I am sure it has been said in many ways, call it the golden rule or whatever you may but if you are as nice to others as you can stand, you will find that the days seem easier and people are a little more friendly.
Having said to be as nice as you can to others, it seems that no matter how hard you try to be nice to others, that there are some people who you just cannot appease. These people seem to work hard at trying to be difficult or just downright mean to others. Identify them and try to steer around them whenever possible. If they want to have a bad day, fine, but you don’t have to let them ruin your day as well. Mom would be disappointed in me for not calling them a bad egg or a stinker but let’s face it, that’s not the case…….they’re just assholes.
If you walk out the door in the morning thinking it is going to be a bad day, you can rest assured that it will be. You will find a way to turn it into a bad day. On the other hand, if you walk out in the morning thinking it will be a good day, something in the course of the day will stand out if even a small thing that will help make it a good day.
A great majority of the things we worry about never happen even though we can spend a good deal of time fretting over them. My grandma McConachie used to say that “worry is the interest paid for borrowed trouble” and I am not going to argue with her!
You can look for happiness your whole life and never find it. You must first find it within yourself before you can find it with anyone else or anywhere else. Until you become at peace with yourself and like the person who looks back at you in the mirror, you will struggle finding happiness anywhere else.
Only you can make sure that you have fun, and I can only tell you it is much more enjoyable to have fun than it is if you are not.
We all do things on a regular basis that may not seem funny or may be embarrassing at the time but if you think that you will be able to look back and laugh about it later, you might as well laugh about it now. Try not to take yourself too seriously. Laughter is great medicine and should be practiced often.
I am not talking about just laughing, I am talking about a good old-fashioned belly laugh that makes you hurt and makes your eyes tear up! It is good for the soul and doesn’t make much difference what you are laughing at as long as it brings you great joy.
In the course of living we will have episodes that may seem like they are pretty tough right now but after a short time they are funny. Just remember that the bad times don’t last but the story about the episode will last forever, strangely though that it seems like the longer away from the episode it gets, the funnier it becomes.
Say it to either a family member, your spouse, significant other, or a friend. Say it every day and mean it when you say it.
We all have been given gifts of some type, never take them for granted. You could be gifted as an artist, a musician, you may be able to talk to people, you may have a great mind, or maybe you just have a great smile. Although it may not seem like a big deal to you, ask someone like me who can hardly draw a stick man or someone who is shy what they would give to be able to do those things. There is no shortage of successful people who have hardly more than a great smile and some other gift that makes them who they are or at least gets them to a place where they can do what they do. Gifts come in many forms, realize the gifts you have been given and be thankful for each and every one of them.
Share the gifts that you have been given with others. This usually only consists of giving up some of your time and sharing one or more of the gifts you have been given. It’s normally free other than that but you will be surprised at the joy you can give others as well as yourself.
We are blessed to live in the United States of America where even the poorest of the poor have much more than people in other countries. We all take this for granted at times until we are in a position to see how others have. Be thankful for any place with a roof over it, anything in your belly, and the opportunity to change your life if that is what you want. We live in the greatest country in the world where you always have a choice. Never take this for granted and never forget it.
You live in the greatest country on earth where your opinion at the polls actually can make a difference. If you don’t exercise this right that those before us made sure that we had, then you give up all rights to discussions about the country, the government, and politics. You do not deserve to be able to engage in these discussions because you have forfeited you right by not voting.
Very few people do multiple things extremely well. Find what it is you are good at and concentrate on doing it the best you possibly can. This holds more truth in business than in your personal life. Too many times I have seen a company do something well and venture into a new area of business where they have not traditionally traded. More often than not, soon you are using resources from what you do well to subsidize your new venture and it isn’t long before you aren’t doing anything well. So decide what it is you do and be the very best at it.
Be Careful! It is hard to imagine how little things you say or do will touch a life in one way or another. Young people are especially impressionable and saying and doing the right things around them is very important. It is hard to imagine that a harsh word or a good or bad act could affect some one else’s life but it happens every day. This is why it is important to do the right thing every time every day. You never know who may be watching or listening and be affected in some way either good or bad by you.
This is not only the right thing to do but will really uncomplicate your life and your memory won’t have to be near as good as someone telling untruths. This is a core value in a person and you will either be trusted or not dependent upon your history. Once you lose your trust by someone, it takes a very long time to get it close to what it once was and will probably never regain total trust by them. It is a lot easier just to keep it.
You only have one opportunity to make a good first impression, if you show up late, you already have two strikes against you. If you can’t live up to your commitment at an agreed upon time, people will wonder what other commitments will you not live up to. It is better to arrive somewhere an hour early and wait as to be two minutes late.
It is OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. I believe that I have earned two doctorates and maybe a couple of master’s degrees from the mistakes I have learned from. I have learned by living and those are lessons that I will never forget or take lightly. I would be lying if I said that some of the most important lessons along the way were not the most fun!
If you can learn from someone else’s mistakes, you learn the lesson without the risk. We’ll call this a free bonus lesson.
Not that there is not the occasional person that is just plain lucky but for the most part, we all make our own luck. We do this by putting ourselves in the position to capitalize on an opportunity when it comes our way. If we haven’t done the work to put ourselves in this position, then we will have to sit around and watch the “lucky” people capitalize on our missed opportunities.
This is how we put ourselves in a position to be “lucky”. Just about anything is within our grasps as long as we are willing to work at it. If you expect to sit around and watch others work hard at whatever they do and expect to reap the benefits of it, you will disappointed in the outcome. The only exception to this is our welfare system, where you can sit and let others earn your keep. If you can look at yourself and think that it is OK to let someone else pay your way, and still feel good about yourself, then you are a sorry excuse of a human being. The little red hen was right.
Any person of average intelligence can be taught anything with the exception of three things. These three things are common sense, mechanical aptitude, and ambition. I believe that these three things you have or you don’t have and if you don’t have them now, you never will have them….everything else can be learned if you put enough effort into it.
I am not exactly sure why I included this but I just felt compelled to add it. Somehow hitting the buffet or ordering a sandwich at a ta-ta bar just seems unsettling to me. I am not a big fan of them anyways and thinking about ordering food at one just seems to be over the top.
The first thing you do is find one that catches your eye. After you find one you like, you take her for a little test drive. After you make up your mind that you are going to keep her, you make the commitment that you are going to take her home. Then you get that first dent….the first one always seems to be the worst but never really is. After the first several years, it takes a little more maintenance to make sure everything is running smooth. After the first 7-8 years, she seems to finally come into her own and you finally know all of the little things that you need to do to ensure a smooth ride and she is a “driver”. After 20 years and things are still going OK you now have what is know as a “classic” and are the envy of your friends and others that you know. Rest assured that getting her to this point is a lot of work but, there really is noting like a “classic”.
This is not always true in matters of the heart as there is no fool like a fool in love but for most decisions, if you follow your heart, you will end up in a good place. I always told my girls that if your heart says it’s so, it’s so. I believe this to be true in most cases. Your head will try to talk you into some things that your heart knows is wrong and can sometimes make a darn compelling argument. Follow your heart and you will be OK.
Lord knows this is as hard for me as anybody but sometimes you just need to shut up and listen. I know you can’t hear a darn thing when your lips are moving. Sometimes others just need someone that they can talk to and don’t really need to know how you would handle things. People will usually tell you exactly what they need or want but you have to be listening in order to hear them.
These little pieces of plastic are the devil’s own doing and can get you in a heap of trouble in a hurry. If you can’t afford something, save your money until you can afford it. These are to be used only in case of emergency.
If there is a problem in the past, that is a darn good place to leave it. Bringing back sore subjects serves no useful purpose and in the long run does no good to anyone. There is no good reason for drudging up past difficulties.
Our principles are the core values that define us as who we are. When you compromise these, you compromise yourself and the things that you believe in. You can not compromise your principles without changing who you are as a person. Never settle for less than what you think is right or what you believe to be true. If you settle for something less and then are disappointed, you have only yourself to thank.
We all make mistakes. I believe it is only fair to give someone the chance to correct it on their own. If they don’t fix it or are not in a position to fix it then I will exercise any means possible to have it corrected. I always appreciate someone letting me fix my mistakes first and will to grant that same right to others.
Most problems come with some sort of drama or other underlying circumstances. In order to reasonably resolve the problem, it is easier if you remove all of these things and look at the root cause of the problem. It will usually come down to several rather easy questions…is this something that can be fixed? Can I fix it? If I can’t, can someone else fix it? What will it take to make this problem go away? If you can boil it down and remove all of the BS, it will make your process much easier.
People only want two things us: they want us to solve their problems and they want to feel like they are important to us.
This is more for the business side but when you make a follow-up phone call to someone even though you may know the answer or that everything is OK, the added touch just taking 30 seconds to follow up means a lot to people. Even if you make 10 of these calls a day, you are only talking about 5 minutes of your time. I assure you that if you do this, the person on the other end of the phone will be more than impressed and will feel like they are important to you. Sometimes you may find that everything was not OK and since you took the time to call them, they will give you an opportunity to correct whatever may be wrong. You may salvage an otherwise lost customer just because you took the 30 seconds to call.
This is a lot easier to say than it is to do. In order to be objective, first you must be able to actually see or hear both sides. This means that you have to be able to leave your side and actually get on the other side or in the other person’s shoes and effectively see the other side of the situation. If you are able to do this, you will be able to make a more educated and fair decision base on all of the facts, not just the facts as you see them. In our stubbornness, it is easy to shut out the other side and cloud our judgment. This takes some practice but when you can do this, it will help you on your way.
This doesn’t have to be anything big but if we learn something new every day, it means that we are still growing as a person and constantly broadening our knowledge. I hate to go home at night until I do this. It is good for your head as well as your soul.
We all can’t know how to do everything; it is OK to ask for help when you reach a point where you can no longer continue by yourself. Try to do as much as you possibly can on your own but know when you reach the point where you need to invite someone to assist you. In asking someone that knows how to help you, learn how to do it on your own if possible and you may be able to assist someone else in the future.
I try to ask myself two questions……does this affect me? Does this affect someone I care about? If the answer to these two questions is no, stay out of it as it does not concern you. Is your life really that easy that you need to meddle in other peoples affairs? You don’t want others in your business and one of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to stay out of theirs.
