Daily Gratitude: This is pretty simple and pretty solid advice. You don’t have to sit around and “wait” until this or that happens before you can start something. You can start anything right now. You will be surprised at how much you can get done if you just look around you, see what you’ve got available to use, and just begin. Begin something, anything. Monitor your excuse making and nip every “reason”/excuse in the bud. You don’t want reasons why not. You want action. And any action is better than none. It doesn’t have to be anything big. In fact it’s the small things done repeatedly and consistently that lead to big things. If your city has as much construction as San Antonio does, you can set this in effect. The constitution never seems to end and then one day a new road or a new building is having its “grand opening”. Make that your goal. To aim towards your own grand opening! Build your foundation first. You’ll have to let it set for awhile perhaps but while it’s setting there are plenty of other little things you can be doing. Just start and then keep going.

Daily Gratitude: “Consistency is the ultimate key to success. The compound effect is the strategy of reaping huge rewards from small, seemingly insignificant actions. Small choices + consistency + time = significant results.” This is from James Clear’s review of the book “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy. How often have you started some practice that you think will make a difference in your life? How long did you stick with it? Even if you spent 5 minutes every morning doing one thing that you think is important, AND you keep doing it every day, it definitely will make a difference. The trouble is that often when someone doesn’t see results in the period of time THEY decide, they give up and go on to something else. What if women decided that they should be delivering their baby at 4 months gestation? How well do you think that would work? We humans have this thing about controlling everything. The universe has its own laws by which it operates and no matter what we think, those are the laws that guide things. I have gotten into the habit of doing a daily gratitude journal. All I do is list 3 things I’m grateful for each and every day. It takes just a few minutes. It’s such an important part of my life that I even do it during races. It’s small but I do it consistently and it has changed how I look at life. Did that happen after I’d done it for a few weeks? No. Could I have stopped then? Yes but I’m glad I didn’t. Think about the compound effect next time you think something in your life isn’t working….yet.

Daily Gratitude: What’s your definition of winning? I heard a great definition of a “winner” – “A winner is a person who is constantly and continuously striving to become better at what they do.” So you can see it’s not about the outcome which is what a lot of people think. However, what’s most important is that you develop your own opinion as to what winning is. Why? Because you are the one who is playing the “game” not someone else. I think this quote has hit it right on the head by saying that it’s not giving up. I don’t see how you can possibly lose if you never give up. Each and every day you should practice keeping going. There’s always something going on that you can practice with even if it’s just being stuck in traffic with a ton of things on your to do list. What can you do to keep your mind in a positive mode in your circumstance? It’s so important that you weed out any negative thoughts that tend to creep in if we’re not constantly vigilant. So if you’re stuck in traffic spend that time saying your gratitudes, saying mantras you’ve created for yourself, plan out what is going to happen when you finally get where you’re going. This is called pre-paving. It works wonders. Plan it down to the smallest detail. I used to do that with all the meetings I had when I was working. Pre-paving sends the vibrations into the universe and that tends to bring it into existence. Next time you have a meeting try it. I know I’ve gone off in a few directions today but i personally think they are all related to winning and not giving up. My goal for the rest of 2024 is to develop the habit of keeping all my thoughts on something positive!