A very wise man once said “if you can imagine survival, you will survive”.  These are the words of Dr. Victor Frankel who wrote the classic, “Man’s Search For Meaning”.  Dr. Frankel’s imagination allowed him to survive years in a concentration camp during WWII.  His imagination literally saved his life. 

So what’s wrong with picturing and imagining the life you are meant to live?  What’s wrong with imagining goals so far reaching, the ones you believed could only live in your dreams?  See it in your mind and then feel it in your soul.  Use your childlike faith to excite and motivate and most importantly, to believe!  Remember, if you can imagine it, you can achieve it!  What will you imagine today?

Do you need to bring more joy into your life?

Have you reached the point where you are asking “WHAT’S THE POINT”?

Does one day roll into another, one week, one year….and, you don’t recall the meaning or feel deep satisfaction of how you spent those precious 525,600 minutes?

You can transform your life today by transforming the lives of others!

Making a difference to another human being will absolutely fill your heart with joy and remind you of your purpose. So, find something YOU can make better. Change something that needs changing.

Spend some of your precious 525,600 minutes each year on something outside of yourself without expecting anything in return but a better, more joyful and compassionate you!

Happiness and sadness are relative states of the human condition.  Our meter moves according to experiential situations.  Think about what makes you happy or sad today.  Now picture being confronted with a really great challenge.  How will the scales change?  Often, we need the difficult and dark times to put things back into proper perpective.  

Victory over challenges will teach you something about yourself.  You will learn that you are much more than a prisioner of circumstance  You are the keeper of your attitude.  No matter the situation or outcome, you control your outlook.    It will drive your reality. 

People long for paradise.  They long for a life full of goodness and abundance, a life without strife.  When this picture perfect scenario doesn’t play out, they can live in a constant state of disappointment. 

What they don’t realize is they would not know how to experience or feel what they perceive paradise to be if they didn’t experience and know it’s opposite.

The opposing entities in a duality need to be veiwed from a perspective of balance.  In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin and yang is used to describe how seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and how they give rise to each other in turn.

There are endless characteristics that can describe the perfect state of being.  However, none of these could possibly be experienced without knowing the opposing entity. 

To know love, you must know hate

To know strength, you must know weakness

To know success, you must know failure

To know hope, you must know despair

To know fulfillment, you must know emptiness

To know forgiveness, you must know revenge

To know good, you must know evil

To know faith, you must know uncertainty

To know bravery, you must know fear

To know abundance, you must know scarcity

To know happiness, you must know sadness

Because I believe all things will balance out in the end, learn to respect and even embrace these opposing forces.  Without them, the joy of the human expereince could not exist. 

Do you need to bring more joy into your life? 

Have you reached the point where you are asking “WHAT’S THE POINT”? 

Does one day roll into another,  one week, one year….and, you don’t recall the meaning or feel deep satisfaction of how you spent those precious 525,600 minutes? 

You can transform your life today by transforming the lives of others!

Making a difference to another human being will absolutely fill your heart with joy and remind you of your purpose.    So, find something YOU can make better.   Change something that needs changing. 

Spend some of your precious 525,600 minutes each year on something outside of yourself without expecting anything in return but a better, more joyful and compassionate you! 

Where do you want to be in life?

Who are you at the other side of the hurdle?

As the proverb says, “You cannot leap a chasm in two steps”!   Sometimes, you just have to close your eyes and leap.  You will always reach the other side on the wings of faith. 

If you need some inspiration to make your “leap”, visualize it everytime you face yourself in the mirror.  The “I WILL make this leap with faith” reverse image tee will instantly change your mindset everytime you face yourself in the mirror.  For details, click here.

DON’T ASK FOR A LIGHTER LOAD, ASK FOR A STRONGER BACK!  

Your attitude has everything to do with how well you will survive whatever is challenging you.  Charles Dickens wrote back in 1859:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst  of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…….”

What will you choose: light or darkness, hope or despair, everything or nothing?

The Dalai Lama tells us in his book, Ethics for the new Millennium, if we can reorient our thoughts and emotions and reorder our behavior, not only can we learn to cope with suffering more easily, but we can prevent a great deal of it from arising in the first place.  He says “we cannot always change our external situation to suit us, but we can change our attitude”.

So how can you make the mental shift outside of the usual advice “get enough rest, eat well, exercise, don’t drink too much, stop smoking etc. “?  Here are some thoughts that may help you to stay positive as you face your challenges:

-Look around and see what is right with the world.

-Be as present in the moment as you can be.

-Don’t dwell on what you can’t change.

-Listen to upbeat music.

-Sit down and write 10 positive statements about your life.

-Meditate and pray often.

-Forgive.

-Change the scale.  If you are 55 living with regret over things you did or did not do with your life, fast-forward and imagine yourself at 80 wishing for another 25 years of opportunity!

“One of Michelangelo’s greatest masterpieces was his sculpture of David.  He worked on it with such passion that he often slept in his clothes, resenting the time it took to take them off and put them on again.  He made hundreds of sketches of possible attitudes and detailed drawings from models.  He tested his ideas over and over in wax on a small scale and only when he was satisfied did he pick up his chisel.  He approached the painting of the Sistine Chapel with the same intensity.  For four years he literally sweated in physical distress but look at what he produced! 

Martin Luther King said, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper he should sweep the streets as Michelangelo painted.  He should sweep the streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, “Here lived a great sweeper who did his job well.’

If you are not passionate about what you do, find something you can be passionate about!  Don’t strive to make money, strive to make a difference.  Significance should be your goal, not survival.”