Do Something Deliberate Today

As a young child, many of us think of the word deliberate as something that’s bad, and most often it was. Even today, I remember the confrontations that followed doing something on purpose, or hearing that I deliberately defied what or how I was told. Moreover, I guess I’ll never forget the deliberate actions my parents took to correct those actions that I “did on purpose”. 

However, today I would like to challenge you to do something deliberate. At least one time today, do something that’s not normal to you, with the intent of helping someone else. To your customers this could be as simple as offering to carry even a light bag to their car or even offering a chair to an elderly person while you take their list and find the products they came in to buy.

 

To your fellow associates do something to make their load just a little bit lighter. When you find yourself with a moment that you are not busy, look around, see who is busy, and offer to take a task off their hands. With that thought in mind, you never know what is happening in someone’s private life that a simple act of kindness and offer to assist with their duties just might be a huge encouragement to them.  

 

In your private life, I challenge each of us to slow down and look at the world around us. There are many things we can all do deliberately, that will make our community a better place to live. Reach out and help those around you who area hurting, sometimes even being just a friend who is willing to listen can totally lift a person out of their despair and give them hope for brighter days ahead.  

 

Doctor Maxwell Maltz, a prominent surgeon in the 1950’s, did a study, where he determined that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. I dare you today and for the next 21 days to do something good deliberately, and soon those actions will be as normal as tying your shoes. Have a great week!

 

 

Spring Forward To Unlimited Opportunities

“Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.” – Carl Friedrich Gauss
 

Spring to me is an amazing time, when the earth starts waking from its long winter sleep. When days not only get longer, but they get warmer, and new life seems to be springing up all around us. There is nothing like that first morning when there is still a little chill in the air, you step outside, and the cold silence of winter is fading and the fragrance of flowers blooming and birds singing now fills the morning.  

 

Such are our lives as well. Just as the flowers spring from the cold dirt from which they retreated to, only months earlier, spring is a reminder to each of us that no matter what has held us back in the past, opportunities are unlimited if we will only awaken from our own state of hibernation that we can easily enter into. As the sun gradually begins to warm the earth, let it remind you that within each of us there is the ability for greatness if we will only open our spirits and minds, and make the commitment to greatness.  

 

This coming weekend is the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, and just as we “spring forward” with our clocks, it should be a time to kick our own lives into a different gear. Whatever the accomplishments or failures of the past, now is the time to renew ourselves and put off the drab faded vestiges of the past, and replace them with a fresh commitment to excellence.

 

Make this season when all things are new again, a time to push yourself to even greater heights than even you thought were possible. As you step out your door tomorrow morning, tell yourself that winter, or better yet, old ways of thinking are in the past, spring is here, and even as the birds are singing a new song and flowers and trees are budding, I will spring my life forward, to new and unlimited opportunities!