A very wise man gave me some excellent advice one day.  I was doing a move in one of my Karate classes and he said, You aren’t doing that move the wrong way, only different.  Lets try it this way.

This was a total eye opener for me.  It made me realize that I was doing the move wrong way but it didn’t make me feel like it was wrong.

Many times, we focus on our mistakes and things that we do wrong instead of realizing that we just did it a different way that it is not correct.  I certainly like hearing that I an doing something different, even if not the correct way, much more than I like hearing that I am wrong about something.

Just changing the words that we use can have a powerful impact on our mind and motivation.

Please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts about using the word different instead of wrong.

Coming up with ways to make things easier or  improve the quality of life for others is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about.  I have visions of doing great things that positively impact peoples lives and help them enjoy themselves to their fullest but then, I realize that those great things seem so big, I just cannot get my arms or my mind around them.   These ideas seem so big at time I think it would be easier to walk to the moon than complete them.

How can I do these great things if I don’t know where to start?

As I was typing this tonight, I thought if I could do something small, then do another small thing and another, after a while, all those small things will add up to something big.  Following something to completion, even if it is a really small thing, will get the process started and moving forward.  The first taste of success will make you want more and then it will become addictive and soon, all of those small things will add up to that big thing.

Do something small today and it might just be the start of something big.

Living in Midwestern U.S. over the last few months has made me take notice of water, especially rain, more than I have in the past.  Watching the rain hit the ground and flow down my driveway, I noticed that if it flows into a rock it doesn’t stop, it quickly goes around it and keeps flowing.

Seeing that water flow made me realize that some barriers are meant to be gone around and not through.  There are many things that have happened in my life that would have turned out better if I went around them instead of taking them head on.  I am not saying that every obstacle in life should be gone around but look at your options before running through it because going around it might be a shorter and easier path to take.

For many years, I tried to do many tasks at once but have only finished very few of them.  I would jump from task, to task, to another task and even though I would get those tasks to about 90% completion, I never finished most of them and always felt that I wasn’t accomplishing anything.

Just the other day, I tried something different, I focused on one task until it was 100% complete.  I then did the same thing with another task and it too was completed.  What I found is that I could actually complete my tasks if I didn’t work on anything else until they were complete.  Even if I was interrupted and had to do something else,  I didn’t move to the next project until the last one was complete.

Give it a try and let me know how focusing on one thing works for you.