Tag: seneca

YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED ❤️

This post is a bit of an uncomfortable truth for all of us. Quite often we are looking outside of us for that magic key that will help fix everything that is wrong in our life. The hard truth is that many of the things holding us back are created by the person who looks back at us in the mirror every morning. Yes, that is not fun to hear, but it is absolutely true. Have you ever felt like you have 25 hours of things to do in a day? That you are running around crazy busy? One of the best ways to discover how to get more things done is by being honest about how much time we waste. “Not me!” I hear lots of you say. We all waste time. Seneca, a great stoic philosopher, once said, “It is not that we have a short time to live but that we waste a lot of it.” This guy died in the year 65. That was long before social media, Netflix and reels!

A great way to get a handle on our time, discipline and focus is a tool that not many are brave enough to do. Are you? For at least 2 days straight, write down what you are doing for every minute of your 24 hours. You may think, “Well I only watched a few minutes of Tik Tok videos.” Only to discover that you watched ten minutes of them…10 times. You may think you took a break to watch a little of your favorite series you wanted to catch up on. Only to discover it was 2 hours out of your day. Think of all you could have got done in 2 hours? This is not to say that you cannot have any fun throughout the day. Just that we must realize the pressure and stress we put on ourselves through our lack of self-discipline.

A quick solution for this is to set timers for your ‘breaks’ throughout the day. You want to watch some reels? Ok, set a timer for 15 minutes. Otherwise 2 hours later you will find yourself watching a cat drive a truck down the freeway stressing on how you can never get caught up on your housework. This happens to me while trying to write a book often. I am a social person by nature. This can be difficult for an author where you must spend a great deal in solitude writing. So, if I am working on a difficult chapter and a friend, or a beautiful blonde I happen to be engaged to, sends me a message, my brain will subconsciously tell me “This is a lot more fun.” Next thing you know I have had a 20 minute text conversation and have not typed a single word.

Yes, I enjoyed those conversations, but I will continue to be stressed with the lack of progress. It reminds me of the quote from Jim Rohn, “Discipline weighs ounces and regret weighs tons.” Yes, it takes discipline to put my phone away and work. The upside is that I will not be kicking myself the rest of the night for the progress I lost. Try writing down what you do for every minute of the day if you are brave enough. Be honest. What you discover may help you live a more productive and less stressful life.

WHEN LUCK HAPPENS 🍀

This week, create your own luck. “Sounds great Neil, but how do I do that?” you might be wondering. In a word – prepare! It amazes me when people tell me how lucky I am. “You are lucky to have so many people follow your blog.” They say. What they do not see is the time and effort put in on top of working 56 hours a week at my day job and working as a DJ on the weekends. “You are so lucky you do not get sick more often.” Those who say this do not talk about eating healthy, working out or making sure to take my vitamins. My favorite is when people tell me how lucky Margie and I are that we have a great relationship. Am I fortunate and blessed to have such a beautiful and loving lady in my life? Absolutely! Do all of our days and plans go smoothly? Not hardly. We both get sick, tired and on each other’s last nerve on occasion. We have breakdowns in our communication. We also work our butts off to address these things. There are always threats looking for that chink in the armor of love. It could be jealous people. It could be people who are spiteful. Even when we do figure things out, there is the threat of taking things for granted or falling victim to familiarity. That is why we are constantly working to keep things fun, fresh and spicy.

Do you want to create more luck in your life? All you have to do is work harder. Do you want to be ‘lucky’ enough to write and publish 3 books? It will cost you many sleepless nights, lots of frustration and plenty of hard work. Do you want to be ‘lucky’ not to get the sickness that seems to be going around the office? You will have to work on staying in shape, watching your diet and perhaps taking a little extra vitamin C. Do you want to be ‘lucky’ in love? Let me tell you up front, you will have to work at it. Learn the art of active listening. Learn to apologize when you are wrong. Learn how to express your emotions properly and with thought for the other person’s feelings. Even before you get into a relationship, you can increase your chances of being ‘lucky’ when you find the one if you spend time working on yourself. The better version of yourself you bring to a relationship, the greater the chances are it will be ‘lucky’.

The formula may seem obvious, but it cannot be overstated. Like Thomas Jefferson said, the harder you work, the more luck you will have. What is important in your life? What area do you feel you would like to experience more ‘luck’ in? Whatever that area is, start to increase the amount of effort you put into it. You will find the amount of luck that seems to find you will only increase.

THE ULTIMATE MEASURE OF A PERSON 📏

A few posts back we spoke about the dangers of letting comfort become an addiction. Many of you were asking, “Why seek discomfort?” This is a fair question. Why spend your life pushing and pursuing the difficult path. For one, it leads to greater destinations. The steeper the climb, the better the view. If you wish to become truly great in any field, there will be lots of work and sacrifice. Nobody has ever grown to greatness sitting on the couch.

Another reason is put forth to us in the quote above by the great Martin Luther King Jr. It is challenging times that give us the best opportunity to show our true character. In this quote he uses the term ‘man’ but it holds equally true no matter the gender. Challenges provide us an opportunity to stand up for others and for our principles. It is easy to stand up for what is right in a room full of people who agree with us. Will we still be willing to stand up for what we feel is right when it is unpopular? When it is difficult?

More important that the opportunity to prove ourselves to others, is the chance to prove ourselves to…well…ourselves. Will you still make it to the gym after a hard day at the office? (hint, that is the day it might be most beneficial) Will you still be able to be kind to others when your life is going through a rough patch? These are things that you can only find out for sure during the dark times.

Challenging times are never fun, and life can often seem too full of them. Still, they can provide opportunities that just cannot be found when life is easy. Next time a challenge comes into your life, ask yourself how you can put it to use for you. Before long you will become just as grateful for the challenges as you are for the good fortune.

BE PREPARED AND BE LUCKY!

I cannot count the times that I have heard someone say “You are so lucky because _____.” This could refer to many things in my life. I have heard how lucky I am that I have such a great relationship. I have heard how lucky I am that I was able to write three books. I even heard how lucky I was to make it through covid and my open-heart surgery. I will admit that there was a good amount of amazing people and grace involved in all of those situations. Do you know what else was involved in those situations? A hell of a lot of hard work.

When I had the good fortune and grace to meet Margie, I treated her with respect and worked on learning about her and improving myself. Do you know what the result was? I was lucky enough to have a great relationship with the most beautiful lady in the world. If I was a jerk, didn’t care about her wants and needs and didn’t work to improve myself, then I wouldn’t be so lucky. Even though she would still be an amazing and beautiful lady. It was, and is, both of our hard work that makes us lucky enough to have such an amazing relationship.

Lucky enough to have written three books? Unless you have written one yourself, in which case I cannot imagine you saying that, you would have no idea the hard work that goes into creating a book. To be honest, I didn’t either when I wrote my first one. I thought you just put some words on paper and someone turns them into a book. Oh no, there is editing. There is formatting. There is choosing fonts, covers for images, titles, pricing, promoting and a million other aspects that may have changed my mind into pursuing being an author had I known about them. Just one of my books took 5 years from start to finish. The last one caused me to give up most of the very short Wisconsin summer to create. That meant sitting inside looking at the warm weather and sunshine while I sat inside typing away. Anyone who knows me would understand what a torture that was.

Lucky enough to make it through open-heart surgery? Once again, I will admit some very talented, and when it came to me patient, people in the medical field. Still, there were 5 days a week spent at the gym. There is oatmeal for lunch every day, when there is doughnuts sitting in the break room. There is a 4-mile walk in the park with your mother after working for 9 hours. If I would have ate how I want (Pizza every day) and just worked out when I felt the urge (That would be next to never) the odds I would have been so lucky to recover from my surgery would have been next to nothing. If I did, it would have been longer and a lot more painful.

In any area of life, if you want more luck there is one way to assure that will happen. That way is to work your butt off. You will find yourself surrounded by more opportunities and luck. If you know someone who seems to turn anything they touch into gold, you might want to look at how hard they work behind the scenes. With that in mind, I am going to leave you with this quote from Thomas Edison. It also speaks about how to create more opportunities in your life.