Remember this day as a fresh start. A new beginning. A clean slate. An optimistic look forward. Remember this day as a day of hope. A day of unlimited possibilities. A day of immeasurable potential. Remember this day as an occasion to learn. A day to improve. A day to get things right.
Remember this day as an opportunity to make a positive difference in someone’s life. A day to have a lasting positive impact on those you come in contact with. A day to lead by example.
Remember this day is a symbol. Because this day, this moment, and every moment that follows is an opportunity to not only be the type of person you want to be, but the type of person you want to be remembered as.
This day is not just a fresh start that comes but once a year, it comes every day — every moment you exist. This day is your life. And this day and all the days that follow are your legacy.
No one has more of an impact on this day and every day that follows in your life than you do. Make it a good one.
May you be brave enough to take on and overcome rewarding challenges. May you find yourself in high spirits & excellent health. May you love with all your heart and find peace in even the most turbulent of times.
May the love you give find its way back to you. And may you forever be filled with the hope & strength necessary to make your dreams a reality.
Please let me be the type of person who I would respect & admire if I saw them in action. Let me greet each new day as another opportunity to get things right. Let me be open to thinking about things in ways I haven’t thought about them before. Let me find ways to make a positive difference in the world, no matter how small, and act upon them when I am able.
Let me be open to the challenge of change. Let me not shy away from things just because they are difficult. Let me face my fears and do things I would like to do even when they make me nervous. Let me be generous with what I have to give away. Let me remember to be grateful for every second that I get to make choices in my life and act upon them.
Let me make at least one person’s day brighter by having been a part of it. Let me accept my mistakes as learning experiences. Let me learn to love myself, flaws and all. Let me not care so much what others think. And let me be confident in my ability to succeed.
No. Life isn’t fair. But how you deal with life being unfair is a choice. You can choose to play a victim and let it weaken you. Or you can choose to be a warrior, learn from it, and let it strengthen you. Because despite the fact that life isn’t fair, every person has the ability to do whatever they can with whatever they have to make something positive of themselves, their lives, and the lives of those around them.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
No matter how small what you do may be, every step you make towards a goal is progress, and everything you do to make a positive difference counts. In the words of Vincent Van Gogh, “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
You will be surprised by how much you can do with only a little.
No matter what life throws your way, no matter how unfair it may seem, refuse to play the victim. Refuse to be ruled by fear, pessimism, and negativity. Refuse to quit. Be a warrior and work through whatever challenges you face in life with courage, love, and positivity. And continually push forward.
Because you are a survivor of the unfairness of life. You are stronger than you think. And you are capable of achieving far more than you believe. Don’t ever give up.
The results of your actions speak louder than words.
You can read a million motivational sayings to pump yourself up — or echo them to others until you’re blue in the face — but that won’t change anything unless you take action and consistently change your behavior.
Don’t just read it or preach it and expect it to make a difference in your life. Knowing something is not enough. Knowing what you should do is not enough. You have to use what you know and take action.
The more I browse social media, the more I see the increasing popularity of the belief that not giving a f*ck is the answer to all of life’s problems…
That the answer to caring too much about what people think is to not care
That the answer to caring too much about the world’s problems is to not care
That the answer to relieving stress in your life is to simply not give a f*ck about anything
And it simply isn’t true. This mode of handling things is just another dysfunctional extreme — the same as caring too much tends to be.
All that “not-giving-a-damn” does is fill the world with more of the types of people no one wants to run into — and as a byproduct, makes the world an even colder and more unfeeling place to be. This, in turn, creates a world of people who don’t care because it’s full of a world of people don’t care — ad infinitum.
The physical equivalent of not giving a damn about anything is putting a blindfold on and sticking your fingers in your ears. It doesn’t make problems go away, it perpetuates them by fooling you into thinking they don’t exist. And it creates a false sense of security and confidence.
The world doesn’t need any more people who don’t care about their fellow human beings (or anything else we share the planet universe with). The world needs more people who know how to effectively channel their energy into strategies that work. Refusing to listen to feedback or care about things is not an effective strategy.
“But I’ve been told not to care what others think or say about me!”, you say.
There is a big difference between not letting what others say about you have control over your sense of self-worth, and simply not caring what people say at all.
And there is a big difference between listening to feedback & compromising yourself to meet other people’s expectations, and listening to feedback, considering it, and moving ahead still confident in who you are and what you believe.
“Listen, smile, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway.” – Robert Downey Jr.
Listening to and being receptive to feedback is an important life skill and vital to being an effective communicator. (But so is knowing your environment and your audience — ie. youtube, Reddit, Xbox live…)
For example, if all you get is negative feedback about your attitude or behavior, then this may be a sign that there may be room for improvement in some aspect of how you handle things. If you keep finding yourself in similar negative situations with different people, employers, or relationships, then this may be a sign that the problem is not an external one.
This is sometimes evidenced by people who declare that they hate drama — and yet they are responsible for being attracted to or inviting into their lives the drama that they say they hate so much.
Another example, just because you don’t mean to hurt people’s feelings, but you inexplicably find yourself doing it over and over doesn’t mean it’s not your problem. It may be a sign that you are unaware of something you are doing and that you could easily improve upon if you chose to acknowledge it.
I’m not suggesting you should change for others or try to please everyone. I’m suggesting that if you are consistently causing issues that you don’t intend to, then that may be something worth taking a look at if you truly are open to improving things about yourself.
No one is perfect. We are all works-in-progress. And there is always room for improvement.
Sometimes we are so blind to our own behaviors — because we judge ourselves based on our intentions, not our actions — that we don’t realize when we suck. That’s when we actually need feedback from people to alert us to the things we are unaware of.
Most of the people who inconvenience others in the world don’t walk around thinking, “Yeah, I’m a sucky person.” On the contrary, they likely don’t realize that they are exactly the type of person they don’t want to be because they’ve learned to not give a damn about anything by ignoring negative feedback and giving positive feedback too much weight.
They’ve also never taken a good long look at themselves or what kind of affect — or inconvenience — they have on those around them. They might disregard feedback they’ve gotten with, “Well, I don’t care if people don’t like me.”
While you should, by no means, try to be liked by everyone, being likable matters in life:
Being likable, connecting with others, and forming relationships — whether it’s with an individual or an audience — is an integral part of being successful in life.
And being liked can have a direct impact on your health, your wealth, your general level of happiness, and how effective you are at achieving goals. (from Likability. Being liked and unliked)
And caring about things matters in life, too. The desire to make the world a better place doesn’t come from apathy. It often comes from discontent and a desire to fill a void or solve a problem.
“Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress.” — Thomas Edison
It’s not people who don’t care that change the world. It’s people who do. And they care so much about something that their intense focus on whatever is within their power to change results in the whole world being affected.
The answer isn’t to stop giving a damn about everything.
By all means, care about things, but learn to let go of those things you have no control of (or no desire to).
Did someone cut you off, cut in line in front of you, fail to hold a door for you? By all means, care about these things, but learn an effective way to deal with them and to let go of those that don’t have any solution. Complaining? That’s not a solution.
Allowing yourself to be open is a sign of confidence, and it’s a strength that will get you much further in life, and provide you with the ability to weather more storms, than simply pretending that storms don’t exist.
