The World is a Beautiful Place

Most of us don’t even realize how amazing our lives are. People lose the appreciation of their beautiful lives while concentrating on problems and being pessimistic about their current “terrible situation”. We consider thousands of things in our lives for granted, because it’s totally normal for us, like being able to have a shower, or to have food on our tables, day after day. Furthermore, the vast majority of us do not have to worry on whether they are going to have something to eat for the next day, as our main trouble is on what to eat the next day – something that might be a pure luxury for someone living in an area where there are limited resources of food. Have you ever noticed the fact that slum dwellers in Nigeria and even more dire places are often even happier than many in so called civilized nations, even though they lack so many things from food to – pure luxury articles like a TV – that some of us consider to be ordinary? Could it be that these people appreciate their lives a lot more, due to the fact of not being able to know whether they are able to enjoy the next day? Perhaps they don’t even focus on material things or tangibles like money, instead they enjoy the time with their family and esteem social values like deep friendships by far more than some of us do? In sum, they just appreciate that amidst all the troubles, the world is still a beautiful place.

Too often than not, we are obsessed with what we don’t have. We fantasize about where we want to be, who we want to be with and how we would like to see ourselves, all while abandoning the moments, people and places of significance that take place in our lives. There is nothing wrong with wanting change; change is good and necessary, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process, rather, which is accomplished over time with transition. The problem we often face with longing for a life different than the one we have is that we treat where we are and where we want to be like an on-and-off switch. We cut off the “now” and turn on the “will be.” Making goals and planning to change your scenery should be a process where priorities change and focus sharpens, not one where one life comes to a screeching halt for the other. We've all been guilty of taking mental vacations, and we've all jumped into the visual snapshot we've projected for ourselves. But often, when we pack our mental bags we leave behind our dormant body to go through the monotonous routine of life like a corpse. This shouldn't be so. Surrendering the life you're currently living is a dangerous thing. It's a risky business that leaves us tirelessly running a race, chasing satisfaction on a treadmill, always wanting, but never having. When we make up in our minds that the present isn't important, it becomes habitual and routine. The job won't have enough benefits, one degree will suddenly turn into two and the dream house in Banana Island will soon enough become humdrum. The reality is that if we can't find happiness where we are, we won't find it where we want to be. Accomplishments will no longer hold value due to the next goal that’s pending.

Loving the struggle, embracing what it takes, understanding your sacrifices and acknowledging those who helped you along the way are all part of the process that will allow us to be better individuals. When we understand the beauty in today and embrace all it has to offer, we will learn how to appreciate the goodness we receive. The world is a beautiful place.

(Excerpts from my Book ‘The Path Less Travelled’)

7 Smart Yet Simple Ways to Handle Difficult People

1. Practice detaching yourself from other people’s bias opinions. — You may not be able control all the things people say and do, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. The way people treat you is their problem, how you respond internally is yours. What you need to remember is that the things people say and do to you is much more about them, than you. People’s reactions to you are about their perspectives, biases and past experiences. Whether people think you’re amazing, or believe you’re disgusting, again, is more about them and how they view the world. Now, I’m not suggesting we should be self-indulged narcissists and ignore all the opinions and commentary we receive from others. I’m simply saying that incredible amounts of hurt, disappointment and sadness in our lives come directly from our tendency to take things too personally. In most cases it’s far more productive and healthy to let go of other people’s good or bad opinions of you, and to operate with your own intuition and insight as your guide.

2. Wish them well and move forward with your day. — Don’t lower your standards, but do remember that removing your expectations of others is the best way to avoid being disappointed by them. Realize that there’s no reason to expect others to treat you the way you treat them—not everyone has the same heart as you. Meditate on that. Let it sink in. Ultimately, the real test is being kind to unkind people. And yes, you can always stand tall and be sincerely kind to people you strongly disagree with. Remind yourself that you never know what someone has been through in their life, or what they’re going through today. Just do your best to be kind, generous, and respectful, no mater what. Truth be told, all the hardest, coldest people you meet were once as soft as a baby. And that’s the tragedy of living. So when people are rude and difficult, be mindful—be your best. Give those around you the “break” that you hope the world will give you on your own “bad day” and you will never, ever regret it.

3. Model the behavior you want to see. — When someone insists on foisting their hostility and drama on you, be an example of a pure existence. Ignore their outlandish antics and focus on compassion. Communicate and express yourself from a place of peace, from a place of love, with the best intentions. Use your voice for good, to inspire, to encourage, to educate, and to spread the type of behavior you want to see in others. This, of course, is much easier said than done. It takes long-term practice.

4. Take positive control of negative conversations. – It’s okay to change the topic, talk about something positive, or steer conversations away from pity parties, drama, and self-absorbed sagas. Be willing to disagree with difficult people and deal with the consequences. Some people really don’t recognize their own difficult tendencies or their inconsiderate behavior. You can actually tell a person, “I feel like you ignore me until you need something.” You can also be honest if their overly negative attitude is what’s driving you away: “I’m trying to focus on positive things. What’s something good we can talk about?” It may work and it may not, but your honesty will help ensure that any communication that continues forward is built on mutually beneficial ground.

5. Proactively establish healthy and reasonable boundaries. — Practice becoming aware of your feelings and needs. Note the times and circumstances when you’re resentful of fulfilling someone else’s needs. Gradually build boundaries by saying no to gratuitous requests that cause resentfulness in you. Of course, this will be hard at first because it may feel a bit selfish. But if you’ve ever flown on a plane, you know that flight attendants instruct passengers to put on their own oxygen masks before tending to others, even their own children. Why? Because you cannot help others if you’re incapacitated. In the long run, proactively establishing and enforcing healthy and reasonable boundaries with difficult people will be one of the most charitable things you can do for yourself and those you care about. These boundaries will foster and preserve the best of you, so you can share the best of yourself with the people who matter most, not just the difficult ones who try to keep you tied up.

6. Make extra time for yourself. — Difficult people who wallow in their problems and fail to focus on solutions are obviously hard to handle. They want others to join their 24/7 pity party so they can feel better about themselves. And you may feel pressured to listen to their complaints simply because you don’t want to be seen as callous or rude, but there’s a fine line between lending a compassionate ear and getting sucked into their emotional drama. If you are forced to live or work with a difficult person, then make sure you get enough alone time to relax, rest, and recuperate. Having to play the role of a “focused, rational adult” in the face of relentless moodiness can be exhausting, and if you’re not careful, their toxic attitude can infect you. So remember that even people with legitimate problems and clinical illnesses can still comprehend that you have needs as well, which means you can politely excuse yourself when you need to.

7. Let them know that you, respectfully, do not care. — This one is essentially a last resort. If you’ve tried your best to communicate respectfully with a difficult person, or to gracefully distance yourself from them, but they insist on following you around and attacking you for whatever reason, it’s time to speak up and tell them that their words are meaningless. In such situations, I challenge you to make this your lifelong motto: “I respectfully do not care.” Say it to anyone who relentlessly passes public judgment on something you strongly believe in or something that makes you who you are. And remind yourself that you did nothing wrong. Some people will inevitable judge you no matter what you do, and that’s OK. You affected their life; don’t let them affect yours.

(MARCANDANGEL).

You Think Anybody Really Cares About You?

The movie, ‘Rocky’ is renowned for many things, but none of these things compares to the life lessons that this movie is laced with. This is one of such lessons from the movie: ‘Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that’

The sad thing is that some people are so fixated about how they show up, how they are being perceived, what the view about them is. What such people fail to understand is that there is enough going on in every individual’s life to keep them preoccupied. The reality is that everyone in life, small or big is pursuing something. Everyone has goals they want to achieve, and as one of my friends will say, everyone needs a sponsor in one way or the other. In many ways, it is a dog eat dog situation.

One of the quick things I realized early in life is that in the final analysis, no one really has your best interest at heart as much as you do. And this is not a bad thing, it is just the way the world is. Your demon is your demon and there are places of trials in your life where everyone else is bared from the court room. There are places of personal pressures in your life where your wife, husband, children, siblings, father, mother and best friends can’t get into. It is not that they don’t love you enough to go through this with you, but the truth is that there are some burdens you bear on your own. The sooner you stop bitching about who wasn’t there for you when you needed them, and instead, take your life by the scruff of the neck, the better for you.

Dust yourself each time and face what you must. Get a few friends who will always be there. Find the positives for there are still some good in this world. Stay close to family and trudge on with your life. Don’t delude yourself that everyone is after you; you are not that important. You are not the center of everyone’s attention, and some of the greatest battles you will fight in life, you must do it alone.

4 Little Things that Will Matter a Lot More to You in 40 Years

1. Treating your very limited time each day with care.

As time passes, you naturally have more of it behind you and less of it in front of you. The distant future, then, gradually has less value to you personally. But that doesn’t really matter, because the good life always begins right now, when you stop waiting for a better one. Some people wait all day for 5pm, all week for Friday, all year for the holidays, all their lives for happiness. But you don’t have to be one of them. Don’t wait until your life is almost over to realize how good it has been. A life uncluttered by most of the meaningless drama, distraction, and busyness people fill their lives with, leaving us with space for what’s truly meaningful. A life that isn’t constant rushing, worrying and stress, but instead contemplation, creation, and connection with the people and projects that matter most to us.

By redefining our priorities, and building healthy rituals to back them up, we’ve literally been able to change our lives. And this is now a healthy practice we coach our course students though every single day as well. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed and stressed out a lot lately, I highly recommend you rethink how you’re spending your time, and replace the meaningless with the meaningful. Start by being honest about the drama, distraction, and busyness in your life.

Identify what’s most important to you, and eliminate as much as you possibly can of everything else. In other words, be ruthless about putting first things first. Say “no” to unnecessary commitments that do not support your priorities. When you start an important activity, turn to it with your full attention and set a conscious intention to be fully present with the act—to do nothing but this one activity for a set time. You might think, “Just write” or “Just run” or “Just be here with this amazing child of mine.” Treat each moment with reverence, as if you are one with what’s happening. The bottom line here is that too often our minds are set on getting somewhere else. Too often another beautiful day comes to an end with hundreds of unnoticed moments behind us—we didn’t notice them because they were insignificant to us. And over time our entire lives become a massive pile of unnoticed and insignificant moments on our way to more important things. Then the important things get rushed through too… to get to the next one, and the next, until our time is up and we’re left questioning where it all went.

2. Genuine relationships.

It’s nice to have acquaintances. It’s important to be friendly. But don’t get carried away and spread yourself too thin. Leave plenty of time for those who matter most to you. Your time is extremely limited, and sooner or later you just want to be around the few people who make you smile for all the right reasons.

Truly, we all long for genuine relationships, but these relationships can be hard to find and nurture, even in our overly connected lives. We meet people in person and socialize online, but these connections often lack a necessary dose of intimacy. We work alongside others in crowded office buildings, but our communication with them is usually work-oriented and not relationship-oriented. We may be lucky enough to have close friends and family in our lives, but when we are distracted by social media and busy with work, those relationships take a major hit. The healthiest and most genuine relationships are comprised of two people who are intimately familiar with each other’s evolving stories. These people make plenty of emotional room for their relationship, which means they sincerely listen to each other, they remember the major events each other have been through, and they keep up-to-date as the facts and feelings of each other’s reality evolves and changes.

The key thing to remember is that nothing you can give is more appreciated than your sincere, focused attention—your full presence. Truly being with someone, and listening without a clock and without anticipation of the next event, is the ultimate compliment. It is indeed the most valued gesture you can make to them, and it arms you with the information you need to truly know them and support them in the long run. It’s also important to note that if two people care about each other and want to maintain a healthy relationship, they absolutely need to be “allowed” to openly communicate ALL of their feelings to each other—their true feelings—not just the agreeable and positive ones. If this is not “allowed” or supported by one or both people involved in the relationship—if one or both people fear punishment for their honesty—lies and deceit will gradually replace love and trust, which ultimately leads to a complete emotional disconnection.

3. Engaging passionately in whatever you choose to do.

Passion is powerful! It rests deep within you and passively drives your feelings, choices, and courses of actions. It can’t be ignored, and it shouldn’t be ignored. Your passion will likely become the sole source of your greatest achievements and your finest moments. The fevering excitement of love. The joy of work that moves you. The clarity of your purpose. The ecstasy of letting go and being one with the present moment. In a nutshell, this is what passion gradually does for you. Without it there is little peace of mind in the end—just a hollow existence of unfulfilled dreams—a lifetime left mostly unlived.

If your life is going to mean anything to you 40 years down the road (or even 10 years down the road), you have to actively and passionately live it every day until then. You have to deeply engage yourself in activities that move you. But the key thing to realize is that almost any activity can move you if you let it. You don’t need some massive, life-engulfing passion to suddenly appear in your life. Because real passion comes from within, and the source of passion in your life may be as simple as having a job to do—a job that feeds your family, for example—and feeling good about doing it right.

Many of us are still hopelessly trying to “find our passion”—something we believe will ultimately lead us closer to happiness, success, or the life situation we ultimately want. And I say “hopelessly” primarily because passion can’t really be found. When we say we’re trying to find our passion, it implies that our passion is somehow hiding behind a tree or under a rock somewhere. But that’s far from the truth. The truth is, our passion comes from doing things right. If you’re waiting to somehow “find your passion” somewhere outside yourself, so you finally have a reason to put your whole heart and soul into your life and the things you’re working on, you’ll likely be waiting around for an eternity.

I’m absolutely certain you have plenty in your life right now that’s worth your time, energy, and passionate focus. You have people and circumstances in your life that need you as much as you need them. You have a massive reservoir of passionate potential within you, just waiting. So stop waiting! There is no next time. Put your heart and soul into what you’ve got right in front of you!

4. A mindset that brings you peace.

Life is a series of continuous changes. Don’t resist them; doing so only creates unnecessary stress. Let the reality of these changes take place. Let them flow. Or as Henry Wadsworth once said, “For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain.” As we age, we gradually learn the power of this kind of acceptance.

Acceptance is letting go and allowing things to be the way they truly are. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about improving the reality of your life; it’s just realizing that the only thing you really have control over is yourself and your thoughts about everything else. This simple understanding is the foundation of acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be peace of mind and growth. It’s important to realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally accepting and at peace. Because inner peace does not depend on external conditions; it’s what remains when you’ve surrendered your ego and worries. Peace can be found within you at any place and at any time. It’s always there, patiently waiting for you to turn your attention toward it. Peace of mind arrives the moment you come to peace with what’s on your mind. It happens when you let go of the need to be anywhere but where you are, physically and emotionally.

You are more than whatever is troubling you. A very real part of you exists beyond your worries, beyond your doubts, independent from the troubles and frustrations of the present moment. Step back and observe yourself as you experience each moment. Be present. Watch yourself as you think, as you take action, as you experience emotions. Your body may experience pain, and yet that pain is not you. Your mind may encounter troubles, and yet you are not those troubles.

Think of the most difficult challenge you face right now. Imagine that it’s not you, but a close friend who is facing this challenge. What advice would you give her? If you could step back and, instead of being the subject, look at your situation as an objective observer, would you look at it any differently? Think of the advice you would give your friend if she were in your shoes. Are you following your own best advice right now? Don’t allow your current troubles to cloud your thinking. Take a few steps back and give yourself the benefit of this distance, and then give yourself some great advice.

(MARCANDANGEL).