Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Party this New Year's Eve - Just NO PITY PARTIES!!!

As we close in on the merciful ending of this challenging and rough year for many, it is fully appropriate to celebrate it's departure and welcome in a new, promising year!!

What we MUST avoid, however, is hosting any "Pity Parties" this New Year's Eve - or at any given time for that matter!

We have a tendency as humans to focus on the "lack" of what we have to the point of it driving us to depression, unhappiness, and jealousy!

When we take a step back and really look at our Blessings, not only compared to those living in Third World Countries (which is a disparity as wide as 100 oceans) but even with those around us in this country of plenty and wealth - it is STAGGERING!!!

Take a moment and a piece of paper and pencil and just jot down what you perceive as your "blessings"! It should not be difficult because even in the seemingly most dire of times - We are still abundantly Blessed and should FOCUS on these gifts as opposed to all the things WE ARE NOT, or DO NOT HAVE, or WISH WE OWNED, or LOOK LIKE!!

Don't you see that all of these latter thoughts are essentially putting all of your hopes for joy, love, happiness, fulfillment and contentment into a useless and doomed arena of wants and wishes!

Even if you do get some or all of what you think you need to OWN or BECOME, do you really think this will suddenly make you joyous, happy and peaceful???

I can tell you with certainty that this type of strategy is only setting you up for a series of failures and disappointments as what you do get suddenly is replaced by OTHER things you believe will make you happy!!

It is an effort in futility - a cycle of sadness and maniacal behavior- and must be avoided!!

So focus on how lucky you truly are to be healthy, loved, needed, useful, active, --ALIVE! People NEED you - they need your positive and strong influence, kindness, and support!!!

Just because they do not tell you how much you are valued does not mean you are not TREMENDOUSLY impactful in people's lives!

YOU ARE NEEDED!!!

Do not wait until you are on your death bed to discover just HOW BLESSED AND VALUABLE you are in this world!!!

Stay Strong and go out and change people's lives TODAY!!


Monday, December 29, 2008

New Year Approaching!! Discard all Old Negative Thoughts and Habits Now!!

As the end of one if the craziest and most challenging years ever recorded comes to a thankful close, NOW is the time to wipe our slates clean and to begin anew!!

What better time than the present to write off all of the negative thoughts, fears, habits, and worries that we fought in 2008 (and perhaps won some battles against) as we shift our focus and sights on a prosperous, joyous and WONDERFUL 2009!

Clearly, we are bound to face some challenges similar to the ones we faced in 2008! Remember, this battle against adversity, fear and anxiety is inevitable! However, it is not to be feared, or avoided! It is to be welcomed and dispensed of as quickly as possible!!

Half of our real battles are fought NOT in action on the "battle fields" where they ought to be fought, but instead on the battle fields of our minds! And often times we lose the battle BEFORE we even fight it for real!

Our minds allow the NOTION of loss to overwhelm and overrun our spirits until we are cowering and shaking and absolutely paralyzed by FEAR - unable to fight and WIN against this dreaded enemy... Our own DOUBT!!!!

Resolve in 2009 to identify and FIGHT OFF this negative notion as it occurs and make a point to actually stare down and face your fears exactly where FEAR hates to be - in the light of the TRUTH!!!

It can be done - easily in fact - as long as we prepare ourselves to know when this negative thought compounding is actually occurring - AND by taking the positive, confident, mental action to ward it off ahead of time!!

2009 can be whatever you want it to be - but it cannot become the Truth if you let FEAR and DOUBT enter the plans!

So what about what others think!??

So what if you Fail!?

So what if you are embarrassed!?

So what if the "old' you disappears and people who enjoyed the "WEAK" you of old do not like the new, STRONG, CONFIDENT YOU!?

Who are you answering to anyway - other people? Society? Your high school "friends"? Your parents????

Do you enjoy how you feel when you wake up in the morning or when you lay your head on your pillow at night??

Do you want to continue in such a manner and state the rest of your life?

Do you honestly believe that "someone else" is going to rescue you from all of this??

Do you not realize that all the power you have and strength you need has been provided to you already - and is simply WAITING for you to decide to use it as it was intended?

YOU..and only YOU - through your faith and belief in God and in the Truth - can change your life - TODAY!!!

What are you waiting for anyway??

Stay Strong - Happy New Year and Happy "New" YOU -- TODAY!!!

I, for one, cannot wait to meet YOU!


Thursday, December 18, 2008

If not for you - Do it FOR YOUR BROTHERS....


Very intertesting article on moods and the effect they have on others around you. So many times we are unaware of how are own mood, attitude, and feelings truly have an impact on someone else's day! Remember what we always speak of - your attitude and moods are contagious which means not only can you change someone else's day with a smile - but your day can be changed by letting someone else's positive attitude take over your feelings!

The point keeps being reinforced -- Happiness is within our control!!

Stay Strong!

Your happiness could be contagious

Study shows friends and even strangers benefit from your cheery mood
By Melissa Dahl
Health writer
msnbc.com

Feeling inexplicably cheery today? Thank your friends. And your friends’ friends. And your friends’ friends’ friends.

New research shows that happiness isn’t just an individual phenomenon; we can catch happiness from friends and family members like an emotional virus. When just one person in a group becomes happy, researchers were able to measure a three-degree spread of that person’s cheer. In other words, our moods can brighten thanks to someone we haven’t even met.

“Especially in the United States, we’re very used to thinking of ourselves as rugged individuals. But even very small things that happen to us have big impacts on dozens and hundreds of other people,” says James Fowler, a University of California, San Diego, political scientist, who co-authored the study with Harvard University medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis. “The things that we do and the things that we feel are going to reverberate throughout our social network.”

On average, every happy person in your social network increases your own chance of cheer by 9 percent — and the effects of catching someone else’s happiness lasts up to one year. The study, which looked at nearly 5,000 individuals over 20 years, was published online Thursday in the British Medical Journal.

Fowler and Christakis were able to map the social networks of 4,739 individuals with data from the Framingham Heart Study, an ongoing cardiovascular study. Participants in that study listed contact information for their closest friends, family members and neighbors, connecting the pair of researchers to more than 50,000 social ties. Fowler and Christakis have used that data set for similar studies published in the last two years that showed how obesity and smoking cessation can spread throughout a social network. The researchers used the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Index — a standard set of questions psychologists use to measure happiness — to analyze the cheeriness of the study participants.

They found that when someone gets happy, that person’s friend experiences a 25 percent increased chance of becoming happy. A friend of that friend experiences a nearly 10 percent chance of increased happiness, and a friend of that friend has a 5.6 percent increased chance of happiness.

That means a stranger’s good mood can do more to lift your spirits than a $5,000 raise, which only increased happiness 2 percent, Fowler and Christakis found.

“Happiness is a social emotion. It's an emotion that we derive from social events, and very typically and it becomes important for cementing the social connections we have with others,” says Jack Dovidio, a Yale University social psychologist who was not involved in the study.

“Happiness is not simply about me.”

What’s more, all these happy people could be helping to keep each other healthy. Several recent medical studies have linked happiness and health, including a 2006 Carnegie Mellon University study that found buoyant personality types catch fewer colds than downers.

And a 2001 University of Kentucky at Lexington study used the handwritten autobiographies of 180 Catholic nuns to judge the effect of happiness on longevity: The nuns who used more positive words to describe their lives lived about 10 years longer than those who used more negative words to describe their lives.

“It does appear possibly to be a causal affect — that being happier actually makes you healthier,” Fowler says.

But it seems you can’t catch happiness over the phone. Fowler and Christakis found that the increase in happiness only affects friends who live within a mile away from each other.

“For emotions, it appears that distance is really important,” Fowler says. “Friends who are close have an affect; friends who are far away don’t. The less you’re in contact with somebody the less likely you are to catch their happiness.”

The one-mile finding in the study is sure to sound odd to close friends who may live across town from each other. But Fowler says the key seems to be in how frequently you see your friends and those living closest saw each other the most often. (He says when they looked at the effect of happiness on friends who lived more than a mile apart, the results were too inconsistent to be anything more than chance.)

Sadness isn't as catching

On the flip side, if you’re feeling blue, you’ve only yourself to blame. Sadness doesn’t infect a social group as reliably happiness does, researchers found. Within some friendship networks, sadness had a significant effect on the members of the group, but on others, the effect was very small.


“With sadness, rather than pulling you in to your social network you often push people away,” says Emory University psychologist Nadine Kaslow, who wasn’t involved in this study. “Even though we know social support is really good for us when we’re sad, when we need it the most, we tend to push people away.” It might be a matter of private, personal emotions versus those that are meant to be shared. Anger, for example, might be another outward emotion that would spread within a group the same way happiness does, suggests Dovidio.


“When we are close to somebody, we actually have kind of a merging of our self image,” Dovidio says. And an infectious case of cheer can help cement connections within a group of friends, he adds, because it can re-affirm how close those relationships are.

“People often get a sense of happiness, even though they don't know where it comes from; it's probably very likely to come from the happiness of other people,” Dovidio says. “If I can't locate where my happiness came from it's likely that it came from another person.”

Once Fowler realized how far-reaching his own good cheer actually is, he has begun to make some changes to ensure he’s in a chipper mood more often. Lately, in the evenings on the drive home from work, just before pulling up to his house, he turns on a tune that’s almost too happy: Hoku’s “Perfect Day.” By the time he gets home, he has a giddy, goofy mood to match the pop song, and he hopes that his happiness will rub off on his two boys, 8-year-old Lucas and 6-year-old Jay.

“I’m not just going to make my sons happy — I could potentially make my sons’ friends happy,” Fowler says. “These little things I thought I was doing for myself turn out to be for hundreds of people.”

Monday, December 1, 2008

"Foundation Build in progress"


I do not profess to be a "handy" person around the house, nor am I well versed on things related to "building", "construction" or "engineering".



I do, however, fully understand the critical importance to building a STRONG FOUNDATION when building any freestanding structure.



It does not matter how strong, fortified, well built, or well structured a building may be - without the benefit of a strong and inpenetrable foundation, your structure will always be vulnerable to external forces and time!



So it is with our Spirit and our Soul! The key to a happy, joyous and Peaceful life is to build and maintain a strong and inpenetrable FOUNDATION of Belief and Faith!!



Unlike a physical building, Our Foundation has to be tended to and built up "multiple times a day" - consistently and continually reinforcing the strength and depth of the base!!



I am sure that this concept is easy to grasp and most people will not argue with it as a fact.



The pressing question instead is:



"How do I build and maintain this strong core Foundation?"



Well the answer is we have to use our hourly thoughts and "MAITH"s (Mental Ace in the Hole) ALL DAY LONG to push out any prior negative beliefs, replacing them with positive, uplifting, and Strong Beliefs and thoughts!!



Every day you can do this exercise, you will re-fortify and strengthen your core soul and spirit - enabling you to withstand and repel torrents of negativity, worry, anxiety and FEAR!!!



Like a beach home that commonly sees hurricane activity, our spirit and soul must be built up, overly fortified, and great efforts taken in anticipation of future fierce and dangerous forces that we may encounter in our quest for Peace and Joy!



Eventually - via DAILY mental and repetitive exercises - we will enjoy an inpenetrable Foundation and an ever strengthened soul - able to withstand ANY forces or situations we may encounter in our daily lives!



Imagine how wonderful that will feel!!



It is yours if you want it!!!!



Go and Build It Today!!!!



Stay Strong!!





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