Daily Gratitude: Take this wisdom from Maya Angelou. You need passion and compassion to round out your being. There’s so much in between but if you can bookend everything else with just these two qualities, your life has a greater probability of being successful.

And of course humor helps everyone get through the day more easily.

But most importantly you need a mission no matter your age. You shouldn’t just be content with surviving. Having a deep mission can change that to thriving. Once you figure out your current mission, you will begin to thrive.

This may seem overwhelming but it’s only a few things you need to cultivate and pay attention to. Work hard on passion, compassion, humor and your mission. That should come before all else.

Daily Gratitude: Do you know what kind of a difference you want to make? Do you want to make a difference? Have you ever thought about what you did today or last week or last month that made a difference (even if just to one person)? Perhaps you didn’t notice but I bet someone else did.

What if every day when you woke up, you said “I’m going to make a difference today!”

What do you think your mind would think? Would it be “you? Who are you kidding?” Or “oh yeah and we’re going to win the lottery too”, or “OK great – how are we going to make a difference?”

Perhaps your mind will go through all three scenarios but hopefully will end up with the last.

Once the question “how” has come to the surface you can start by making a list of possible ways. Start small and make them doable.
• I’m going to smile at 3 people today
• I’m going to check on 3 people I have been remiss in contacting
• I’m going to start doing x project (where x is something, some habit, you’ve been thinking about )

Pretty soon you won’t have to think hard or make a list each day. Pretty soon, your mind will be filled with things you want to do that can make a difference. Why? Because it’s something you want and your mind is becoming conditioned to produce what you want so while you sleep, it will be producing ideas. You can enhance that by saying before you go to sleep “tomorrow I’m going to make a difference”. That tells your mind to get to work on ideas.

Try it. It’s fun..and positive and we certainly need more positive these days

Daily Gratitude: This is so true. Think back to good things you’ve done or accomplished and list how many of them you’ve done without great enthusiasm. I bet the answer is none.

It’s really hard to put the degree of effort needed to achieve great things without enthusiasm. The “oomph” just isn’t there.

This is one way to determine how important something is to you. Check your enthusiasm meter. If it’s not way high, you might want to re-examine your “why” (your deeper reason for wanting to do this thing).

Or maybe you feel enthusiasm for something that isn’t on your goal list. In that case you might want to re-look and see if you should put it on that list of goals.

We all need enthusiasm in our lives. If there isn’t any, it’s time to find something that really turns you on!