror, there will be some sleepless nights in your future. Having to say ‘no’ to others to make sure that self-love is taken care of is important. How about envious people? Envy is a terrible emotion. The only thing we should have a strong desire for is to have a better life for ourself. That can only be accomplished by becoming a better version of ourself. People filled with envy often take actions that are immoral. You do not want to be involved in anything like that. You do not want to surround yourself with people focused on the lives of others more than they are on their own life.
As far as letting others have power over our life, it happens more often than you think. This quote above is an example. If you believe you are doing what is right and someone insults you, do you question or even change your course of action? Do you do things just for praise even if it may not be right for your life? Doing what is right and what will improve your life is more important than hearing a compliment from someone else. I know people that have to look online to see what is trending before they make a decision on what to eat, what to wear or a host of other things. Independent thinking is a sign of true strength. It also eliminates a lot of stress and a lot of resentment. When you let others have power over your life, you often resent them even if they are not aware of your feelings. All of this leads to stress you do not need.
As mentioned earlier, taking these actions may ruffle a few feathers. That is the price we must pay for a happier life and a greater deal of inner peace.
These days it would seem that some people relish seeing the downfall of others. Here is a way in which we can put that downfall to use in our own life. Look at what we can learn from that downfall. It can be someone doing something to ruin their reputation and their career. It can be the fall of someone’s marriage. It can be someone ruining their own health. As I have seen recently, someone passing and leaving a legacy of hate and deplorable actions. We can learn from each and every one of these.
We can learn from other’s mistakes because we cannot make them all ourselves. It is also a chance to practice a little compassion. We all make mistakes and do things we regret. If you are reading a site like this, it would be safe to assume that you are trying to make less of them. One way to do so is look at each of these downfalls of others and think of how we can avoid making the same mistakes. Did your friends marriage fall apart over a lack of intimacy or communication? Maybe it would be time to brush up on your own? Did a relative lose their job due to downsizing? It would be a wise idea to brush up on your resume and skills.Lastly, passing away without leaving a decent legacy is something I think we should all keep in mind. The hour of death is always uncertain and we should work hard each day to make a positive difference.
We should never celebrate the downfall of others, but we should learn from as many as we can. Each one can also be an opportunity to help. What can we do for the people in the situations above? The more we learn and help, the better our life will be!
There are so many times that every day life gives us keys to an amazing life we often miss. This is one of them. Yes, I realize that GPS is a machine. It does not have emotions. It does not overthink. Do you know what it also does not do? Give up! Can you imagine if we did one thing that our GPS does? Whenever life, or our plans, do not work out the way we planned, say out loud, “Recalculating route!”. You may think you look a little crazy, people may laugh at you. Laugh with them! This is a great way to remind ourselves that a change in route is not a failure, but an adjustment. We can still get to our destination, it may take longer. We may need a different route. We will still get there.
Can you imagine if GPS acted like us sometimes? We are running late and encounter a closed road and our GPS just says, “You’re screwed. Your day is over.” How about if we take a wrong turn and our GPS says, “You are an idiot! Why did you do that?” No. It just recalculates how to get there. It takes in account we did not take the way initially planned and make adjustments. You think you have found the perfect life partner and they turn out to by a lying loser? Yes, that sucks. Just walk away and say, “Recalculating route.” Lose the job you thought you would retire from? It can be a very difficult set back. There is no doubt about that. Say “Recalculating route!” and brush up that resume!
Life is not always easy. There are challenges. A cute saying like this does not fix them. What it can help us realize is that life is not over, it is just taking a different route. Next time you hear your GPS utter this familiar phrase, smile to yourself and know that life is much like a unplanned detour on a car trip. Recalculate your route and enjoy the journey!
Have you ever thought of feeding your spirit or your intellect? We make time to eat every day. We need to do so in order to survive. If you are reading a website like this, it is my guess you are looking to do more than just survive, you are looking to thrive. The way we do that is by making time to feed both our spirit and our intellect. We should work on composing a list of things that do both. Do you enjoy reading books that teach you something new? How about listening to a podcast that can give you a new perspective? How about watching a YouTube video to brush up on a skill or learn a new one? These are all ways in which we can feed our intellect.
Feeding our spirit may take a little thought, but it is just as important. If you feed your intellect, you may be more knowledgeable. What good would it be to be full of knowledge if you are also full of depression and anxiety? Increasing your brain power is no good if you do not increase your inspiration and inner peace. This can be done taking a walk in nature, viewing a piece of art, meditating or listening to a certain piece of music. Whatever speaks to your spirit. It can even be hanging out with certain people.
We eat three meals a day. We should take time to have one ‘meal’ a day for our spirit and our intellect. How about you? Do you feed all three aspects of your life? Can you think of ways in which you can do so?
Talk about a secret weapon in the war against mediocrity. A calm mind will allow you to see not only solutions to challenges, but opportunities you may have missed if you were too emotional. Yes, it is good to have enthusiasm. Yes, it is good to be passionate. What is required is to not let those same emotions blind you to certain things. Can you stop and think of areas of your life that remaining calm will give you an advantage over someone who is emotional?
One of the first things that comes to mind is interpersonal relations. Having the ability to remain fairly calm when there is discord between two parties is a super power. The closer these parties are, the more difficult it is to remain calm. It is also the more important it is to do so. Think of a disagreement at the office. How you handle things with your coworkers can affect your life 40 hours a week. It can influence promotions and productivity. How about friendships? Being able to disagree with friends can mean the difference in relationships that take years, and sometimes decades, to develop. Most important, think of your romantic relationship. I believe that lack of proper communication is the cause for most divorce.
Have you ever seen a couple disagreeing so passionately that they forget what they are actually disagreeing about? Have you ever been part of a couple like that? Sometimes, parties may be discussing totally different things. If your partner thinks you are upset about one thing, but you are really upset about something else, can you see how difficult it would be to get that disagreement solved? Often this leads to arguing about the same thing over and over. The solution is to be able to communicate what you are upset about, the solution you would like to see and how to work together to achieve that. They only way to do this is by managing to be calm.
Of course remaining calm in the midst of conflict is easier said than done. Can you see why it would be worth the effort? Even in the internal battles that exist when we are working to be a better version of ourself, the ability to be calm is so helpful. It allows us to be objective and view our life with a healthy detachment. Being able to be honest with ourselves without getting emotional will allow us to make necessary changes. It will allow us to do this without feeling depressed or like a failure. From relationships with others, to the relationship with ourself, being calm is what we should aim to achieve.
Today’s post might be a little ‘sciency’ but do not let that scare you. We will break everything down and go slowly. By the time you digest everything I believe you will have gained information and a valuable tool to help you move closer to an amazing life. Today we are going to talk about sympathetic resonance. Before we get into exactly what that is and how it works, let us talk about us. You, me and every other human that lives and breathes on this planet. As you break down what we are all made of, when you get to the very base of everything, it is made of exactly the same thing – energy. Each person, every object is energy at its most fundamental level. The difference is in the frequency and vibration of that energy.
Consider this quote from one of the smartest men to ever live on the planet. Tesla realized that the secret to everything comes down to the base of what everything is made of energy and the frequency and vibration that energy is in. Before we lose anyone, let us help understand energy on an interpersonal level. Have you ever experienced someone who brought tension into a room simply by entering it? How about those people who make people smile just by their company? You can feel their energy without grasping the quantum physics behind it. The same can be said for how you feel in certain places, listening to certain music, or looking at a certain piece of art. The list is endless. Certain things affect you in certain ways.
Now let us get back to sympathetic resonance. This is a fancy term for saying energy affects like energy. One of the best examples of this can be had using tuning forks. Every tuning fork has a frequency determined by its mass, length and material it is made out of. If you struck a tuning fork next to a group of tuning forks of varying frequencies, only the ones that matched the initial fork would vibrate. It is a cool little trick, but how does that serve us? That is where it gets interesting.
Remember when I said at our basic level we are all made of energy? That we all vibrate at different frequencies? Much like a tuning fork, we will resonate with people of like energy. Here is where things get interesting and how we can put them to use. Unlike a tuning fork, people have many frequencies they vibrate at depending on mood, health, environment and a host of other factors. Even the happiest person has a sad vibration in them. We all have our own fears, triggers and joys that we respond to.
Thinking back to our tuning fork example, we resonate with like-minded energy. That being said, a person’s energy can resonate with certain aspects of ourself. Some of those may be beneficial to us, some may be detrimental. That is why it is paramount to surround ourselves with the best energy we can. Why watch the news over and over? It will look to resonate with our energy of fear or perhaps anger. Spending too much time with that person who is always anger will only cause us to stimulate that anger frequency in us.
You do not need to fully understand sympathetic resonance or the quantum physics behind it to know that the things that surround you affect you. Knowing this, can you see how important it is to select your environment as much as possible? Associate with positive people who are driven. Fill your house with items that bring you peace and joy. We cannot control everything in our life. That is precisely why it is so important to control what we can. The energy that surrounds and affects us is something that we have a great deal of control over. Can you see how this knowledge can help us achieve an amazing life? How you can use an energy cleanse after a stressful situation? How having a house that brings you peace can help leave you more energized?
Sometimes the oldest wisdom can enlighten us most in the present. Take a look at this quote from a Stoic Philosopher. Far too many young people place their value on ‘likes’ on social media. There are people who look at career advancement as a measure of success. Some view the number in a bank balance as an indicator of a successful life. All of these have variables that can slip out of our control. How many people ‘like’ something we put out on social media has so many variables that it is beyond comprehension. It is certainly not an indicator as to the quality of the content. Career advancement? Things such as market volatility, nepotism, and office politics can influence that. Bank balances? One health emergency and that can be upended.
Instead, focus on what we can control. Take the social media example. If you focus on putting out quality content verses likes, when you do have a post go viral, there will be no concern if it will be a good one. The best way to boost your readership is to write something worth reading. Career advancement? Becoming the most valuable employee you can be is something you can control. Learn as much as you can. Develop your people skills. Give them no choice but to promote you. If they still decide to go with their brother instead, you will be positioned to succeed somewhere else. Bank balances? Increasing your financial knowledge and skill is one of the best ways to insure yourself against catastrophe. Even if an emergency wipes out your savings, you will have the knowledge and skills needed to rebuild again, and do so in less time than most.
Whether your concern in life is finance, relationships or legacy, your best course of action is focusing on what you can control. In every situation there are things that are in our control and things that are not. To place value on the former, means less control in your life. To place value on the latter means more control. In the simplest of terms, one of the best things to focus on and put value on is becoming the best version of yourself. In that regard, no matter what outside circumstances hold, you are best positioned for success.
This may seem like a morbid thought, but it is actually rather motivating. There is a classic Latin saying that says, “Death is certain. The hour uncertain.” It can come at anytime. Delayed gratification certainly has its place in self-improvement, but it must not come at the cost of our inner peace and joy. While we are striving to become the best version of ourselves, we must do our best to enjoy the process. While you look forward to the future, enjoy the present.
Another way of looking at these sayings is that we should take nothing for granted. Our health, the love we share with our spouse, the friendships we have. Even our job and boss that may drive us crazy at times, can be taken away in a heartbeat. Every ability we have. Every simple pleasure and even every annoyance, can be gone in a second. You may think challenges and problems would be great to be gone. In a strange way, they bring their own kind of joy. If you face a small daily challenge, overcoming that gives you a small victory every day. That is something to be celebrated.
When we delay our happiness until something happens, we live a life of wanting. If we can find joy in the waiting, our life becomes one long celebration. Enjoy the destination as well as the journey. That is the secret to an amazing life. The more moments you can find to celebrate, the better. How can you live a little in the moment? Are you guilty of postponing your happiness? Have you found ways to enjoy the journey? We would love to hear your story!
This is a picture of the amazing coffee that I enjoyed with my good friend Nick the other day. Every time we get together, the discussion is always so productive. We encourage each other to ask ourselves the tough questions. We bring new points of view and different experiences to consider. In addition, Nick holds me accountable in many of my projects. That is the benefit of having a friend like him.
This afternoon we found ourselves on the subject of people overcoming great adversity in their lives to go on to both accomplish great things as well as inspire others to do so. He shared a story of a young lady who was a 16 year-old theater student. While preparing for a role in a production, she fell through a door in the stage and become paralyzed from the neck down. As a young person just beginning their life, this had to be devastating. She confessed to crying herself to sleep on many nights. Over the decades that followed, and with intense therapy, she managed to regain use of 4 of her fingers. This may not sound like much, but it allowed her to operate a motorized wheel chair. This gave her a greater deal of autonomy and motivation to continue to push on. Thirty years after her accident, she appeared on stage and sang a song from the production she had been training for on that fateful day when she was sixteen. Something the doctors had told her would never be possible.
For those of you who follow this blog, you know I am a big fan of Inky Johnson. He is a gentleman who trained to be a professional football player since the age of 7. His junior year in college he was told he would be a top pick in the NFL making him an instant multi-millionaire. He called his family who were all living in great poverty and told them the great news. Two games later he suffered an injury that left his left arm paralyzed. This ended any hope of a professional sports career. He is now a prolific speaker sharing his story to inspire others. Again, after much therapy and countless sleepless nights.
My question to Nick, and to myself really, was what was it that makes these individuals able to overcome the challenges they face while so many of us go back to bed if we stub our toe getting out of bed? What is that mindset that allows you to push on long after others would have quit? It is the ability to be resilient. The definition of that word skillfully placed above this paragraph. What allows someone to be resilient and how can we develop more of it? Inky Johnson would credit his faith as a major reason for being able to keep going. That may be a part of it, but those without a spiritual belief have also demonstrated this ability. What allows a person to have the fortitude to make it through sleepless nights, through tears and heartache?
The reason this question kept bouncing around my brain is because pain, loss, and heartache are things all of us will go through at some point. The desire to quit is also something we will all face. That can be the desire to quit a job because you do not like your boss. The desire to quit on your marriage because you and your spouse cannot seem to get along. Giving up on your health journey because you are tired of waking up sore and eating chicken breast. To, of course, giving up on life itself. Being the person that I am, and the mission I have for my life, it is my goal to help people persevere more. Too many of my friends have given up on too many aspects of their life, and sadly some on life itself. That bothers me so greatly it has motivated me to do all that I can to bring as much love and light to the world as I can.
How can we develop the ability to be resilient? The first step is acknowledging that it is a skill worth putting the time in to develop. I think we can all agree that you are always in one of three stages in life. You are heading into a storm of life, in the middle of one or just coming out of one. That is not negative thinking, but realizing that there are always challenges to face. Most of them are not nearly as intense as the two listed above, but some are even greater. One of the things that we can do of the start is to have a vision for our life. If you do not have a destination for your life, how are you going to get anywhere? What is the purpose for you to get out of the bed in the morning? If it is to just pay bills and die, you are not going to be able to withstand what life has to throw at you. If it is to see your grandchildren grow up and bring as much to their lives as you can, that is a far stronger reason.
In addition to developing a strong ‘why’ for your life, developing a strong self-care routine is essential. If we do not take care of ourselves, we will not be able to take care of anyone else in our life. In addition, meeting challenges in the best possible state we can will give us the best chance of overcoming them. That is not something you can do if you do not take care of yourself. I would throw in a study of people who have overcome tragedy themselves. I cannot think of anyone who has made it through something intensely trying that did not want to share what helped them do it with others. Start with watching some of the videos Inky Johnson has on YouTube. If you know someone in your life that has overcome something challenging in their life, ask them for advice. In my second book, Living the Dream, I share several of these stories at the end as inspiration for us all.
If you find yourself in the middle of a circumstance that has you wanting to give up, let me share something that has helped me personally. Knowing the pain and hurt you are experiencing will give you the tools and strategies that can help others in the future going through that same pain will not only help you to keep pushing forward, it will also have you being present enough to learn the lessons that you will pick up along the way. You will emerge a stronger, more credible, and yes a more resilient person on the back end.
One very important note on the end of this post. If you are thinking of giving up, reach out for help. There are times when we need help developing that resilience. It will also give those helping you a feeling a value and purpose. Never give up on yourself. Study resilience. It is something that can and may save your life.
The ‘secret of success’. It is something that billions are spent on every year to discover. The amusing part of this is that it can be found in this quote by Aristotle. You need to have successful habits. Ones that continually push you to be a better version of yourself. If you make exercise and learning a habit, there is no limit to where this world may take you. When we are stressed, we do not rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our habits. That is why it is paramount that we begin to work on them as soon as we can. Habits take time to develop. They are also easier to develop when we are not in a stressed state.
A few years back, I appeared on the television show Positively Milwaukee. One of the strategies for success that I advocated that day was that we should learn to swim while we are on the shore and not when the ship is sinking. Meaning, that learning and perfecting skills should be done before we need them. When will we need them? We never know. That is why it is so important to get into the habits that will be profitable to our lives now. Profitable does not only refer to financial concerns. A habit that increases, or profits, our health is a vital one to have. Self-care is a great habit to develop for mental health purposes. When will we need a hand with a mental health? That can be right around the corner!
Another important aspect to consider about success is that it cannot be compartmentalized. We have seen this is CEOs, celebrities and others. If your success in one area of your life comes at the sacrifice of others, you are not a success. If you are wealthy, but you family is not happy or your friendships are suffering, are you truly successful? We need to develop excellence habits and apply them to every area of our life. What healthy habits for excellence do you have? Which ones do you think would be healthy to develop?
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 