This moment right now is a miracle. You have ears and eyes that have evolved perfectly to experience the world around you, which is an incredibly delicate process. Your life came from 400 trillion to one odds that two specific cells meet, to then divide and create everything that makes up you and your body. The order of your actions and thoughts in the next hour are completely dependent on every second before it, in your lifetime and beyond, and every detail of your future is still being designed right this instant!

Everything that happens in this existence is a miracle.The definition of a miracle 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.” The odds of things happening exactly how they did are unbelievably low, which makes you wonder, what if they hadn’t? This belief is a powerful perspective to take because it represents how everything that has happened and will happen is all a bonus. If that’s the case, then we can welcome any and all things into our lives with curiosity and enthusiasm just like any miracle deserves.

An underlying sentiment to this thought is gratitude. It doesn’t matter if you interpret these events as divine or coincidental, the consistent truth is that it all happened against all odds. And the fact that it all happened for you, in such a precise and profound way, gives you a lot to be grateful for.

One of the most important, but most difficult traits we can possess is empathy. Empathy is an ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes, observe the context around their mental processes, and understand why they believe things to be a certain way or feel a certain way. This characteristic serves us in a number of different ways - Emotionally supporting a friend or loved on, attempting to motivate someone, trying to do business with someone, or trying to understand how someone has different political beliefs. 

But the flaw with empathy is that it is largely based on assumptions and when you assume, it leaves a lot of room for interpretation, subjectivity, and opinion. So if you want to be more effective, you need to remove the judgment and biases you're feeling and try to approach the situation at face-value. 

If you want to emotionally support a friend, ask more targeted questions to understand the context of the problem, so that you can address the root of the emotion and not about the superficial display of that emotion. If you want to motivate someone, think about their goals and objectives and how you can position what you want them to do as a means of achieving it. If you want to do business with someone, think about the stakeholders and pressures they must respond to and how this would make them look in the eyes of a boss or superior. 

Your ability to be empathetic is strengthened by your ability to remove yourself from someone’s situation, which requires radical open-mindedness and zero judgment. Empathy is a fundamental trait that, when exercised right, will allow you to be more effective in your interactions with others.

Let’s keep it simple and take it back to 3 words that changed my life. It’s a concept I do morning affirmations on and it’s something that a lot of emotions hide behind. Those 3 words are: You are worthy.

Those dreams and aspirations you have, you deserve them. That community group you’re involved in, you belong. Those feelings of joy and fulfillment you’ve experienced in the past, you earned them and you’re capable of feeling them again! Don’t let everyone else’s negativity get in the way of your shine.

Your past experiences may have set a standard that you’ve been living by, but when you have the self-confidence to look beyond those standards you’ll see how they’ve been limiting you. You might be appeasing others’ opinions and expectations out of unworthiness, which is keeping you from allowing yourself to live a fully-expressed life.

But remember, no matter how bad things have gotten or how low you’ve been, your existence today demonstrates that you are capable of persevering! And every time you persevere you create evidence that you are capable, you do deserve it, and you do belong. When you believe that you’re worthy of receiving what the world has to offer, it will deliver with abundance and you will elevate without restrictions.

To get to that place of believing in your worth, what do you need to do? You need to produce proof. You need to take action in a way that is consistent with you believing you're worthy. By investing in yourself and putting yourself out there knowing you’ll be okay if you fall short. You’ll quickly find that you are worthy, you are abundant, and now is the time to shine.

I think we’re all guilty of this to some extent, and we definitely know someone who operates in this way. It’s easy to talk the talk, but it’s not easy to walk the walk. I’ve found that the most difficult part of doing anything is the follow through, actually doing it, and it creates a large emotional and psychological divide. It’s so easy to talk about wanting to do something - You state large ambitions, make big plans, and talk a big game, but nothing comes from it if you don’t take action. And if nothing comes from it then what purpose did it serve?

For that reason, when I try to get a read on someone I look at their behavior and what they’re doing, not what they’re saying. Someone who keeps grabbing handfuls of chips but says they’re on a diet. A person who complains about not having enough to do but doesn’t make any effort to try new things. There’s a reason the expression “Actions speak louder than words” has been true and effective for decades!

But fortunately, the same goes for the things you tell yourself. Oftentimes negative self-talk isn’t validated by your actions, and it arises from social conditioning and insecurities that distort your perception of truth. But these negative things you say about yourself don’t provide evidence for who you are, it’s what you do that provides evidence. You think you’re unhealthy but you log your food intake. You think you’re lazy but you have a full calendar. 

Take this very moment for example. You are taking the action to read an excerpt related to self-improvement podcast, which in itself separates you from so many people! Let that action motivate you to take another action, and another action, until you recognize the path you're on and the growth you're experiencing.

You know all of that stuff that comes into your life and seems to weigh you down or force you off course? It’s all of the bullshit you deal with throughout the day. My boss wants me to do this task that isn’t worth my time. My car broke down and now I spend time and money getting it fixed. My best friend went around my back and is really pissing me off. All of that sucks, right? Or maybe that’s just the meaning you’re choosing to make out of the situation.

If you find yourself negatively affected by these little inconveniences, maybe you need to rethink why you view those things as so inconvenient. A powerful reality about our existence is we always have choice, and your decision to attribute negative meaning to an event is your way of handling the situation.

That’s why I’m saying - Your BS is your belief system. If you perceive something as negative it’s because your beliefs say it is so. We need to understand how deeply rooted our beliefs are, and how often they are being exercised without our conscious awareness.

If your boss wants you to do some menial task, why do you see it as menial? If you zoom out and approach it with empathy, do you understand why it needs to get done? Maybe you're the only person she trusts to get the job done.  Or if your friend goes around our back, maybe that’s their indirect way of asking for help. Maybe this is a huge breakthrough in your relationship because it’s creating a platform for them to be vulnerable with you.

The BS in your life is only there because you choose to let it be BS, and that choice exists within what you conclude to be true based on your beliefs. It’s a matter of perspective. The “bullshit” you deal with might be someone else’s dream. It’s only perceived as bullshit because you believe it to be so. 

As things transition and change, one phase of life may end and a new one may begin. This is often triggered by standard life events like graduating high school, getting married, having a child, or leaving a job. But it also can happen very randomly - When you meet someone who changes your perspective, you commit to something new and major in your life, or something big happens out of nowhere. In all cases, change by the very nature of it is disruptive.

Many people articulate this as the beginning of a new chapter in your life, and it’s important to acknowledge what that means. On one side, it’s you moving on from something and rejecting the comfort in the way it was. On the other side, a new chapter and it’s unchartered territory bring a sense of uncertainty about how things will be. It’s your choice to embrace new chapters in your life and make the most of your story moving forward.

While you don’t know the contents of this new chapter, and you don’t know the lessons and learnings it will provide, it’s still a matter of perspective to approach the uncertainty with optimism. Even a seemingly bad start to a new chapter -like a death, a divorce, a break up, or a health scare - can be viewed with a lens of curiosity. It may be the key to unlocking the inspiration, self-worth, confidence, or fire you need to become who you are meant to be. New chapters are new beginnings, and that’s something to look forward to.

Integrity is so important. It’s living in a way that is consistent with your values, having morals and ethics, and doing what you said you were going to do,  But interestingly, integrity is usually presented in a way that has consequences that affect other people. You flake on your friend, well now your friend is upset. You cheat on your partner, now your relationship is in jeopardy. You succumb to an addiction or vice, and now others are affected by your actions or lack of action.

But let’s turn this conversation around and make it entirely about the self. What does it mean to have self-integrity?

To me this is having completely intrinsic accountability. This is waking up at 6am like you told yourself you would the previous night, but you didn’t tell anyone else. It’s knowing and abiding by your limits in different settings, even though no one else knows what your limit is. And be careful - What happens every time you violate that inner-accountability is you breach your integrity.

This has devastating effects. You stop trusting yourself, you stop believing in yourself, and therefore you stop prioritizing yourself. Every time it happens it weakens your relationship with that element in your life, and forces you to rationalize or adjust to live in a way that is more consistent with having less integrity.

But the other side of it, every time you do what you said you were going to do, you have control of yourself, you execute - You start trusting yourself more, you start believing in yourself more, and your start prioritizing yourself more.  Your choices are so important because they are the foundation of everything else, and you need to be extremely mindful when your choices interface with your integrity. 

Our existence is a very emotional experience. How lucky are we that we get to participate in something that really pulls at us and allows us to feel? It’s truly a blessing to be able to endure and enjoy our life in such a unique way. While emotions can be the best and worst thing to ever happen in the moment, it provides a meaning to our experiences that is unlike anything else. A quote by Maya Angelou recently perfectly embodies this thought.

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I think we should be more intentional about our emotions. Whether we want to or not we are constantly communicating with others through our emotional states. It’s through this implicit conversation that we can connect with others in a way that leaves a lasting impression. In fact, our brains are hardwired to identify and remember emotions as a survival advantage that can be traced all the way back to our fight or flight instinct. 

If you want to make a difference, make a point to influence someone on the level of their emotions. Don’t just hand a homeless person a $5 bill, look them in the eyes and let them feel their humanity. Don’t just say a rehearsed “I love you" to a partner or family member, announce it from the depth of your being so that they can feel the love carried in your words. Moments like these really do stand out from the crowd and serve as an opportunity to introduce more light into this world.