Today is Saturday. Most of us are enjoying the start of the weekend. A few of us, like myself, are working. It is good to be a hard-working individual. It shows character and self-discipline. Both very good traits. What we must be careful with is to balance that with our true passions and ambitions. No matter what that job is, one day we will retire. What then? The average person lives less than 20 years after retirement. Men, it is even less for you. Why do we suppose that is? One of the main reasons is a lack of purpose. You do not want to give all of your passion and energy to a company that will replace you a day after you are gone. Think about your legacy, and what lights the inner fire inside you. That is what the world needs more of.
Forgetting your dreams to chase the dollar can have terrible side effects. Increased stress, reduced sense of purpose and fulfillment. How exciting can a life of ‘wake up, pay bills and die’ be? Not very exciting. I’ll cover more ways to go from striving to thriving in my upcoming fourth book. Until then, I want to remind all of us to continue to make our dreams a priority. Even those of us who are finished with the work-a-day world can put our dreams on the back burner. We spend our time with busy work and running errands for others. Perhaps so used to putting our own desires last, that doing anything less has us feeling guilty.
Even someone like myself who works about 60 hours a week, still makes time to pursue their passions. In fact, the words you are reading now include that. The means are not just to justify an end, but to invest in my dream. Pursuing dreams helps us feel alive. It puts light behind our eyes and a spring in our step. How can you invest in your dreams today? Through time? Financial investment? Maybe it is just dusting them off and bringing them back to life. Do not let your salary kill your dreams!
By this time tomorrow we will be in a new year. The quicker we come to grasp the thought above, the better that year will be. The quicker we take full responsibility for our own life, the quicker we will be able to make the changes necessary to go from striving to thriving. If we are truly serious about improving our life and changing what isn’t working there are two things we must do first. We must be honest and clear about what isn’t working in our lives. If we say on occasion we don’t eat the best, when in reality our 4 food groups are ice cream, pizza, chips and beer, we will not stick with the change. Even if you have a map, you cannot get where you are going if you are not clear on where you are starting from.
That leads us to our second step. We have to become disgusted with where we are. If you want to get in shape in the new year, but the 30 extra pounds you are carrying around doesn’t bother you that much, let’s be honest, it is not likely you will stick with the change. We must demand better of ourselves. We must fully desire the best version of ourselves. We cannot do it for the money, for the opinion of others or for significance. No, we must be unwilling to accept our current state in life. Change your inner dialogue to one that drives and motivates you. Create a powerful ‘why’ that will carry you through on days you might not want to take action.
It is important to know that the only one with the power to save us in the New Year, is the person staring back at us in the mirror. If you put the power to do so in the hands of others, you are sure to be disappointed. Nobody should care more about your life than you. It is time to save ourselves in 2025!
The next 3 days we are going to look at things to get ready before the New Year. Today’s post is about changing our perspective on happiness. Many people spend their lives chasing happiness. It really is a fool’s errand. For one, happiness is usually a reaction to outside circumstances. Joy, on the other hand, is more of an emotional state. Put another way, happiness is a destination, and joy is a way of traveling. What we can do is focus on the setting up situations that create happiness for us. It would be even wiser to focus on what has us feeling joy in our hearts. Let us take a look at a few of these.
During these last 360+ days of posts you may have grown tired of me bringing up a certain topic, but here we go again. What of the greatest ways to not only feel happy, but create inner peace and joy as well, is to foster an attitude of gratitude. The reason gratitude gets so much attention is because it works. Being grateful turns what you have into enough. It helps us frame life in a more positive perspective. Realizing there are many things that are worth celebrating in life. It can conquer fear, anxiety and anger. It can help with depression. Finding a gratitude practice to start in your life would be one of the best things you can do for yourself in the New Year. You could start a gratitude journal. You could fill a photo album of things you are grateful for in your cell phone. That way gratitude is a push button away.
In addition to gratitude, another great way to increase joy in your life is to focus on how you can best serve others. When you increase the amount of joy and smiles in someone else’s life, you cannot help but feel better yourself. The best service usually involves something you are naturally good at or enjoy. If you are a good listener, find a way to help people really be heard. If you are a good baker, fill people’s hearts with joy by filling their stomachs with treats. Help an elderly neighbor with the grass or shoveling snow. Whatever you do, use it to help others and your world will end up a brighter place.
In the coming year, do not waste time chasing joy. Instead, focus on filling your heart and journey with genuine joy. Be grateful. Find ways to serve others. Remember, the more people you bring joy to, the more happy people you will be surrounded with and the more they will want to do the same for you. That way, you will not have to chase happiness, it will naturally come to you.
As the holidays get into full swing, our calendar becomes full. We are running around shopping for others. Perhaps we are at home cooking for others. There are still the usual commitments on top of that. What gets lost in the shuffle is time for ourselves. This doesn’t only happen during the holidays either. Life moves at such a rapid pace we can wear ourselves out trying to keep up. One job that we cannot slack on is loving ourselves. It is of the utmost importance.
Loving yourself does not involve arrogance. What it does involve is self-care. We need to take care of our health so we can show up for life and for those we care about as the best version of ourselves. It involves making ourselves a priority. Knowing that we may not be able to attend every holiday party we are invited to. We may not have the finances to buy gifts for everyone we would want to. That’s ok. By taking care of ourselves, we allow others to do the same. By loving ourselves, we demonstrate that we feel we deserve that love. We also learn what makes us feel loved. This is important when others wish to make us feel loved. In fact, if we do not love ourselves, we can make it impossible to feel that we deserve love from others.
Loving ourselves allows us to really appreciate and fully receive the love that others share with us. When your spouse tells you that you look attractive, but you are used to putting yourself down, it can be hard to believe much less appreciate. When you know that you have beautiful qualities, that compliment from your loved one is much easier to believe. When you can fully receive a compliment, it not only makes you feel better, but the one giving you the compliment as well. Think of it. If you tell someone they look nice and they always respond, “No I do not!” How likely are you to continue to compliment them? If they respond, “Thank you so much for saying so. That really means a lot.” How much better would you feel knowing that they appreciated your compliment.
It is your duty to love yourself. This does not mean you have to be perfect. It means that you are doing the best you can and showing up for others the best you can. You might have things about yourself that you don’t like, that is fine. Those things might be what someone else loves. You are an amazing soul and realizing that will not only benefit you but everyone else that you share life with. Don’t they deserve that? Don’t you?
I hope this quote gave you a little chuckle like it did for me. I think it is helpful to have something that is not only a little silly, but encouraging as well. A quote like this can start your day with a smile and a little boost. As for me, I am certain to accomplish the first part of the quote and as long as Margie thinks the second part is true, I will be good.
Life is full of challenging times and challenging people. Having a quote like this to help get us through could be worth its weight in gold. It would also be a great response to the question, “How are you?” or “How is it going?” Having an empowering answer to this question can have a great impact on your life. Why? Think about how many times a day someone asks you how you are. At the very least, it is something you will answer at least once a day. Having an answer that is positive and uplifting means that you will be saying that very thing at least once a day. It is like repeating an affirmation. Conversely, I have heard all manner of sarcastic and negative answers to this question. Why you would want to speak negative over your life is beyond me.
Find your empowering and silly quote now. You can use this one until yours appears. Think of a positive response you can reply with when someone greets you. If you can make them smile as well that is an added bonus. Think if you ask someone how they are doing and they smile and look at you and say, “Living the dream with amazing people like yourself!” That may very well brighten your day. The more you repeat positive statements, the more they seep into your subconscious mind. Doing this long enough, it becomes your reality. I would love to hear some of your ideas of positive and silly quotes below.
The last few posts we have been talking about gratitude, appreciation and such. These are not mere idle words. They are powerful ways of thinking. Roughly ten years ago, I began to change the way that I thought and viewed the world. It has created some radical shifts in my life. I gained the love of my life. I wrote and published 3 books. I started a podcast and YouTube channel. I began speaking. This was all due to a change in the way I thought. When you develop an attitude of gratitude and live in the present life becomes nothing short of magical. Even if your life is tough right now, there are so many things we have to be grateful for. Clean water, the ability to read these words, the fact we are alive when there are so many advances in science and medicine.
When you develop this attitude, that of gratitude, you will recognize that merely being alive is such a great gift! One way to really begin to appreciate all that you have in your life is to live in the present. Way too many of us are filled with regret for the past, or anxious about the future. One already happened, one hasn’t happened yet. Regret the past? The only way to do anything about it is to take action in the present to make up for it. Worried about the future? The best thing you can do is to take actions now to prepare for the future. Don’t want to risk taking things in your life for granted? Stop looking at your phone and take a look around you.
We can get so busy working to afford a life, that we fail to realize that life itself is the gift. It is in mastering our thoughts and choosing what to focus on that is the secret to an amazing life. We can choose to focus on what is right with the world, or what is wrong with it. They are both available at all times. Focusing on what is good in the world does not mean you are ignorant to the fact that there are things that need improvement. Just that you are not dwelling on them. This is a lesson I practice daily. I work long days most of the time. I have a wonderful lady at home that I will soon marry. There are times that my heart almost breaks because I miss spending time with her. If I were to focus on that, my day would be filled with sadness and heartache. Instead, I choose to focus on how fortunate I am to have someone I am so excited to come home to. That is a gift that not many have. I can be grateful that I have a job that I can work to help support us. Again, something not many have.
Even writing this blog and my next book. People ask how after working 56 hours at my day job, 5 hours on Sunday as a DJ, and going to the gym 3 days a week, do I manage to still have ambition to write? Still have ambition? How many people get to share thoughts for reducing stress, increasing joy and becoming the best version of ourselves to people in over 200 countries? It is a feeling of joyous obligation. Meaning I know people are relying on me to bring motivating and empowering positive thoughts to them daily. That is such a great blessing and opportunity. Does that make it easy? No. It makes it worth it.
Changing your thinking begins with mastering your thoughts. Until you do that, you can’t do anything. Once you do that, you can do anything. Mastering our thoughts means mastering our inner dialogue. Controlling the conversation that is going on in our heads and not leaving it up to chance or outside circumstances. This takes some discipline and willpower. It is certainly a skill worth mastering. When you do get control of your thinking, you will empower yourself to accomplish anything you are going after.
If you want to know the secret to an amazing life, start by mastering your own thoughts and emotions. It is a skill that will pay off more than anything else. More importantly, it will allow you to develop any other skill. If you fail to master your inner dialogue, you will forever be at the mercy of others and outside circumstances.
I heard something the other day that will be in my upcoming fourth book. I wanted to give you an abridged version here today. When it comes to improving our own lives, we have spoke volumes about adopting an attitude of gratitude. This is for good reason. You hear it so much it almost sounds cliche. The reason you hear it so much is because it works. We recently even discovered a new and almost effortless way to do this. That was creating an album of pictures (either a photo album or in your phone) that reminds you of what you are grateful for. Then, all you have to do is scroll through the pictures and you start to feel grateful.
This is technically not a post about gratitude. No, it is about gratitude’s twin sister. What are we talking about here? Let me explain. Gratitude works wonders on our relationship with ourselves, but what about our relationships with others? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a magic wand for improving them? There is and it is easy to use and will work on any relationship. Looking to deepen your love with your spouse? This will work. Looking to be on your cranky boss’s good side? It works for that too. How about conveying positive feelings to a friend? This is perfect for that! The more you get in the habit of using this skill, the more polished you will become at it and the more powerful it will work.
The secret power we are discussing, and gratitude’s twin sister, is appreciation. When you appreciate someone, you are telling them why you are grateful for them. This is not to be confused with flattery. That is false praise, usually delivered in hopes of gaining favor. You might think people can’t tell the difference. They can and nobody likes flattery. Appreciation is a genuine expression of gratitude for another person. Letting someone know you are grateful for them and exactly why is so powerful it can deepen the strongest love and soften the hardest heart.
Delivering appreciation is an art form. It takes a certain finesse. Using the right tone and body language. Maintaining eye contact without being creepy about it. This will all come with practice. Do not worry about being perfect. Appreciation is so rare today it is always treasured. Just be genuine and the results will be amazing. We are all out here trying our best and working hard. For someone to notice and let us know means the world.
When you start using genuine appreciation, I can promise you that every relationship in your life will improve. Who would not want that in life? When you think how interconnected we are in life, it is important to let others know how much they mean and how grateful we are for them. Start expressing appreciation today. Make it genuine. Make it sincere and it will change you life.
There is a lot of fear and anger in the world right now. Many people are scared of what tomorrow may bring. That is not only understandable, in many areas it is justified. There is also a lot of anger in the world. The powers that be seem to be succeeding at dividing the people in a bid to control and conquer them. You are hearing more than the average amount of people bashing each other and their opinions or stands on many issues. This could be political, religious, climate or a host of other categories. What is the cure to all of this craziness.
At the risk of being anticlimactic, the answer is in the photo above. We must promote what we love instead of bashing what we hate. Another way of looking at this, is promote solutions instead of complaining about problems. It is easy to point out what is not working. It is far more difficult to actually come up with a solution for solving that problem. The first step in creating a solution for any problem in this modern age is to find a way to work together. That doesn’t mean have everyone agreeing on everything, but there does have to be a mutual respect. Ask yourself who profits from us hating our neighbor? Here is a clue, it is not you or your neighbor. When we learn to work together with a healthy dose of respect for those who differ from us, that is when we become strongest.
A more direct and simple way to happiness over fear and anger is to promote what you exactly love. Talk about what gets you fired up and what puts joy in your heart and a smile on your face. As an example, I do not care for 70’s folksy rock or disco. I do, however, enjoy classic jazz and 80’s hard rock. What doyou think would bring more joy to my heart, to complain and tell everyone how much I think one genre of music sucks, or to talk about my favorite bands and which songs I really like from them? Not only will that make my life more enjoyable, but I will be more enjoyable to be around. Nobody wants to be around the person who is constantly complaining.
Next time you find yourself filled with anger, fear or sadness, just start promoting what you love. Talk about and share what makes you happy. Here is a warning, there will be people who will tell you that what you enjoy sucks. There are just those people out there. Who knows, they might be filled with anger or fear and just not know how to express it. Instead of getting into a disagreement with them, just let them know you respect their opinion and end the conversation. You will not waste any energy and you will walk away a lot happier. An added bonus about expressing what you like is that you find people who like the same things. The same goes true for complaining, but what is more enjoyable, being in a crowd of people constantly complaining or people on fire with passion for what they love?
It is Monday. We have probably all worked very hard and the last thing we want to do is read a long blog post. Today we will just feature this handy list that might be worth printing out. Energy gainers and energy drainers. As the week goes on we will need more of the first and less of the second. Take a look at the two lists. There are some you might have thought of and some you might not. I am going to give you some from each list I am going to work on. I would love to hear yours in the comments below.
From the energy gainer list, first up I am going to use gratitude. A few post ago we touched on a new way to infuse more gratitude into our lives. This is a good idea no matter who you are. The benefits of being grateful could fill a book and has on several occasions. The new way we talked about was creating a gratitude picture folder on your phone. I am going to work on adding to mine and make it a point to look at the pictures of things I am grateful for at least once a day. The second one I am going to use is meditation. I normally meditate before falling asleep, but I am going to take a few minutes each day for a ten minute meditation. This doesn’t have to be complicated. You can even just close your eyes and count your breath. There are also plenty of meditations on YouTube you can just push play and away you go.
In the energy draining department, I am going to work on eliminating more news. With current political events, news is everywhere and it is seldom good. Avoiding it and focusing on news of friends and family would be far less stressful. I am also going to work on cleaning up some clutter. We may not think of this as an energy drainer, but it can be a big one. Looking at the paperwork you have stacked up, or little things you have to go through can sap your energy in a hurry.
These are my energy gainers and drainers I am going to focus on. How about you? Which ones jumped out at you? I would love to hear your answers in the comments below.
Does the above example remind you of your self-improvement journey? If not everyday, maybe at least some days? With everything I have going in my busy life, it can be me at times. It is important to recognize when it comes to improving ourselves, slow and steady is often the best course. As I so often do, I am going to use fitness as an example. Say you are extremely out of shape and want to improve in a hurry. So you go to the gym and workout hard for hours on end. One of two things will happen, neither of which is good. Let us take a look.
The first, and most obvious, is you will burn out. This can manifest itself in many ways. You could injure those muscles that still have a lot of rust on them. This could cause long-term or even permanent damage. Speaking of damage, you could go from a weight bench to a table in the emergency room if your heart is not up to the task. Second, you could burn out mentally. Deciding it is too hard or even impossible to workout. It wasn’t working out that was the problem, it was your approach. That is why slow and steady is the best.
If our person in the example above focused on just one thing instead, they would have been a lot better off. Maybe commit to doing a certain number of squats everyday or even a simple walk after dinner. In any area of improvement, I feel it is best to leave wanting to do a little more. That way you will approach the next time with enthusiasm and eagerness. Sure, you could push your body and heart to run a couple of miles, but you would be exhausted and not look forward to doing it again. Instead, start with a nice neighborhood stroll after dinner. Gradually go a little further each time.
This works the same with any kind of self-improvement. If you add too much all at once it can seem overwhelming and you may be tempted to quit. Instead, try meditating for a month before adding journaling. Start with stopping drinking soda before a total diet over hall. The secret to success is to start small and think big.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 