"We are losing jobs to…"

When you or a family member loses their job, or a business closes down in town, or if you read about it in the news, it’s easy to start saying that we are losing jobs to other countries, or that things are going to hell.

But the reality is that unemployment is low.  How could this be?

Each year in the United States 21 million jobs are destroyed.  At the same time 24 million new jobs are created.  The world is changing, as it always has and always will.  This is a good thing.  

Be ready and participate. 

Study what you want

What do you really wish for and want in your life?

Are you studying it each day?

Why Self-Discipline?

The only reason I would deny myself simple pleasures and ease today is because I know that what I do today will determine how it’s going to be for me tomorrow.

Self-discipline requires making the connection between today’s action and tomorrow’s result.

Are you making that connection?

Experience Abundance

From a material point of view, we don’t need much money to experience abundance.  We can go into beautiful buildings that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, ride in vehicles that are modern marvels, enjoy a large park and its natural beauty, and eat in a restaurant where people spent a long time creating beautiful ambiance for us.  We can move about in a society where most others are not destitute and suffering around us.  All this, even if we don’t have a lot of money ourselves.

Today, commercial abundance is not something you have to own to experience. 

A brief moment in time

How old is the earth? How did those mountains get there? Imagine how violent that must have been. How about when the continents were all connected? How about when there was an ocean in what is now the Southwest US? Or when glaciers or great rivers carved those valleys? Dinosaurs?

It’s an amazing wonder.

Great change is part of the history of the earth. In our brief moment here, we cannot expect all this change to be over just because there are 7 billion of us here now.

Can we?

Meaning Making Machines

It not so much what happened that affects us for months, years or a lifetime; it’s what we made it mean that stays with us.

Spend some time thinking about the big difference between what happened to you, and what you made it mean to you.

You can change history by changing what you made it mean to you.

Being present

Today we have lots to do and many distractions.  Add to that our mobile devices and it seems like nobody can pay attention to anyone else for long.  

Being fully present for antoher person is a gift they appreciate.

How are you looking at it?

Today was the absolute worst day ever

And don’t try to convince me that

There’s something good in every day

Because, when you take a closer look

This world is a pretty evil place

Even if

Some goodness does shine through once in a while

Satisfaction and happiness don’t last

And it’s not true that

It’s all in the mind and heart

Because

True happiness can be obtained

Only if one’s surroundings are good

It’s not true that good exists

I’m sure you can agree that

The reality

Creates

My attitude

It’s all beyond my control

And you’d never in a million years hear me say that

Today was a good day

Now read it bottom to top.

Competition protects us from coercion

In a free market, buyers are protected from abuse from sellers by the presence of other sellers, because they have a choice.  Sellers are protected from coercion from buyers by the existence of other buyers.  

Employers are protected from coercion from employees by the presence of other potential employees; and employees are protected against tyranny from employers by the presence of other employers.

When there are monopoly’s, private or governmental, that’s when people get pushed around with no alternatives.

What markets do you have no choice or very little choice in?

How do beliefs get formed?

What we believe is formed by what we are told and taught: our environment (physical place and people around us) and then our experiences (what happened to us).  Then we make decisions about those experiences (we make it mean something); “I’m not good at…”, “these people are bad (or good)”, “doing this, results in that”, etc.  

These become our beliefs.  And those beliefs drive our thoughts; and our thoughts create our new experiences and results.

In order to change our results we have to go back upstream and change some variables – what we learn, who we hang out with, our environment, or the decisions we made about what happened.  Then our beliefs will change and our thinking will change and our results will change.

Read that again.

What do you need to change to get the results you want?