Daily Gratitude: Be grateful for luck but never rely on it. If you hope for it, do your “hoping” for a certain period of time and then move on. You may see lots of successful people and sigh, whining “that person is so lucky. I wish I had that luck”. I imagine that almost everyone you say that about hasn’t been lucky so much as they have been persistent and undeterred when things didn’t always go according to plan. What looks like luck is behind the scenes hard work and long hours. Never mistake the two. If you really want something, you will apply yourself to it and what comes from that hard work will appear to others as Luck but you’ll know what it really was!

Daily Gratitude: Maybe you can’t do much (or anything) about your past thoughts other than to examine your life and see if you can correlate the two. But you certainly can do something about your future. Despite the chaos in the world today, you are in control of your thoughts. And it is your thoughts that will determine where you go. Sure you can say “but I can’t do anything about the political situation or all the wars” and that would be true. But you can do something about how you think about your life and your interactions with other people. Why not focus on your own microcosm – your family, friends and maybe even your community? How? By monitoring and measuring your thoughts. The most important part of that formula is to monitor them. You’d be surprised and maybe a bit overwhelmed by the number of negative thoughts that go through your head every day. even if you think you’re a positive person, I think you might notice some back and forth in your mind – a positive thought comes and then some little voice (it’s really a part) pipes up and says “oh yeah, well let me tell you how it really is. Your positive stuff is BS….etc.”. This is normal because your mind and your parts are protectors. They are meant to get you through danger and you can’t get through danger if you don’t recognize it and haven’t experienced something like it so you know what to do. this is all ok. don’t get discouraged. For a week or so, just become aware of what’s happening, aware of the conversations in your head. you don’t even need to change them for that first couple of weeks. just notice them. write them down if you can. that will help you review later rather than just relying on your memory. it’s also a way to enable you to decide what you want to change. Start with this.

Daily Gratitude: This follows the “change of self” post quite nicely. Even when things seem stagnant in your life, recognize that you’re changing as the world around you is changing. You never stay in one place even when it seems like that’s all you do. You are constantly progressing. Your poor brain would rebel if it didn’t have the opportunity to redo its thoughts and ideas. Your life may seem stagnant but you aren’t. and it behooves you to look inside and see if you still think the same way about something in your life as you did. What about your relationship with your spouse? how has that changed? how has your opinion of him/her affected that relationship? Same with your kids and friends. What if you found out that your best friend supports the opposite political party than you? Would you be appalled and want to end the friendship? Would you be curious and want to know more? would you even care? What will be different, if anything, about your interaction with that person just because you now have one additional bit of info about them? Just thinking about it shows progress. it is also representative of a change in you. how does that feel?