Why do I say that? Because I was so taken by her that I started noticing other people around the same age. Most of them had a sour expression on their face and looked much older. I saw her walk and she had a slight limp, but it didn’t seem to slow her down. Others I watched had various difficulties, but the all looked to be in much more misery than she did.

What’s this got to do with me?

Well, I’ll ask you what your demeanor is like. Are you happy and upbeat, like this receptionist or are you grumpy and sour like so many others I saw? How do you feel; physically and mentally? Do other people like to be around you? Do you like to be around other people?

You have the choice to be happy or not. The decision to put a smile on your face and make the most of the day is yours. No one else can tell you how to feel. If you are happy and upbeat, it will be hard for others to bring you down, although it can happen after some time. If you are down, it will take someone else quite a while to bring you back up.

How do I change my mood? There’s nothing to be happy about!

I have no doubt that things can be bad for you. The questions is, what good is it doing you to be down. I don’t care if you are dying of some incurable disease, being depressed and down or worse yet, angry, is not doing you any good at all! Some studies actually show that it is doing you harm!

I can’t tell you how to change your mood other than to just decide to not be down, but to be happy. I have battled a negative grumpy demeanor my whole life so I know it is not easy. I also know that it is as easy as making the decision and putting a smile on your face, even if it is forced at first.

Yeah, but how do I really do this?

There is a great book out called How We Choose to Be Happy: The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People–Their Secrets, Their Stories
It is about studies done on “happy” people and what makes them that way. The book says that they found a strong relationship to happiness and health, happiness a wealth, happiness and success. I suppose that you can do this on your own, but this book seems to be a good one to reference! If you really want to become like the receptionist I met, like the people in How We Choose to Be Happy: The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People–Their Secrets, Their Stories, then this is the book for you. It is am easy read and you will find yourself wanting to be like some of the people it describes!

P.S. Here’s another one! How to Be Happy, Dammit: A Cynic’s Guide to Spiritual Happiness. I’ve not read it, but I like the title!

Are you ready to die now?

Come on! Are you really saying that you are ready to die and you are looking at end of life decisions? I’m not saying you shouldn’t think about it now and then, but should it rank above decisions about how to live?

As I sat out on the deck today, eating lunch and listening to an on line webinar of Lynn Terry’s Elite Forum, I was thinking how nice it was to be in that place at that time. What were you doing at lunch today? If your day was terrible, you might have been thinking about end of life decisions, but I hope and pray that it wasn’t that bad! You were probably wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else, but that’s it!

Do you see what I am saying? You were thinking about life and how you could live it better, how you wanted to live it differently. You were wishing that you could be home, or traveling, or going to the circus, anything other than where you were, but it was all living stuff! You are not in the same crowd as those who search the internet thinking about the end of their life!

Where would you like to be a year from now?

Would you like to be vacationing on some tropical beach? How about sitting in a little cafe somewhere, enjoying a cup of coffee? Wherever it is you would like to be, can you imagine really being there? You can you know. I mean if you wanted to be somewhere very far away that would cost a lot of money and you don’t have any saved up, it might be a stretch, but more than likely it is possible.

What would it take to make that dream come true? What would you have to do to start living the dream you have? For most of us it takes a little thought and some planning, but that is it! It doesn’t take an act of God or winning the lottery to make many dreams a reality.

Where would you like to be right now?

Here is where we start thinking about living and not about dying. You think about living the life you want and where you want to be in life. It might mean changing some things in your free time or it might mean making some major changes. Whatever it is, the decision to live and stop dying a little each day is just that a decision! What will you do about it today?

P.S. Here’s a great book with an appropriate title! 1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler’s Life List

This book is available in Kindle Too! Don’t have a Kindle!!?? Well! Kindle Review: this thing rocks!

A positive thinking definition!

By positive thinking, I do not mean some airy fairy, make a wish upon a star, type of thing. Your money concerns are real. No amount of wishing is going to make them better! What I mean by positive thinking is looking at your situation realistically and thinking of ways that you can turn them around so that the results are more positive for you. Let me give you an example.

Let’s say that you have a home phone, a mobile phone, and high speed internet, all from the same provider. It is costing you a bundle to have all this and you need to cut it down. As you investigate, you find that you could disconnect your house phone, keep the internet, and increase your usage minutes on your mobile phone and still save twenty dollars a month. Is it a fortune? No. Is it a start, yes! If you saved the twenty over a year it comes to two hundred and forty dollars. Still not a fortune, but could you use two hundred and forty dollars?

This is looking at the situation and thinking in such a way that the results are positive.

Two hundred and forty dollars is not making you rich?

I know. That was just an example. Let’s look at some other things. Could you refinance your house? Mortgage rates are way down. You have a car payment from buying a car just before the recession got really bad and it is killing you. Can you get a home equity loan on your house? The interest can be used on your taxes at the end of the year. The car payment can’t!

Have you thought about starting a little part time business from your home? Maybe you would like to do gardening for others. There are lots of people who have had to increase their hours at work and no longer have time to keep up the yard. Could you do it for them and make it reasonable enough that they could afford it and you would still make some money? Maybe you could do something online.

What hobbies do you have that might be turned into something that makes a little pocket change? If you are like many people, you don’t really need a lot, just a few hundred a month would make a huge difference!

What’s the point?

The point here is that if you use positive thinking to look at your situation instead of wringing your hands and deciding that you will live the rest of your life under a bridge, you will be able to come up with ways to ease the pain. You don’t have to start a business making a million dollars, just enough to take off the pressure. You don’t have to give up your cable, your phone, every amenity you enjoy, just juggle them a bit to come up with a little extra cash.

Don’t get caught up in negative thinking and make your life miserable. Use positive thinking and start your financial recovery!

P.S. I mentioned making money online. Here is a book rated four and a half stars that could help you if you wanted to try your hand. The Recession-Busting Guide To Making Money Online From Home

P.P.S. I am not a financial adviser or counselor. If you are in serious financial stress, you should seek professional help!

Do you change your life, or your thoughts?

In my experience, you can’t do one without the other. You cannot change your life to be anything other than what it always has been if you never change your thinking.

If you always think what you’ve always thought,
You will always do what you’ve always done.
If you always do what you’ve always done,
You will always get what you’ve always got.
If you always get what you’ve always got,
You will always think what you’ve always thought.
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It is a vicious cycle, but it is true! Nothing changes without your thoughts changing!

As we get older, we tend to think in patterns that are well established. The unfortunate thing about that is that these patterns may not serve us all that well. In fact, they may be down right detrimental to the life we desire to live.

What is it you would like to change? What are your thoughts about it? What do you think about when you think about that subject? If you can clearly listen to your thoughts, you may see patterns that stop you from doing the things you want and getting the things you desire.

Join me in changing your thoughts. Join me in this great adventure that is just unfolding. Join me in finding the way to change your thoughts and change your life!

Change Your Thoughts

P.S. Dr. Wayne Dyer has a book called Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. It is rated four stars and Dyer did a public TV show based on the book.

Yesterday, I took a day off to prioritize things in my life. I wanted to look at where I am compared to what I want in life. The interesting thing was that I am only short of a couple of things. I am pretty much where I want to be. I want to do the things I want to do. My suggestion to you is to do what you want.

Woohoo! I Can Do Anything!

Okay, look, you can’t rob a bank and run down the street naked. Well, you can’t rob a bank. Let me know where you are going to do the other and I’ll be there to watch what happens!

What I mean is that you should live life according to what you want out of it. You should do the things you want and live how you want. If you don’t, at least to some degree, your life will be unhappy at best.

Just to give you a real simple example, I wrote that I wanted to do my yoga practice because I wanted to, not because I felt I had to. When I read back over that, I realized that the only difference was attitude, mind change. I could do what I wanted or I could do it because I felt I had to. It was just attitude. Do what you want can mean nothing more than the right attitude.

How Do I know What I Want?

I suggest you take time like I did and just write down on a piece of paper what it is you want from life. Be as detailed as you possibly can.

Write down what your perfect day looks like. Imagine waking up and what you will wear, what you will eat and what happens as the day progresses. Again, get detailed. The better you can see it, the better you can understand it.

Read back over what you have written, not just then, but over the next couple of days. This will help it to really sink in.

Do this as a monthly habit, or how ever often you feel you need to. Don’t let it go too long! For one thing, it is easy to forget as you get caught up in life. Also, things change! What you want today may not be the same as what you want next month. You may achieve something and need to look forward to something new.

What If What I Want Doesn’t Match With Someone Else?

This is something you will have to decide. If your life is miserable because a relationship is not right, then you have two basic choices. You either change what you want or you change the relationship.

This may sound selfish, but can you live your whole life in a relationship that is unhappy? My grandmother lived in a relationship with a man who was one of the most miserable human beings to ever draw breath. She was not strong enough to leave him even when he molested his own daughters and beat his wife. Thank God he died fairly young!

Leaving him would not have been selfish; it would have saved her daughters and herself.

We all choose the life we life to a great extent. We may not control the circumstances, but we do control our thoughts and actions in relation to them. What do you choose? I say, do what you want!

Here’s to You!

P.S. Here are a couple of excellent book on getting what you want!
Get What You Want!: Workbook to Reactivate Your Passion for Life, Find Your Purpose and Achieve Your Dreams

How to Get What You Want

7 Tips To Be More Productive

You can be more productive!

You can get more done in a much shorter amount of time!

Spend more time with those you love!

Take that long deserved vacation!

Make more money!

I struggled for a long time with being unproductive. I would fool around and do whatever it took to avoid doing anything. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really do this on purpose. I mean I didn’t do it consciously! That’s why I came up with a system that taught me how to be more productive.

If I had been born thirty years later, I would have been diagnosed with adhd I am sure. Instead they just said I was a pain in the classroom, and other anatomical places, and wouldn’t pay attention.

I took all I read and everything I tried that worked and put it together in this report! I want to share it with you so that you can do more and be more! This isn’t some hyped up version of “set a goal,” but something that works for me. I am using it now as I write this post!

“7 Tips To Be More Productive” Will teach you how to avoid distractions and get things done in much less time that it normally takes! I don’t know about you, but that was a biggie for me!

Here’s just one simple thought.

What is your motivation for doing what you want to do? No motivation, no completion! If you are just doing it because your boss said so, you may never get done, or at least not and enjoy it! change your motivation and you change the entire task!

If you are serious about wanting to be more productive, then it’s time do something about it! Putting off those things that will help you be more successful is not going to get you anywhere! You must act if you want things to change.

Grab your copy of “7 Tips To Be More Productive” here

Here’s to You!

Disclaimer! There are no typical results! Everyone is unique. How the system in this report affects your productivity is up to you and the way you use it. If you download it and let it sit on your computer, you will get absolutely nothing out of it. If you use it to the best of your ability, you will be more productive. How much is anybody’s guess!