As you start to get older, you begin to understand more and more that life is not about what you look like or what you own. It’s about the people who truly love you and the person you’ve become.

As you start to get older, you begin to understand more and more that life is not about what you look like or what you own. It’s about the people who truly love you and the person you’ve become.

I find it puzzling that such an important and meaningful lesson is so lost on a vast assortment of humanity. 

It would appear so obvious at the outset, that one’s character and quality of communication, compassion, understanding, love and friendship with others would be paramount in life’s assortment of treasures and values, and yet, as you look around, you see millions of people who are lost in seas of wished-for treasures, trinkets, fame and fortune.

Yet, as we grow up, we realize it becomes less important to have more friends and more important to have real ones because making a hundred friends is not a miracle. The miracle is to make a single friend who will stand by your side even when one hundred friends are against you.

Making the proper investments in life could not be more important. Those come in the form of financial, education, life experiences, health, fitness, mental health, relationships and so much more. The decision to go internal and focus on ourselves plays a key role in the overall success we feel as we grow older. We see how others perceive us, recognize our value in their spheres of influence and learn how and why our collective life engagements have materialized into nonphysical instruments of value to be leveraged in our respective worlds.

The kind and compassionate people are valued in countless, immeasurable ways. Their presence is felt long after they have left the room. And in many cases, long after they have left the physical world. Our financial fortunes can buy a sign above a library or similar, but only the energy that has been expended by our heart and our caring mind can buy a place in another’s heart, such that every time you come to mind, they are filled with an incalculable warmth.

Prioritization is key to success. So certainly the need to prioritize the efforts needed to grow and develop those inherent qualities that make us beloved must be one of the top prerequisites in life. 

Without them, we solely evolve into a series of assets that must be subdivided and distributed after our turn on planet Earth. With no one mourning our loss or cognizant of our absence, then we have not left a void that others who have invested heavily in being a person of substance may leave in their wake. 

Every person’s legacy and immortality is created in the feeling and memory that they are able to bestow upon history. Some are tiny, and others cast a giant shadow…. But certainly, the biggest winners are those who create a memory in those who knew them and others that knew of them that speaks volumes as to the warm and rich values that they role modeled for others.

Happy Monday!  

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Written by Brian Weiner
When I was 5 years old, I discovered that the lemon tree in the backyard + dixie cups + water and sugar and I was in business. I have been hooked on that ever since. In 1979, I borrowed $14,000 to create a brand new product... photographic greeting cards with no text on the inside, called Paradise Photography. That was the start of The Illusion Factory. Since then, The Illusion Factory has been entrusted by all of the major studios and broadcasters with the advertising and marketing of over $7 billion in filmed, live, broadcast, gaming, AR, VR and regulated gaming forms of entertainment, generating more than $100 Billion in revenue and 265 awards for creativity and technology for our clients. When I took a break from film school at UCLA to move to Hawaii, my mother did not lecture me. Instead, she took 150 of her favorite aphorisms and in her beautiful calligraphy, wrote them artistically throughout a blank journal. That is the origin of the Lessons from the Mountain series. Since then, on my journeys to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise, I have spent countless hours contemplating words of wisdom from the sages of all races, genders and political persuasions, constantly accumulating the thoughts to guide me on my life path. I hope you enjoy my books. Please let me know your thoughts, as I highly value your feedback!