Michael

Live a balanced life-learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. – Robert Fulghum

I’ve been thinking about balance in my life lately. I go through phases where I do too much of one thing to the exclusion of others or focus on one area of my life exclusively. It’s healthier to have a more balanced approach to living.

For example, I haven’t been very social lately. I’ve been doing things and going places mostly on my own. So, over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been going out with some new friends, expanding my horizons and trying some new restaurants. I’m finding out that I’ve been missing out on some fun and relaxing times.

I find my life has been more like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between seemingly opposing interests. I’m noticing that this is more of an extreme way to live. Lately, I’ve been focusing on making the pendulum swing in a smaller arc, i.e. doing more of what the quote above is stating.  It’s been a little harder than I had anticipated, but I’m learning.

I am noticing that when I hit the balance point, my life is much more relaxed and doesn’t experience the wild swings. I’m also finding that my energy is increasing as is my level of happiness.

I’ll continue to work on this and write about it periodically. I suggest looking at your life, seeing where you have the big swings and start figuring out how to inject more balance.

Have a great day!

Michael

People who can agree on what’s funny can usually agree on other things. – Anonymous

Humor is incredibly important for me whether it’s with friends, work, family or etc. I’ve been in an exceptionally humorous mood the last few days, so I thought I would share some of my favorite one liners.

It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others. – Steven Wright

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. – Yogi Berri

Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it. – George Carlin

Women don’t want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think — in a deeper voice. – Bill Cosby

You cannot have fun with anything that you don’t love or admire or respect. – Mel Brooks

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself. – Johnny Carson

For fast-acting relief try slowing down. – Lily Tomlin

I don’t understand how a woman can take boiling hot wax, pour it on upper thighs, rip the hair out by the roots, and still be afraid of a spider. – Jerry Seinfeld

There’s nothing worse than being an aging young person. – Richard Pryor

Don’t forget to laugh a lot today.

Michael

All your dreams can come true when you have the courage to pursue them. – Walt Disney

Walt Disney was an excellent example of someone who relentlessly pursued their dreams. In the process, he affected millions of people with his creativity.

I’ve used a simple formula for a few years to start fulfilling my life long dreams.

1. I clearly define my dream.
2. I believe that I can fulfill the dream.
3. I start doing small things that help me move towards my dream.

With this simple formula, I have been able to see many of my dreams fulfilled.

#1 – Make sure your dream is specific. For example, you may want more money. Pick a reasonable number as opposed to saying “I want more money.”

#2 is the hard one and the one that most people forget to do. Without belief the process will not go very far. You must believe that you can fulfill the dream. Act like you are fulfilling it. Pretend what it would be like if you fulfilled your dream. Imagine yourself fulfilling your dream.

#3 – For example, my dream was to go to China. I begin to read about China. I determined places that I would like to see. I talked to people that had been to China. I began to learn a few simple words of Chinese. (Note: I went on a fantastic trip to China this year.)

This is a simple but effective process that can change your life. Try it out on small things first. Get used to the process and then move on to bigger things.

Have fun.

Michael

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. – Mark Twain

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope. – Bill Cosby

There are three stages of a man’s life: He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus. – Author Unknown

I’m fortunate to have two wonderful parents. I wrote about my mom recently, but today is all about my dad. I really love the Mark Twain quote, as I lived that exact belief when I was a teenager. My experience was in three stages; I didn’t believe anything my dad was saying, I didn’t want to admit he had been right all along, and then finally realizing how much wisdom he possessed.

Of the many lessons I learned from my dad; responsibility, strength, compassion, unconditional love, the lesson that was the most important was his acceptance of who I was. That was a big deal for me, because we are very different. But, he was always my biggest supporter no matter what road I was going down.

I know sometimes that he thinks about all the “mistakes” he made as a parent. Don’t all parents do that? But, I came out just fine. My dad was and is an integral part the success I’m experiencing now.

Dad, my hats off to you! I’m fortunate to have you as a father and have never wished for another dad. It may have appeared that way during some moments in my teenage years, but deep down I always was happy for who I had as a father.

Hope you have a great day!

Love,

Your fortunate son

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe. – St. Augustine

What a powerful quote! Another way of paraphrasing St. Augustine’s idea is that we should be keep our eye on the future while focusing completely on the present. Keeping your eye on the future helps to clearly define your desires. Being okay with your present situation is critical to keeping your emotional state/attitude in the best possible place. Positive emotions keep your possibilities open and infinite.

Learning to enjoy what you have while still having desires for something more has taken me some time to begin being proficient at it. It can be really hard to be okay with a lack of money when your desire is to have more. Not being lonely when one is not in a relationship is challenging

But I’m really starting to get it. I’m learning to enjoy all my present moments. My future desires are beginning to fall into my life. It’s like magic, but really it’s just learning to be as happy as I can be at any moment. The rest just falls in place. Thank about what the world would be like if the majority of people were as happy as possible at any point in time. It would be quite spectacular. But our bottom line responsibility is to focus on our own happiness. That is all we are responsible for.

Michael

F.E.A.R. – False Expectations Altering Reality – Rebekah Shaman

I love this quote from my friend Rebecca. It succinctly and clearly outlines the problems that fears create. I guess I had never looked at fear as expectation, but it is an excellent perspective.

Fear is just a negative expectation. Sometimes they can be very negative expectations. Yes, I know that fears are quite illogical and I appear to be using logic to dissect them. Sometimes it can help by approaching fears with the mind. It gets you in the door to begin overcoming them.

When we have negative expectations, we begin to shape our future in an equally negative way. We close down to anything positive happening. Fears create tremendous anxiety, stress, nervousness, worry and a host of other emotions. I mention the obvious because sometimes with fears that have lingered for a long time, we become numb or unaware to exactly the damage all that negative emotion is causing.

Negative emotion begets negative emotion. As we run away from our fears or unconsciously repress them the negative emotions persist, grow and can help to create even more fears. But on the other hand, consciously confronting our fears will begin the process of breaking the old patterns and preparing us to gain control over our lives.

I feel like I am an expert on fears. I’ve had most of them and lived with many for the majority of my life. During the mid 1990’s, I began a conscious process to overcome my fears. I was tired of being controlled by things outside of my control. I used several techniques including going to a therapist, facing my fears consciously, reading books about overcoming fears and first learning to be okay with who I was even though I looked “down” on myself for having the fears. My fears even came in my dreams. For example, I was always running from something that was trying to “get” me. A lot of times I had this annoying little creature chasing me and biting at my Achilles heel. I always find it fascinating how we translate our everyday life into dreams.

Shortly after I began working on my fears, I was in a very bad skiing accident. As I lay on the ski slope dealing with a massive amount of pain, I remember thinking one thing; I was angry because I had another fear to deal with. I now had the fear of breaking my leg skiing again. As I lay on my side, I was quite angry about this. To this day, I haven’t been skiing again. I’m planning on getting over that fear with the next ski season.

Take the first step to reduce your fears. Go get some counseling, read some books about them but most importantly take some conscious action, however small. Reading and talking only go so far.

Have a great day!

Michael

I started off my business travel week with a less than wonderful stay at the Holiday Inn near the Helsinki Airport. The room was small, but I can manage that. The problem was that the temperature was in the 80’s. It was quite warm and humid. I called reception to ask for an air conditioned room.

“All are occupied,” says the clerk. She asks, “Are you using the fan?”

“Yes, but it is only blowing the hot air around in the room,” I say with a big smile on my face. (I’m trying to keep my attitude up). I ask for a bigger fan. It takes 5 calls and 7 hours to finally get a new one.

Next, I open up the bathroom and I’m greeted with the smell of sewer. Oh my! Can you guess? All the rooms were booked. In fact all hotels in Helsinki were full. The final problem was that the internet and T.V. couldn’t work at the same time. Not enough plugs. I’m a multi-tasker so I can do both. This was a minor inconvenience. I was working on the more serious problem of how to take a shower without using the bathroom.

I leave Helsinki for Germany on Wednesday. There were a total of 2 1/2 hours of delays. Here they are in order of occurrence: weather related flow control in Munich, baggage stuck on the lift belt into the plane, baggage door stuck open on plane, flow control delay again, thunderstorms in Munich delay.

I arrive in the Munich airport. Everything is closed except for the Lufthansa Service Center. They will pay for a hotel room, dinner and breakfast. Fantastic! I’m thinking things are turning around. The agent then says, but we have a small problem. I’m amused at this point.

“What’s the issue?” I say.

“Well, there are no hotel rooms left in Munich. In fact the nearest one is a one hour taxi ride,” says the agent.

“I’ll take it,” I say. I calculate that I’ll get about 4 hours of sleep by the time I get to the hotel before having to wake up to ride back to the Munich airport.

I find a taxi outside. The driver was fantastic. He was very nice, very accommodating, and drove incredibly fast. It seems to be common here. Nearing the hotel I see that the area was really nice. I could just barely see a lake and some mountains. We turn into the hotel area and I’m astonished at what I’m looking at. The Seehotel Uberhafrt Tegernsee hotel was luxury at its finest. The service and room were on very high standards. This was quite the change from the Holiday Inn in Helsinki.

The overall moral here is simple. Keep your attitude up. Laugh at the situation. Go with the flow.

It was a great trip plus I got a good story out of it.

Michael

As I was riding in a taxi to the Helsinki airport today, I watched numerous large cumulus clouds as they criss-crossed paths with each other. It reminded me of a great experience with my daughter when she and I drove to California from Louisiana years ago.

We had stopped in a little town in Arizona named Williams as a stop off point to visit the Grand Canyon. We decided to leave early the next morning and take a train all the way to the canyon, which was about a 90 minute ride if I remember correctly.

As we pulled away from the station in Williams, I noticed a small cumulus cloud off to our left. It was hovering close to the Grand Canyon and many miles north of us. But for some reason I was drawn to watch it. As the minutes rolled by, I noticed two very interesting things. The cloud was staying in practically the same place. Additionally, it was, by the minute, growing dramatically in size. I was fascinated. It seemed destined to become a thundercloud (cumulonimbus).

By the time we got to the canyon, the cloud was approximately 25,000 feet high. This was a guess, but it was about half the height of full size thunderstorm clouds I’d seen in the past and those can get to 50,000 feet and higher.

My daughter and I spent a few hours at the Grand Canyon and then boarded the train in the late afternoon to return to William. Of course, the cloud was still there and was now a full size western thunderstorm in all its might and glory. The monster cloud was dark and foreboding. We could see huge lightning bolts striking the parched high desert plain ahead

About half way back to William, the rain burst forth from the thunderstorm and drenched our train and the surrounding area. It was a humbling display of nature. We witnessed the seed of a cumulonimbus form and were fortunate enough to be present for the birth of a major thunderstorm in the high plains south of the Grand Canyon. This was and has been a unique experience that has never repeated.

For me this is another one of my simple pleasures and a great example of the mysterious.

Have a great day!

Michael

The expression of gratitude is a powerful force that generates even more of what we have already received. – Deepak Chopra

Gratitude is one of the critical keys to being happier. As we become grateful for what we have, we open ourselves to receive more of what we are grateful for. Think about people you know that aren’t grateful, don’t you find that they seem to have more things to be ungrateful for as their lives go on?

Being grateful generates an enormous amount of good feelings internally. So, a purely “selfish” reason to be grateful would be the good feelings you will experience. Yes, I’m being facetious, but don’t forget that happy moments and good feelings tend to perpetuate more good feelings and happy moments. They are a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Feelings of gratitude set the stage for a tremendous attitude adjustment. A popular theme and core belief of mine is that you always have the ability to change your attitude. Gratitude can go a long way to perfecting your skill at improving your attitude at any moment.

A few things that I’m grateful for are my family, my daughter, my friends, the opportunity to travel, sunsets, sunrises, coffee, a good hike, music, forests, waterfalls, the ocean waves and great conversations. There are a lot more, but you get the idea.

What are you grateful for?

Michael

Flying high above Ireland and the U.K. today, the early light from the upcoming sunrise began throwing lighter tones into the dark shades of the night sky. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, deep, heavily saturated reddish-orange hues grew outward and parallel to the horizon. The atmosphere at 37,000 feet was impeccably clear this morning, which helped to enhance the entire scene.

Undefined bands of reddish-orange turned to orange. Orange blended into yellow. Yellow transformed into green. Green merged to blue. Blue elevated to purple. Purple expanded to indigo and black. The colors were so intensely saturated that they almost looked unreal. All the colors of a rainbow were present but instead of the translucent nature typically seen, the colors were richer and more opaque.

I watched for over an hour as the colors became steadily brighter, losing some of their saturation, until the sun burst into full view. Events like these really fill my soul. As I’ve been writing over the last few days about simple pleasures, it seemed to be destiny that I had this wonderful experience.

When you get to view an occurrence of nature like I did today, it’s important to take the time to experience it. Stop what you are doing. Enjoy the moment. Reflect on what the experience generates internally. But, fundamentally, just be still.

Michael