The Strong Within Affirmation Podcast

Tag Me Tuesdays-#353  December 19 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

I Know When To Stop

I took a break from a personal Facebook page for a few years, and while most would think that would be the end of my life as we know it…it actually was a peaceful time. No constant berating of political posts, no constant complaining of how bad their lives are when their fries weren’t put in their to-go order bag at the drive through, and no competition contests on who’s smarter…better…or whatever people feel they need to do to prove their worth to the world.

But this past year I created a new personal account, so I could begin living again (sarcasm implied there incase you missed it)…because I almost didn’t know what to do with myself without any social media…but in all seriousness I wanted to be able to participate in the great things on social media like seeing new family pictures, where people have moved to, and all the great things going on in their lives. And that definitely trumps all the negativity I see people swimming in, daily on their posts.

I usually refrain from talking about sports, politics, or math as those are touchy subjects for most. One of my friends posted a math riddle with cute snowflakes, candy canes, and wine glasses…and I was fooled into doing more math than I wanted to…with such cute symbols it had to be fun right???

I answered the math riddle to the best of my ability…but those cute snow flakes and candy canes had me mesmerized to keep looking. As with any riddle, there will be small changes that you may not notice to make the problem a brain teaser…and looking a little closer I saw one of the inconsistencies and changed my answer. To make a long story short I think I changed my answer like 4 or 5 times.

Now math wasn’t my strong point in school, in fact I thought I was stupid because I didn’t understand math very well. My father was an engineer and when he would try to tutor me, he would say “why don’t you get this?” And I know he wasn’t saying it meanly, math was easy for him, and he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t good at. And so I told myself I was stupid at math and made sure to not do my homework or think about math any more than I had to. And thus I got the grades that would prove to myself that I wasn’t any good at it. I created a self-fullfiling prophecy for math.

Anyways back to the math riddle. In this problem there’s addition and multiplication, but in this problem there were no brackets or parenthesis saying which order should be done first…and so the riddle tricks you in two ways…first you don’t think any parenthesis are needed and just do the math problem from left to right…or if you had remembered the order of operations that we learned in elementary school that exponents are done first, then multiplication, then division, then addition, and then subtraction…which teachers had created an acronym to help students remember the order of operations easier by shortening it to the word PEMDAS…which I never learned that acronym actually.

And the interesting thing about doing a little research, is some people will claim that PEMDAS isn’t always correct. And in a video I was watching on YouTube (which I will include on the post on my site), the narrator said that while the order of operations isn’t technically wrong, it’s morally wrong because it turns humans into robots. But I’m digressing because it’s not about whether I was right or wrong it was about a little Facebook fisticuff argument I got into…and whether I should have kept my mouth closed or engaged the way I did.

I had posted my last answer on my friend’s post, and someone had said something right before me which seemed condescending to everyone on the post, as he said “the answer is 15 for those of you struggling.” I had a different answer because I had forgotten about parenthesis since they weren’t in the riddle, and answered it as if it was left to right. I had found the small differences they tricked you with by changing addition to a multiplication sign, and changing the icons just a little bit to trick you if you didn’t notice the small inconsistencies.

So, I went about my business, and that same person made sure to then comment on my post saying the answer is 15. And my blood was boiling. I hate when people try to correct me instead of just saying their answer and being ok with their answer. It’s not that I don’t want people to educate me, but the way this guy’s post above mine sounded and then feeling to comment on my post…just felt like him boasting about how smart he was.

I came to a crossroads as I wanted to say something rude to him, and so I had a conversation in my mind debating whether to say something or not…my brain was screaming at me…”Chris leave it alone. There’s nothing good that will come from this. It will just create more issues than you really want to deal with.” And the devil on my shoulder said… “you know what ‘eff’ it, do it anyways. Say what you want to.” And so I wrote something that got my point across, but wasn’t snarky as I said, Joe maybe we are different, but I like to figure things out on my own, even if I’m wrong.” (The person's name was changed to protect the guilty).

And like any good social media fight…that person responded almost immediately as if waiting to goad anyone willing to say anything against him that wasn’t praising him for answering the math riddle the way that he did.

And so he responded… “you’re right, we are different. I learned how to do that math in the 1st grade.” And now I knew he was lying…who learned order of operations in 1st grade??? Except maybe Doogie Howser, of course. So the fight was on, and again the dilemma came up…should I let it be or should I engage?

Now I took it further than I needed to…but the whole time I tried to remember to be kind and calm. I think sometimes we enjoy getting into arguments to win, and maybe that is what I was trying to do, but I think my way of winning wasn’t trying to prove who was right, but just in moral decency and kindness to another human.

So my next response was…”Joe I can tell math is one of your strengths.  It’s not one of mine. That’s awesome you are good at math. One of my strengths is loving people, not trying to prove how much smarter I am than them.” And so we went back and forth a little bit as he called me a special snowflake… I thanked him for showing me how real level of education. I remember in elementary school they said the best way to beat a bully is to not play his game, so “I said I’m sending good energy his way no matter how he felt about me.”

He replied back he couldn’t wait to laugh at me when the real world slapped me in the face. And to which I replied…keep watching then…waiting to laugh.

Anyways, the humor behind this story is when is it appropriate to stop…if to start at all. I have to remember that sometimes even when I’m trying to be kind… I still may be trying to correct them and get my way. And even if it’s with kind intentions, that still is a sort of manipulation in its own way. I am not saying it’s bad…but I am also not letting the person be themselves. I guess I hope that I can help people to see their anger and unkindness and change their ways. Who knows, maybe it might change them in small subtle ways…not immediately but down the road but maybe when they step away from autopilot of how they engage people.

So the question I want to ask all of us…is why are we pursuing a certain outcome? What if we were to pause for a moment instead of getting into autopilot fight or flight mode and ask ourselves, “what do I really want to accomplish here?” We can’t control others and their motives, but we can take a look at ours and instead of going to battle, ask “what’s more important?” There’s the saying, “you can be right, or you can be happy.” And what I take it to mean, is that sometimes we spend so much time fighting to prove how right we are, and how wrong others are…that in the end it’s not about a truth but it’s really just our ego speaking, “saying pay attention to me…look at how important I am.”

I’m not angry at the person who I had a disagreement with. I understand his dilemma. And while I may be reaching here and making assumptions, I think there are some hard things going on in his life, and it’s easier to carry that with us wherever we go—than to find the light in our darkness. Whether it be his work environment, his home life, or maybe the personal struggles he’s dealing with…its easy to take allow negativity to cling to us as we spread it without knowledge…because we have let that negativity consume us.

So, let’s be wiser today. Even if it’s keeping our mouths closed. Sometimes it may be living in accordance with an old saying… “It’s better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Today’s Personal Commitment:
What’s the only the tool that gets sharpened with more use?

Your tongue

Are there times you should have held your tongue? Are there times when you put your foot in your mouth and wish you had taken time to think before speaking? I know when I was younger, my mouth moved faster than my brain. At least it seemed like it, and I would use the phrase it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission as an excuse for me not thinking.

There are good merits on both sides of the story, sometimes we need to say things without thinking about them so it gets out and can be discussed, and sometimes we need to hold our tongues to allow less chaos to enter an interaction.

Today, before you speak…take a moment to take a deep breath…and then respond. See if you can do this EVERY time you are about to speak. That will take a lot of mindfulness, but I think it can a valuable lesson for you in processing things differently. Who knows you might find you’ll have to apologize less and you might come to some better conclusions. Only one way to find out. So see if you can do it one day out of the week, each week, for the next month and see what revelations you come to. Who knows maybe you won’t have to get into Facebook arguments to get your kicks out of life next time.

I Know When To Stop

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Mindful Mondays-#352 December 18 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

I Take Full Responsibility For My Life

“I don’t want excuses. I know what you’re up against. We’re all of us up against something. So you better make up your mind, because until you have the balls to look me straight in the eye and tell me this is all you deserve, I am not letting you fail. Even if that means coming to your house every night until you finish the work. I see who you are. Do you understand me? I can see you. And you are not failing.”

– Erin Gruwell, from the movie Freedom Writers

This quote from the movie Freedom Writers is based upon a true story of a teacher who’s given the task of teaching at-risk students…or what some have termed as the untouchables.  I really like this quote, and it’s a wonderful thing to have someone believe in us that much…but I want to pose the question of: how do we believe that much in ourselves first?

I was thinking about an acronym to use for the word excuse and I came up with this:

EXCUSE—

  Enjoys

eXtinguishing

  Chances

  Under

  Silly

  Elaborations

Most of us have heard the saying, “If you want it bad enough, you’ll find a reason…if you don’t…you’ll find an excuse.” But yet it’s easy to forget that reasoning when we’re in the moment. It’s easier to place the blame or direction elsewhere instead of taking responsibility for what has happened. It doesn’t mean that we necessarily have to take all of the blame, it just might mean that maybe we need more time, we need to find a better way to work on something, or maybe that we look deeper and ask ourselves if we really gave a valiant effort in making whatever we set out to do…a reality.

I spent some time trying to find words to match the letters, so the acronym could be complete crap, but I think there’s a lot of truth in those words because when we use excuses we are essentially finding joy in using excuses. We love extinguishing our future chances by conditioning ourselves to be comfortable in excuses rather than taking the uncomfortable hit of responsibility when things go wrong. We find silly and unnecessary ways to elaborate why it’s ok to stay in our failures…rather than create results. And so excuses feel natural, the more we use them.

I read an article by a man named Jim Collins who wrote the books Good to Great and Built To Last. And in his books he talked about how major companies become so successful. And some of the points I remember him making, I wanted to bring up in this specific podcast on excuses:

1. The egg principle. Jim talked about the world will see an egg, and it looks uninteresting. It looks like every other egg out there unremarkable and ordinary. Until the egg hatches and a little chick pops out and people are amazed. So while people see this miraculous thing happen, and it seems instantaneous looking at it from the outside…the chick had a different point of view. It had been struggling and working to break itself out of its mold. It wasn’t magic or instantaneous, as the baby chicken kept growing and pecking at its problem to create a better solution to its tight situation.
   
2. If you looked at two companies who went through the same traumatic event…people would respect them differently by how the company responded to the tragedy. So take for example when the economy was in a huge recession, the first company would say that their issues were because of the recession, but don’t worry things will pick up eventually. Where the second company wouldn’t make any excuses. They would talk about where they went wrong and how they could have performed better even in a down economy, and while it’s unfortunate what happened…they are going to learn from these lessons to become better.

Now after hearing that, what company sits better with you? I could be going out on a limb making an assumption for you, but I would guess you’d have more respect for company two. They didn’t make excuses of external factors. They said we could have done better, we could have planned better, and while it’s unfortunate…we will rise up from learn from this to become better.

Excuses weaken you. They are small lies we tell ourselves to take us off the hook. And the more we allow them to seep in our lives, then the more natural they become to us. Now it doesn’t mean we have to take responsibility for everyone…but it does mean we may need to begin operating differently in how we go about our lives. I know I want to be valued on my word, I know I want to be respected when I make a mistake instead of deflecting it somewhere else, and I know I want to grow from my mistakes instead of removing myself from responsibility.

I talk a lot about making mistakes and being ok with them, so today let’s be willing to rid ourselves of the excuses by holding ourselves to a higher standard. Mistakes are inevitable, but how we decide to handle them will make all the difference in our lives.

So how do you want to live your life?

Do you want to be putting the control somewhere else placing the blame somewhere else, or do you want to be in control of your life taking responsibility for the mistakes and the wins…learning from them to become a better you?

In every moment you have a choice….you can hold yourself to a higher standard…or you can shirk responsibility and become weaker in the process because of it. I hope that we all choose a little more wisely in how we handle our mistakes from now on

Today’s Personal Commitment:
When something goes wrong, where is your natural tendency to put blame? None of us are perfect, and even if we take a good amount of responsibility for our mistakes there may be a few spots that we’ve fallen short on. So get out a piece of paper, and write down some of the big mistakes you’ve made over your life time. Also look at some of the unfortunate situations you’ve gone through and write them down. And see how you handled those areas of your life. Why did they happen first of all, and what was the story you told after they happened?

Did you try to excuse yourself from the problem, did you try to place blame elsewhere, was there something better you could have done and learned from them? If we don’t look at how we think when mistakes happen, what our most automatic response is and did we follow through with that thought process…then we will be doomed to allow our emotions to continually control us…instead of allowing our mind to process how we want to feel, and then following through in a manner that is more in alignment with how we want to be.

I Take Full Responsibility For My Life

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Smiling Sundays - #351 December 17 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

I Want Your Success In My Thoughts And Prayers

I was on social media and a friend of mine put up a post that caught my attention. It’s like that game mad libs where a sentence is written out with a few blank spaces in it. And in this post when you type out the words it suggests and come to the blank space, you are supposed to click on the predicted word that your phone thinks you’ll say next and fill that into the blank space in your response to the post.

So my friend’s post said this: “I want your ______ in my ________!” I thought that this combination of words and spaces would be a train wreck like those questions you hear on family feud and the host tells the contestant to get their mind out of the gutter.

And when filled in the blank spaces with my phone’s predicted words, I was pleasantly surprised at how nice mine came out that I decided to make it my affirmation today. My response came out saying “I want your success in my thoughts and prayers.” I’ll get more into the details of this thought, but before I do…I wanted to share the other responses as I thought they were pretty funny.
 

-“I want your mom in my class.”
-“I want your phone in my pocket.”
-“I want your money in my wallet.”
-“I want your family in my life.”
-“I want your money in my car.”
-“I want your child in my car.” And the person commented after that…great now I’m on a watch list.
-“I want your ass to get in my backyard.”
-And the last one was, “I want your love in my life.”

So all in all, what seemed like a train wreck waiting to happen was a very happy and fun experience I think.

But back to the affirmation now. I love to tell people “I’m sending great energy your way.” I love to let people know they’re in my thoughts and prayers because I think we need to know people are thinking about us…and I think there’s great power in where we purposefully put our thoughts.

I remember volunteering at a soup kitchen with some friends for homeless people. And what was neat about this volunteering experience, was people didn’t wait in line. They would grab a seat, and the volunteers would serve the participants their food and drink at their table. It was the chance for them to be treated as if they were in a restaurant setting. And it was so neat because you got to really give of yourself and serve someone literally and metaphorically. And while I served people their food or drink, I loved asking them how they were or if there was anything I could do for them. I met some very nice people, and it was so much fun giving of myself, and truly serving people who have a more difficult life than me.

I was bringing food to a lady sitting against the wall by herself, and I’m not meaning any disrespect when I talk about her, but there was something going on with her mentally. I know a portion of homeless people have mental disorders. And when I brought this lady her food I asked her how she was doing. She said she wasn’t doing well and was feeling sick… So I responded back. “I’m sorry I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayers and be sending healing energy your way.”

She looked up at me confused and said, “what?”

So I repeated my statement… “I’ll be keeping you in my thoughts and prayers and be sending healing energy your way.”

And she said, “that’s of the devil.”

I thought for a moment, and I held my tongue as I wasn’t going to get in an argument or discussion with someone I was serving…and I said have a great day ma’am and walked away.

As I left that situation keeping my mouth closed, I was thinking how sometimes what we say is misconstrued by other people’s beliefs or words they use. While I use different words than others sometimes, I still believe we are saying very similar things when you look deeper at our meanings. I believe our words and thoughts are energies…and thus when we pray…It’s an energy we send out to people.

There’s the saying that the person who gets the most from prayers is the one saying it. And while I believe that the person praying gets something from it, I still believe energies are sent and shared with others if they are open and willing to receiving them. Now that may sound like a crazy statement saying that people wouldn’t want good energy to come into their lives… but I think we block a lot of the good things coming into our lives by not being open to having things done another way. We have our mind set on how things work or how they should work, and thus we close ourselves off by continuing to live in our smaller limiting beliefs. And like that lady I was serving, her image of God is a smaller one than mine. She believes that we don’t have the capacity or energy to share God’s power with each other. And I’m not saying she’s wrong, or I’m right…our words probably mean the exact same thing…I just think she’s cutting off other people and possibilities from her life by limiting her vocabulary and mindset.

When we become purposeful with our thoughts, words, energies we project into the world, we then share a great part of ourselves with the world. But let’s say I’m wrong about prayers reaching others, when we say them with intent… they’ll reach us. They make us mindful, aware, and help us heal ourselves…so if our prayers only helped ourselves…what if we all prayed more…would we all help ourselves a little more? The world would become a better place not because prayer changed it, but our thoughts changed who we were…and that changed the world.

But I’ve come to know the real truth, that the energy I send out…people receive it, if they are open to it. I’ve come to know that the energy I send out…helps people. And I’ve come to know when I tell people that I’m sending energy their way…they are grateful and smile knowing I had them in my thoughts and prayers. So I want you to know that I’m sending great energy your way, as it’s my hope that your success is not only in my thoughts and prayers…but that my energy is transcended to you. And that you make yourself open to receiving that energy, to create the successes you desire.

So let us pray to each other, let us pray for each other, and let us be changed by the energy we decide to share with the world. As I’ve come to find that every time I purposefully prayed or said to someone I’m sending you great energy…if I took a moment to really put attention and intention to it…it changed me…and I hope it changed them too. Let us send great energy to each other with our words, and thoughts…and let us send great energies with our actions as we live in love…in everything we do.

Today’s Personal Commitment:
Whether you pray or just want to think about someone…let’s not get into the semantics of the word. It’s really about sending energy to someone. So take an extra moment to visualize the person you want to send good energy to, take an extra moment to really be intentionally about what you’re thinking and saying for them, and take an extra moment to project your energy to them. Now maybe it sounds crazy, and maybe there’s nothing to my method in giving out more energy, but for me I believe it makes us more aware and more intentional within our lives. And when we do that we are sharing a better energy with the world.  So let’s be different today in how we share our energies with the world…let’s be more considerate and intentional about how we do it. Let’s go deeper.

I Want Your Success In My Thoughts And Prayers

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Synergistic Saturdays-#350  December 16 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

I Face My Fears In Order To Know The Beauty Behind Them

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, psychiatrist, or claiming to have the answers that will heal you. I’m only bringing up possibilities of thinking differently in hopes that you heal yourself.

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, called Snap Judgement. They usually have someone telling their story…and all of them are well produced and interesting. I was listening to an episode called “Secret Identity.” And in this episode a girl was adopted and named Sarah by a loving family. Sarah later in her life decided she wanted to find her biological parents. She was living in the state of West Virginia and a private investigator had found where her father lived. So she sent a letter to him and was contacted by her uncle first. Her biological family lived in Africa. One interesting part of the story was her father was a chief of a tribe in Sierra Leone which meant that she was a princess. And when she finally made the trek to Africa, they welcomed her with elaborate dancing as tribe members sang, “we are preparing for Sarah.” After the ceremony, her uncle got up and said a few words that Sarah had come home and she can be chief someday if she chose to.

Now this whole story sounds like a fairy tale. That you were given up for adoption…but you were adopted by a loving family. And your biological father was a head chief of a huge village…which meant you were royalty and a princess to over 50,000 people. However, the best part about the story is not that she was a princess because of her birth father, but it was how her and her father communicated when they first spoke on the phone.

When Sarah’s father called her he said, “Please forgive me, I didn’t know how to find you after you had been put up for adoption. Your name had changed, everything had changed.”

And Sarah said, “no, no, no, no…wait a second, please forgive me because I’ve been making you wrong my entire life just to protect myself. And I’m not going to do that anymore.”

If you want to know the rest of the story go check out the podcast Snap Judgement and the title of the story is “Secret Identity.” I wanted to relay that by Sarah being willing to look past her fears she was able to find something beautiful on the other side. Now not every problem will work out as perfectly as this one did…but if you are willing to look beyond your fears, even if it doesn’t work out like you planned…something great is happening.

We as people essentially make two choices in life. I know I’m simplifying it a bit, but we either go towards what we want or we avoid the things that bring us pain. And when you make it a habit to go towards the things that scare you, the things that are tough…then you are creating a new paradigm in your life. You’re not allowing the things that are hard to stop you. Because if you really think about it, all the things that really scare us, are because they are important. If it wasn’t a big deal to us, we wouldn’t care and it wouldn’t create anxiety for us.

And anxiety really is just a choice. I know people will say I have a condition or a disorder that anxiety makes me paralyzed… and while I will agree that that person will become paralyzed…it’s still their choice to become paralyzed. It’s their choice to allow anxiety to take over. And it’s their choice to keep steering away from the things they fear to stay in the places that feel comfortable for them. And this is not a judgement because I’ve been in those places before as well. We have conditioned ourselves how to feel or think about things that make us uncomfortable. If you look at two people who had the same traumatic event happen to them as children, one person could associate pain and suffering from that and have fear that it could happen again. Where the other person could have had issues dealing with it but decided to see it as something unfortunate that happened to them, and now they know the signs to look for and won’t allow the feelings to keep continually paralyzing them…they learn to associate a different emotion.

I want you to hear me clearly on this…I am NOT putting a judgement on any person in this situation. Your life is your life, but I do want to bring up the possibility that what you’ve told yourself for far too long may not necessarily be true. So for someone who claims they have anxiety and they can’t do anything about it…they make that their truth. And someone who says I know I don’t like being here, but I will decide to not let my anxiety control me…will make that their truth.

We live in a society where we want the quick fix, we want the drug or the procedure to solve the problem for us…and while it may bring relief…it usually is only temporary as you need to keep taking the pills or whatever else you are using to try and heal you. And so you condition yourself, that you need the pill instead of seeing the pill as temporary. You condition yourself to see something else as the answer instead of seeing yourself as being the permanent solution to change yourself. Now I could be wrong, and I’m ok with that because it’s not about me proving a truth to you…it’s about opening ourselves up to see others possibilities.

Now I’m getting a little off point here going into anxiety and the pharmaceutical industry. I think everything can have a benefit, but we as a society have become far too dependent on things thinking they will be our answer, when all along we needed to decide to be our own answer. We might have needed the help at first, but we never saw the end result of us being the change.

So maybe this is what needs to be asked for you and for myself…what are the crutches we’ve been holding onto that have kept us from moving forward? What are the stories that we’ve told why we can’t be something, do something, or have something?

I’ve spent years creating an inner voice that told me about my powerlessness…instead of creating a voice talking about my power. And I won’t get in depth about my bouts with depression and suicidal thoughts when I was younger, but things didn’t change until I became committed to my healing. Things didn’t change until I told myself there was no other way than being focused 100% on finding a way. And I told myself I would go the distance to find my solution and die trying if that was necessary, because I was already dying inside. So, what did I have to lose?

And the reason I was truly willing to change from a new way, was because the pain of staying the same was far greater than the pain of moving forward into my fears. And my life isn’t perfect, but who I am… has changed drastically as I’ve healed myself in a way I could’ve never imagined because I was willing to face my fears, to analyze the stories that were keeping me trapped and change them…and to be 100% committed to my healing…because in the end I knew what happiness felt like and I knew I had been there before.

I was willing to do anything the right way to create that again…and I believe when you want something bad enough, when you are willing to do the hard work—then the way, will always happen. I am a firm believer in the saying, “when the student is ready, then the teacher will appear.” So whatever you’re struggling with, I want to ask if you are truly willing to be 100% committed to making it yours? Because nothing will ever change if nothing ever changes…and you must be that change…and I believe you must be willing to die of the old self and be willing to do whatever it takes to make it a reality. But that’s hard, and it would mean you would have to change, and changing is scary…but maybe a better question to ask yourself is…is the change scarier than staying where I am?

Today’s Personal Commitment:
Sometimes milestones or goals in our life aren’t reached by what we’ve allowed ourselves to get comfortable in. So what has kept you comfortable from moving forward? What excuse have you used to keep you in the same place? What story have you been telling that’s kept you fearful and immobile?

I think people give up because they have the illusion that change should happen quickly. We see someone doing what we want to, and if it doesn’t happen fast enough for us…well it wasn’t meant to be then. Take for example I heard about how people were being successful in monetizing podcasts. I spent two years telling myself that if I didn’t make money from it then I shouldn’t do something. So last year I decided to put a podcast out regardless if I ever made a cent from it. I thought it would be nice if I made money from it, but my intention wasn’t in making money…it was about putting value out into the world.

I had spent the previous two years hem hawing around trying to make things perfect…that I never took action. I have like 15 recorded interviews I haven’t put out to the world.  So last year I decided to stop  letting my fear and the obstacles stop me as I changed my focus to bringing value into the world…not perfecting things or focusing solely on money. I started with something small and asked how I could be consistent with it. And so I decided to do a 5-10 minute daily podcast, to get me moving from where I previously was…being stuck.

So what is something that you can focus on for the next year to help you get moving and putting more of your value into the world? Not to make something from it…but because it’s a part of who you are. Maybe it might pay off in the end, but if we focus only on what something can get for us, sometimes we don’t do the things that could be really fulfilling for ourselves.

I Face My Fears In Order To Know The Beauty Behind Them

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Fantastic Fridays-#349  December 15 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

I’m Meant To Change Someone’s Life Today

I was invited by my good friend Angi to attend her work Christmas party. Her company has been known to put on great parties, and so last weekend I went and ate some good food, and they even had a cool surprise guest do a concert for us.

The company had hired Chris Blue, the newest winner of the television show The Voice on NBC. Chris Blue is a fellow Knoxvillian like I am, so it was neat having a local celeb on stage for us. On one set, he combined the songs Change The World made famous by Eric Clapton, and Man in The Mirror that Michael Jackson originally sung. And after those songs Chris talked about how he believed that love could change the world…and so he had us do an exercise with him while he was up on stage.

He had us look to our neighbor and say with him, “I believe I was supposed to sit next to you for a reason, and you may not know me but I wanted you to know that I love you…and there’s nothing you can do about that.”

And when you do icebreakers like that, it can feel awkward to do something that makes us experience vulnerability. And I feel that we aren’t able to help people if we aren’t real with them, if we aren’t vulnerable with them. But to change someone’s life, we must first be willing to change ours. We must be willing to be vulnerable and go to the places that we avoid in our minds, the places that need to be addressed, not because we need more conflict but more because the things we avoid don’t disappear…they grow. When we confront those dark places, we don’t have to fear them because we will see that by encountering them face to face…they never had the power we thought they did. We’ll see that the only reason they had power over us…is because we gave them that power. And if we gave them that power, then that means we are the powerful ones…not our darkness.

I spent so much of my life trying to help people, so I could avoid my stuff. It probably could even be called one of my addictions because it was a way for me to avoid my struggles. It was a way for me to disengage from my life. And as I became more aware of myself over time, I saw that while I still was helping people, I wasn’t helping them to the capacity that I wanted to. There’s this silent lie I tell myself that if I can give someone good enough advice then maybe I can save them. And I think I wanted to save people because I was hoping it would be enough to save myself. And so in everyone else I see me…but I had to work on myself first so I could understand that the greatest help I could give people was being a better example. Helping people with words of encouragement or just being with them in their times of need are great, but being the best version of yourself first when helping them will be a more impactful presence in their life.

And when you become better, when you stop avoiding your darkness you’ve been hiding within…you can then begin healing it. There’s an age-old question I believe everyone asks multiple times in their life…what is the purpose of life…or maybe put more accurately…what is the purpose of my life? And everyone will have a different answer, and maybe even different answers in different times of your life… but the purpose of life, at least for me, is to experience life. It is to live in a moment and be comfortable within it. It is the challenge to love myself underneath my skin no matter my faults because they were lessons that brought me to this point. It’s the chance to experience the Divine not out in the cosmos but to know it is within me at every moment waiting for me to plug in and connect. It is the choice to experience the pains and joys of others…to be a part of their lives as much as mine. And so my purpose of life is to continually keep finding ways to connect and experience the moment…and I believe that is the pathway to heaven. It is the pathway to finding or becoming what we seek.

And within every riddle will be a simple solution, or question, we overlooked. And I think this quote brings it home for me every time I remember to say it… “I am not a human being having a spiritual experience; I am a spiritual being having a human experience.”

So today let’s have a human experience and be the answer for ourselves. Let us stop looking for our crutches in life, let us stop leaning so heavily on something else to save us, and let us begin remembering our power we’ve always had. Let us remember that to experience life we must be willing to show our deepest essence, to share our vulnerableness unafraid of what other people will think. As we stop covering up who we are and share our souls nakedly, unapologetically, to the world.

Let us come back to what we’ve always known but have forgotten…that our words of advice won’t be someone else’s answer, if we are not committed to healing ourselves first. For when we become better, we become the example, we become the miracle for people to see…that they can be a miracle too. So today, let’s change our lives by being vulnerable and loving ourselves unapologetically through our mistakes and all, and let’ change someone else’s life by being our best selves. For when we do that, we can truly love others then. And when we love others….there’s nothing they can do about that…and I think that’s a pretty amazing feeling to have.

Today’s Personal Commitment:
How can you be a difference today? I like to challenge my personal training clients after their session is done. I say that our workout session isn’t over, “I want you to go out this week and see how you can be 1% better in every aspect of your life.”

So how can you be 1% better, so you can not only be the difference in your life…but the difference in the lives that you interact with daily? So each morning this week wake up and take three purposeful deep breaths and say to yourself, “I will be 1% better in all I do, so I can change my corner of the world today 1% at a time every day.”

I’m Meant To Change Someone’s Life Today

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Thoughtful Thursdays-#348 December 14 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

Every Day Is Good

I like the saying, “every day may not be good, but there’s good in every day.” And the reason I believe we as human never reach our full potential, is because we don’t find the good in a day. We’re not silent enough to hear the beauty in the wind. We don’t lift our eyes up enough to see the beauty in a blue or cloudy sky. We don’t relish in a moment to taste life as we still hold bitterness of the past in our mouths. And we can’t touch a moment because we’re too busy looking at what we don’t have, instead of realizing what we do have. We look too far in the future, we want big things to happen to us in every moment, we want our miracles to be amazing…and if it’s anything short, then we’re not satisfied.

We have the tendency to live more in a dream out of reach rather than a moment. And it’s not that a dream is out of reach for being too far, but it’s that we purposefully make sure we‘re never able to get close enough to reach it. It’s subconscious programming that we’ve allowed to seep in from the lies we’ve believed from other’s lips…and then from lies we’ve told ourselves. As we say that a dream we want might be too hard to achieve, that it won’t be worth it, that our plans will eventually fall apart anyway, or that we aren’t deserving to have what more worthy people have achieved.

And when we say those things they become true…not because they are true…but our words are powerful and create realities. We learn that it’s safer to live in lies than to live in the hopes of who we can be. For any dream is possible when it’s reached for in each moment, but it’s easier to let the dream be as brief as the air slipping from our lips when speaking them. And so each dream is just another oasis and illusion off in the distance, rather than small actions taken within a day.

Every day is good because there’s always hope in a day when we move forward. There are always chances in a day when we stay awake to the realities in a moment. There is always truth in a day when we look to earn the small wins rather than trying to bag the occasional jackpot that may never come.

One of my life missions is to share awareness and joy by being in service to others. I want people to know they’re seen. And so I make sure to get to know my waiter or waitress’ name, I make sure to ask how the cashier is doing as I’m going through the line, and I work to chat with people and remember their names at the gym. Those small things may not seem like a lot, but there’s a bigger picture that I see. And that bigger picture, is me purposefully living within my dream by being present in my day. It’s about knowing that I cannot change the world if I don’t practice the small actions that I’ve chosen to make my compass within my day.

And maybe that’s why people are looking to the future as their escape. That dream in the future is what they think is the answer to take them away from their current hell. However, hell is not a place but a mindset of being trapped where we don’t want to be. And maybe this might sound petty of me, but I’ve met a lot of whiny people in my life…and I’m not blaming anyone as I might even be the biggest one of them from time to time.

Living in America, we have a pretty lush life. In Forbes Magazine, an article titled Astonishing Numbers: America's Poor Still Live Better Than Most Of The Rest Of Humanity, the author Tim Worstall examines a few studies done on the poor across the world and in one graph he says, “In fact, America’s bottom ventile is still richer than most of the world: That is, the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American income distribution is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s inhabitants.” Now I’m not making light of anyone’s issues…so I will only use my issues in this example…most if not all of my problems…are really non-issues. It’s me complaining about things that are hiccups rather than dead-ends.

The reason I’m doing this podcast is not because I have all the answers, but it’s more that I hope to keep reminding myself of the answers that need to be said every day. It’s the continual act of saying I still have much to learn, and that I’m willing to be humbled and challenged to remind myself of the beauty I‘ve been missing. And so I challenge you, to make an oath with me every day…to find the good in each day, to live in the moment so we can find the blessings in the moment, to pivot from our frustrations and complaints…not because they’re a burden…but because they keep us from something better. Again, it’s not that we can’t see the things we don’t like, but where you keep your focus upon is what you magnify.

Like in driver’s education…my teacher talked about how students would see a broke down car on the side of the road, and where their eyes were…they tended to drift that way as he would have to grab the wheel and course correct them. The devil is in the details…and the most subtle things can block us from our true path…but only if we forget that there’s good in every day. Complaining won’t answer our problems…they will only bring us down into them.

When I ask people how their day is, a common response I get is, “I can’t complain…” And so I will say in return… “it’s not that we can’t complain…it’s that we won’t complain.”  For in my heart I know the truth…that there’s something better in looking at the good in my day, rather than continually wallowing in the small problems of the day. Or even taking a neutral stance and saying you can’t complain…which means that you really aren’t seeing the good then either. And if you think about it, what is a problem… really??? It’s a matter of perspective…because one person can see a problem, where another can see it as a means to solving a problem. They see it as a jumping point in making them better. So which person will you be? Will you be the one waiting for the far off unreachable dream to save you, or will you be the one living within your dream by finding the good within each day?

Today’s Personal Commitment:
As I said earlier, one of my life missions is to share awareness and joy by being in service to others, and so that’s my daily compass. By remembering this every day it gives me direction. It helps me to look for and create the good in a day. And I think if you find at least one purpose to direct your attention to in the day, you will create a compass that’ll help you be awake. You’ll create an awareness and a lasting fulfillment knowing you are walking your path. For good days aren’t found, they’re already here. And in each morning we have the chance to accept the circumstances of misfortune, or we have the chance to create a blessed, awoke, and directed life. So what will be your compass to direct you to see the good in every day?

Every Day Is Good

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Wisdom Wednesdays-#347 December 13 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

I’m More Concerned With Flow Rather Than Formula

I was talking with my good friend and fellow podcaster Suzanne, and we got to discussing how we try to reinvent the wheel too many times and make it harder on ourselves. I was asking about her interview podcast…and if you’re a crafter, or you want to be more amazing, or even if you just love awesome voices…then you need to check out the sosuzypodcast… and that’s spelled S-U-Z-Y.  She has an awesome voice, she’s uplifting, funny, creative, and her intro music is awesome. I’m always dancing in my seat when her podcast starts.

Anyways, in our conversation about her interview process she said, “I change up my questions, and I wish I just used the same ones over again. Sometimes I make the question process harder than it needs to be. Then I end up throwing in those new questions, so I should just relax.” And I totally understand her dilemma, you want to create a formula that’s easy to follow, but you also want to be flexible to really hit on the strengths of your guests.

Now I know everyone listening doesn’t have a podcast, and maybe will never want to create one…I appreciate you for listening whoever you are in podcast land out there. So I wanted to bring this back to helping anyone find a better process for whatever they are doing in their life. I think when we do something new, we want it to be great, we want it to be different, we want to be unique and not copy people…but I was listening to another podcaster awhile ago, I can’t recall his name…but he said we all are copying someone or something when we first start. That’s fine, do that, and get more comfortable with yourself so then you can begin adding in your own unique flair.

So maybe it’s good to find a formula in the beginning to copy for a little bit until you find your flow. The person who made the word flow famous is… Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi…I probably butchered his name since it looks like it should be said as (say name how you think it sounds) I’ve heard it said multiple ways…so just type in his first name in Google since it would take a year to spell out his last name to find out more on him, it’s spelled M-I-H-A-L-Y…but he says that flow is the process of living in that state of being that’s in the middle of the emotions of stimulation and control. It’s that place in between being excited and feeling comfortable.

Like anything new we do, there might be anxiety in getting it right, as we don’t feel a sense of control just yet. Or in contrast…when we’ve been doing something for awhile, it can be easy to get bored with that situation or thing. And that’s why flow feels so great, because it’s about balancing our emotions between excitement and control. Or maybe put more easily, being in the zone. Maybe you’ve been in the zone before where things seem so natural and it’s amazingly exciting at the same time.

I know anything is possible but being in the zone, the state of flow, 100% of the time probably isn’t possible, so how can we get into flow more often than not? And I don’t have your exact answer, but I want to tackle this a little bit to get you thinking how YOU can find your state of flow. I had a life coaching student where every Friday him and his business partner would go about doing something spontaneous. They worked in a town called Gatlinburg…which if you don’t know anything about that town, it’s a tourist hotspot. It’s right next to the town of Pigeon Forge which is just as exciting as Pigeon Forge is the home of Dollywood…which if you didn’t know, is Dolly Parton’s theme amusement park. So just picture this in your mind about Gatlinburg…Amusement parks, arcades, putt putt, all the shopping you could ever handle…right next to the Smokey Mountains National Park where you can find tons of beautiful hiking trails… And no…Gatlinburg isn’t sponsoring my show, but they should after that fantastic review, right?

But anyways, my life coaching student and his business partner would go ride go-karts, or ride a roller coaster, or play laser tag, or just do something uniquely different to start their Friday off, to get into the state of flow. He told me that it was amazing how well his Fridays went, and then the next week would be so refreshing to get back to the routine and be anticipating another fun Friday. He said that his flow routine helped him to make better and more creative choices, he talked about how he got so much done, and how it re-energized him in his life and his work.

So it got me to thinking maybe being in flow is finding any way you can create a love and excitement while feeling natural and present in the moment.  Maybe it’s about finding any way to spice up your stuffy life and help creativity be nudged a bit from the cobwebs in your brain…to bring back a newness to the routine of your day. As Mihaly said…about finding that space in between stimulation and control.

And if you’re still asking why you need to be in flow when your life is going fine…well maybe a better question to ask yourself is…could I benefit from finding an excitement and ease in my day, could I use a boost in my attitude and work and life processes…and could I find a better way to experience life than I’ve been previously living? I guess it’s about creating that place where you’re not just living day to day…but you’re loving it. I can’t guarantee working on flow will change your day, but I do like to think if you created more ways to live fully…whether weekly, monthly, or daily…you might find yourself more like water…in flow… towards the best possible destination.

Today’s Personal Commitment:
A gentleman by the name of Owen Schaffer wrote something called Crafting Fun User Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow and in it he talked about 7 ways to get into flow

1. Knowing what to do
2. Knowing how to do it
3. Knowing how well you are doing
4. Knowing where to go (if navigation is involved)
5. High perceived challenges
6. High perceived skills
7. Freedom from distractions

Which I get what he is saying…but we make flow so complex. It’s like this elaborate plan that you are never going to get to because there are a million steps. So, I’m going to propose you do something that excites you like my life coaching student did on his Fridays. So here are some ideas for you to ruminate on, but feel free to make your own.

• Go on a date where you just drive with your partner. Chose a number from 5-40 and have the passenger flip a coin on which way to turn when you come to a stoplight or stop sign. There are three ways to go since forward is an option, so maybe when you can’t go straight you use the coin…or maybe you just decide and yell out which way to go instead of flipping a coin.
• Look up 5 restaurants that had good reviews and choose the first one that comes to your mind.
• Go to a record store and buy the first CD that really catches your attention to listen to …that’s if you still have a CD player.
• When you go to a restaurant ask your waiter or waitress what their favorite dish on the menu is and order that.
• Think about something you always wanted to do as a child and never go the chance to do it, and go out and do it.
• Get lost on purpose. Go for a drive and take turns and destinations you might not have traveled to because usually you were driving to a specific place.
• Take a different route to work
• Instead of speaking first, listen to what people have to say.
• Make dinner together with your family or loved one.
• Before you decide to do anything major, take 3 deep conscious breaths.

There are millions of things you could do to get you in a different zone. I know the definition of flow is being in between stimulation and control, and maybe doing something new may not feel like control…so those are only suggestions…but you won’t know how great it will feel to try new things and find more excitement in your life if you don’t begin taking more chances on your life.

I’m More Concerned With Flow Rather Than Formula

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Tag Me Tuesdays-#346  December 12 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

I Still Get To Keep Choosing

In our stress filled lives it can feel like we are continually spiraling out of control…except for those rare moments when we’re drunk…then we feel more in control than ever. Or maybe we just are delirious during those times, and the ability of forgetting can be a powerful thing. But in all seriousness, I hear more and more people talking about trying to survive their day to day lives in one piece. Maybe even working for the weekend and most times living pay check to paycheck.

It almost feels natural to be living by the skin of our teeth…and maybe there’s some truth to that, as our cavepeople ancestors literally were finding ways to survive day to day. But I would hope that we’ve evolved just a little bit from those times.

I talk about being mindful and living in the present moment a lot because it’s easier to wish for the past or hope for the future. It’s easier to live in a place within our minds that keeps us numb to all the stressful things happening in the moment. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We decide what to stress about, and we decide what to be at peace with.

In my life most of my stresses came from being too quick to judgement. I was more willing to see how things were tense than what was going well through the problem. Because in life there are always two sides to every situation. For agony there is healing, for sadness there is joy, for indifference there is love, for hatred and chaos there is peace…and when we can see that life is two parts at the same time, then we can choose to see the other side of life.

Life isn’t about being one way or the other, it’s really about finding balance in the situation…and I believe that happens by being aware of one of our greatest powers…the power of choice. The power to put our focus and attention on to the thing we most want to see. I might be called crazy for thinking this way, as I believe we shape and mold our lives not from the external environment that happens around us…but more by how we think, what we say repeatedly, and how we act.

Now maybe this might be over simplifying the process, but I believe all great things really are simple underneath it all. So if you’re stressed, if you’re sad, if you’re hurt, if you’re sick, or if you’re in pain… change happens by deciding to change our mind. It’s about changing our mind to see another reality, to tell another story, to live a better life. And maybe I might be overstepping my bounds because your life is your life, but it’s my hope that I don’t ask you to stay the same only surviving life…but I ask you to become better. To become the person you’re meant to be. And that can only happen by understanding you have a choice…and you get to keep choosing how you want this moment to be for you.

And maybe you have a simple life, and don’t want much but your comfy chair, your tv programs, a nice job to earn just enough, a loving family, and a little peace and quiet from the troubles of the world…well those things are not easy. They take work, and they take a willingness to be better every day. To be in a job that you desire means you have to be aware at your job and purposefully look for ways to find enjoyment in what you do, to have a loving family means you have to actively participate every day in creating that atmosphere, and to have that peace and quiet in your life means you have to choose to focus on peace and balance rather than just ignore the world around you. Any old fool can be purposefully ignorant… but people who thrive in life, people who aren’t consumed by the outside stresses, and people who live lives that they’re in love with…show up every day.  They choose to keep choosing a better picture, a better story, and a better pathway. It’s not that their lives are easy, but it’s that they know they will come across some difficult choices, and they decide to show up anyways…every day.

So the question I want to ask you is:
Are you willing to take the harder road, the one full of stresses, the one of pain, sadness, and agony…in order to purposeful look and begin creating balance on the other side? I think people who are happy deep within are creative…not because they’re artists or writers, or have what we would call a creative calling…but because they choose to keep finding ways around the problem to find the solution and outlook they want to see. The continually keep choosing a better story to tell and then live it.

Today’s Personal Commitment:
What choices are you avoiding in your life in order to place the blame elsewhere? I know it’s easier to blame someone or something for our places in life…but essentially the blame we assign are lies. We are the ones responsible for the direction of our lives. Even if someone lied to us, we have the choice to live forever in self-pity that we were taken advantage of…or we have the choice to pick ourselves up and learn from the situation and move into a better circumstance.

Even if it doesn’t feel good right now from all the misfortunes that have happened…as time passes…if you chose to see a different path, a path of moving forward and taking responsibility for your life…I know you will be grateful for the pain you went through. You know what they say…that we can’t know light if we don’t know darkness, we can’t know happiness if we don’t know sadness, we can’t know love if we never knew hate, and we can’t move on if we continually keep blaming. So let’s be better today, not because we’re leaving blame behind or maybe even going down a scary road alone…but because it’s all we know…it’s who we are at our core…and there’s nothing else that would fulfill us more than to live our lives within our values…holding ourselves accountable to show people how great life can be when you decide to live in the moment and choose the side in life that you want to see.

I Still Get To Keep Choosing

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Mindful Mondays-#345  December 11 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

Miracles Happen Every Day

Looking up the definition of miracle in Google and the first dictionary definition is:

a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.

But I wonder if a miracle is more than an answer from the Divine?

How would you define a miracle? Yes we could only define it as a miracle from above…but is it a lucky happen chance, or is it the realization of the power within the moment?

Do you have to be holy to experience them, do you have to believe in them??? I don’t think so… because we are part of a miracle every day. If you think about how your heart beats, how the intricate structure of veins and arteries carry blood, oxygen, nutrients, and then carries the used stuff away…it looks pretty dang complex…when, in fact, it feels really simple to you. You don’t even notice all the work your body is doing all the time. It really is a miracle how our bodies function so seamlessly.

We go throughout our days, forgetting more miracles than we can remember. We don’t have to believe in miracles to experience them, but I do believe we have to become aware of them to truly appreciate them. And when we become aware of them, we allow ourselves to celebrate in them. We allow ourselves to appreciate life, our lives specifically…and thus we allow others to share their miracles with us as we return the favor. For every problem in my life, when I stepped back to see the bigger picture, I saw two things occur…that there were more miracles in my life than problems…and that my miracles were much bigger than any problem.

So why do we give so much power to problems…why do we allow problems to create anxiety, worry and stress in our lives? Maybe it’s because we think it’s easier to allow something to control us than to put effort into directing the course of our life. We’ve been told that we’re not in control of the direction of our lives, that we get on a roller coaster, hold on, and hope to get to a nice destination without really knowing where it will go. And while we may not know the exact destination our roller coaster will go, we still have a choice to enjoy the ride, we still have a choice to get off at any time and go another direction, we still have a choice to go kicking and screaming afraid of where it will take us, or we still have the choice to talk with the conductor of the ride.

Whether you believe in miracles…matters not,. And not because they don’t happen or they have more power if you believe in them or not, but because they will always be happening whether you believe in them or not. There’s something more than beyond this physical existence, and words will never be efficient enough in defining the power in miracles…so for now all you need to know is that YOU are a miracle…and YOU are someone’s answer today. You might be a thousand people’s answers…and so whether you believe in miracles or not, matters not…because someone believes in them because you came into their life. And maybe you may not call it a miracle, but someone is saying a prayer right now for the blessing you brought into their life. And when thinking about it that way, you might have been thinking in your mind and thanking someone silently for them coming into your life.

As I said, if you really think about how the human body functions, as it does, is quite a miracle. Maybe we’ve gotten used to miracles, and now we need a supernova to awaken us…but if you can find the beauty in the simple…in the right now…I know you will not only see the beautiful miracles in the moment…but you will find yourself attracting more miracles into your life. So let us start becoming more aware of miracles rather than forgetting more and more of them every day.

Today’s Personal Commitment:
How many miracles are missing in a day?

Take a look at your past week and write down all the small things that happened that brought your week together nicely. You could just look at the things that happen already in your life smoothly…those are miracles in themselves. Take a look at your past year and write down some pretty cool things that happened to you.

To see miracles we must become aware of the powerful simplicity of them. And once you can see them, you can appreciate them when their happening…instead of being blind to most them. Why live a life in the dark when you can find and enjoy all the beautiful miracles happening to you daily?

And lastly, write down how YOU are a miracle to the people in your life. The more you see the impact you give, then the more impact you can give.

Miracles Happen Every Day

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide

Smiling Sundays - #344 December 10 The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast

What I Surround Myself With Is What I Get Used To

I live by a set of train tracks. If you walk deeper in my neighborhood, you’ll get closer to the train tracks. My house is close enough that when I hear the train whistle blowing while I’m recording my podcasts, I turn it off for about 5 minutes. I’m not so close to the tracks that it’s overwhelming, but on somedays those conductors will lay on the horns as they pass road intersections.

I was walking the other day and a gentleman was outside hanging Christmas reefs on his brick mailbox. I said hello, and I stopped and asked him a question. I said, “how do you deal with being so close to the train tracks, is it hard, or have you just gotten used to it?” And he replied that the first few years were harder, but now he doesn’t even hear it anymore.

And living closing to train tracks is like our lives, what we surround ourselves with is what we get used to. There are two sayings that I think about and they are you will be most like your 5 closest friends, and the second is you become what you think about consistently. And those lessons, are like those trains—what you continually surround yourself with will become natural to you.

I interact with a lot of people during week. I deal with a lot of people in different walks of life and different ways that they look at life. I was recently chatting with a nurse, and I like to start a conversation of positively. And so I decided to ask her what were the 3 best things about being a nurse? The reason I’ll ask a question about someone’s profession is not just small talk, but for me it’s a purposeful way to help people remember why they do what they do, and to get out of the funk of sometimes looking only at the negative things they have to do in their jobs.

And so the nurse answered me back right away, by saying…”I can’t answer that right now. I’m having a bad day.”

I said, “oh, I’m sorry…I’ll keep you in my prayers that your day gets better…”

Which she then responded, “I don’t believe in God.”

I could tell this was a woman who was having a very hard time, and used her hard exterior shell of negativity to protect her. So I just replied, “well you don’t have to believe in God to receive good energy, so whatever you do believe…whether it be in the Universe, a higher power, or even in science…I’ll be sending great energy your way for your day.”

I usually don’t get that type of response when I meet people. Most people will mindlessly say I’m fine when they aren’t, or they will find something good to look at…but I could tell this lady was hurting, and it was my hope that I could share some kindness with her to change her day. And it wasn’t my place at the moment to tell her this, but she surrounded herself with negativity, and so it became natural to her…and then it became all that she could see.

I don’t know her story, and I’m sure there are some hard things going on with her…but until she can learn to see her world differently, until she learns that what she surrounds herself with…then she will always be surrounded by her focus. And I’m not judging her, I feel a love and hope for her that she can find peace, beauty, and kindness in her life. I could tell that her answers weren’t just a negative outlook, but someone who was really hurting. Being a coach, and being open with people I’ve found that I get a lot of people airing their issues with me…and later they’ll tell me that weren’t sure why they shared their issues so freely with me…almost as if they were apologizing to me. I reassure them that it needed to be said, and I thank them for trusting me by letting me know those things.

And in the end it’s my hope that by listening, by being open for them, that they could get out what they needed to say. And it’s my hope that I might help them change their perspective a little bit, to begin surrounding themselves with things they truly want to be surrounded with. A great life isn’t fallen upon by accident…a great life is purposefully chosen every moment as we decide to surround ourselves with emotions, actions, and words that align us with where we want to be going. You don’t have to share all your problems with me, but I’m here if you do need someone to talk to. And what I really want to know is, are you aligning and surrounding yourself with things that are helping you to get you where you want to get going?

Today’s Personal Commitment:
What do you surround yourself with?

• What are the thoughts you surround yourself with during the day?
• What vocabulary do you use regularly?
• Who are the friends and acquaintances you keep in your company most times?

And after you look at all of those things, and work to become more aware of it, ask yourself… if they’re in alignment with becoming the person you most want to be. One of my favorite Chinese proverbs says, “if you want to know the future, take a look at what you are doing right now.” So what are you surrounding yourself with right now…and what will help align you with being who you most want to be?

What I Surround Myself With Is What I Get Used To

Thanks for listening.  I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn

Contact info- email: [email protected]  phone:865-219-3247

Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide