#30 Forgiving Mistakes

"To err is human, to forgive is devine" There isn't one of us walking around sucking up air who hasn't made a mistake. As for those of us willing to admit it, well that's another story :).

Personally, I'd rather someone make a mistake of effort as opposed to one of neglect or laziness. Most of us would find that kind of transgression far more forgivable. Also, when you do goof, the most mature thing to do is own up to it, as opposed to covering it up, or outright denying it. This does two things: it makes it possible to make amends or corrective action to address it and also enables the situation to transition to resolution and, hopefully, on to forgiveness. It also takes away the power of blame. It always amazes me when I come forward and admit my error, and offer a sincere apology, that it takes away all of the righteous anger of the person wronged and softens them. I've even seen the other person go from an 8 or 9 on the irritability/anger scale to almost copping some of the blame themselves for my mistake and having it bond us closer than before!

Conversely, when someone makes a mistake that directly impacts you, however much you are in the right and difficult it might be, do try to treat them as fairly as possible and forgive them. If they refuse to admit, take their blame or acknowledge their role, still try your best to let it go. This is more for your benefit than theirs ultimately. Certainly don't give them a chance to wrong you again, there's no dignity in being a floor mat or a sucker. Realize that harboring ill-will and anger is never beneficial on your end. The toxicity of that rubs off on you whether you're in the right or not. Have faith that those who refuse to apologize or acknowledge their role in doing wrong, will reap what they sow and let nature run it's course.

#29 - Accepting Blame

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible" - Stanislaw Lec

When a problem arises the best course of action is to accept your fair share of the blame and do your best to solve it before it grows any worse. You'd rather kill a monster while it's small, as opposed to a huge, snarling beast that you can only hope to contain.

One of the reasons World War II even happened is because the European nations chose to ignore the agression of Germany and Adolf Hitler early on, when they boldly violated the Versailles Treaty and went into the Rhineland and on to Poland. Millions of lives could've been potentially spared had France, Britain and other countries in the pact interceded and stood up to Hitler before he grew out of control (even the United States too, to a certain extent).

While this is an extreme example, look at your own life. How many times have you let something slide, or not dealt with an issue because you hoped it would go away, work itself out, or you simply weren't ready or willing to deal with the situation for whatever reason? I think at some point we all have, and when we are forced to deal with it, oftentimes it's too late or infinitely more difficult to deal with than if we had been proactive, dealt with the unpleasantness of the moment initially and simply nipped it in the bud. Hopefully we learn the lesson and continue on in the future to deal with problems in a timely fashion before they reach an intolerable breaking point.

#28 - Friendship

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you" - Elbert Hubard

All of us have our unique personality quirks, habits, likes, pet peeves, prejudices, beliefs, personality styles, etc. It's a wonder sometimes we don't all get sick and tired of each other at some point. I digress, but, still, what fun would life be if we continually were lone wolves all the time, marching to the beat of our own drummer, never having someone close to confide in or share in the daily joys, miseries and endless, various experiences of life with? It'd be pretty hollow and empty is what it would be.

Family is one thing. For the most part, they're all stuck with you (and you with them). Now your friends, for the most part, we all chose them. Your true friends, as the quote says, know many, or most, of your ins-and-outs, what make you tick, and still make the emotional commitment to be there for you and the end of the day, and vice versa. My friend Michelle (pictured with me) and I could go on for days about the minutaie of our long-running relationship. For all of each others faults we're there for each other when the going gets rough and can find the magic in our relationship when sometimes you'd rather see the cracks. We like to take fun digs at each other, but woe to the person who does it to us when the other one is around. Someone like that is difficult to find and even tougher to let go so it always pays to hold on to something that precious.

#27 - Sincere compliments (President's Day Edition)

"Man will stand a great deal when they are flattered" - Abraham Lincoln. Working in sales (like I do) you pretty much find that you can have the best, highest quality, most sensibly priced product for the value, but for most people, this is, ultimately, of little consequence. The best way to make a sale is to someway, somehow find some commonality, so as to build rapport and start the beginnings of trust. Once you've done that with a prospect it's almost always a good idea you find some way to genuinely (ideally) compliment them on something. Their taste, their obvious wisdom to buy what you're selling, their shirt, anything as long as you mean it. From that point, it's only the most disciplined, or hardened person who won't respond positively to you and what you have to offer by way of product or service. They may or may not buy, but at least they'll listen and consider what you have to say, which is farther than you ever would've gotten if you had just plowed ahead with the features and what-not of what you're offering.

Go ahead and try to be closed off and hostile to someone who admires and genuinely seems interested in you. For 99.9% of us, our favorite person and subject is ourselves, so when we have a chance to meaningfully talk to someone who seems as interested in or admires us as much as we do ourselves, we are compelled, almost by an invisible hand, to soften our stance and be more pliable to what someone has to offer us. It's as if our egos override any common sense or intellectual reasoning whatsoever. It's virtually the same idea as when you were a kid and you waited until mom and dad were in a good mood before asking them for something. The odds of them going along with it were much better.

The next time you have to deal with a difficult person, remember this principle, and "kill em' with kindness". Find something good about them and milk it for all it's worth. Due to the law of reciprocity it's nearly impossible to return human caring and kindness with invective and difficulty. It's not so much much phoniness, so much as verbal akido. See if that "tough cookie" doesn't get a little softer.

#26 Love (Special Valentine's Day Edition)

"There is no remedy for love, but to love more" - Henry David Thoreau *. In honor of Valentine's Day, I figured we could write a piece about love. There is no grander feeling in the world than that of being truly in love with another person. The flip side of that is there is no greater heartache than the loss of it. Be in the end of a close relationship, intimate or otherwise, a death of a loved one, or some other way of losing someone you care about, once you've experienced that type of acute and unforgettable pain, a natural reaction of many people is to close their hearts down, sometimes permanently the hurt is so excruciating for some, and build an emotional wall or form a shell, to protect themselves from never being hurt in the same way again. This usually causes them to become numb and often leads to bitterness at worst, or a feeling of hollowness from the void at best. Hardly compelling options.

The best remedy is to dare to love again. The ol' "The best way to get over the last one is to move on to the next one". Resilience in love, like resilence in most areas of life, usually pays off. Like anything worthwhile there is an element of risk. However it's a risk worth taking. With love, it's like balm for a wound that has no other ointment. Not only that, the next person you get into a relationship with will have the benefit of the experience you bring (as long as it's not unresolved baggage). The good news is we all crave and ache for love and approval. Sow for the harvest. Plant enough seeds of love for others and before long you'll walk in a garden of love and affection. It sure beats, the lonely, isolated alternative. Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

*Todays quote was taken from the great site: http://www.greatest-inspirational-quotes.com/

I'd heartily recommend visiting it and thank Jax from the www.stevepavlina.com forums for allowing me to use his site :)

#25 Confidence vs. Arrogance

Arrogance is a strange disease. It tends to make everyone sick except for the one who is afflicted by it.

Nobody likes a pompous ass. Conversely, there's always room at the table for a class act. Confidence is a great virtue, whereas arrogance is an inescapable character flaw. Yet, the difference, seemingly on the surface, doesn't seem that far apart. The actuality is they are as close as New York and Los Angeles.

The main difference is in humility. The person with self-confidence is sure and secure enough in themselves to realize they're human, don't have it all figured out and can be prone to mistakes. They can be counted on to humbly accept such things gracefully as criticism, questioning, receiving advice and handling setbacks. Because they are confident and self-assured, they use such opportunities to grow and better themselves, seeing them as learning experiences. Contrast that mode of thinking to that of the arrogant person, who due to a deep, inner insecurity or ill-founded sense of superiority and/or entitlement, acts as if they are beyond reproach and are incapable of making a mistake, needing advice from others and shrink from setbacks, either rationalizing them or casting blame onto others. They treat the same circumstances a confident person handles with aplomb, as insults.

When dealing with a confident person, their strong, healthy egos are based on a loving disposition, of themselves and the world around them. Their place in their worlds feels secure and they think in terms of abundance: 'we' instead of 'me'. They have a tendency to make the people they interact with confident in their own abilities and make them feel better for having known them, enriched somehow through osmosis. They are inclusive and seek to inspire the best of others.

Sadly, the arrogant person has a shallow artifice of a strong ego that is in fact a front for the inner contempt they feel for themselves that they routinely project onto others. Their defects are based on fear of being seen as vulnerable and overcompensate by being critical in nature. They take other people's success as an indirect diminishment of them and a lessening of attention and adulation for them. For them, life is a zero-sum game. For someone to win, they have to lose, and vice-versa. Everything is a cutthroat competition and they'll exercise any means at their disposal not to lose. They come from a place of lack, and seek to drain the resources of those around them, through manipulation and an off-putting, haughty manner. Typically, others prefer to deal with them as little as possible as they tend to adversely infect those unfortunate to know them with their condescending sense of ill-founded superiority and lack of give-and-take. For them it's as much take as they can muster, and any giving comes with strings attached, as favors to be exploited on some future date. Though they may masquerade as "beautiful" on the outside, their odiousness emanates so thoroughly that no amount of aesthetic falseness can hide their true ugliness for long.

While confidence is earned and respected, arrogance is a sad, pitiful act that is only skin-deep. Though it may be hard to tell at first glance, it's only a matter of time before the real gold differentiates itself from the fools gold. Don't be the watch that turns everybody's wrist green. :)

#24 Money

The root of all evil is not money itself. The root of all evil is the unabashed desire for money and using means necessary to accrue it. Why do you think so many of us are outraged and cynical when it comes to corporate America and its CEO’s when they take these huge bonuses while their companies crumble and rot from the inside out, are given huge bailouts by the government (hardly saints themselves), while are huge layoffs of workers of said companies? Too many of our leaders, entrusted with huge corporations and elected public officials, have succumbed to greed and bald ambition, at the expense of sharing with humanity and those who helped them obtain their position in the first place. The irony is that money is a very fluid instrument that obeys certain laws, such as: the more you spread it around and share it (for commensurate compensation of course, an honest days work for an honest days wage) the more it grows and creates. It's when it stops and sits that commerce halts, and the pendulum swings the other way.

I think anybody reasonable sees the need for profits for a company to keep it a thriving, growing entity. Nobody should want to deny anyone their just desserts. However, there’s no reason that CEO’s and corporate officers should be releasing 100 million dollar ‘Golden Parachutes’, while using the cheapest labor in faraway lands, and then have the gall to scream poverty. That kind of imbalance and brazen hypocrisy is morally outrageous and unacceptable. Which leads us the original point. It’s the greed that allows billions to be destitute, hungry, diseased and homeless in our world, and allows evil to flourish in the hearts of men, seemingly at all costs. Until we figure out a way to make things more equitable within the boundaries of capitalism, the situation will only continue to get more dire and worsen, thus killing the Golden Goose of our economic system.

#23 Pleasure

Bob & Jillian have helped tons (no pun intended) of folks through the gates of hell to the heaven of fitness.

"Through the gates of misery & hell lead the road to untold pleasure"-Unknown. If you stopped and realized how many of us stop short of a goal or following through because it was hard, just a few feet, or even inches short, it could potentially depress you for days. When the going got tough, we got the hell out of there! If we had just stuck with it a little longer, a few more seconds, minutes, hours, days or weeks (you get my point) and we would've crossed that great threshhold from the temporary pain and inconvenience of the moment and gotten the pleasure of what we really wanted that couldn've transformed our entire lives. I'm as guilty as anybody. Years and years went by where I had thousands of opportunities to approach women out and about and because I was terrified of the prospect of rejection. I "played it safe", and stayed in my comfort zone, refusing to risk it. There were times it was obvious someone liked me and I still put my hands in my pockets, looked down sheepishly and refused to act on it. Finally, I decided to face my fear head on and get that area of my life handled. I talked to guys who were good at interacting with women, building attraction and just relaxing and having fun with attractive members of the opposite sex without having angst. I also bought some programs that helped guys like me (the 'Double Your Dating' series w. David D'Angelo series was most helpful) get comfortable and build my inner confidence. This helped me not just in dating, but in my life overall. When I moved to Nashville, TN I used the stuff I had been learning, crashed and burned a few times, but realized that I was growing and making great strides. I kept going. After dating several people I eventually met my future wife. I went through the hell of being forlorn in love, petrified to approach somebody, and have now found the person for me.

Exercise is another great analogy for this principle. When I'd let myself go physically, I'd reach that point where the pain of living life as a zombie-like (no energy) fat slob was greater than the pain and discomfort it would take to get my body getting back in shape. So I began the long journey back to being fit, and, as expected, my body resisted, hard (I even came close to vomitting a few times). Still, I kept going (notice a theme?), and before too long I actually started seeing results of my day-by-day consistent efforts and felt a sense of accomplishment and a rush of pleasure you can't buy or get any other way than by doing it and earning it. Also, eventually the workouts got easier and I actually began to look forward to it. It was fun and a great way for me to start my day and burn stress. At this point in my life, it's one of my favorite things to do and look forward to and is an absolute 'must' in my daily routine. It literally helps fortify me for the rest of my day.

Why do you think the show "The Biggest Loser" is such a big hit? You can literally see, week-by-week, the contestants transforming themselves and experiencing the profound joy of mastering an area of their lives that was a bane to to their existence. They are literally lifting huge weights off their shoulders. It's inspirational, like all people who experience remarkable growth in an area they had resigned themselves to. They had each gone through their own personal hells and entered a version of their heavens. What is your personal hell that could lead to heaven (untold pleasure)?

#22 - Pain

Pain is sometimes a misnomer. While most folks will go to great lengths to avoid pain, or even circumvent the possibility of it, it's got a bad rap, that is somewhat undeserved.

Pain can be your biggest ally or your worst enemy. Pain will tell you when something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Pain instructs. It lets us know through our emotions that we care. It allows us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and do the right things. If there were no pain to signal we've done something wrong, such as feeling guilt and anxiousness, we could do untold harm to ourselves and others.

Pain also affords us the chance to display and gain maturity by dealing with it effectively. Pain scares off the insincere and lukewarm and offers those brave enough to overcome it the ultimate rewards of life. Many attempt to cope with the various guises of pain through overindulgence of substances and other destructive habits such as drugs, alcohol, violence and a myriad of other vices that temporarily numb or kill it. The paradox is the more you try to avoid, trick or numb it, the harder and meaner it pursues you. Like weeds in a garden, newer, more severe problems start cropping up everywhere. When you deal with it head on, you are given the gift of growth, self-esteem, self-sufficiency and an overall sense of well-being.

Pain also protects. It sends our body signals that something is amiss, and must be dealt with or we will be overcome by disease or incapacitated if we continue to push ourselves in a harmful way and and need to modify our approach or cease altogether. It also lets us know if something or someone isn't good for us, and that we should avoid it. Ignore pain at your own peril.

As crazy as it sounds, when you look at pain as your ally and friend, instead of a bogie-man to be dodged and feared, the more you can gain and expand in your life. Because another great paradox is often pain can lead to...(to be continued)

#21 - Music

"I love music. Sweet, sweet music" - The O'Jays. Music is the fuel of of emotions and memories. Ever since I was a kid, I've had a strong love affair with music. My father instilled it in me early. Listening to hours after endless hours of old records turned me on to become the music-head I've become today. Though I've never become a musician myself, untold hours have been spent listening, dissecting and exploring literally thousands of different artists, songs etc from all eras. While 99% of people won't take it to the level I have, music encompasses every concievable emotion and establishes the rhythm of life.

The next time you watch a film, notice how the music, sometimes subtlely, sometimes as obvious as the nose on your face, can completely manipulate a scene and drive home the points and push and pull your emotions the way the director wants you to go. It's one of the most powerful anchors in humanity too.

For instance, think of Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now (Theme from 'Rocky')". When you hear the first few notes you can't help but think of the movie "Rocky", Sylvester Stallone runing up the steps in Philly and training like his life depended on it. I defy you to not think of it when you hear that song! Now that's a powerful anchor!

Another reason music is so powerful and personal is people have certain songs, albums and artists anchored to them and their emotions as the soundtracks of their lives. An iconic image of Johnny Cash, the first few notes of "Stairway to Heaven", Prince on stage can all transport people to another place and time. Your first kiss, your brother and sister dancing in the living room, a particular album that nursed you through a tough time, walking on a beautiful spring evening listening to your Walkman. Your first concert. Powerful stuff. One of the many reasons music will never die and always endure.