Tag: Thanksgiving

CELEBRATE OUR ANNIVERSARY!🥳

Today we celebrate 10 years of this blog! I began this journey in 2012 with just a desire to share with others the tools and strategies that helped me positively impact my life. I never dreamed it would turn into what it is today. There are many things that I have learned in the past decade of sharing ideas with you. First of all, I am still learning and sharing. Self-improvement is very much like physical fitness. You are never ‘there’. There is always maintaining and learning to do. You will mess up. You will have bad days. Life will throw a whole lot at you and you will need to develop new ways to handle new problems. It is the learning and growing that develops from that which is so rewarding.

I also learned how similar we are. When I started I had…well…zero followers. That was never the goal. Still, my desire to share with and help as many people as I can, allowed this blog to now be followed in over 200 countries and by over 50,000 people. I learned a fellow in Italy and I not only like the same music, but are both dedicated to improving ourselves and have had some of the same influences.

Another thing we are celebrating today is Thanksgiving. It is no coincidence that I started this blog on this day. One primary secret to an amazing life is Gratitude. In my own life, it has done the most to positively transform my life. As I reflect on the last 10 years of my life, one thing I am most grateful for is my lovely lady. Margie has been pushing me outside my comfort zone for as long as I can remember. One of the first examples was putting flyers up for my first book signing. We were in the village of Greendale where I worked for the Post Office. The book signing was to be held at a local coffee shop. I had 2 businesses in mind to put flyers at. One of them being the coffee shop. Margie looked at me and simply said, “No, we are going to ask to put them up at every business in the village!” I was tempted to tell her that I thought she was on the brink of insanity, but she was so cute and so insistent. What I thought was going to be a five minute ordeal inside my comfort zone, ended up being a half a day where she would say, “I’ll go in with you.” Then she would push me towards the counter and disappear and make me promote myself. It made the book signing the success it was. Not much has changed two books later.

There is so much in my life to be grateful for. Just today I was recalling how my grandmother used to make pans of barbeque chicken. The whole family would come over and eat all of the delicious food she would make. These days I am grateful for walks in nature and trips to the gym with my mom and wonderful meals created by my beautiful Margie, who is an amazing cook. I think my Grandmother would have really loved her. I know I do. Come to think of it, that is another secret to an amazing life. Find someone who will love you, but push you outside of your comfort zone and make you develop into the best version of yourself. It doesn’t hurt if they are lovely like my lady.

Today, there is lots for me to feel grateful for. The ability to share with you for 10 years. The ability to reach over 50,000 people in over 200 countries. The fact that my partner also happens to be the most beautiful lady in the world and I get to see her on the pillow next to me every night! That fact that we have wonderful memories to reflect on and the possibility to create even more! Today, I would be so grateful if you would share this website with at least one other soul you think could benefit from learning secrets to an amazing life. Together we can reach many more souls. Maybe in the Congo? Maybe in Greenland? Maybe in the town next to yours. We are all one global family of 8 billion.

TRY DOING THIS ONE!

Not a bad plan

Today in the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving. It is a holiday in honor of everything we are grateful for. It also happens to be my favorite holiday for that reason.

I have an idea of a new tradition we can all start. While it may be difficult to shift our entire attitude to one of gratitude, especially in the course of one day. We can take one simple step.

We can all think of one thing we are truly grateful for. Do this right now. No, really, right now, as you are reading this. Pick one thing in your life that you are truly grateful for. I’ll share mine with you. After having the Corona virus in March, I am honestly just grateful to be alive! With asthma and a heart condition I realize it could have been a lot worse.

Here is where we start a new tradition. Take the one thing you came up with and share it with others. Just let them know what you are grateful for in your life. Through observation I have noticed 75 to 90 percent of what comes out of people’s mouths are either gossip or complaints. It seems to be human nature. Let us throw a statement of gratitude in the mix. It will certainly help us feel better. It will also be refreshing to those who hear it as well. Encourage them to join you on this new tradition!

CHALLENGE OF THE HOLIDAYS

We are closing in on my favorite holiday – Thanksgiving. I love the idea of taking a day out of our busy year to focus on being grateful. Just like many holidays, the focus of the holiday has shifted from being grateful to cooking a large meal. This year, much like everything in life, things are different. Physical distancing and the fear of the virus has put limits on family gatherings. I always try looking at the positive side of everything and there is something positive to be had in this.

The one way to appreciate anything is to do without it for a period of time. If our significant other goes away on vacation we realize how much their presence means in our life. Even our job, which can often bring us a great deal of frustration, can be appreciated with a period of unemployment. This year, we have many things that have been taken away from us by this terrible pandemic. The plus side is that we can be reminded how much we have to be grateful for. There are so many things that we may have taken for granted that now we can feel how much we miss them. On a positive note, it has also forced us to find new and exciting ways to stay connected even when we have to be apart physically. Finding ways to put technology to work through zoom meeting and even video calls to stay in touch with friends and family. Using technology for the purpose of bringing us closer is yet another thing to be grateful for.

There are also old-fashioned things that we may have forgotten that can benefit us greatly in these chaotic times. Sending someone a greeting card in the mail to say nothing other than I love you, I miss you or I am grateful to have you in my life. Cooking a home cooked meal together and then sharing that meal with friends and family as you spend the evening watching a movie together. Maybe enjoying playing board games together and learning about each other while laughing and having a good time. Finally having time to catch up on those good books you have been meaning to read and never seem to have the time for.

Whether it is enjoying and benefiting from new technology that allows us to remain close even when we have to stay far away, or going back to the older technology that allows us to reconnect, these crazy times have given us a lot to be grateful for. I would love to hear some of the things you remain grateful for or even new things you have discovered you are grateful for here in 2020. I believe if we all share what we are grateful for we can help spread the feeling of gratitude in the world as we head into the new year. Please share what you are grateful for in the comments below. Is it a tradition you are still able to do during the pandemic? Is it the memories of holidays past and gathering together with family? Are you grateful for a special someone in your life that is making your world a better place? We all have something to be grateful for even in the craziest of times. Share yours with us and let us spread love and light the rest of the year.

30 DAYS OF GRATITUDE (DAY #11)

Welcome back to our celebration of 30 days of gratitude. Each day we will focus on one area of our life to be grateful for. If this is your first day doing this I invite you to go back and do the days before this. You can do them in your head, write them down and home, but it is my hope you decide to share what you are grateful for with our community here on Secret2anamazinglife.com. There are no rules. Do one day or do all 30. Let us now look at today’s area of gratitude.

It is ironic I suppose that this post comes out on Friday the 13th. Not exactly a holiday, but a day people either fear or celebrate. What holidays are your favorite? My quick answer would be Thanksgiving. There is no other holiday that involves no gift exchanges, no rituals or dogma set in stone. Just a simple gathering for a meal and to celebrate all that we are thankful for. This year Margie and I had a small and wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends.

Here is another interesting fact, I love to learn about and celebrate holidays outside of the beliefs I grew up with. An example would be the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah celebrates the creation of the world and includes 10 days of introspection and repentance. Who among us couldn’t use some of that? Yom Kippur, also know as the Day of Atonement, where individuals are encouraged to make amends and ask for forgiveness. Once again, who couldn’t use a day like that in our lives? The Muslim holiday known as the Festival of Breaking the Fast, is a celebration of the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting. It is celebrated with not only enjoying a good meal, but also giving zakat al-fitr or charity in the form of food. What a great tradition this is! There are certainly more to both of these holidays and I do not mean to not give them their full explanation here. Rather, my purpose is to introduce you to some amazing holidays you may not be familiar with.

What is your favorite holiday to celebrate? Why do you enjoy celebrating it? Are there some fun traditions or rituals that make it special for you? Let us all learn and maybe incorporate some of your ideas into our holiday celebrations. 

CLICK HERE TO GET NEIL’S BOOK FILLED WITH IDEAS TO MAKE YOUR LIFE AMAZING

A CELEBRATION OF MANY THINGS!


It still seems hard for me to imagine that 7 years ago I sat at my computer on Thanksgiving day to begin sharing my thoughts with the world. I never would have imagined it would lead me where I am today. This blog is followed in over 100 countries by thousands of people. I am beyond blessed, and beyond thankful to have both the privilege and the responsibility to be the one on the other side of the keyboard sharing with you.
Today in the United Stated we celebrate Thanksgiving. It is a holiday dedicated to focusing on all that we have to be grateful for. For that reason alone it is my favorite holiday. Add to that I now share my life with a woman who can cook better than you can even conceive and you can see why this time of year is so special to me. The truth is, if we knew how powerful gratitude is, this time of year would be special to all of us. Gratitude can change your life for the better quicker and more powerfully than anything I know. In my books I have lots of tips for both changing your attitude to one of gratitude and increasing the level of gratitude you have.
While you wait for your copy of my book to arrive, or perhaps someone is buying you one for a Christmas gift, we are going to engage in a fun 30 day event right here on this website! It is going to be fun. You can join in whenever you feel like it. All it will entail is focusing on one thing you are grateful for each day. By the end of 30 days we will have thought of 30 things that we are grateful for and enter the new year with a grateful and loving heart. This will set us up for a successful 2020!
Whether you answer 1 day, all 30 or somewhere in between, I encourage you to take part in this. Invite your friends to join along, or simply ask the question of the day to friends, family and coworkers. I cannot wait to read all of your insightful answers. You certainly don’t have to share them in the comments below, but why not let us all know the amazing things you are grateful for?
In closing, I would like to again say how grateful I am to all of you who read and follow this blog. I invite you to tell others about it as well. It humbles me and fills me with a great deal of thanksgiving to be able to share all of these thoughts with you. Thank everyone so much for that honor. Come back tomorrow and let us get this gratitude party started! I promise it will be fun!

CLICK HERE TO GET NEIL’S BOOK FULL OF IDEAS TO MAKE YOUR LIFE AMAZING!!

THANKSGIVING TO GRATITUDE TO GRATEFUL

Six years ago on this very day I began this blog. It was Thanksgiving of 2012. A lot has changed since then as you might imagine. My post that day in 2012 was about gratitude. In the six years since that post was written I have learned, and experienced, a lot more about gratitude. It’s power to transform how you feel and perceive life. That, in turn, ultimately transforms the quality of your life. I have included a special section on gratitude in my upcoming book Living the Dream.

Recently, I read an article that gave me a whole new outlook on gratitude. It including something even more powerful and life altering – being grateful. Today, as we all hopefully are spending at least part of our day focused on what we have to be thankful for, allow me to introduce you to what I learned in this article. It will allow you to take what we observe on this most wonderful of holidays and use it to create a life that is far more rich and rewarding.

Thanksgiving. It is more than just a holiday it is an observance. Many spiritual practices have rituals of thanksgiving. Taking time out to observe and make special mention of all that we have in our lives that is going well and that we can be thankful for. This can happen once a year such as we are doing today. It can happen during religious or spiritual ceremonies or on special moments when we get together with friends. It may change our way of thinking and feeling for that day, or even for a couple of days. Soon, the thought of what is missing in our lives creeps back in and we live in a state of lack until that time again next year. That is true unless…

We tap into the power of gratitude. Gratitude to me should be something that we practice daily. Several times a day as often as we can. Why? Because the more we practice gratitude the better our life becomes. The definition for gratitude is to be appreciative for all the good you have in your life. You have hot water? You have electricity in your home? You have a job to earn a living? You can express gratitude for all of those things. Trust me when I tell you there is always something in your life to have gratitude for. You may be so out of practice in looking for the good it may take you a while to find it, but it is there. When you start looking for good things in your life they start to become easier to find. This, in turn, causes an increase in good feelings. What does an increase in frequency and intensity in good feelings get you? A more enjoyable life. That is where a lot of people stop, and that certainly is a great state to be in, but there is something better.

Grateful. How is being grateful different from expressing gratitude? Being grateful does not depend on good things happening to you. Remember our examples above? Let us take a another look at them? What happens if your hot water goes out? Being grateful means you understand what a blessing it is to have hot water as a normal circumstance and being without is a great reminder. Being grateful means you are still thankful that the water is clean and you have means in which you can heat it. Electricity go out? Being grateful means being thankful not only that it is usually available, but there are hard-working people on the job 24/7 to help get it back on track. Your job not what you like? Perhaps you even lost your job? Grateful is a chance to improve your budgeting skills and yourself while you pursue something that will bring you spiritual as well as monetary fulfillment.

If that last state sounds a bit like looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, it kind of is. Do yourself a favor and imagine what your life would be like if you were able to find joy and the good in life no matter what the outside circumstances were? You would be in a state of bliss most of the time! What would that give you? One hell of a great life. Trust me when I tell you I know this isn’t easy. I am working to develop a feeling of being grateful in my life. What a goal to pursue. Everyday I become closer to being able to appreciate the joy in life even in the toughest circumstances. That does not mean there are not days in which I falter. We will all have them. The sooner you get them out of the way, and the more you learn from them, the closer you will be to living a life feeling grateful.

As you observe this wonderful day of thanksgiving, begin to ponder how you can foster that feeling more often. I suggest starting with having gratitude for all the good that comes in your life. Taking a moment and appreciating those things. Then strive to feel grateful even in the face of challenges. Celebrate the fact you are alive every day to experience all the world has to offer. There is even beauty in pain. When we arrive at the state in which we can experience that, life becomes a state of magic.

THE HIGHEST FORM OF APPRECIATION

Are you one who ‘talks the talk’ or do you ‘walk the walk’? As we approach my favorite holiday and begin to focus on what we are grateful for, let us think of this quote. Let us show our appreciation not just in words (although I encourage everyone to do that as well) but in actions. Let us not just speak our gratitude, but show our appreciation through our actions too.

Grateful for first responders? Make sure we are pulling over to let them pass and driving slow when we drive past them. Grateful for someone in your life? After you tell them, make sure to do something to show them as well. This is not just for Thanksgiving, but all year.

TRADITIONS

The Holiday season is almost upon us. At local stores decorations are starting to go up, I even heard a Christmas song on the radio the other day. With the holidays coming up we can find our minds turning toward traditions. There are many different kinds of traditions. There are traditions based on our different faiths. This can encompass many different things from fasting, praying, style of dress and many more. These traditions are very important for cultural reasons. The connect us as a faith-based community and refresh our spiritual nature. There are also different family traditions. These can include shopping for holiday gifts together, creating a holiday meal together or just gathering at a certain family members house for great times. The traditions here can be as unique as the family itself.

The tradition I would like to discuss today is more individual. It can be between spouses, brother and sister, friends or even an individual tradition. The picture I used for this blog post is one of Margie and me at one of our favorite breakfast places. We have been going there since shortly after we met. Sadly, this day we missed another tradition of ours which was an event called ‘Cider Sunday’ in which a local nature preserve celebrates all things apple. We also have other traditions that we have began. Most of them both add love to our life, as well as keeping that love fresh and fun. Do you have something like this with the love of your life? Maybe a special place you go on a birthday? Maybe an event you look forward to attending every year? Do you celebrate the first day of spring by having a picnic in the park for example?

If you do not have a romantic tradition, or would like to include more, why not get together with your love today and discuss that? This also works with brother and sisters, friends, coworkers and anyone else you would like to include. My suggestion is this, create traditions that help that relationship grow. Maybe something that fosters a feeling of gratitude and appreciation in the relationship, or perhaps a way to grow and learn together? In the case of romantic partners, use Margie and me as an example. Create traditions that feed love and keep it fresh and growing.

Personal traditions may be something that is not as familiar with a lot of you, but I think they can have a great impact on our lives. Perhaps start a tradition of keeping a gratitude journal every night or at the very least once a week. A daily or weekly meditation practice could serve you as well. They can be traditions that add joy to your life. I do things to celebrate the first day of spring and summer each year. I also attend a bicycle expo every year as it helps me look forward to spring and being able to get out and ride.

Feel free to share any traditions you have with us in the comments below. Whether they are Faith, family, romantic or personal. This way we can all inspire each other with great ideas!