Your Morning Thought

Today was not a guarantee, stop acting like it. For everything in life there is a lesson, some of them harder than others.  If you have read my writings in the past you will know that the death of my brother John is something that impacted me greatly.  It took me a long time to figure out what his death meant to me.  I know it clicked for me one day and I took the time to write this. "It took me a long time to figure out what your death brought to my life. I will honor your existence by be as honest, open, and loving as you were. You were truly fearless brother. You inspired a greatness in me. Your death will not be in be in vain. You will now live through me." There were a lot of events after his death that impacted me as well.  I would go down and console my grieving mother.  Help my little brother as we coped together the best way we could, it meant getting pissed at several local establishments.  Taking care of half the funeral tab so...

Accept the good things in life. When presented with an opportunity to do something that could change your whole entire life, just say "yes".  I know in today's "me, me, me, me, me" society is can be difficult to understand that there are good people who want to help.  Seems like every time we turn around we hear about another type of scam out there and while we should be cautious, if you have nothing to lose, well, go for it. The opportunities that are presented to us in life are no coincidence.  God, the universe, karma, whatever you want to believe in, will present us with many paths to go down.  We must pay attention and do the will.  The greater power needs us to do certain things in life, for by doing them, the greater power gets much joy.  As we continue to develop these skills, we will have more and more opportunities to do his will.  Everyone that has accomplished anything has done so with practice.  Even by accident, the law holds tr...

What Can I Give? People that know me outside of this little blog, well most people, know that I have been through the worst kind of breakup you can go through...Divorce. I try not to bring up my past too much in this aspect because it is not something I am proud of, I was at one time, but I realized that I had a long way to go if I was going to get back into a successful relationship.  What I know now is this:  I never want to go through that kind of pain again.  I don't think we quite prepare ourselves for the emotional trauma one will endure when going through that kind of loss.  But I do believe sticking it out for the sake of longevity is foolish.  There is not medal for staying in the longest, most miserable relationship.  I stuck to my guns and even with a lawyer involved I worked out the final decision with my former spouse.  It was my belief that lawyers are only in it for one thing and it is not YOUR best interest, it is theirs.  So I ...

You Are Attracting The Wrong People Take a look around you.  Everything in your life that you have,  you have attracted it.  One way or another everything in your, good and bad, is there because of you.  If you are overweight, you ate the food.  If you are in an unhappy marriage, you attracted and married that person.  The key to happiness is becoming the person that attracts good things into your.  Sounds simple, eh?  Well, it's a process and like any other process, there is some pain involved. That day when you finally say "I have had it!" will be the greatest day of your life.  This is when you can begin to change.  When you have finally had enough and you aren't going to take it anymore.  After that you can finally start taking a real good look at your life and the people in it.  But, what you must realize is that it is not enough to simply remove these people from your life. There are a couple of ways to go about cha...

Unlock Your Mind, Unlock Your Potential It wasn't too long ago that I was an obese, smoking alcohol abuser.  I didn't have much going in my life and really didn't see too much for my future.  I didn't really concern myself too much with it.  I did what made me feel good and didn't really care about much else.  "Do what makes you happy."  That is a dangerous line of thinking, especially for those of us who like to indulge in the immediate sources of "feel good". I am all for doing what makes us happy, but what we must realize is we should focus on the long term happiness, not the short term happiness.  If we focus on what makes us happy right now, that is all we will chase. But, onto the root of the matter.  Our thoughts.  Our thoughts and words have power beyond what we could ever imagine.  Everything we have on this earth that is man made started as a thought.  We have the power to create whatever we want.  We have the power...

By taking care of loose ends No matter what we do in life it leaves a trail.  This can be used as an advantage if we allow it to or it can lead to some pretty big complications later on in life.  We must be careful of the seeds we plant today as we will reap the harvest later on in life.  This is so true.  Think about even the smallest things you do in life and how it shows up later on.  So, what we can do is plant seeds today to bring us the right kind of yield we want in the future. This has become very hard to do in our "feel good now" society.  We are convinced that we shouldn't feel the least bit of pain or suffering in life.  That we shouldn't have to wait to feel good.  Food is ready in seconds, porn is available right on our phones, if we have a slight ache or pain there is a pill for it.  Listen, life is pain...we are meant to feel it.  Certain things should feel bad, we should not feel good all of the time.  There is ...

It Is Always A Good Time To Give Thanks This is an interesting topic for me.  At one point in my life I got very proud of my accomplishments.  In my mind, I had done it all!  We all know these people in our lives.  Those people who have done everything and anything.  They constantly trump your accomplishments with their accomplishments.  I wasn't exactly one of those people, but I do have a lot of experience in different areas because I love trying new things.  What I was doing though was reveling in it.  As I would soon learn my accomplishments didn't mean much in the eyes of others.  I would also learn that no one really cares about what you used to do.  "What have you done for me lately?" I would soon lose everything that I had worked so hard for.  All of my accomplishments, monetary and otherwise would be taken.  Most traces of my work would be covered up and/or removed.  My money would be taken, my motorcycle, mos...

Faith In Yourself The story we tell ourselves everyday is key in becoming the person we want to become or the person we were meant to be...depending on your belief structure.  I don't believe the majority of the people in the world today understand the power of their thoughts and words.  It has been told to us and shown to us throughout history how important words can be.  There are some that believe the whole entire universe was created by simply speaking. Now, there is more to building good self esteem and  good self confidence.  We must take action upon the things we are now saying or believing about ourselves.  If we look into the mirror and say "I am strong, I am confident, I greet people with a smile, I bring happiness into the world." then we must go out into the world and do these things.  Thoughts without actions remain just that...thoughts. Personally, I have come to the conclusion that there is more to life than just what is on the surfa...

Letting Go So You Can Grow One of the harder things to get through in life is loss.  Life is full of loss.  From the moment we are born we lose the comfort of the womb and are brought into the world in a very uncomfortable manner. I guess the question would be is: "How do we deal with it?" It's a tough topic.  One that I struggle with a lot.  I am horrible at dealing with death.  In a very short order I lost 3 very close people to me.  My brother, John, my grandfather, and my father.  I actually lost my father twice, once mentally, and again physically.  I was also dealing with the loss of my marriage as well.  These are not pleasant things and some people try to put a positive spin on them...which I can see now, but when you are going through it...there is not much a person can say to "snap" you out of it.  My recommendation is that if you have a friend that is going through loss, just be there...and listen. "No words of wisdom ...

A Guide to Love You can't give away what you don't have.  If you don't have love for yourself, you can't give love to other people.  Period.  One must know what love is in order to love give and receive love.  Have you ever received a gift, maybe from a foreign place or different culture, and you have no idea what it is?  This happens many times when people give us the gift of love and we are somewhat clueless as to what it is because it is so foreign to us.  That was me for a long time. I know for much of my life I felt pretty inferior.  I had the challenge of being my dad's first born but also the middle child as my mother already had her first son.  2 and a half years after I was born my little brothers came along as a set of twins.  I was always expected to do more and I always pushed myself to be "the best".  My older brother was a bully...and I was also bullied throughout high school.  My mom left about a month and a half ...

With Pain Comes Growth and More Opportunity If you are trying to escape this life without pain you are in for a pretty miserable time.  I know for a long time I kept up walls to try and keep pain out.  But in doing so, you keep all of the good stuff out too, which far out measures the pain one might go through with loss in life. A life lived in a box is not a life well lived.  Sure, you could take the safe way out.  We could put you in a corner, keep you fed, keep you away from all of the bad things in life.  But that wouldn't be much of a life now would it? I have taken on the philosophy of just throwing myself out there and really following my intuition, not my head.  I spent many years using logic and even priding myself in it.  It got me to where I am today, which is not bad.  I have a good paying job and I did have a marriage, was working toward a house, had the 401k, health insurance...Just everything you are "supposed" to do.  I was ...

We Reap What We Sow Doing the right thing can be so very difficult sometimes.  I know many times in my life I have been faced with decisions.  Sometimes I have done the good thing and probably a lot of times the not so good thing.  That's life.  If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't doing anything. I have spent a lot of time in my life living in mostly farm country in Pennsylvania.  I grew up near the city of Philadelphia, but my parents moved us to the middle of a field in central, PA when I was ten, then I moved to God's Country when I was 20.  Spent many summers playing in corn fields and even one fall harvesting potatoes, here is the lesson.  We reap what we sow and usually in abundance. "How does this work in life?" You might ask.  Well, let's look at a corn field.  We plant one kernel of corn and it produces a corn plant that produces much, much more than what is planted.  The same thing goes for the seeds we plant in life...

Your Habits Matter Your Goals/Output In Life Are Compound Habits This is the most important conversation you can have with yourself in life.  I would invite you to sit down, write out your habits, and choose which ones are serving you.  Are you really getting anything out of those video games?  I understand for some people it is how they get their social interaction and it does beat sitting on a bar stool, but, what are you really getting out of it?  Binging Netflix, reading tabloids, gossiping, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc etc etc.  What tiny things that you are doing everyday are slowly taking over your life? I have had days in my past where time just sort of goes and I have no idea what I have done for the day...Did I accomplish anything?  Did I move closer to my goals?  Do I even have any goals?  I am here to tell you I wasted A LOT of time.  I made a lot of money and had nothing to show for it.  I had relationships that we...

When You Say "Yes!" Say Yes - Langhorne Slim Saying "Yes!" to most things in life.  How many times are we presented with an opportunity of some sort in life and our first reaction is to back down?  Sometimes we even say yes and then later on we back out.  The universe presents us with many chances in life to find the things that are seeking us.  We must look at every opportunity as a chance to find what we are looking for.  Even though it might not be obvious, you don't know what is going to happen and who you are going to meet in the process. My case in point.  I took the opportunity to get involved with the PCVA (Potter County Visitors Assocation).  This was the local TPA (Tourist Promotion Agency) for Potter County in Pennsylvania, USA.  The whole mission of the group was to bring more tourists to Potter so they spend money and help our local businesses.  Unlike my colleagues who were supposed to get on boards and didn't, I seized th...

I know a lot of times in my life I have believed what other have told me about certain things and people that eventually I found out were to be totally untrue in whole or in part. Personally, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt these days because of my past experiences.  I think it is important that we take the time to investigate things in person in order to draw our own conclusions on certain people, places, etc.  Most, if not all, of the time people are putting other people through their own life filter.  If you are speaking to a negative person about another person, I am sure this person would only see the bad things about a person.  The person they are speaking of might have done 100 good things, but the negative person doing the speaking will find the one mistake they have made and proclaim that this person is "bad". I have had to learn this the hard way and other have learned it about me.  I live in a small town and as you can imagine, everyone...

Live The Perfect Life  Oh, that glorious time of year where here in Pennsylvania they pull one of the chosen whistle pigs out of his hole and he tells us when Spring will arrive.  Millions of people flock to a small town about 1 and half hours north of Pittsburgh to marvel in Punxsutawney Phil's majestic presence.  They will heed his words of caution this year as the prognosticator of prognosticators has seen his shadow.  Winter will be with us another 6 weeks this year.  The good new is, he is usually right about 20 percent of the time.  Not to take away from the magic that is Groundhog's Day, but it does all seem a little silly. But, what this tradition did bring about was one of the more profound and interesting movies that has been produced.  "Groundhog Day" is a movie written by Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin.  Danny Rubin came up with the idea, Ramis rewrote it to make it viable as a movie.  It stars Bill Murry who plays weatherman P...

Go and Do It...No Matter What  Your word is your bond and it is powerful.  There is nothing worse than when someone says they are going to do something and then they don't do it.  "I'll be there!"  "Sure, I will help!"  Then when it comes time to do the thing, you can't find them. There have been plenty of times in my life where I have said I was going to do something and I failed to do so.  These are hard lessons.  There are also times where I said I would do something and come time to do it, I really didn't feel like it, but I did it anyway.  Why?  Because I said I would. I think the best practice would be to just do it.  The reason?  There is psychology behind it.  When we say we are going to do something and people give us positive feedback, it gives us a better feeling than actually doing the thing.  For instance if you say to someone "I am going to start in the gym tomorrow and my goal is to lose 50 lbs!" then they...