For things to change, YOU have to change.
-Jim Rohn
Each and every life form on this planet is a work in progress. There is no grand culmination to the evolution of conscious life. Every kind of critter from a bacterium up to a human being comes into the world with a certain hand to play. They play out their cards the best they can, learn as much as they can, teach what they can to posterity, and then it’s lights out until you come back around again (if you’re into that sort of thing). Success in the animal kingdom depends on the same thing as it does for us. It’s all very economical if you look at it. Life is simply trying to expend energy by making the best choices over perceived options to maximize safety, comfort, and growth.
I could listen to Jim Rohn lecture all day long. He is one of the best and brightest speakers still alive on the planet today. There are few people that understand the mentality of success so well and are able to articulate the message so that anybody with 1/3 of a brain can take some value away from his message. I like him so much because he was one of the first people to get me to see what my problem was. IT WAS ME! I had been pointing my finger so much that my hand was cramping up, but I needed the same slap in the face Jim Rohn did when his mentor told him “If you want your life to get better, you have to get better.”
It’s so ironic that every kingdom of life on the planet is fine tuned to it’s local environment the same way each instrument is tuned and timed to the same conductor in an orchestra. Everyone is playing like a beautiful symphony besides US, who are supposed to be the crowned achievers. There is quite a bit of truth to the whole story of man being tossed out of the garden if you read between the lines. When you stray too far from what is natural and harmonious your body, mind, and spirit all start to decay.
Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.
-Jim Rohn
So what do you do? Start going to work on yourself as hard as you work on your job. If you don’t design your own life’s plan and make your own choices chances are you’ll fall into somebody else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much! Everyone stars in the movie of their own life. In the eyes of everyone else YOU are somewhere between a “best supporting actor” or an “extra.” You really shouldn’t be the star of anybody else’s movie. Parents struggle with this and often lose themselves and live vicariously through their children. You also shouldn’t give up the leading role in your own movie to anybody else. Don’t cast yourself into shitty roles on purpose either.
So what do successful people do that 97% of other people just DON’T DO? They merely sit down, decide to make a plan, and start taking steps in the direction of their end goal. THAT’S IT! There is no magic secret to changing your life. I know everybody at least makes it to the point where they say “ok, it’s definitely time… I know I need to change X.” Not everybody, but a good number of us make it to the point where we say, “in order to change X, I’m going to Y.” Here’s where we lose more folks on the path. These are the new year resolution people who make a change for two to five days then go right back to the status quo. Soooooooo few people actually stick with their plan UNTIL they get there.
How long should you keep trying? UNTIL!
Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
Jim Rohn.
With as much violence and racism and all other forms of bullshit and garbage spread like wildfire in today’s media, it’s more important than ever for us to be taking matters into our own hands. You can’t change what’s on that TV screen by yelling at your neighbors. You can’t change anybody’s real quality of life with Facebook likes. Anything you see on the screen, no matter if its a computer, phone, TV or a billboard is already a DONE DEAL. It’s out there… It’s done and stagnant. What you can change is yourself and the way you conduct yourself in your own home and your own life. The way you interact with other people at work or at the grocery store. You can change more with a smile and a friendly hello than you can with a 45 minute rant you post on youtube. Anything you resist grows stronger. Don’t you realize that’s how you build muscle?
I EMPLORE YOU to take a look at something you can improve in your life, no matter how small. Draw a line in the sand for yourself and celebrate a little victory. Then make another, albeit slightly larger goal, and get yourself another win. One more easy one and you’ll be on a roll. Get your subconscious mind primed to carry out bolder and bolder lifestyle changes. It really builds steam and lights a fire under your ass. Before you know it you’ll be in a whole new dimension of possibilities you were never aware of before. If you don’t know where to start, go to work on what you’re putting into and onto your body with my STEP BY STEP PLAN.
The key to life is that childlike state. Remember to be CHILDLIKE and not CHILDISH. Keep yourself in the state of curiosity. Of wanting to learn a new musical instrument, or learn to scuba dive, or learn martial arts. Of learning a new skill no matter what it is to stay fresh and young at heart. Most importantly of all we need to teach our kids to be authentic to what they feel drawn to and interested in. Just imagine what your life would be like if you had been coached and guided to be the most creative and loving being. Teach our kids to do what they love and the money will follow their joy. When you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. Teach our kids the path to growing up at the BEING LEVEL and be the model for them to follow.
Remember evolving a little every day in every little way.
Don’t let your learning lead to knowledge.
Let your learning lead to ACTION!
-Jim Rohn
Years back I remember watching a documentary about the Hopi elders. The main idea that they were trying to get across to their own people and the world at large was the resounding message, “We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for.” They knew that great change was coming over the world there was nothing we could do to stop it. They also knew that nobody was coming to save us. They were absolutely right on both the global cultural scale but also down to the daily personal level. It is truly up to each and every one of us to determine the trajectory of our own lives.
In a world where knowledge is power it is extremely important to be at your own helm. While it is easy for a person to be dis-empowered by a lack of information, now it is just as easy to stand in front of so much information and so many choices that they are frozen stiff like a deer in headlights. Indecisiveness and procrastination are the new plagues of our generation. Everyone says they hate being bossed around by leaders, but the truth is nobody does anything until push comes to shove. Nobody can make up their damn mind. Then if they do happen to make their mind up, they still don’t get off their ass and DO anything about making a change in their life. THIS MEANS YOU! And ME. This is a WE problem. We all need to get off our asses and start putting effort into making the changes we know we need to make to increase our quality of life as a species.
Get real with yourself. Stop making excuses for why you aren’t the way you need to be in order to feel self confident. Telling yourself these stories in your head is the perfect recipe for depression. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that things like depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and most chronic illness like obesity and diabetes are afflictions that you are just so unlucky to have fallen victim to. These are symptoms of a poor physical and mental habits that become ingrained into your damn soul. The consequence for inaction is suicide whether it be instant or in slow-motion. You have to put persistent effort into changing otherwise YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO GET ANY RESULTS and you are NEVER GOING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF when you are alone with your thoughts.
You get the picture. Start telling yourself these power statements when you wake up in the morning. Work like Arnold Schwarzenegger says with reps and sets of the desired behavior until you get the results you want. YOU WILL GET RESULTS WITH THE PROPER EFFORT. It is a damn law of the universe. You can overcome any obstacle in your life no matter how deep your depression or how bad of an alcoholic you are. $50K rehab programs and years of counseling are only as good as they are at making YOU help yourself. Retrain your body, mind, and spirit for balance and upward mobility. Don’t put bandaids on bullet wounds. Keep a daily journal that you fill with things you are thankful for, people you love and want to make proud of you, plans for how you are going to achieve goals. You can do it. From baby steps to big leaps.
I read a lot of books. Most people don’t read these days which is a damn shame. OK, I’ll admit I went through a dry spell for a good block of time where I didn’t read anything that wasn’t force fed to me in Junior High and High School, but luckily for me I got back on the horse in college. I love to read books about psychology and thinking. I am a deep diver when I get into a topic of interest and this is both a blessing and a curse. I get fixated on whatever is in my cross-hairs. Always have, and this has pushed me into some pretty negative thought patterns in my day. I have inadvertently set a handful of bad habits this way which had to be undone later on. Most (close to all) of the unhappiness in my life, both past and present, has come from me not maintaining control of the voice in my head and allowing it to set bad habits in my way of thinking.
No two people share the same exact reality. Quantum physics even tells us that there isn’t even such a thing as a solid matter “Reality” with a capital R. There are only billions of “realities” (lower case r) rendered to each of us as we observe what is going on in our environment. Five honest people could witness the same car crash and give five completely different accounts to the police of how it played out. Each of them would believe their own account enough to pass a polygraph. So who’s right? We have to let the judge and jury decide. But wait, even their views are completely subjective.
by frequent repetition or physiological exposure.” Our subconscious mind functions totally on habit.
When something eloquently put rings true and resonates with your soul the source doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the value you gain from it.
Everybody is a different person behind closed doors. You would be shocked to see what some of your closest friends are doing behind closed doors right now as you read this. I’ll bet your grandmother would be completely shocked to see that thing you did just the other day. Don’t lie! Pretty much every person you have ever seen in your entire life is a complete weirdo. The whole idea that there exists these “normal” people that we need to stifle out our uniqueness to impress is complete bullshit. Owning your weirdness is wonderful and freeing.
expressing your authentic uniqueness the more of your inner weirdo exposed to others with no fear.
in your involvement they go right back to the condition you found them in. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The only way to truly lead and inspire real change is to lead by example. BE that change you want to see in the world and stop leading horses to water.
choices in their own life. We get very insecure around people who we feel are “better off” than we are. We break ourselves down in our own mind and tell ourselves that we are “less than” and not “equal to.” We literally and subconsciously hand our power over to anybody our mind has identified as “superior” to us. This isn’t fair because of how aggressively our subconscious concepts of who we should be idolizing are molded by the media. This is followed by accusing said person of “thinking they are better than us” when the only problem exists within the story we’re telling ourselves in our own heads.
settle for the ordinary.” Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Don’t be afraid to start making changes in the way you think and set some new goals. There is literally nothing stopping you from doing anything you want if you are confident enough withstand the criticism until you get there.
I don’t even have to have ever met you and I am certain that you are guilty. I certainly am. Although we may technically be right, at least from our point of view, how much thought have you actually put behind it? Have you ever really contemplated what it truly means to grow up?
to the gulf. After you’re a bonafide adult its on you. Because we all know of both 70 year old whiners and toddlers with the wisdom of an old soul.
Lets say I help an old lady cross a busy street. There are several possible intents that I could have while I was acting out the seemingly good deed. From a higher point of view, whether or not it was actually a good deed has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I helped anybody cross any street. It has to do with my “intent” and what I was thinking to myself at the time of the occurrence.
soul you want to make her feel safe and it makes your heart warm to add value to other people’s lives. Not just your friends and family, but everybody you come into contact with is worthy of experiencing the best version of you. Life should be an art form where we leave every person we interact with in a better emotional state than they were in beforehand.
Think about it, who are you anyways? Who are you really? You have a body, and a brain, and a mind, and your thoughts… but YOU are not any of those things. You are not your body any more than you are your Toyota. You are the consciousness that possesses and observes all of these things. We and our children accumulate these experiences through lifetimes here and there and everywhere gleaning the meaning and lessons taken to heart from each of these experiences over eons. Lets face it, wise men and women have been trying to WAKE US UP on this planet alone for thousands of years. Now it’s our responsibility to encourage each other to keep growing up with a genuine compassion, because we are all powerful beings waiting to be activated.
I love listening to different perspectives on topics that pertain to struggles I am having in my own life. I recently listened to a recording of an Indian yogi and mystic by the name of 
known what the best way to parent their children was. Even if you have 12 children you are still learning. You may raise your first 11 properly and the 12th one can really put you through the ringer.
little habit that my girls pick up coming from my lovely wife… and she sure as hell picks up every little annoying habit that I contribute to the pot. It’s quite funny how it’s so much harder to see one of your own habits manifest in your child’s mannerisms than it is to spot those from others.
That is a must, but that will only create the necessary ambiance. It still doesn’t make you necessarily a good parent, but it creates the necessary ambiance. Creating the necessary ambiance is absolutely a large part of parenting. A large part. If you create the right kind of atmosphere of a certain sense of joy and love and care and discipline for yourself AND your home atmosphere, generally they grow up peacefully.
beings or brats you raise. For that, what kind of being YOU are is an extremely important part of raising children. So if your wife became pregnant, it’s time for YOU to start your transformation. Now because another life is coming in and YOU YOURSELF might not conducting yourself in such a way that is suitable to be emulated. Becoming conscious of what we are doing and what is rubbing off on even our babies is extremely important.
their intelligence. That will not insure whether he or she is gong to become, a doctor, an engineer, so on and so forth, but one thing is clear. The curious higher intelligence is active when you do not stifle the innate curiosity. Of course you want to put him or her through the necessary physical activity to give a healthy body, but it is just as important to foster an active intelligence.
control. Right? However we do have control over some circumstances. You CAN create an atmosphere of love, thoughtfulness, and openness. When you do not (knowingly or unwittingly) train your child to be exclusively identified with any particular social institution, naturally there is no sense of prejudice and no grounds for being offended. When you bring up a child free of prejudice, in a loving very open atmosphere, GENERALLY they do well. Buuuuuuuut, there is no guarantee because there are other influences in the society. There is no insurance or guarantee. That is a risk that you are taking. Always.
When I was a young boy I was a huge reader. I learned to read a bit early and I remember wanting to read everything I could get my hands on. Dr. Seuss, dictionaries, encyclopedias, you name it. This carried on until junior high and the advent of puberty. This is when most of us in our culture learn to stifle our imagination and uniqueness and trade it for acceptance into the herd.
the many, many lessons about how to get along in this human situation that can only be learned in social settings. Even our blood family just another kind of social institution.
child is imaginative, open-minded, and free of assumptions and prejudgments. A child has an honest-to-god genuine curiosity about the world and wants to solve any mystery they become aware of.
head is actually the only thing you can have any TRUE control over.
to what amazing things are possible to achieve.
My family and I moved down to Southern Texas in 2014. Prior to that we had been living in Chicago, so we couldn’t get enough of the sun and the year round pool access. Being in the sun much more than we were previously accustomed to had us using way more sunscreen than before. Having to apply sunblock on my two young daughters’ bodies almost every day (sometimes multiple times per day) really caused me to start paying attention to the ingredients in this stuff.
The two brands I had in my bag at the time, along with about every major name brand, and even the cheap-o store brands contain toxic chemicals that actually accelerate damage to the body and skin they are supposed to protect. Be on the lookout for these 5 dangerous chemicals on your sunscreen and put it back on the shelf if you haven’t bought it yet!!!
Linked to lowering the birthrate in babies whose mother’s had high exposure during pregnancy. Some also say it my be linked to higher rates of melanoma, the very cancer we are trying to protect ourselves from. Also linked to hormone disruption, the development of allergies in the body, and cell damage. Releases free radicals.
Quickly breaks down under UV exposure and is one of the biggest free radical generators. Free radicals are high energy particles that damage cells and DNA, cause cancer, and speed up the aging process.
Although vitamin A is a necessary nutrient for health, it degrades under UV exposure and releases the same free radicals causing genetic mutations and increasing cancer risk. When used by pregnant women, it has been linked to fetal brain swelling, organ toxicity, and developmental toxicity.
A common preservative in many beauty products shown to cause estrogen disruption and immunotoxicity. Also associated with infertility, neurotoxicity, abnormal testicular development, allergies, benign tumors of the uterus and digestive tract, asthma, breast cancer, and even contribute to obesity.
Sunblocks use a plethora of chemical fragrances to make their smell more tolerable to the user including phthalates. Usually called “artificial fragrance” which is the umbrella term for this group of chemicals. Known to cause neurotoxicity and immune system toxicity. Linked to cancer, allergies, birth defects, and even nervous system disorders.
want to steer clear. I don’t know about you but I buy just about everything but food online. What you want to be looking for instead is one with the main ingredient ZINC OXIDE or even Titanium Dioxide. These sit on the skin differently and don’t come with the host of alleged side effects. Even your buddy Dr. Oz recommends making the switch so please don’t take my word as an expert authority. Do your own homework.
