Daily Gratitude: Don’t be guided by what the “masses” do or think it say. That is so easy to do with social media but you have to do your own thing. Have your own goals, make a plan and then follow the plan. Make your own time table and then abide by it. You can do your writing whether others have gone to the beach or put off their writing til tomorrow. You can go for a walk today even if it’s raining and everyone else is staying home. If you do, then tomorrow when they finally decide to go out, you’ll already be ahead. If you continue to do things as you planned, you will get ahead. But getting ahead isn’t your goal anyway. Your goal is to achieve what you’ve set down in your plan. Forget competition as a goal. You will come out ahead of whatever game you’re in because you are persistent and doing things when others don’t “feel like it”.

Daily Gratitude: Emmet Fox talked about your mixing bowl, saying that you can expect whatever ingredients you put in that bowl will somehow be tasted in your finished dish. If for some reason you put kerosene in the mixing bowl, you can expect the finished item to taste like kerosene – not so pleasant no matter what else you put in there. The same applies to your thoughts. If you’re “almost” always positive about things, what does that mean? Is there sometimes kerosene in your thoughts? If so, things may not work out so well. Sure things can appear to be bad. But if you use my mantra “everything always works out for me”, you can just accept what happens knowing that the universe has some plan for you and even if that plan doesn’t seem to be the same as the one you laid out, it is most likely the better plan. My life has proved that. So, instead of trying to be Pollyanna, I simply proclaim that “everything always works out for me!” As such I don’t put any kerosene in my mixing bowl. Keep track of your thoughts and see which ones you want to filter out. Then go about that elimination process diligently.

Daily Gratitude: I love this. It’s just another way to get people to focus on the steps in the process and not the massive leaps or the outcome. This phrase came when two people were hiking and one noted all the little streams along their path. The other person, who was local, remarked that each one of the little streams fed into the big river. It goes to demonstrate that without all the little pieces of a project, the final goal won’t occur. So, when you’re bored and tired of paying attention to all the little things, remember the big river. Since we just had the Olympics it behooves you to think about all the hours each athlete spent over the years just working on the basics – each little stream. Without those streams, you’ll have no strong foundation to your dream or project and therefore your ultimate result will be unstable! Remember the streams to get to your dreqms.