Be Proud and Not Ashamed of Your Heritage

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A vote is not a solution.

While it is our right and our duty to vote, we need to remember that casting a ballot for someone who claims to have all the answers will not solve all our problems.

Only we can do that.

12th Rule of Thumb

Just because you can't see it, hear it, feel it, taste it or smell it doesn't mean it isn't there.

A safe life is the easy way out.

Doing the same things over and over again until you die may sound like a great way to live your life but it severely limits the ability of the spirit that dwells within you to grow and evolve. And yet doing the same things day in and day out, year in and year out, for an entire lifetime, is just exactly what most people do.

Safe, predictable routines are the most desired of all Earthling life activities. They are cherished and even revered, just as the natural life activities of the animal world are held in high esteem by nearly all Earth cultures.

Why the natural world is a model for most human beings to honor and emulate is simply because very few people on Earth realize that nature is what you were put on Earth to rise above.

11th Rule of Thumb

For everything you endeavor to do there is at least one person trying to stop you.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Self-reliance is a virtue cherished by all and yet no man or woman is an island of self-sufficiency, a foolish goal coveted by many. Knowing the difference between the two is the first step toward reconciling both into a rewarding life of interdependence that works for you and for the other people in your life.

10th Rule of Thumb

All’s well that ends well, unless you didn’t live to see it.

Find and Secure Your Personal Zone

Nothing is gained by living a totally routinized existence. That is a way of life for animals and the only way they can survive, by repeating and clinging to a narrow pattern of life activity that offers security and predictability. But mankind was not intended for achieving mere survival alone and nothing else.

Finding a safe, workable zone from which to reach out and branch out is imperative for intelligent creatures who seek answers to life’s many mysteries and who thirst for adventure. Having a predictable pattern of life activity to return to or to fall back on is always the first order of business before any quest of the unknown can begin.

Find your personal safety zone and keep it in working order. Then reach out daily into the wonders around you, knowing that your own zone of safety and security is expanding with you as you grow and learn and truly enjoy the bounty of new discoveries.

The Everyday Things Are Everything

In the hectic pace of contemporary life it is all too easy to forget the small things that happen every day and the importance they possess for you. Striving to achieve the goals you have set for yourself and focusing all your thoughts and activity on such things will only blind you to the lessons that can be learned from paying attention to the everyday things.

Caring for a child or preparing a family meal or doing the laundry means much more in the long run than the acts themselves and their immediate desired ends. Being a dedicated, punctual, hard-working and grateful employee carries more weight in life than being at the top with nowhere to go. The everyday activities enrich the soul that dwells within you by refocusing your thoughts on other people rather than only on yourself. The carefree services you perform for others refocus the mental patterns of selfish strife that deplete your energy and which often lead to the emptiness of failure.

The real treasures in life lie in the day-to-day world, awaiting your discovery. The rest are carrots on strings held out before us by those who have never paid attention to the daily world around themselves. Graciously accept your role as a doer and provider of the simple things in life. What follows can only be your success in life.

9th Rule of Thumb

Don’t count your chickens before they cross the road.

Doing The Next Best Thing

Sometimes, doing the best thing is actually doing the obvious thing, or the easiest thing, or the expected thing. This can be as commonplace as being and acting like the person everyone expects you to be. Doing the best thing is often doing the unfruitful thing, as far as any benefit to you is concerned. Do not allow yourself to live up to the label that people and life have bestowed upon you. Most people deserve better than that.

When someone angers you to the point of retaliation, do not retaliate. When you feel like cussing and swearing, praise some one or something instead. If using the law against someone is your most logical choice, then let their own karma call them to accountability instead.

Doing the next best thing is not always the best thing to do. But, in many cases, it is the thing that will work the best. For you and for everyone involved.

Knowing when to do the next best thing instead of the best thing is having wisdom and that is applying knowledge that can only ever be earned.

8th Rule of Thumb

The good don’t die young. They just go where they’re really appreciated.

Letting Go Is Having

Knowing when and how to let go of someone or something is one of the biggest keys to success and happiness in life.

Knowing when to let go of a way of life that is not working for you is having a new way of life which does. It can mean leaving one job for another or leaving a place that offers you very little for a new place that abounds in opportunity.

Knowing when to let go of the dead is allowing their memory to live within you.

Recognizing that you have done all you can in your effort to arrive at an answer to a problem or to arrive at a solution that you genuinely need in life is the first step toward placing that problem into the realm of a higher authority. Letting go and leaving that unsatisfied need in the hands of that higher authority is the key to having that necessary answer placed free of charge into your own hands.

Letting go and having are two sides of the same coin. And that coin is called faith.

Living Above and Beyond

There is more to life than living it just for yourself. Living your own life is, naturally, the first order of business for any mortal creature. But the secondary responsibility of all mortal creatures is to live part of your life in service to others.

This can be as common and natural as parenting or as bold and risky as putting your life on the line for a cause that will eventually benefit mankind.

No one is expected to lay down his or her life for a frivolous reason but using your life experience to enrich the life of at least one other person is an eternal victory for the soul that dwells within you.

7th Rule of Thumb

When the rich get richer, someone else always winds up in the poorhouse.