~~Food For Thought ~ Marvelous Monday Edition~
~~Rituals for Success Part 1~~
~Note~
Here is part one of the twelve daily rituals for long-term happiness and success following up on the weekend's agenda:
1. Exercise your integrity.
Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you are capable of. Communicating clearly and asking for what you want and need from people. Speaking your truth, even when others judge you for it. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your morals and values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe. And, of course, always doing the right thing, even when it’s hard, and even when nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.
2. Steer clear of drama and those who create it.
There comes a time in life when you have to let go of all the needless drama and the people who create it. Staying out of other people’s drama is an incredibly effective way to stress less and smile more. A good rule of thumb: If you can’t say it to their face, you shouldn’t say it behind their back. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.” Life is much too short to waste time talking about people, gossiping, and stirring up drama that has no substance. If you don’t know, ask. If you don’t agree, say so. If you don’t like it, speak up. But never judge people behind their back.
3. Replace judgment with encouragement.
No one truly knows what they will do in a certain situation until they are actually in it. Yes, it’s very easy to judge someone else’s actions by what you assume your own actions would be if you were in their shoes. But you only know what you THINK you would do, not what you WOULD do.
The truth is, we tend to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our ideals. So do your best to catch yourself when this happens. Remember that when we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person, and everything about our own need to be critical.
Bottom line: We have enough critics in this world. Be an encourager. You’ll see why.
4. Be positive and spend time with positive people.
Happiness is not the absence of problems, but the ability to deal with them. Raise your awareness to your own inner strength and positivity. You are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life, or you can choose to be positive instead by focusing on the great things that are truly important. So talk about your blessings more than you talk about your problems. Just because you’re struggling doesn’t mean you’re failing. Every great success requires some kind of worthy struggle to get there.
In addition, do your best to spend more time with positive people and less time with negative ones. People that deliberately doubt, judge and disrespect you are not worth your long-term time and attention.
5. Make new choices as needed, rather than letting old ones make you.
You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who and what hurts you. After all, who we ultimately become depends, in part, on who and what we let into our lives. So don’t just settle for relationships and situations that have proven to be unworthy. Exercise your right to choose differently.
Be the hero of your life, not the victim. You may not control all the circumstances that happen to you, but you can decide not to be continuously reduced by the same ones.
6. Simplify whatever you can, whenever you can.
As E.F. Schumacher once said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
Simplifying is not seeing how little you can get by with – that’s poverty – but how efficiently you can put first things first, and use your time accordingly to pursue the things that make a lasting difference in your life. Less really is more. Instead of adding, improve your life by subtracting. Get rid of unnecessary clutter, negative influences and toxic relationships. There is a big difference between what you want and what you need and also between what’s excessive and what’s essential.