The trouble with being a good sport, is that you have to lose to prove it.

When was the last time you were a good sport?

Were you playing a game and lost?

Or applying for an opportunity and lost?

Running for a position and lost?

It is easy to opine on the virtues of being a good sport, and it is an entirely different experience finding yourself in such a position, and acting in accord.

When you are in that moment of knowing that you lost, there is a rush of emotion that can overwhelm you with feelings not in balance with the way you see the world. In that moment, time expands, and you are in a doldrum of knowing you could have done better or you should have done better, or you deserved to do better… but for whatever the reason, it did not work out for you as you had hoped….

So now what?

Do you suck it up, congratulate the victor and move on? Do you pretend it is alright, but secretly harbor negative feelings with expectation that perhaps one day you will settle the score? Do you protest vehemently and decry the outcome as invalid and demand to be vindicated? Or do you fall victim to your own shallow sense of self, deny the results and wage a coup to take over the entity that has just announced your loss?

The purpose of competition is to enable the best of the best to presumably rise above all others. Since the origins of the cultural tribal competitions that escalated those to the top of the pecking order, the ability for humans to compete and prevail, has been a cornerstone in the human evolutionary experience.

We celebrate the greatest in our society through competition, awards, medals and financial rewards. As a global society, we are myopic on these competitions and enable them to become a significant portion of our culture. Our past time is spent watching athletes compete, as well as actors, musicians and creative people generating diversions for our daily escape from our day in/day out rituals.

When we see someone who has given their all, and is one step shy of the top position, lose the prize, but maintain their composure and integrity in the heat of the moment, we brand them a “good sport.” Does this mean that they are not feeing the sting of having lost? Most probably not. But, we witness a person who has grace, self control and dignity, recognize that this competition has just ended and not in their favor. If they have self confidence and poise, they accept this as the truth, and they move forward with their lives…. Many times with the expectation that they will compete again and win the next time.

I believe this comes down to proper parenting. If you are wise, you will enable your children to compete in competitions where they are just as likely to lose as win. In that loss, they will learn the grace and mindset that losing is just a small chapter on the road to great success. Without that parenting, your child may grow up to become the world’s biggest loser and who knows where that could potentially leave them at the end of their journey?

Happy Sunday!

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We often take for granted the very things that deserve our gratitude.

 Cynthia Ozick

What are some of the most valuable things that you take for granted, every day?

Your health? Your loved ones? Your friends? Your ability to make a living? Your ability to pursue the dreams that matter to you?

There are countless variables in our life which are omnipresent, and which receive very little regular attention or gratitude. As we get older, and we have opportunity to watch one of these myriad variables, wane or disappear entirely, it shines a bright spotlight on that which we have so regularly assumed would always be in place.

Have you ever hurt a small part of your body, (like jamming a finger) and every time you go to do something (like reaching into your pocket) there is a pain that reminds you that something in your body is hurt, that wasn’t hurt, and now calls attention to itself with regularity, until it heals (assuming it will heal).

These contrasting experiences give us stimuli to recognize, and therefore appreciate, all that the world of gratitude would encompass, if we were fully awake, and aware of the details.

Even the ability to take a clean breath of air is, in and of itself, a luxury that some people in some parts of the world are not regularly able to avail themselves of.

Our opportunities to perhaps take a step back from the complexities of our daily lives, and pause long enough to express our gratitude for the people we love, the people who care about us, those who are by our side, through thick and thin, and so many other variables, is worthy of a brief moment, every morning.

In doing so, we take an inventory of these things that are so readily available to us, and acknowledge how fortunate we are to have all of that in our world.

Happy Saturday!

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Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not presenting it.

WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD

Are you both generous and genuine with your gratitude?

Have you ever been incredibly appreciative of something that someone has done for you, but too shy to tell them how much it meant in your world? 

For some reason, some of us are reticent to express appreciation and gratitude for fear of some form of rejection or misunderstanding. The truth is, the majority of people are desirous and appreciative of hearing that something that they have done has meant something of consequence, and enriched the life or lives of others. 

It makes sense, and yet there are plenty of people who will quietly feel that appreciation, but never take the time to express it. When we understand that expressing gratitude is feedback, no different than an audience applauding or cheering for a performance, we might become a little less self-conscious about being openly appreciative and perhaps instead, be guardedly evocative of our emotions, so that others are aware of the impact that they are having on us. 

When we take the time to communicate with others, we are creating a loop of communication that empowers us to thrive from whatever it is that they have done that has caused us gratitude and reciprocate in kindness by expressing it and leaving the other party aware that we are cognizant of what they have just done for us. 

Take the simple, polite act of holding a door open for strangers as you walk in and out of a retail establishment. There are those that will take the time to thank you for the courtesy and others who will walk right through that doorway and not acknowledge you, as if you were the door person whose responsibility it was to open the door for them. 

It used to annoy me that I would go out of my way to be courteous, and others would choose not to acknowledge that, so I made it a policy to politely say, “you’re welcome,” in a kind tone, as if the other party had thanked me for holding the door, whether they thanked me or not. 

It solved my need to create a feedback loop and perhaps subconsciously reinforced for them, that there was something missing in their repertoire. 

Either way, we are continuously finding ourselves engaging with others, and benefiting from things that they might say, or do, within their sphere of influence. As a direct result, we would be most wise to take the time to acknowledge their having done so, and allow them the privilege of knowing that we appreciate what they have done for us. 

Happy Thursday!

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The more that you believe everything will be OK, the faster it becomes a reality. 

ROGER LEE

How many times in your life have you visualized a positive outcome that has manifested to your benefit?

When a circumstance like this resolves in your favor, does it further strengthen your determination to leverage this thought process?

Or do you view the outcome as being happenstance, in which case nothing that you were doing or thinking had any influence on your perception of what has just transpired?

We put our intent into the world and our intent manifests in our favor or our disfavor. Buddha said, “what we think, we become.” This happens whether we are conscious of this energy, or not.

The more conscious we become about how our energy generates internally, and then manifests externally, the quicker we are capable of understanding how we might best leverage this to our collective greater good.

Why does this work? It’s well to prognosticate these kinds of expectations, predicated upon things that we have read and philosophies that we embrace. But philosophy, notwithstanding, is there a physical and reliable answer to what is transpiring? 

If we are putting a thought out into the world, that thought is energy waves that manifest in our mind and broadcast beyond the mind into the world at large.

How then are these trillions of thoughts, circulating our planet, finding their way to bringing anything of consequence to us individually or to a society, collectively?

The answer is that in these energies creating fields that move through our universe, they are no different than light or sound, both of which are traveling in waves. These waves interact with one another without impedance… no different than multiple ripples in a pond which intersect and overlap, without any of the ripples changing shape, or losing direction.

As these energy waves are moving out into the universe around us, they are attracting to complementary energy, which collectively harmonize as appropriate pairs of energy attract, interact and continue on their way.

When these interactions transpire, some of those complementary energy waves find their way back to us. While my explanation is rudimentary in contrast to what is actually transpiring, my metaphor is fairly accurate, in the sense that a photon can transmit from the sun and bounce off of anything that you might see outside, and instantly reflect off of that object into our eyes, thereby giving us visualization of the items around us.

The positive energy that is being transmitted, as well as the negative energy that is being transmitted, goes out into the universe and reflects off of complementary matter and finds its place back within us.

Only through continuous adoption of this belief, are we able to ultimately manifest our biggest dreams and aspirations into reality.

When you believe it is going to transpire, you will make it so.

Happy Tuesday!

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ARTHUR C. CLARKE

If I were to tell you that in one minute, you could transport yourself to any other spot on planet earth, would you believe me?

Imagine if you were talking with friends in 1912, and someone told you that they could take a heart out of a person that had just passed away and put it into the body of another person who desperately needed a heart replacement, in order to live, would that not seem equally impossible? 

I’m sure as Christopher Columbus and crew were traversing the Atlantic ocean for the first time, if someone had told them that in a few hundred years, people will be able to fly across that same ocean in five hours, would that also not seem equally impossible? 

It all distills down to where current technologies and understandings of those technologies lie, in order to assess whether or not something is seemingly possible or not.

Do you remember watching Star Trek and seeing the tricorder scan the human body and find anything that was wrong within it? 

Or the robotic surgeon technology in the movie, Prometheus, in which a solo robotic device is able to perform a highly complicated surgery. 

As the world progresses, science-fiction prognosticates all of the most likely, and some of the highly unlikely concepts to spark the human imagination. As quickly as those thoughts are stimulated, an inventive mind starts to conceptualize and formulate the appropriate steps for how such a seemingly miraculous event could, in truth, be accomplished. 

As a child, I watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey and was transfixed by the idea of a video phone call from a vehicle not even on Earth. Decades later, my team and I were working on exactly such an invention. You never know which idea will spark a revolution in the mind of another person.

Science and science fiction have been inextricably intertwined from the very beginning. As the sci-fi authors postulated traveling to the moon and beyond, others were already contemplating how such an astronomically ambitious undertaking might be approached. 

When we look to the future, and we are taking into consideration that artificial intelligence will be capable of solving many of the anomalies that have stupefied our greatest minds, we might begin to visualize how, and where, this exciting new chapter of human history may lead us. 

From there, we must access all of the intelligence that we can possibly leverage in order to liberate the most ambitious ideas from science fiction and convert them into science fact. 

Happy Tuesday!

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It’s not always a bad idea to burn bridges behind you…especially if you are being chased by zombies.

BRIAN WEINER

Have you ever burned a bridge behind you?

We are taught, with frequency, that we would be most wise to never burn our bridges….but is that always true?

Perhaps there are times where  burning the bridge is the very best thing you can do.

The aged perspective is to always leave certain opportunities open, for you never know when that may come back to fruition to your benefit.

But what if there are zombies on the other side of the bridge.

Not the Hollywood ghouls of legend, but metaphorical zombies who will never warrant your time or attention again.

When you have completed a chapter with specific individuals, companies, institutions, organizations, or other collective bodies of humanity, you may awaken to a core knowledge that there is no longer cause or reason to ever make contact again.

In that innate knowledge, you can, in most cases, make that mental break and never look back, without a word spoken. That bridge is closed, usually through unspoken terms by one or both parties. The world of online dating exemplifies how readily achievable this simple exercise is.

But… sometimes a word must be spoken. An action taken. A notice relayed. Because sometimes, the other party or entity is less willing to take no for an answer, and may pursue us through countless methodologies, some of which can truly be overwhelming.

That’s where the zombies come into play. 

If that person or entity is continuously pursuing a dynamic with you that is not of your choosing, and you have tried simple and polite methods for communicating this, then perhaps the bonfire on the bridge may be your only resort.

Zombies became the perfect Hollywood villain because they are humanoid, so they embody certain human qualities, yet they are mindlessly in pursuit of those who are not. Further, as they carry no nationality, religion or any other identifying qualities that embody a sector of society that could potentially feel indignant that this film has singled them out as the villains of the story, zombies are only male or female. Young or old. 

Zombies can manifest in your own life through countless circumstances. You may have found yourself working for a company that is practicing unethical behavior. Or you may engage with a group and discover that their core beliefs do not align with yours. You might find yourself readily identifying with a large group who are engaging with a cult of personality whose morals and behavior you do not agree with or whose behavior offends your own core religious beliefs.

Wherever these zombies occur in your life, never be afraid to recognize how and why they are no longer a fit in your life, and take actions to remove yourself quietly from their company. If they refuse to let you leave easily…. Torch the bridge and walk proudly away.

Happy Monday!

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I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

CARL JUNG

Are you the net result of the transformative events that have transpired in your life previously?

We all are. 

But that does not mean that those events have to dictate whom we are becoming.

Circumstances, some much larger than life, are unquestionably substantial factors in our lives… and many carry influence as to how we develop as individuals and as a society. How could they not? 

If we evaluate the biggest variables in our lives thus far, we are readily able to see how some of these circumstances have colored our future through their respective impact. 

Does this necessarily mean that they will absolutely dictate our future? 

Not necessarily. 

We are but a lump of clay and, as a result, we are more likely to evolve, predicated upon how some of these circumstances have impacted us. That said, there are many people who accept their past as a direct limiting factor in how the rest of their lives will potentially evolve. 

That is directly where the decision comes into play. Even though it is likely that a larger than life event may create specific responses in us, we are not directly pointed to a future that is a foregone conclusion. Indeed, we are fascinated by the stories of those who have risen above the extenuating circumstances in their lives, in order that they might become the person that attracts us in the first place. 

We all have choices. One of these choices is to determine whether or not we are ready and willing to accept our past as the prognostication of our future. History is populated with countless accounts of those who have weathered very difficult circumstances in their childhood or subsequent years, and yet, something deep within that individual rose above those circumstances in order that they might leverage a deeper belief within themselves, which then galvanized in their favor and catapulted them into remarkable accomplishments. 

Is it solely that these individuals are extraordinary? Or, is it possible that they were in possession of this most rudimentary idea, postulated by Carl Jung and others?

I believe that the truth is that we all have this power, yet most people do not understand this basic concept, and as a direct result, live lives of mediocrity, for no better reason, then no one has shared with them, the core truth about how they might better themselves and leave any of those coloring chapters in their rearview mirror. Instead, the opportunities for their future are manifested by their direct will and desire. 

Never settle for any limiting factor in your life. It is far wiser to visualize light years beyond that limitation in order that you might aim for the stars and actually arrive there. 

Happy Sunday!

https://brianweiner.com

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Without rain, nothing grows. Learn to embrace the storms in your life.

POWER OF POSITIVITY

When was the last time you weathered a storm of growth in your world?

The storms seem to arise out of nowhere, blanketing us with experiences, feelings, emotions, angst, fear, and trepidation. They manifest from within as well as from external variables, each creating their own unique set of parameters that cause us to take shelter.

In the pause for shelter, we have opportunity to reflect on the circumstances that have brought us to this juncture and to evaluate which details we have at our disposal to help the storm to vacate from our existence and empower us to move forward.

A storm looks and feels like a blight that has rained down upon us with the fury of nature, impassive to our needs and wants. 

But is that always true? 

Is it possible that we create certain storms in order to learn the critical lessons that we most need to learn in order for us to effectively level up from where we are and escalate to where we most wish to be?

When the student is ready, the master appears. In many cases, the master is the storm. It causes us to snap out of our daily hypnotic trance and to instead focus on the variables within the storm that are keeping us from going where we believed we were headed. Instead, the storm catches us in a moment of vulnerability and gives us tremendous pause to contemplate the choices we have made, and to rethink some of those, predicated upon the variables in the storm that are restraining us.

We are state that we wish to grow, but growth comes with growing pains that we seemingly erase from our memory with the blanketing amnesia that so compassionately enables us to repress some of the pain of the growth, and instead, empowers us to leverage that growth into new chapters in which we have elevated to a surprising new level.

We have a choice in the storm. Stand tall and fight it out, or cower in fear and pray it all disseminates as quickly as possible. Neither alternative is wrong. But in the choice to stand and fight it out, we are continuously growing, as the work in progress we truly are…. And with that growth comes new blossoms of opportunity that may never have been possible, had the storm not swept in and captured you in the process.

Happy Saturday!

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You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them. If nothing else, you need to remember that. You can’t erase history, or change it.

Do you have memories that you would like to forget?

We all do.

If you have lived any substantial length of time, you will inevitably have memories that you would like to see disappear. History has its own degree of permanence, and regardless of whether it is inconvenient for any of us that the history exists, the reality is, it is history because it actually transpired and if it actually transpired, there is good probability that there was a lesson for us in the process.

To ignore the history, or even worse, to try to erase that history, is a fool’s errand that yields nothing but continued problems in its wake. History is not there for you to like or dislike. It is there for you to learn from it. And if it offends you, even better. Because then you are less likely to repeat it. It’s not yours for you to erase or destroy.

We are a work in progress individually, and collectively as a society, and even more collectively as a specie on planet earth. We have millennia of remembrances, traces, and accounts of those who came before us.

Some of what we are able to learn about them teaches us things that we most desperately need to know, in order that we do not repeat the same problems and suffer the same misfortunes as those who preceded us.

If we are prudent and equally unafraid of our history, we are that much more served to leverage all of that to our overall benefit, in the sense that our understanding of how, and why things transpired may impart upon us enough wisdom that we are all the more intelligent about the options that we choose, when presented.

Your past may not be everything that you had hoped, and wished that it might be, but with a greater understanding of where things have come from, we will be all the more wise to plot intelligent pathways for the future.

Happy Friday!

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If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.

STEVE JOBS

When was the last time you were pursuing something fueled by the largest of fires in your belly?

I do not think one can truly understand the word, “driven,” until you have experienced something of this magnitude.

At that point, it feels as if there is almost something larger than yourself behind the master controls of your entire being, driving you towards a conceptualized finish line, in which whatever it is that is driving you, ultimately reaches its prescribed destination.

It is this overarching feeling that catapults us into ever greater heights of experience, exploration and effort, in order for us to ultimately elevate ourselves from where we are currently and project ourselves to the position that we most wish to achieve.

In this wave of feeling, we are exposed to forces much larger than that which we believe to be within us, and it is those forces that take our physical, mental and emotional control panels and leverage them in every possible way that they might be leveraged.

We are continuously, hoping that we might find this degree of inspiration within us. Nietzsche said, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” When this revolution transpires, we are elevated in what feels like a drug inducement of bravado, courage, determination, resilience, and fortitude.

These elevations are fully capable of transforming us from a level of mediocrity, to a level of brilliance, as quickly as we are able to fully understand what the prerequisites are, and how we might ultimately use them to our best advantage.

As we continue to grow and escalate towards that perceived finish line, every reinforcement of our actions and behaviors, drives us ever closer to attaining that dream, in order that we might find more of the right internal resources, and external stimuli, that will ultimately facilitate our ability to achieve such a focused and determined goal.

Our own efforts become the galvanizing force which help us to crystallize the metamorphosis we have initiated, so that we are that much more ready, willing and capable of achieving everything that we know in our heart, we are capable of achieving.

Happy Thursday!

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