Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Best Advice I Have Found

Want the best advice I have ever found? Advice that will change your business for the better, your life for the better? It will change your attitude for the better and it will serve you the rest of your life and your life will continually improve. Are you ready? Here it is in two little words: Be Thankful.

Purposely develop an attitude of gratitude about everything--and I mean everything. I mean every thing that is said, everything that you see and everything that happens around you. Don't leave anything out. Be thankful for it all. Having an attitude of gratitude is something you need to develop, it doesn't just come by itself. It is a decision. Once you decide that you want things to change, and decide to develop the attitude of gratitude, you will become more and more grateful as time passes.

If you're not already there, this idea will have to settle in a bit. I suggest you begin, by trying it on the things that are easy to be grateful for. As you get used to that, start adding in other things that you're maybe not sure you're grateful for and you will start seeing those things in a different light. You might ask, how can I be grateful for this? That will help you get moving toward gratitude for it. In time, and with practice, you can become grateful all day, every day for every thing, event and person.

How will this change your business for the better? When you are grateful, you are open and ready to receive. You will find that you have a whole different attitude about customers, problems, business climates, the news, etc. You will begin seeing--no, you will begin focusing on the possibilities instead of the problems, the light instead of the dark, the way instead of no way, opportunities instead of despair, and abundance rather than lack. You will no longer be controlled by circumstance, but by choice. I tell you that there is nothing more powerful than that. You have the choice. Matter of fact, you have always had the choice and you have always chosen, but now the choice to be grateful is in the forefront of your mind and you realize that you have chosen other responses before. Maybe it was anger, depression, frustration, anxiety. Those need not control you. If they control you, they control your business. Choose gratitude.

This is not a lecture. I am sharing the best advice I have ever found. It is something that I found many years ago, and I continue to read and listen to more about today. And I get better everyday about being more and more grateful. It is a deliberate process. One of my mentors, Jim Rohn said that there is a day that turns your life around. That day for me, was reading a book called Power In Praise by Merlin R Carothers. It is a very short, but very powerful book. Today, I am reading a little each night over and over in John DeMartini's book, The Gratitude Effect. It is also a powerful book and very easy to read. It is great at my bedside because it has a lot of short stories so you can read one every night and it only takes a few minutes. All of John DeMartini's books are focused on gratitude and love. There are many others as well, but these two are very powerful recommendations. Perhaps for you, it will be something different.

How can you be grateful for negative events? Practice. The only thing I can say for sure here is that your reaction to any event, regardless of what it is or how positive or how negative is a choice. The event does not choose for you. Once you get that, and realize that you are in control of what you think about anything. . . well, that is a peace that did not exist before. Try it. You'll get better at it if you don't quit and go back. You will have so much more joy. Start being thankful today for one thing. Then make it two. Then three, and pretty soon, you will realize that you are thankful all day long! It is without a doubt, the best advice I have ever received. Now, I pay that forward to you! Enjoy!

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