It’s often easy to downplay what we have to be thankful for in our lives, and focus primarily on what is lacking. We get so caught up in getting more…becoming popular, funnier, healthier, wealthier; that we don’t express heartfelt gratitude for what we currently have.

While I want to be more popular…
I am eternally grateful for the friendships I have.

While I want to be funnier…
I am grateful for the humor I find in my life.

While I want to be healthier…
I am thankful for my current health.

While I want to be wealthier…
I am grateful for my current wealth.

When we acknowledge what we want, it’s important to always make sure to acknowledge what we already have. Cultivate the habit of unceasingly expressing attitudes of gratitude daily. Celebrate your life. Laugh at the daily misfortunes. Smile & take joy in the little successes. Accept the good. Not only when you fulfil one of your desires, but because of what you already have.

It’s okay to want & desire more. It’s only harmful when you do so at the expense of thumbing your nose at what you already have.

If you take a regular inventory of your life and what you have to be grateful for, you will discover a multitude of gifts and talents you have ignored. You will uncover the many blessings already in your life… and you will see that the hand God dealt you is a winning hand.

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a
canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had
rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.

They didn’t look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag
out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the
clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it
cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each
contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels
in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him.

He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the
clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of
thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of
thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

It’s like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we
see the external clay vessel. It doesn’t look like much from the outside. It
isn’t always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish
or well known or wealthy But we have not taken the time to find the treasure
hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each one of us. If we take the time to get to know
that person, and if we ask God to show us that person the way He sees them,
then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine
forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown
away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay.
May we see the people in our world as God sees them.

Sometimes your eyes can deceive you. Like a magician performing their latest magic trick, a new eMail program has arrived on the scene that is not what it seems. Folks are getting tricked into joining this eMail blocker called Boxbe without realizing what they are getting into.

People are receiving notices after they send someone an eMail that their message cannot be delivered because they are not a member of the recipient’s “group”.

The message looks like an attempt to verify you as a real sender, but it is really an under-handed trick to get you to join Boxbe.

“Boxbe” is a clever list builder which forces people to join the list. It is marketed as an inbox-cleaner/spam-blocker.

When you join, everyone who tries to send you a message are informed that they must join Boxbe in order to get their message delivered to you.

This may seem like a good idea, but do you really want people to have to jump through hoops to contact you?

Not if you’re in business or want to stay connected, you don’t!

Plus, you won’t receive valuable newsletters & broadcasts that you’ve subscribed to. (Auto-responders and mass-mailers do not join Boxbe!)

The easiest way to deal with spam is the delete button. You can mass-select spam and hit delete once – and it’s all gone!

Again, Boxbe is a very clever list builder – but it’s not your list, it’s Boxbe’s.

You can bet that they’ll sell that list once it’s huge enough and they’ll sell it to Boxbe members.

Then a new breed of spam will be born – Boxbe spam!

If you’ve been considering joining Boxbe, don’t! If you joined Boxbe, go to their site and opt-out.

If you can’t opt-out, then you’ll need a new eMail address (get one free at Google) – and re-subscribe to all your lists.

Don’t fall for this magician’s sleight of hand!

Some recent events surrounding these three above entitled superstars got me thinking. Even people at the pinnacle of success sometimes fall back into old (bad) habits.

If you watched the Basketball Hall of Fame Induction ceremony or read any of the comments that were part of Michael Jordan’s speech, you no doubt were struck as I was by some of the sour grapes displayed by MJ. The infamous All Star game ‘freeze-out’ by some veteran players during MJ’s first All Star game, former college basketball coach Dean Smith’s leaving him off of the cover of Sport’s Illustrated in favor of another North Carolina player, limited playing time during his rookie season; and numerous other examples were cited by MJ documenting how he was wronged in the past. It seemed oddly strange behavior, especially in contrast to the speeches of the other inductees; to focus so much attention on these ’slights’ by others, rather than to simply celebrate the feats he achieved as the greatest basketball player of all time. Jordan even qualified his remarks by saying he felt sorry for his kids having to live in his shadow.

Kanye West seems to find it difficult if not impossible to let the universe take it’s course when it comes to dictating who gets recognized for their achievements, if those being recognized do not live up to his own personal standards. If you saw the recent MTV Video Music Awards ceremony and his behavior and treatment of Taylor Swift, you know what I’m talking about. This rude behavior has now spawned a new phrase, with many talking and tweeting on Twitter about: a “Kanye” as a way to describe bad, childlike  behavior; as in “Don’t pull a Kanye.”  

Anyone who saw or heard Serena Williams’ meltdown at the US Open was probably shocked! I know I was. While being very competitive when playing tennis myself (certainly not at that high a level), I can only begin to imagine the volcano of passion for the game & tremendous desire to win that accompanies such greatness for playing the game of tennis. But even Serena has to recognize that although tennis is an individual sport, there is a team of people behind her amazing skill and talent for tennis (including her coaches and family); and her legions of fans fuel her success as well. Much more disturbing than her verbal outburst is her continuing failure to apologize (say “I’m sorry”) to the lines-woman involved.

So what does all of this have to do with you and I? None of us will probably ever dunk like Michael Jordan, sing like Kanye West, or serve like Serena Williams. But we have the opportunity to honor and respect the universal Law of Attraction when it influences us or those around us. Following  a few simple rules can greatly facilitate this LOA process and affect our own inter-personal balance & harmony as well.

Don’t play the blame game: Blaming someone else for our lack of success may temporarily make us feel better and/or more secure, but these feeling of being justified & redeemed are only fleeting at best. Long term we are left with feelings of unfulfilment and often remorse as well.  

Letting go of bitterness & not walking around with a chip on your shoulder: Besides the effects blaming others has on them and ourselves, this type of attitude tends to color our world and block the very types of things that we wish to attract into our lives. Negativity attracts more negativity and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we can adopt an attitude of gratitude and be thankful for even the little successes in our lives, we are more likely to attract the ultimate success and achieve the greatest goals in our lives.  

Don’t rain on somebody elses parade: Stealing someone elses limelight: Not only is it bad karma, but the act of taking away from someone else doesn’t add to your own prestige and success, but rather diminishes it.

Take joy in other people’s triumphs: Other people’s joy has a way of rubbing off on us. We all know the axiom about in order to be successful, we should hang around successful people. The same can be said for joy. In order to be joyful, we should hang around joyful people.

The Law of Attraction tells us that there is an infinite amount of abundance and prosperity to go around. Yet some people behave as if they must ‘compete’ against the whole world for a limited supply of success. The true competition in life should be amongst ourselves. Your biggest task is not to get ahead of others, but to surpass yourself.

Treat judges and officials with dignity and respect: Beyond the fact that officials are human beings with feeling and desires just like all of us, the game simply cannot be played without the rules of the game and those to enforce them. Officials often have a real passion for the game, just as the players do. 

 Following the above rules and practicing this type of behavior will not only make you a better and more liked (likable) person, but will help you feel more comfortable in your own skin as well, and better able to attract the happiness and contentment that you desire in your life.

I watched the movie “Pay It Forward” again on tv for the umpteenth time  yesterday. I never get tired of that movie. It seems like I always find something new or get a new take on something when I watch it. Usually something I already know intuitively, but I get it and see it clearer and more succinctly & definitively after the movie.

 This time it was the whole idea of helping others and who’s really benefiting who by paying it forward. On the surface, I’ve always thought it would be amazing to be involved in such a powerful movement (paying it forward) and how proud one can be about doing good deeds for others. But the whole idea of giving goes much deeper than that for me now. By offering to help someone else, I am really asking them to do me a favor by allowing me to experience the joy and “connection to source” as Wayne Dyer calls it; in being part of the universal plan.

We’re taught in our society to ‘mind your own business’ and ‘don’t make waves.’ So it seems to me that this whole notion of imagining the world as a better place and what things would be like if people started doing random acts of kindness to each other; is a child-like idea that we can better understand by getting in touch with our inner child. As Abraham-Hicks puts it: ”The little ones still remember how to use the power of their imagination. They are still engaged in the utilization of their imagination — that is one of the reasons that keeps them so exhilarated.”

This whole deeper concept of giving is epitomized in the scene where the homeless man/junkie talks to the suicidal woman before she jumps off of the bridge. Do yourself a favor and rent this movie if you haven’t seen it yet. And it’s definitely worth watching again, if you’ve already seen it. Pay close attention to the scene on the bridge. And ask yourself who’s really doing whom a favor here?

Yes, my friends; there really is a disease infecting Twitter. It’s spreading like wildfire! Twitter’s got the flu (but it’s hopefully not fatal). Symptoms of the disease include constantly spamming us with your latest and greatest product or opportunity. Always looking for the sale & viewing everyone as a prospect that you can earn money off of. There are many tweeters out there (you know who you are), who bombard us with their product  or service from the get go, including links in their welcome direct mail message to us after we follow them. As Charlie Brown used to say: “Good Grief!”

Did they ever stop to think for one second that we may be interested in getting to know the person behind the website link or sales letter? Perry Belcher has recently begun calling this “The Twitter Disease.” This all-encompassing desire to tell everyone you can as quickly as you can, why they should buy from you right now! I’ve talked to Randy Gage about this and he likens this type of ‘marketing’ to puking on someone that you’ve just met at a party or social event.

To me, what’s most offensive about this type of behavior is that it’s not caring about who you infect, as if you know what’s right for somebody else and you’re going to expose them to it whether they like it or not!

There is a better way. It’s called appreciation marketing. Offering something of value to someone because you appreciate them as a human being, think it might help them or enhance their life, and you value their friendship. What a concept! Offering something of value to someone you care about with no strings attached. Of course, to appreciate someone, you have to first get to know them & develop a relationship. But isn’t that what social media is really all about?

Hello. My goal in writing this blog is to offer something of real value to you, my readers. To leave behind a little bit of my heart & soul here, and to above all, keep it interesting.