My Riffs

The bible says it is more blessed to give than receive. From experience it feels a lot better to give than receive. The world needs more people giving and less people taking.

Today is really all we have. Planning for the future is of utmost important but not at the expense of neglecting today. The best way to live is as if today is your last day. 

It's easy to see what's wrong with others and try to fix them. But it's generally not a good idea. We're better off fixing ourselves. We likely have enough to fix within ourselves that we shouldn't waste time fixing others. The best fix for others is to simply love them.

Giving your peace away is voluntary. People can't truly rob us of our peace. We give it away far too easily.

If you’ve been thinking of doing something, just do it. Tomorrow is no guarantee. So just do it. If it’s good, adds value or brings joy, do it. 

Why delay saying the things we will regret having not said? If you appreciate someone, tell them today. There's no benefit in delaying. We never know how many opportunities we have left to say the things we want to say. So just say it, don't delay.

Living life in a hurry is a sure way to miss life itself.

Two are better than one. Two can do more than then sum of one plus one. So join up with a good person or two and you will be able to accomplish much more than just yourself.

It's so easy to point out where someone is doing wrong. Why not point out what they're doing right though? Most times that will do more than pointing out wrong. Do you let someone continue to make mistakes when you can help? No, but pointing out the better way likely helps moreso than pointing out what they're doing wrong. When you tell someone they're wrong, that doesn't leave them much, but when you point out a better way it gives them something to work with.

If you have health you have a lot. Rich people without health have very little. The wealth in your bank account doesn't mean much when you don't have good health. And sometimes the wealth in your bank account can't buy you good health. So if you have health, you have a lot!!!

We live in the information overload age. But information alone doesn't make people smarter. Information  has become difficult to trust or even know what's true. Learning to parse information is where intelligence can be found. If you can learn to find good information you live in a good time. If you’re unable to filter information you may live in the worst of times. This is exactly how very bad ideas can become “viral”. Technology takes things to market much faster, its expanse is worldwide and bad ideas travel fast. The best “fact checker” is you. Become your own fact checker. Find better information and use it to fact check. Don’t just allow yourself to be told what’s correct and incorrect. It seems the official fact checkers are really just agenda pushers.

Kindness doesn’t always come easy. It’s not necessarily even the natural response. We may need to train ourselves to be kind. But being kind may be the greatest thing we can be. Kindness accomplishes so much more than force can. If you’re unsure of what you want to be, just be kind. That’s one of the best aims there are. 

Doing the right thing always pays off. But doing the right thing is often more difficult. So many take shortcuts and do the wrong thing. So why do the right thing when it’s harder? You do the right thing because doing harder things makes you better. And doing the right thing is always the correct choice. 

Be an example to others. Humans naturally imitate each other. We need more people being a good example, because the behaviour is contagious. Being the best version of ourself is sometimes the best thing we can do for other people.

Don’t you love those people who find the good in everything? I’m talking about the people who have wisdom and life experience and are able to elevate and uplift every situation and circumstance. They’ve learned that every hardship is the birth of something good. And they’re able to convey that to others. The world needs more people like that. We all can work to be one of the people who always see the good side of things and help others do the same. 

Not everything has an edit button. Some mistakes are undoable. Some mistakes work out best simply by owning them and doing whatever possible to rectify. Mistakes are inevitable and some come with longer and larger consequences. But owning them is really what determines the outcome. The mistake doesn't have to determine the outcome, the reaction does.

How often do we come to conclusions without all the evidence? Probably very often. Learning to reserve judgement is a skillset of the wise.

The greatest builders in our world are words. We create our world by the words we speak. The words we speak turn the thoughts in our head into some form of reality. So we can’t be careful enough to what we say. We are literally building our reality when we speak. We can speak doom or we can speak victory into our own lives. This is why we have to surround ourselves with people who believe in us.

Yesterday was Remembrance Day in Canada. It reminded me that we want selective memories. We want to remember certain things and purposely forgot others. Bad memories tend to cling but they’re the ones we need to train ourselves to let go of. Remember the good and remember what others have done before you to help you. Forget the wrongs that have been done to you. 

Who you are is so much more important than what you do. People usually ask what you do but that doesn’t tell much about who you are. A job is a job. It shouldn’t be an identity or your identity will be shallow. 

Ego gets in the way. It’s best to leave your ego far behind you. As soon as you think you’re something, you set yourself up for a big fall. 

There’s lots of ways to get it done. Don’t get so stuck on one certain way. Most journeys in life won’t go exactly as planned. Be open to new paths opening. 

Forcing someone to do something doesn’t teach must. Getting them motivated to do it from their own free will is the right way to do it. 

Too many yeses means you will be forced to say no to many things. Yeses have to be chosen wisely. No is likely something we don't say enough of. We have to say no to protect our most important yeses.

The more you say it, the truer it becomes.

If you feed it it will grow. If you starve it it will die. Am I feeding the right things or the wrong things? Am I starving the right things or the right things?

Figure out what you're for. We often know what we are against but a strong for is more powerful than being against anything.

It's never too late. To apologize, to learn a new skill, to go somewhere new, to fix something that's broken... Doing good even if it's late is still the right thing to do.