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Archive for September, 2010

‎”The road to abundance is a happy one. If you’re not laughing pull the hell over…” -RW


Many years ago I was sitting in the back of a Greyhound bus on my way to Richmond, Virginia, to visit a friend.  At that point in my life, I was jobless as well as careless and felt that I’d pretty much lost everything.  All I had at that point was a copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s book “The Power of Positive Thinking”.  While reading the book I started to realize my thoughts were negative, needy and unfocused.  Most days they were, “Why isn’t this happening for me” or “I don’t have enough” and “Why does everybody else have more?”  My driver’s license said Rick, but it should have said VICTIM. It was everybody else’s fault.  It was my location.  It was my girlfriend.  It was my job.  It was my boss.  It was my cat (I’m so glad I got rid of that cat).  Reading the book helped me to see that my thoughts were the foundation of my life.  If my life sucked it was because I fundamentally believed it did.  If I said to myself, “I’m never going to find the right person,” that’s exactly what would happen.  Why am I always so bored?

The next day my car broke down.  I thought I was acknowledging reality, but it never occurred to me that I was creating that reality.  Slowly I started to turn my thoughts to ones of aspiration, abundance and joy.  As corny as this may sound I had to learn that happiness is the soil of any abundance garden and that I had to be happy before I could grow abundance, prosperity and joy. Not to mention it put me in a much better  mood.  Another lesson I had to learn was to allow others in my life to be as unhappy and nasty as they needed to be.  I didn’t have to participate with that bad behavior.  That didn’t mean I woke up in a good mood all of the time or that I didn’t ever get angry at myself.  But I committed to memory that in that moment maybe I needed to listen to a great song or watch a funny Youtube clip.  Whatever it would take to turn my attitude around is what I did.  Doing it on my own wasn’t going to work either. 

I decided to surround myself with people I wanted to emulate and that were happy with their lives.  Then I’d quite simply ask them how they did it.  People that are experiencing joy and abundance are usually very happy to share their story with you!  Many of them taught me to focus on how to do something instead of finding ways not to. My words had real power.  I have never forgotten that.   My old vocabulary consisted of words like can’t, don’t know and scared.  I have new words.  Will, show me the way and passion.

The true power of positive thinking has brought me to a place that, at one time, I thought I’d never get to.   G-R-A-T-I-T-U-D-E.  I am now grateful for it all – my mistakes, financial woes, and everything that brought me to this point.

From gratitude grows passion and with passion you can do ANYTHING!

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