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The Best Life: rule #6 speak gently so all may know of love

Tata — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:17:08 +0000

The way you speak to people determines what you get from them. It is hardly what you say to people that matter, but how you say it that’s more important. Everything and anything has been done; thus, what individuates you from the crowed is the “how”. You can do anything you please and people will remember what you did but also how you did it most of the time. I remember as I kid my mom used to get me to take out the trash, cook small meals, or clean the dishes I had used. I thank her for that now because it made me kitchen independent. But I remember how she would say it more than anything. If she said it gently without commanding me to do it, it got done faster. She soon realized this too and she got more out of me.

So, when you speak gently and lovinly to others, you will get the same tone most of the time. Don’t believe me? Start an argument right now, just pick somethig random and start yelling about it to the first person you see. What is likely to happen is that the person you are yelling at will start yelling back too. Soon, it will be a full blown argument and by the end of it, like a lot arguments, you will forget what it was about and laugh about how silly it really was. The same goes for the opposit. If someone is yelling, how do you get them to stop?

You will not get someone to stop yelling at you by yelling back at them. Instead, in a calm, cool voice, answer them with a gentle demeanor and eventually, your calmness will rub off on them and they will calm down too. Your voice is very powerful. When you listen to music, can you stand to listen to an artist you think cannot sing? I don’t think so. The same goes for the radio. And if you enjoy listening to a pleasant voice on the radio
then why not apply this simple principle in your life?

Don’t believe how powerful words are? I used to date this girl who used to use certain phrases about how being together was not a sure thing. And certain things she would do would demonstrate just that. Although I am usually not the type of person to fall prey to negativity, sometimes the resolve of another is just more powerful. Eventually, those words became our reality. So pay attention to what you say and how you say it. It is a tool that everyone has at their disposal that also sets those who know how to use it apart from those who haven’t mastered the art of the tongue yet. Language is poetry
and poetry is life.

I could be wrong. What say you?

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The Best Life: rule #5 – always tell the truth

Tata — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:41:11 +0000

Can you go a week without lying? What about a day? Is it possible for people to always tell the truth? For a lot of people it is hard for a number of reasons. They want to spare another person’s feelings. They want to keep their job. They want to get ahead in life. They want to impress their friends and they want to feel important. And some people feel like they have to lie to accomplish these things. As a result, truth has become a rear commodity.

So, is there a way to accomplish what you want out of life withou lying and cheating? Absolutely. I know and have heard of many people who have done it and continue to do it. They are honest people who put their integrity first before anything. And because of that, they are successful. But how do they do it?

Telling the truth is not a hard thing to do. People mistake truth telling with feelings of hurt and anger. The way to always tell the truth is to focus on the “how” and not so much the truth itself. People are emotional creatures and their egos are fragile. They let their emotions take control over them instead of using their logic. That is why focusing on the how is very important. I know you have heard the phrase, “it’s not what you say but how you say it that’s important”. People don’t really listen to what you are saying to them, they focus more on the delivery. Your body language, your tone of voice, and all other subtle cues become very important. That is why a whopping 90% of communication is non-verbal. Meaning, it is not what is said but what it’s not being said that is revealed by your body language that’s important; id.est. the how.

That means, you can always tell the truth, but know when it is the right time to approach the person you want to talk to. Know the “how” and you can always tell the truth without fear of hurting anyone’s feelings or being hated. People generally appreciate honesty but not the brutal type. Be gentle in your speech and in your manner when delivering a truth. Speak softly, truthfully, carefully and with empathy. Start with a compliment to soften the possible sting of truth that people often attribute to it. When you tell the truth, you become trusted, you are elevated above other employees or friends, you are told secrets, and you are even loved. The truth is not a bad thing; tell it and set yourself and others free.

What say you?

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The Best Life: rule #4 – live by love always now and forevermore

Tata — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 01:21:39 +0000

It is hard I know. Poeple do things you don’t agree with. They do things you don’t like or hate. So you get annoyed and want to yell at them and tell them a piece of your mind. But what good is that going to do? Yes, it will make you feel better for the time being and you will feel a victorous smile come upon your face but did you really win? Does telling people off really help?

Everyone has heard that, “it takes more muscles to frown than to smile”. Same goes for love and hate. You waste more energy hating than loving. And because the energy it takes to hate is negative, it takes a tole on you mentally and that mental straine eventually appears physically. People that hate others more often than not look evil on the outside too, but that’s not always the case although it is something to think about. But how do you always come from a place of love and live the law of love always and forever more?

Start by rememebering that:

No one can really hurt you emotionally unless you let them and if you doubt that, read this
You are always in control of your emotions
The world is your neighbor as it states here

When you remember these and stay true to yourself, you can be that person who always comes from a place of love. When someone does something you don’t like ask yourself, “if this person was a loved one, how would I treat them”? Kind of like the saying, “what would Jesus do”? But no one knows for sure what Jesus would do so I am asking you to come from the love that you have for those that are dear to you in your life. They way you treat them is what I mean by coming from a place of love. There is a significant difference in how we treat strangers versus how we treat those we love.

There is no difference in love except in the amount that is expressed. You should read the previous sentence again. What I mean is that we can actually love and do love all people the same way. The difference is how much of that love we express. And being that we are closer or spend more time with our family members, it seems as if we love them more. In actually, we just have more opportunities to express our love more since we are around them more unlike with strangers. By coming from a place of love and treating others as you would your loved ones, you can be whole – a loving being that you are.

When you come from a place of love: (1) people are happier to be around you (2) you make more friends (3) you are happier (4)positive things begin to happen in your life. We all want these things in our lives. Nothing is stopping you but yourself. Let’s do it together; together is always good.

What say you?

The Best Life: rule #3 – Love your neighbor as you love yourself

Tata — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:53:03 +0000

These rules to living the best life are from a pamphlet I put together for one of my classes I was teaching in Korea titled The Best Life. I have converted the pamphlet into an e-book is available here free to download. I will spend the next couple of weeks explaining each of the rules to living The best life that you can possibly live. Apply these in your life and you will become a new person. So, download the e-book and follow along.

What does it really mean to love your neighbor? Is it a phrase Christians use just to look good in front of others or is it more than just a face value statement? On the latter question, true, some evangelical maniacs who really don’t care one way or the other as long as thier needs a supplanted use the phrase but don’t excersie it, but it goes deeper than that.

To be frank, this is not something I really should be telling people about but the way I see people treat each other, it needs to be repeated. I don’t mean go around telling people you love them or visitig the lady next to your house randomly to share your insect collection, you would be wired, but it does mean having a little humanity in you. Yes I said humanity in you, why, because I have seen people treat animals better than they treat each other.

If you saw a stranger suffering on the side of the road would you help them or pass them by?
If the person you live next to was screaming and running down the street, would you help them or let them be? When I asked this question in my self-development class in Korea, the majority of the students said they would help the person living next to them and would be fearful of helping the person on the side of the road. Sadly this is the mentality of many people and pricesly why the world is in the shape that it is in. Fearful of helping the person on the side of the road! What makes you think that your life is more important than theirs? If you have read rule one We are one and have dowloaded my free ebook,The Best Life that outlines the rest of the rules to live a great life, you would do or say differently if faced with a similar question or situation because one way or another, what happens to one of us, happens to all of us.

Let me repeat it again, your neighbor is not just the person living next to you. Your would be a fool to think that. Your neighbor is everyone; the world is your neighbor. The sooner you realize this and start acting like it the better your life will be. Separation from each other and the stupidity of religion to tell people that they are unworthy thus causing more separation, division, fear among other things in order to control people is one of the biggest problems facing the world. Yes, religion is a problem and sadly it is also the solution; the same can be said about alcohol.

I am not here to point fingers or ridicule anyone. If you think I am doing that then look within yourself and see what or who you are defending. Then ask yourself if it is your place to defend that position. I am sick of people riding in their high horses and thinking they are too good to help others or that they are more important than others. So get off your high horse before I shoot it between the legs. The time has always been right for people to be better, but they just refuse to. Wake up. Your neighbor has been there all along, it’s time you start to acknowledge them.

I love hearing what others have to say. Afterall, people are the most important thing anywhere anytime; so what say you?

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The best life: Rule #2 Be a light onto the world

Tata — Sun, 30 May 2010 06:15:21 +0000

Everything that you do someone is watching. That is why they say that those who can do the things they do when they are alone in public are the people with good character. People are self conscious for all the wrong reasons. They feel like they must impress others. They feel like if they act the way they want to no one is going to like them. They feel like if they say or do kind things people are going to take advantage of them. So, what? Not that you should let people take advantage of you but you should know what is acceptable to you and what is not acceptable.

Don’t let what people do or say stop you from doing and being the best of you that you can be. Instead, you be the light onto the world and show the world how to live. Be the peace maker in a fight, be the love in a room full of hate, be there for others when no one else is; be everything to someone and everyone.

Who cares what people think? When you stop caring about what people thinkg of you, then you trully live. Being a light unto the world means you always stand for the truth, you always cary yourself in a way that represent who you really are and want to be.

I often shopped at a busy department store in Korea. The front doors of this department store where always opening and closing. But no one was holding the door for one other. So I decided to intercept and do something different that none of them were doing -courtesy. I waited until there were a lot of people coming and decided to go inside. I walked in front of them and made sure to hold the door for the lady behind me. Do you know what she did in return? Yep you guessed it. She held the door for the guy behind her and so did he for the student behind him and the student the same and so on and so on.

Being a light onto the world doesn’t mean you have to do something miraculous like turning water into wine. It doesn’t necessarily mean raising someone from the dead either. It simply means be the shining example by making someone elses day better because what happens is, someone else sees what you are doing and they do it and your example leads others to be better. What say you?

P.S these guides to living “the best life” can be found in my e-book on the sidebar. If you haven’t, take a moment to download it and keep up when I write about them. Contribute by commenting below; your feedback is always appreciated. I suggest you subscribe so that you will get a free email when I write about the next one.

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The best life: rule #1 – We are one

Tata — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:57:49 +0000

These rules to living the best life are from a pamphlet I put together for one of my classes I was teaching in Korea titled The Best Life. I have converted the pamphlet into an e-book and it will soon be available here free to download.
I will spend the next couple of weeks explaining each of the rules to living The best life that you can possibly live. Apply these in your life and you will become a new person. So, download the e-book from the sidebar when it is available and follow along.

I have been hearing this statement over and over and after putting some thought into it, it makes a lot of sense. The only way you are going to see changes and improvements in your life is to start with your thoughts. The thought that has been recurring to me is the idea that, “WE ARE ONE”. It is a very simple yet powerful statement that can change the face of the world if everyone started to think like this. It would end all wars, it would end world hunger, it would bring peace, it would save us all from our own inevitable destruction.

This phrase has been said in many different ways by many people all across the world. Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Moses, Zen Masters, Confucius, Buddha and a thousand others have been preaching this message of love and oneness. Until we realize that we are not separate from each other and should give the same care to strangers as we do to our family (because the world is our family) the cycle of suffering will never end.

My grandfather was a Teacher, a great Teacher to be exact, and he also realized the fact that we are one in a very simple situation that happened in one of his classes. When I was ten years old he told me this story. He was Teaching in a small village in Cameroon, the country of my ancestry. He was in class one day and asked all the students to turn in their homework. It just had happened that one his students did not do his homework. My grandfather being a stickler when it comes to education was not happy about this and it was very rare for students not to do their homework so he was a bit shocked.

So he scolded the student a bit and obviously the student was not happy. The student went home and told his mom what happened. She yelled at him too and when his dad came home, he yelled at him too. The family was not happy that evening and the daughter came home seeing what had happend was not in a good mood either and so on and so on in a family of 14.

It was early in the day so everyone ate their lunch and returned to the school for classes(they went home to eat lunch). When they came back to school, all the students even the ones in other class were suddenly in a bad mood.

To make a long story short, my grandfather found out that it all started with him scolding the one student in his class and him not being happy taking it out on his friends and his friends on their friends until the sadness spread like a wild fire. Bottom line, what happens to one person happens to all of us in one way or another because “we are one”. What say you?

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Who decides how happy you are?

Tata — Wed, 26 May 2010 05:28:07 +0000

This is an introduction to a pamphlet I am updating which is a small, compressed part of the book I am writing. The pamphlet (Live the best life)is a hand out for myself so that I do not forget the principles taught to me by my grandfather.Once I get it in good order, meaning no grammatical errors and good explanations, I will make it free to download on here. I used the pamphlet for an adult class I was teaching while in Korea. They found it useful so I hope others will too. The introduction:

Life is not a struggle. Life is as good as you make it. You are deciding everything in your life. If you are happy it’s because you choose to be and if you are not happy it’s because you choose not to be. No one can decide these feelings for you; only you can. You choose how you feel at all times about everything. You are always in control of your feelings and your feelings are the gateway to who you are. It doesn’t matter what the world is doing if you are in control of your feelings. So what is stopping you from living the best life that you can? Who is stopping you from having joy in your life? There is only one answer: you are stopping yourself.

Is your life really out of control that you can’t take it back? Tell me about it won’t you?

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What is your definition of love?

Tata — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:59:45 +0000

This is an excerpt from an essay I am writing titled “The definition of love”. It is not complete yet but I thought it would be good to hear what people have to say about love before completing it. Love is a simple yet very complex subject that bugles the minds of many. Because we have placed conditions on love, it is hard to truly love. I believe the only difference between the kinds of loves you have for family, friends, and the world only differs in your expression of it.

Here is the excerpt:

Love is all there is and it has no requirements. If someone loves you because of, that is a conditioner love. In loving others, remove the “because of.” When you love, you just do. However, you cannot love others without first loving yourself. This is why I question the idea that, “it is better to give than to receive.” How can you give something that you don’t have? How can you give love if you don’t have love within you?

Once complete, the full essay will be posted here. In the mean time, what is your definition of love?

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Happy New Year

Tata — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:08:10 +0000

2010 is here. What are your New Year resolutions? Every year millions of people make New Year resolutions but end up not following them. For those who do, kudos to you. For those who don’t, here is how you can keep your promises to yourself this year.

Make a list and put it where you can see it every day.
Start small. Start with the easy ones first. By completing any of your resolutions even the small ones, you will motivate yourself.
Reward yourself as you accomplishing each one.
Have fun accomplishing them.
Be positive. I know it’s hard sometimes but always think of the good that will come out of what you are trying to do.
Don’t get frustrated. If you fail at first, try again. Get up, dust yourself and try again.
Don’t let the negativity of others hinder you. Always remember that misery always wants company; meaning, when people fail, they want others to fail with them. It’s sad but true.
Love yourself, when you love yourself, you do for yourself. Find time to take care of yourself. If you don’t, who will?

Here are my New Year resolutions. These are in no particular order. I simply choose to accomplished these things by the end of 2010.

Improve my blog design and ranking in Google
Speak French fluently again and go to Paris for the 2010 summer and if I save enough, go to Egypt and South Africa too.
Have my business in Korea doing well in it’s first year
Be more patient with people
Visit my uncle in Germany
Finish and publish the book I started to write
Try not to fall in love, well, if I can help it. What is life without falling in and out of love with…….
Focus more

That is my list right now. I will probably add to it as I think of more things I neglected to do in 2009. I will use this post to help me remember and accomplish these. What about you? What are your New Year resolutions and how do you plan on accomplishing them? Don’t be shy, share!

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You can make each day great

Tata — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:40:49 +0000

How you start each day plays a big role in how your day goes. If you start your day with a positive attitude, you are likely to have a good day; if you start your day with a negative attitude, it is likely your results will be negative. So, wake up each day and renew yourself, renew your thoughts about yourself in the positive direction, think good things about yourself and your future.
Remember, your thoughts eventually lead to actions and your daily actions eventually become routine, your routine creates your experience, your experience forms your personality and determines the kind of person you are. Knowing this, don’t you want to be the best of you that you can be?

Mental excercise

I start and end each day with reading. I wake up around 7:30 or 8:00 AM each day but no later than 8:30. The closest things to my bed are my iphone because it’s my alarm and a stack of books. They are a collection of audio, pdf and paper formats. I read for about 35 to 60 minutes in the morning. I do this not only because I enjoy reading and thus start my day with something I enjoy but also because it wakes the mind and gets me thinking about something right away. This is a good way to start the day.

Physical excercise

After reading, I exercise. It’s good to excercise mentally by reading but it’s equally pertinent to stimulate your body physically. In fact, one without the other is not as effective. My excercise lasts 30ms to an hour. I try to mix it up between running and weights since it’s Winter here in Korea and I don’t play soccer as much as I used to. When I run, I go for about 50 minutes because sometimes I get going and I don’t want ot stop. I try to run at least 3 times a week and workout 3 times a week although it doesn’t always turn out that way.

Choice of breakfast

Back home in U.S, choosing breakfast was easy. I could eat cereal with fruits and yogurt, make pancakes with turkey beacon and eggs, make vegetable crepes or have a bagel and ovaltine. But living in Korea brings a whole new challenge when it comes to breakfast. Korean’s don’t really have breakfast food as far as I know. Rice and kimchi seems to serve as the all-purpose meal. So, this makes it difficult to keep a consistent choice in making breakfast. Luckily I have a friend in the military who shops at the base for good-ol-American style breakfast. So, in the morning I make it a routine to have a good breakfast after my excercise. I keep it healthy as well. I usually have pancakes, meat crepes, or Korean style-rice and tofu and kimchi. The point is, I make it a habit not to skip breakfast; afterall, it is the most important meal of the day.

What does breakfast have to do with starting your day correctly? With excercise whether mental or physical, the answer is apparent. Breakfast puts you in a good mood believe it or not. There are days when I have a good workout and I am in a good mood mentally, but that doesn’t last long if I don’t have breakfast. I find myself agited for no particulary reason until I eat something. So, make breakfast part of your morning.

Preparing for the day

Yes I sing in the shower, so what chump? After showering and all the necessary grooming. I mentally prepare myself for the day. I think about what I choose to accomplish for the day. I usually make a list the night before of what I want to accomplish the next day. This keeps me focused and a step closer to my long term goals. With each little thing I do everyday, it has some significant towards my long term goals. I mentally prepare by reciting the list I make the night before.

One last thing

Yeah some people might find this wired but I also choose an emotion I want to be for almost each day. I look in the mirror staring into my own eyes and say to myself, today I am peace or today I am love. I go through the day and act as such. On the days I am peace, I look to create and be peace to everything and everyone I touch throughout the day. And when I am love or patience or respect receiving and giving, I am just that. You cannot get what you yourself do not give. Remember this always. Your attitude determines your aptitude. So, start everyday great and make it a routine. For you are great.

Here is a great video on attitude

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