Life keeps leading us on journeys we would never go on if it were up to us. Don’t be afraid. Have faith. Find the lessons. Trust the journey today.

We are all beautiful human beings, just trying to find our way. Today and every day we seek to better understand the meaning of our lives. We long to discover our gifts and release them fully into the world, and we hope to find happiness, peace, and strength along the way. For some of us the key to these desires rings loud and clear, driving what we do and how we do it from moment to moment. For others, these deep seeded needs are buried below the noise of daily life, below ego, below fear, below the pressures and norms that we face in society… and thus, they are rarely addressed.

Along my own journey of self-actualization, I’ve witnessed dozens of amazing people — friends, course students, live event attendees, etc. — discover their own paths to happiness and self-fulfillment, and I’ve noticed many common themes emerge. In all cases, the happiness they discover and gradually develop internally is seeded by the realization of certain hard yet fundamental truths about the nature of their lives in the present day.

It seems we are all here to realize these truths [Read more…]

God willing, you’ll be gifted another 40 years of life experience.

But even if you aren’t, the core principle of this article remains relevant:

As you age, you’ll learn to value your time, genuine relationships, meaningful work, and peace of mind, much more. Little else will matter.

Deep down you know this already, right?

Yet today, just like the majority of us, you are distracted by everything else.

You give too much of your time to [Read more…]

If you want to grow and move on to better things, you have to give up the things that hold you back.

Recently, Marc and I received a new thank you email from a longtime reader and coaching client named Kevin (we’re writing about him today with his consent). He said our books and M&A life coaching sessions helped him and his wife Laura maintain a positive, intentional mindset as they struggled and grew through one of the most difficult periods of their lives. Certain sections of his email nearly moved me to tears:

“As you know, after injuring my back, losing my job because of it, being evicted from our apartment, moving in with Laura’s parents, nursing my five-year-old through a nearly fatal bout of strep throat, I was stuck in a tragic rut for far too long. And I was sitting on the front porch of my in-law’s house feeling sorry for myself, yet again, when my old college buddy called me crying and said, ‘Mel-Mel-Melissa, my baby girl, just died in a car wreck.’ And suddenly I felt like the lucky one.”

Kevin then went on to say, “It was the shock of my friend’s tragic loss that motivated me to review four pages of notes I had previously taken from both your book and our most recent coaching sessions. And this time your wisdom sunk in! Suddenly a light bulb illuminated in my mind – and it literally changed my entire outlook from negative to positive. I suddenly realized there were people who needed me to get back up, and infinite reasons and ways to do my very best with what I had. So I started giving up all the negative things I was thinking and doing that had been holding me back; and then I took a bold step forward, and another, and another. And it’s been almost a year now, and I’m happy to say you were right!”

If you can relate to Kevin’s situation in any way, and you’re ready to move forward, I want to remind you that TODAY is the first day of the rest of your life. The road ahead is wide open. You CAN get yourself back on track!

But first, you have to… [Read more…]

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”
— Benjamin Franklin

I recently received a thank you email from a reader and course student named Hope. She said our work helped motivate her through an arduous recovery process following a serious car accident last year. Although her entire story was both heartbreaking and inspiring, this one line made me pause and think:

“The happiest moment of my life is still that split-second a year ago when, as I laid crushed under a 2000 pound car, I realized my husband and 9-year-old boy were out of the vehicle and absolutely OK.”

Dire moments like this force us to acknowledge what’s truly important to us. In Hope’s case, it was her husband and son. And in the remainder of her email she talks about how her family spends significantly more time together now, sharing daily stories, telling little jokes, and appreciating each other’s company. “The accident made us realize how much time we had been wasting every day on things that weren’t important, which prevented us from spending quality time with each other,” she said.

It’s hard to think about a story like Hope’s and not ask yourself: What do I need to stop wasting time on?

Here are some things to consider that I’ve been examining in my own life: [Read more…]

Saying yes to happiness means learning to say no to the desires that drain you.

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for. I don’t think anything could be closer to the truth, and yet all too often we find ways of complicating things for ourselves. We look for happiness where it does not exist – in shallow goals and desires – in possessions, quick thrills, and impressing the wrong people.

Angel and I were recently reminded of this when we met a family of six staying at a hotel in near our home. We saw them hanging around outside the lobby, sharing stories and laughing hysterically. As we walked by, Angel and I said hello to them and asked where they were from. “Oh, we’re from here,” the mother said. “Our house burned down to the ground yesterday, but miraculously, all of us made it out safely. And that makes today a day worth smiling about.”

Talk about a wake-up call. Some people might say they had lost everything, and yet this family knew better – they knew they had it all. Because there really is nothing like joyful tears and deep breaths after a long, hard laugh with the people you love – nothing in the whole world like a sore stomach for the right reasons and a grateful heart to back it up. That’s a situation where true happiness is surely found.

And there are many other sources of true happiness as well. But as I’ve said, there are also lots of common traps – goals and desires that we think will bring us happiness, but actually do the exact opposite. Recognizing these traps is the key. In fact, I believe one of the best feelings comes when you realize that you can be perfectly happy without the things you once thought you needed.

With this in mind, consider the ten goals and desires (traps) below and how they may be holding you back. Each of them is popular in our culture, and thus common in our lives, but rather than contributing to our happiness, they rob us of it. [Read more…]