My favorite day of the year, the first day of summer. It is the longest amount of daylight. It is a season of growth and sunshine. It just feels as if happinessblossoms on every corner. Where I live, this season is far too brief for my liking. So today, I do my best to make the most of everything.
To me, the best way to celebrate summer is by focusing on the things you find fun in your life. What makes the sun shine in your spirit? Do more of that today! Have an ice-cold glass of lemonade and a scoop of ice cream. Share a smile with someone you love.
Last post, we looked at how environment and ritual can give us a grateful life. We can use those two tools to transform any area of our life we want to focus on. This will be expanded on when my fourth book comes out this fall. So you do not have to wait until then to start creating the life of your dreams, we are going to look at using these two tools on the most important area of our life, ourrelationships.
If you think about it, the quality of our life is the quality of our relationships. If you have all the wealth and fame in the world but no romantic partner or friends to share it with, your life is going to suck. If you are suffering in poverty and insecurity and you have no partner or friends to help you through, your life will really resemble a flaming dumpster.
Enough of the negativity. Let’s look at what having amazing relationships can do for us. Have you ever received some great news and had to wait to share it with someone special? It feels like you could explode! Why? It is not like the situation will change when you share the news. How about watching sports? Does it feel any different to be sitting at home alone watching the game versus seeing it livewith a friend and thousands of other screaming fans? Why is that? Because as human beings, we are wired for connection.
Connection not only amplifies our joy, it halves our sorrow. Have you ever had a tough day at work (silly question) and came home to the embrace of a loved one? How about a stressful family situation and then went out for fun with some friends? Suddenly, the stress is a little less. This is not only good for us physically but will help us address the situation better.
How can we use environment and ritual to improve our relationships? How about scheduling a regular coffee date with that special friend? Maybe cooking a special meal for the one you love? Another great ritual could be sending out a greeting card once a month. Just a card reminding people how amazing they are and how much they mean to you. Do this once a week, and in a year, you will have improved 52 relationships! (Side note our address here at secret2anamazinglife is P.O. Box 333 Oak Creek WI 53154 USA) Not into the whole greeting card thing? Try sending a well-crafted email or post on someone’s social media page.
Environment can be used much the same way. In my first two books, I advocate using a ‘Happy Playlist’ of songs to lift your spirit. You can use the same method to put together a playlist that reminds you of a special friend or the one you love. Can you imagine how you would greet your partner if you listened to a playlist of songs that reminded you of them the whole way home? How about displaying little things that remind you of all the amazing people in your life? Maybe things they gave you, or just something that reminds you of them. Every time you see that object, that special person in your life comes to mind. Every time they come to mind, your appreciation for them grows.
These are only some ways that you can use environment and ritual to create the relationships of your dreams. How would you use the two tools of self-improvement to positively impact your relationships? Share your ideas in the comments below.
This will be a very powerful post! Today we will learn 2 items that can transform any area of our life. Problems with your health? This can help. Relationship losing its spark? This will fan the flames of desire. The best part is, once you put these two things in place, the change is almost automatic! As a bonus, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
You may be thinking this all sounds too good to be true, and I would not blame you. Let’s dive right into the first tool you can use, and I think you will grasp the power of this.Remember, the best way to witness the effect these strategies for success will have in your life is to use them yourself.
The first tool is the environment. We discussed this a few posts back, but let us take a closer look. Many people are chasing that better life. Chasing that perfect relationship. Chasing that great career or healthy lifestyle. Many of these same people are in environments that do not serve those ends. You are looking for a healthy lifestyle, but your refrigerator is full of ice cream and cake. You want to turn that side hustle into a dream career, but your bedroom is full of gaming gear and other distractions.
Reaching goals can be tough enough. Creating an environment where those goals can flourish makes it so much easier. Want a great relationship? Fill your bookshelf with books on the subject. Watch some great videos on YouTube or a relationship podcast. Fill your cabinets with tasty and healthy snacks, so those are your only options.
The second tool to transform your life is ritual. Before you recoil in shock and terror, I am not saying you have to dance in the moonlight with your friends or whatever is happening in that picture above. A ritual is nothing more than an intentional habit. An act we purposely engage in for a desired outcome.Whether that outcome is health,wealth, or my favorite, gratitude, you can develop a ritual.
Let us use gratitude as an example. I think we could all use more gratitude in our lives. It not only helps us feel good, it changes our perception on life.When we are focused on what we lack we feel poor and like life is a sentence of sorts. Our life feels like a job. Have your you ever felt that way? Than you could use more gratitude.
Here is how we can use ritual and environment to stay in the mindset of gratitude. Let us start by finding our favorite quote on gratitude. Now print out 3 copies. Place one where you will see it first thing in the morning. This could be the bathroom mirror, the coffee maker, the refrigerator door. Whatever works for you. Place one in your car for your commute. Lastly, keep one in your pocket. You now have surrounded yourself with reminders of gratitude. You have the environment.
Now comes the ritual. Every morning, say the quote out loud 3 times. Thus reminding yourself to be grateful that day. Whenever you reach in your pocket for keys, a pen, or anything else, take your quote out and read it. At the end of the day, write three things your grateful for that day and why in a journal. You could keep this by your bed. This would add to the environment.
Can you imagine how much easier living a grateful life would be using these secrets? I would love to hear your tips for living grateful in the comments below. Come back next post where we look at ideas to use this to create the relationship of your dreams!
As we start a new week, let us do our best to keep a smile on our faces. This can seem challenging depending on what life throws our way. Here is something that will help – focusing on our blessings. That is everything we have to be grateful for on our lives. Can you imagine how different your life would be if you were so focused on gratitude that you had to be interrupted to be affected by negativity? How would your life be different if being grateful was the rule and not the exception?
This sounds great, but how can this really be possible? How can we remain grateful in a world that is often ‘positive challenged’? In a word – reminder. Put as many things in front of you to remind you not only of the things you already have to be grateful for but to discover new ones as well.
This will be different for everyone, as everyone has different things to be grateful for. You could keep a picture of a loved one in the car to look at during the commute to and from work. This could be one of the 2 or 4 legged varieties.You could keep a gratitude journal on your nightstand by your bed.Maybe a well-placedaffirmation on the bathroom mirror or coffee machine?
These are just a few ideas. Choose what works for you. Next post, we will look at 2 steps to take that will not only work for gratitude, but for any area of your life. You will definitely want to return for that. Better yet, subscribe to this blog so you do not miss a single post. Feel free to share what you do to stay in gratitude in the comments below.
What an important reminder. We know there are things in our lives that we need to change. We look in the mirror and see a little too much of us to love. We open our mouth and everything that comes out is not necessarily kind and encouraging. Our bank account seems to have the decimal point in the wrong place. These can all seem like tall orders to tackle. How do we transform our physique? How do we remember to speak life and hope to others? How can we turn around our finances?
Here is the important thing to consider, these issues did not occur in a day and so it may take some time to turn them around. Do not let that discourage you. Quite the opposite. I am guilty of this myself. We look at how long it may take to achieve the end state and give up before we begin. It is so vital to remember all of the small wins you will experience along the way. You cannot solve the problem in one day, but you can begin to turn things around. Introduce one healthy meal or snack into your diet. Go for a walk after dinner. Share one genuine compliment a day. Start an automatic savings plan. All of these may not seem like much at the time, but they will grow into success.
Perhaps the most important thing is to keep yourself inspired. It can seem overwhelming when things may not seem to be happening at the rate you had planned, or maybe even take a step back. It is important to keep a source of inspiration nearby. Perhaps reading this blog every day.Keep those little reminders present because there will still be times life seems overwhelming, and you need to be reminded… one at a time.
I have written about this in the past, and even done a YouTube video about it. (check out my channel at Neil Panosian) It is so important it needs repeating. Do you want a life that is better than most? Do you want to live a life that is filled with more happiness than most? Than decide to! This really shouldn’t be a secret, but for some reason it remains so to many.
When you ask most people if they are going to have a good day, they respond by telling you they do not know. Maybe they even are cautious and say, “We will have to wait and see?” Wait for what? If you are waiting to see if the world and the people in it will cooperate with you so that your day can be good, most of the time you will be disappointed. That means most of the time you will not be happy. That is how the majority of people on the planet live their life. They leave their happiness up to circumstances beyond their control.
What can we do to take back control from those circumstances and begin to choose to have a happy day? Let us look at what most people do when they start their day. Many lament the sound of the alarm, and often hit snooze so they can experience it yet again. They look at their phone and see what drama others in their life may have. They may even, if they are of the less informed, watch the news to discover all that is wrong with the world. Then, they ‘fight traffic’, go to a job they have been dreading and do the same on the way home. That is not the formula for a happy day.
Our goal is to pick rituals and an environment where a great day can’t help but blossom. What does this include? That is really up to you. It can be having inspiring things attached to your mirror like the lady in the picture above. It can be thinking of three things you are grateful for before you get out of bed. Listen to something inspiring on the way to work. That way, if you get stuck in traffic it is just more inspiration. Will this make all of your days sunshine and rainbows? Of course not. Starting the day with an intention and determination for happiness does a lot more than leaving it up to chance.
How about you? What will you do to create a great day instead of leaving it up to chance? What rituals or environment to you have that helps start your day in the right direction? Please share with us so we can all benefit. If you are so inspired, click the link below to check out my YouTube video I filmed years ago on this very subject.
This quote is a great reminder in a world focused on material and status accomplishment. While that is great, it is what you have gone through to get there that is impressive. Your persistence in accomplishing your goal is what makes you who you are. Trying to eat better and accidentally slip and fall and a doughnut lands in your mouth? That could be enough for most people to beat themselves up and go back to eating junk. If you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and grab a salad for lunch, you are my kind of hero.
Please do not under value the fortitude it takes to keep pushing after a setback. It is something that defines character, internal strength and gives us the ability to handle difficulty in the future. If you have ever fallen and got back up, remember you are the hero. You deserve the glory. Keep fighting. It is within that fight that the glory lives.
There is a lot to unpack here, and I hope to have these words make sense to you. If you are a student of self-improvement for any length of time, you have undoubtedly heard the story of the lion and the gazelle. It is a great way to view motivation. The gazelle is motivated by outside circumstances. In this case, the lion. If the lion is not there, he will continue to eat grass and chill. The lion, however, has an internal motivation – his hunger. Sure, maybe there is the thought about feeding the rest of the pack, but the driving force is his hunger. The same should be true in our lives. We should not only be motivated by outside circumstances, but by internal ones. Do we only study and improve ourselves when we think our job might be in jeopardy, or we do it because we are hungry to become the best version of ourselves?
The same is true with competition. We are not competing to be smarter than Bob, or more beautiful than Betty. We want to improve ourselves and become the best version of us that we can be. Not to mention, the world does not need another Bob or Betty. What the world needs is for us to be the most authentic and best versions of us that we can be. What is preventing us from doing that is also internal. It is not Bob, Betty, our spouse or our boss. No, it is our habits, our lack of consistent action. When we are trying to lose weight, it is not Little Debby’s fault that we eat a box of snack cakes. No, it is our lack of personal control.
This week, remember we are competing against that version of ourselves that wants to hold us back through laziness, lack of focus and lack of effort. Can we defeat the challenges of the old version of ourselves? That is the true competition. That is what we are up against.
I have written about this in the past. I may have even used this very picture. It remains as true now as it has ever been. With all of the divisive political rhetoric, people searching for the most direct path to fortune and fame, and the lack of significance many people feel, we need to embrace this little lesson above. It will not only address all of the issue mentioned previously, it will also make the world a better place as a whole.
Want to solve the great political divide? Be a decent human and accept other people might hold different opinions than you. Further more, those opinions could be right for them and their beliefs. Want to look for the quickest path to fame? Find a need and fill it. The more people you can serve, the more you will be in demand. Providing life hacks, inspiring and empowering people or just being encouraging are great ways to start. If you feel that you are not very important, or wish to be more valuable to those you care about and the world around you, be a wonderful human being. Be a good listener. Treat everyone with compassion and understanding. Uplift the spirits of everyone you come in contact with. Do all of these and your presence will be coveted by kings and peasants alike. Everyone loves someone who makes them feel like the special individual they are.
Lastly, filling the world with one more good human being benefits us all. It is a blessing for those you interact with and an example from those observing you. It is perhaps the most rewarding career field you can go into. As the photo above mentions, there is very little competition.
It is my first time writing at a coffee shop in a while. The weather around here has been quite nice, and it has been fun writing on my front porch. Today, we are going to look at a subject that has almost become second nature to me. It is how to live an amazing life in any condition. This may sound like a tall order, and it can be. Situations in life broadly fall into two categories. There are the ones that we consider ‘good’. These can be falling in love, a financial windfall, or any of many other great situations. The others are what we call ‘bad’ situations. These could include, but are not limited to, falling ill, losing our job, losing a loved one, or many other such things.
I have found two different strategies to turn both of these situations into something that improves my life. When life is going good, the trick is to fully experience it. This may sound like a no brainer, but today there appears to be a challenge in remaining present. This is easy to understand. We have cell phones that keep us connected to the world around us no matter where we are. There is social media. This keeps us connected with friends, family and even people we don’t know in person. With our cellphones, everyone has a camera with them at all times. It can be tempting to spend the entire experience taking pictures of the event instead of living it. Do not get me wrong. A well timed picture can be a great memory, but make sure you make it an exception and not the rule. It is a sad day when you have to experience a great time you had by looking through the pictures later because you missed it at the time. Appreciate the people you are with, for one day they will be gone. I recall one of my favorite places to go was to visit my friend Curtis at a coffee shopwhere he was employed. We would talk about life and our families. I always left inspired. One day he and his family moved to a different state. The business also relocated.
When life is grand we should stop and truly experience it. That makes sense. About those ‘bad’ situations. Are you really telling me that they can help us live an amazing life? Yep. Simply asking one question can help you to do that. It does not erase the pain, sadness, or anger that you may feel, but it will be a constructive moment. That simple question is, “What is the opportunity in this?” Perhaps someone you love is suffering. How can there be an opportunity in that? There is a chance to help. By showing caring, your relationship with that person can deepen. Perhaps you can help them discover something about themselves they could only learn in the challenge. I think you will find, in any situation, if you keep asking this question you will get an answer.
There you have it. Whether life is good or bad, you can use it to your advantage. No longer are you a slave to circumstances! You can put any and every circumstance to work for you. If you utilize these two simple lessons, you will progress in life far quicker than those poor souls who are ignorant to this valuable information. To make sure that does not include anyone you care about, I invite you to share this post with everyone special in your life.
