Family...

In life you come across friends. You encounter foes. But in the the end, you can't change family. Family are there whether you want them or not. Embarrassed or proud, they are always a part of you. Embrace that part. It's who you are...

Life doesn't grant you the opportunity to decide your family. Live with the hand you are dealt, it's always a winner. Family will never bite you, and if that occurs, it's usually foreseen. Make the most of your opportunities and always smile...

Yes you can, should, and are supposed to...

What is easy for some people to do is impossible for others. Not because the others can't do it, but because they don't think they can, they should, or they are supposed to. Growing up incredibly shy, I can completely relate to this.

To a degree I woke up everyday and lived in other people's worlds. I went about my day quietly and watched other people doing the things that I wanted to be doing. While other people were standing up for themselves, I was submissive. While other people were outgoing, I stood there hoping to get asked to do something. While other proactive people were having fun and playing the game of life, I essentially stood on the sidelines and cheered them like a fan.

I'm here to tell you that you don't have to be an observer in other people's fun, instead you too can have fun too. There's nothing that makes them different from you or better than you other than the fact that you don't know that yet.

It is ok to take chances and in fact the more you take the less they actually seem like chances but rather the norm. A risk no longer becomes a risk if you are ok with all the outcomes. Don't question if you can, should, or are supposed to... the answer to those questions are yes. You are only limited by your effort.

Life can be fun for some and scary to others with the only difference being the mindset of possibilities. Having faith to make a move, take on a challenge, or speak up for yourself will change your life. It's your life, not someone else's.

The world is stage and you are the star of your own show. There is no rehearsal and no encore. It's a one person show and it's showtime. Good luck with your journey, everyone is pulling for you...

The mislabeling of a mistake...

Life is unpredictable and outcomes don't always go as predicted. Even with all the stars aligned and all the preparation finished, things might not go as you had hoped. Most people instantly label it a failure or the action a mistake... but that's not really a correct label. Just because something didn't go the way that you wanted doesn't make it a mistake, simply a different outcome than you wanted.

Something is never a failure or a mistake if you learn from it. Even when things don't go your way, if you choose to look and learn from it, you don't have to label it a mistake at all. Life is about learning and improvement. You can take as much back from a "mistake" as you can from a "success". Something is only a mistake when you fail to learn from it. Not learning from a mistake tends to lead to making the same mistake again. Life is about improvement not making the same mistakes over and over.

If you don't like the result, don't make the same action. If you do what you've always done, you are going to get what you have always gotten. If you don't like the way things always go, you need to make a change in how you do things.

Growing, changing, and improving is what life is about. Trying new things and different approaches until you are happy with the results is important.

Keep smiling everyone, today is going to be an amazing day...

Darkest before the dawn...

Life is full of ups and downs. The downs always seem like an eternity and the ups are always too short. If things aren't going your way, have faith that an up is right around the corner. It's during the downs that it becomes time to shine, not during the ups. The downs are not the time to give up rather the time to stand up. Character is revealed when times are tough. Let your character shine through...

The sun will shine again. Have faith in that simple fact and continue to smile. Today is a great day and tomorrow will be even better...

Making life easier...

One simply thing in life that I've learned is to make life easier for yourself. People sometimes do thing to complicate things such as make questionable decisions or be at inappropriate places. They basically do things they know they aren't supposed to do because they value the reward more than the potential consequence. Some people enjoy drama.

In life, this approach brings on a lot of reward but it also brings on a lot of headaches... and usually a lot of pain to other people. It's just easier to make life easy for yourself. Why create obstacles? Why get sidetracked? Drama wastes time and time is valuable.

As a child when you were walking home from school and saw a puddle, you knew to avoid it. As an adult, why would you walk through a puddle? Simply avoid the puddle and continue on your path to happiness. Have fun everyone and keep smiling...

Loving yourself...

There is no greater moment than the moment you realize the only person you truly need to impress is the person you see in the mirror. Loving who you are is a springboard towards a healthy and productive life. Feeling comfortable with your decisions and your actions provide the foundation of personal growth.

Not having to worry about what others think will allow you to make choices that are truly your own. Taking other people's feeling into consideration is a very important quality but learning that even that is a choice you're making is very empowering in it's self. Doing things because you want to and not because you think you are supposed to, you have to, or that others want you to is life changing.

You can't provide love to others until you provide love to yourself. Keep smiling everyone...

My biggest fear...

Growing up my biggest fear was talking. I wasn't comfortable with my own voice. To complicate things, learning to read wasn't any picnic either. With all the difficulties I had with my ears while learning to talk, no one could understand me. I found myself constantly repeating myself and not being understood. It was frustrating to say the least. Years and years of speech therapy and it's still something I think about.

Like I said, to compound the issue was learning to read. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age. I excelled at certain things and was literally terrified of others. I had to read slowly and follow along with my finger. I wasn't really comprehending the sentences as much as trying to say the words the best I could. That wasn't even the worst of it... having to read a paragraph aloud!

I didn't have the sad fears as my classmates. I wasn't afraid of bullies or girls at this point, I was simply terrified of words. Reading aloud was probably the most difficult thing I ever had to do. My trick was to try to count ahead and make an educated guess as to when and which paragraph I was going to read. I would "practice" to myself over and over. Search out sounds that I had hard times saying and try and focus on those. When my teacher would look at me, my heart would fall. Here goes nothing I would think. Half my classmates couldn't understand me and the other half who could hear me, listened to me skip words and transpose letters.

When it was all said and done, all I could do was put my head down and relax. Not the boogie man or anyone other character from a horror film could ever scare me as much as having to expose myself like that in front of my classmates.

Not being able to communicate verbally was a huge issue as a child. Not talking was a lot easier than having to repeat myself or being misunderstood. My classmates weren't nearly as mean or cruel as the ones that laughed at me in my head.

Things did get better though...

Searching for answers...

No one is perfect. Not everyone is ready to accept that, but the truth is we all have flaws. The questions is... are you willing to understand this and accept someone's flaws? Are you ready to understand and accept your own flaws?

Life is lived forward and rationalized backwards. The future stands ahead of you. Make the most of the future. Understand you are who you are and decide where you want to go. Understand the things you have and the things you want. Most importantly, love the person you are and value the things you have. Often people search for happiness in different places and other things, and happiness was there the whole time, they just didn't realize it.

You won't be happy with the things you aren't and the things you don't have until you are happy with who you are and the things you already have. You can chase unicorns and battle ghosts, thinking you'll find happiness, but happiest exists everywhere. You are only as happy as you allow yourself to be.

Keep smiling and learn to love yourself. Today is amazing and tomorrow is going to be even better...

Ordering food...

If people were to just look at my diet they would label me picky but that definitely wasn't the whole story. I limited the different foods that I ate because it made things easier for me. I would lobby to go shopping with my mom because then I had some input on the food she bought for me. I would stick with the same old "reliables" I would eat every week. I was terrified of change, so this approach was a trick I used to ensure I would have some safe food to eat.

One of the scariest parts of growing up was going out to eat. A lot of places didn't have cereal or plain sandwiches which I ate ninety percent of the time. I would scan the menu trying to find the simplest foods with the shortest and easiest name to say. Then I would consider all the side orders and choose something I've had before for piece of mind. Even after stressing over what I wanted, the hardest part was still to come...

Few people were more intimidating than a waitress. They would stroll up to the table ever so casually and cast a huge spotlight on me... well so it felt. I knew when they approached it was time to get my game face on. I repeated over and over in my head the exact words I was going to say. I prayed the whole exchange would go smoothly and she wouldn't ask me anything unexpectedly. I would know most of the options she was going to ask from the menu or from listening to the people who ordered before me. One of the tricks I would use was to order last as a way of knowing what to expect when it came to the questioning and the mini-interrogation.
My other trick was just to say plain. It wasn't even that I necessarily wanted it plain, it would just end most chances of any follow-up questions.

Each time I made it through a trip eating out, I considered it a victory for the good guys!

True rainbows...

Sunshine creates life. Everyday I wake up to the hope of light. It's not guaranteed but simply a dream. Every morning may day relies that it will be sunny. Some days aren't as planned. Some days are cloudy. What's next...

Life is not over and the sky is not falling. Take it for what it is and only that. You can infer, extrapolate, anticipate, or come to your own conclusion, but... it's just cloudy. Not everyday will be sunny.

Dreams are often dashed. Not everyday is how you see or hope. Some days are cloudy, don't let it affect your dreams. Dreams exists amongst clouds. True dreams part the clouds and bring sun.

We all need dreams. Dreams make us focus and hope. Even amongst clouds, we can still have hope. Things are not bad and the sky is not falling. Life is amazing, keep smiling and be kind. Consider other people's feelings when you can.

The clouds and rain bring certain constants. For every drop of rain... a rainbow is assured. Look at the bright side. find your rainbow amongst the grey of a cloud. If you can't, you can tomorrow. Life isn't about not being able to, but simply not being able to yet... keep smiling everyone.

Action versus waiting...

Great things have been achieved through action. Great things have been conceived while waiting. Both can be important, but one is more relevant.

Act and don't react. Solve and don't wonder. Be active and don't think about it. Life isn't about wanting to do things, it's about doing things. Experiences aren't based on thought but trial and error.

Today only comes around today. You may long for tomorrow but the now is now. You can't duplicate now but you hope for tomorrow. Move now, tomorrow is still there.

Good luck everyone... make the most of today...

Right and wrong...

Every person is specifically different. We all act differently and think differently. We are all individuals with a unique attribute set. Thus we all see things differently.

Imagine a scenario of finding a twenty dollar bill at a grocery store. Do you give it to the person the closest to it? Turn it in? Pocket it? There's a million options and behaviors, each unique to the individual.

We all act and react based upon how we were taught. We are a culmination of our experiences and our environment. We behave how we think we are supposed to behave... and in an odd way that's all we can do. With this realization, when looking at others, all we can do is understand and accept.

Back to the twenty dollar scenario, there's a variety of people in the world that would do each one of those things. Some people would keep it without question. Some people would return it. Some people would attempt to track down it's owner. There's a million degrees of these scenarios, a million different people who would do each one. These same million people would each consider how the other one handles it as wrong. "You are stupid to return it." "You are stupid to keep it."

People handle things how they think they are supposed to handle them. To extrapolate further, people also judge others based on they think they would react if they were in the same situation. We hold other people to our standards even though these standards are not their standards.

If everyone handles a situation differently, there's a million styles of right as well as a million styles of wrong. Each right and wrong belonging to a different person. How we handle something is right to us and could be wrong to another.

We are individuals. We come from a different background and have had different experiences. These experiences are what shape us. We try to put ourselves in other people's shoe and fail because we don't know all the factors.

There's only one person that we can truly comment on and that person is ourself. The only energy and thought that we need to expend is to make sure our actions and reactions make sense to us. To judge another person is pointless and a waste of time.

We are all different and that's what makes us amazing. Keep smiling everyone, today is going to be a great day...

Humility...

Everyone excels in different areas. Naturally in certain fields, specific people will shine and in others fields, another group of people will stand out. Just because you are better at someone at something doesn't make you a better person, it just makes you better at the certain thing.

Strength can be used to two different ways. You can use your strength to lend a hand and help someone up or you can use your strength to hold someone back. I've long believe that if you know, teach and if you have give... I chose long ago to use my strength to help others.

Part of life is trying new things. When we first start out, we probably won't impress... but that's not what we are there to do. We do things to learn. Not doing something perfectly the first time isn't a failure, it's a stepping stone. Success comes with time and hard work.

Overcoming obstacles and improving one's self is part of life. Don't allow yourself to be discouraged and don't allow yourself slow down. Keep working hard. In the end, hard work will get rewarded.

If you are the one that shine while the people around you struggle. There's no value in mentioning it, but there is value from learning from it. Encourage others.

People don't know other people's motives for attempting something. Don't discourage others. No one is perfect, so there's no point in trying to think we are. People enjoy the things they are good at, but should try to work at the things that they aren't.

We all excel at different things. Sometimes there's a lot of value in one single word... humble. Keep smiling everyone and keep working hard. Life is a process... no one is quite there.