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I want you to know that I do these videos because I want to add value to you and hopefully encourage you. And as one of my coaches once told me way back in the beginning, never underestimate the power of encouragement. And I took that to hear and to be honest, 90% of what I do is encouraging people. I speak life, I help people see their own potential, I let them know that they are stronger than they think they are…
In fact, someone reading this might be a little discouraged right now. And maybe you are doubting whether you are going to make it. YOU. ARE. GOING. TO. MAKE. IT. You got this. You’ve got a 100% track record of not dying, okay?! So be encouraged. Get around people who are going to encourage you. Get some voices speaking in your life, books, podcasts, whatever it is that is going to build you up. LIsten, sometimes we just get beat down a little bit through circumstances and through life. YOU just got to build yourself up a little bit. Take faith that is going to be okay. BE ENCOURAGED.
Speaking of being happy, being encouraged and things of that nature. I had somebody recently say this… and I get it more often than I can count…
ARE YOU REALLY THIS HAPPY ALL THE TIME? HOW ARE YOU THIS HAPPY ALL THE TIME?
Often it is because they are suspicious of me being happy all the time. When people first meet me, they have been known to think I am fake because literally their psychology says their life experience has not been that way and no one can be really that happy all the time. They think it is impossible to be happy as consistently as I show up.
Here’s what I will tell you. Like let’s pull back the curtain. Am I happy 100% percent of the time? Heck no. I’m human, just like you. Stuff happens, life happens and I am not happy all the time? Am I consistently positive? Am I consistently able to find the bright side of things? Am I consistently able to show up with the level of energy and positivity that impacts my environment rather than it impacting me 100%? Yes. Whoa, I promise I do. This positivity is not for you, but you get the overflow.
One of the things I learned from Date with Destiny was a clarification of my values at this event with Tony Robbins. Energy and Vitality were some of my values. These values are targets in my life that I pursue, and for everyone of those targets, you create rules that make it easy to experience those things. And one of those rules I made, four years ago, was to think and feel energy and vitality. Anytime I give my energy as a gift to others, you feel it!
But you’ve also got to know, I used to be like an emotional roller coaster: HIGH highs and LOW lows. My energy was not consistent. My happiness was impacted far too much in the past by circumstances. SO yes, there was a chapter in my life where showing up with this energy wasn’t fake but it was unsustainable in my life. It wasn’t consistent. It was authentic, but it wasn’t consistent. BUT NOW, I can say with integrity that I live this way. And again, not that I don’t have lows… I am human and life happens, but I live here consistently.
SO, How do I do it? How can I do that? The truth is I’m nothing special. I promise you. You get to create the life you want. What have been some of the key things for me discovering that, I am going to share with you, maybe you can apply in your own life. Who doesn’t want to be happier in life? And there are just three things that enable me to be happy consistently.
I’m a Christian and I love Jesus a whole lot! Here’s what I can tell you. It is exhausting to pretend or to fake happiness, peace, joy and YOU KNOW IT. It’s exhausting to fake happiness, to act like you have peace when you don’t have peace, to act like you feel confident when you’re really just scared on the inside that nobody loves you, that you might let somebody down… personally, my trigger used to be that I was going to disappoint someone. You want to talk about taking the high down to a low, superfast? All I had to do was think that I was disappointing someone. It didn’t even have to be real. I just had to imagine it. And if they said it, I would hit the gutter so fast. But here’s where this comes together for me. Jesus gives me certainty that goes beyond circumstances. Within that certainty is the certainty that I am loved.
That’s the best thing about Chritianity and the True Gospel of Jesus Christ is that you are LOVED just the way you are. Not the way you think you should be, not the way anyone else told you that you had to be. You. Are. Just. Loved. And He loves you so much, His love is sooo good that it’ll probably change some stuff about your life… but right now in this moment. HE. LOVES. YOU. He accepts you. You don’t have to change the way you talk, change the way you think, change the way you interact, change the way you dress… YOU. ARE. LOVED.
And because I have come to know that (I was about 13 years old) that became so real to me. And I know that I am loved. And I have accepted it. I’ve had to learn some things over the years to live into the truth of that reality. I stopped trying to prove myself, stopped trying to be enough through my achievements, stopped trying to be something I’m not. I can rest in the certainty that I am loved just the way I am. The more happy I become.
And to be honest, it is not just happiness, it is an unshakeable joy that I am loved by God. If you want the core of my happiness, it is because I have a relationship with Jesus Christ. He’s my savior. I’ve accepted Him. He’s forgiven me of my sins. I have a relationship with God, the father through Jesus Christ because of grace, not because of anything I’ve done. It is because of grace and by grace which is unearned, underserved, unmerited; I am just loved. And that comes from deep within and that is why I am soo happy. This is the thing that matters more than anything else, any tool, any principle, any psychological concept I could teach you.
I am happy because I have Jesus in my life. I have surrendered my life to Him, which by the way when you’ve surrendered your life to Him… YOU don’t have to maintain all this stuff. And that means your circumstances can’t steal your happiness because you’re trusting Him more than your own ability, the circumstances around you, the economy, or relationships. I’m happy because I’ve got Jesus.
I am happy because I protect my energy. Three quick sub points on how I protect my energy:
I protect my energy by my peer group. I protect my energy with my own family. And I don’t just teach this stuff to you. My kids, my wife… we live this stuff together (with Jesus, first). Our home is a positive environment. We’ve got two teenagers, so it’s not 100% positive all the time, but our home is a positive environment. Our kids are positive kids, because we protect our energy. I don’t allow my kids to get around really negative people. I got people in their lives that are constantly pouring positive energy, words and faith on the inside of them. We protect our environments and people.
Listen, a great example of this is social media. I ain’t got time for negative people. My social media feed is positive. It is uplifting. It is challenging. It is encouraging. If you got on my social media feed, you’d be like the world is a beautiful place. Some of you have got social media feeds that make you think everything is going to hell in a handbasket; the world is coming to an end, people are liars, people are cheats, people are bad and evil… STOP. Stop doing that to yourself. Create a social media feed that builds you up, uplifts you, inspires you and enables you to serve more people.
This is one that I’ve really honed in on in the last year and a half and there’ve been a lot of life lessons over the years. If you hold onto unforgiveness, the only person you are hurting is yourself. We wrongly think that we are punishing other people by not forgiving them but the truth is, the reality, the only person we are hurting is ourselves by holding onto all that negativity. It is like a poison on the inside of us.
Letting go is important, too. I don’t allow bitterness to get into my heart because it allows me to love other people well. And it frees me to not carry that weight, the burden of that unforgiveness and that bitterness. Here are some amazing books that are faith based and all about forgiveness, the principles are for everyone: Total Forgiveness and How to Totally Forgive Yourself. And then my friend just introduced me to a book by Desmond Tutu, who just passed away, called No Future Without Forgiveness and he also has one called The Book of Forgiving. I’m excited to read those!
I have daily habits that fill my tank. I journal, I have a morning routine, and I work out a few times a week. Some of my values are rhythm & rest and energy & vitality. If you don’t have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual rhythms to fill your tank… IT IS GOING TO BE HARD to sustain happiness, joy, and fulfillment in your life.
Before I even got to the recording studio today, I had an hour and a half in my journal with God in reflection and I went on a walk. These are things that I do every single morning, they’re non-negotiables for me because they protect my energy so that I can serve others at a higher level. And that leads me to number three…
My life is not about me… Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy life, I love doing fun things and good things BUT I LOVE to serve people. I love YOU, people! I don’t even know you and I love you.
I care about people.
I want people to win.
I want people to tap into their full potential.
I want people to become the best version of themselves.
I love people and I love serving them.
And there’s a whole lot of foundation for that in my life. You know, when it comes to the whole Jesus thing, He said the greatest among you will be a servant. I love that! Zig Zigler also says, You can have everything in life you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want. I believe this to my core and try to live it everyday! And truthfully it is easier to be happy when I come into a situation and I’m more focused on serving you and loving you and not needing something from you. It manufactures so much happiness, joy and fulfillment in my life because I’m using the gifts and callings that God put in me and on me for my life.
And if you want to know, here’s some full transparency. I was having a little melancholy moment earlier today while I was driving. I had a moment in my head and I was a little discouraged. There were three things that set me back and you know what, I’m here right now present in this moment just a little while later. And I am happy, because I am serving you. I’ve got a whole lot to be grateful for, A WHOLE LOT OF GAINS in my life. And these are the three things that help me to be happy on a consistent basis.
LIsten, that first point I mentioned about Jesus, maybe that’s a new thing to you. Maybe I’m not the typical Christian you have interacted with and I’m sorry if some Christians make God and Jesus look bad. It’s not Jesus – it’s people not doing things that He would do. But hey, if you want to have a conversation about that point… DM me, message me and let’s talk. I would be delighted to have a conversation. It’s not about religion, it’s not about do’s and don’ts… it is about a relationship with God that loves you! And that is a great starting point for increasing happiness in your life!
I hope that this serves you!! And this is where you should go out there and give your greatness to the world because somebody needs what’s on the inside of you!!
