Friday 25 April 2014

To be Humble

A few years ago I was reading a book on success. As I read I took many interesting points, there were many thoughts to take away and it definitely gave me inspiration to make some changes in my life. One thing I found interesting was a discussion about managing your time, one point in this was to pay someone else to do basic jobs. The directive was if you could pay someone else less an hour to complete the job then you are paid in your own job, then it was not worth your time and you should hire someone else to complete the work. The examples they used were around mowing the lawn, house hold chores and basic daily activity. At the time I nodded to myself and said I can see that making sense.

The other day I was folding laundry and a thought hit me. We should always take the time to do the basic jobs, these basic jobs keep us on the ground, they keep us humble. Once we start paying someone else to complete all the basic chores in our life we start becoming disconnected with the basic aspects of life. We start to place ourselves above those that are paid to complete those job. In the end though we are all human, no matter our title or our paycheck we are all people and we are all basic creatures. We must take the time to keep ourselves humble, and taking the time to complete the basic chores of life is a simple way to do this.

As we engage in these chores and they become routine it also gives us time to think, working on these chores it is also easy to reflect, reflect on the basics of life. As I fold my little girls pants I smile looking at how small they are... and then realize how much bigger they are then her little sisters, she has grown so much. As I mow the lawn I think back to being a child myself and mowing my parents lawn, I think to how hard my wife works to keep our lawn looking amazing. My mind has time to settle, let go of the stress of work and life and glance over life. I let myself settle into the chore and release the other aspect of life for the 20 minutes or hour, in some ways it is a form of meditation. Either way it reminds me of the little things in life and keeps me humble.

Motivate, Inspire and find your focus. 

Tuesday 8 April 2014

Positively.... Spun!

As I sort through the world, I look for the sunlight, I look for the warmth that comes with happiness and positive thoughts. As I look around with this thought another old phrase comes to me, "actions are stronger then words," so now I think to myself I need to look for positive action, positive movement in the right direction. Then I stop, sun beaming down on my and my mood lifting by the second, I cannot define myself by the thoughts, words and actions of others. As they say I need to be the change. I need to be positive, act positive and think positive. If words and actions of others don't directly impact me then I need to leave them to themselves.

When each of us focus on being positive ourselves and spread a positive mood we are making change. Smiles are contagious. When we see something that frustrates us we cannot dwell on it, we need to avoid commenting, if anything offer a positive thought or action. We so often continue to say how positive we are but are commenting on how negative something was, but we think we feel better because "we were the positive one!" Well I ask how are we being positive when we are taking the time to spread the negative action. Drop it, walk away don't carry it with you!

So today lets step forward finding the silver lining. Commit to only focus on the positive today, and start to build this habit. Try to make three people smile and you are doing something right. Try to make 2 people laugh, you have helped them through the day. Be there to help stop one persons tears and turn it to a smile you are feeling success.

Motivate, inspire and find your focus!

Sunday 6 April 2014

Make it Perfect.

I fight, I struggle, its not right, I cannot present this, I cannot move forward... Its NOT PERFECT!! I struggle day in, day out looking for perfection, wanting everything just to click together to look at my work, look at my life and go, wow I couldn't have done anything better!....

Over the years I have broke down many times trying to find this perfection, slipping back into this world of missing my target. I have found myself alone in groups of people, drifting through life in a dark cloud worried that someone will notice that I am not perfect, that I have flaws. I smile and nod, act strong but inside feel inadequate. These are my feelings and not to be part of the outside world and I try to never let anyone see them... That is impossible, just like perfection. Someone is always going to see through a façade if you live within one, you hope it is someone that loves you and will offer support but that is not always the case, and those are the days one live in fear of...

One cannot live in fear, one cannot worry day in and day out and one will always look back and see something they could have done better. One must find the strength so see imperfection as a stepping stone to improvement, just another lesson in this amazing life we live.

As I look around the world I find one thing, those who demonstrate success always appear to achieve perfection, but with a bit of looking one can see that they rarely do achieve perfection. What they do is accept what is around them as perfect in the moment. They do not react to flaws, they work with them, they don't throw their arms in the air and walk away, they stand back look around with pride and accept everything as perfection within the moment. They know there are flaws, and they take note for the future, they fix anything that may actually cause a problem in the moment, but if it can be brought in to look like it is part of the moment and will not create an issue later they roll with it and accept it as perfect within the moment.

The challenge many of us have is not a lack of perfection, it is the stress and worry we create by trying to achieve perfection and never seeing that it is all around us. We must always strive for the next level, always push harder for happiness and whatever our vision of success is, and we must always strive for perfection. This is not a bad thing as long as when we strive for these things we will accept the imperfections as part of our life, maybe something to work on, definitely not something to break us. We need to focus on bettering ourselves and those around us, and when we recognize that growth is the greatest sign of perfection we will feel proud and others will see our pride. They will look at us and wonder how we achieve such perfection, we will become the inspiration and we will grow.

We must take a moment every day and see the perfection that is all around us, see how many things we have to inspire us and motivate us. We all have perfection in the things around us, whether it is a moment of silence that brings a smile to our face, a hug from a child or a job well done that we can reflect on just how well we have done.
Motivate, Inspire and find your Focus.