A life of well-being, meaning and purpose.
Continue reading “Values And Purpose”Once you find it, your true purpose does not change. The things that are important to you may change over time and so will your values. Knowing your core values and staying true to them helps you stay on track with purpose.
TheExceleratedLife.com
Continue reading “Don’t Argue With Reality”Sometimes, as the saying goes, “bad things happen to good people”. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people, too. And sometimes, good things happen to good and bad people. The reality is, things happen to people – good or bad are mostly judgment calls. Accepting where you are in life means you don’t argue with reality. It’s the first step to change what you can.
TheExceleratedLife.com
Continue reading “Strengthen Your Values”You and I are builders, adding one day to another to create a life. When we live according to our deepest values, we build a quality life. If we don’t know what our values are, or if we ignore them, we risk building less than we are capable of, to our own detriment.
TheExceleratedLife.com
We need each other. We depend on each other. We literally cannot live without each other and we cannot be our happiest, our best, and our most productive without building healthy relationships.
TheExceleratedLife.com
“We’re all in this together.” I can’t count the number of times nor the number of people from whom I have heard this sentiment over the past months of the pandemic. I suspect you’ve had a similar experience. From doctors on TV to product advertisements to personal injury lawyers to friends on Zoom, these words have been spoken again and again. “We’re all in this together.”
Continue reading “How To Build Healthy Relationships – And Why”“There is a candle in every soul / Some brightly burning, some dark and cold . . . Carry your candle, run to the darkness / Seek out the hopeless, confused and torn / Hold out your candle for all to see it / Take your candle, and go light your world.”
Chris Rice, “Go Light Your World”
I grew up in the country. Beyond our backyard was a pasture, then the woods. My brother, my cousins, and our friends liked to play in those woods. One evening after supper, we ran into the woods to play a game. We were having so much fun we lost track of time and didn’t realize that it was getting late. Before we knew it, night had fallen and we were in the dark. I began running, but of course I couldn’t see and ran smack into a tree! (I suppose you could say I couldn’t see the tree for the forest.) Fortunately for the rest of us, one of the guys had a flashlight. He turned it on and then we could see him. We all gathered around and he led us out of the woods, shining his flashlight . . . no more running into trees.
Continue reading “A Light In The Woods”Our default behaviors are, by definition, those things we do without thinking about them. It’s a good idea to step back from time to time and examine your defaults. You may want to change some of your “settings”.
My phone is old by cell phone standards. But I still remember when I got it, trading in my old flip phone for a smart phone. And it was smart. The technician at the store took about 15 minutes to set it up and save all my contacts. He handed me the phone and it was ready to go. Such convenience.
Continue reading “Change Your Default Settings”Success has been defined as “the progressive realization of a worthy goal”. Setting meaningful goals gives you focus and a target to aim for. Writing them down insures that you won’t lose sight of your destination.
“When she looked ahead, Florence Chadwick saw nothing but a solid wall of fog. Her body was numb. She had been swimming for nearly sixteen hours.
Already she was the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions. She had managed to finish that swim in a record time, 16 hours and 22 minutes on August 8, 1950. Now, at age 34, her goal was to become the first woman to swim from Catalina Island to Palos Verde on the California coast.
“On that Fourth of July morning in 1952, the sea was like an ice bath and the fog was so dense she could hardly see her support boats. Sharks cruised toward her lone figure, only to be driven away by rifle shots. Against the frigid grip of the sea, she struggled on – hour after hour – while millions watched on national television.
“Alongside Florence in one of the boats, her mother and her trainer offered encouragement. They told her it wasn’t much farther. But all she could see was fog. They urged her not to quit. She never had . . . until then. With only a half mile to go, she asked to be pulled out.
Continue reading “The Power Of Goal Setting”
“You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.” ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach
At this time of year, our thoughts naturally turn to Thanksgiving and thanks giving. That is good. However, the act of being grateful, of giving thanks, is too important to relegate to only one day each year. Indeed, gratitude – being thankful – is one of the keys to the Excelerated Life.
The importance of being grateful has been recognized and taught by many people, from the apostle Paul to New Thought teachers to positive psychologists. Continue reading “Giving Thanks”
“It is certainly true that, when you accept your resentment, moodiness, anger, and so on, you are no longer forced to act them out blindly, and you are less likely to project them onto others. But I wonder if you are not deceiving yourself. When you have been practicing acceptance for a while, as you have, there comes a point when you need to go on to the next stage, where those negative emotions are not created anymore. If you don’t, your ‘acceptance’ just becomes a mental label that allows your ego to continue to indulge in unhappiness and so strengthen your separation from other people, your surroundings, your here and now.” ~ Eckhart Tolle
When my younger daughter was 6, she had a stroke. At age eight, while the doctors were still trying to decide what was wrong, she had another one, bigger and badder, that left her with a number of deficits to overcome. She had to relearn how to walk, how to talk, and how to use her left hand instead of her right. As you can imagine, this was a devastating blow to her and to our family. Continue reading “After Acceptance”
“The muscular person likes to use his muscles, indeed, has to use them in order to self-actualize, and to achieve the subjective feeling of harmonious, uninhibited, satisfying functioning which is so important an aspect of psychological health. People with intelligence must use their intelligence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used, and cease their clamor only when they are used sufficiently.” ~ Abraham Maslow Toward a Psychology of Being
I read this quote from Abraham Maslow’s book in a recent +1 note from Brian Johnson. The capacities that “clamor to be used” remind me of the VIA Character strengths.