This morning when I woke up I was feeling sad, unhappy and lonely and completely NOT motivated. I went in the kitchen to make some coffee even though I have given up drinking coffee. I had a couple of sips of the coffee and it tasted really good so I justified that since I was having a bad day I should drink coffee and treat myself. (forgetting that the reason I gave UP coffee is because it is more of a punishment than a treat, depleated adrenals, stained teeth, jitteriness..lol.) Then I turned on some music, first Madonna then Michael Jackson and then some other artists and I started cleaning up my house. As I was cleaning I was listening to the music and listening to the words and began feeling really inspired, I started to realize that even though these feelings seemed so real in the morning earlier, they were just an attack on my happiness. Everyone feels unhappy at some point in time but it's just a suggestion in your thought and you don't have to accept it. You can shut the door on it and the only thing that those negative thoughts are capable of doing is driving you out of your peace of mind.

It's just like going into a courtroom and having everyone point you and say “you're sick “and they're arguing that you're sick and there can be all these valid reasons why you should listen to those critical critiques...ANYbody for that matter, could argue that you're sick but you don't have to accept it. You know that you're well and you know that you are complete and whole and you can argue in your defense just as if you were in a courtroom of your thought. Its just that easy. If someone accused you of murder, and you KNOW you are not a murderer, would you accept someone elses verdict on YOUR life? I don't think so!

So as I listen to the music I started to realize that I was accepting a limited view of myself as being unable to handle events negative events. Everyone has negative events in their lives. Everyone does. It's not the events that define us it's how we handle these events, so I decided to throw the coffee out. I didn't drink all that much, I just had a couple sips and I threw it out and I'm back on my NO coffee drinking.(or maybe I will start out with a half cup, go to a quarter cup and then stop..lol)  I was really grateful to have the music to listen to to help me feel inspired and I got a lot accomplished. I had read an article about doing three big things and two little things in a day and it was a great concept! As I listened and cleaned and organized,, I was thinking about how each person in society can make a difference, a contribution... because here i was years after some songs had been recorded, feeling uplifted and inspired by the words and the melodies... musicians can make a contribution through their music artist can make a contribution through their art, politicians through the laws that they help to enact and ordinary citizens can contribute through their daily POSITIVE interactions with other people.

Some try to makea difference by looking at nature around them. We have such a focus these days on preserving natural resources and people want to preserve the mountains and the oceans and the beaches and the parks and animals, wild animals, rare animals and even all of our fossil fuels, and yes these are ALL natural resources. But the greatest natural resource that we have that we are doing the worst job of conserving is the human resource. We are the least caring about each other, about children, babies, the poor or the sick, the handicapped, the old: these are our most precious resources.

The elderly resources: I know each of us knows somebody who is significantly older than we are and who is very wise and very good at offering suggestions and giving advice which has significantly enriched our lives. Or I bet each of us knows of a baby or foster child, a handicapped person or an elderly homebound person, whose caretaker or parent has benefited and become whole and complete and enriched by being in the service of that child or adult. US, the United States,  caring about each other can do the MOST by having a sense of compassion for each other and having a acceptence of individuality, respecting the uniqueness of each person without trying to control any of these people.

Political parties often times try to promote a celebration of its individual members, but it comes with the cost of being available only within the realm of their accepted core agreed upon values and that is very limiting. Political parties, businessmen, and athletes, are all competing for common goals but the competition should not be that the only winners are the ones with the most power or strength. If you were having a childs birthday party to celebrate  for that child, and your child recieved all these gifts, would you let the guests go home without a goody bag of treats so they felt celebrated also? Each person, children and adults in our lives, are bearing gifts and we will feel much happier if we acknowledge these gifts by our kind behavior towards them in gratitude for their uniqueness. Kind of like the story of the birth of baby Jesus, where the magi (who were rich and powerful) brought gifts but the shepherds and the sheep (who were the lowly) also brought gifts of warmth and protection. Did the childlike innocence of the baby know or care about the difference between the gifts? No he accepted all with perfect love. He did not see one as better than another.

It really is not expressing love when you can only express interest or kindness towards someone who agrees with your political, musical, financial, religious, educational etc. point of view. Enlarge your perspective and allow yourself to be influenced by someone else and their point of view, keeping in mind that their experience is always completely different from your experience therefore their point of view is equally as valid and may give you a wiser range of choices. There are no superiors and there are no inferior's, each person, each human resource that we have is completely whole and completely valid and completely equal to all the other people out there in the world. So when you see someone you do not PERSONALLY know, like, for example,  Angelina Jolie, who is may be a celebrity with a lot of money and  who may do some things you do not agree with, you still have to acknowledge that she is doing something CONCRETE to preserve human resources. She is doing an amazing job of trying to help care for all the children that she has adopted that were destitute and impoverished and these children are very enriched now. I'm very impressed with her love for suffering children and I think that her actions speak volumes for her. We also see many other influential musicians, actors, teachers, and athletes involved in similiar community service acts.

As one of the masses,however, I know a lot of people today feel like politicians, musicians, businessmen, athletes and celebrities,  compete with unkindly and unfairly with each other to be superior to someone else instead of realizing that true competition acknowledges the individual abilities of each person and does not use power to edge someone else who is valuable out (movie pretty woman is a good example). The person with the best ability in any particular arena should be the one who excels and the others can be supporters and can help be a team and with everyone on equal grounds. The person who EXCELS is a winner but that does NOT mean they are superior, they just have excelled in that area of expertise and will certainly recieve financial rewards for their efforts (usually but not always). For every area of expertise there's a person who's gonna excel and every person has their own resources that they've been gifted with. Sometimes those in power find it hard to see the gifts in someone they consider to be inferior and to be sure,  it's easier to see gifts in some individuals than it is to see it in others, but that doesn't mean that those gifts don"t exist in each person.

If you really believed your own little boy or girl was a valuable treasure, would you really leave that child planted in front of a TV babysitter all day and would you let your teen go to a party without checking to see if there was good supervision? Would you complain about going to there school projects or their sport events? Would you spend every night having a cocktail or would you spend time going for a walk with your kids? The competition you make your kids endure to get your kind attention is amazing to me sometimes as an observer of parents and kids. We ALL can do better with our HOME competition first and move out from there when we are perfect parents. = )

So when you see the competition you should remember the gifts of each competitor, and  it should be friendly and it should be handled the same way athletes embody good sportsmanship. There should be the same kind of competition in the business world as well. For example, I just noticed on Twitter that some fans of Madonna and Lady Gaga seem to be competing with each other for the attention of the public regarding whose music is best, and I don't believe this is coming from either of the two musicians I believe it's coming from the fans. I think that the general public like both Lady Gaga and Madonna. They are fabulous entertainers they are beautiful singers, are strong women and have unique audiences devoted to their type of music and the music is very inspirational. Sometimes you are inspired by listening to Madonna sometimes are inspired by listening to Lady Gaga sometimes are inspired by listening to country or hip-hop or rap or classic rock or metal. There's all different kinds of music and you can listen to all of it and be inspired, I like Soul right at the moment.

I think that to talk about someone as being better than the other is missing the point I don't think that Madonna wrote and sang her songs to be popular I think she wrote her songs because she had a message and she was able to give that message in the form of an incredible number of songs that have continued to be popular for years after they were released, and that is amazing. Lady Gaga is new and she's young and she's vibrant and her message is equally powerful and she's reaching an audience that nobody else could probably reach and she should feel very proud to be able to be a voice for a group of individuals that maybe would not have a voice otherwise. I'm just using these two artists as an example because I've noticed it recently and actually I think they would sound amazing in a duet.

There are other examples within the political arena and there's a lot of NOT lovely competition among politicians. I think that the general public gets turned off by that and the more ugly the conversations become, the less interested the general public is in what it is that these politicians are trying to say, and the politicians are at that point just arguing to try to convince each other on any point, because the general public has already shut them down mentally. I think it's makes good political sense to step back and listen instead of arguing, listen to what other people have to say and then express gratitude for the things that people say that you think are going to help take the world in general in the right direction. Politicians all have different views of how that improved world is gonna happen and it is ok to voice CONSTRUCTIVE views in a humble way, okay to be different. Instead of criticizing someone who has an opposing view it's probably more beneficial in my opinion to celebrate the similarities and encourage people to find a win-win situation in the political arena. If you went to another country, would you immediately start telling that culture how stupid they were for doing things a certain way? I don't think so. You would try to learn and understand their culture and offer helpful advice if it was asked for or needed. Right? We should have that same respect for political, religious and ethnic differences.

This tolerance and willingness to learn should extend also for those in the business arena and even in marriage relationships. As I said earlier, it starts right at home and if you at home are not able to have a good relationship based on tolerance and understanding and compassion (and I'm struggling with mine right now so I'm speaking from experience) you will never be able to extend a compassionate ear to your neighbor or an enemy. You have to start with yourself before you can start telling other people how to live their lives. You have have humility and realize that your life is going to be the best expression of your voice or point of view to your children and to your friends and your family and to the whole world, so you can try to do your best to start close to home and venture out from there.

As a parent if you are not respecting and valuing your child, if your child is only there to carry out your personal agenda and expectations then you are trying to control your child and your child as an individual could get damaged. Even though they might only be three years old they still should have the respect from the parents regarding their uniqueness due to the fact that they are complete and whole individuals ALREADY and only need our protection and love to beome functioning adults with intrinsic values MAINLY determined by parental  behavior instead of words. As children grow they need to see a constant source of gratitude being expressed by parents along with humility, tolerance and compassion and do not allow negative thoughts to take hold.  When connecting with children and teens, music  and dance are great ways to lift the spirits as well as getting out in the sun and having friendly conversations. I went for a bike ride after the coffee dumping this morning, and it was sunny  but there was snow on the ground and it was able to enjoy a glittery dazzling bike ride to continue to boost my thoughts.

Exercise or fitness is so important because there are so many women and men who have all kinds of excuses as to why they're not happy and a lot of it is image related. They don't like their body. They feel fat, they feel unattractive and then they go off and completely do exactly all the wrong things to continue this destructive pattern of what they don't like about themselves. If you are overweight and you go out drinking every night of the week you're gonna continue to be overweight. If you're overweight and you eat donuts and cookies all day long you're gonna continue to be overweight and if you're overweight and you never exercise you're gonna continue to be overweight. So because I'm a personal trainer this is very frustrating for me that people complain but then they don't do anything to change the BEHAVIORS to improve what it is that they don't like. If parents are not able to do that for themselves how are they going to expect their children to be able to make good decisions and incorporate successful behaviors, if they are not modeling it to their children?

One last thought about children and adults is that I have known for a long time that the easiest way to be happy is to be as a child, or be innocent. I think one of the reasons that I've been able to continue to be happy in spite of a lot of personal struggles going on in my life is because I was raised to have an innocent view of the world, to have a faith in mankind, in the good of man, in the common man or the little people, the salt of the earth people, and to realize that there is good (gifts)  in every person, even criminals, there is good. Lost happiness can be recovered when each person allows that innocent thought to bring them  back into their rememberances of many GOOD experiences that they've let it go into hiding and their rejection of negative memories. This good needs to be brought back iin because what we Choose to think about will determine our happiness. The child like innocence DOES that easily and clearly and when you actually HAVE a child, that innocence needs to be protected. The child in each of us needs to be cared for and allowed to grow. Introducing fears into the minds of small children, to me, is no better than exposing them to a contageous disease into their mind . Telling children they have to be afraid of things and letting him watch movies that cause them to have fear, are things that destroy innocence and a child will eventually discover these things on their own anyway as they mature. But to be indiscriminate about these things  as when kids are young, I think, is a waste of their youthful innocence. Those mids could be enhanced much more constructively by taking them out on nature hikes and taking them to places where they learn tovolunteer and learn  how to create things on their own, such as  crafts and art.  Also  teaching them ways to be fit, helping them learn how to shop economically so that if they ever have financial problems they know how to make it on a budget, teaching them how to clean so that they have good personal habits, these are all things that show respect for the value of the natural resource of the child. It's easy to pop a kid in front of a video game but that's not really parenting and if you want to have children then part of having children is is giving them all of the best tools that you can as a parent. We should all review our own thought. Give yourself 5 min. of giving gratitude and expressing thanks to something or someone in your life every day because it's very hard to be mad or upset when you're expressing gratitude. Whatever it is that's making you upset take it in your mind and put it in a box and tape it up and file it away, turn on some music, think of something positive and start dancing!