Daily Gratitude: What if you were to focus on the “overcomers” instead of the thing needing overcoming? How different would your outlook be? It might take a little more effort but wouldn’t it be worth it in the long run? I think so. Instead of thinking how insurmountable a mountain is, I’d rather concentrate on those people who have actually reached the summit…or even those who have tried. At least they got off their butts and got out there to attempt it. They didn’t just sit around lamenting the fact that the mountain “is really hard to climb”. It’s a mountain after all and they are all hard to climb. Some more than others. But you’ll never know anything about it unless you investigate and what better to investigate than the ones who’ve actually been on that mountain. With the internet now, you should be able to find someone who has done something at least similar to what you want to do. Stop saying “i can’t” or “it’s too hard”. Even if you don’t want to do that thing yourself, you may be able to learn a lot from someone who has done it. I learn a lot from the 314 mile race across Tennessee. Do I have to wait a year each time before I can apply what I learned? No. Much of what i learned is applicable to life in general so I can use that knowledge every day. Flip the switch. Next time you say that something is too hard, immediately stop yourself and ask “I wonder who’s done this”. And go online and find out! It will change your outlook on everything.

Daily Gratitude: Sometimes it’s hard to remember this. We just want to quit trying because it seems nothing is going right. This happened to me in the 2025 Vol State race. Absolutely nothing was going right. I wanted to quit and I tried but the Meat Wagon Lady wouldn’t let me. So I had to keep going. I encountered more defeats in that one race than I ever had in my life. But because of her instincts and intuition I had to continue (yes some of it was being stubborn and wanting to say “I told you so” but that never happened). As such I was never defeated and I finished the race. Look at Thomas Edison and his inventing the light bulb – was it 13,000 or 14,000 times he tried and “failed?” He didn’t let all those defeats become his ultimate reality – total defeat. He kept on and we should too. It would be fun if instead of the routine emojis that people use they adopt a light bulb to use when they are trying to encourage someone to keep on going. That could then remind the person they are trying to encourage someone that had had a bad time to keep on going. Maybe even print out a light bulb and hang it around your house to remind you that a few defeats does not mean you’re defeated.

Daily Gratitude: We can’t just sit around waiting and hoping something will come along to make us happy. It just doesn’t work that way. If we’re not feeling happy, we need to take some sort of action. Sometimes it’s any type of action – doesn’t have to be planned or orchestrated. Often just going for a walk will do it – get those energetic juices going. Once that is started, you might just feel like doing something else. This weekend I didn’t want to go out for my training walk. I was feeling tired and listless. I’d had a migraine headache on Thursday and Friday so Saturday morning, the lethargy was still there. But I knew that if I waited around for the “urge” and “desire” to come, I might be waiting a long time. I had the impetus of knowing that I only have 3 months to train for Vol State and each day I sat around “hoping I’d be trained enough” was another wasted day. So I had to make myself go out. After if gone about a mile i forgot how I had felt and began to enjoy it. That happens a lot so I had that experience in my armory to draw upon. This, i technically knew it would happen. But it still required discipline to get me going. Then when I came home, I just wanted to rest and relax. But again, I knew that I only had another day and a half to put out items for “bulky trash removal”. So, if I didn’t want to wait another 6 months to declutter some more, I had to get my butt moving. That was hard too but I made myself get up and work. For each of these I had incentives and you’re wondering what to do if you don’t have such incentives. Make the incentive simply be “getting off your butt” or “getting started”. Think of it as priming the pump. If you want to be more active or more creative, prime the pump by taking some action – any action – and then see what happens. Try an experiment and just find a way to get up and do some simple little thing and then see what the rest of the day brings.