What to give?

In life we often search for success. We see something that we consider success and we want it. One key step that many people forget is that to find success we have to sacrifice. We must give of ourselves to find success in life. We must give time, or effort, emotion and a some part of ourselves. We drive forward to obtain the golden ticket.

Success for each of us is something different, and when we look at others if they do not see success the same way we do we often look at them with judging eyes. We wonder why they are not fighting for the same things we are. We consider them lazy because they are not sacrificing as much as we are or we consider them selfish because they have no time for other. We are not looking in the mirror to consider what we are sacrificing because we make it all make sense within our own head. We convince ourselves that our sacrifice is worth it. Often it is but some times it is not. We each make these choices and must accept others choices.

My family and I have chosen a tougher path, we move every few years and we often have to say goodbye to friends as we move on to our next posting. As we make these moves I have a goal in mind, I believe my family has the same goal. But overtime I have had many discussions with friends about this. One made the statement, "Well I guess money is more important then friends to you!" That stung, but I hadn't ever considered it from that angle. It stopped me in my tracks, I wanted to believe the my true friends would always stay connected... I asked another friend a few years later why he didn't push for more, he looked at me and said "Look around, I have everything I need, I am home every night, my job challenges me but does not exhaust me and my family has me here for them." I almost shed a tear. He was truly happy... Could I be happy with that?

Success has so many levels and we need to know what will make us happy. Over time I try to be more and more conscious of my breaking points, how much can I sacrifice for each goal, how much can I give. I know I can give much of myself, I know I can break myself and get up again. But I have a family, I will not sacrifice them so I need to listen I need to understand. I sacrifice myself for my family, directly at the home and indirectly through work, it is a balance everyday as it is for so many. But every moment is worth it!

We all need to understand our break points, when we find a goal we want to achieve we need to know what we will have to sacrifice and what that will that sacrifice
do to us and those around us. Sacrifice is part of life, be prepared and know you can reach your goals. Once you reach a goal you can look back and know you gave of yourself and truly know what the value of your success is.

Motivate, inspire and find your focus.

Finding Time.

"Ya, ya I will get to it when I have time." "Yes I can get that tomorrow." "No problem I will find time."

Terms many of us use everyday and almost all of us are guilty of not "Finding Time". This coin has two sides; One we just don't want to hurt anyone so we appease them and put the task that we don't want to do off until "later." Side two is simply procrastination, and I am as guilty as anyone else of this if not a bit more guilty then many.

Side one is a simple fix in text, harder in practice but definitely something we can all do. Learn to say no! Don't just blurt it out as though you are a three year old and then run away. Try and be conscious of your words and the other persons feelings, but seeing that we have already identified that we have a time management issue don't take to long to ponder the request. Then once you know there is a high chance you won't complete the request explain that you don't think you can get it done and if it is important you may not be the best person to complete the task. This may turn into a discussion and you may find yourself still completing the task, but if you do I expect the other person has given you some motivation... even if it is just a swift kick in the butt.

Side two is a bit more complex, the largest side of this is one is fairly clear though. In the end we don't find time, it is not hidden under a rock, and we don't make time, we cannot sit down and craft a bit more time for the end of the day "ok today is going to be 25 hours instead of 24!". Time is just a tool we have to structure our day, a tool we can use if we learn to control our activities. We all have 24 hours in a day and we need to learn to use them to our advantage. We all have x amount of activities we need to complete within our day, within our week within our month... Many of us unconsciously work to our time, if we have an hour to finish a task or think the task will take us an hour, it is probably going to take an hour. Could we have finished it in 30 minutes, maybe, but we knew we had an hour so it took us an hour.

Take the time to know what you are doing in a day, look at tasks that take the most time and consider how you can get it done faster. Look at small tasks and order them together so that you can blast through a whole bunch of small tasks in one burst, you will build a head of steam, feel good about your pace and keep driving through into the next task. Some days we will need to use the time we have set aside for a daily activity for another task, this is ok, changing up our habits now and again will help us learn to add new tasks to our busy days. In the end our day is build on a whole bunch of little habits, we expect certain results and have build in rewards. Make sure to fit additional tasks in to your existing structure, have similar reward for yourself, make change feel natural, once change is part of your daily life you will "find time" everywhere you look!

Motivate, inspire and find your focus.

To be Humble

A few years ago I was reading a book on success. As I read I took many interesting points, there were many thoughts to take away and it definitely gave me inspiration to make some changes in my life. One thing I found interesting was a discussion about managing your time, one point in this was to pay someone else to do basic jobs. The directive was if you could pay someone else less an hour to complete the job then you are paid in your own job, then it was not worth your time and you should hire someone else to complete the work. The examples they used were around mowing the lawn, house hold chores and basic daily activity. At the time I nodded to myself and said I can see that making sense.

The other day I was folding laundry and a thought hit me. We should always take the time to do the basic jobs, these basic jobs keep us on the ground, they keep us humble. Once we start paying someone else to complete all the basic chores in our life we start becoming disconnected with the basic aspects of life. We start to place ourselves above those that are paid to complete those job. In the end though we are all human, no matter our title or our paycheck we are all people and we are all basic creatures. We must take the time to keep ourselves humble, and taking the time to complete the basic chores of life is a simple way to do this.

As we engage in these chores and they become routine it also gives us time to think, working on these chores it is also easy to reflect, reflect on the basics of life. As I fold my little girls pants I smile looking at how small they are... and then realize how much bigger they are then her little sisters, she has grown so much. As I mow the lawn I think back to being a child myself and mowing my parents lawn, I think to how hard my wife works to keep our lawn looking amazing. My mind has time to settle, let go of the stress of work and life and glance over life. I let myself settle into the chore and release the other aspect of life for the 20 minutes or hour, in some ways it is a form of meditation. Either way it reminds me of the little things in life and keeps me humble.

Motivate, Inspire and find your focus. 

Positively.... Spun!

As I sort through the world, I look for the sunlight, I look for the warmth that comes with happiness and positive thoughts. As I look around with this thought another old phrase comes to me, "actions are stronger then words," so now I think to myself I need to look for positive action, positive movement in the right direction. Then I stop, sun beaming down on my and my mood lifting by the second, I cannot define myself by the thoughts, words and actions of others. As they say I need to be the change. I need to be positive, act positive and think positive. If words and actions of others don't directly impact me then I need to leave them to themselves.

When each of us focus on being positive ourselves and spread a positive mood we are making change. Smiles are contagious. When we see something that frustrates us we cannot dwell on it, we need to avoid commenting, if anything offer a positive thought or action. We so often continue to say how positive we are but are commenting on how negative something was, but we think we feel better because "we were the positive one!" Well I ask how are we being positive when we are taking the time to spread the negative action. Drop it, walk away don't carry it with you!

So today lets step forward finding the silver lining. Commit to only focus on the positive today, and start to build this habit. Try to make three people smile and you are doing something right. Try to make 2 people laugh, you have helped them through the day. Be there to help stop one persons tears and turn it to a smile you are feeling success.

Motivate, inspire and find your focus!

Make it Perfect.

I fight, I struggle, its not right, I cannot present this, I cannot move forward... Its NOT PERFECT!! I struggle day in, day out looking for perfection, wanting everything just to click together to look at my work, look at my life and go, wow I couldn't have done anything better!....

Over the years I have broke down many times trying to find this perfection, slipping back into this world of missing my target. I have found myself alone in groups of people, drifting through life in a dark cloud worried that someone will notice that I am not perfect, that I have flaws. I smile and nod, act strong but inside feel inadequate. These are my feelings and not to be part of the outside world and I try to never let anyone see them... That is impossible, just like perfection. Someone is always going to see through a façade if you live within one, you hope it is someone that loves you and will offer support but that is not always the case, and those are the days one live in fear of...

One cannot live in fear, one cannot worry day in and day out and one will always look back and see something they could have done better. One must find the strength so see imperfection as a stepping stone to improvement, just another lesson in this amazing life we live.

As I look around the world I find one thing, those who demonstrate success always appear to achieve perfection, but with a bit of looking one can see that they rarely do achieve perfection. What they do is accept what is around them as perfect in the moment. They do not react to flaws, they work with them, they don't throw their arms in the air and walk away, they stand back look around with pride and accept everything as perfection within the moment. They know there are flaws, and they take note for the future, they fix anything that may actually cause a problem in the moment, but if it can be brought in to look like it is part of the moment and will not create an issue later they roll with it and accept it as perfect within the moment.

The challenge many of us have is not a lack of perfection, it is the stress and worry we create by trying to achieve perfection and never seeing that it is all around us. We must always strive for the next level, always push harder for happiness and whatever our vision of success is, and we must always strive for perfection. This is not a bad thing as long as when we strive for these things we will accept the imperfections as part of our life, maybe something to work on, definitely not something to break us. We need to focus on bettering ourselves and those around us, and when we recognize that growth is the greatest sign of perfection we will feel proud and others will see our pride. They will look at us and wonder how we achieve such perfection, we will become the inspiration and we will grow.

We must take a moment every day and see the perfection that is all around us, see how many things we have to inspire us and motivate us. We all have perfection in the things around us, whether it is a moment of silence that brings a smile to our face, a hug from a child or a job well done that we can reflect on just how well we have done.
Motivate, Inspire and find your Focus.

Dreams come true

All our life we strive for your dreams, we push to see them come true. For so many they always seem so far away that we lose hope, we lose desire and motivation. But for me, I see now my dreams are coming true, I see that many dreams are in my hands. I look at my beautiful wife, my amazing kids and a job I love.... Just a year ago I had most of this but could not see it. The day we stop and look around, really look at what we have and see are dreams are coming true is the day life becomes amazing. Now lets stop for a second, I am not bragging, I am not saying I have won the 649, I am saying I see life different. Dreams are coming true for all of us once we take the time to see them, Dreams come true in all sizes and shapes, it may not always look like we thought it would, it may seem extremely simple, but when you look in the eyes of your loved one, look around at your friends, hold your child, this is a dream, a dream we all had to be loved, a dream to be accepted. When we look at the walls around us, the fact that we get a pay cheque these are dreams coming true. When we feel this joy, this success, we can now help others achieve their dreams, when we focus on someone else's dreams we then feel greater success, greater joy. There is no feeling like making dreams for others come true, this should be a dream for all of us. When we accept that our dreams are coming true and help create dreams for others we start to build a circle of success and joy, dreams become more achievable, people want to help you reach your bigger dreams and life becomes amazing. Once we accept and love what we have we start to see the biggest dream any of us could have come true and that is happiness. Don't stop dreaming, don't stop setting bigger dreams and shooting for the moon but never stop seeing that your dreams are coming true all around you and life is amazing no matter how hard it seems, no matter how low we are, there is always something to be happy about and a dream coming true. Smile and the sun and dream of the stars. Motivate, Inspire and find your Focus.

To rest the mind work the body

I had been sitting for two days, reading intently feeling inspiration as I burned through my new book. Such clear thoughts, connections being made with work and family life. I love digging into a book that click that inspires and creates focus points... Especially when I can do it sprawled out in the sun with a drink in my hand... But something isn't right yet, my mind is still in gear I haven't let go yet, I am relaxed but have not let go. What is it, why am I not shutting my mind off, I switch books, some good fiction.... Still not letting go... I am sitting listening to music book and the ground lost in my thoughts when I hear a call for water polo! I jump up, why not I need something and have enjoyed water polo before. A casual game starts, we have a good group, all having fun and all working hard. My heart rate is up, focus is on the game. We laugh, we cheer, we course in jest when the other team scores. The game wraps up we shake hands and head back to our chairs. I sit down and feel that feeling I was looking for. I am now relaxed, for 45 minutes I was engaged, mentally and physically, now I rest. It hits me, I need the physical workout the endorphins to let the stress out. It all makes sense engaging in any activity can help relax the mind, we so often think rest means sitting, yes this is the definition of at rest but to de-stress we need more. Sometimes it is a long run to be alone with our thoughts, sometimes its a team sport to draw our focus to people, and activity and away from the task on our mind. To rest the mind work the body, it works every time. Motivate, inspire and find your focus.