What do you do when things don’t go as planned?

Do you panic?

Do you complain?

Do you give up?

Or do you buckle down and make a new plan?

Hardly ever have you heard of any personal or professional endeavor executed precisely as planned. In fact, more often than not, you’ll hear people say they had to correct course, improvise, or, in extreme situations, throw out the plan and create a new one.

Probably the only time you’ll experience or hear things going exactly as planned is on a production line where machines have been calibrated as tightly as possible and seldom involve human interaction.

Planning provides you with an estimation and rough roadmap that might help you achieve your goals, but planning doesn’t guarantee success.

Since things rarely go as planned, it doesn’t mean that planning is a waste of time. Planning allows you to think out loud. It enables you to think through and account for all the possible known impediments and perhaps even imagine some unknowns.

The experience of things not going as planned is not unique to you. So when things don’t go as planned, and you feel like giving up, hug yourself, say a few encouraging words, and then put your pen to paper and create a new plan.

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Have you ever heard of Slick Willie Sutton?

If yes, then good for you, but if you haven’t, no need to worry because I’m about to tell you who he was.

Slick Willie Sutton, aka Willie Sutton, was a bank robber who committed most of his crimes in the early 1900s.

So, what does a bank robber have to do with you?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

One day, a reporter asked Slick Willie why he robbed banks, and rumor has it that he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Read that last line again.

That makes sense, right?

He went to where he would find what he was looking for because he had asked the right questions.

What are you looking for? And are you asking the right questions and searching in the right places for the answers?

Or are you practicing the Streetlight effect?

What is the Streetlight effect?

Here you go.

The Streetlight effect

A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “this is where the light is”

While this is an amusing story, it drives home the point about looking in the right place and not where it’s easiest.

So when you’re out looking for solutions to problems or challenges, make sure you’re more like Slick Willie, asking the right questions, and less like the drunk who lost his keys.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

What if the way you think about another person were actually thoughts that redirected back to you?

Just like a well-thrown boomerang, your launched thought is now circling right back towards you.

If you believe that we’re all connected and originate from the same source, then technically, this is true.

Whenever you think negatively or positively about someone else, you’re thinking the same thing about yourself.

This doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t feel emotions when people behave a certain way because emotions are part of the human experience and add color to your life. What I’m talking about is more along the lines of conscious thinking.

When you’re going through your day and thinking about people, what do you say about them in your mind?

You know, when you’re in that moment when you conjure up a name in your mind, and you say they are…-that’s the instant.

That’s your opportunity right there.

That’s the moment when whatever you’re about to say about them – you’re about to say about yourself?

Is it possible or realistic to only have good thoughts about other people?

I can’t answer that for you.

But why not give it a try?

Ultimately, you can consider it a selfish act because those good thoughts are boomeranging back to you.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

How often do you argue with yourself?

If it’s never, then perhaps you should think about doing so.

And I don’t mean argue with yourself out loud because you might run the risk of being locked up.

What I’m talking about is getting in the habit of opposing one of your beliefs, ideas, or thoughts.

Taking the opposite side can give you a glimpse into why others don’t agree with you or see the world the way you do. It can also help you validate ideas more effectively.

In business, there is a concept of pre-mortem, which is very helpful for developing or inspiring new ideas. The objective of the pre-mortem is to explore reasons why a business might fail. The pre-mortem shines a light on potential challenges and hurdles and develops preparedness to address issues should they arise.

There is also a concept of red teaming. Red teaming is similar to a pre-mortem, except, in this case, a team of individuals takes an adversarial stance against an organization to expose vulnerabilities.

You can use either one of these tactics on your own beliefs and ideas.

Being open to being wrong is one of the keys to personal growth. The fact is, you will never have all the correct answers, and when you learn to accept this, your mind will be open to new ideas and options.

So, learn to argue against yourself. It will help you defend what you genuinely believe and enable you to discard ideas that are holding you back. 

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

Which one of these are you going to choose to believe?

Everything you worry about comes true.

Or.

Nothing you worry about comes true.

The first one is the rock. It offers you anxiety, stress, and tension.

The second one can be your soft place. It offers you comfort, relief, and solace.

These might not look like options you have, but they are.

Your default state is probably the first choice because that’s where most are programmed to live, but you can choose to reprogram yourself.

Some might say that choice number two is too Pollyanna-ish for them. They might be accurate, but the act of worrying doesn’t actually solve any problems either.

Not worrying is not the same as not acting or not preparing. In fact, it could be considered quite the opposite. If it helps you, write down the things you’re worried about, not so you can focus on them but to get them out of your head.

Carrying around constant anxiety about things that might never occur will eventually become exhausting, and it will take a toll on you and those around you.

So it’s up to you to make a choice between the rock and the soft place.

Neither is right or wrong, but one of them will allow you to enjoy the moments in your life a little more.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

Do you know what cartography is?

It’s the science or practice of drawing maps.

The famous explorers Lewis and Clark drew some of the earliest maps of the United States. In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned them to map the newly acquired western half of the North American continent.

How useful do you think those maps would be today?

There might be a handful of landmarks, such as rivers or perhaps a large mountain range, that still exist, but the landscape would look totally different for the most part.

Maps must be continuously updated, especially in rapidly changing environments. Even a map that is only a few years old can be outdated.

What about maps that seem to misrepresent?

The most popular world map used today is the Mercator map. The way this map is presented leads you to believe that the sizes of Europe and North America are more extensive than they are, and “visually speaking, Canada and Russia appear to take up approximately 25% of the Earth’s landmass when in reality they occupy a mere 5%.”

What if the map you’re using to guide your life is outdated or, even worse, misrepresents the truth?

What if you have unquestioningly adopted practices and patterns of thinking without updating them for the environment and time you’re living in?

Learn to question the maps you’ve been given and taught. Don’t fall for the ‘it’s always been this way.’ And remember, even when you have an up-to-date map, it only provides you with the layout of the land. It doesn’t show you all the impediments you might encounter on your own personal journey, and it doesn’t teach you how to handle them. To do that, you’ll have to create your own map. 

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

What are the first words you say every morning?

Do you welcome the day with joy?

Do you express gratitude for being awake?

Do you tell someone you love them?

Or.

Do you mutter and grumble about having to wake up?

Or.

Do you ignore the first words you use to start your day?

Starting your day by expressing gratitude and love for yourself and others can set the tone for your entire day.

Your words are not a panacea and don’t make challenges and problems disappear but serve as a reminder that, just for that moment, all is okay.

It takes less than a minute to set your day or the day of someone you love on a positive course, so why not make the effort to do so?

If saying positive words out loud feels a little awkward at first then you can start by thinking of them aloud in your head, or even just whispering them, so only you can hear them.

The best part of starting your day with words of gratitude and love for yourself and others is that it sets your frame for how you see yourself and the person you’re thinking of.

Start your day tomorrow with beautiful, positive words for yourself and others. Practice it for a week and see how you feel.

What have you got to lose? If it doesn’t change anything, you can always go back to grumbling and muttering.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

Look around.

What do you see?

Almost everything you see is a solution to a problem.

Your clothes, devices, home, transportation, and much more are solutions to problems.

You might think and, to some extent, falsely believe that all the big problems are solved.

True, but also not true.

You see. The problems were solved with the ideas and technology available at that time.

And some were solved a very long time ago.

So now all you have is opportunities.

The million, if not billion, dollar question you should ask yourself is, if I had to solve this problem today, how would I do it?

Make it a game.

Identify a few items in your life that you use frequently and try to develop ideas on improving or rebuilding them.

Research new materials and manufacturing techniques and see what you can find.

Business and work is all about solving problems. Businesses are often created because an individual solves a problem for themselves, and others say they would pay for the same solution.

So, get in the habit of looking at things not only in their current form but also from a perspective of how a problem was solved and how it could be improved. Who knows what problems you might solve with the great ideas you’ll come up with?

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

Congratulations!

You’ve made it to the top of the food chain.

You’ve out-evolved every other animal.

So, how does it feel to be on top?

What are you going to do with all your power?

Will you use your power to do wonderful things for yourself and others?

Or will you squander it by cowering at every opportunity and playing small?

You have no idea how powerful you are. And I don’t mean in the sense of raw brute strength. Even though, many people do underestimate their physical limits, even when it comes to pure strength.

You have the power to build, create, heal, invent, and live your life every day, tapping into your unlimited reservoir of power if you choose to.

Or you can trudge through life as though you’re powerless, which can also be true if you believe it to be. But to believe you’re powerless, you really have to put your head down, turn a blind eye, and ignore all that’s been built and accomplished by others who were and are just like you.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. You can refuse to accept that you are indeed powerful or embrace your power and live magnificently. Whatever you choose will be the truth.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

Are you ever amazed by what you can do?

Just think for a moment about everything you’re capable of doing.

I’ll help you out a little, just in case you’re struggling.

You can use your imagination to create an entirely new universe filled with characters and scenes that have never existed, and you can do this all inside your mind, no matter where you are. Science hasn’t yet proven that animals are capable of doing the same.

With enough resources, you can travel almost anywhere in the world. And if you choose to, you can get there by sitting in a metal tube that hurtles your body through time at over 500mph.

With the press of a button, you can use a device to speak to or even see another human being almost anywhere in the world.

Do you consider any of these things I’ve listed to be amazing?

Or do you take them for granted?

Young children make great role models and mentors for learning to live in awe because they haven’t yet transitioned from seeing the world as miraculous to becoming mundane.

 I’m not suggesting that you spend your days walking around with your mouth open in awe at every experience, although that would make for an interesting sight.

I am suggesting that you pause on occasion to appreciate all the amazing things you can do, both inside your mind and in the world around you. And live a little in awe. Your inner child will thank you for it.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

When was the last time you just sat still?

No books, computers, phones, TV, or anyone else around you. Just you sitting still, alone with your thoughts, allowing your mind to digest, format, and process everything around you.

Skipping from one input source or task to another doesn’t give your brain time to absorb all the information it’s exposed to, and even more important, it doesn’t get any rest.

And it doesn’t allow you to think and integrate ideas.

Thinking is one of the most essential gifts humans have, yet it is often underutilized.

Decisions are made on the fly, between events and tasks, because there’s always the next thing to move on to.

But it doesn’t always have to be like that.

You can create space for yourself to sit and think.  

It doesn’t have to be hours of sitting. Just a few minutes between activities is enough to provide a brief reset so you can move to the next input feeling refreshed.

Give yourself the permission and the pleasure of learning to sit still.

Your mind will be grateful to you for taking it off the constant-activity treadmill for a few moments of rest.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

Do you have your auto-translate turned on?

You know, the one that takes words that people say to you and then gives them your meaning?

Your auto translate that says to you, hmmm, what did they mean by that?

You’ve probably been caught on the other end of someone else’s auto-translate – and you’ll know this because you’ll find yourself saying something like, that’s not what I meant, or that’s not how I meant it.

You see, what you hear is not always what’s being said.

In fact, many times, you’ve attributed meaning to a situation even before you’ve heard all the words.

This can be very problematic, especially if you tend to be of a defensive nature.

Your habit of giving meaning to words is deeply ingrained because you probably learned to do so at a very young age.

The environment you grew up in taught you a lot about words, but because you learned it doesn’t mean it was necessarily true. And what you learned is now very hard to unlearn.

But you can try, on occasion, to put your auto-translate on pause.

Let the words come at you, and hear them for what they are: sounds bouncing off your eardrums that you give meaning to.

Don’t forget, the next time you catch yourself saying, that’s not how I meant it; you’ll wish the person you’re speaking to would do the same for your words, too.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

When was the last time you behaved childishly?

Why is the phrase ‘you’re being childish’ a bad thing?

What’s wrong with being childish?

Being childish is beautiful.

It’s untainted.

It’s looking at the world with awe.

It’s fresh and uncalcified.

It’s innocent.

It’s curious.

It’s full of endless possibilities.

Somewhere inside you, a childish part of you is waiting for the opportunity to express itself.

It’s just waiting to have its Peter Pan moment.

Getting older doesn’t mean you have to rid yourself of your childish qualities. Even though your responsibilities change, you can still be in awe and wonder, and you can still believe in endless possibilities.

Let your inner child come to life again.

Not the version that was told by adults how it should be and behave, but the one that was the purest and most authentic version of you. 

It was the original you.

Remove some of the masks you’ve had to layer on with time and find that original childish version of you again.

Just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you must always act and be ‘old.’

And one last thing

Tag you’re it 🙂

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, please tag one person you love.

How do you entertain an unwanted thought?

Do you welcome it?

Do you allow it to make itself at home?

Some thoughts are like unwelcome guests.

They’re rowdy, make a mess, and show no appreciation for your hospitality.

In fact, all they do is cause you to feel grief and discomfort.

And yet you allow them back in.

But you don’t have to.

Just like the unwanted guests, you can choose not to allow disempowering thoughts to get back into your mind.

Or at least learn to evict them when they do show up.

If you had unwanted guests, the last thing you would want to do is feed them and make them comfortable, as this would only encourage them to stay longer.

The same applies to unwanted thoughts.

You can get into the habit of ejecting an unwanted thought by replacing it with a different one. You see, even though your mind is a very powerful tool, it can only hold one thought at a time.

Now you have a choice of which thought you want to keep.

With some practice, you can learn to replace negative thoughts with positive ones – if you choose to.

Or like the unwanted guests. You can leave your mind open to any thought that wants to enter and wreak havoc at will.

The thought you let in might not be up to you, but you can decide how long you want it to stay.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, do me a favor and share it with one person you love.

Newlyweds tragically killed in car crash.

Authorities say a new strain of COVID-19 puts millions of children at risk.

Banks threaten that a wave of foreclosures will ruin the housing market.

Stock market crashes.

Did you feel that?

The preceding headlines raised your blood pressure ever so slightly. Even worse, they tainted your mind for the entire day.

And yes, I apologize for doing so. But I’m trying to make a point.

I only wrote a few headlines.

How many negative headlines do you consume in a day?

Constant exposure to negative headlines is like allowing a boxer to jab at your brain relentlessly.

It will take its toll, especially if you begin your day with them.

You’re mistaken if you think reading the news or having the radio or TV playing in the background doesn’t affect you.

Your brain is always on and constantly scanning for information. And, due to an inborn survival mechanism, it will always seek out negative news first.

Ask yourself this question.

What would I miss if I didn’t hear or see the news for one day?

Or

What if I started my day with something positive and uplifting?

Would it change how you viewed the world?

I’m almost sure it would.

Yes, bad things are happening in the world, but most of them will not change your life.

So refrain from allowing headlines to color how you see the world, especially first thing in the morning. Your mind and your blood pressure will both be better off.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, please share it with one person you love.

You hear, but do you take time to listen?

You look, but do you take time to see?

You touch, but do you take time to feel?

You eat, but do you take time to taste?

Your senses connect you to the world and allow you to know and understand all that is going on around you.

Like most people, you probably take your senses for granted. And that’s understandable.

But what if, just once in a while, you stopped to appreciate them?

All the information you consume is sent to your brain through one or a combination of senses, and it’s only then that your brain can make decisions about what is best for you.

You can briefly focus on your senses by doing a quick sensory audit.

Go through each of your senses and, just for a moment, pay attention and experience each one.

Doing so will increase your awareness of your surroundings and allow you to be more present in what you’re doing.

Occasionally, grounding yourself through your senses is a beautiful exercise, almost like a brief reset in your day.

Your senses are your keys to the world.

Give them some attention and experience what they might unlock for you.

What will you do with your 26?

Will you malign or motivate?

Will you hate or love?

Will you create or destroy?

It’s almost impossible to comprehend the power behind the 26 building blocks of the English language.

Alone each letter seems powerless, just one small squiggle that is easily ignored. But when put together with thought and order, they have the power to set the world on fire.

If English is your first language, then each thought you express externally or internally is a collection of words built from these 26 blocks.

So, what will you do today with your 26?

I’m using mine to tell you how much I appreciate you.  And the world would not be the same without you.

What would the world look like if we all committed to a simple social agreement?

An agreement so simple we could all agree upon.

Well, at least most of us.

Okay, let’s narrow it down to just us.

You and me.

Are you in?

Here are the terms.

1. Make one person smile today. It doesn’t matter who it is.

It could be a co-worker, family member, friend, or even the cashier ringing up your groceries.

2. Think good thoughts about one person.

Again, it doesn’t matter who the person is.

3. Think of one good thought about yourself.

Yes, you are important too; you should know that about yourself. You’ve taken yourself for granted for way too long.

That’s it.

That’s the whole agreement.

It shouldn’t take more than a minute out of your entire day to execute all the items listed in the agreement.

Can I count on you to participate?

You can count on me.

Imagine what the world could look like if we all made a conscious effort every day to inject just a tiny amount of happiness into our lives and the lives of others.

I’m going to start by thinking a good thought about you.

Your car didn’t start?

You failed a test?

You were fired from work?

You had an accident?

Your heart was broken?

You lost a loved one?

You lost money?

You missed a flight?

Well, welcome to the club.

If you’ve experienced any of the above then you are member of the human club.

The fact is, difficulties and setbacks don’t just happen to you but also billions of other members.

The list you read is the shortlist. Many members have experienced and endured so much more.

I know when you joined the club, you weren’t told about all the things you might experience, but it’s because we didn’t want to scare you.

Now look at the list again.

Do you see the empty spaces between each question?

That’s where the beauty of life resides.

That’s where the fun happens.

And that’s what I want you to focus on.

That’s where your life will be moving along smoothly and you won’t realize it until you come up against the next challenge.

You will undoubtedly encounter challenges, but that’s the price of membership paid not just by you but by everyone around you.

However, if you can shift your focus from the price you pay to the benefits you get, and the moments you enjoy, then you’ll realize it’s well worth being a member of the club.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, please share it with one person you love.