Posted on by Raj Daniels

Empty Space

How often do you leave space in your life for magic to happen, to experience serendipitous interactions and opportunities?

Living with your days crammed with activities and things to do leave you with little or no room for ‘by chance encounters.’

You don’t have to schedule hours of empty space but you do have to make an effort to make time for opportunity. You can do something as simple as go to a coffee shop and talk to a stranger with no agenda or outcome in mind. You can take a walk without listening to music or talking on phone, just looking and absorbing your environment.

There are numerous examples in history, such as Newton and his apple or Archimedes and his bathtub where inspiration for a new idea struck when least expected because of empty space.

Make it a practice to add, or perhaps better said, to remove constant activity and input to your life. Leave some empty space for yourself and see what magic you experience.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

No Blueprint

Are you trying to follow a blueprint of someone else’s life to fix or improve your own life? The problem with blueprints, templates and other such mechanical terms is that they only work for mechanical objects.

Take a diet for example. A 100 people could be on the same diet down to the last calorie counted and measured, and yet there would be 100 different results because no two individuals are the same.

When you find yourself saying, but it worked for her or that’s how he did it, you are inviting yourself down a slippery road. You are making the error of assuming you are the same as the other person.

Now there are guidelines you can use to direct your life and they can help you move in the general direction towards what you want to accomplish but guidelines don’t guarantee ‘success.’

Someone else’s life blueprint can be a good starting point for you, but only as learning tool for you to continue to conduct your own life experiment and find a way to a unique to you.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

I don’t know how to…

Do you let not knowing how to do something stop you from moving forward? When you have a thought or dream of doing something new does your mind answer with ‘but I don’t know how,’ and you stop before you start?

Yes, there is uncertainty in feeling that you don’t know how to do something, but it can also be liberating.

Learn to develop the perspective that not knowing how to do something is a great position to be in. It means that your options are wide open and you have the freedom to experiment without any preconceived notions of the ‘right way.’

Don’t let not knowing how be your crutch that you fall back on and stop you from moving forward. You live in a world of abundant resources and the answer to almost every one of your ‘don’t know hows’ can be found as long as you are willing to look for them. And for the answers you can’t find, well now you have the opportunity to be the one with answer to someone else’s ‘I don’t know how.’

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Permission to Play

Do you give yourself permission to play; to lose yourself in an activity that you enjoy so much that time disappears?

It’s been said that play is essential to creativity. Playing enables your imagination to express itself in ways that you wouldn’t normally do in your everyday routines.

Playing is different for everyone and there are no set guidelines for the correct way to play. Playing for you could mean participating in sporting activities, wrestling with children or just watching movies.

As an adult you will always have ‘adult’ responsibilities as part of life and they will never go away. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give yourself permission to play. Indulge yourself occasionally in guilt free play time and don’t worry about all the other adult stuff, it’ll still be there when you’re done playing.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Start to Start

What personal project, goal or idea have you been putting off? What’s that one thing that you think about that you really want to do that you haven’t taken any action on? It could be as small as clean the junk draw or as big as travelling the world. What’s yours?

Make time today to write down one thing you want to do. And I don’t mean make a list or take a note. Write it out in long form and go in to as much detail as possible.  Describe what the end result will look like and what it will mean to you.

Starting is one of the best habits you can develop for yourself. Not only will you get more done but it’s only after starting that you can really grasp the effort required in accomplishing what you want and it will also help you decide if you really want to continue.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

How can I help you?

How can I help you?

How may I serve you?

What can I do for you?

These questions have magic within them. They have the power to transform your life if you ask them with a sincere desire to serve others.

These questions also require you to have an abundance mindset because you have to know and believe that you have enough time, energy and mental capacity in order to make time to do things for other people.

Research shows that when that when you help others you’ll receive the added benefit of feeling good about yourself too. So make helping others part of your daily routine.  Add these questions to your vocabulary, make a habit of using them often, and experience how your life changes when you commit to helping others.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Self-Worth

 

What is your self-worth tied to?

Is it tied to the amount of money you make, the number material possessions you have, your house, your car, your job, where you live? Would you have less self-worth if you lost any of the preceding items? Is it tied to how people see you? What if they were no longer in your life?

Self-worth begins from respecting yourself. It starts with appreciating who you are regardless of what you have. Now this sounds easy but you’ll be challenged daily by external forces such as family, friends,  media and advertising telling you that you’re not worthy until you have what they think is important.

Fighting these external forces is tough and you’ll often find yourself second guessing your self-worth because you begin to assess your value through the eyes of others. And you begin to measure yourself against other people.

The first steps to improving your self-worth are to stop tying your self-worth to possessions and to stop comparing yourself to others. Comparing yourself to others is not only destructive but it doesn’t make logical sense since each individual is made from a totally different set of DNA.

When you find yourself questioning your self-worth, challenge your inner thoughts, see yourself for who you are and commit to appreciating who you are and what you have.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

A Good Person

Are you a good person?

Recently I was at dinner with a friend and she shared that she was interviewing her grandmother and one of her questions to her grandmother was ‘do you have any advice for your grandchildren?’ And her grandmother had one answer, be a good person.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard this, especially from people that are in the later years of their lives. The people that have lived the longest seem to realize that in the end once you strip away all the titles, money, awards and material possessions very little really matters except being a good person.

So what if you start off with the end in mind of being known as a good person? What if you made that your guiding light? How would you live your life? How would you priorities change? Would you behave differently?

Being a good person is a broad definition and can mean different things to people, however there are some key characteristics that most can agree on.  If being a good person is important to you then start working on the behavior that will result on you being a known as a good person.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Need or Want?

What are the things in life you need and what the ones you want? Finding a balance between the two can be challenging especially if you have trouble differentiating wants and needs.

Food/water, shelter and clothing were at one time considered basic needs and more recently sanitation, education and healthcare were added to the list. Now each one of these categories is vast and can span the spectrum from very basic to highly sophisticated.

Differentiating between a need and want can be tricky because the language seems to be interchangeable and external influences often lead you to believe that wants are needs.  The key is for you to use the language correctly.

Having wants is good in that it can push you and motivate you towards certain goals. But just remember that because you want something doesn’t mean you need it.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Why am I trying?

Have you ever asked yourself, why am I even trying? Why am I even trying to be happy, lose weight, earn more money, be in a relationship, build a business or any other endeavor?

The why am I trying question usually arises when whatever you’re attempting to do seems impossible. Or when you think it’s just way too hard to continue.  And it can be a very valid question. And in the question lies the answer. It’s in the ‘why?’

What is your motivation for trying? What will you gain, what will you become if you succeed and will you be strong enough and willing enough to pay the price?

Defining your reasons for why to start and also re-examining your why while you’re on your journey will help you decide if you should continue. The majority of people that quit going after what they want is because they stop asking why.

Keep your why in front of you. Read it or see in on a regular basis so that when things do get difficult you will know why you are trying.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Practice makes You

What do you think of when you hear the word practice? Do you think of athletes, musicians, perhaps religion or some other activity that requires repeated attention in order to improve? And you would be correct, but what about you? What do you practice?

When you see an athlete or performer practicing they are engaging in an intentional activity to improve their ability to perform. The same applies to you except you’re usually thinking or doing without being intentional, because it’s just how you are. Or is it?

When an athlete sees that something is no longer working for them they work to change to it, they practice something new. What about you?

Every behavior you perform on a regular basis regardless of it being positive or negative is a practice. It’s just that you don’t view it as practice or re-affirming, you just see it as who you are. The reason the athlete is motivated to change their behavior and practice something new is because their livelihood depends on it. The same should apply to you too, because ultimately your life depends on it.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Be Sad

Be sad. That’s right, be sad, embrace your feeling of melancholy and give yourself permission to explore why you’re feeling sad.

With so much focus on being happy, sadness is shunned as a bad emotion. However, as a human you’re designed to feel sadness. The key is how you deal with it.

Any emotion, positive or negative, requires a high level of effort and energy to maintain over a long period of time because you are constantly looking for reasons to justify feeling the emotion, to validate your feelings.

Don’t be afraid of sharing that you’re feeling sad. Those that really care for you will understand and you’ll also give them permission to share when they’re feeling sad too.

While experiencing sadness is part of part of life, you do not need to dwell on it. Experience it, understand it, and then re-focus on the things that do make you happy and that you are grateful for. Allowing yourself to feel the range of emotions that you were made to feel is an integral part of the human experience.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Wish others happiness

Do you spend any of your time consciously wishing others well? Wishing them happiness and sending them good thoughts? Or are you so focused inward that the well-being, happiness and success of others never crosses your mind?

Wishing others happiness is not a natural behavior for everyone, but it can be learned with practice. I know you might be thinking ‘what if someone has done something to hurt or betray you, how can you wish them happiness?’ And this is a valid question. But how much time and energy can you spend being upset with them and what was your role in the situation?

Wishing others happiness can actually improve how feel about yourself because it shifts your mind, even if temporarily from thinking about your own problems and challenges.  Practice today to send thoughts of happiness to people you know and random strangers and experience how it changes your day.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Unlimited Resources

 

If you had unlimited time, money and energy what would you do with your life? Would you really be motivated to do anything productive?

Working within resource constraints naturally forces you to be more creative. It pushes your mind to find new and unique ways to produce results. Nature itself is designed to work and produce against constrained conditions and the strongest of any species are those that learn to adapt and thrive with limited resources.

Nothing you need to or want to start doing requires unlimited resources; in fact having limited resources forces you to be more resourceful.  Whatever you want to do, start today and remember, the only place you need to have unlimited resources is in your mind.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Superpower

What is your super power? The thing that you are so good at that you always feel confident when you do it? The skill that when you look back on your life you know you could always rely on?

If you don’t know, or are not sure what your super power is then think of a time when someone asked you ‘how do you that? You’re so good at that? Or, ‘that comes so easily to you? These are all clues to what your super power is. You can also think about activities that you really enjoy doing, productive activities that you would do for free.

Once you identify your super power then you can learn to nurture and grow it. You can design your life around it. You can find roles or jobs that leverage your inherent talent and when you do you will ultimately do and feel better.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Break your routine

Break one of your routines today. Choose one thing you do every day and change it just for today. It doesn’t have to be huge change; in fact it can be a small as using a different cup for coffee, using the opposite hand to brush your teeth or sitting somewhere else at work. Just something that feels a little different.

Making a small change to a routine will engage a different part of your brain and spark new connections. You’ll see the world differently and experience different emotions.

Breaking a routine can be a great gateway for creating new habits. It can give you the courage to eventually make bigger more drastic changes because you learn to get comfortable with change. Try it today, because you have nothing to lose. If you don’t like the change you can always go back to your routine.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

The idea of

Do you like the idea of being happy?

Do you like the idea of being healthy or the idea of being wealthy?

The idea of being in a relationship or any other endeavor?

I was taking a walk yesterday morning and saw a man walking a large black and white Old English sheepdog. Now if you’ve ever seen one of these dogs you know that they are beautiful and for a quick minute my mind wandered to the idea of owning such a dog. But very quickly I realized that I liked the idea, but not the work and maintenance that’s required in owning one.

Falling in to the trap of liking the idea of something is very easy to do because your mind rushes to the end product, the picture of how your life would look. And there’s nothing wrong with imagining how you want your life to look. In fact it’s the starting point of all great journeys.

The key is to realize that every end product, every idea and dream realized is going to take a lot of work and very often more work than you realized. It’s going to take work to start, to continue and to maintain and just liking the ‘idea of’ will not get you there

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Commit to Yourself

This is a very special blog post for a couple of specific reasons.

First is that it will be my last entry for 2016 and second is that it is a ‘makeup’ post.

What I mean by a makeup post is that on January 4th 2016 I committed myself to writing a minimum of 100 words 3 times a week. And the result of my commitment is that over the course of the year I have written 155 blog posts and 34,000 words. However, I have a confession to make.

On Monday July 4th I did not write a post because I was travelling. And the fact that I didn’t has been nagging me all year.

Now you may say that, it’s only one post and perhaps I should focus on the accomplishment and I would agree with you. However, I also know that this kind of thinking is a slippery slope. It’s like a cheat day when on a diet that turns into a cheat week and eventually… well you get the idea.

So in the spirit of my make up, I now ask you. What did you commit to but didn’t’ stick with that is still nagging at you? Why did you stop? And if it’s still nagging at you, how can you start again?

Let’s both take an oath together to stick to our commitments. Not only the commitments we make in public but to the ones we make to ourselves.  To see our commitments through and, if stuck then reach out for help. And if we falter or slip, not quit but forgive ourselves, do a makeup and re-commit.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

You don’t have to

Do you believe that you have to behave the way you do?

That you have to respond and react the way you do? And that there’s no other way for you?

Do you have to yell at your spouse or children when you are upset?

Do you have to eat the unhealthy food because it’s there in front of you?

Do you have to check your email or social media one more time just in case you miss something?

Do you have to have wander aimlessly through life being the victim of your circumstances?

Do you have to…fill in your own have to.

If you believe that you have to do any of the items above then you fallen in to a trap. Because everything you see listed there is something you learned to do. At some point in your life you adopted a mindset or a behavior because you thought this is how I need to behave. But you don’t have to. You choose to.

If you want to act a certain way then at least own the behavior and don’t blame it on have to. And when you do step up and own your behavior is when you have the opportunity to change it… if you choose to, but you don’t have to.

Posted on by Raj Daniels

Time for You

Do you schedule time with yourself to do the things are important to you?

Or do you rely on an ad hoc; I’ll just get to me when I can system?

Giving all your time to your work and family might seem noble at first, however it will cause you to feel out of control and over time build up feelings of resentment for both.

Prioritizing a little of your time for yourself lets you know that you too are important and that you’re not just living a reactive life. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, even a few minutes a day can make a big difference to how you feel.

Look at your calendar today and schedule a few minutes for yourself tomorrow and treat that time just as you would any other appointment.