Life Is A Journey. Enjoy The Experience.

Living A Determined Life Reveals The Best Within Us 

As you embark upon your own Project You Life Journey, here is a wonderful, motivating thought to keep in mind: some of the best days of your life have not yet happened. These will come when you start Living A Determined Life. 

Now, isn't this a great reason to get your Project You Life Journey underway right away? 

As Marianne Williamson says, "The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best which is within us."

Your attitudes will exert tremendous control over your life. A positive attitude can be a very powerful force driving you toward your dreams and goals along your Project Your Life Journey path. A negative attitude, however, is also a powerful force, one that will work against you as long as it remains in place.

As you embark and continue on your Project You Life Journey, remember to be grateful to the people who assist you on your way, and to those who make you happy. These are the wonderful gardeners in our lives who make our souls blossom. The least we can do is to express our gratitude in return. 

After all, our hearts radiate an electromagnetic field affecting the moods, attitudes, emotions, and feelings of each person we encounter and interact with, whether we are conscious of this or not. As such, our souls would like us to radiate positive, optimistic, helpful, encouraging, and loving vibes to our fellow human beings, so that more of humanity can know and experience greater levels of satisfaction, happiness and contentedness.

And lastly, remember that, in the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done." 

As such, the only true judge of your life and the path you take can be yourself.

As you now delve deeper into the core concepts of Living A Determined Life, let your life be a true reflection of all that is beautiful within you, as you leverage these concepts to give birth to the best that is within you. 

This article is partially excerpted from the Amazon best-selling personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available now in paperback and Kindle formats.  

Have An Attitude Of Gratitude

Being Grateful is Self-Rewarding and Creates A Less Stressful Life

The phrase have an attitude of gratitude has practically become trite. But until a better phrase comes along, it is certainly one worth adhering to. 

George Horace Lorimer, the editor-in-chief of The Saturday Evening Post for over 35 years, had a great philosophy about gratitude: "It is good to have money and the things money can buy, but it is good too to check up once in awhile and make sure that you have not lost the things money cannot buy."

Today, many people, particularly in the New Age thinking of spiritual and personal self development, advocate that we each undertake a daily ritual of gratitude identification by asking ourselves:

What or who inspired me today?

What or who brought happiness to me today?

What or who brought comfort, peace or love to me today and how did they do so?

Being thankful and grateful for the acts of kindness ─ both great and small ─ that you receive throughout each day is a self-rewarding and less stressful way to travel your path. 

Expressing your gratitude with sincerity to those who have given you something and who have helped to ease your journey during the course of each day will be appreciated by those others while simultaneously adding to your own karmic bank.  

This concludes our short series of blog posts on gratitude. We hope they have sparked many thoughts and ideas on how you can commit to making 2016 your personal Year of Gratitude. Please let us know how your gratitude journey progresses throughout the year. 

This article has been partially excerpted from the Amazon best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in both paperback and Kindle formats. 

Express Your Gratitude Formally and Informally

A Key Component of Gratitude Is Expressing This To Others 

Gratitude on the micro, day-to-day interaction level is equally important in achieving satisfaction and contentment along your life journey. 

One of the laws of the universe clearly seems to be that the more grateful you are for the people and little things in your life, the more people and little things will come your way to be grateful for. 

Here is how a few motivational speakers have defined this concept over the years:

There is no better opportunity to receive more than to be thankful for what you already have. Thanksgiving opens the windows of opportunity for ideas to flow your way. ~Jim Rohn

The more you recognize and express gratitude for the things you have, the more things you will have to express gratitude for. ~Zig Ziglar

Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life. ~Christiane Northrup

Like the ability to expertly tell a joke, being able to express gratitude (on a more micro level) is becoming a lost skill. 

Too few people stop to say thanks any more, either formally or informally. People will dash off an email to voice a complaint, yet few will take the time to be courteous with a single note of thanks.

Perhaps because expressions of personal gratitude are so rare, especially formal written ones, they are even more greatly appreciated by recipients. 

In reality, it takes so little effort to sincerely say thank you to everyone who does something for you. 

This is probably one of the easiest habits to form, and yet we somehow let opportunities slip past us, and others to be handled with unfelt, insincere utterances of "thanks" rather than a robust, and heart-felt "THANK YOU."

As William Arthur Ward, the author of Fountains of Faith and one of the most quoted writers of inspirational maxims wrote, "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." 

As you continue to make 2016 your personal Year of Gratitude, remember that a key component of sincere gratitude is expressing this to others, both formally and informally.

Please share other ideas you have in the comments section below. Thank You! 

This article is partially excerpted from our best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available today in paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon. 

Create Your Gratitude List

Tips for making Gratitude a present condition and state of mind

Here's an exercise you should do at least twice a year ── get a sheet of paper and list all of the things for which you are grateful. This should be things, people, events, emotions, feelings, and thoughts that you are truly grateful for today.

If you write something in the past tense, edit it into the present tense. For instance, rather than being grateful for the great family vacation you had last year, write that you are grateful for the wonderful memories you have of that vacation and the deeper bonds and love between family members that abounds today as a result.

Likewise, instead of writing that you are grateful for the excellent advice of your mentors and teachers over the years, write that you are grateful for the opportunities you have today to put their advice and lessons to use.

Gratitude should be a present condition and state of mind. 

Too many people express gratitude in the past tense and then do not bring their gratitude with them into their experiences and interactions today. 

Being happy and thankful about past experiences is fine, but the fact is you live in the present and the chances of Living A Determined Life in the future are not great if you do not start with an abundance of gratitude today.

This should be a macro-level list, such as you are thankful for:

a)     having (name of person/s) in my life

b)     my specific talents in _______________ and being able to use these talents in pursuit of _______________

c)      my fitness level (if appropriate)

d)     my health status (if appropriate)

e)     my opportunities to contribute to the causes / community concerns that I am passionate about (list these)

f)       the challenges and opportunities given to me in my roles as mother/father, sister/brother, spouse, partner, grandparent, etc.

g)     my desire and willingness to start Living A Determined Life

Your gratitude list should be at least ten items long. 

If you cannot find ten macro-level things you are grateful for, come back to this exercise after you have read and contemplated chapters 5-9 of Project You: Living A Determined Life. 

A re-reading and internalization of the two previous blog posts on attitude may also help. 

We wrote earlier about making 2016 Your Personal Year of Gratitude. Knowing what you are grateful for, and ensuring that these are written in the present tense, will help you achieve this goal. 

Kindly share other ideas you have for creating Gratitude Lists in the comments below, as we'll be most grateful! 

This article is partially excerpted from the Amazon best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life. Get your copy today in paperback or Kindle formats at Amazon. 

Gratitude Produces The Most Contented and Happiest People

Being Grateful Increases Personal Peace and Satisfaction 

It is interesting to observe that the most contented and happiest people are those who fully embrace both their good and bad experiences. Such people know and understand that the hurdles, problems and even the awful events they have experienced were all important and crucial aspects of their personal journeys.

As spiritual beings temporarily trapped in the human form our purpose in this life is to experience what is needed for our spirits, the spirits of others, and indeed the universe, to grow and expand. 

At different points in our respective life journeys, each of these spiritual needs will be experienced and fulfilled (but not always in ways that our mental and emotional selves desire).

It is important to understand that your life experiences are for your spiritual growth, not your human, mental, or emotional growth. 

When you fully grasp this concept, it is a whole lot easier to have gratitude for everything life throws at you, rather than just the things, events and people your human aspect considers good.

At a macro level the more you are honestly and deeply grateful for: a) being alive, and b) the experiences you have at each particular point along your own path, then the more satisfied and at peace you will be when it is time for you to pass beyond this particular world. 

This article is partially excerpted from the Amazon best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life. Get your copy now in Kindle or paperback format at Amazon. 

Make 2016 Your Personal Year of Gratitude

Be Truly Appreciative and Thankful Has Many Benefits 

Throughout the ages, philosophers, thinkers, gurus, sages, and leaders of every spiritual and religious tradition have taught that the cultivation of gratitude is a key to experiencing deeper levels of fulfillment, self esteem, well being and authentic happiness on an individual level.

Gratitude has also long been seen as necessary for creating a more robust, friendly, co-operative society on a tribal or collective level.

In fact, some thinkers have put gratitude at the top of their attitude lists, including these two:

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others. ~Marcus Cicero

Of all the attitudes we can acquire, surely the attitude of gratitude is the most important and by far the most life changing. ~Zig Ziglar

Whether it is first or not, gratitude will certainly unlock your character and create more fullness in your life.

Gratitude, from a Project You Life Journey approach, takes place on two levels: 

a) the macro view of being thankful for the opportunity of life, and 

b) at the micro, day-to-day dealings with people.

Gratitude is not simply being thankful or feeling blessed for the positive events in your life and for the range of happy and satisfied emotions you feel. 

Rather, it is about being truly appreciative and thankful for being given the opportunity to experience this world as a living, breathing, thinking, and feeling sentient being.

As we are only mid-way into January, it's not too late for all of us to make a commitment to make 2016 your Year of Gratitude. Feel free to share your ideas on how to do this in the comments section below. (We'll be most grateful!) 

This article is partially excerpted from the Amazon best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life, which is available in paperback and Kindle formats.