DON'T COMPLAIN

The Big Idea — Don’t Complain

“Complaining is the absolute worst possible thing you could do for your health or your wealth. The worst! … For the next seven days, I challenge you not to complain at all.”

~ T. Harv Eker from Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind

This is another great one. Do you complain a lot? You know what you’re doing when you complain? You’re basically telling the Universe that you’re powerless. That you’d prefer to complain about something you don’t like rather than ask yourself the question, “Hmmm… What do I want? And how can I get it?!?!”

Don’t be a victim. (EVER!!)

May I repeat that? Don’t be a victim. (EVER!!)

Remember, “There is no such thing as a really rich victim.” To help you out with this, why not try on a little exercise T. Harv suggests? The next time (and the time after that and…) you complain, take your finger and slide it across your throat – like you’re slitting your throat. Gross? Yah. Exactly the point. Because that’s basically what you’re doing every time you complain!!!

“You can be a victim or you can be rich, but you can’t be both. Listen up! Every time, and I mean every time, you blame, justify, or complain, you are slitting your financial throat.”

~ T. Harv Eker from Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Get PhilosophersNotes today

yes I know I am plagiarizing from Brian Johnson at Philopher's Notes but check his site out - good stuff everyday

MAYONNAISE JAR & TWO BEERS...

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 Beers.
A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was..
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous 'yes.'
The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed..
'Now,' said the professor as the laughter subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things---your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions---and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car..
The sand is everything else---the small stuff. 'If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued, 'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18.. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first---the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand. One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, 'I'm glad you asked.'
The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.
Please share this with someone you care about. I JUST DID!

MORE LESSONS FROM THE TRAIL

more about Choice Points

"OK, Mr. Smarty pants hiker-boy," (direct quote) "tell me more about Choice Points and what are they?" Choice Points are something that occur to each of us throughout our lives and begin at a very young age when we bear witness to something that causes us to stop and reevaluate our position and decide our course of action. The decision can be a conscious one or subconscious like the response to some tragic or threatening event in our childhood that we don't even remember anymore. The result is a change in the course or path of our lives. The point of change might result from something traumatic like abuse, violence, hunger, natural disaster, abandonment and not so commonly thought about are the results of witnessing acts of kindness, love and generosity.

Choice Points offer us the opportunity to take a different path from the one we are on now. As a child, these may have appeared to have been forced upon us but that simply isn't true. Two children can experience the same event and have two totally different reactions to it - something is at work here. As we get older, we often choose to ignore the Choice Points that are presented to us by refusing to look inside ourselves and find the spiritual guide that is trying to show us the way. The more we ignore the message, the higher the drama tends to get until we finally choose to deal with it, or not. The accidents become more serious, the illness or disease gets stronger, the financial stress keeps repeating, the careers keep ending, the dramatic episodes of our life start to spiral out of control - all in an effort to get our attention. On the West Coast Trail, I got stranded on a dangerous boulder field near Owen Point and found recurring issues about abandonement and independence rear their ugly heads in very dramatic fashion. Finally, I made the choice to trust in something beyond myself and stand on my own two feet (literally) and move in the only direction left to me - forward!

MORE LESSONS FROM THE TRAIL

"...throughout our lives, we are presented with Choice Points."

from THE WEST COAST TRAIL: One Step at a Time

We are all confronted with choices in our lives. While hiking the West Coast Trail, choices are presented constantly and some are obvious and simple like, going over, around or under a log. Some have larger consequences like whether to hike on the beach or in the woods and sometimes we make a choice between stopping for a rest or climbing the ladder to the next level. While some of these choice decisions do offer a risk to life and limb as noted in my book, most are simply decisions that don't necessarily have a right or wrong attached to them, but all have consequences.

In every day life we sometimes require Choice Points in a more dramatic fashion as we ignore the issues in our lives by filling our time with busy-ness instead of looking below the surface to explore the business of living rather than the living of business. You and I can site numerous examples of people receiving a "wake up call" in the form of a serious injury or health issue to themselves or a loved one. We can point to people who needed to lose everything in order to gain what was most precious. Perhaps we were the subject of something similar. Fortunately, we live in a time of "choice" if we choose to exercise our choices. We can CHOOSE joy, peace, abundance, health, happiness and fulfillment or we can choose illness, depression, loneliness and lack. The CHOICE is ours, the price is the same - our life.

Share your "Choice Point" with me, whether on a hiking trail or sitting in your backyard, I am interested in knowing what lessons have come your way. I will only reprint them if you give me permission to do so.