You Have the Power

Good Morning, my friend.

It is a time for joy by living fully in gift.

Living the reality of your gift and talents in everything you do brings meaning and fulfillment and joy.

A gift when applied to all aspects of your life equally brings significantly more energy and the fullness of mission.

If your gift is to engage others so that they feel more confident about themselves, then to be most effective the gift must be applied in the work place and the play place, and in the every place.

The human condition is taught to balance life. It is taught to treat each part of life as a stand-a-lone component; like pieces of a pie. Some teach to evaluate each piece separately for example rate your success at work on a scaled of 1-10. Then separately rate your relationships on a scale of 1-10. Then evaluate your family on a scale of 1-10. And so forth.

The truth is that life is not likened to pieces of a pie it is not about balance it is about convergence. You will never achieve balance. It is about converging each part of your life by considering it in relationship to the application of gift. So how are you doing with your gift at work, how are you doing with your gift in relationships or in your civic activity or in family? Are you giving of yourself in some areas but not others?

When one commits to live their gift in all of life, life works. (Mt. 12:1-8)

Morning: Today help me to live my gift in all of my work and life.

Evening: How today did I do by living my gift?

Finding Happiness

Do you have happiness in your life? Is life about happiness or joy? What do you do when you are unhappy?
Thom will show you the difference between happiness and joy. He will unpack the value of real joy, as well as of meaning and fulfillment. .

What is a slump and how do you get in it?

It is all in how you define it, but time and time again everyone encounters statements such as, "Happiness is fleeting!" or "Happiness is elusive!" Research shows that happiness, as a feeling, is not sustainable. In the majority of cases, happiness is the result of some physical attribute. For example, someone feels happy when they have purchased a second home or achieved some personal or work-related goal or met someone they like. When happiness is attributed to such determinable objects, as the objects grow or diminish, the sensation of happiness is directly affected. When the second home loses its importance, the relationship doesn't turn out the way one expected or the plaque one received for reaching a goal requires dusting, happiness is equally affected. I deleted the last sentence of this paragraph.

The truth is that happiness attached to things or people is not sustainable. As Aristotle wrote, happiness is about a state of being. Test this theory by moving somewhere to be happier, or take a trip to get away to a new environment and like most people you will find no enlivened state of euphoria. Why? Because you took the same old person with you! You took YOU! And if YOU are not right, changing environments will not make you right. So what is the answer? Seek JOY, not happiness. Joy is a state of mind that can bring good out of everything the world brings your way.

A simple daily exercise is to practice identifying some good that comes from whatever bad you think happened to you. By the way, the results of this exercise are what all good movie scripts are made of: tragedy hits but there is some saving good that comes out of it! Remember, people find personal wellbeing because they get to know themselves and what they are meant to be. Organizations become leaders because they apply their core competencies for the advantage of their customers-not themselves.