Gratitude

Practice is probably something you think you’re done with when you leave school or give up music lessons. But, have you ever thought of practicing the fine art of gratitude?

The simplicity of gratitude and the powerful effect it has on our lives is unequaled by any other practice of its kind.  

There’s a special kind of magic in gratitude for it raises our consciousness, recharges our energy, enhances our self-worth, and strengthens our spirit. Gratitude most certainly counts.

It’s quite possible to attain great wealth, the best education, and an exceptional quality of life and still be unhappy. This occurs when people live with an absence of gratitude.

Success is a process that includes both peaks and valleys, but the one constant in a truly successful life is gratitude.

A successful life requires ongoing growth, and gratitude ensures growth. Gratitude heightens awareness and expands your interaction with the world.

Once gratitude becomes part of your nature you begin to see the connections between your success and creature comforts, and the talents and contributions of others.

Consider the following:

• The farmer plants, waters, fertilizes and harvests the tomatoes you enjoy.
• The truck driver delivers the food to the market that will soon feed your family.
• The baker kneads and bakes the bread for the sandwich you’ll eat for lunch.
• The engineer and architect design the bridge that allows you to get to work.
• The furniture maker’s handiwork creates the furniture in your living room.
• The plumber fixes your leak, clears your drain and plunges your toilet.
• The teacher educates and inspires your children to be the best they can be.
• The customer provides the support that enables everyone to receive wages.
• The performer engages the imagination and entertains your senses.
• The seamstress sews the beautiful clothes that make you look great.
• The physician and nurse help to bring your beautiful baby into the world.

Pause for a moment and begin to think of the connections between people and you will immediately understand how important a role gratitude plays in the creation of a happy, productive life.

We live in a world where we have much to be grateful for if we would just stop and look around.

It’s quite humbling to think of all the roles that complete strangers play in our daily existence. The sheer ingenuity and effort required of others is one of the most compelling reasons why we must make gratitude a daily practice.

Humility is a virtue integral to gratitude as we cannot recognize the need for gratitude without it.

Everything Counts! by Gary Ryan Blair

It is a wonderful and timely message for living a full, rich life of excellence, gratitude and quality.

John Wiley Publishing has created and priced Everything Counts so that you can give it as a gift to every person on your Christmas list.

If there is anyone to whom you want to express gratefulness or someone who needs to be reminded that everything counts—this is the gift for them!

I am very proud of this particular piece of work and very excited to finally be able to offer it to you!

High achievers are intensely results oriented.

The world is filled with non-achievers who believe that intentions are more important than results.

For knuckleheads, effort is the same as accomplishment. Knuckleheads put in countless hours on the job, struggling to keep up with their hectic schedules, and speaking in breathless frustration about how unappreciated their efforts seem to be.

However, if you ask them to name one significant goal they have achieved in the last day, week or even month, many would be hard-pressed to come up with anything of significance.

Knuckleheads speak about how hard they work and offer countless examples of their own good intentions, but when measuring results, most of these people have nothing to show for their efforts. Even worse, they don’t really understand why results even matter.

The fact is high achievers are intensely results oriented.

You can't excuse yourself out of a pickle that you behaved yourself into.

Mark Twain once wrote that, “There are a thousand excuses for every failure but never a good reason.” Knuckleheads have developed an unequaled gift for making excuses and thus murdering their own potential.

If you experiment with excuses, lies and exaggerations, it is probably because you find the truth inadequate.

The tragedy of the average knucklehead is that they have become dependent on the deception, false belief, and unfortunately ease of use associated with making excuses.

I know of no enemy more insidious or vicious than excuses. It’s an enemy that poses a clear and present danger to your future.

Excuses are to a knucklehead, what spin is to a politician – a clever yet lame way to pass away bad news or some undesirable reality. The truth is, no one is buying and we all know you’re full of beans.

You can’t excuse yourself out of a pickle that you behaved yourself into. Don’t lie or BS people with some sorry excuse for why you didn’t deliver the intended results. Trust me, they see right through it, which makes you look like an even bigger knucklehead.

Excuses are personality defects; the dirty ring around the collar of your performance, which carry the distinct whiff of mediocrity.

Few things make a knucklehead more uncomfortable than being confronted with the reality of their own sorry excuses. The excuse of using excuses is a behaviorally transmitted disease that inhibits the inherent potential of anyone that comes in contact with them.

So why do knuckleheads become such easy prey for an excuse when bringing home the bacon was what was expected of them?

Why do they continue to rely on such lame rational, which undermines their potential and destroys their reputation?

Why do they continue to dine on this junk food of behavior?

Why? Because they’re knuckleheads! That’s why!

Knuckleheads flip the bird to their own potential when they offer up an excuse, and it’s a bloody shame as far too many people demonstrate this reckless behavior pattern.

The tipping point of success resides on the other side of excuses – responsibility!

Take control of how and when.

If everyone believes that you are available at all times, you are. 

How you deal with incoming calls is an important indicator of how much control you exert over your own schedule.

If you accept every call that comes in than you are at the mercy of anyone who happens to have your number.

Taking control of how and when you accept phone calls is critical to your time.

A cluttered desk piled with scribbled notes screams knucklehead.

The perceived cost associated with getting organized is a favorite excuse of most people.

This goes back to the premise that being disorganized must be someone or something else’s fault – that there must be a barrier to entry that keeps you in this state.

There is a tremendous opportunity cost associated with remaining disorganized as every misplaced message or task left unaccomplished has a cost.

Sometimes the cost can be diminished reputation, loss of opportunity, and even financial pain.  A lot of unfortunate, negative perceptions are created by the appearance of disorganization.

By not taking control of this issue, you become known as someone who doesn’t return phone calls, someone who is consistently late to meetings, and someone whom you can’t trust.

These perceptions, actually these realities will in fact tarnish your business and personal relationships.

The cleanliness of your space speaks volumes to your co-workers and clients. A cluttered desk piled with scribbled notes screams knucklehead.

How can a client entrust you with his or her business if you can’t be trusted to handle the items currently on your desk?

And how can your boss, or co-worker rely on you if you have proven yourself unreliable in other, seemingly innocuous situations?

The answer is simple: They can’t!

Excuses are a dramatic, ongoing theme for Knuckleheads.

One thing you can count on from far too many people is their consistency in being late for just about any meeting. They are an equal opportunity offender and THIEF of others time, and patience.

These knuckleheads are not the sharpest knives in the drawer; they waltz in late, apologize profusely and insist that this incident was highly unusual.

They are never, ever late they say. The victim of their excuse finds the knucklehead amusing because experience has shown them to be late for everything.

Let’s cut to the quick on this issue. Being chronically late is irresponsible, unprofessional, and is a significant factor in annoying those that have been on time.

Knuckleheads would never admit this but they are getting some kind of demented jolly by getting other’s attention when they walk in the room – late of course.

This demented behavior reinforces a sense of inadequacy that the Knucklehead feels about themselves and this is their creative way of demonstrating their incompetence to the world.

Excuses are a dramatic, ongoing theme for Knuckleheads. They consistently over schedule, become flustered when they fall behind, and continue to insist that they are never late. A rendezvous with reality is the only hope for change!

Guido Daniele's Body Art

Daniele is a brilliant artist who has turned his hand to creating a wholly different style of painting which he dubs as ‘Handimals‘.

Rather than working on canvas, he uses human hands to produce these stunning animals -- like a Technicolor version of the “shadows on the wall” game.

The whole process takes up to ten hours -- and the models can’t even twiddle their thumbs…the end result is both surreal and sensational.

For your enjoyment, I have included a collection of Guido’s hand painting art. Check out his amazing creations which look like real animals and then visit his site and check out his body painting pictures.

Alligator by Guido Daniele

Eagle on two hands by Guido Daniele

Dog by Guido Daniele

Eagle by Guido Daniele

Elephant by Guido Daniele

Connecting people in need.

Wish Upon A Hero is a very special site which was conceived by a very special man, Dave Girgenti.

Shortly after the September 11th attacks on New York City and from his home in NJ, Girgenti watched as thousands of people posted pictures of missing loved ones throughout the city.

He thought there had to be a faster, more organized way to connect people in need. That was the moment in which the idea was born.

Less than five years later, Hurricane Katrina created a similar catastrophic event in New Orleans where hundreds of thousands of people needed immediate help.

This time it wasn’t just about locating loved ones. Hurricane victims needed everything from health care services, food, fresh water, clothing and shelter.

It became clear that Wish Upon a Hero needed to become more than an idea. Over the next two years, Girgenti exhausted every resource at his disposal to create an online community that offered a platform for people to help people.

The site has grown from helping to reunite families to granting wishes big and small – so far, more than 34,000 requests have been granted.

Cast a Wish

Wish Upon A Hero is completely free to its users, allowing everyone who registers the opportunity to cast up to three wishes at a time.

Because Wish Upon A Hero is designed to help everyone, wishes can be big or small, elaborate or simple, based on financial need or just asking for a simple favor.

Be a Hero

Wish Upon A Hero is a unique venue for any individual, organization, or company looking to make a difference in someone’s life, or the lives of countless people.

Heroes come in all ages and from all walks of life. All of us, from our nation’s most powerful corporations to individual philanthropists, and those with limited financial means, can be someone’s hero:

• A man who buys uniforms for his town’s little league team.
• A plastic surgeon brings his skill to the aid of an uninsured breast cancer survivor.
• A national appliance retailer that donates a refrigerator to a single mom with a newborn.
• A groundskeeper at Yankee stadium who helps a woman fulfill her father’s lifelong dream of throwing a single pitch across home plate.
• A group of 8th graders that rally behind a fellow student whose home was lost in a fire.

Once a wish is granted, the hero can choose to remain anonymous, or be formally recognized on the Wish Upon A Hero website.

To become a hero, you can visit Dave’s website, www.WishUponAHero.com

Producer Mark Johnson

Playing for Change is a movement uniting people all over the world through music and inspiration. I absolutely love their mission and commitment to inspiring peace through music.

The film is unbelievably special and brings together musicians from around the world — blues singers in a waterlogged New Orleans, chamber groups in Moscow, a South African choir — to collaborate on songs familiar and new, in the effort to foster a new, greater understanding of our commonality.

Mark has also been instrumental in creating The Playing for Change Foundation which provides resources (facilities, supplies, educational programs, etc) to musicians and communities around the world.

Check out this compilation on the song: Stand By Me

The foundation is working with South African poet Lesego Rampolokenga to build the Mehlo Arts Center in Johannesburg, South Africa and building and supporting the Ntonga Music School in the South African township of Guguletu. In addition, Playing For Change is working to enhance and rebuild Tibetan refugee centers in Dharamasala, India and Kathmandu, Nepal.

Musicians around the world Playing for Change.

In the words of one of the artists featured in PLAYING FOR CHANGE, Vusi Mahlasela, “The world is immigrating into a global village, the question is how much do you want to belong.”

Learn more about Playing for Change, their mission, and how they are inspiring people throughout the world to accomplish much more together than we ever can apart.

Bobbi Deporter

This sound likes a really super camp doesn’t it? Well, this SuperCamp does exist and it is the brainchild of Bobbi DePorter.

In 1982, Bobbi broke the mold by creating a learning and life skills academic summer program for youth. The SuperCamp program based on the premise that every kid has a hidden genius and with the goal to bring that genius out.

Just as Southwest Airlines changed our perceptions of flying and Starbucks changed our perceptions of coffee shops — SuperCamp has throw away the rule book and created an innovative category in engaged, joyful, successful learning. Now with more than 50,000 graduates and programs in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America, SuperCamp is an established leader in the field of youth development.

Here’s a note from a SuperCamp Graduate:

“I have been a SuperCamper for two years. One in the junior forum and one in the senior, and what I got from both of those years was this: anyone and everyone can learn no matter who you are, where you come from, and what your grades say, you are a talented and smart individual quite capable of learning. All it takes is belief in yourself and your abilities to make you a better and more able person. Combine this uplifting message with practical learning techniques and interpersonal skills for a fun filled and educational experience.” -- Robert

Bobbi DePorter has changed the lives of over four million kids around the world. As an author of over a dozen books, she is recognized by many as a leading authority on effective learning and youth development.

You Are -- A to E

What impresses me most about Bobbi and the SuperCamp curriculum is their focus on excellence as a critical life skill. They place a premium on exposing kids to personal best practices by creating communities of excellence which unite all camp participants with a common bond; to live a life of exceptionally high standards.