Welcome to day 17 of our 30 day gratitude journey. Today is a tricky one for me. What knowledge am I grateful for? Being a lifelong learner, it can be hard to pick just one. Lucky for us the question is not worded that way. When it comes to knowledge, we all are proficient in some area. What is your area? Is that the knowledge you are most grateful for?
One of the bits of knowledge that I think is vital in this day and age is the ability to read. With this information, you can learn anything else you desire. The internet, combined with YouTube can teach us almost anything we desire to know. All that is required is the ability to read and a little bit of time. I value the knowledge of interpersonal relations. Despite the world becoming more and more ‘virtual’, the ability to develop repour with other humans is a priceless skill. Whether that connection happens online or virtual, the skills are very similar.
Here is yet another way in which to look at this situation. You do not have to possess the knowledge for which you are grateful. I am very grateful for all of the medical knowledge that has come out and continues to develop. Can you picture going to a dentist who only had knowledge from 100 years ago? It is frightening enough to picture going to the dentist as it is. How about fixing computers? Mine is painfully slow right now. I do wish I knew more in this field, but I am grateful for those who do. Same with mechanics. Looking at the amazing cakes my lady creates. That is knowledge that I will never possess.
To me, the more knowledge you have the more valuable you can be. Not only to the world at large, but to yourself as well. Think of all you can learn and all you can become? I think we could all agree that obtaining this knowledge is easier today than at anytime in history!
We spent the last few posts discussing the power of gratitude. Today, we are going to discuss another emotion with a great impact in our life. That is the power of belief. What we believe will determine, to a great deal, what we will or will not do in life. If we believe that all charities are scams, we are unlikely to donate money to any cause. If we believe all people in life are out to get something, we may have a hard time accepting compliments as being genuine. You may have not stop to consider how your belief about other people’s motivations could impact your ability to accept compliments about yourself, but you can see how it would impact that.
This post is about another important belief, our belief in ourselves. Do you believe in yourself? Sure, it may have some to do with the situation. My belief in myself when it comes to speaking in front of others is a lot greater than dancing in front of others. For you it might be the exact opposite. What happens when that belief falters? There are two very important steps we can take to help us in just such a situation. This is not mere theory. Just today practicing the second of these steps allowed me to write when I didn’t think I had it in me. We will get to that after discussing the first step.
The first is to keep track of some of the great things we have done in our life. Especially if it involves overcoming any kind of challenge. David Goggins, one of my favorite speakers and authors, calls it the cookie jar. When you are young and you were upset, you could often reach in the cookie jar and pull out a cookie to make you feel better. Sadly, that may only work so well as an adult. The cookie jar we are talking about is the reminders of all that we have accomplished. Often when we think we would be unable to. David Goggins is also an ultra marathon runner. He was asked what he thinks about at mile 50 or mile 75 when his body just wants to give up. This was a question that interested me. Not only in terms of what the hell would you think about after running 75 miles? Also because it is a great metaphor for life. How often can work, family or relationship stress feel like running a 100 mile race? Sometimes running may even sound easier than what we are going through. Our belief in ourself may come into question. Perhaps the task is seemingly insurmountable or we have already made some terrible mistake? Then what? We need to go into that cookie jar in our brain and pull out one of those ‘cookies’ of our past accomplishments. When we overcame the odds or accomplished something great. We need to remind ourselves how awesome we are.
The second thing that is important to do is to surround ourselves with people who also believe in us. Sometimes we just can’t reach the cookie jar and we need someone else to reach inside and hand us a cookie. The more they know and care about us, the better they are able to do this. It is another great reason to put in the work to build and grow your relationships. It will come back to serve you as well. I promised you a personal example of this. The people in the two pictures above are myself and my lovely lady. I am the one with the facial hair in case you are still confused. We have been together going on 12 years. Just yesterday, I took her on a date. Why am I still dating my lady after 12 years? Here is why. Today I was having a bad case of writer’s block. I messaged her to tell her. Her response? “I believe in you. You are always so smart and patient.” Those few words gave me the belief in myself to write several blogs, including the very one you are reading. Having someone to believe in you when you are doubting yourself is not only a great gift, but why a relationship is a great responsibility. It is also why a beautiful sweet lady is one of the greatest gifts and one that I treasure.
Believing in ourselves allows to accomplish far more than if we doubt ourself. Taking these two steps can help us either develop or improve that belief. Keeping a ‘mental cookie jar’ of our accomplishments and fostering our relationships with those who do believe in us will help keep us going. As I was writing this, a new self-improvement tool popped into my head. It will be in the upcoming book, but you will hear it hear first. It may not be a bad idea to keep an actual cookie jar and write down your accomplishments to put in there. When we need that emotional ‘cookie’, it can be hard to come up with. Especially if we are in a negative emotional state. Having written examples of them will take the thinking part out of the equation and still help our belief in ourself. This certainly isn’t necessary, but does make the process a lot easier and more effective. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you add these two steps to your life to improve the belief you have in yourself. Use that belief to accomplish the greatness that is inside of you.
Last post we talked about my introduction to the power of gratitude. In a way it was also my introduction to the world of self-improvement. That has went on to shape the path of my life for the last 25+ years. If you did not read our last conversation, might I suggest you give it a look. In a nutshell, I began using gratitude to prove that it made no difference in your life. By the end of 30 days, I was encouraging all of my friends and family to use it too. Quite the turnaround for someone who began with a very cynical attitude. After I was so excited and convinced that gratitude can change your life, the universe seemed to say, “Let us see how committed you are to this.” The world often works this way. It will test you to see how serious you are about your journey. In this case, after having this crash course in gratitude, I literally crashed. A young man stopped in the middle of an intersection and I ended up going through my windshield.
Most people would think this would be a situation that would deter someone from feeling grateful. Certainly it is not an experience that I would recommend. Let me tell you what I did learn about myself. I am not a very good friend to me most of the time. What on earth does that mean? It means that my inner conversation had been one of discouragement and negative sarcasm. That is the majority of what we run into in the world today. We seldom pay attention to our inner dialogue. It seems to be a running conversation that occurs in our head unfettered. Let me assure you when you wake up in a hospital bed after headbutting the windshield of a 2000 Jeep, you have plenty of time to pay attention to what you are saying to yourself. Mine wasn’t so good…to begin with. I recall waking up and thinking, “This sucks.” There may have been a few more colorful words thrown in, but you get the idea. My car was totaled. I was going to miss my first day of work in 9 years. None of it was good, or so I thought.
Just as I was swimming in a sea of self-pity, something, or should I say someone, changed all that. A nurse came in and said those five magic words. “Would you like some coffee?” Sadly, it wasn’t as much as these nurses above had. In fact, it was rather awful coffee in a little Styrofoam cup. It was, however, coffee. I recall saying to myself, “At least I have a cup of coffee.” Then all of that gratitude I had been practicing came back. I thought if it can work when life is sunshine and rainbows, let us see if it will work now. I started contemplating what I could be grateful for. I did have insurance, even if the young man who caused the accident did not. I was alive to be having this conversation with myself. There was family on the way to help me. Suddenly the outlook did not seem as gloomy. There was potential, if nothing else.
That is when I learned a very valuable lesson. The conversation we have with ourself has a great impact on our emotional condition. As a matter of fact, I would say it determines our emotional condition. Also discovered in that moment was the fact that the conversation we have with ourselves can be controlled. We are not at the whim of that inner voice, or voices depending on the individual. No, we have a say in how we talk to ourself. We can be our best friend cheering ourselves on, or we can be our worst enemy putting ourselves down. Either way, the impact is just as great on the rest of our life.
One other thing that happened in that moment, that I may not have wrapped my head around until much later was the realization that two opposing views can be true. In fact, two opposing worlds can be true. We have all heard the quandary over whether the glass is half full or half empty. Both can be true at the same time. When you are grateful, you are seeing the glass as half full. Neither view changes the actual state of the liquid in the glass, it only changes how you feel observing it. What is the big deal about that? How you feel is your life. If you are a person who finds every reason to complain and you win a million dollars, you will just be a millionaire who likes to complain. That is why taking control of the inner conversation is so important. It determines the quality of your life. The best way to make sure that conversation is a good one is by developing an attitude of gratitude.
In both the Testament of Solomon and the Talmud, it was said that King Solomon enslaved demons and forced them to build the temple. As most of you know, this blog is not about religion or what you believe. This story can be interpreted in a way that I feel can help us lead a far more disciplined and productive life. What can a king from over 2000 years ago help us discover secrets to an amazing life? More importantly, what can enslaving demons to build a temple teach us about creating a successful life today? Plenty. It is all in how we look at this story.
Let us take a look at what temple you are building. Certainly, there are many different kinds of temples. If everyone in the world built a temple, would that not require a great deal of real estate? Even if just everyone reading this blog built a temple, I fear it would cost some wonderful four-legged friends we share the planet with their homes. Lucky for us, the temple does not have to be a building. Unless of course that is the thing you actually do. In the modern world, your temple can be anything you are building to honor the life you have been given. It can be a fit body, like the couple above. It can be an amazing cake like my lovely lady creates. It can be a clean house, a healthy relationship, or even writing a fourth book like I am endeavoring to do. What you are working on is your temple.
You might find yourself at this point asking, “Can I really summon a demon to help me make it to the gym?” The answer is both yes and no. For those of you that are frightened by this whole prospect, let me assure you that we are not talking about engaging in diabolical behavior and summoning some demonic creature with wings and a tail. In some ways these demons are a lot closer, and to me, a lot scarier. The demons are the parts of us working to sabotage our success. It is what some people refer to as the “Dark side of humanity.” There are some who say it is best to bury and pretend our dark side does not exist. Not only is this a fool’s errand, but if you do not get control of your dark side, your personal demons if you will, they will get control of you at the worst times. Let us take a look at what I mean by this.
Who are these demons? They are the dark parts of us that often hold us back in life. It could be the demon of anger that causes us to say hurtful things to our spouse in the heat of an argument. It could be the demon of distraction that keeps us from focusing on our goals. Did I mention that I am still working on my fourth book? As you can see, fighting these demons is a daily job. It is not simply ‘resisting’ them. It is acknowledging them and then using that energy they take for constructive purpose. If you get angry during a heated disagreement, say to your demon of anger, “I see you tempting me to tear into this person. I am not going to let you destroy another relationship in my life.” Then use that energy to go for a run, or dive deep into improving the quality of your relationship. How about that all too present demon of distraction? Trust me, this one is everywhere. We even carry it in our pocket everywhere we go. I can’t tell you how tempting it is to practice my chair dancing skills when a good song comes on at the coffee shop I am supposed to be writing at. In this case, I say to that demon of distraction, “I see you there trying to shift my focus.” Perhaps I use that energy to focus on completing 1000 words so I can dance to my hearts content?
I do not know what demons you are currently facing. It could be distraction, laziness, procrastination. There are so many that do there best to keep us from building our temple. Whatever that successful life looks like for us. It is in acknowledging that dark side of us and using the energy it contains to push us one step closer to an amazing life. This is not easy. It is a daily fight and a difficult struggle. The rewards are the amazing life that we deserve. Do not give in to your demons. Use them to build your temple!
This is one of these messages that can be tough to read and even tougher to experience. Comfort can be a great thing and is the goal of many people. As wonderful as comfort is, it can prevent us from growth and many experiences that will bless our lives and give us the power to help others. Maybe it is the job or relationship that you stay in despite knowing that it is not for you. It isn’t bad, but it is not helping you grow. Your job may be draining your soul, but it is paying your bills. Sometimes the universe knows that you could make a far bigger impact if only you trusted yourself to move on from what is not serving you.
I cannot count the times that this has been true in my own life. Far too often growth only happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing. Growth and increase are often uncomfortable. When we leave certain elements of our past behind to become a better version of ourselves it can be scary, and yes painful. Do you know what is even more painful? Coming to the end of our lives and being filled with the regret of all the growth and change we could have experienced and helped others do the same. We failed to take the actions needed because we would have rather remained comfortable.
I experienced this many times. Starting this blog in 2012. It was uncomfortable to admit how much I did not know about creating on online presence. The following year I became and author by publishing my first book, A Happy Life for Busy People. Writing books can always be a scary and uncomfortable experience. Starting a YouTube channel, a podcast and many of the other things I have done in my life were created by a feeling of being uncomfortable with how my life was. The initial feeling of discomfort was not fun, but it was necessary to facilitate the change needed to improve my life and bring the next iteration of who I was to become.
In your own life do not fear discomfort. Embrace it for the change it may be bringing you. Ask yourself if that discomfort may be pushing you to experience a season of growth and increase that comfort may be preventing you from taking the actions to achieve.
I have been involved in the world of self-improvement for over two decades now. I have seem many people, some with the best of intentions, try in vain to improve their lives. Why, when someone is so enthusiastic about improving their life do they fail to do so? It has to do mainly with their mindset when beginning the journey. Our attitude at the onset of a task has a great deal to do with the outcome. Sometimes more so than the circumstances in which we find ourselves surrounded with. That is why it is so important to get this right. To make preparations for the journey before we begin. You wouldn’t go for a long hike without making sure you brought enough water would you?
What is the proper mindset for self-improvement and what preparations should we be making? I think the quote from Mr. Churchill above gives us a few answers. To begin with, we must understand that improving our life is not a linear journey. There will be peaks and valleys. When some experience a setback, they feel that their journey is not working. The setbacks we experience in life often are some of the best teachers and provide knowledge we cannot gain in any other way. We need to prepare for them. We need to do more than understand from an intellectual standpoint that they are coming. We need to prepare for them emotionally as well. How you do this will depend a great deal on you as an individual.
Some things that work for a great deal of people include, but are not limited to the following. One of the most powerful things you can do is to understand your ‘why’ for improving your life. What happens if you do not improve your life? What happens if you stay the same? This might be a good time to scare yourself a little. Does your family have a history of cancer or heart disease? That might be a good motivation to stay in shape. Then there is the other side of the spectrum. What will happen if you do succeed in your efforts? Will you gain the respect and admiration of your spouse or family? Will you have more energy to play with your children or work on your passion project?
You must also create ways of maintaining your enthusiasm. This can be planning little rewards for yourself when you reached certain points of your self-improvement journey. If you are trying to lose a good amount of weight, make sure to honor yourself along the way or it may feel like you will never get there. It also includes giving yourself a little pain when you mess up. Just make sure to not beat yourself up so bad that you feel like giving up. If you binge on a couple of doughnuts after a month of eating good? Yes, realize you made a mistake, but also realize that maybe you used to do it once a week. Keep your enthusiasm. Keep working towards your goal.
One of the main things you can do to assist in this is to keep your goal in front of you. This can be something as simple as an affirmation on the bathroom mirror or more involved like a vision board. Keep your reason for maintaining your effort in front of you too. It could be a picture of your children, your husband or wife. Whatever the reason that will make you push harder when much of you is telling yourself to give up. Make these preparations, and develop this mindset at the beginning and the journey will be a lot easier.
How many times do you have to try something before learning it? Two times? Three times? Thomas Edison failed more than 1000 times before inventing the electric light bulb. Can you imagine sticking with something that long? I am not sure that I would. The point of all of this is that the amount of times that you do not succeed at something in life will always outnumber the times that you do succeed. In other words, you will fail a lot more than you succeed. Knowing this, you would think that failure would be a well-studied subject. On the contrary. Most people do not like to think about failure, much less study it.
If failure is something we are going to experience often in our life, should we not spend some time learning how to do it properly? Many of you might be asking how can you ‘fail properly’? Don’t you just fail or succeed? The average person does, yes. If we are looking to create an amazing life, it involves learning to put everything that occurs in our life to work for us. This includes failure. How can we do that? The first step is changing our mindset around failure. We must see it for what it is – a learning experience. Your muscles do not grow in the gym without encountering resistance. The same is true for you as a person. You only grow when you encounter resistance. In fact, the bigger the resistance, the bigger you must grow to overcome it. Just as the heavier weight in the gym requires more muscle growth. The photo above may seem cliche, but it is 100% true. Failure is a ‘first attempt at learning’. You do not learn much if you succeed at things the first time. It also would lead to a boring life eventually.
The second step to making failure work for us is learning to mine it. Yes, it is time to imagine ourselves as miners and see what we can get out of failure. The obvious may be the lessons and knowledge. If you have ever tried to put out a grease fire with water, you will soon learn, in spectacular fashion, that is the exact opposite thing you should do. It is a failure in the moment, but you will never put water on a grease fire again. You gained that knowledge. How about trusting someone with a secret only to discover they told everyone they know? Failed in that judge of character, but learned they cannot be trusted with confidential information. In addition, if there is something you want to get out, perhaps this was the person to tell. In each case you walked away with more knowledge than you went in with.
Another thing we gain from failure is resilience. If we always succeeded, how tough would we be when faced with a challenge? Not very. Failure teaches us perseverance, patience, and mental and emotional fortitude. These are lessons that you cannot learn with success. Therefore, failure is actually something we can be grateful for. It gives us a kind of strength that success never could. You owe it to yourself to learn how to fail properly. We are all going to do it in life. We should learn to do it in a way that will give us an amazing life!
This is more for my friends in the Northern hemisphere. For someone who is a fan of warm weather and sunshine, but lives in a state with 9 months of winter, this is a glimmer of hope. Although this graphic is about the weather, in many ways in mimics life in general. We have dark periods in our life. Much like the weather, we have little or no control over outside circumstances. What we can do is find ways to change our mindset and find ways in which to find as much light in the darkness as we can. Sometimes that consists in just knowing that the darkness does not last forever.
Another way in which this is like life is that the seasons are cyclical. Every year there is a dark period followed by a period of rebirth and growth. Life is much the same. We have periods of darkness. There are times when nothing seems to be going right. People pass away, jobs are lost and health is compromised. After which, we find a period of light. We find a job that we enjoy more, or perhaps pays better. We gain our health and maybe make some new friends. Knowing that there are cycles to this crazy adventure we call life can help us better appreciate and make it through some of the darker times.
As of right now, those of us in the north have made it through some of the darkest days. There will be some challenges ahead to be sure. The days will continue to grow longer and eventually the temperatures will rise as well. Knowing this helps us make it through the snow and frigid weather. Just like knowing there will be a brighter time in our life can help us make it through the darker times. We have done it before and we will do it again!
With seemingly everything becoming more expensive these days, everyone is looking for ways to save a little here and there. Sadly, one of the areas people cut off first is investing in their lives. One great way to improve your life is to change this mindset. View everything as weather it is an expense or an investment. A gym membership can be a great investment. If you go consistently, it will save you on sick time, medicine and stress. It will also add energy and the ability to do more. If, however, you are not going to use it, than it will be nothing more than an expense.
While making these discernments, be careful not to justify expenses as investments. What I mean is that if you are going to buy a new cell phone, even though your current one is working just fine, you could say that it will allow you to work more efficiently from more locations. While that could be true, if you are only could to use it to watch random reels on social media, be honest with yourself. In that case it is an expense. If you buy a great book on how to make better use of your time, but only use it as a paper weight, than it goes from investment to an expense.
As we are all looking to spend wiser and save more, make sure you are doing so wisely. Make sure to continue to invest in yourself. Remember the better you take care of yourself, the more you will be able to do for your friends and family. The best investment you can make is the one you make in yourself.
With New Year’s resolutions starting to fall off, this post comes at just the right time. No matter how lofty our goals, we will not look like anything like them if our habits and effort do not match them. Think of the person who has the goal of getting in shape every New Year. If they do not match that with consistent effort and hard work, they will pretty much look the same as last year. If your goal is to be in a better place financially, but you have a habit of buying every new phone as soon as it hits the market, you will look more like the person chasing instant gratification than someone concerned about their fiscal well-being.
That is why in my upcoming fourth book we focus on setting up rituals to form a daily structure. This will go a lot further to success than even setting goals. I recommend you do both, but setting up a daily habit you engage in will be key. Even starting with something small will gain you momentum. Once it becomes a mindless part of your daily routine, you will be well on your way to success. At first, understand new habits will be difficult. The brain does not like to change its way of operating. Stick with it as Earl Nightingale used to say. Once your mind adapts to this new habit, you will be on your way to success.
There are ways to help put this on autopilot. Let us say your goal is to start the day with a better attitude and outlook. Placing inspirational quotes on the bathroom mirror, or empowering affirmations to repeat to yourself, would be a good idea. I have a daily inspirational calendar by my coffee maker. I love starting the day with both. It takes me a while to remember to read each page. Especially at 4am when I wake up. Once in the habit though, it is something I now look forward to! How about you? Can you think of some simple habit you can do daily to gain momentum and set yourself up for success?
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 