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"The idea of paradise is just on the horizon, always, while life is here, under my feet, now. Might as well enjoy it, learn to appreciate the good waves, the paddling, the ferocious storms, and the mundane moments – the quiet lulls between swells…the infinite universe stands always before your eyes."
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What I’ve Learned from Life…Thus Far
I was commenting on a Joe’s post on How Do You Trigger Positives? sharing what I had discovered thus far for living a positive life, when I thought, “hey, that be a cool project to work on – listing out all my life mantras and lessons.” And so I began leafing through my favorite books and thinking about some of my more memorable experiences. Through all my travel, networking, reading, and interacting with extraordinary people, these are the life lessons I have picked up…thus far. Please feel free to add on to what you’ve learned along your life’s journey!
Happiness is a decision.
The only limits that exist are the ones we create.
The most important moment in life is this one.
Everyone else’s opinion is still just your self created thoughts.
Nothing is catastrophic.
Love your fate.
The idea of paradise is just on the horizon, always, while life is here, under my feet, now.
Fear means your getting somewhere.
Worrying means your not.
There’s an important difference between your best and the best.
Failure is the pathway to success.
Nothing worth having comes easy.
Enjoy the little things because one day you’ll look back and realize they were big things.
It always seems impossible until it’s done.
There will always be a reason not to do something.
Not much can be learned from a perfectly smooth road.
It’s all relative. Against the backdrop of sickness and poverty, life can take on a completely new meaning.
The title you have does not dictate the impact you make.
Regret stings 100x more when you don’t do it.
Any human perception of reality can be no more than a tiny sliver of infinite reality.
If we don’t let go, we make prisoners of ourselves.
Appreciate emotional reactions and then let them fly away.
We don’t always see that we’re growing and changing, but we have to keep on trucking along, and one day we make wiser decisions.
Life is in the journey not the destination.
Sometimes you’ve got to get a little lost to figure out where your going.
Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing.
Everything is a life lesson. If you don’t get a job that you wanted or a relationship doesn’t work, it only means something better is out there waiting. And the lesson you just learned is the first step towards it.
In modern America, most people live with almost as many luxuries as a prince had 2,500 years ago. True contentment does not come from external circumstances.
Author the stories of your life.
Do so much with so little. We don’t need stuff to be fulfill us; we just need memorable moments and loving relationships.
Making one person smile can change the world. Maybe not the whole world, but their world. So start small and start now.
j.k.livin, the ‘j’ is for just the ‘k’ is for keep.
How to Identify Worthwhile Actions
How do you know which actions are worthwhile and which are not? Anyone who has an appetite for the taste of success thrives to take meaningful steps towards it, but what do those steps look like?
The most pivotal and overlooked component for success is its starting point. Teddy Gross, founder of Penny Harvest, has helped raise over $7 million by collecting the tiniest denomination of currency in the US fiscal system.
But where did Teddy begin? It started with one single penny. Something so common and tiny, most of us don’t even bother to pick one up as we pass it in the street. And yet the collection of pennies has culminated into something truly extraordinary as millions of dollars have been raised for people in need.
None of this would have not been possible without that starting point, without that initial penny. And so one component to what makes actions so valuable is to not underestimate the value of our actions. What at first may seem as trivial and inessential could very well be the building blocks to an extraordinary breakthrough.
When we look at our actions, the only part of it that is truly factual is the action itself. You take a job, you sell your house, you travel to a different country, you make a sales pitch. Those are all facts. What comes after the action are our interpretations and perspectives.
The reasons you take a job could run the gamut. Money, benefits, boredom, satisfaction, travel, fulfillment. As well as whether or not you actually like this new occupation. Variables such as co-workers, location, workload, tasks, interaction, and administration all have their respective roles to play.
The reality of how good or bad our job is – is formed by the perception we create. And so all our interpretations of our actions feed into whether or not something is worthwhile.
But after actions occur what do you think we tend to focus on? Look at the front page of todays newspaper, turn on the news, or simply listen in on a conversation at work. The general scope of perspective is pointed in a negative view.
Out of the 30 most common emotion words in the English language only 6 of them were positive. This focus on the adverse has put on blinders to countless positive possibilities.
When trying to identify choices and actions that have the most value, focus in on the bright spots of those actions. In the beginning stages of Penny Harvest when a few hundred dollars of pennies had been raised, Teddy Gross could have thought, “this is barely anything, this certainly won’t make a difference.”
But instead, he looked at the same few hundred dollars and saw peoples desire to help and built off these bright spots.
Identifying the worthwhile actions isn’t about a full proof plan designed to give you the right choices. It is about finding value in the reality we create.
Shakespeare said, “There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Realize that behind every decision we make and every action we take there are positive potentials and bright spots to be found. These actions may not seem valuable alone, but together, can create an outcome that is truly worthwhile.
Have you ever done something that you thought really wouldn’t make much of a difference? What are the worthwhile actions in your life? Is there such a thing as a worthless action?
A Distorted Self-Perception aka The Bad Hair Day
We tend to have very critical self-perceptions. The way we view ourself is important. We are the authority of our beliefs and if we do not see ourselves in a confident light then how can we expect others to.
A person with positive performance self-esteem is an individual who is confident and optimistic that he or she is on top of things, understands what needs to be done and feels capable about being able to pull it off. But, a poor self perception actually reduces a sense of performance self-esteem.
The most common example are those all too common bad hair days. As a guy, I’ve had more of these than I care to admit.
Truth is, when we go out with the perception that we do not look good, it alters the way we interact with the world. This is known as the spotlight effect, where we think the social spotlight is pointed directly in our eyes.
Psychologist Thomas Gilovich, sent a group of students into a room wearing Barry Manilow t-shirts. While the students thought that everyone was laughing at them, only 23 percent of the other students even noticed the t-shirts.
We have this overly critical and protective view of how the world sees us, when in actuality these insignificant build ups in our heads go unnoticed.
An intrigued psychology professor, at the beginning of each class, had students rank a person’s hair sitting across from them and then their own. Students scores of other peoples hair were constant having relatively little variation, while scores of themselves varied drastically. Basically, when we think we are having a bad hair day, we are extremely sensitive about it, but no one else even notices.
It doesn’t matter if a strand of hair is sticking a little higher than the rest or if you are wearing a t-shirt with your parents favorite singer-songwriter on it.
Every single day you wake up and interact with the world you are just as ravishing as the last. Having the courage to see yourself this way, will increase your self-esteem, confidence, and performance.
Next time your loading up the sweet-smelling Loreal Moisture Maintenance in an effort to subdue that rowdy hair, take a moment to honor the brave Barry Manilow saluting students.
The only real thing people will notice is your action to the reaction of your perceived self appearance. If you overcome that, you will be allowing your true, confident, inner self to shine.
Waves Need Water
It is the tiniest parts of life that can make the the biggest differences. A chess player won’t overlook the necessity of its pawns and a sprinter knows the importance of a tenth of a second.
A moment is valuable. Some more then others, but if we start to chuck them out the window like worthless pennies, we will most definitely neglect some of the most worthwhile ones.
Life comes at us in waves. Literally, giant, oceanic, swirling waves. Heaps of water crashing down, each with different breaking points.
In the midst of all this chaos of crashing, it becomes increasingly difficult to hone in on a single molecule of water. Each is part of a chain of events created by ripples and wind speed. In the midst of a wave, it is tough to appreciate a single drop of water. But it is the change in air pressure flickering across the individual molecules of water that gives birth to this massive swell – this unstoppable movement of change.
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