Gratitude For Antagonists

I am friends with a young man named Rich. He suffers from depression and low-level paranoia. Although he lives in a safe neighborhood, he is certain that there are prowlers outside his home. Those thoughts keep him awake at night and I can’t but help wonder if part of the cause is a fear of antagonism – wanting life to be problem-free and these imaginary threats are a subconscious manifestation of that fight within himself. Rich is not alone: we all struggle with both real and imagined threats to our well-being.

These threats, which I’ll term as antagonists, are something that I am grateful for. I admit that on more than one occasion, I’ve wanted to run from the problems in my life. At the same time, it is not lost on me that such feelings are part of the fixed mindset, as set forth by Dr. Carol Dweck, as it is based on fear, self-imposed limitations, and maintaining the status quo. The issue is that when I focus on the negative, those thoughts multiply and loom in my mind. In my view, that much of what happens to me is a consequence of the thoughts that I think and the emotions that I feel on a regular basis.

The ironic thing is that antagonists are the source – or at least the catalyst of our greatest strengths. Although it is human nature to take the path of least resistance, it is also the path of least growth. Personal development comes from overcoming obstacles and tapping our inner reserves of strength to master the problems in our lives. Just as a person cannot gain strong muscles by doing easy exercise routines, we cannot grow by avoiding the antagonists in our lives. They must be faced and beaten or we will reinforce habits of fear and dodging that which challenges us, which in turn will keep us from achieving our goals and solidify a negativity-based mindset.

This is why for the antagonists in my life. I don’t seek out troubles. I have enough in my life without actively seeking them out. However, I am grateful for the opportunity to engage my positive mindset, to use creativity to solve any complications, and to practice personal courage and proactivity. Although it is a struggle for me, I know the reward is equal to – or greater – than the risk that the problem entails. My strength comes from the challenges that I seek, not in spite of them. There is no way around it. If I want personal strength, then I must stand up to the antagonists in my life and commit to doing my personal best.

Unfortunately, the mind latches onto negative emotions and thoughts more firmly that it does the positive. For me, this reinforces the need to start and finish the day on a positive note. I created a list of questions to ask myself at the beginning and end of each day. These questions are positive and success-minded. They are designed to put me in a resourceful mindset. I provide them in the hope that you will be inspired to come up with your own set of questions that will give you greater fulfillment in your life.

  1. What is great about today?
  2. What is my top priority for today?
  3. Who needs my help the most today?
  4. How can I best help them?
  5. What is my greatest obstacle today?
  6. How can I turn this obstacle into an advantage?
  7. What is my learning goal for today?
  8. How am I going to achieve that learning goal today?

Gratitude For Taste

I don’t know if I am alone in this or not – I love my sense of taste – and I don’t mean in fashion. That sense is near a zero. If my shirt and pants are similar shades, I’m good. No, what I am talking about is the literal sense of taste. Now, I admit there are many foods that don’t taste good or are acquired tastes (which indicates to me that the only reason people started eating them was because of a dare). Even still, I am grateful for the abundance of foods out there that taste fantastic and provide sustenance for me.

What I find interesting is that our sense of taste is something of a two-edged sword: it makes many foods enjoyable and desirable – and at the same time there are many foods that are unhealthy, but taste great. I suppose that this is like a large number of areas of life where we have activities and habits that appeal to us in the short term, but have long term consequences that we’d rather avoid. While it is true that many of the products that we consume are specifically engineered to taste good at the expense of our health, it is still our choice. Of course there are places where getting healthy food is harder – either through price or availability, but there is still the options to choose foods that taste good and are healthy over those that taste good and are not healthy.

So considering that our taste buds do not discriminate between healthy and unhealthy foods – what is their purpose? I say that our taste buds exist to get us to eat. We tend to do what gives us pleasure and avoid that which gives us pain. This is part of the habit loop – we repeat actions that give us some kind of benefit or reward. Even if the long-term effects of an action are negative, we will often still engage in the activity if the short-term benefits are enjoyable. However, survival does not seem to be a tangible reward: it is more of a state of being. Eating, especially pleasurable eating has two forces pulling us to a single destination – the experience of eating food that tastes good and the elimination of hunger pangs. I am grateful for this realization, as it reminds me that if I want to make improvements in my life, it is helpful if I find rewards that both pull me towards something that I want and push me away from something that I wish to avoid.

What is heartening to me in all of this is that my eating habits and even what I find pleasurable in eating is under my control. I can choose to eat foods that are healthy and taste good. The types of food that I keep in my home are going to be the foods that I eat. In a similar vein, how I represent those foods in my mind is going to play a significant part in whether I am able to enjoy them or not. It is entirely possible to hate sweet tasting fruit, by feeling that I have to have them – essentially resenting those foods and seeing them as holding me back – from enjoying a tasty, but calorie-dense snack.

How I represent those foods has a serious impact on how tasty the foods are. A grateful heart will be able to savor the taste of food more than a bitter heart.

Gratitude For Ego

According to psychologists, the ego is the part of the personality that handles the external world. To put it into context, Freud separated the personality into three parts: the ego, the id, and the superego. The id is the part of our nature that displays the impulses and unconscious desires, while the superego is our morality and ethics. I have to say that I am grateful for the role that the ego plays in my everyday life, as it is the primary way that I interact with others on a daily basis. Clearly the id and the superego (or the aspects of my nature that fit within those elements) affect my interactions with others, but I see them as parts of the ego, not independent of it. That is, these three parts of my personality are displayed both internally and externally in my life.

Out of these three aspects of the personality, the ego is the most discussed in society. What I find interesting is that it is used mostly in a negative context. Most often, when a person is spoken of as having an ego, it is equated with arrogance or overconfidence. We also have words like egotism, which are tied to selfishness or narcissism. Personally, I feel that this is a mistake and that we have done ourselves and society a disservice by putting this label on the ego. Instead, we should have gratitude and appreciation for the ego.

The reason is this: We live our lives mostly in our heads. From what I’ve read, we have an average of 50,000 thoughts a day and most of those thoughts are repeats of previous thoughts. We have a playlist on repeat and it never stops. The ego is that aspect of ourselves that takes the playlist and uses it to interact with the physical environment and other people. I am grateful that my ego is able to get out of the way enough that I am able to function in the physical world and have great relationships with other people.

In addition, it seems that to operate, the ego has to act by using a set of rules that I have put in place or my thoughts and actions would be completely random. The id and the superego have important parts to play in maintaining a balanced personality. I tend to think of it like a slow or pressure cooker. The heat of the cooker is the ego – the purpose of the device. The superego is the pressure aspect that keeps everything bottled up and the id is the release valve that activates before the stress becomes too great. These two parts of the personality keep the ego from making purely logical decisions, which is a good thing. We are emotional beings and our emotions reflect our beliefs and how we interpret the world. I am going to say that the purpose of the ego is to make decisions that satisfy both the id and the superego through the application of virtue.

What this means is that the ego produces its best work – making decisions that benefit the person – when it does so in alignment with positive virtues. That is to say, when I live according to my best self, my ego makes the best decisions that it is capable of. In neuro-linguistic programming, if I remember the concept properly, they say that we always make the best choices available to us. However, those that are in a poor mindset make poorer choices because they are limited in the amount of positive outcomes available to them. On the other hand, if I have a positive mindset, the potential for positive outcomes increases as I have more emotional and intellectual resources available to me. Virtue is the habitual application of a positive mindset.

This raises the question – how do I practice and habitualize virtue? It has to be more than thinking good thoughts. It requires action and sacrifice as well. If a billionaire sees a homeless individual on the street and gives the person ten dollars out of their pocket, it is different than if someone else who gives their last ten dollars to the same person. A person can think that they are virtuous, but without concrete action (and hashtag activism doesn’t count), then they are in fact, not virtuous. James Clear in his book Atomic Habits discusses the importance of starting small. I often think that I have to make huge investments of time and action – but that’s not true. Even if I have a goal to eat better and all I do at the start is add a serving of fruits or vegetables, not go all out and make a month-long meal plan and throw out all of the food in my house. Once the serving of fruit or vegetables is in place, then I can add to it. As far as I can tell, improving virtue works the same way. I choose a small act once a day, do the act, and repeat. It may be as simple as giving someone an honest complement every day. The key is to make it consistent.

I am grateful for this because it means that the focus of my ego, and by extension, my virtue, is under my control. If I want to be a more patient person, then I can make choices that reflect a patient nature. I use my ego to focus on the benefits of being patient and the hazards of being rash. As I focus on being patient, choosing options that reflect patience, and adopting a patient mindset, then I develop a more patient ego – that is, I see the world and interact with the world in a more patient manner and I have more of a reservoir of patience when tough times arrive.

Two techniques that I feel help me direct my ego in the way that will be the most beneficial to me are as follows. The first comes from an episode of London Real with Nir Eyal. He discusses what he calls the ten minute rule. If he feels an impulse to do something that may be detrimental, he sets a timer for ten minutes and puts off the action until the timer goes off. Usually, by that time the impulse has passed or no no longer has the strength that it once did. Essentially, it is procrastinating the activities that take my from my best self. The second comes from an episode of Impact Theory, where the guest was Brendon Burchard. He talked about having ten questions when he gets up in the morning that focus his mind on what he wants to achieve during the day. He also has another ten questions that he asks himself at the end of each day to evaluate how well he did in achieving his goals. Ten may not be the optimum number for you – but ask yourself questions each morning and evening about the person you want to be – are you taking steps to be that person – even if they are small steps?

If so, congratulate yourself and stay on the path. If not, now is a great time to start. Because if it isn’t now, when will you?

Gratitude For Journals

It doesn’t seem that journaling would be a hard thing. Look at any retail outlet with a stationary section, and note the journals and dairies available – hard covers, soft covers, post it sized pages, legal sized pages, and more colors than a psychedelic rainbow. Yet, for the life of me, I struggle to put down the events of my life in any meaningful way. However, this post is about four types of journals that I think that are meaningful and ones that I am grateful that we have – and why I think that they are important.

The top spot goes to the gratitude journal. Obvious, to be sure, considering the blog, but there are solid reasons why a gratitude journal is important. It can be combined with other journals and also as a way to get the brain moving as you consider what to record. This is the type of journal that I am the most consistent with. It doesn’t have to take up a lot of space, especially if you are in a hurry – three to five short lines will do the job well. The main point is to be grateful for the small and large things in life, not to write an essay. When I put the daily list in my journal, it’s usually the small stuff, like getting my exercise routine done, getting to work on time, having a great conversation with my wife. Small things to be sure, but important as well. Life is built on the small things and I think they need to be celebrated.

A second type of journal is the events journal, which is one of the more common types out there. In essence, I write down the events in my life. Now, depending on the event, I put down details about what happened, who they happened with, and any special meanings or consequences of the events. A day’s events can be short – a single sentence will do for most things. Also, if I am tired, I may just jot the bones of the event and hopefully come back to it the next day to flesh it out. Yet, if I don’t, then no stress. The important thing is to make it a habit and put down something. Also, if I worked on any goals, then I put down what I did and how far I got – although I often put any goal progress in my gratitude journal as I am grateful for any and all progress that I am making on a daily basis and I want to recognize that.

A third type of journal is the feelings journal. This is a more involved type of journal and the entries tend to be longer than the first two types. Here, the journal is about getting what’s in your heart onto the page. In a way, it’s like meeting with a therapist and sharing what is bothering you or what is making you feel great. It can be similar to a gratitude journal if you focus on positive emotions, such as the things that happen that make you happy. In any case, it’s great for getting feelings out that you have harbored within and are stagnating there. It also tends to combine several journal types together, including the two previous types mentioned above.

The fourth and final journal type that I am grateful for and has created value in my life is the roles-based journal. I got the idea when thinking about the scheduling method put forth in 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Dr. Stephen Covey. The basic premise was that we all have a number of roles that we play in life: employee/employer, father, mother, son, daughter, artist, reader, etc. My weekly schedule is based on the time during the week that each role takes up. The journal concept is that the journal entries are based on what happens during the blocks of time where I am fulfilling each role. This type of journal does pre-suppose that I am is making a schedule and working it as I run through the journal process. This method takes the most work, but also allows for the most personal development and feedback.

For myself, journals are primarily for me. I know that some people write them to one day share them with their children or close friends, but I see them as a way to learn from my own past – my mistakes as well as my successes. Events, as they recede into the past, become vague and I make mistakes about my recollection of them. By writing them down and how I feel about what occurred, it allows me to reflect on them in the future and remember the lessons learned and come to a greater understanding of my choices and how it has affected my life.

Gratitude For Christmas

For myself, the expectation of Christmas has changed over the years. When I was young, my brothers and I hardly slept. My parents gave up on sleep somewhere between five and six in the morning. Our present opening ritual ran from the youngest to the oldest, each opening their gift, while everyone else looked on and made appreciative noises. The next gift was not opened until the current object of attention had been given its full due. Still, as I participated in our family tradition, the focus was always on my next present and anticipating what it would be. As I have aged, I have shifted to giving – the receiving doesn’t excite me as it once had.

This change over the years has increased my gratitude for Christmas, even though I have received less. I am grateful for is the relationships that I have with my family. Not everyone is blessed enough to be born into a good family, but I was and I appreciate it immensely. Yet, most people have at least one person that they consider to be part of their circle of close family and friends. This is a special time of the year to reconnect and strengthen those bonds – a time unlike any other.

Love and connection are critical elements of having a life of gratitude. These characteristics are essential to being alive. Most, if not all personal development experts put love and connection as important elements of fulfillment and as a key motivational factors. I think one of the reasons for this is that love expands with use and it has an innate ability to attract other virtues to one’s life as well. People who express and demonstrate love also develop greater optimism, joy, enthusiasm, and zest for life. It sharpens the senses and makes people value their life and the lives of the people around them more.

Also I am grateful for the gift giving. As I mentioned before, I no longer look at the season as a time to receive. I don’t say that to receive attention, but more to recognize a change in mindset – I like the feeling of either making or buying a gift that I believe that the other person will enjoy. The price of the gift isn’t the issue either – I recently gave a book on personal development that I had bought second hand – and one that I treasured – as gift. My wish was that they’d get half as much out of it that I had – or more. Their improvement as a person, as great as they already were, was my only goal.

Lastly, I am grateful that Christmas is an excellent time to reflect on the past and to set goals for the upcoming year. This may be because it is naturally a time for introspection and gratitude and that lends itself to review and looking forward to the next twelve months. Many people tend to see the new year as the time to set goals, but new year’s resolutions have gotten a bad reputation. I remember reading a real life anecdote in Reader’s Digest some years ago that hit this home for me. The story told of a regular swimmer at their local YMCA who noticed that there was an increase in the number of people in the pool at the beginning of the year. The individual mentioned this to the lifeguard on duty. The lifeguard said, “These are people who made resolutions to be more active. They’ll be gone in a few weeks. ” A sardonic response to be sure, but it has the ring of truth.

For myself, one of the main reasons I don’t keep to my goals is that they aren’t rooted to solid anchors. Many experts talk about having a strong enough ‘why’ or going through an activity often called ‘the seven levels of why.’ Other people have gotten more out of those exercises than I have – perhaps because I didn’t anchor my why to specific virtues of the heart. After all, they are the motivations that speak most directly to the soul.

An alternative to this technique is something called future planning. I imagine that it is the end of 2020 and I am looking at what I was able to achieve during the course of the year, as well as what I was able to cut from my life. I then figure out how to put into practice the two or three goals that spoke the most to me. This includes the steps I need to take to make each goal a reality. I work out a schedule and include set timers on my phone to go off when I am to actively work on these goals. Even when it comes to eliminating activities, I still set times to engage in them, but I set limits for the duration of the activities, and have them decrease in duration over the course of weeks.

That way, when the Christmas of 2020 rolls around, I’ll have even more to be grateful for and more to celebrate.

Gratitude For Tears

Jim was reading in the living room when his younger daughter entered. She dropped onto the couch where he was sitting and let him know that his older daughter Diana lay in her room sobbing. Jim knocked on her door, but she didn’t want to talk. Earlier, after a miscommunication, he got after her, while he was in a fit of frustration. Later, her brother came in and chastised her for something else. The two events were more than she could bear and she fled to her room. Why should she be grateful for this burden put on her? What was great about this flow of tears?

The benefits of tears come from the reason behind them. There seems to be three main reasons why we cry. First, it is to dislodge particles or foreign objects in our eyes – such as a speck of dust or small motes in the air. Second, they may form in reaction to the environment, such as when we cut an onion. The third type is in response to an emotional event. While I am grateful for the biological reactions of the first two types of tears, I am especially thankful for emotional tears. Hopefully, I will be able to explain the why of it.

As I see it, emotional tears stem from two main sources: joy and loss. On the side of joy, I may shed tears when I have a high level of happiness for myself or for those I feel an emotional connection to – although I may not even know the person at all. A movie may show a protagonist struggling against enemies and obstacles as they work towards their main goal and when they have overcome all, I have to wipe the wet emotion from my face. Contrariwise to this, sadness, despair, and depression, which often entail some form of loss (real or perceived) also cause me to feel the effects of the situation. This is played up in stories and I often cry along with the characters as they experience their darkest moments.

Half of the reason that I feel gratitude for tears of joy is that they often come when I have gained something of value or I hear of another’s experience and it touches my heart because the experience is in line with one of my values. Often this happens when I hear of an example of selfless service. I am convinced that giving without a desire of reward is an expression of love of the highest order. Too often, my ego gets in the way of my giving and these stories are reminders that I can do and be better.

I am also grateful for tears from loss and fear as well. These two emotions come from a belief that something of value is being taken away. It is possible to say that there is no such thing as loss or gain, as all possessions, whether intellectual, emotional, or material are on a spectrum of ownership – some days I feel on top of my game and on others, it feels as if the world is out to sabotage me. However, nothing is static: it is all flux and change. The thing is that if I believe that I am losing value in an area of mylife, that is what makes the difference.

The other half of the reason that I am grateful for tears and crying is that they act as a release valve. While I know that there is some controversy on this, I think it is true for two reasons. First, the physical act – the sobbing, the shaking, and the physical crying becomes an like exercise for the emotions. Like a good workout, there is a sense of completion when it is over. The second reason is that I believe that tears act as a governor on my emotions. That is, they bring me back to a happy middle. They become a measure that the body has of keeping my emotions from entering too radical an extreme and bring them back into balance. That said, I don’t think there is anything wrong with feeling strong emotions and I need to feel deeply – just shouldn’t live there.

Gratitude For Worry

Jim watched as Jennifer talked to a co-worker. Jennifer talked softly with a soft inflection of humor. Jim thought it was curious and told another associate that when Jennifer talked to him, she spoke confidently with assertiveness – not with the humor that he noticed in the earlier conversation. A moment later he looked around and spotted Jennifer twenty feet away. He was sure that Jennifer heard his exchange and worried that she would take it the wrong way. He wasn’t sure if he should ask her if they were good or just leave well enough alone.

I am grateful for worry because it lets me know of the things that I care about. I can only worry about the things that I have an emotional connection to. It is the anticipation of loss and the warning system that lets me know of what is at stake. Worry only activates when there is something of value that is at risk and we are unsure of the outcome. There are many variables to everyday life and it is impossible to say with certainty what is going to happen. Of course, I can say what I believe is going to happen, but such statements are infused with assumptions and presuppositions that don’t always line up with the reality of the situation. Sometimes it is a wonder that anything I think is going to occur actually ever does.

Uncertainty happens to all of us and happens on a frequent basis, which causes worry – not the uncertainty itself – but what it represents: loss. This takes many forms, such as material goods, safety (ours or someone that we care about), our emotional state, or our relationships. Also, our egos may be on the line as well, as we may worry about what others will think of us, our ideas, and suggestion. In this case, the loss is one of influence with others.

Keep in mind that it isn’t the loss itself that sparks the worry, but the fear or the anticipation of it that causes the worry. To me, this indicates that worry is a reaction to my mindset and self-talk. If I maintain a positive mindset and I am focused on what I am going to gain from an event, then the amount of worry that I feel will be minimal, if anything at all. Those that think in positive terms are like cliff climbers that are focused on the next hand hold and the summit. Compare that to the negative mindset, where they are focused on the distant ground below, the pain and death that will occur if they fall, and so forth. In both cases, their exact location may be the same, but their ability to reach the peak will be very different.

So why am I grateful for worry? There are two reasons. First, worry tells me what I truly care about. Since I only worry about those people or events that I may experience loss with, it means that I worry that I may lose that which is dear to me. Sometimes this can come as a revelation – I didn’t realize that this thing had such a strong pull on my heart. This is important because anything that I care about, even if it is on a subconscious level, impacts my decisions and behaviors on a daily basis.

Second, All emotions exert energy – the more powerful the emotion, the more energy is created. It is primarily exhibited in my focus. This means that the more intense that I feel an emotion, the more focus I have on that emotion and what the emotion is centered on. Therefore, the more that I worry about something, the more energy I am creating from the worry and the more focus I am exerting on it to the exclusion of other events or priorities in my life. I have to decide if the effort of the expenditure is worth it.

One of the most effective ways to reduce worry and restore focus to positive emotions comes from Brendon Burchard and his book “High Performance Habits.” He talks about a technique called “release tension and set intention.” Although I strongly suggest reading the book to get the full description (there is also a youtube video on the practice as well), it essentially means breathing in through your diaphragm and breathing out through your mouth while saying “release” as you release the tension in your body. Once you feel that your tension is gone, then you address yourself in the third person, which psychologists cal and tell yourself what emotions that you want to feel. It is an excellent technique and one that I use at least four times a day.

Gratitude for Inspirational Quotes

Last week, at Thanksgiving dinner with my family, someone brought up Robin Hood movies and specifically the Costner version. One of my brothers quoted the cousin of the sheriff, who, after the sheriff threatened to gut a foe with a spoon, was asked by his henchman“Why a spoon, cousin?” I quickly responded, “Because it’ll hurt more, you twit!” Everyone at the table chuckled and talk tangented to Mel Brooks’ comedy “Robin Hood: Men In Tights.”

The reason that I bring up this incident, is to highlight that quotes add spice to conversations – they make us laugh, make us yearn, and make us think. These quotes are often concise, and their specific word order often has us wishing that we had been the ones to come up with the saying. They can be great fun to share with others, but there is a subset of quotes that I am particularly grateful for. These are inspirational quotes, which I take to mean quotes that stir the heart and make me want to act, to be better, and to propel me to action.

For this post, I am going to share five such quotes and why I am grateful for them.

  1. “Perfect is the enemy of done.”

I was attending an ESL (English as a Second Language) conference and the keynote speaker shared this quote and I wrote it down immediately. I have often been a victim of seeking perfection in my writing, abandoning projects because I felt that they weren’t good enough or editing them into oblivion, trying to get the words perfect. It made me realize that it is more important to get the writing done and out than to find the absolutely best way to share an idea. At the same time, I want to make sure that what I am putting forth is an excellent representation of what I am capable of – not use this as an excuse to slap something together and call it good.

Another way that this quote has helped me is that it is a reminder not to let my fears take over. Sometimes I procrastinate a task because I’m afraid that it will flop and I will have wasted my effort. This quote reinforces that it’s okay to make mistakes and write horrible drafts and even embarrass myself in front of others. The important thing is learning from those attempts and progressing in my ability and my skill. As long as I am not treading water in whatever activity I am engaged in, then I am fine with that.

  1. “If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit down for a month” – Theodore Roosevelt

I am a fan of the quote collection site www.brainyquote.com and in preparation for this post, I scrolled through all of my collected quotes and laughed out loud when I came across this one. The laughter was bittersweet as the humor came with the knowledge of the truth of this statement. It is easy to place the blame on others for my misfortunes, rather than on myself. Part of the problem lies in this current culture of victimhood, where it is always someone else’s fault for what is going on in my life. While it is true that no every obstacle is due to my own thoughts and behaviors, refusing to analyze what part I play in these issues is unwise. Any growth in my life depends on knowing where I am at now so that I can figure out how to move on to the next level.

Similarly, if I don’t take responsibility for my actions, then I cannot develop as a person. Personal development depends on a core belief that I am in charge of the changes in my life. By playing the victim, I am waiving any ownership of the negative events in my life. Once this becomes part of my identity, then I have no need to improve because I am perfect just the way that I am. It is others that are the source of my problems, so they are the ones that must change – not I.

  1. “The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love, and loyalty.” – Zig Zigler

I am grateful for this quote for a couple of reasons. First, the metaphor is apt and visual. My understanding is that when they lay the foundation of a building, they set the corner stones and these stones set the stability of the entire structure. Second, the qualities that Zig mentions are virtues of the heart that I need in order to have a fulfilled life. These virtues are interconnected with each other as well. For example, honesty sets the baseline – where I am now and where I need to go – and being honest with others allows me to develop integrity. As I develop my integrity, others know me as a person whom they can trust and will keep any promises that I make to them. That is the hallmark of character, which incidentally reinforces self-esteem, and blossoms into greater appreciation for myself and others.

Appreciation is a lesser form of love, providing warmth but not a wealth of passion. It is a state of static emotion. For love to take hold, I must take action. The old saying that love is a verb is true and I believe it. It’s a funny thing, but from my experience, I increase in my love for others when I serve without a hope for compensation. It’s not easy to do, especially if I have no real feelings for the person at the outset, but it is worth it.

  1. “Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.”

– Wayne Huizenga

I am grateful for this quote because it reminds me that decisions are thoughts put into action. Most people have aspirations , but unless they get out of their chairs and do, the thoughts remain in the ether of our minds and nothing more. Another aspect of the quote that touches me is the deliberate use of the word ‘morning.’ I have found that the vast majority of successful people get up early, usually by five o’clock. They have regular routines, such as drinking a liter of water as soon as they get up, meditation, reciting passages that have great personal meaning, exercise, and so forth. They keep their electronic devices on airplane mode for the first hour of their day. Only after they have secured the foundation of their daily success, do they take on the world.

The final part that grabs me is that Wayne talks about making success happen. Those that achieve are distinctly aware of what success means for them – and they take action to make it a reality. Too often, I delay putting my goals into action. Each minute passes by this way but once and ill-used moments waste away my potential for greatness.

  1. “Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.” – Alfred A Montepert

To me, this is a mindset motivator. When I wake in the morning, I am hungry – sometimes ravenously so. That gives this quote extra meaning for me as it indicates that problems must be handled with gusto and erased from my agenda. Taking a timid approach to problem solving leads to weak sauce solutions. Band-aids. Problems are going to crop up. No matter how successful a person may become, no matter how much cash is in the bank, they are inescapable. As I see it, the key is to expect issues and stumbling blocks – that way I can prepare for them. When I see these challenges as part of the journey, I can eat them eagerly and with excitement. Overcoming these obstacles lead to greater strength, giving me the ability to handle the ups and downs with equal equanimity.

The Soul Of Thanksgiving

When I decided to do a post on what makes Thanksgiving Day special to me, I spent a long while pondering the subject. At first, the three main pillars stuck out to me: family, turkey, and football. Of the three, family is the most important and I have a great family to celebrate it with. Also, the stuffed bird in the center of the dining room table is an iconic staple that I grew up expecting on that day. On the other hand, ours never was a football family and I am fine with that.

Yet, I felt that something was missing, as if there was a blindspot in my vision. Not to the back and left, like when I’m driving, where the rear and side mirrors refuse to show me that vehicle right behind my wing. No, this was a spot in the center of my vision that my thoughts skittered across without really seeing. It was a curious thing, both uncomfortable and troubling, that I would have this difficulty discovering what made this holiday important for me. Certainly it lay in a virtue that I repeatedly skipped over, conscious of it or not. There was a pain tied to this virtue and by ignoring it, I attempted to avoid staring it in the eyes.

However, I knew that if I continued on this course, greater personal issues were in my future. Comfort zones are great and I have spent years in mine – but deliberately avoiding anything that pushes the edges of these zones causes our positive natures to shrink, where they become weak and anemic. Strength comes from facing resistance, not sprinting from it. Not confronting this blindspot, this aspect of my nature, was an attempt to run from myself. And the funny thing is that you can run, but you can never escape yourself.

Anyway, after a week of contemplation, I think that the virtue most associated with Thanksgiving is love. There is no gratitude and thankfulness without love. The most important love is that which is not focused on the self, but on serving and loving others, which is true for any virtue. If my life is based on a self-centered end, then yes, I can develop that skill or ability, but it will fall short of its potential. If instead, I develop myself so that I can assist and serve those around me, then my skills will surpass anything that I would have thought possible. Perhaps I feared the power that love brings.

At its heart, love is the freedom of communication, of sharing through vulnerability and (hopefully) reciprocity. It has to be returned, not through force or threats, but by free choice. Love is an expression of freedom – an openness of the heart. Love must be freely given and freely received to reach its greatest power. Anything less is a shadow.

I hope that this Thanksgiving Day you have those that you can express love to and demonstrate it – and receive it back in kind. Because behind all the pageantry, the turkey, and yes, the football, this is what Thanksgiving is all about.

Gratitude For Self-Esteem

Jake has a problem. He’s a popular kid in high school with many friends and acquaintances. His eye found an attractive young woman that he shared a couple of afternoon classes with. After discussing it with his closest friends, he asked her out to the upcoming prom. She agreed and they joined three other couples for an evening of dining, pictures, and dancing. They both enjoyed themselves, but for some unknown reason to Jake, she declined to go out with him again. Surprised, he took it hard and he succumbed to a slow spiral of self-doubt and negativity. How could something that seemed to go well end up Jake to question his self-worth and confidence?

I am grateful for the amount of self-esteem that I have for myself. Although I have good and bad days, I am usually positive about life and about my options. In a certain sense, it all comes down to self-regard, or the value we for ourselves. It is difficult, if not impossible to value others more than we value ourselves. We have to see the positivity, the possibilities within ourselves before we can recognize them within other people. Put another way, we only develop the outward nature of ourselves to the degree that our inner, private selves are developed. Although we can develop a facade to hide the hot mess of our inner lives, it cannot last and it is only a matter of time before the cracks in this shell become apparent. In Dr. Covey’s classic work, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” private victories or the development of character proceed more obvious areas of success that are visible to the masses.

This leads me to a second area that I am indebted to self-esteem: it is the precursor to achievement. Jake’s preoccupation with his prom date and pessimism led him to withdrawing from school and sapped the very energy that used to drive him. Self-esteem drives competence, or at least the willingness to put ourselves in situations or with people that we would otherwise avoid. It is responsible for much of the success that we experience in life. Self-esteem creates energy and drive that we can use to fuel our futures. What I find truly fascinating is that although certain factors come into play in its development, it doesn’t have to be based on anything tangible. In fact, people can develop self-esteem when they have nothing to base it on at all.

Another reason that I am grateful for self-esteem is that we can choose to have this sense of worth and we can choose what to base it on. The important thing is to anchor it to something that is not going to change and leave us defenseless. For example, if a person bases their self-worth on putting forth their best effort into everything that they do, they will lead a better life than an individual who bases their life on what others in their social circle feel about them – or what the individual thinks that those others feel about them. Unfortunately, most don’t take the effort to consider the foundations of their self-esteem and often find that it rests in the temporary and the fluid.

A fourth reason that I am grateful for self-esteem is because it governs the quality and the depth of my relationships. Just as a pitcher of water can only fill a cup if it has the requisite amount of liquid within it, we can only develop relationships to the degree that we posses enough self-worth. If we lack self-esteem, then we are not able to forge deep interpersonal relationships because we lack the emotional resources that it needs. True relationships require vulnerability and openness and if we have low self-esteem, then we will lack the courage to expose ourselves to potential harm.

Lastly, our sense of worth, or in this case, a lack of it, limits our ability to be happy, to be fulfilled, and to feel satisfaction. We can’t give more than we have – either physically or emotionally. If we are a person who suffers from low self-esteem, then we are in a constant struggle against ourselves. We deny ourselves of the fruits of our labors because we don’t feel worth of the reward. This creates one of the true aches of low self-worth: satisfaction and fulfillment are emotional states that we experience when we believe that we have earned them.

But, as I wrote earlier, part of the beauty of of self-esteem is that we can have as much of it as we want. We are limited only by the constraints that we have put on ourselves. We cast off our shackles when we recognize that we are worthy and we accept it within our hearts.