GarthBox

The emotion you’re embracing isn’t as important as that you embrace it.

Embracing it means you’re dancing with it. Working with it. Good or bad; you’re making the most of it.

Embracing happiness is better than telling yourself you don’t deserve it. Embracing anger is better than sweeping it under the rug. Embracing guilt gets you to a resolution faster than blaming someone for your action.

We need not always a different emotion; we simply need to embrace the one we’re facing better.

Stay Positive & Different Isn’t Always Better; Better Is Better

It only took a moment to pause and think to realize that if we put the railing on first, it would be more difficult to install the gate. So we installed the gate first.

It’s kind of the same with the list you have for your day. It only takes a moment to pause and think that if you do the easy stuff first, it will be less likely you’ll do the important work today.

Stay Positive & So Where Are You Going To Do First?

A bartender invested an extra 20 seconds connecting with the guest in front of me. It was magical for both of them.

The Thai restaurant had a large photo of two people on the wall next to the menu. It was the mother and son owners of the place. When you looked over the counter, you got to see both of them working together to make your food. That was magical, too.

A friend was at an arcade and it was clear the second employee following the first was there training. My friend got his quarters and rather than walking to go play games, looked at the new hire and encouraged her with a statement of good luck.

Stay Positive & It Only Takes A Moment

There’s a difference between a time stamped deadline… and a count down to it.

The same goes in the other direction: it’s far more valuable to have milestones leading up to the end result than it is to have a photo of the end result.

Both scenarios you must know what the end goal or deadline is, but that doesn’t drive progress as much as having it metered does.

One more reason for it to be metered? You can’t just move the finish line based on when you get tired because you’ve already established that those moments are milestones, not the finish line.

HT to the cocktail lounge that was marketing itself as an elegant, upscale, vibing place; and it was… until they handed me a menu that looked like it was designed (that’s even giving it more of a compliment than it deserves) like it was for a chinese restaurant. Someone moved what finished looks like rather than acknowledging they had another metered milestone before they got to a true finish.

Stay Positive & Keep Yourself On The Hook

An author I met yesterday spoke about how dull his life is. Despite making enough money to feel as though he has earned a living writing, he still holds author events that zero people show up to and releases new books that barely sell anything. The funny part about him? He didn’t care. All he cared about was doing the writing. That brought him joy.

Another author I met is equally as successful in terms of having earned a living as an author but maintains a day job since she only creatively writes two hours in the morning each day. It was the duo of efforts that brought her joy.

Then I could go into the countless ways all the authors I met got published and to varying degrees of success.

That’s all to say that success can look like a lot of things, but none are as important as the version you want.

Once you know that, it’s far more likely you’ll end up in positions that “luck” is stepping into as well.

And all the sudden you’ve got success. The good kind. Your version.

Stay Positive & Gotta Know It To Chase It

The weight of all you want to do and accomplish today is a heavy one. Sometimes…oftentimes…it’s so heavy that it puts you in bed. Maybe so heavy that it has you hit the snooze button, too.

The trick is if you could just put on your shoes. Place them next to your bed. Toss your socks on top of them. Make it so insanely easy to put on your shoes that you simply can’t not. You can even tell yourself that you could still lay back down so long as you put your shoes on.

But you won’t do that. You’ll get up because you’ve started.

Starting, they say, is the hardest part. But it doesn’t have to be.

You can make starting easier if you just put on your shoes.

Stay Positive & Logic Applies To A Lot Of Scenarios, Doesn’t It?

There’s always something to fill the void with.

If nothing else, education.

What we do with our downtime is what separates us from our peers.

Stay Positive & The Time Is Yours