Your thoughts are not only in your mind, they are in your body and in your environment as well. When you change your mind, you change your energy, and when you change your energy, you change your life. You also change the environment around you and influence how people treat you.

When you are caught in a downward energy spiral of complaining, you are focused inward and miss the outside world. You are essentially trapped in your negative energy and your perception is creating your environment to a degree. Dr. Masaru Emoto has scientifically proven that thoughts and feelings affect physical reality. In his book The Hidden Messages in Water, his subjects focused different intentions on frozen water molecules. His mesmerizing findings showed that the water labeled with kind, loving thoughts formed beautiful,  symmetrical, snowflake-like, colorful crystals. While the frozen water exposed to negative thoughts and visions formed distorted, incomplete and dull crystals. Our thoughts do, indeed affect our environment and people around us.Our bodies are 75% water  - imagine how our thoughts are affecting the water in our bodies.

Research has shown that 70% of our thoughts are negative. Imagine what may happen if you change those thoughts to a positive perspective. When you are lost in complaining or negative thoughts, you miss what’s going on around you. Complaining puts stress on your body, telling it that “what is” is not what you want it to be. Stress affects our bodies  with an increase in cortisol - a stress hormone which increases abdominal fat. No wonder American’s are so obese - we’re stressed out!

Be aware of your present moment, your surroundings, your thoughts and be fully engaged in what’s going on now. Pay attention to who you’re with, what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking and practice being alive and engaged in the present moment. Being fully engaged means bringing your total presence to what you’re doing: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual energy all working together in total participation. This does not bode well for multi-tasking. Practice staying out of your head and into your life. Practice focus, practice positive intention, practice being present and see what happens.

I’ve been taking the most amazing teleclass about the 7 Mindset and Manifesting Secrets of Multimillionaires as well as reading much about the keys to success. Always open to learning more about the way people operate. What keeps popping up is the word LOVE. When we operate from love, everything else falls into place. When we operate from a powerful center of love and not from fear, everything is where it should be.

As my friend and business partner Mandy told me - everything turns out in the end and if it’s not turning out, it’s not the end.

My friend and business partner Jennifer told me the reason she got into the Send Out Cards business with me is that she always saw my happy, smiling face and the happy people around me at my trade-show tables. She said it looked like so much fun that she wanted to have that in her life. Because I LOVE what I do - almost always have and when I didn’t, I made changes to do what I did love to do. It shows. I can see huge differences in my energy when I’m doing what I love and helping other people do what they love.

Enabling the dreams of others and creating connections, building relationships, helping people and using communication - speaking, writing, Send Out Cards, books, blogs etc. is what gives me energy. People and my relationships to them give me energy. I send several cards every single day to people letting them know I appreciate them and building connections in my life. I know that love surrounds me - beauty surrounds me.

That’s why I moved to the beach. Walking on the beach 3 times per day with my dog Madison - I love it, she loves it. It’s inspiring. It makes me happy to see her happy. She was a rescue who was a puppy mill breeder. For 5 years she lived outside in a 10 x 10 pen in Missouri with no shelter, 5 other dogs with a cement pad and chainlink fence. She never had the pleasure of feeling her legs run. She never had the joy of romping more than 10 feet. Now when I see her face light up as she chases waves, squirrels, birds, bunnies - it brings me such joy. We have a connection that we both love our freedom to roam and run and romp as we choose.

Madisonbeachshell

What more can you put into your life that you love? What can you remove that you don’t love? What connections can you make to add more love into your life? Where can you live to do what you love? What connections can you sever in order to move closer to love in other areas of your life?

My friend and business partner Paul sent me this profound 3-minute video that’s all about love and connections. I’m a sucker for animal stories and this one is quite moving about the power of love. Get out your hankies - I’m pretty sure it will move you to tears as it did for me. Click HERE to watch it.

Do you expect things to go your way - is the universe conspiring in your favor?

Do you have loving, supportive relationships?

Do you lead a purposeful life and live consciously?

Do you feel like you have some control over your time, your stuff, your space, your situation, your life?

Do you feel like you are in the flow of your work or personal interests - challenged enough to be interesting and enjoyable?

Do you have a positive outlook and practice some form of spirituality?

The more questions you could answer with a resounding YES, recent studies show that you are more likely to be happy than those who couldn’t answer an affirmative. Happy people exude energy. Energy begets energy. If you are not at the peak of your happiness factor; take a look at the areas in your life you could change. Surprisingly simple internal factors such as having a healthy self esteem, a sense of optimism and hope, gratifying relationships and meaningful purpose in your life have the most influence over your well-being.

Let go of the things that are out of your control and practice these bliss-booster tips to improve your happiness quotient:

  1. Upbeat attitude. When you change your mind, you change your energy and when you change your energy, you change your life. It all starts with a thought - make it a positive one. Setting your intentions to desired outcomes makes all the difference - we attract what we most think about. Where intention goes - energy flows.
  2. Create a loving, supportive network of your favorite people - get connected - see #5 below. To get good friends, you need to become a good friend. What are you doing to cultivate your relationships and make people’s days? A sense of belonging is not only good for us personally, but professionally as well. Having a good friend at work is one of the key essential elements of a good working environment.
  3. Hone in on your purpose - know why you are here and act in alignment with your purpose. Purpose brings passion.
  4. Think solutions - not problems. Your brain will answer any question you offer it. Instead of asking “What else can go wrong?” or “How did I get into this situation?”, ask “How can I turn this around?” or “What is my lesson and how can I learn from this and avoid it in the future?”.
  5. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude. When you’re grateful, you’re not fearful - count your blessings. Send a card to somebody to let them know you appreciate them at www.BizBuilderCards.com.
  6. Find your flow and get into it. Become engaged and focused in your activities - where challenge meets knowledge, skills and abilities.
  7. Cultivate healthy habits - eating, sleeping, exercise, spirituality and smile about it. When we smile, it stimulates the thymus gland, which makes us more resistant to disease. This little practice also tricks our physiology into thinking we are already happy and boosts our mood. As a Certified Laughter Leader, my research has found that laughing and smiling do indeed aid in your happiness factor.

Now take your own inventory and see which areas in your life need a boost. We create a happy life by stringing together happy moments and feeling in control of our life. Take control over the areas that are less than desirable in your life and go get happy. As Eckhart Tolle says, “Unhappiness is unintelligent”.

The word “courage” has come up a lot lately in my life. My good friend (and “twin sistah”) Sue has done paintings about it. My wise counsel Bill told me I needed to have lots of it since every single thing in my life on every level was in flux right now. My BFF Barb and I have discussed different versions of it nearly every night for the past 10 months. And now my friend Paul sends me the following excerpt and video link about the courage to say YES and the courage to not quit.

I think I’m getting the hint to have the guts to keep moving forward and figure out creative ways to energize myself and my life no matter what may shift, change, crumble, not materialize or be taken away from me.

I’ve had lots of training in courage and finishing the game. I’ve done triathlons, marathons, century rides, 30-day backpacking stints to survive in the wilderness for a month, and a 220 kilometer bike ride through 3 countries in 1 day. Those were peanuts compared to the following video. I’ve learned that shifting gears and re-assessing or doing the race in your own style is not quitting - it’s twisting the situation to best fit your needs, even though it may not be the norm. Having faith in yourself and the bigger picture is what pulls you through sometimes. I also realize that no matter how big a race I think I’m racing, there’s always something much bigger, and that energizes and inspires me. So what keeps you energized and motivated to not quit?

For any of you who have thought about quitting your dream - check out this video below. Instead of entertaining the thought of quitting, perhaps just take a detour or side step a little on your path forward and watch this video. Fair warning - I had tears in my keyboard before the first few words were uttered.

A son asked his father, ‘Dad, will you take part in a marathon with me?’


The father who, despite having a heart condition, says ‘Yes’. They went on to complete the marathon together.

Father and son went on to join other marathons, the father always saying ‘Yes’ to his son’s request of going through the race together.

One day, the son asked his father, ‘Dad, let’s join the Ironman together.’ To which, his father said ‘Yes’ to.

For those who didn’t know, Ironman is the toughest triathlon ever. The race encompasses three endurance events of a 2.4 mile (3.86 kilometer) ocean swim, followed by a 112 mile (180.2 kilometer) bike ride, and ending with a 26.2 mile (42.195 kilometer) marathon along the coast of the Big Island .

Father and son went on to complete the race together. View this video for lessons in not quitting


Google