Tag: Shopping

valuable treasure

“Just because a treasure is not valued, does not make that treasure less valuable.”

-Neil Panosian

Ok, yes I did it. I just quoted myself. Am I having a fit of narcissism? Am I running dangerously low on material? The answer to both is no. If you do have any other ideas you would like to add to the secret2anamazinglife website please feel free to let me know. This is just one of those statements that came out of my mouth once and I had to take a step back and go “Wow, that is so true!” Let me explain the meaning behind the quote. Quite often if we lose a lover, a friend or a job our very first question may be “what is wrong with me?” That is not always a bad thing as it helps us look at our role in the situation. Were we not attentive enough lover? Did we take our friends for granted? Did we not do our best at our job? These are all good questions, but there is something more to remember. Sometimes we have done nothing wrong. Here is my honest opinion, each one of us is a treasure. Not only because you are spending your valuable time reading all these words I write, but you are either doing so because you are genuinely interested in discovering ways to improve your life or you are a really good friend of mine who is just that supportive. Either way, you are amazing. When you “fail” in a situation and you start to feel a little shine has been taken off your apple, remember two very important things. One, the shine on apples is usually from a wax that is put on so you are better off without it. More importantly, maybe everybody was full.  What do I mean by that? Let’s use another analogy. When you think of treasure what do you picture? Jewels? Diamonds? Gold? We are each diamonds to the world in our own way. Very valuable, priceless. People pay their life’s savings for diamonds, yet what good would a diamond be to a starving man on a deserted island? Sometimes our treasure is just not as valuable to the situation. Other times the other person can’t understand the true value of the treasure. If you showed a diamond to a baby they would appreciate it no more than any other sparkling object. So when someone doesn’t appreciate the treasure that is you, just remember it doesn’t make you any less valuable, They may just not know any better like the baby. Take your shining diamond somewhere it will be appreciated for its full value. You are all treasures my friends!

THE JOY OF BEING WRONG

One of the most unfounded fears in our society today is this, the fear of being wrong.  It amazes me the great lengths some people will go to in order to not have to admit they were wrong.  Let us be honest, raise your hand if you have ever made a mistake.  I’m sure that almost all of us reading this, and the one writing this have their hand in the air.  Ok, now put it down because if you are staring at your computer with one hand in the air people may begin to point and whisper.  So what is the point here?  We are all aware that everyone has made mistakes and that we are not the first one.  So why the big fear of admitting it?  Some people are afraid it will make them appear less intelligent.  I have even heard it mentioned that some people feel inferior to others when they are wrong. Well today we are not going to discuss how to get rid of those feelings.  We instead are going to focus on why being wrong can be such a good thing.  Let me begin by sharing a story from my own life.  One of the many times I was wrong was when I was asked by the owner of the bar I work at if we should bring in karaoke.  Now, I first let him know it is his bar and I would respect any decision he made.  That being said, I was dead set against it.  I pictures having to listen to hours of the worst singers I have ever heard.  I thought every Friday was going to be like the first night of the TV show American Idol.  Not only that, every karaoke show I have seen was led by a man who seemed half used car sales man, half Las Vegas lounge act.  Showing how much my opinion mattered, or how set in his mind he was, we started karaoke.  We also started it on Friday, the only night of the week I am behind the bar.  Well, I will be the first to admit how wrong I was.  Starting with the singers.  They are some of the most fun and passionate people I have had the honor of meeting.  A few of them have gone on to become friends.  The terrible screeching I feared is more the exception than the rule.  Business has picked up, as has the atmosphere of the bar.  The people who run the karaoke?  Not only do they not try to sell me cars, they are some of the most creative and fun people I have had the honor of working with.  They also truly care about the people who come to sing with them.

Here is the point of that story.  If I had been right, there would have been no pick up in business.  My ear drums would probably be bleeding right now, and I would have lost out on working with and meeting some of the most amazing people I have met in a truly long time.

When we are wrong, it frees us up to consider life in a whole new light.  The greater the conviction we had about what we were wrong about, the more freedom and freshness it can bring to our lives.  Sometimes I say to myself “if I was wrong about this, what else could I be wrong about?”.  So just remember, don’t always be so afraid to admit you are wrong.  It can turn out to be one of the greatest blessings, and bring a whole new look to life.  Also remember that others share your same fear of being wrong.  So when a friend, spouse or co-worker find themselves to be incorrect, be encouraging and inspiring.  Just remember, being wrong can actually be something worth celebrating.  I am reminded of that every Friday!

Metal motivation

Yesterday we spoke of exposing ourselves to different sources of motivation and inspiration.  Well I have come across what I feel is an excellent site for people who may find this whole taking control of your mind and using the power of your thoughts a bit too ‘new age’.  It also works great for people like myself who on an occasion or several need a shove to be reminded to do the things we know we should be doing, but for a million different reasons are not.  Now I caution some of the language on this site is a bit strong, but it is a great bold look at how to improve your life and empower yourself. the site is www.metalmotivation.com The esteemed gentleman who you will see and hear from, CJ, has some amazing ideas and serves as another great option to plug into for some great motivation and life changing tools.  He also has some pretty great t-shirts there too. Check it out, if it works for you great! His concepts are some of the best I have heard in a long time. Have a passionate and thrilling day my friends!

 

LET’S START COOKING!!

Here is a fun and creative idea I just came up with.  Sometimes it works that way.  For those of you who don’t know, I love to cook I find it to be very cleansing for the soul and being able to see and taste something you create always fills me with a sense of accomplishment.  Except for the one late December evening when half asleep I tried to bake cookies and mixed up the salt and the sugar.  Even then they still looked nice.  Back to my brilliant idea.  Ok, in my mind it is brilliant, but trust me my mind is one place we need not go.  I was creating a casserole tonight from a cookbook my grandmother left me when she passed away.  Perhaps it was her inspiration that put this idea in my head, but either way I encourage all of you to try it.  If you do and it works out remember my birthday is July 29th and feel free to send me a copy of your creation.  If it doesn’t work out, feel free to just send cookies.

Back to being serious, which is rare for me.  The cookbook I was using was one of those with the spiral binding.  As I flipped through the pages an idea came to me.  What if I could create a ‘motivational/inspirational cookbook’!  On each page could be a different idea for staying motivated and creating the amazing life we all deserve!  It gets better.  I know all of my ideas, you know all of your ideas, but we do not know each other’s ideas.  So get your self a blank set of recipe cards and hand them out to your friends, neighbors, family, co-workers or anyone else you can think of.  Explain you are making a special cookbook and could they give you their secret recipe for staying happy/motivated/inspired whatever word you wish to use.  You may even give them a self-addressed stamped envelope so they can take their time and mail it back to you when they are done.  You might want to skip that kind of odd crazy friend you have though.  Ok, you can include him, but just put that recipe on the back page. When you are done you will not only have created an amazing list of new ways to improve the quality of you life, but you will also have gained an insight into what makes your friends happy.  That can come in handy on special holidays like…I don’t know birthdays that fall on July 29th.  Ok, my friends, let’s get cooking!

QUALITY AND QUANTITY

There seems to be a statement that is brought to my attention frequently and it may be in the back of your mind as well.  So today we are going to bring it up front and address it.  Honestly before embarking on a life-long journey to live a life as full of passion and meaning as possible this very question plagued me as well.  Ok, I know stop stalling and let us get to the question.  The question I get is this.  “Motivational and inspirational things are great, but they never last and they are never there when I need them most” Although I often feel the same about rum it had me thinking.   Well to answer this I am going to quote the famous motivational speaker and author the late Zig Ziglar who said,

“Motivation doesn’t last.  Neither does bathing.  That is why we need to do it every day”

Following this blog is a great first step into having a motivational pick me up delivered right to your inbox, so be sure to click the link on how to follow this page to make it as easy for you as possible.  I also suggest picking up some Motivational cds to listen to when in the car or if you have a free moment at home.  A book or two would be great as well.  Motivational movies like “The Secret” are good to have around when you just feel like you lose your direction or are just having a bad day.  Feel free to print out your favorite posts from this blog to review when you need.  Remember you are never going to agree with 100% of what anyone says, nor should you.  Each of us has our own unique life and circumstances.  Which is why it is so important to gather as many positive points of view as you can.  Surround yourself with people who are positive motivated people who just might have slightly different way of going about the world.  Keep your mind open to what everyone has to offer.

If we drink a cup of coffee a day (or diet coke or whatever works for you) to keep our bodies going.  We should at the very least expose ourselves to something motivational or inspirational to keep our souls and spirits going.

WATCH YOUR COFFEE!

Here is an interesting metaphor I learned recently that I would like to share with you.  I am always on the lookout for symbols that can serve to remind me of my goal of living the most amazing life I can.  I like coffee.  Ok that last statement could be a slight understatement.  Frequently I find myself at Starbucks either working on my book or even composing some of these posts.  Now before I get to my next point I have to address the voice of my good friend Kim in the back of my head saying “I don’t drink coffee”.  Trust me this could work just as well with a diet Coke.  Next time you get a cup of coffee, or whatever it is you care to consume, think of it as your mind.  Now while waiting in line at the coffee shop I have heard some VERY specific things people like, and do not like in their coffee.  Funny thing is these same people are not nearly as careful as to what they put in their minds.  We must be diligent as to what we let in and keep out of our thoughts on a daily basis.  If we happen to leave this up to chance what will we be greeted with?  I can only share this with you.  I watched the news to try to catch the weather a few nights ago.  What I saw will seem like an exaggeration, but it was the honest truth.  In the first 5 minutes of the news I heard of 3 homicides and 2 house fires, one that took the life of a young woman.  Never did make it to the weather.  It is not only the media we have to look out for, even some of our closest friends and family.  Sounds pretty mean at first blush, but let me explain it using the coffee method.  If a complete stranger walks up and puts some poison in your coffee what will happen?  Answer, you will die.  Now let’s say your closest friend, even on accident spills some of that same poison in your coffee what will happen?  Same result, you will die.  Now this may sound extreme, but that is exactly what negative thoughts are to a healthy mind, poison.  How many times have you had lunch with a friend who happened to be having a bad day and proceeded to tell you how bad the government is, how the economy is on the verge of collapse and other such inspiring thoughts.  You may very well end up leaving lunch at the very least a little less inspired.  The flip side of this is we must not poison anyone else’s coffee.  Before you start venting all of your negative beliefs on your friends, family or co-workers, look them in the eye and ask yourself “would I want to poison this person?” because that is what you are doing to their mind.  So when you get your next latte from Starbucks, or your next diet Coke from the vending machine, stop and think about what you would let somebody put in there.  Let it serve as a great reminder to watch your own thoughts, feelings and emotions.  Watch your own coffee.

HOW GOOD IS YOUR VISION?

In yesterday’s post we spoke of vision.  Why is it important?  How do we develop it?  Why bother?  Let us tackle the first question, ‘Why is it important?’  I can best describe this by using a story I heard about two different ships.  On the first one, we pick a destination, map out a course fill it with a capable crew and an outstanding captain.  Now, keeping the destination in front of them nine times out of ten it will get where it sets out to go.  True that along the way the map might need to be adjusted and the crew may need to be replaced, but it will arrive where it was destined to.  Now let us take a second boat, but on this book we will not say where it is going, we will not give them a map.  There will be new crew and therefore no need of a captain.  We will just fire up the engine and let it go.  How far out of the dock do you think that ship will go?  Where will it end up?  This may seem like an extreme example, but ask ten people where there goal is to end up in 5 years, 10 years or even 20.  Then ask then what their plan is for getting to that destination.  Very few will have a concrete, worthwhile goal in mind and even less will have a plan to get there.  There is another, more fun reason to do this.  Rewards.  How, if we don’t know where we are going do we know if we are getting any closer?  Where is the opportunity to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done? Where is the motivation?  Where indeed.

So if this vision is so important, how do we develop one?  Well they come in many definitions.  Companies call them mission statements.  Some people call them goals.  I prefer to just say “Discover your passion and then chase it with all your might”.  If you are chasing a goal you are really passionate about two things happen.  One, it seems more like an adventure then work.  Who doesn’t like a good adventure?  We pay good money to read about them in books and to watch them on the silver screen.  The second thing is obstacles naturally turn into challenges.  We will not anything stop us!  So start your adventure now.  Write down your destination.  Begin to map it out and select your crew to assist you along the way.

IT DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN

Sometime in our life we went from being the adventure seeking young child, to the adult waiting for life to happen to us.  A view that also affects our view of happiness. I was told the other day that someone was “Never happy, but it’s not their fault because nothing ‘happy’ ever happens to them”.  Here is when a slight change in perception can make all the difference.  Going back to that adventurous toddler, when we are young, we seek out happiness, we don’t just sit in our cribs and wait for it to ‘happen to us’ much to the chagrin of our parents.  When we grow older, however, lots of us just sit in the house and watch tv waiting for something happy to happen.  Here is when a good definition of what happy means to you would certainly help.  While enjoying a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks with a group of friends the other day, I asked them what would make them happy. There were two very different kinds of happiness expressed.  There was what I shall call ‘high excitement’ happiness. The “brand new sports car” “winning the lottery” “night in Vegas” to the ‘low excitement’ variety, “having the dishes done” “a good book and a bottle of wine” “a nice long walk in the woods with my dog”.  Although these answers are very different, they both work for the people who said them. So I asked, why are you not working toward saving for that trip to Vegas? How about working with you spouse to schedule some time alone for a book and a glass of wine.  Sometimes we forget a little pursuing on our behalf, and a change in perspective can make all the difference. Plus, let’s be honest, we all deserve it! Have an amazing day my friends!

START OUT EASY…

Quite often the hardest thing about starting any project is knowing where to start and those all to important first steps.  In fact, one of my biggest stumbling blocks that I am always working to overcome is getting to far ahead of myself and becoming overwhelmed.  So where to begin if you find your life to be in a rather dark place?  What if you have never made an effort to consciously live a more positive life?  Even if you are just looking for a simple basic step to add to everything you already are trying.  Remember different things work for different people. Try as many as you can.  This next one comes from a very close source…my mother.  As we were discussing ways to be more positive she came up with what I think is an easy and straight forward method to help nurture and develop a positive outlook and bring more joy into your life.  The complex tools needed for this task?  A pocket-size notebook and a pen.  The time required for this project?  A few seconds every day for about a week.  Here is the game plan.  Pick a day, any day, be it Monday, or Sunday or Friday.  The day only matters as a start and end point.  Now the night before you are going to start make sure you have a pen and paper handy.  Put it on a table beside your bed, so you see it first thing in the morning. Now upon waking that day grab your pen and paper and put it in your pocket.  Throughout the day whenever something good happens to you write it down.  It doesn’t have to be an exact description, just enough to remember what it was.  “Traffic good on way to work”  would do.  This is just for your own viewing so as long as you understand it is all that matters.  Repeat this throughout the day as you notice anything positive occurring for you no matter how small or silly it may seem at the time.  “Heard a joke and it made me laugh”  “Coffee tasted really good” If you forget something at the moment or don’t have time that second, write it when you do.  There are no rules and the only one seeing this is you.  Now before you retire for the evening, review your list.  Try and remember the moments and how you felt.  This does two things.  One, it will probably do wonders for your dreams that evening.  Also, it helps us put life in perspective and shift our attention to the positive.  So what happens if you only have one or two things that first day?  Nothing.  That is beautiful.  You stopped to appreciate two beautiful moments in your life.  Repeat this for about a week.  Note what happens.  By focusing on the positive things in life, it helps reduce stress and increase joy.  Without getting too much into how the law of attraction works, I would say it would be a safe bet that your list will be longer on day 2, then on day one and longer on day 7 then on day 5.  Now you will excuse me I need to go buy a pocket-sized notebook

THINK…BACKWARDS…

So often I hear people say, “I’m in such a bad mood and I don’t even know why” I must confess to having felt that way before.  This can be a rather perfect scenario for being happy.  Now you may be wondering if I have completely lost my mind.  While that has yet to be determined, at least let me explain my last statement.  When it comes to adding more joy to your life, as with any worthwhile goal, one of the greatest challenges lies in just knowing how.  Let’s face it, if there was a simple step by step plan to a happy life, wouldn’t we all follow it?  One of the greatest challenges I have had in both putting together both this website and my book is people are different.  What makes one person happy, well it may not work for the next person.  So how can we discover what truly makes us happy and develop a formula to continually accomplish that?  I have two suggestions and they are complete opposites and involve thinking backwards. Now before I loose everyone completely, let’s take a step back.  Here is the first method. Even in the darkest of lives there are moments if not days when things just seem to be going your way.  Think back have you ever had one of those days where you are just happy with the world?  Here is a suggestion, try retracing your steps.  What do I mean?  Simple, start from how you are feeling and work back through your day.  Perhaps you had completed a project you were working on?  Maybe you brought a smile to the face of a friend or even a complete stranger.  Maybe you just finished listening to one of your favorite songs on the radio, or working out.  It will be different for everyone, and there may be a few things in there that just seem kind of crazy, but if they lead you to happiness…who cares!  The point here is to look at what makes up a great day for you.  Perhaps write them down on a list, or in a person journal (more on that in later in the week).  Ok, so perhaps you haven’t had one of those days in a while? Maybe you can’t remember what made you so happy, or just want to enjoy the feeling without trying to figure it out. Fair enough.  Even if you find yourself having a miserable day, it is cause to get excited!  Why would feeling miserable be anything to be excited about you may ask.  This is why, it works the same way as being happy.  If you’re having a bad day, stop and think about all the things that transpired to bring you to that point.  Make a list of those things too.  Not only will you come up with a list of things you would do well to eliminate from your life, but if you look at the opposite of those things, you have the seeds for what will make you happy.  So even knowing what you dislike can be a very healthy thing.  If you were to say, I dislike all the negative people I run into.  You will know limiting your exposure to negative people might be something you wish to work on.  You may also phrase it as “adding more positive people to my life would make it better”.  So as this week continues, try thinking backwards and form a plan for your own happiness.  A plan that would be as unique as the person writing it!