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A Better Start to the New Year

As you initiate three positive acts daily, you start feeling better about yourself

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How would you like to increase the positive vibes in your life for 2023? Here’s a simple way: perform three acts of goodness a day. They don’t have to be the traditional help-the-old-lady across-the-street kind of activities. You could pick up a piece of litter. You could return change to the clerk who overpaid you. You could compliment someone who appears to be in need of a compliment.

Three is a decent target, it’s attainable: not over doing it, and not under doing it. In choosing to do three, however, often you’ll find yourself doing more.

Rewire Your Brain

Studies suggest that your brain is wired to focus on negative input, i.e. a “negativity bias.” It’s your built-in survival mechanism to notice danger so that you can protect yourself. This hypersensitivity to what’s wrong in your environment, however, can wreak havoc on your state of mind, your motivation, your energy.

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Deliberately choosing to focus on positive action can literally shift how you relate to the world in ways that are more uplifting, more inspiring, more positive. For example, focusing on world hunger can often leave you feeling helpless, overwhelmed and constricted. Alternately, focusing on the noble efforts being made to alleviate hunger can leave you inspired, open-hearted, and motivated to action. In short, you are reprogramming negativity bias, and it works!

As you initiate three acts, you start feeling better about yourself, and perhaps surprisingly, better about the world in general. You know the old axiom, if you smile at somebody they tend to smile back at you. If you perform three good acts daily, you tend to be immersed in a world of people who perform good acts. You begin to notice them more often.

A Distinct, Current Benefit

I’m not saying to do this because it’s some kind of pay-it-forward scheme where, hopefully, one day everyone is engaged in wonderful acts for one another. That seems too idealistic to consider.

In your own life, right now, however, right here, three acts a day does wonderful things for your psyche. It confirms the goodness that is inherent within you. It prompts you to look forward to performing the next act and the next and the next.

What you focus on expands. You’ve probably heard this before and research backs this up. Where you place your attention is a conscious choice and intentionally focusing on positivity helps you cultivate a mindset that supports taking positive action. Think about it… once you start thinking about that new car you want, you’ll often start seeing that car everywhere! In the same way, when focusing on goodness, you begin to see goodness everywhere.

Everything to Gain

You primarily experience the world emotionally. You see, taste, touch or hear something and your emotions are triggered, whether positive, negative or neutral.

“Positive emotions broaden [our] scope of attention, cognition and action, and build physical, intellectual and social resources,” says Barbara Fredrickson, a leading happiness researcher at the University of North Carolina

By focusing on goodness, thereby generating good-feeling emotions, we are intentionally creating a positive emotional environment. Cultivating this positive emotional state has ripple effects in every area of our lives. Buying coffee for the stranger behind you makes you feel good; then you take this positive emotional state into your next activity.

Repetitive positivity filters into your being, down to the cellular level and helps to cultivate a positive emotional state. I wouldn’t be surprised if your step becomes a little lighter, your smile a little brighter, and your disposition more engaging.

Building a Skill

Learning to focus your attention on where it serves you best requires intentional practice. You are building the skill of deliberately creating the mindset required for a joyful life. It’s training your attention on goodness so that positivity becomes your default setting.

Sustaining that intention to focus on goodness in action is key. If you want to live a happier life, I invite you to practice this kind of consistent mental and emotional discipline to continually overcome your brain’s negative bias.

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Jeff Davidson is the world's only holder of the title "The Work-Life Balance Expert®" as awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He is the premier thought leader on work-life balance, integration, and harmony. Jeff speaks to organizations that seek to enhance their overall productivity by improving the effectiveness of their people. He is the author of Breathing Space, Simpler Living, Dial it Down, and Everyday Project Management. Visit www.BreathingSpace.com for more information on Jeff's keynote speeches and seminars, including: Managing the Pace with Grace® * Achieving Work-Life Balance™ * Managing Information and Communication Overload®



 
 
 

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Life

Give Thanks and Carry On

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, if you can

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Thanksgiving: that joyous time of the year when families get together, have a wonderful dinner, catch up on what everyone other is doing, give thanks for all that they have, and perhaps watch some football.

Up for the Challenge?

This Thanksgiving might prove to be a challenge for many people. For one, the cost of the turkey, the bird traditionally served, in some locals cost between 50% to 80% more than last year, and turkey was already expensive.

Among your relatives a few might be vegans or vegetarians. If you have a vegan enforcer in the family, this person will rail on and on against eating meat, and about how turkeys have lives just like we do.

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One of your vegan or vegetarian relatives might offer a discourse on how cranberries should be harvested a different way, the dangers of turkey stuffing, and the problem with vegetables that you might be serving, the risk of having too many starches – potatoes or rice – and the evils of wine, beer, and other alcoholic drinks.

Topics Worth Avoiding

The politics to consider abound. Since roughly half of the country votes Democrat and half votes Republican, the odds are overwhelming that you’re going to have somebody with opposing politics at the table. During Trump’s years as president, many families had to navigate around the topic of the presidency, prevailing policies. and so on.

Today, while there’s no question that Joe Biden is completely inane as leader, the same delicate navigation needs to occur. As miraculous as this might seem, some on the left actually approve of what Biden has been doing. Note: don’t be concerned about the Bidens going hungry. With all those under-the-table payment from Ukraine and China, they can EASILY afford a huge, expensive turkey with all of the trimmings.

If you can avoid discussing the eight million invaders illegally crossing our borders, rampant inflation, the U.S. Afghanistan withdrawal, the crisis in Israel and potential for World War III, drag time story hour for children, transgenderism, the bogus lawsuits against Donald Trump, the unending crimes of Hunter Biden, the payola to Joe Biden, FBI corruption, the historic unpopularity and ineptness of Kamala Harris, and about 30 or so other topics, your dinner should go smoothly. Enjoy!

A huge current wrinkle on the political scene is that recent surveys reveal at least one-quarter of Democrats actually approve of Hamas, atrocities and all, and side with Palestine on all issues large and small. They believe that Israel is an apartheid state and that Jews are today’s Nazis. Apparently they’ve never visited Israel and have no Jewish friends.

Depending on how many Democrats attend your Thanksgiving gathering, if it’s four or more, mathematically speaking you have a decent chance that one is a pro-Hamas Democrat. Wooo…  Now, you really have to stay clear of current issues or your dinner table might be as inflamed verbally as the Middle East is with armaments.

Insufferable Stuffing

After everyone is stuffed with turkey, vegeburgers, or whatever the people who like rabbit food eat, you might sit in the den and turn on a football game. Quickly, you’ll have a stark reminder of how far political correctness has infected society.

If the Washington Commanders are playing, it’s hard to forget that they used to be called the Washington Redskins until the wokesters among us demanded that the name must be changed. Not so ironically, 90% of native Americans actually want the name Washington Redskins reinstalled, and currently are petitioning for it.

In baseball, the Cleveland Indians “had” to be renamed to the Cleveland Guardians. Potentially, there’s no end of this malarkey. Should the Minnesota Vikings change their name? After all, people from Scandinavia might object to the term “Vikings.” While we’re at it, consider college basketball. The Wake Forest University Demon Deacons are due for a name change, if you’re on the Left. So, too, the Duke University Blue Devils, the Arizona University Aztecs, and on and on.

Landmines to Side Step

With all these potential land mines to side step, and all the ways that otherwise pleasant conversations on a pleasant day could occur, you have to be on guard.

Nevertheless, I wish you and yours a happy Thanksgiving. May you survive the day, fully intact, and ready to have a decent Black Friday.

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Military

Biden Boondoggles Imperil the U.S. and the World

The Biden Administration is the picture of futility and incompetence, mixed with corruption and persecution of its political opponents

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On my last day following a long sojourn abroad, I met a wonderful woman from North Dallas, had dinner with her, and memorized her email address.

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When I arrived home the next day, I emailed her to see if she had had a decent trip back. A couple of minutes later, my email bounced back to me as undeliverable. Realizing my mistake of failing to write down her email address or the spelling of her last name, over several weeks I tried numerous alternative methods at length for finding that information, but with no success.

I had not handled it right and I could not later correct the mistake. You’ve long heard the phrase by the late, legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” I would add, will you have the opportunity to correct the damage done or even to try again?

Macro Level Bungles

It’s hard to even imagine the frustration and problems for all of us considering the never-ending missteps we watch every day from our president!

Biden and company have engaged in macro-level failures for nearly three years now. Their repeated failures to take early appropriate steps, domestically and internationally, has had serious ramifications for the nation and the world.

In chain-like fashion, their ineptness, unintentional and intentional, has spun out of control and led to one unpalatable situation after another. Then they spend untold labor hours and multi-billions of dollars, not to mention American lives, seeking to correct what they could not get right in the first place.

The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan caused the loss of American lives and $85 billion dollars worth of military equipment to the Taliban. This ‘gift’ is ultimately finding its way to our enemies throughout the region and, arguably, globally. It also has signaled to the rest of the world, particularly Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, that American military effectiveness is questionable.

As a result of not adequately planning the withdrawal from Afghanistan, as President Trump had already outlined, the Biden Administration has been scrambling ever since. Following our Afghanistan withdrawal Russia’s invasion of Ukraine under a false pretext, and the resulting multi-billions we have spent propping up Ukraine, are major unfortunate results.

Middle East Madness

Another result of our ineptness is the spate of attacks, now several dozen, on U.S. Armed Forces throughout the Middle East following the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel.

China’s forays into the Middle East and its support of Iran further imperil Israel and, by extension, the U.S. In considering the Biden Administration, China is emboldened. They are in partnership with Russia ostensibly for one reason: to hasten our declining power. They have ramped up spying on us via “weather balloons,” university “research centers,” exchange “students,” industrial spying, and, of late, the influx of more than 17,000 Chinese nationals at our southern border – all single men of military age.

Because the Biden Administration intentionally has not secured the southern border it has subjected American citizens to crime, fentanyl addiction, and massive numbers of deaths, as well as bursting federal, state, and municipal budgets in the attempt to house, feed, and safeguard swarming numbers of illegal immigrants.

Biden’s porous border policies have invited terrorists, weakened any notion of U.S. homeland security, heightened child trafficking, accelerated drug cartel activity, and aided gang-related connections throughout our county.

Poor Planning, Execution and Follow Up

Across the board, in examining the policies and programs of the Biden Administration and how poorly they’ve been designed and initiated, it is now apparent that everything they do today represents one attempted, hopeless ‘correction’ after another.

These attempted corrections are long drawn out, invariably with no end in sight. Whether it is on the world stage or domestically, each boondoggle after another leads to protracted, expensive, questionable attempts to resolve what didn’t need to occur in the first place.

It is not an exaggeration: the entire Biden Administration is the picture of futility and incompetence, mixed with corruption and persecution of its political opponents. This is no way to run a country or display to the world how an effective representative republic operates. It is no way to deter our enemies from taking bold steps. It is no way to guide us safely into the future.

Indeed, the entire world is now less safe.

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