Daily Gratitude: “Excellence happens not by accident.
It is a process.”

This is another way to talk about the compound effect.

People are always being critical and envious when it appears someone became a big success “overnight”. What they don’t realize is that the success didn’t happen that way. Many many hours of work have gone into whatever they achieved.

But more importantly, this is a key thing for each of us to remember when it seems things aren’t moving forward. Just keep at it. Each day that you work toward your goal, something happens. There’s progress. But you may not see it and even worse, you may not see it for quite awhile.

If you keep working, though, one day you’ll see the results of that effort. Your first reaction may be that it’s a fluke but it isn’t. It means that all you’ve been doing has actually been having an effect. The more you keep going, the more the effect will show up. There may be plateaus. Realize that that’s exactly what they are, plateaus. The body is integrating all the effort and there will be another peak soon.

Just keep doing what you’re doing. You will get there!

Daily Gratitude: “Man becomes conscious of himself through his resistance to others.”

This is a good way to gauge if something within you needs improvement or work. If you start to hold up your hand and push back against someone or some idea, it’s a sign that there may be something in you that you ought to examine. It may be that once you do that examination, you’ll identify it and decide you still believe it. Let’s say a person you know never leaves a tip and that begins to bother you. In the grand scheme of this thing we call life, is it really important whether ANOTHER person leaves a tip? Why does it bother you? It doesn’t really matter and that’s why it’s a sign that you should look at it. Something is going against your personal values. I’ll bet that once you look within, you’ll see that it may be just one annoying thing about your friend but maybe it’s made you see other things you don’t like. This is good because then you can decide if your friend’s good points outweigh these minor annoyances. When you realize that you’ll be able to either tell them that this bugs you or you may just decide it won’t bother anymore . But it also possible that you’ll reassess the friendship. That sounds harsh but it’s also how little things can lead to disastrous endings.

Any time you’re feeling the “that bothers me” or the “no way” thoughts and feelings about something, it’s time to examine what it is actually telling you. The “thing” in front of you is a nicely wrapped package but what it’s hiding is buried deep under the wrapping, inside the box and stuffed under a bunch of the styrofoam peanuts. It’s the pearl inside the clam shell. You have to dig to find it but it’s worth it.

Daily Gratitude: “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”

Boy was Marcus Aurelius a wise man. Whenever I’ve been brave enough to do this, it’s taken the wind out of my sails quickly. And that’s a good thing.

I get lots of practice with it in my neighborhood which is a “cut through” between two major roads. There are stop signs but so many people can’t see them (ha) or can’t read and think they say “slow”. And of course there’s the stoplights at each end of the road. The green light doesn’t stay green very long. So if someone is on their phone during the red light, they will probably realize it’s turned green in time for them to make it through while so many of the rest of the cars don’t.

Instead of blowing my top now I acknowledge the frustration and then think “when I have I done something that has affected others (whether it’s in traffic or otherwise)?” That helps to dissolve the frustration.

The reason it’s important to acknowledge the frustration (or whatever emotion you’re experiencing) is that emotions aren’t really controllable. They happen. What we can and should control is our response- our feelings.

Try Marcus’ question next time you start to criticize someone or something. See how it works.