This is POSITIVELY the follow up to the last post!

Little Johnie came home from school. He said “Dad, I think I’m failing math.” Dad said “Don’t think that way son, be positive!” Johnie thought a second, and replied “Ok..I’m POSITIVE I’m failing math!”

As I touched on in the last post, how we see ourselves, others, life, has EVERYTHING to do WITH life, with the QUALITY of life we enjoy, or not, and even how LIFE responds to US.  The understatement of ALL TIME, and something I will touch on but not dive too deeply into in these blogs…is THOUGHTS are THINGS..or more correctly thoughts CREATE things..and life in general. Your life. Don’t get ahead of me here, just remember that and keep reading.

Being positive, having optimistic thoughts, an optimistic outlook to life and the things that life throws at you, is a skill that can easily be turned into simply a way of life with a little effort.

Having a positive attitude  won”t necessarily let you do and be everything and anything you want, but it WILL let you do anything and everything that you ARE doing MUCH BETTER and MORE EFFECTIVELY than having a negative attitude will.

“The more positive you are when you think and work toward your goals, the faster you achieve them.” - Brian Tracy

There will be future blogs on goals, and some statistics to help show your mind just how ABSOLUTELY vital they are to lasting success. The point still remains the same; You will have in your life and live the kind of life, to a LARGE degree, based on your thoughts…your BELIEFS…POSITIVE or NEGATIVE, either way.

Want more poverty, illnesses, depression, anger, “tough breaks” in your life? Keep negative thoughts in your head and soul.

Want more prosperity, health, passion, love, “lucky breaks” in your life? Keep positive thoughts in you mind, heart, and soul.

That may seem simplistic, and maybe that is one of the many reasons so many people don’t get it, it seems too simple and easy to do anything THAT powerful and really impact our lives so much.

By using what may be your greatest gift…free will, the freedom of choice, you have the ability, the power, to CHOOSE another powerful and highly impactful thing in your life ..your attitude. You can CHOOSE your ATTITUDE, and your LIFE will reflect that back.

What happens TO you PALES in significance to how you CHOOSE to RESPOND to what happens.

For example, let’s say a you’re driving down the street when suddenly some idiot cuts you off and nearly causes a pile up before speeding off on their merry way. You are FUMING! You may even call them a few names that don’t appear anywhere on a birth certificate, describe them using words that could make your granny’s head explode, and invite them to perform solo sex acts  that are illegal in all 50 states and most of the civilized world.  You get to school / work and with outrage oozing from you pores, continuing to RELIVE the moment as you tell anyone and everyone that will listen about the absolute MORON that nearly got you killed on your way in! Even an hour later you’re still hot under the collar, still cursing the day his mom met his dad.

You have now devoted a part of your day, your life,  thinking about someone that hasn’t given you a second thought.

Do you LIKE this person that much? Feel like you OWE them anything? Since the obvious answer isn’t just “no”, but a resounding  “Hell no!”..then why, on God’s green earth, would we allow someone we don’t know, don’t like,  and will most likely never even meet, rob us of the one commodity we can’t get back, time, and ruin OUR attitude? They interacted with you for a moment..why give them even an hour of your life, or day?

Positive attitudes about life are a great shield against random acts of stupidity.

It was a jerk behind a wheel..so? IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER! What MATTERS is how you CHOOSE to let it affect YOU..YOUR ATTITUDE..the rest of YOUR day. When we take on the challenge of choosing to be positive, we can understand that people are people, life is life, and in THIS case…there was NO accident. Be THANKFUL it was a “near miss” and not a “meet by accident”.  Whether you stay mad all day or blow it off and DECIDE to stay happy, either choice determines YOUR day, NOT theirs.

Last example.

Like any good cook, I keep my knives sharp as a razor at all times. SO sharp in fact, that when a nine inch Chef knife fell from a counter, (don’t ask) it had NO problem slicing my leg open at the calf. Hurt? For a minute or two ..it was deep enough that my leg did that “numb” thing…Mad? YEP! ..for about 5 or 6 of those adjectives we’ve already discussed. Then…just pressure and a ride to the ER,  along with cracking up and cutting up (pun intended)  all the way. Why? Because staying mad or being negative in any way WON’T heal my leg or stop the bleeding any better, and at least being positive and laughing makes ME  feel better! (Actually, helps heal too..but that’s another story.)

Point is..DON’T Worry, BE HAPPY! (Look Janell..we had the same thought!)

You have a CHOICE. YOU get to CHOOSE how you react and respond to life, and how you react and respond to life INFLUENCES how life treats you back. This video below addresses some great points..ESPECIALLY right around the 6 minute mark.(It’s only 7 and a half minutes long..watch and grow.)

Thoughts ARE things..and they are things we have more control over than we give ourselves credit for, or even a chance. Even some things we call “emotions” are actually a combination of our conscious thoughts combined with our subconscious ones.

“Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others.”     — Dr. David Hawkins

Bottom line: Practice POSITIVE. Do it long enough, strongly enough, and it just becomes part of you. And you part of it.

Honesty! Integrity! and Fears! Oh My!

It’s March, and this month’s “theme” is Honesty and Integrity. What do those words even mean? Dictionary.com defines them as:

hon·es·ty

   [on-uh-stee]  

noun, plural -ties.

1. the quality or fact of being honest;  uprightness andfairness.

2. truthfulness, sincerity, or frankness.

3. freedom from deceit or fraud.

in·teg·ri·ty

   [in-teg-ri-tee]  

noun

1.  adherence to moral and ethical principles;  soundness of moral character; honesty.

It is, of course, easy to see why those two are linked together: If you have integrity, honesty is a state of being. If you have..and adhere or stick to… morals and ethics, you will deal with life, and more importantly, yourself, in an honest and sincere way.

Simple.

Right…….

At least you would THINK it should be simple. Yet look around. How many people do you meet, deal with, encounter in the task of day to day living, do you feel have a backbone built on integrity and are so honest you would trust them with your wallet, your life? Do you trust most people?

Do people see YOU as “righteous” ..someone so honest and trustworthy they feel better just by you being near?

 Do they trust you?

An “honest” examination of most people’s perception is that in general, honesty and integrity driven people make up the MINORITY of those that breathe, not the MAJORITY.

If honesty and integrity are free from deceit, free from fraud, are equally fair, and were common traits, why do those words typically flee from our mind at the the very mention of the word “politician”?

Let’s get back to the point of this blog; you.

It is not “fair”..therefor outside the area of the theme of this blog, to expect honesty and integrity in others if you can’t first look in the mirror and see them in the eyes staring back at you. It starts with YOU. Period.

Being honest, sincere, integrity oozing from your pores like sweat on a summer’s day, does NOT require surgery, physical exertion,  or tactile pain.

It GIVES freedom, peace of mind, a pride to our stride.

Remember when we were just learning “right from wrong” as children? When we did something we knew was right, we were not only proud, we couldn’t wait for our families to be “proud” of us too! But when we did something we knew was wrong…we didn’t march around head held high, we kinda slunk around, not only feeling a bit down, but scared, mortified, of the consequences if anyone found out. It’s the same way today, just not as externally extreme. We honestly feel better when we have “nothing to hide”..so to speak..and know we have not hurt or hindered anyone with lies or cons.

So why aren’t we ALL honest and ethically moral people?

There are many reasons, including our upbringing, ( but if you are old enough to read this, you are old enough to make your own rules of conduct) and our environment, but it all boils down to one word, imho. (In My Humble Opinion) That word is FEAR.

Being honest, full of integrity, is PHYSICALLY painless, but MENTALLY and EMOTIONALLY it can be a marathon ran through molten glass. We try to avoid pain, so we say or do things that tend to be the “safest”, or easiest. And now, when we TRY to change that behavior, there is the pain of change. Our subconscious mind fears anything it considers unknown, foreign, new. ..it means change, change is pain AND fearful, so it fights us tooth and nail. Just like ANY habit we try to quit. Smoking, eating too much, drinking..whatever. If it’s is something our subconscious mind has gotten used to, it can be hell to change it.

Until we actually make the CHANGE the NEW HABIT..then it is ok again and back fighting WITH us instead of AGAINST us. But I digress…

As humans, we want to “fit in”..to “belong”..to be accepted by others. We want that so badly at times that the pursuit of  trying to get OTHERS to like us for who we think we are, many have lost sight of trying to figure out the only person that REALLY matters…the one in the mirror. We stop examining, learning, tweaking, and discovering the REAL person inside our own skin. We play our roles, be what we want others to perceive, instead of just simply, and honestly,”being”.

There is a French saying; “It is important to our friends that we are always completely, totally, honest with them. It’s important to our friendship that we are not.”

As a guy, we men know, for example, that how we answer the question “Does this make me look fat?” will have different outcomes based on our response. Society has ALWAYS been fraught with “little white lies” that snowball into acceptance of bigger and bigger ones. And it becomes part of who WE are as a person.

Can you be honest with yourself? Do you know how? Yes, I know many of you reading this know the answer and feel, in general, that you are an honest and trustworthy person. But that is an on going journey of discovery and self construction, not a destination. And there are some of you reading this that, from a moral and ethical stand point, make Dracula look like a vegan.

The COOLEST thing, however, is that every single one of us have the greatest gift on the planet:

Freedom of choice.

We are FREE to choose HOW we think, WHAT we think, our attitude towards life, others, ourselves.

We are free to be posers, and we are just as free to be US. But the unfortunate truth is, more often than not, that freedom has been given to the world..to life in general.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that the first rule of success is self trust. Do you trust people you don’t think are honest? How can YOU trust YOU if you think YOU are dishonest? No REAL honesty, no success. Good thing for you the path is  lit up. To get there, stay tuned…and read the next blog…..

The Gold Rush and WDD

If you have studied American History, or seen the movies, you’ve heard about the California gold rush in the mid 1800′s. People traveled from all over the country, even the world, to cash in on the “mountains” of gold that were simply waiting for the adventurous entrepreneur. If you studied it well, you learned something beneath the surface of the obvious objectives of the “seekers of fame and fortune” and discovered that, as a group, it wasn’t the miners who struck it rich; it was the people selling the tools and services TO the miners that made their fortunes.

I am reminded of that as I put on my student trappings and delve into the world of Web Design and Development. In today’s economy, people are embracing, in larger and larger numbers, “non-traditional” means to make ends meet and secure their financial freedom. A lot of that activity is occurring in the Network Marketing / Multi-Level Marketing arena, with HEAVY emphasis on using social media and the internet to build your organization. That led to “Maximizing your image”, your brand, your “web presence” that then spun off additional opportunities to provide THOSE products and services. At the core of all of that, of internet exposure and audience capturing, is…WDD. The ones sitting next to me, and around the globe, that are learning how this works and how to create it from scratch, are the “General Stores” and pick ax  suppliers of the 21st century, imho. They stand..well sit..poised on the edge of a financial future that may even surpass their own expectations, and that of their eager miners.

What a journey, and a journal.

It amazes me, though I don’t really know WHY it does, that life unfolds in unexpected ways that yield equally unexpected jewels of wisdom and growth. As I continue this journey down the road of learning web design, wondering at times how I even got here, to this particular course of study at this point in my life ( I am well beyond the “average age” of a college student), serendipity makes itself known in a variety of extraordinary ways. The things I am learning, the paths that branch out, are providing so many tools and contacts that I sit here in almost a state of awe. Like so much of life, one thing leads to another,  then it goes in another direction leading to that, then that takes you to a “who or a what” that is someone or something that helps you, and it often helps you in a way you needed, but a need that wasn’t the same one that drove you to your quest in the first place. The internet only helps that process of course, with a plethora of links that can keep you on, or get you off, track with incredible ease.

It was on one such short trip that I came across this video, actually in the Daily Press here in WordPress, and it was a video of a man I have long admired for his talents. It was the last 2 minutes or so of the clip that made me go “Wow. Exactly right.” It’s only 10 minutes in its entirety, and I include it here: 

Life IS creation and creativity, and it shows you every single day it wants you to come along and play. Even if you don’t know why or where its headed. It does.

And so it begins….

This blog starts as an assignment for my Web Design Class, and where it goes, what it evolves into, will be an adventure in words and time that I truly look forward to.  The web, in it’s many forms both static and mobile, continues to change and advance the way we interact with each other, our schools, our companies, life itself..in great and marvelous ways.  We are all students of life, and technology puts that learning curve on steroids. It will be interesting to see, as I study what makes web design tick, how much of what I learn today will be “old news” tomorrow…but not afraid, just excited! This blog serves a couple of purposes, one as an assignment and assignment postings, and the other is simply me….learning, living, and grabbing life by the horns.

What a ride. Carpe Diem.