Daily Gratitude: “Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”

Although this seems simple, it’s not easy. But it’s so, so valuable.

This is one reason I recommend having a success/accomplishment journal (or cookie jar). What you really want is to plant those successes and accomplishments in your brain and soul. One way to do that is to press them into a piece of paper (your journal). There’s a kinetic and cognitive energy that comes from writing things down.

You have to impress joyful things into your being. And we all have them even if we deny that on the superficial level. Joy is a relative term. I had a pretty dysfunctional childhood and spent most of my days afraid. But you know what brought me joy and allowed me to escape into another world? Listening to the radio for 2 hours while the Yankees played. I totally immersed myself in that. I kept score, I drew pictures of my favorite players. Anything. For those two hours I had found a place of joy.

Even now when I don’t feel well my joy is that I don’t have that horrific post-Shingles pain that made me want to kill myself (if you ever wonder “how” someone in chronic pain could contemplate suicide, let me know and I’ll guide you through it). Sometimes I have to remind myself that it could be worse and those are the times I remember to go back to when it finally went away. That’s funny too. I was extremely sick at that time but it didn’t seem that bad because that nerve pain had gone.

There are places of joy. You just need to do the work to search for them.

Whether it’s physical or emotional pain, the joy you find will ease a bit once you start to put your focus on the joyful things.

Daily Gratitude: “We can never know the impact any small deed will have until we finish carrying it out.”

There’s a story about a young man whose village was struck by a drought. As a result he couldn’t afford to go to school to study science. He found a book in the library that taught him about windmills.

He spent much time at the local scrapyard. Using scrap metal, tractor parts and bicycle halves, William forged a crude yet operable windmill generator, an unlikely contraption that eventually powered small lights at his home and charged a neighbor’s cell phone. A second machine powered a water pump that could battle the drought and famine which loomed with every season.

There’s many lessons in this story but I particularly like that he used so many things that had been discarded. They became useful in another’s hands.

He didn’t give up. He built a small wind generator, just a small thing – at first. Then it became a solution to the village’s problem as well as his own.

He was determined. He did something small. Little did he know that eventually it would help his entire group of people AND prompt a company to pay his education.

Never stop doing something you believe in just because others may laugh or not see any potential in it. Keep on going. Look around and see what you can use!!!

Daily Gratitude: I’m sure I’ve written about this before but reminders on this topic are always useful….especially at this time in the world.

Understanding and comprehending this concept is probably one of the first steps toward success in your life.

It’s not just to prevent saying things you’ll wish you hadn’t, but it can prevent you from making impulsive decisions.

“Not me” I can hear you saying. “I don’t make impulsive decisions.”

OK. Making an impulsive decision isn’t just seeing how nice something looks and buying it. It really revolves around whether or not you looked at the consequences. To me that means thinking it through. I’ve made a lot of impulsive decisions in my life because i didn’t think of the long term consequences. The best example is when I’d been in the navy 16 years (only 4 to go to full retirement). I got orders to go to Okinawa. Not so bad I’ll bet you’re thinking. Yes but….(famous words). I would have had to have my two Siberian huskies in quarantine for 6 months – 6 months I couldn’t have them with me. So what did I do? I put in my resignation papers. I was just going to lose all that I’d worked for because of my dogs and 6 months. If that’s not impulsive I don’t know what is. Fortunately things worked out so I neither had to resign nor go to Okinawa. But you get the point.

Our emotions can govern us and when they do, we’re usually sorry.

There needs to be time between the stimulus (my getting the orders) and the response (to go or not to go). In my case there was a space, a pause. I didn’t make that decision lightly. I just didn’t really evaluate all the consequences BECAUSE I was being ruled by my emotions.

Practice the pause.

Next time you’re in traffic and some one cuts in front of you, pause before you blurt out what you were thinking. Then ask yourself “am I responding from my emotions or from reason. Have I considered the consequences?” Then you can move on. I suppose you’re saying “ha what consequences could there be when someone cuts me off?” Nowadays you’d be surprised at the possible outcome. Can you spell “road rage?”

Do this with every situation in your life. Make “practicing the pause” a habit.