Use your life to make a friend.

A short message today, for obvious reasons to the usual suspect of reader friends.

Doing without is an experience we all say we wouldn’t wish on anyone. I was thinking about doing without my laptop, not in a drastic or tragic sort of way, but with how my mind works it rambled to other places.

Going hungry, sleeping in a car, going without the love of a parent. Sometimes those experiences allow you to understand others better. Those moments in your life humble you and ground you. No, I don’t wish anyone to go through those moments either.

But for those who have?

Embrace whatever the experience, no matter how difficult and use it to help others, even if that help is simply doing the hardest thing there is…being a friend.

“A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.”~Bernard Meltzer

Much Love & Respect

Ronovan

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Our life, our story

Very wise.

FlorenceT's avatarMEANINGS AND MUSINGS

Recreate the story of our life

© 2015 Copyright reserved. The author asserts her moral and legal rights over this work.

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Wednesday Words: #Enjoy #Life #Quotes

“I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.” ~Anne Wilson Schaef For Colleen Chesebro’s Writer’s Quote Wednesday

“The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.”~Voltaire

“I’ve never really taken anything very seriously. I enjoy life because I enjoy making other people enjoy it.” ~Tim Conway

Guide those tongues wisely.

People say things they don’t mean. Okay, maybe they mean them but they don’t intend nor do plan to keep those feelings. In the moment they have a burst of anger and say stupid things. I know, I said the bad word, stupid. At least it’s a bad word in my house.

Maybe it’s the TV my son watches but he does well with not saying things to hurt feelings. Gotta love Classics on Hulu.

Angry young lives should

Be taken seriously,

Guide your tongue wisely.

 

 

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Acceptance to A Better Future.

Yesterday in my article Peacemaker to Positivity I mentioned accepting the events of your life in order to be at peace with yourself and to use those events to help others who experience similar things. That’s a lot to ask of someone.

There are events in this world that are difficult to accept. But you are either accept them or ALLOW them to run and ruin your life. And events are events. They are moments in time. Moments that have already happened and cannot be changed.

We all go through the “If only I had…” moments. Those are the “I am holding myself back” moments. If you are a parent you try and do things through you child you wish you had done. As a spouse you want to be more perfect than whatever your parents were.

We are going to fail in both of those. Our children are not us, so whatever they do is for them, not us. And our parents were them and not us. No matter what others do, it is them that do it. By accepting and moving on we can become a success at something on our own, for our own. We can help other people.

I know there are those moments that are truly horrible, but what can you do about them? Don’t ALLOW them to turn you into something you aren’t. Don’t ALLOW anyone to win over your life but you.

 

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Stand Up to Release.

caroline kennedy quote imageIt is not easy to stand up against your constituents or your friends or colleagues or your community and take a tough stand for something you believe is right. Because you always want to keep working and live to fight another battle and it might cost you your career.”~Caroline Kennedy

How often do people like to tell you that what you think is wrong or what you believe is wrong? And how often do you then stay quiet or back down?

A lot of people complain about the world but are silent when it comes to the things they have problems with.

Part of being positive in the world, finding your positive place and place of peace is to release those things inside of you. If you believe in something, then live that something. If you believe something is right, then stand up for that something.

Negativity comes from regrets. Regrets come from not doing things you should do. How often is your mind filled with those missed chances at standing up for what you believe in? More often than you think. Your fantasies and dreams stem from missed chances. You may think about a better job. Maybe that better job you want is because you missed an opportunity you thought should be yours.

Do you think about possible relationships? Broken relationships? Maybe even a current relationship that is poison?

Fear keeps people from standing up for what they think is right. That fear will lead to a life time of negativity, doubt, sadness, regrets. You don’t have to confront people, you can simply say that it’s over and be done with it. Walk away.

Other issues require speaking up. I know for a fact that anger can build up by being silent. That anger interferes with attaining the peace you want. Look at the quote at the beginning. If people don’t accept you for you and what you are and believe, then you don’t need them, they aren’t your friend or people you need to be around or a workplace you need to be in.

Much Love, Success, and Respect
Ronovan

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I am what I say I am.

Ever been told by people that you mean something you didn’t mean? Perhaps this sounds familiar, “I know what you really meant. Don’t lie to me. You’re all alike.”

I am unique, as is everyone. I would like to speak about something that bugs me in a major way. And if you are honest with yourself you might admit it bugs you as well.

I don’t like my actions or words being judged based on a person’s experience with other people or especially with how they would act in a situation. Some people are scum. Sorry to use that word but it’s more polite than a lot of words that could be used. To think that I would think or intend as they do just because I am of a similar something or other ticks me off.

For example, if I were to say I thought someone had great hair, that doesn’t mean anything other than I think that person has great hair. But in the past I’ve had people tell me that I must be interested in someone for paying a compliment or even noticing someone. Hair usually isn’t the thing. I may like a shirt or shoes. I don’t see a reason you can’t compliment someone on something. I mean perhaps your significant other may not like it but anyone else doesn’t have a reason to even bother.

This carries over to articles and my beliefs. Some people think that because I am a Christian that I must think a certain way. They also think because I am male, white, and live in the South in the USA, I must have certain opinions and if I say something they develop an opinion of it based on those factors.

I’ve learned over the years to observe and that’s it. I say words and those words about a subject should be taken as they sound, not as one thinks they must be intended. I find myself explaining things in my writing to head off these crazy ideas people have.

Trust me, as a person of the various criteria above I have become accustomed to heading things off. But it’s also helped me take what other people do at face value. I get the discrimination people get because of factors. Surprised that I could be discriminated against? Surprised I would dare even use that word?

Every person can be discriminated against for something. Some people think Christians aren’t discriminated against. Try being a teacher these days and be openly Christian. Read a Bible during your lunch time and you get punished. It’s my lunch time. Go talk to the football coach watching porn on his school computer. Oh, sorry, his team makes money for the school. My bad.

You may think my article is negative and be surprised considering my blog is focusing on positivity, but it’s not negative. It’s about being who you are, and for other people to treat you for who you are not what they think you are. Don’t think you do the discrimination thing or judging thing? Ever said to someone about your friend, “Don’t take it seriously, he’s just a guy. You know how they get sometimes,”?

Much Love, Success, and Respect
Ronovan

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Live in the Now, not with the Ghost of the Past. #BeWoW

nemoMy theme this week so far has been silence. Keeping one’s silence is golden. You appear wise when not engaging a fool, even if you are a fool yourself, which in some way or other we all are.

Living in the moment for me means I don’t ALLOW those old moments to flare up my emotions to interfere with my dealings with the moments of today.

If we all ALLOWED them to happen, we would never love as we all most likely have had broken hearts.

By living in the moment we ALLOW ourselves to experience things we would have missed out on otherwise. We don’t ALLOW fears to get in the way of adventures. By this I mean foolish fears, not wise fears that bring us caution.

Living in the moment is a difficult thing to do at first. With practice it can be done.

ALLOW yourself to enjoy life. ALLOW yourself to be more than you ever imagined.

As pain is the past,

The future’s in the present,

With great hopes and dreams.

Here are some free Kindle books pertaining to living in the moment. I haven’t read them yet, but they have good reviews and I thought I would bring them to your attention. Quotes are from Amazon Book Descriptions. Click images for Amazon book page.

41aih0k2u+L._AA160_“After reading Remove Negative Thinking, you will be able to:
– Recognize and remove your negative thinking patterns throughout the day
– Reframe how you see the world
– Connect to your passion and purpose
– Focus on abundance and live in the now
– Move outside your comfort zone
– Stay motivated and surround yourself with positive people

 

51R+3-36xNL._AA160_“This inspirational guide reminds you that life can be good, no matter what challenges you may be facing right now. Be present, see the divine at work in all circumstances, and experience ordinary life as sacred. Learn to practice the art of abundance as a form of spiritual awareness based in gratitude. “

 

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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God and Meditation.

Are you a Christian or even an Atheist and afraid of Meditation because you think it will turn you into a Buddhist, turn you away from your belief in whatever you believe?

Don’t laugh. A great many people associate Meditation with Buddhism because it is such a central part of that philosophy and way of life.

You’re already meditating.

Meditation, for Christians should not be something to fear. In fact, if you are doing as you should, you are likely meditating and not even realizing it. Each morning you should be spending quiet time preparing for your day by praying or talking with God. You are preparing yourself to not allow the events of the day to sway you or influence you.

During this time you are pushing the world out, those sounds and thoughts, and you are focusing on one thing, God. During these quiet times you may not even be thinking of anything but simply being at peace and calming your mind for the day ahead. Perhaps you are repeating the word “calm” or “peace” in your thoughts over and over. A one word prayer.

When you are in these moments you find things become clearer to you. All the outside stimuli are blocked away and central ideas come into focus and you discover solutions to problems or clarity of purpose, and even a clarity of scripture void of the traditions man has applied to them in trappings and rhetoric.

Jesus was a man who meditated.

“But Jesus did not meditate, so why should I?” What do you think Jesus was doing while fasting in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. While fasting he must have been doing something. Preparing himself for his ministry ahead? How? By talking with God, talking with the Father, by meditating. And through this preparation, at the end of those 40 days and nights, Jesus was prepared for the trials of Satan.

People forget a few things about Jesus. For one, he was a man. Yes, he was God in the form of flesh as man on earth. He had to be. For him to be a sacrifice for us he could not be the all powerful form of God without the ability to be harmed, feel pain, go through trials, be tempted, and all the other things a human could go through.

He performed miracles by asking the Father for His help. I mention that so no one thinks he had these powers on his own and thus was different from normal humans. But how did Jesus stay pure to be the perfect sacrifice for humanity?

Remember how Jesus would often go off on his own, away from his disciples? What do you think he was doing during this time? Remember in the garden on the night of his arrest and he asked the disciples to keep watch? What do you think he was doing?

Jesus was the rock star of his time of ministry work. Everywhere he went people wanted something from him. These things could be simply to hear him speak or to get some miracle from him. But there was a constant buzz around him. Jesus needed to get away from all of that and be alone. He needed to refocus and reenergize. He was human. He had a human body. He had a human mind, all of which were susceptible to fatigue and deterioration. He needed his quiet time.

The Bible speaks of meditation.

Meditation is not a religion. Parts of this article came to me during meditation. People want to be enlightened. For a Christian—as a Christian, I feel as though I am enlightened already. As I meditate in my quiet moments and refocus on God, He gives me thoughts and revelations.

Does the Bible speak of meditation? I know some of you are wondering. If it’s not in the Bible then you don’t want to hear about it being possible, even if you are a Christian or not. Joshua 1:7-9~“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Meditation is not just sitting quietly it is also a way of life. You can meditate through every moment of life. In the above scripture, Joshua speaks to this. The word meditate (hâgâh)  here has meanings such as; to utter, speak, muse, imagine, to meditate. To get the full benefits of the Word of God you need to be in it throughout your day, in all your actions. To get the full benefits of meditation you need to be in it throughout your day, in all your actions.

To prosper (tsâlach, tsâlêach), to make progress, to advance; all definitions of the word translated as prosperous above, you need to be in whatever it is you are doing and stay on the path of what you are doing at all times. Otherwise you are sidetracked and have to either start over or take time getting back on the track where you left off.

I’m a doer, not a sayer.

As a Christian, by combining these two the Word of God/prayer and Meditation that go hand in hand, written in the Bible, you can achieve a divine enlightenment and peace of mind. I don’t say this as some guy trying to get you to do something; I say it as someone who does it.

I did it before my accident two years ago, lost it for a while, and now you may have noticed in recent months a change in my writing. I live what I am talking about. I didn’t call it meditation, but that is what it was.

josuha-1-8

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Creating a Positive Environment

Listing negatives and living in the here and now, in the moment without looking to the past for what we’ve missed and regretted and to the future for what we wished we could have. That pretty much sums up the past three weeks of thoughts about becoming more Positive.

Positivity doesn’t just happen. As I’ve mentioned before, you need to take baby steps to create a lasting mindset of positivity. A qToday I want to discuss a little about creating a positive environment to grow in. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to move rearranged your furniture, at least not yet. Hmm, maybe I will. Let’s see what happens.

First you need to decide how serious you are about wanting a better life. Some decisions might seem drastic to you. Some will be seriously life changing. But if you are wanting not only a better and more positive you but also a better and more positive around you, then tough needs to happen.

The Definition

Second you need to learn what your environment is. Many people only think of the physical state of what I mentioned earlier, furniture or paint or curtains or a garden. But environment is many things.

“1:  the circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded

2a :  the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors (as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival

b :  the aggregate of social and cultural conditions that influence the life of an individual or community”~Merriam-Webster’s

By looking at the definition of environment you may see where we are headed. You may not be able to rid yourself of all things negative in your life but you can be rid of what you can be rid of. One way to do this is to realize what is and is not important to your life.

Getting Started

Once again, a difficult/tough process, but one that is required. As always, start with the easy things first. For me it was things like music and other medium that gave me negative messages. Just because a song had a good beat I might have liked it but the lyrics were actually derogatory and very negative. I was hearing them but not really using my brain to say, this stuff is not worth it.

As for media, such as news articles and the like, I look at headlines and decide if I want to read or not. Do I need to know about certain celebrities and their fights with each other? Do I need to know about every single incident of any type of crime in existence?

Family and Friends?

The difficult things? Family? Friends? That’s where it gets a bit tricky. And it’s why you start with what you can control with a little more ease.

I know some people who are horrible to certain people but nice to me. Why? Maybe because I am positive and not negative to them all the time? I don’t know. But I do think it helps.

How you look at things can determine how you handle things, interpret things and how people look at you as well. You influence others by how you act and thus you change your environment. Does it always work that way? No, but it does work a lot of times.

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Quotes of Habits & Attitudes.

chuck-maragos

“Habits are strange. Some are positive and serve us well, and some are negative and do us harm. However, we profit when we remember we entered this world with none and we will depart with none. As habits form silently, constantly, and relentlessly, their pervasive impacts are often unnoticed. Yet they control our life. Although productive habits are invaluable, and bad habits are costly and difficult to break, all the effective listening leaders I know spend an inordinate amount of time studying, consciously shaping, and refining their habits.”~Chuck Maragos

william-james-inner-outer

“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”~William James

stephen-covey-replace-habits

“Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits.

You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of the effectiveness, happiness and trust-based relationships.”~Stephen Covey

maxwell-maltz-self-image“Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other.”~-Dr. Maxwell Maltz

albert-schweitzer-attitudes

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds.”~Albert Schweitzer

From Saturday: Quotes of life. From previous Thursday: Quotes of Motivation.

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Habits-Good or Bad?

thaddeus-golas

On Monday I wrote an article titled Let a moment just be a moment and as a result of comments I began thinking a little bit. No comments from the usual suspects please about me thinking.

Emotional reactions and assignment of labels to events are habits. That can be good or bad or if you would rather you can call them beneficial or non-beneficial, as I often look at them that way myself. Some ‘good’ habits may not be beneficial or necessary. Recognition that you have these habits, either in a good or bad way, is a great benefit to you.

Knowing you have created habits through the years, and if you examine your life you will likely see where certain habitual reactions began, you can either work to continue on a positive path to increase those beneficial reactions or work to decrease those negative ones that cause harmful effects on your life.

I know there are people out there that think how you are is how you are going to be forever. Let me tell those people this. “You’re wrong.”

Here’s the deal, yes, pretty much all of our lives are habits. Every aspect of our lives involves habits, other than the biological process such as breathing and the like. And even with breathing you can create a habit or routine manner of breathing in situations.

Think about that one for a moment. If you think when someone talks about your Momma you have to hit them or insult them back, then you’ve got a habit going on and you’ve also ALLOWED that person to own you for a time. They got you. They know your sore points, your weaknesses.

Just like in boxing when fighters prepare for an opponent they are training to how that opponent fights. They know what their opponent’s favorite moves are. If you don’t have habits then you can’t be owned as easily, including not being owned by your own weak mindedness.

Overcome your negative view of not being able to control your habitual reactions and thoughts through creating healthier habits of positivity. A way to begin is by looking at that List of Negatives I asked everyone to create a few weeks ago and think about how they became negatives. Examining and understanding your emotions and thought processes is one of the key factors of creating a positive you. A positive you is not just for you alone, it’s for all those who associate with you.

Everyone you know will benefit from a more positive you.

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

be-wow-blogger

 

 

 

 

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Feeding is not nourishing… by @FTThum

An Awesome post written for #BeWoW. Well, I think it was written for far more than that but it happened to coincide with it. I know she worked on this a few days and it came out great. A definite MUST READ for everyone. Seriously. Don’t miss this one.

FlorenceT's avatarMEANINGS AND MUSINGS

Busy-ness and stress are no strangers in my life. I am adept at managing it all. To replenish my energy, I meditated, slept the requisite 6 hours, ate nutritious food, made lists and check them off – everything to ensure daily life ticks over as it should. Well, I probably could have gotten more than 6 hours sleep if I ‘gave up’ writing but life would be unbearable :-).

Then a friend reminded me to nourish myself. It was then I realised in the midst of ‘doing’ living, I’d somehow forgotten to care for myself. You see, to look after myself as in to nourish myself takes more than eating the right foods and sleeping the recommended number of hours. I know this.

In essence, nourishing is more than meeting biological or physiological needs. Nourishing is about feeding the spirit and soul. By the way, nourish comes from the…

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Quotes of life.

GBS

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

MA

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius

MG-speedThere is more to life than increasing its speed.

Mahatma Gandhi

mg-message

My life is my message.

Mahatma Gandhi

c-simple

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Confucius

DL-purpose

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

Dalai Lama

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Live in the Now, not in the Then.

“The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.”~Woodrow Wilson

Two weeks ago I asked you to Make a List of Your Negatives, while last week I said to get rid of one of those negatives. Two problems with that last one. One, the article was long and few people read it. The other problem, for those who read it I imagine you were expecting me to tell you how to get rid of those negatives. By the way, there was more to the article than ‘get rid of one of those negatives’.

Today I’ll attempt to be brief and tell you how to be rid of negatives.

X Out the Past and 0 Out Your Future

Let’s take your list of negatives in their nice columns and for every negative that comes from a past event place an x beside it. For every negative whose source lies in the future, in other words something you are wanting but can’t have yet or may never have, place a little circle beside it.

Now realize you are looking at things that cannot be reached or dealt with in the present. Wait before you start yelling about controlling what might happen in the future.

Those Past Negatives are in the past. Unless you want to apologize to someone or forgive someone, you are most likely out of luck. Drop those Past Negatives. And if you haven’t apologized or forgiven in all these years and are having problems with it, that’s called Regret. You can visit my Regrets are where they belong, in the past from this past Wednesday for some good quotes about regrets.

Know You Are In The Now

Expecting anything from someone else is a Negative you will never control. That’s one Negative you are to never allow to take a rest in your mind. It’s time to live in the now, not the yesterday, not the future, but the now. Here. Now. Not in the what you wished you had or what you hope to have, but in the what you have. You can work toward what you want to have some day, but that’s some day. That’s a goal, not a Negative.

Take your list, do the x’s and o’s and start working your way through those x’s. And really, if you are strong enough, you can toss them all, but if you haven’t already done that, then you most likely will need to take the baby steps I’ve talked about previously. There is no hurry, no race, no trophy.

You need to:

  • Think about why that Negative happened
  • What you had to do with it
  • Why it is still hanging with you
  • What can you do about it
  • What it has done to your life
  • Then realize it is over

That last part is the most difficult. Read through the article again and you’ll see why you are to let it go and let it be over. You’re in control of it all. Don’t ALLOW anything, especially a memory to control YOU.

Live in the here and now, and enjoy life.

“When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.”~Bruce Feiler

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Regrets are where they belong, in the past.

“Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.”~Johannes Brahms

When you go through life you end up running across people who, for some reason, think you are a threat to them. It has nothing to do with you having done anything wrong. I’ve seen examples of a lot of what Brahms spoke of above.

I watch interviews with these old professional wrestlers I watched when I was a kid. I do so in part because they were part of a time when I lived with my grandmother, back around 6 or 7 and when we visited her later on as well. It’s amazing how jealousy turned people you thought of as good guys into such bitter old men.

You have those types in every type of profession and every walk of life.

“Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.”~Miguel Angel Ruiz

Ruiz speaks the truth, right to the core of my thinking. Regrets are like a disease, a virus that spreads though your body. The more you feed it the more it will grow until it is all consuming. You abuse others for your regrets, your jealousy of those who did what you regret you didn’t do.

Regrets are easy to let go. Much like those memories of the first grade you can’t think of, regrets are in the past. I know, some regrets you have might be in your face every day.

“Regret is an odd emotion because it comes only upon reflection. Regret lacks immediacy, and so its power seldom influences events when it could do some good.”~William O Rourke

“Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”~William James

The above two quotes explain exactly what purpose regrets serve and how to move on from them or even avoid having them. The quote by William James goes along with something I said recently.

“Recognition of truths in your life is a big step toward a happier you. A bigger step is taking action upon that recognition.”~Me

We all have disappointments in our lives, those missed opportunities that we brought about by our own action or inaction. Nothing can be done about them now. Well, at least most of them can’t be changed. Looking forward is always the best thing to do, even if there are no regrets in your past.

For an article I wrote about a luncheon with a top executive and self-made woman with Coca-Cola visitDo your best…or not at all…advice from success”.

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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#100WordWisdom Haters Gonna Hate.

Haters are going to hate no matter what, sometimes they just spin their tales in an attempt to make you look bad. I found that out recently. As I fumed for a few minutes I slowly let it go, made sure their attempts were futile and carried on with my positively motivational positive day.

Not every day will be pain free of pain in the necks showing up. Having lived with it for so long I know to deal with it and move on. I had to deal with it quickly because of my son. We’re having a good day.

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Be Honest for Yourself, NOT the World.

Do you show the world the real you? Do you hide? Are you afraid of the real you? Are you ashamed of the real you? Why?

There is a lot that goes into being the real you. You ever think about who you are and then think about who you were born as?

You know that jerk that lives next door or maybe in your own house? Guess what, he/she didn’t start out that way. Jerks are made, not born. That means who you are now, is not who you were born as, it’s who you were made into. And if you were made into something then you can be made into something else.

My Honest Self

I don’t present my honest self to the world because I am concerned with the world’s opinion of me. I present my honest self because I care about my opinion of myself. The world’s opinion can be swayed by mood, a word misunderstood, a lie spoken about me, or any number of other things I am certain you may think of.

Being my honest self does not mean I am a rude, intolerant, jerk of a man about things I don’t agree with or believe in. If asked I will say I don’t agree with something if I don’t agree with it. I do not have to be rude about it. I wanted to make that clear as some people are that way when they consider that as being what a person can be honest and true with about. Please refer to what I spoke of at the beginning of the article.

Today I want to be honest about who I am. I am a positive man, which has taken time to bring to the forefront of who I am. I am a positive man who is currently at battle with negatives. We are all at battle with negatives, however in my case I believe I am facing some extreme negatives because I am putting forth a message of positivity in hopes people will be helped and in a small way, a small step at a time, the world will change.

This sounds like a grandiose idea. Where else does every change of the world begin but with an idea of some sort? There are a great many problems in the world that could be solved with people starting by being positive about their own lives. By doing this, they can then be positive about others and for others.

My Honest Future

I love writing fiction. I do it for young people I know. Usually they are written as presents because I cannot afford anything else. I have written some for adults as well. I have written novels and submitted them, to only end up rejected. Rejected rightfully so.

Over the years I have come to terms with my writing and have improved as I have done so. I have not given up on my fiction. I have great story ideas, it’s the execution of those ideas I am working on. And I realized recently that I don’t need to be in a hurry and put out something that is garbage.

However, there is a part of me that I have been denying although it is obvious and throughout my writing here on my site. I am a teacher. Above and beyond anything else, that is what I am. That is what I was born to be. How I teach is up to me. What I teach is up to me. I choose to teach through writing. What do I choose to teach?

I keep returning to things ultimately leading to positivity. Therefore, I am going to teach on positivity. I have been doing that quite a bit of late, and I hope some of you have benefited from it. Moving forward I will be doing it in a, hopefully, better way now that I have accepted what I am doing. Fiction is not gone from my life. I love history and there will be historical fiction related stories from me. Some I believe need to be abandoned in order for me to become focused on what needs to be.

recognition-action

That being said, there may be some changes here on Ronovan Writes, nothing drastic but perhaps a feel or a focus. I do hope you stick around to find out what happens as I explore a new path in this fork in the road I’ve arrived at. Poetry will remain, of course. Expression of feelings and thoughts through poetry is a way for one to deal with those feelings and thoughts in an artistic and useful form. Poetry is therapy. Much of my poetry, if not all of it, is therapy to me and it is honest and truthful.

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Positivity: Increasing Your Positivity Percentage

Last week I asked you to List the Negatives in Your Life under different headings:

  • External Negatives
  • Internal Negatives
  • Temporary Negatives
  • Constant Negatives

I Know of What I Speak

I want to go ahead and get something out of the way here. I am not writing about this from an outsider point of view. I’ve been through life events, young and old, that some would never want to go through. These events could make me into a Negative, bitter, angry man. If you’ve been reading my blog you probably realize I am not any of those things. Therefore, as I talk about things remember I have been there, I am there, and I am doing these things myself.

Negativity is a Perception

One of the first things I want to explain to you this week is how something impacting your thoughts about you and life is a perception. Yes, I know, bad is bad. I’ve been there. Perhaps you were physically abused as a child or worse. That being a Negative action is not in doubt, but how you ALLOW it to impact your life is now up to you. You can change your perception, your moving onward, about it.

One of the first articles I ever wrote here on the blog was called Don’t ALLOW people to control YOU. That was over a year ago. If you’ve read that article you might understand why I am going to say your External Negatives category list should be empty.

My definition of External Negatives is “negatives that are outside your control. Things you are not able to personally control your long term reactions to or veer away from being influenced by.”

However, if you mentally perceive the event or influence as an event, an occurrence, it then has no lasting influence on your mental and emotional life. The External Negatives are in actuality only Negative on your mental and emotional Positivity because you ALLOW them to be.

Ultimately it is about you determining how you will handle something, no matter how bad it may be to other aspects of your life.

An example might be a divorce. It’s possible for a lot of baggage to come out of a divorce and one piece of baggage might be not allowing you to trust someone enough to love them or get in a relationship with them.

The new person has done nothing to you. But what YOU have done is ALLOW an event, whatever the cause of the divorce, to keep you from loving again. Caution—yes. Total shut down—no. You can learn, teach, train yourself how to look at things as being events, passing moments in time.

An Increase in Your Positive Percentage Brings Success

Now, move all those External Negatives you may have to the Internal Negatives list. Why, because you have control over what they are to you. We all want to decrease the Negativity in our lives. Positivity leads to happiness and also to success. Success? Yes.

I am not talking about you becoming a millionaire. I am talking about relationship success, friendship success and your happiness success. If you are Positive, people then see an upbeat air about you which leads one to interpret you being happy and Positive.

You are successful if you’re Positive Percentage is high. You have overcome the perceptions of Negativity in your life. You are upbeat because you are confident. “I can do this.” “I got this.” No, those are not mantras. I’m not into those.

One Baby Step for Positivity is One Giant Step for Happiness

Regardless of what your Negatives are, you can overcome them. Remember, Negative is a perception, an opinion. However, ALLOWING it to be a Negative on you and your life? It’s a matter of time and attitude as to what it does to you.

You may have 20 things on your lists, but can you overcome all those Negatives at once and keep them away? Some of you just said or thought, “Yes I can.” Go for it if you like. For the rest of us who have been through up and down battles with so many things in our lives, we are going to do what it takes to be a success at life.

What we are going to do is not the typical increasing your Positives, but increase your Percentage of Positives. How do we do this? By ridding our lives of the Negatives. What will this do? The first and most obvious will be making for happier, more satisfied selves. That in turn will create environments of improvement, of Positivity. With numerous people doing this and spreading the idea, you then have people focusing on Positives and on taking ownership of their being Positive and not relying on others to give them opportunities for Positivity.

You might have read books, watched videos, or even attended seminars and workshops on how to handle Negativity. Many of these options attempt to have you basically ignore the negatives of life by using meditation or various stress relief techniques as a magic pill, which they are not intended to be.

I have started meditating, but not to rid myself of negatives. I see meditation and the various stress relief techniques as maintenance tools. Do not take this as a knock against any of the mentioned techniques. They all serve their purposes for their purposes. But when people try to say this or that is the key to a successful happiness life my alarms go off and I want to tell people who get pulled into it to wake up.

The only way to a successful happiness life is you taking an active role in getting there.

We are going to do something that makes people achieve goals. We’re going to take baby steps, not giant leaps that will skip over things we need to handle. We are not going to ignore our Negatives, we are going to face them head on and then flick them off like pieces of lint in the future.

What are we going to do?

So what do I want you to do? I want you to learn to deal with the Negatives in your life, those that have happened and those that will happen. The idea of you never having Negatives again is a bit insane. And I will not even remotely tell you differently. If you ever see a method who says that, walk on by.

But here is what you can do to make your life more Positive Percentage.

By learning to handle the Negatives you have, you will be able to immediately rid yourself of the future Negatives as they come in. You will recognize them as they arrive. You will even learn how to avoid certain situations that lead to Negatives.

As you’ve gone through and made your lists you have experienced the feelings attached to those moments again. You have recalled how and when they happened and with whom they happened. Remember all of that. If you have that type of feeling in the future stop and realize what is happening, then handle it.

Don’t look for Negatives to happen. We self-fulfill a great many things in our lives and Negativity is one of them. I have told many people, many young people, “Don’t worry about something, don’t stress about something, that hasn’t happened.”

Easy to say, right? It’s how I live. I am the calm in the storm. I am the one that sits for half hour to an hour or more while others vent about the world and then give them their chill pills to bring them back down to reality land. They blow things up to monster levels when in reality they are Smurf level.

Setting an Attainable Goal

Today you will pick one negative from your Internal Negatives to rid your life of. Look at all of those you’ve held onto and decide what you think would be the easiest to get rid of. Once this happens, work on thinking that Negative through and realizing what you have ALLOWED it to do to you. Then get rid of it. Think it through. Look at it as a problem like any other problem, because in reality it is just another problem. One for the next week. No pressures here to race. Once you have that one in hand, move to the next less easy one.

Why the easiest? You want to learn how to handle Negatives. As you learn to handle each one that you perceive as being a little more Negative you will build up experience and become a pro by the time you get to that big one. If you start out with the big one first and you fail you won’t try the others. Also if that big one involves a person, you want to be prepared and confident in yourself and your abilities to face that Negative.

There is no hurry. You were doing nothing with these Negatives before, but now you will be doing something.

Ultimately you might be asking yourself why do all of this. You’ve spent a long time avoiding these parts of your life. It’s time to face them, and take back control of your happiness. Do I have Negatives in my life? Oh yeah. But they wash over me and I am cool with it. I realize what they are. I realize they are often times attempts to bring me down.

While you work on your list keep an eye out for the next part of the series Creating a Positive Environment. This is going to be an incredibly difficult thing for some to do. Again, baby steps. I am not a giant leap kind of guy, even though I may be kind of tall. By taking smaller steps, I don’t pull a muscle and get hurt. The same goes for creating a better life.

The actual next article is Live in the Now, not in the Then. The article you are in, I felt after thinking on it a bit, is too long, thus I wrote something that is shorter and to the point for those who might prefer that if you didn’t quite get something out of this one.

Much Love, Success, and Respect

Ronovan

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Letting Go so you can Go On.

Themes. I guess you could say my writing of late has a theme to it and today will be no different. A few months ago I made a conscious decision to begin writing about positivity. Oddly enough it turns out I have been writing about that since my blog began, I just didn’t realize it because of all the somewhat angst riddled poetry I was writing back then.

Yes, I can do angst well.

Six months ago I wrote an article titled Choose to Let Go. The article spoke somewhat about my amnesia and how I look at it and move on in spite of it. As I was thinking of this article for today that article came to mind and I realized how themes seem to come back around. Cyclical is what people call something like that.

I write about these things because I continue to see these things and they are everyday obstacles in my path. The difference in them being cyclical or not is how you handle them.

Cyclical means you haven’t discovered how to deal with something. I am not speaking of how every year the tornadoes come through the south here in the US. I am talking about those things you can control. Although if you don’t want to keep running for cover every year because a tornado coming . . . move.

One thing that comes up all the time for all of us is people slighting us or hurting us in some way. Hurt can mean hurt feelings, made fun of us, forgot about us in some way or anything that impacts us emotionally in a negative manner.

I was watching some interviews of professional wrestlers-I don’t actually watch matches, I watch the real person interviews about their careers, the not fake stuff part of the world, I know, I’m weird. Anyway, I noticed how so many people hate this one wrestler because of how he used to be. Since that time and for the past 13 years he has been a born again Christian and very devoted.

These people he slighted in the past, or who felt they were slighted because his career rose as theirs fell, refuse to believe who he is now, that he has changed. They want to hold on to that, well, truly childish and horrible acting person he once was. I mean he really was bad.

You can look at these people and see this hate and bitterness eating away at them. It’s in every part of them from the way they look at the camera to the way they talk and from the way the walk to the way they act in the ring. I know most of pro wrestling is scripted but the wrestlers have to act and by allowing the bitterness to remain they can’t be anything but these mean guys called heels. Even when they are good guys, baby faces, they are still not quite fully there. Then the success doesn’t come and they hate that guy who was a success even more.

So that was one example, another is as I was reading some sports clips online one was about a pro pitcher in baseball who looked at a fan calling to him. The guy blew the pitcher a kiss. The pitcher did a ‘say what’ type of face, turned around, but then turned back quick, caught the kiss and then tossed it onto the field. It was an obvious joke. Yet the writer made it out to be something bad.

That led me to wonder who spends their time, their days, looking for something they can put a negative spin on? Who makes a career of this?

People filling their lives with negativity all the time.

I was looking for that perfect verse to share today about forgiveness. There are so many in the Bible. To paraphrase a saying “if something has to be mentioned so many times there is a reason for it.” I came across a short one.

And forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.-Matthew 6:12

When I came to that verse I sat and thought for a while. That wrestler can’t make people forgive him for what he once was. But he has forgiven all those who did the same to him through the years and asked God to forgive him. His life is in a good place with a ranch, a wife, and two great kids. He’s retired from wrestling and considered a legend and perhaps one of the Top 10 wrestling entertainers ever, but he doesn’t focus on the wrestling part of his world.

He’s a dad and husband who helps home school his kids. I mean they are on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. Those who hate him are in nowhereville wrestling for noname wrestling.

I’m not saying forgiving others will bring you great things, but it will bring you great feelings. Once you let go of all of that baggage you grow taller. You grow taller in the eyes of those around you as they see something change in you. Just think about it. If you go around brooding and angry all the time, to me that means you are filled with hate and doubt and are frustrated. If you go around as though things don’t bother you, you then appear confident and people are drawn to you. People then want to be around you and work with you.

Forgive people things. Seriously. What can you do by holding onto something that can’t be changed, something that happened years ago? Let it go. You don’t even realize what those little things have done to you over the years and what they have turned you into.

Much Love, Much Success, and Much Respect to You All,

Ronovan

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