Appreciating happy moments in life wherever we may be Most of us strive for bigger, better, and more luxurious or prestigious things throughout the course of our life, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting the best for yourself, your family and your friends. For example, one would much rather stay in luxurious 5-star hotel vs. a 2-star one, because, he or she would like to have access to a multitude of amenities that may be available in a 5-star hotel, better location, closer to all entertainment, restaurants, etc. However, could we have as much fun with your family staying in a 2-star hotel? Absolutely. It’s all how we look at each experience and our priorities and values. When the most important thing to us is being with people that we love and care about, and going on various adventures together, then it really does not matter whether we stay in a luxury hotel, motel, or somewhere else. Why? Because, our attention is fully absorbed by our significant other and/or our child(ren). We can absolutely make the best travel or vacation experience with those that we love and care bout if our priorities are aligned with our values. It does not matter where we go with my family on vacation, or where we end up staying, we always make the best out of each and every situation no matter what. Sometimes, when we go to a big event and when all hotels are sold out around the venue, we end up staying few nights in a nearby motel, and guess what, we always have a wonderful experience together regardless where we are, because, our top priority is to have a great time together, so everything else comes second. I often observe families have a very challenging time vacationing, because, either their plane was few minutes delayed, or Uber car was not as big as they were hoping for, or room at the hotel was on a lower level than expected, and so on. What’s often observed in such situations is unhappy travelers, frustrated parents, disappointed children. But why? Why ruin your days, week or month when frustration can be avoided by simply shifting our focus on what’s most important to us – people that we love and care about and doing everything that we can to make them happy. Now, I completely understand that we all have our own unique thoughts, opinions, and priorities in life. So, my goal with this article was to simply highlight one point that happiness can be found wherever we may be in life as long as we are surrounded by those that we love and care about, and remember that even small happy moments in life can make a big memorable difference I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
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Not giving up on your dreams regardless of circumstances or lack of progress How many of you thought about giving up on your goals and dreams in life, or your lifetime passion and/or hobby, just because you did not see any progress whether you were hoping to monetize your hobby or attract people to support your vision and sharing your passion with them? I know I have. But then I reminded myself why following through on my goals and passion is important and what it means to me and my family. It’s easy to give up, and that is exactly what takes place whenever someone loses patience, gets discouraged due to lack of results or progress, loses motivation. But why? If it’s our lifetime passion, whatever it may be for you, that we are pursuing, it is something that we deeply care about, there should be nothing that could stop us from following through on our goals, dreams, and live our life with unbreakable determination of reaching that what we set to accomplish. Isn’t that is what we love to do? Isn’t that is what we care about? I would assume that the answer here is a strong “Yes.’ So, let’s not forget that regardless how slow the progress may be, how many challenges or problems we may have to face along the way, regardless what other people are telling us of what we can or cannot do, trying to discourage us, we know what we want to accomplish in our life, we know the lifestyle we want to create for ourselves and for those that we love and care about. So, let’s get after it. At the end of the day our passion, our hobby, is what we have created in our mind and we know how it would make us feel once we accomplish it. We must believe in ourselves, motivate ourselves, and never give up on our passion and our dreams. Even if you are far from being great at what you love to do, for example, being a writer or blogger, keep working on it, keep honing your skill, keep learning, because, every day we get more experienced and more knowledgeable. So, keep learning and exploring something new daily, and eventually everything will align just like you had envisioned it in its ideal state. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
Living in the present and making the time for whom we love and care about vs. living in a land of our memories How often do you stop and appreciate everything and everyone that is present in your life today? I know that in my case, I can certainly do a much better job at this than I have done thus far. So often we get carried away by the routine that we all live in, that we simply forget to pause and recognize everyone who is present in our life today, to appreciate their presence, their support, and their genuine love. Often, we take it for granted. Many of us, myself included, often take our present for granted and not making time to really appreciate and to think the universe for everyone who is by our side and have been by our side for many years. But why? Why not pause our extremely busy life for just few minutes and do just that? Why not send our thanks and appreciation back to the universe showing how thankful we are for having people that we love in our love? Why not share our thoughts with those that we love and care about every day, letting them know how happy we are for having them in our life? Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to this question. What I do know is that very often we wake up and realize that people that we cared very deeply about and loved are no longer there for us to tell them in-person how much we cared about them. So, why wait until it is tool late? No reason at all. It does not take much effort or time to show our love and appreciation to those whom we love and care about. If we are not doing this today, if we are not making time, then we simply creating excuses for our own lack of action in making a first step in approaching those that we love and letting them know how much we care and appreciate them. You never know how much the display of genuine care and appreciation may mean to the other person, whether it is your spouse, husband, parent, child, grandparent, or your close friend. Perhaps that’s what they’ve been waiting for all their life. Perhaps that is what they need to keep moving forward in life and fight through any roadblocks or challenges that they may be dealing with in their own life today. You never know. If you never take the first step and reach out to them, you may never find out until it’s too late. So, don’t wait for a better time, don’t put it off for another day, do it today, do it now, especially if people that you love and care about are right by your side, and if not, if you are separated by a long distance, then pick up a phone and give them a call, as they may be sitting by their phone right now waiting for your call. If you have an ability to drive or fly and go see your loved ones in-person, then do so. It’s not going to require much effort on your part, but it will mean a world to another person, probably more then you can possibly imagine. One of the biggest regrets that I have is not making more time, creating more opportunities to go and see my grandparents in-person on the regular basis while they were still alive. I kept on telling myself that I can always to do so later, whether it was next day, week or month, putting my visits away for another time, because, either I was too busy or did not have financial resources available. Well, now I have one out of four grandparents alive, you bet that I make every effort to go and see him in-person every week or at the minimum every other week. I can tell you will very strong level of confidence that there’s nothing that puts a bigger smile on my grandfather’s face than seeing his grand-grand children come visiting him and spending some time with them. How much move can I ask for then seeing him and my children happy. Many of us have people in our lives whom we care about and love, so can we say that we spend time with them regularly or at a minimum call them on the regular basis? If not, then we really should think about our present and our past and do some deep searching inside of us, asking us one question – “Why not”” I vividly remember a scene from the movie – ‘Home Alone’ – where child had asked his neighbor, why doesn’t he speak with his son? Why doesn’t he give him a call? To which neighbor replied that he believes that his son does not want to speak with him, because, of long-standing disagreement they have had with him, which also kept him from spending time with his granddaughter that he loved very much. Only after the neighbor got enough courage to call his son, he realized that such simple step was the barrier between him and his son, him and his granddaughter, one phone call was a solution to a longstanding disagreement and/or misunderstanding. Earlier example is exactly how many of us create barriers in our own mind that may not even exist or may be completely irrelevant. So, let’s remove those barriers in our own mind, let’s overcome any hesitations and our own egos and make a genuine effort to reach out to those around us, those whom we love and care about today, letting them know how much we care about them and live the life free of regrets about our past, present, or future. We only live once, so why waste our time living in anger, misunderstandings, disagreements, or “what if.” Be happy, be thankful for everyone that you have in your life today, and don’t waste precious time living surrounded by walls built by our own doubts and fears anchored in our mind. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
Being in control of the dialogue while compromising, actively listening, and showing respect to those with whom we interact If someone asked me – “What is the most important skill in any productive and effective dialogue?” without any hesitation I would say “Diplomacy.” So, why is diplomacy is so important for an effective dialogue and why it is not being used as often as it needs to be in important conversations and negotiations that many of us participate in on the regular basis. Unfortunately, there’s not one good answer to this question, however, one thing that stands out to me what I am thinking about diplomacy is people’s desire to be right in order to satisfy our own egos and feel good even if conversation takes a negative/unproductive turn. We want to be and feel right even when we are wrong. Why? Because, the illusion of being right helps to boost our ego and allows us to feel good about ourselves and our actions. But, what we often forget to consider is how other people feel about our words and our actions. We miss a critical part of the bigger picture, and that is that dialogue can never be effective without mutual respect, understanding, and often compromise. Compromise is a very important component of any diplomatic negotiation. Without compromise and genuine respect for another party in the dialogue, it is your opinion vs. someone else’s where both sides walk away from conversation with high boosted ego but in disagreement. So, what exactly are we accomplishing by being right at the expense of another person’s defeat, walking away from conversation with feeling of bitterness? We accomplish absolutely nothing in such situation, all we are doing is damaging our relationship with another person or group. So, the issue remains unresolved and once positive relationship is now damaged. Does anyone win in such situation? Of course, the answer is ‘no.’ Therefore, being diplomatic, by listening vs. arguing, being respectful of another person’s or group’s point of view and perspective, be willing to compromise, considering all sides of the dialogue is very important in having a positive, effective, and mutually beneficial conversation, dialogue and overall engagement. Remember, these points next time you engage in any conversation. Remember to be diplomatic vs. allowing your ego to only focus on your own thoughts and opinions. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
Don't let time slip away, make time to appreciate, recharge and reflect every day Have you ever stopped and think about the beautiful world around us? Have you taken a break recently in your extremely busy schedule to look around and appreciate the nature around you? If you are surrounded by building without a single tree in sight, have you admired beautiful and unique buildings around you, the unique and astonishing architecture? If you live near the ocean, when was the last time you went to the beach and just peacefully sat on the sand admiring the beautiful and magnificent ocean, and its powerful waves? I know it’s a lot of questions that I ask for you to answer, but they are all centered around one thing – the importance of appreciation of the world and beautiful nature, surroundings, and people around us. Now, you may say that “I don’t have time in my busy and hectic schedule to pause and just enjoy peaceful nature around me.” However, if you are working in the office all day, have you taken just few minutes throughout your day to spend outside, perhaps eating lunch or grabbing a cup of coffee, leaving office environment for a period of time? If the answer is no, that perhaps you need to analyze your daily schedule and look for opportunities to optimize your work, meetings, projects that you are working on, so that you may be able to take just few minutes to step outside of your office and enjoy the beautiful day. Look, I know it’s easier said than done, but if we do not create such experience for ourselves, we will continue being consumed by our busy lives without allowing ourselves to simply pause, reflect, think, and fill ourselves with the positive energy of nature. I am sure many would agree that we often get so busy with our daily tasks, problems, issues, concerns, projects, work, etc., that we allow it to consume us completely day after day, and when we eventually find a minute or two to stop and look around, we notice that things have changed, our surroundings have changed. I often hear people saying – “I don’t know where time went, but I didn’t even notice how quickly summer went by and next season came.” That’s a great example of us being so busy that we don’t even notice time passing us by, seasons changing, our surroundings changing, even people around us changing, while we are working very hard to create a better future for ourselves and those that we love. Why not try to combine hard work with some time for ourselves to pause and interact with our surroundings and people around us? Why not take just few minutes each day to appreciate our present? If you can substitute driving your child to school with walking, not only will you enjoy the company of your child, learn more about what he or she are passionate about, but also spend just few minutes surrounded by nature, even if your route consist of walking through busy streets and buildings, you are still interacting with world and people around you vs. the interior of your car. I hope that this brief article added some inspiration to your busy life, and motivated you to find ways to spend just few minutes each day enjoying beautiful world and people around you, helping you to re-charge and fill yourself with positive energy for the entire day, and making it a little easier to deal with and overcome challenges and difficulties that we all face in our busy lives. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
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