What I’ve Learned Along the Road
It will be a life-long journey to try to get it right, but here are some things I feel were important to have learned so far: It is better to try and fail, than not to have tried. Be consistent and fair in all your dealings with people in all situations, not just family and work. Honestly is always the best policy. Truth is the truth, so easy to remember. Consider the opinions of others as they may be the ones with the right answers. It is OK to be wrong, but also important to admit it. There is more…
Share Your Wisdom
If everyone shared the lessons and knowledge of their lives, we could learn so much from each other, and there would be more empathy and less strife. Here is the wisdom that I’ve gained in my thirty-seven years: The color of someone’s skin or their financial status shouldn’t define how they’re treated. Someone else’s religious beliefs shouldn’t offend you if your own faith is strong. It’s easy to let drama into your life but it’s harder to get rid of it. Don’t stress out if no one else has faith in you, just have faith in your God and that’s…
A Caring Future Is In Your Hands
It is hard to put a lifetime of experience into so few words. There are so many angles to look at it from and most lessons come from the past. I want to look at what lessons could come from the future, a future we can all aspire to today. There is a future reality where all ages of life are valued. A baby is never ill-treated by uncaring adults. A young child is never bullied or insulted by his friends. A teenager doesn't consider taking their life because there is no hope for a job or career. No child…
7 Steps to Be Inspired
1) Don’t be afraid to fail. In each of our failures there is a something to gain or learn from. Sometimes the simple lesson is in learning what not to do. What we often perceive as a “failure” is actually just a lesson that life is teaching us. Try a different approach. 2) Don’t be afraid to speak up and use your voice. Too often we hold back from saying what we really want to say or mean to say. Sometimes the biggest regrets we have are the things we never said to someone while they were still around to…
Live As If It Were Impossible to Fail
Here's what I've learned in 27 years... Family is everything. It is so important that no matter what you do or where you go, keep family at the forefront. In your dealings with all, strive to be the greatest provider of Value - shun the quick profit and maintain integrity. This will bring you much honour, respect and lasting prosperity. There are so many ways in which we are often expected to govern our lives - some of these ways work and make sense; others do not work and do not make sense. The trick is to find the way…
Permission to Fail is Permission to Live
To give yourself permission to succeed, you also have to give yourself permission to fail. The truth is that real life has mistakes in it. All creativity, live performance, all real exchanges between people and anything that is authentic, will go wrong now and then. Even the most experienced ritualist will make mistakes. Real life has no airbrushes to hide the flaws, no photoshop to take out the wobbly bits, no editor to polish it. Life is lived in one take, with no pausing, rewinding and redoing options. If we hold ourselves to the standards of polished, professional media, we will…
Overcoming Failure
If you have ever hit a wall of failure at top speed, you know the paralyzing feeling that takes place inside your body. That paralyzing feeling stops you in your tracks, turns a great thing into your worst nightmare. If you have ever poured your heart and soul into something and somehow, someway, it failed, you know what it feels like. This feeling of defeat can lead you down two roads. One is the road to nowhere. This road is the road that keeps you from getting out of bed in the morning, changes your beliefs about yourself, changes the…
When Failure Isn’t An Option
Ever since I was a little kid, this has been my favorite question: "What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?" A teacher presented this to me one day in class when I wasn't exactly living up to my full potential. At first, I dismissed it as kids often do, but it stuck with me for days. When I finally directed my full attention to it, I became quite fond of it, and the way it sparked my imagination. As a kid, I thought that question was simply fun, but as an adult I understand its true brilliance.…
Be Inspired to Succeed by Failing
I believe everything we need to succeed is inside us as children, but it gets slowly pushed out of us as we grow older. By the time we’re teenagers we’ve forgotten these lessons or been forced to bury them. And if you are like me, deep inside you don’t feel any different than you did at age ten or twelve, well, except that you likely don’t play baseball anymore and you probably haven’t done a somersault in years. (I am not suggesting you start.) What I am saying is that you get back a few of those great qualities you had…
The First Step to Managing Change
The nature of life is change. And, the more we strive to keep things the same, the greater the changes seem to be. Nothing lasts forever. We only need to visit any cemetery to get a fresh reminder of the transient nature of our existence. Economies and industries rise and fall. Remember Kodak film? How about vinyl records, cassette tapes and VCRs? It is a given that, at some point in time, in each one of our lives, we will all experience the bitter taste of failure as well as the savory sweetness of success; the vulnerability of weakness as…
The 4 Hurdles You Must Jump in Life
There are four hurdles we must jump in life and until we do, we will not become all we are meant to be. Initially the hurdles diminish our confidence and self-esteem, but this is an illusion as they are a part of the way-the journey of heroes, inventors, and legendary entrepreneurs. They exist to help us fulfill our highest and greatest purpose. The first hurdle is overcoming all the naysayers, the people who tell us our dreams are silly, we're not smart enough, rich enough or strong enough, but we must be strong and follow our heart. If we ignore…
Pi, a Rainbow and a Nudist Beach
The movie Life of Pi is the story of a young man who survives a disaster at sea and is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery. While cast away, he forms an unexpected connection with another survivor: a fearsome Bengal tiger. At one point, Pi, clearly feeling like he had reached the end of his rope, yells out to God, "I lost my parents, I lost everything, what more do you want?" How often in life does this same thing happen to us, where we just want pack up and move on... when we feel like we…