Marc and Angel Hack Life

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
―Albert Einstein

You do know you talk to yourself in your mind all the time, right?

Pretty much every one of us has a non-stop stream of thoughts – a mental monologue – that has a powerful impact on how we feel, how we behave, and how we live our lives.  Too often, this mental monologue consists of unhelpful thoughts that hinder our happiness and effectiveness.

Which is why it’s time to stop thinking about…

1.  Who everyone else wants you to be.

You were born to be you, not who they tell you to be.  You are not here to be perfect; you are here to be true.  Be gentle and kind to your heart and soul.  Accept who you are, where you are, and where you came from.

Don’t make a decision based solely on popularity, or based on what others think is right for you.  Just because others are doing something doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for you.

Listen to your gut.  Now is the moment to follow your intuition and pursue what matters most to you.  Reach deep within yourself and awaken to the purpose that moves you and makes you feel alive.  The world is filled with opportunities to do an infinite number of things, so why not align your efforts with the activities that speak to your soul. Keep reading →

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say,
and what you do are in harmony.”
―Mahatma Gandhi

It’s important to make someone happy, and it’s important to start with yourself.  But before your level of contentment can improve, your choices and actions must improve.

If you’ve been struggling to find happiness there’s a good chance…

1.  You let envy get the best of you.

When you feel envious, tell yourself not to feel envious.  Be blatant and direct.  Tell the ‘why not me?’ voice in your head to quiet down and tell the ‘don’t be silly’ voice to speak up.  It really is this simple.  You actually prevent envy by addressing it directly and stopping it dead in its tracks.

When you feel flustered because someone has received the very thing you want, force yourself to remember how much you have already been given.  Remember that there’s plenty for everyone, and that everyone gets one dose at a time.  Remember that what happened to someone else has absolutely no bearing on what happens to you.  Your success is unique to you.  Remember that a wonderful thing has happened to this other person, and if you keep working and pushing forward, something wonderful will also happen to you at just the right time.

2.  You don’t DO enough.

A significant majority of your anxiety and unhappiness likely stems from a subconscious disappointment in yourself for the great ideas and dreams that Keep reading →

“We often take for granted the very things
that most deserve our gratitude.”
―Cynthia Ozick

How often do you pause to appreciate your life?  How often do you stop dead in your tracks and think, “Goodness, I have it pretty darn good”?

Even when life is far from perfect, it’s important to keep things in perspective.  Many people in this world wish they had what you have.  Here’s why:

1.  You are educated enough to read this.

If you’re reading this, you have something brilliant to be thankful for.  It’s called an education.  Believe it or not, there are roughly 774 million people in the world who don’t have this ability.  That’s a significant percentage of the human population.

Literacy is the bridge that closes the gap between discouragement and confidence, between confusion and understanding, and between sadness and hope.  It’s the greatest platform of personal growth, and the means by which every human being can realize their full potential.

Isn’t it crazy to think about how many people aren’t educated enough to make use of this basic human right?

2.  You are reasonably healthy.

In other words, if you got sick today you could recover.

Never underestimate the gift of your health.  It’s the greatest wealth you will ever Keep reading →

For my 17th birthday, many moons ago, my grandfather on my mom’s side gave me four used flannel shirts that he no longer needed.  The shirts were lightly worn and in great shape; my grandfather told me he thought they would look great on me.  Unfortunately, I thought they were odd gifts at the time and I wasn’t thankful.  I looked at him skeptically, gave him a crooked half-smile, and moved on to the other gifts sitting in front of me.  My grandfather died two days later from a sudden heart attack.  The flannel shirts were the last gifts he ever gave me.  I regret the small thing I didn’t say when I had the chance – “Thank you Grandpa.  That’s so thoughtful of you.”

As you can imagine, this was a huge wake-up call for me.

Here are eight wake-up calls for you – a few important lessons worth learning before it’s too late:

1.  You might not have tomorrow to say, “I love you.”

About a decade ago a coworker of mine died in a car accident.  During his funeral several people from the office were in tears, saying kind things like: “I loved him.  We all loved him so much.  He was such a wonderful person.”  I started crying too, and I wondered if these people had told him that they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this powerful word, love, had been used without question or hesitation.

I vowed to myself then and there that I would never again hesitate to speak up to the people I love and remind them of how much I appreciate them.  They deserve to know they give meaning to my life.  They deserve to know I think the world of them.

Bottom line:  If you love someone today, tell them.  If you appreciate someone today, tell them.  There might not be a tomorrow.  Today is the day to express your love and admiration.  Read 1,000 Little Things.

2.  Your judgments of others are inaccurate.

You will never know exactly what another person is going through or what their Keep reading →

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift,
which is why we call it the present.”
―Bil Keane

Why would you ever want to compromise something that’s beautiful and true to create something unpleasant and fake?

You’re lucky enough to BE; make your being count.

Lose track of the negativity and dishonesty.  Live positively and authentically.

1. When you wake up to a new day, BE grateful for another chance.
2. When others take the easy road, BE the one who takes the right road.
3. When something must be done, BE proactive.
4. When several possibilities present themselves, BE decisive with your priorities.
5. When achieving something is important to you, BE open about it and go for it.
6. When the work seems overwhelming, BE concerned only with the next small step. Keep reading →

by Mike Vardy of Productivityist.com

As we head deeper into the year, many of us have seen our BIG resolutions that we made fall by the wayside.  Why is that?  Perhaps it’s because our energy levels dipped and we couldn’t maintain the new habits that we had adopted.  Perhaps it’s because we weren’t really committed to giving them full effort in the first place and just felt that we ‘had’ to make some resolutions.  Or perhaps we simply lost our focus.

No matter what the reason is, just because we’re well past January 1st doesn’t mean we can’t have the year we want.  I’ll go as far to say that making resolutions at the start of the year is not the best idea anyway.  We’re just getting to the end of six weeks of holiday madness, our energy levels and emotions are scattered all over the place, and we’re feeling the pressure of a new calendar year that seemingly forces us to make decisions on adopting a new way of life – decisions that we haven’t completely thought out and habits we aren’t quite ready to adopt.

If you’re feeling like you’ve let yourself down because you haven’t kept up with your resolutions, don’t fret.  I propose that you can start the year you want anytime you want.

Here are 5 things you can do starting now to make that happen.

1.  Take a month to reflect and recharge.

If you find your mid-month or mid-year routines spinning your wheels, take one Keep reading →

This afternoon my neighbor’s 16-year-old son interviewed me for a school project entitled “Lessons Life Teaches.”  He came over to our condo with a white poster board that had nine words written on it.  After a few miscellaneous introductory questions, he asked me to think about the words on the poster board for a few minutes and then, in the simplest way possible, explain what life had taught me about each one.  Here are the nine words and what I told him:

1.  Time

Time passes quickly, and if you’re lucky enough, you’ll live long enough to marvel at the memories.

Picture yourself in twenty years walking past a park where you used to play with your friends when you were in kindergarten.  While you’re passing by you notice that the park in now jam-packed with a new set of little faces.  As you watch these kids swinging from the swing set and climbing trees together, you reminisce about simpler times and think about how these kids are going to grow up someday and do many of the same things that you’ve done.  They will fall in love, and make mistakes, and fight adversities, and change their minds a dozen times about what they want to do with their lives.

But not yet, not now.  At this moment swinging and climbing are sufficient feats for them.  And although it would be nice if swinging and climbing were endlessly sufficient, you know they aren’t.  You know life is infinitely more elaborate and beautiful – even in ways you have yet to experience – and that with each passing moment we all become a greater part of this elaborate beauty in every imaginable way.  Read 1,000 Little Things.

2.  Love

When someone loves you, you know it.  When they look your way, the world looks better.  When they say your name, the world sounds better.  When they Keep reading →

A few months ago I shared twelve pieces of wisdom my grandmother left behind for me after she passed.  This wisdom was written in an old leather-bound journal she aptly named her ‘Inspiration Journal.’  Today I want to discuss seven questions she had written at the bottom of her final entry.  Although my grandmother never wrote down her answers to these questions, the questions alone are extremely thought provoking.  I’ve listed them below and shared some of my own thoughts about each one.  I hope what I’ve shared here inspires you to live boldly and honestly, so that you can answer each question someday with a sense of peace and fulfillment.

1.  Am I proud of how I lived?

If you don’t express the passion inside you – the ideas and deeds that make you feel alive – you will die one moment at a time without ever having lived.

Don’t be scared of death.  Be scared of leaving too much of your life unlived.  Be scared of leading a tedious daily existence that doesn’t empower you to be your best self.  A fear of death is simply a fear that you haven’t yet accomplished what you were born to do.  When you live a fulfilling life that’s abundant in meaning the thought of dying becomes less worrisome, because your mind isn’t focused on it.  Instead, it’s consumed with living passionately in the present moment and embracing all the beauty life has to offer.

Someday inevitability will take place and your life will flash before your eyes.  Make sure it’s a spectacle worth watching – one you’re proud to have been a part of.  Read 1,000 Little Things.

2.  What did I discover?

Some of the best discoveries in life come when you least expect them, in places you never even thought to look.  What you were not looking for can end up being more than you ever hoped to find.  So seek your goals and dreams diligently, but do not become so obsessed that you develop tunnel vision.  Do not blind yourself from all the unpredictable wonders and opportunities passing in your periphery.

Life’s greatest beauty is found in its surprises.  Its dynamic nature continually renews the possibilities before you; you honestly never can be certain when the next gust of wind will arrive and what it will blow in your direction.  Open yourself to Keep reading →

by Jonathan Mead of Paid to Exist

Sometimes our lives are overloaded with notions of practicality and productivity.  We believe that if there’s no planned purpose to an event or activity, there’s no point in doing it.  In reality the best things in life are unplanned and without an appointed purpose.

We sacrifice a great deal of our time and sanity doing what we don’t want to do, so that at some arbitrary point in the future we can establish the freedom to do what we love.

We relentlessly pursue happiness in every imaginable way.  We pursue happiness in material possessions, in social status, and in the acceptance and recognition we get from others.  We even search for happiness in various versions of a future-promised afterlife.  But these pursuits rarely give us more than fleeting moments of joy.  We end up missing out on lots of thrilling life experiences and contentment because we fail to understand a very simple but easily overlooked fact…

The Search for Happiness Causes Misery

You can’t find something that’s already here with you.  Happiness exists in this moment.  It’s not something you need to find.  That’s like trying to find the oxygen you’re breathing right now.

In reality, it’s the tension of your mind that causes unhappiness.  If you’re not happy, it’s because your mind is focused on something that’s making you unhappy.  And why is your mind doing this?  Because you’re stuck in a vicious Keep reading →

Once your mindset changes, everything on
the outside will change along with it.
―Steve Maraboli

An effective mindset is one that makes the best use of available resources – your time, energy and efforts – and uses them to create positive change.  It’s not about trying to do everything and be everything; it’s making the very best of what you have while enjoying the process of living.

Here are seven effective traits and behaviors of such a mindset:

1.  Enjoys and appreciates the present moment.

Happiness is a mindset that can only be designed into the present.  It’s not a point in the future or a moment from the past; but sadly, this misconception hurts the masses.  So many young people seem to think that happiness awaits them in the years ahead, while so many older people believe that their best moments are behind them.

The truth is, the greater part of your happiness or misery depends solely upon your attitude towards any given moment, regardless of the events contained within.  You need much less than you think you need to be happy, and you usually have a lot more than you think you have.  There’s always something worth smiling about.  It’s just a matter of thinking differently.  Read 1,000 Little Things.

2.  Connects inner purpose with outer effort.

The most important thing you can know is what’s most important to you.  Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give yourself to it.  As Friedrich Nietzsche so profoundly said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”  Your purpose is your ‘why.’

You can accomplish almost anything when what you’re trying to accomplish is what you care about.  Wear yourself out with focused, disciplined work on a purpose that connects with who you truly are.  You have a unique voice and a Keep reading →