Appreciation and Gratitude

I have big news.

I am going to be moving out soon. Most likely on the first of august. It’s a big step in my life that I am very excited about.

Whenever big changes are happening in our lives we tend to reflect on what we are leaving behind. I’ve realized that I have a greater appreciation for things while looking back than I did in the actual moment.

I have a love/hate relationship with my cats, but now that I am moving I know that I will miss them. I don’t always appreciate my family, but now that I know I won’t be seeing them as often, I consciously put in more effort. It makes me wonder why I didn’t have this attitude the whole time.

It seems we appreciate everything more in retrospect.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them. -Gilbert K. Chesterton

I want to give my family and the people around me the appreciation they deserve. I came up with an exercise to keep things in perspective and encourage myself to show my gratitude to those who deserve it.

Imagine you are retired.

Your memories seem so distant, you’ve let go of any grudges and you reminisce every once in a while in a nostalgic state. Even the small moments, laughing with a co-worker forty years ago, are cherished gems that have so much emotion attached you could shed a tear just thinking about them.

You laugh to yourself when you realize that so many of the things you were so preoccupied with, weren’t really that important.

You wish you could reach out to certain people, you wish you could tell them how much they meant to you.

Are there people in your life you aren’t appreciating enough?

Visualizing myself being older and looking back helps to keep the important things in perspective.

The more I think about it the more I realize that the memories I will cherish the most are the times I exchange gratitude and appreciation with the people around me. I don’t want to look back and feel like I didn’t give my whole heart to the people around me.

If you feel the same, tell the people in your life that you appreciate them.

That’s all you have to say to give someone a memory that will last a life time. Just say “I appreciate you.”

A Guide To The Most Important Thing In Your Life

We all want a lot of things in our lives.

We want financial freedom, love, travel, good health, family, accomplishment and much more. The only problem is when you pursue one of these, you lose time that you could have spent pursuing one of the others.

I like to simplify things as much as possible, it makes life easier. So I pursue one thing that will lead me to each of those things listed above. Call me efficient, call me lazy, but I want to try and make things easy for myself if possible.

So what do I focus on to help me reach all of my goals?
My personal energy.

How do you make decisions based on personal energy?

Your personal energy encompasses your mood, wakefulness, how excited you are and how positive you are, among other things. I will say it is anything that uplifts you mentally or physically.

I absolutely HATE shopping with a passion. It steals both my mental and physical energy. It drains me.

When I go to Walmart and I can’t find what I am looking for, or worse yet I don’t know what I’m looking for, it is only a matter of time before I am completely drained. At that point I just want to sit down and give up.

Some people love shopping and if that is the case then you would gain energy when you shop. Everyone has different energy boosters and drainers.

Since shopping is a drain for me I choose to write things that I need over a period of about a month and then go out and get all of them in one shopping session.

This way I know exactly what I need and only go shopping once a month. If I had to go out more often I’d be drained a lot more.

That is just one example of making decisions based on personal energy, but you get the point. You can apply this to what job you decide to take, whether you go out with friends, what movies you watch and pretty much anything else.

Try to do more of the things that boost your personal energy, and less of what drains it.

When you have energy everything improves.

Making decisions that keep your personal energy in mind will make everything you do in life slightly better.

Just think about it, when you are in a good mood you tend to work better. It causes you to have a better perspective, more resilience and you deal with people better.

Just imagine doing a job that you love versus a job that you hate.

When you imagine yourself doing the thing you enjoy, you probably see yourself working super hard and being proud of everything you do. If you fail, you are excited to try again.

When you see yourself at the job you hate, you probably feel the weight it would put on the rest of your life. You would dread every moment.

But sometimes you have to do things you don’t like to, things that drain you. I have a full time job that drains me sometimes. This is why you have to keep your personal energy in mind in other aspects of your life.

Waking up early and having a good breakfast increases my energy ten fold. Going to the gym has the same effect. Having breakfast helps me prepare for my work day and going to the gym helps me relax and allows me to enjoy myself after work.

Your energy affects everyone around you as well.

You already know this, though you may not have noticed it.

When an upset person walks into a room, they dampen everyone’s mood around them. You immediately feel the weight of their negative energy on your shoulders. It makes everything a little more awkward and painful.

On the other hand when someone who is full of relentlessly positive energy walks into a room everyone gets an immediate boost.

We all have that one friend who never seems to be upset. When they show up everyone says hi, hugs are thrown around, and people are generally happier.
Smiles everywhere!

When you become a person who is a source of good energy you improve all of your relationships.

How to increase your physical energy.

This is relatively simple, treat your body with respect.

1) Give your body the sleep it deserves, get at least eight hours each night. If you do this you will instantly give yourself a big boost to your physical energy.

2) Give your body food that will nourish it. Don’t feed it things that will upset your stomach or cause extreme ups and downs in energy. We all know how it feels after we have too much fast food in one sitting. You end up feeling bloated and lazy with an upset stomach.

3) Work your body a little bit each day, give it some sort of exercise. This could be anything from a full five day gym routine to simply going on walks every morning. This will keep you moderately in shape and your body will thank you for it.

Good health leads to good energy, so treat your body with respect and it will return the favor. Most of this is common sense.

How to increase your mental energy.

This one is a little more complicated.

1) Do things you enjoy as often as possible. I love writing so I try to fit writing into every day. It balances me out. After I write something that I am proud of I get an energy boost for the rest of the day, guaranteed.

I also like the gym, music, reading, walks, and looking at quotes. Whenever I feel drained I have a go-to list of things I can do to get a boost of energy.

2) Surround yourself with positive people who uplift you. When you have negative people in your life they can bring you down. When you have positive people in your life they can turn your whole day around with one comment.

Try to find people who encourage you and put more positive than negative into your relationship.

3) Avoid stress as much as possible. This one can be hard, but as long as you side step as much stress as you possibly can you will have more personal energy. Be aware and take note of anything or anyone that causes you stress. Try to reduce the role they play or amount of time you spend on these things.

A side note: Mental space.

This is a very similar topic and it relates very closely to the mental side of personal energy.

I believe that you can only be thinking/focusing on one thing at a time. I often have days where I think about one thing 70% of the time.

Usually this is not something that will improve my life or make me happy. Most of the time it is something I am stressing over, or something I am upset about such as a lousy person in my life. 

You have to be very careful what you allow to take up your mental space. If you let the wrong things take up too much space you will drain your energy faster than you would think possible.

Any time spent thinking about negative things is less time you could spend thinking about positive things.

Focus on improving your personal energy and things will fall into place.

This is one of my main philosophies. I hope it helps you to accomplish your goals and put more quality into every aspect of your life. I also hope it helps to make you a more generally happier person.

After writing this I have so much energy. With this wind pushing my sails I think my day will be a good one.

Let’s meet up one day and you can tell me what gives you energy.
After all, spending time with good people always gives me a boost.

Never let lousy people affect you again

I’ve never told anyone this, but I have an alter ego.

When I rip off my shirt I have a giant “O” on my chest. I am Captain Obvious, because I am one hundred percent sure that you already know what I am about to tell you.
I know, it’s not as exciting as the super hero I met last week.

Some people are lousy.

From head to toe some people are just horrible. My friend calls them “Unsavory” which is fitting because after you experience a lousy person you have this disgusting aftertaste in your mouth. BLEH. Nasty.

There are many different ways that people can be lousy to you. People will lie to you, cheat you, ditch you, and even hate on you. People would snatch the gum right out of your mouth if you yawned in front of them.

It can be hard to deal with these people.

No matter what you do, it seems you always get the short end of the stick and they don’t give a damn. The worst part is that sometimes this person is awesome and they have just one really crappy personality trait. How can you justify hating them then?

So how do you deal with these people? How can you fix the problem with the least possible amount of stress and negative emotion?

Every time you are angry or frustrated with someone you are allowing them to take up a bit of your mental energy.

They are just fine, thinking about whatever lousy things they are thinking about, and you are sitting around stewing in your anger. You must change the way you think about the whole situation.

“If you don’t like something, change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.”
-Mary Engelbreit

One of my biggest pet peeves is being ditched. I loathe people who say they are going to do something and then bail at the last minute. I have a couple friends like this. Hell, I have lost some friends because of it. I liked them a lot, I just got tired of being dissapointed.
Now I don’t even get to enjoy the random conversations we would have had.

You have to realize this is the way that person is.

Once they have shown that side of themselves, you can’t be surprised when it happens again.

If you know they are a liar, don’t put stock in anything they say. If you know that they ditch people all the time, you can still ask them to come out, but don’t get your hopes up. You are angry because you refuse to see the pattern and you have unrealistic expectations.
You are lying to yourself.

I still become a little upset the first time someone shows a lousy side of themselves, but after that I adjust. I’m not saying that if someone does something lousy that you have to stop talking to this person, I’m actually advocating the opposite. Just realize that not all people are perfect and you shouldn’t expect anything more than who they are.

The closer you get to seeing the clear picture of this person, the more you should adjust the role you allow them to play in your life; how much of you mental space you allow them to take up. If someone is lousy make sure you don’t hinge much of you happiness on them.

There are a lot of lousy people out there and a lot of people have lousy qualities.

I’m not perfect. In fact I have spent most of my life being the crappiest person I know. I doubt you are perfect either.

So, if you know that you have lousy traits, why expect anyone else to be free of blemishes. They just have different imperfections than you.

Life is all about moderation.

Give everyone an equal chance. Speak ill of no one. Minimize those that drain you and expand on those that empower you. Never dwell on the negatives and never let negative people drag you into the mud.

Allow people to play whatever role they play in your life, though the great part is that you get to choose how big that role is.

After all, you are the director of your life.
Don’t let it be a lousy one.