Author: Jason Ivers

The Most Valuable Thing In The World

The Most Valuable Thing In The World

What is the most valuable thing in the world, for every single person?  You can trade it (in sufficient quantities) for nearly anything else, but can’t get it back once it’s spent… Attention.

Attention is your mental effort, and focus, over time.  Do you want money?  You can spend time and effort and receive money in return (often called a “job”).  Want a girlfriend/boyfriend?  Investing time and effort can get you one of those, as well.  House?  Check.  Better relationships?  Check.

You can’t get more of your attention back after it’s gone… the time is gone, and you can’t “unspend” the mental effort spent during that time.  You also have a limited amount of mental effort that you can put forth in a given amount of time.

That makes attention incredibly valuable.  It’s valuable in terms of both human value and monetary value… after all, you can’t sell someone something without having their attention.

People intuitively understand how valuable someone’s attention is… that’s why we value “active” company more than passive company, why celebrities and successful businessmen are so often fond of people who are “real” with them (if you’re not being real with them, you’re not giving THEM your attention, you’re giving your fantasy of them attention, which is essentially the same as giving it to yourself), and why advertisers like to advertise on the most popular things (they’ve already proven effective at getting attention).

The funny thing is, you don’t have to give someone very much of your attention at all to make it a valuable gift/exchange.  Just taking 5 seconds to actually meet someone’s eyes and convey that you really are thankful when you say thank you is a valued gift… try it and you’ll see the appreciation in the faces of those receiving your attention.  Give your family member your true, undivided attention for an hour and watch how much happier BOTH of you are.

The majority of people are very self focused with their attention… Just think back over your day and see how many people stopped focusing on themselves and gave you their full attention at any time, for any thing.  It’s not that uncommon for most people to be unable to think of a single incident… even when you’re having a one on one conversation with someone, most of the time at least part of their attention resides elsewhere.

When you give someone your full attention, they generally will give you some of their own in return… it’s built into us that this is the way it should work.  This exchange of attention, when repeated, builds up a relationship between you.  More investment of attention will generally improve the relationship over time… remember, though, this is attention on THEM, not a mental fantasy of them from your own mind.  Focus on THEIR needs, desires, likes, etc., not what you think they SHOULD need, want, or like.

Successful relationships (whether romantic, business, sports, or anything else) lead to a successful, happy life… no matter what that means to you.

Take this article, plus the last two (The Need For Silence and Gratitude – Make Yourself Happier), put them into play in your life, and you’ll be a happier person in a very short time.

Gratitude - Make Yourself Happier

Gratitude – Make Yourself Happier

You know what the main difference between a happy life and a miserable life is?  Gratitude.

Happiness in life boils down to this:  If you are genuinely appreciative/grateful for things, you will be happy.  If you are not appreciative or grateful, your life may look desirable from the outside, but YOU will be miserable.

It’s not only your own happiness determined by your gratitude… it’s the happiness of all of those around you, as well.  If you are genuinely appreciative, it shows, not only in your words, but in your actions.  If you are appreciative of what others do for you, they will be happy to do things for you, meaning their happiness will increase, as well.

So give it a try sometime… pay attention to what others do for you, and realize that they are putting in their own time and effort to do something for you.  They’ll never have that time back, and whatever time they spend on you is time that they can’t spend on their own heart’s desire (unless, of course, what they are doing for you IS their heart’s desire).  If you truly take a moment to consider that, you actually will appreciate that they have done something for you.

Thank them.  Smile genuinely at them.  Meet their eyes.

Make sure you acknowledge the people who show you appreciation… smile back, meet their eyes and genuinely tell them they are welcome.  Wish them a good day as you leave.

You, and those around you, will feel the difference quickly, often in a single day, certainly within a week, and a month can make a lifetime’s worth of difference.

And, in keeping with this post, I genuinely appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this, and appreciate it even more if you comment and let me know, whether on the site, on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AMiracleADay) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/AMiracleADay).

I hope I’ve reminded you to take the time and that I’ve added a bit of happiness to your life, and those around you… combine this with a few moments of silence, and you should see a remarkable difference.

The Need For Silence

There is, in all of our lives, a common need that often gets overlooked and neglected… a need for silence.

These days there is ALWAYS another source of stimulus, more noise, more stress, more video to watch, news to read, emails, phone calls, etc.  There is input from work, from family, from friends, from the media, from nearly everyone around you.

The human mind, and the body for that matter, is NOT meant to put up with this sort of constant bombardment.  Continuous input from all of these various sources will amp up your stress level, cause your sleep to suffer in both amount and quality, and eventually cause problems with nearly every aspect of your life.

The cure is simple, but sometimes hard to implement.  Every day, you need to take some time without stimulus… without conversation, music, TV, or even books.  Give your mind some time to process all of the junk… it usually works best in the evening, thought it may not feel like it.

When you first start this practice, it will likely feel like you are failing, because your mind is running all over the place (especially when you do it after a full day).  That’s okay, though… the idea isn’t to reach a state of zen meditation (though if you continue the practice every day, you may reach that point eventually), it’s simply to let go, and let all of the chaos from your life wind down a bit.  That lets your brain start to organize, categorize, and otherwise process things.

You can think of it like juggling… all of these sources of input are balls to keep in the air.  It makes it a heck of a lot easier if you put some of them away as you go… it’s a lot easier to juggle ten balls total if you keep putting some away from time to time, and only keep a few going at any given time.

Most of your sources of input aren’t going to make room for you to take the time for silence, so you are going to have to make the time.  Everyone around you will benefit, however, so it’s for their good as well as your own.

Just remember the line from the AMC movie theater chain:

How To Win Friends And Influence People (As An Adult)

 

The majority of people will have far fewer friends as adults than they had as children, and will form even fewer new friendships as they grow older… but it doesn’t have to be that way.

There are many reasons that it is harder to make (and keep) friends when you are an adult than when you are a kid, but one of the biggest things seems almost counterintuitive… we’re more afraid as adults than as children.  As adults, we have experienced emotional pain that the vast majority of children have never been around, let alone experienced… everything from being rejected by someone you were interested in all the way up to the pain of losing someone close to you.  That pain hurts in ways that physical pain doesn’t, it’s harder to ignore, and it takes longer to heal, so the fear of feeling it again is much more intense than the fear of physical pain.

Our subconscious minds, however, don’t even want to admit to this fear… they mask it with all sorts of other excuses and reasons, most of which seem reasonable on the surface, and our conscious minds don’t really want to face our fears either, so we blindly accept the excuses spewed by our subconscious.  The only real way to get past that is to consciously examine why we let a friendship fade away, or why we hesitate to reach out to a possible new friend.

Being consciously aware, and active in guiding your life, requires effort, and puts you at risk of failure.  Making friends (and keeping them) requires you to open yourself up to emotional pain (not necessarily to feel it, but you have to risk it), as you have to allow them inside your walls that you’ve built to keep even the potential of pain at a distance.  You have to invest your time and energy into something that you don’t actually control, that may not come out the way you want it.

The how of making friends and influencing people is easy… find common ground and reach out to them.  Find ways to invest your time and energy into something that you have in common, or something that is important to them.  Listen to them, and learn who they really are.  Let them inside your walls and your masks… the more personal your connection is, the stronger your link will be… you will be better friends, and/or be able to influence them more strongly.

None of those things are hard to do (directly) or hard to understand… the difficulty is in opening yourself up to the potential of pain, the possibility of failure or loss, and the giving up of control.  It is hard to let down your walls enough to reach over them to someone else… but it’s worth it.

In fact, I am going to be reaching out to people I haven’t connected with for a long time over the next little bit… Family, friends, former coworkers.  I’m writing again now, and I’m working on following my own advice (not always the easiest medicine to swallow).  Want to connect (or reconnect) with me?  Now is a good time… reach out and I’ll respond.

Swimming In The Currents Of Life

Are You Floating Or Swimming Through The Currents Of Life?

There are two modes in which we can live life, passive and active.  The most common mode is passive… when you live passively, you let the currents of life take you where they will, whether that is good or bad.  The most active role you take is to try to avoid negatives, and even then, you won’t go much out of your way… you likely even feel like there’s nothing you can do.

When you live actively, on the other hand, you have an idea of where you are, where you want to be, and the direction you need to go to get there.  You take active steps to move in the direction necessary to get to the destination you have chosen.

Good and bad things will happen to everyone, regardless of whether they are choosing to live actively, or just going where life takes them.  Diseases generally aren’t things you choose, for example, although your choices can certainly affect your likelihood of getting many of them.  Meeting the love of your life isn’t something you can choose, either, although again your choices can most definitely affect the likelihood of meeting them (and even more so the likelihood of keeping them).

The mode in which you live your life is a choice, though as Rush says, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.  You can alter which mode you live in at any time, though not without difficulty.  Most people live most of their life in the passive mode, and even people that choose to live actively can sometimes slip into living passively, and those who live actively don’t necessarily do so in every aspect of their life… You may be actively choosing to get fit, or to move up the corporate ladder, but be living passively in your love life, for example.  We only have so much attention, and it’s hard to be attentive to every part of your life.

So… why should you choose to live one way or the other, if good things and bad things happen either way?

A life lived passively will have, at most, brief moments of joy… You may feel joy when your child is born, for example, but if you don’t actively choose to focus on them and spend time with them, that feeling will fade, and may even turn into resentment when they impact your life in ways you did not choose.  You may feel joy when you meet a new flame, but if you don’t actively choose to invest in that relationship, it will slip and fade, and so will the happiness that came from it.

A life lived passively will have very little passion… It will be sort of gray, and you will likely feel far more of the negative emotions than the positive ones.  You may feel depressed, stuck, angry, jealous, etc., mostly because you feel like you have no control over your life, though most of the time when you are in that state, it’s hard to see the root cause.

A life lived passively will have little love… Love is an active emotion, something that must be created.  Love fades when it is not given proper care and feeding, and while the current of life will most likely sweep you past, and through, love from time to time, it will do absolutely nothing to keep that love with you.  That requires action on your part.

A life lived actively can be full of joy, passion, and love… Your choices can feed all of those positive emotions, all of the things that make life worth living.  When you find something you are passionate about, and you pursue it actively, the passion you feel grows.  When you actively choose to invest your time and energy into the ones that you love, the love between your grows deeper and stronger, regardless of the type of love.  When you actively choose to live life, and you see the impact it has on everything, and everyone, around you, you can build joy that lasts.

Someone living passively sees a job they don’t like as something they have no choice about, something that they are stuck with, that drags them down.  Someone living actively sees the job as something that enables them to pursue whatever it is that they are choosing… and you would be amazed at the difference in attitude that brings, and how much of the negative perception of the job goes away with that difference.

Someone who is living passively will see a family member whose health is failing as a negative to be avoided… They choose not to get too close, in hopes that it doesn’t hurt as much when they go.  Someone who lives actively will instead see the time before the person goes as a chance to renew and strengthen the bonds of love between them, and will end up hurting far less, because the very strength of those bonds, the bonds that the passive person is letting fade, will support them and give them strength.

Again… the way you live life is a choice, and your whole life doesn’t have to be one or the other.  If you are living passively, and most people are, you can choose to live actively in just one area of your life… you can actively invest in the love you have (or actively invest in new people, if you don’t currently have anyone… even the smallest of active investment of time and energy will make a massive difference), you can actively pursue your passion (whether that’s helping others, cooking, woodworking, art, or anything else), and you can actively choose to take joy from wherever you are.  You can actively be active, to start getting fit, or actively choose what you eat… it’s amazing how much eating well can affect every other aspect of your life.

It doesn’t really matter where you bring active living into your life… the effects of bringing it into your life anywhere will spread to the rest of your life.  It’s easier to love someone who is passionate, and easier to be passionate when you know you have love solidly in your life.  You have more energy to follow your passion when you take care of yourself physically, and the mental improvements from being passionate make you less likely to eat poorly.

I’m actively choosing, right now, to live my life more actively… Won’t you please do the same?

Apologies For The Confusion- AMiracleADay.com Is Slowly Coming Back

AMiracleADay.com Is Under Construction
AMiracleADay.com Is Under Construction

After www.AMiracleADay.com being gone for quite a while, I am in the process of bringing it back.  That process, however, is a little messy, and some links may be broken, images may be missing, etc., while it’s ongoing.

Sorry about any irritation it might cause, but at the same time, I’m glad it’s coming back (and yes, this is the original owner/author).

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