Have you ever met someone who seems to always have things go their way? They just expect a positive outcome and in turn, they usually get it. Even when things don’t work out, they don’t fret and let it ruin their day. Your general outlook can steer you in a direction without you even knowing it! Did you know that your general outlook is actually a choice? The outlook you choose can serve you or enslave you. Which one will you choose? My suggestion, choose happiness. Happy people don’t kill people.
A positive attitude will help you live longer
A group of 180 nuns from Sisters of Notre Dame were asked to keep autobiographical journals about their everyday lives, outlining their time living in a convent. These women were all born before 1917 and remained Nuns for life. The journals were not set up for eventual scientific study, just as an outlet for these women, detailing their vocation.
Five decades later a team of researchers gained access to these journals and focused on coding the entries for positive emotional content. Their question: Could their level of how positive they were as young women predict how their lives turned out? The answer is yes. A positive outlook leads to a longer life.
The nuns with more joyful content lived nearly ten years longer than the Nuns with more negative or even neutral entries. At age 85, (Growing up, they all appeared to be at least 85 years old to me.) 90 percent of the happiest quartile were still alive. Compare this to just 34 percent of the least happy quartile still living.*
*Source: The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
What can you do to be more positive?
Cognitive-behavioral therapists agree that many of these positive skills can be learned. Here are some skills that will help you, if you endeavor to adopt them.
Happiness is a choice; plain and simple. All of us have bad days but we get to choose how we act – and react – in these situations. If this isn’t easy for you, here are some steps you can try:
- Make a list – In the movie “The Ultimate life,” by Jim Stovall, they talk about the Golden List. For this exercise get a journal and write down 3 new things you are grateful for each day.
- Exercise – Exercising for 10 minutes a day. According to helpguide.org, physical activity or exercise is a natural and healthy way to induce a positive attitude.
- Meditate – Meditating for 2-3 minutes and practicing breathing in and out will help clear your mind of clutter. Research shows that you get multiple tasks done faster if you do them one at a time.
- Be Thankful – Write one quick email first thing in the morning thanking or praising a member on your team.
- Journal – Journal for 3 minutes a day on a positive experience you’ve had within the last 24 hours. This strategy can help transform you from a task-based thinker to a meaning-based thinker who looks for meaning instead of endless to-dos.
Make a case for your innocence!
In the movie Legally Blonde, Elle, played by Reese Witherspoon, is a bright young intern for a law firm that is representing a beautiful young heiress who is accused of killing her husband. In a meeting, Elle explains to her colleagues why she thinks the heiress is not guilty. She states “Brooke is a physical fitness instructor and exercising releases endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don’t kill people.”
In The Journey Training, we believe that every moment is a choice. Every choice has a cost and a benefit. If your general outlook on life is a choice, think about what everyday choices you can make to help you stay in that happy state. Happy people don’t kill people. Choose happiness! Even if it seems ridiculous, statistics show that happy people live up to 10 years longer –and chances are you won’t kill anyone, either!
I was working out in the gym when an old song came on. It was “Rocket Man” by Elton John. What really stood out was something I was feeling that morning; and quite frankly, something I’d felt much of my life. “What if they find out who I really am? I feel alone, and I don’t think anyone would understand me if they really knew me.”
This thought was really magnified after winning The Biggest Loser in 2009. As I stood on the scale and became the biggest loser in history, I wondered how long I could keep that moment – that act. People started looking at everything I ate, at my current weight, and people even thought I was rich beyond my wildest dreams.
I remember when I was a kid and answered the door to the FBI. “We need to talk to Charles Cahill.” I didn’t know what was going on. Turned out that my father gave them a shotgun that was bought with a hot check by someone else, and then sold to him for cash. After the FBI left, he admitted to me that he knew something was odd about the shotgun, and he knew it was possibly stolen, but he wanted that gun so bad that he bought it anyway. For the first time, I saw a flaw in my father that I didn’t know was there.
It took me to a time when I first met my wife. I wanted her to like me so much that I told her a few little lies to make her think I was better than I actually was – embellishments was what I’d call them. Eventually, a few of those lies would catch up to me, and I’d have to come clean.
Then I thought of my children when they were born…
How long would it be before I got knocked off that pedestal of being a hero to them?
What happens when they know the real me?
Will they still love me as much as they do now?
Will they still think of me as highly as they do now?
Here are a few of the lyrics to Rocket Man: “And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time ‘til touch down brings me round again to find I’m not the man they think I am at home. Oh no, no, no, I’m a rocket man. Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone.”
We’re often scared of those around us knowing the real us. We’re fearful that we might let everyone down…
What if they see our flaws?
What if they knew our thoughts?
Would they still love us?
Each month at The Journey Training, people find out they don’t have to carry the guilt, shame, or fear anymore. People consistently find out that others are a lot like them – hiding things about their past – their failures, their fears, their anxieties. Then they find out something even more incredible: When people find out the real you, they actually love you even more.
How long are you going to carry around those weights? Maybe it’s time you let yourself off the hook and tell yourself the truth; that even with the flaws, mistakes, and imperfections, you’re okay – perfectly imperfect! And most of all, just like the hundreds that have gone through The Journey Training, you just might find out that you’re not alone on your journey.
How will you get to your goal if you don’t create a pathway of expectations to get there? A wish isn’t enough; You need a plan.
When I was growing up, my parents and I had never had a discussion about sex. I learned about it from friends, school, magazines etc. There was never an expectation from them on it. There were no guidelines, no warnings, no expectations. I would venture to say that my sisters experienced the same lack of guidance when it came to this topic. My younger sister was pregnant when she turned 15 and had her 2nd child before she turned 18. I hope that this sheds some light on the danger of not setting clear guidelines and expectations for our kids, not only on the topic of sex and purity, but other areas of their lives as well.
I wanted to do something different, something special to set clear expectations for my kids. When my boys are 13, I plan a special trip to have some one on one father/son time. I choose something that I know they would enjoy.I do this to go over 3 specific things. I know,as a parent, there are 100’s of things I could address. However, I want my focus to be on these three things. I have a special item to give to him for each one that will serve as a memento to remind him of our discussion.
- Who do you surround yourself with? For this question, I choose a knife with his name engraved on it along with scripture. “As iron sharpens iron so does one man sharpen another”. (Proverbs 27:17) I discuss with him the importance of good friends. We talk about who the influencers are in his life. If he is the smartest in his group, who will he look to to be challenged. What will he choose to do if his friends make poor choice. Who will sharpen him? Who might cause him to become dull?
- How to achieve your goals? Focus is the key to achieve one’s goals. For this question, I choose a really NICE pair of binoculars. I show him how to use them. I have him focus on something far away. Then, without adjusting the sights, I have him look at other things. He tells me that he cannot see them because they look blurry. We talk about how hard it is to achieve a goal when we try to focus our sights on too many things. We need to focus on just one.
- Sexual purity. This subject is the tough one. I pull out a silver dollar and ask him if he would like it. He takes it as every boy does. We talk about the importance of keeping his mind pure. I explain why I work so hard to keep him from watching movies that may have sex or nudity in it because of what it can do to him as a young man. I talk to him about sex, sexual diseases and the best way to stay clear of those diseases (just in case you have not connected the dots yet, it’s abstinence). I talk to him about keeping himself pure for his bride, there would be no better wedding gift than this. I then pull out a 99.9% pure uncirculated silver American Eagle coin (we can get into all kinds of analogies about how the other coin I had given him had been handled by 100’s of people and how the new coin has not been touched, but I will let you figure that part out). I tell him that if he commits to keep himself pure that I would like to give this to him to present to his bride, or give it to his son as an heirloom.
We are given a task by God. We are admonished to “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) As parents, it is not only an expectation, but something that is absolutely necessary. What are the GREAT expectations for your kids? Do they know what they are? Our job as parents is not to raise great kids but to raise great adults.
In The Journey Training, we believe that you get what you plan for. Setting expectations is vital to reach the destination you desire. Without expectations, you may end up far from where you really wanted to be. Why not make your expectations clear – so there are no gray areas – you just might find yourself going farther than ever before.
What happened to us as we grew older? Where did all of those dreams go? There is a bible verse that says: “Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17) Let me ask you? Why didn’t it say young men will dream dreams? Why not the sons and daughters? I believe it is because it gets harder to dream the older we get. But I believe wholeheartedly that those dreams are still there in your heart – waiting to be re-ignited and awakened. We may have just forgotten how to dream!
To be able to actually visualize what you want is an important step to attaining it! Before I was on The Biggest Loser, I had to actually believe it could happen. I had to see myself as a thin and in-shape man. This might seem easy to some of you, but imagine if you weighed 460 pounds and had a 69 ½ inch stomach – AND you were 39 years old! It seemed impossible. But deep down, I knew that it wasn’t! I held on to the hope that I could achieve that dream. So I envisioned myself in shape; feeling and looking healthy again! In fact, I carried a picture of myself at 17 years old, when I felt and looked like a champion!
Without that visualization, I might as well have hung it up. In fact, a few years before I had lost that vision – and I bought more life insurance for when I would die a morbidly obese man.
One day, I closed my eyes and pictured my dream. I was thin, healthy and I was involved in something that was helping people achieve their dreams. It involved music, experiential training, and my wife Darci was involved, too. It was exciting, yet scary, to dream again! Then I wrote an entry in my journal. I wrote this:
The things I need to do to achieve my dream:
- Be a joyful and passionate man.
- Lose the weight.
- Lose the debt. (2 & 3 can be achieved by winning The Biggest Loser!)
I signed and dated it, and the path to my dreams appeared! That was a year before I made it to the cast of The Biggest Loser, and I don’t believe it was a coincidence!
You see, while on The Biggest Loser, I not only won the show and $250,000, but I was joyful and passionate! I lost all of my weight, and I lost all of my debt! And what else happened? A dream of mine from my youth, writing music, was re-ignited! Passion was breathed into me again, and in turn I wrote a song on the show called “Second Chance,” which has been played around the world and has given hope to many hopeless people! This old man dreamed dreams!
What is your dream? Can you dream again? We at The Journey Training know you can! One of our primary purposes is to re-ignite passion and dreams in people who may believe it’s simply too late!
In Arthur Greeno’s book, Dysfunctional Inspiration, He shares some amazing facts. A few are:
- Tiger Woods was three years old when he shot 48 for 9 holes of golf.
- Mozart was 8 when he wrote his first symphony.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson was 14 when he enrolled at Harvard.
- Bill Gates was 19 when he co-founded Microsoft.
- Plato was 20 when he became a student of Socrates.
- S. Truett Cathy was 25 when he and his brother Ben first started the Dwarf House, later to become Chick-fil-A.
- Joe DiMaggio was 26 when he hit safely in 56 consecutive games.
- William Shakespeare was 31 when he wrote Romeo & Juliet.
- Walt Disney was 55 when he opened Magic Kingdom.
- Dom Perignon was 60 when he first produced champagne.
- Michelangelo was 72 when he designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
- Frank Lloyd Wright was 91 when he completed his work on the Guggenheim Museum.
- Grandma Moses, America’s most well known folk artist, was in her 70’s before painting her first painting.
- Ichijifou Araya was 100 when he climbed Mount Fuji.
Still think you are too old to dream? Think again – and DREAM AGAIN!
Have you ever heard of “autopilot?”
The definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary reads as follows: A device for automatically steering ships, aircraft, and spacecraft. I’d like to add something to that definition. Here’s how I would state it: A device for automatically steering ships, aircraft, spacecraft, or person.
Think about it. We were created to be able to do things without thinking about them. This serves us well as it would be crazy to have to think “breathe in, breath out, breathe in, breath out” all of the time! And simply getting out of our chair would take a thousand different thoughts! In fact, if you are sitting down, you probably weren’t even thinking about the pressure of your weight on your buttocks sitting in your seat – but now that I mentioned it you probably can’t stop thinking about it! Why? Because you became aware of it.
As humans, we are programmed to be able to do many of life’s everyday actions without thinking about it, or by autopilot. What’s the problem with that? The problem is that we often begin to do so many things on autopilot, we don’t even know what we are doing. Let me give you an example.
Back in 1997, Darci and I had been married two years and began attending a new church. We were looking to find new friends, and sometimes that’s hard! Well, a couple at the church asked us to come over for lunch – in an hour! We had to hurry as we didn’t want to miss this opportunity! We had planned lunch with her parents, so I called them to tell them we wouldn’t be making it. The answering machine came on and I had forgotten I was even on the phone! I was asking Darci to hurry up as we didn’t want to be late, and we didn’t have time to mess around.
We had a great afternoon with friends and then went over to her parent’s house for dinner. Her father confronted me with, “I can’t believe you treat my daughter like you do. I’m really upset.” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about! Then he said, “Listen to this!” He hit play on the answering machine I had forgotten was on as I told Darci to hurry up earlier that day. It was embarrassing. I was yelling and screaming and acting like a bully! My heart didn’t mean for that to happen, but I was on autopilot and didn’t even know how I sounded! It really made me think.
Since then, I am more aware how I talk to people. Am I perfect? Of course not! But I do often catch myself when I get a little to passionate and I am able to calm down and speak in a gentler, respectful voice. I had become aware of my autopilot, just as you were when I mentioned that weight pressing down on your buttocks in your chair – oh yea…You’d gone back to autopilot, hadn’t you?
At The Journey Training, we focus on self-awareness – becoming aware of our personality, our actions, our autopilot decisions that we consistently make in our life. I can’t tell you how many people have left The Journey Training and said, “I can’t believe it. It’s like a whole new world!” When you become aware of what you do, and in turn aware of why you do what you do, then you can decide to change if you choose. This in turn can change your entire life! But until you become aware of your autopilot, you are doomed to let your ego and subconscious continue to make many of your decisions for you – even if they sabotage what you really want. So I ask you, “Who are you, anyway?” Because until you know that, you could be unable to make the best decisions for you, your family, and your life!
Isn’t it time you learned exactly who you are and started turning off the autopilot?
Let’s turn the clock back to your childhood.
Remember the house you grew up in? What did it look like? What smells were there? Did it have paint or wall paper? Did you have a backyard to play in? Where was your bedroom?
Now let’s revisit your hopes and dreams.
What was it you wanted to do? Did you want to become a veterinarian or be a musician? You may have wanted to be a teacher, astronaut, pilot or even the President of the United States! Where did those dreams and passions go?
I believe that they are still there, along with the belief that you could actually achieve them. You just left them behind – just a dream put on a shelf, just a thought you put away. The great news is that you can wake those dreams up again and on some level find success in the very things you always wanted to do! It just may not look exactly like you thought it would.
I remember being in my backyard with an old wooden tennis racket and our stockade fence. I had just watched an incredible Wimbledon Championship Tennis match between John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg. It was the most incredible match I’d ever seen. I went outside after Borg won the title and there I was, serving for the win in the final set at Wimbledon. I know, I was in my backyard – but I believed I was there – and I believed that I could do it!
I also remember being a kid and playing my sister’s guitar. I would be in the closet playing, but in my mind I was on stage in front of thousands, with TV cameras broadcasting my performance to millions, inspiring them to a better place!
It wasn’t long after that I lost those dreams to other things. One might call them diversions, but I call them life. When we are children, we know what’s right and wrong, we feel the desires in our hearts, and we don’t have the worries or hustle & bustle to take our minds off those things. We have our imagination to keep our dreams alive.
What is your dream?
What is your passion or your mission in life? Go back to those desires of your youth, couple them with what should change in the world, and you’ll come up with it! It might not be a veterinarian, but it might be volunteering at the local animal shelter. It might not be the President, but it might be the leader of your local PTA chapter. And you could find yourself helping transform your world one person at a time, beginning with fulfilling your mission in life!
So just like me you might find your purpose mixed within your childhood passions! I found myself just like Bjorn Borg, winning it all on The Biggest Loser, writing and playing music on the show, and now on an infinite speaking tour around the world with the purpose of awakening the dreams in others! Because, after all, each hardship you’ve endured in life is a stepping stone to the purpose you were created for. The first step is actually choosing to see that it lies within your heart and not somewhere in the distance.
At The Journey Training, we are passionate about helping you find your passion and purpose. The training is centered around bringing those true, innocent memories alive and starting you on a path to your purpose. Let us be a stepping stone for you!
