10 Weeks to Love and Abundance

Hey there everybody and welcome to this presentation on my book 10 Weeks to Love and Abundance. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. The ebook for 10 Weeks to Love in Abundance is available on Kindle or you can purchase the PDF for $1.99 at docsnipes.com books each chapter in this book starts out with a self assessment and provides five activities per week. So I kind of it up so you could do Monday through Friday and then have the weekends off and the goal is to help you apply each of the ten principles of Love in order to reduce stress, improve your health, and use your energy to nurture what is most important in your rich and meaningful life. Now the 10 principles we're going to talk about are Patience, enjoyment, Respect, forgiveness, earnestness, compassion, truthfulness, selflessness, Meekness, and endurance. And we're going to talk about each one of those individually in this presentation. I designed this book so it could be used for a variety of reasons. You can use it for individual self improvement to enhance your personal love and abundance. You can use it for family strengthening because each chapter has activities and journaling prompts or discussion prompts. You can use it for team building at work because it's not so personal that it's not something that you would want to use in the in the work environment. Or you could even use it for community building through your church, at a community center, or at the library. Let's start out by talking about what is abundance. Abundance and is creating a rich and meaningful life. It doesn't necessarily mean being wealthy, so to speak. It means knowing that you will always be able to get your needs met and create a life that is fulfilling. Now I have needs in bold and italicized for a reason. We could want a yacht. We could want a mansion. We could want a lot of things. But is that a need? Abundance is a mindset in which we are content once we have our needs met. Now if we have extra stuff, that's great, but our stress level is not dependent upon having all of the extras. So let's think about how each of these principles creates abundance. Patience when you are patient, you spend less energy getting stressed out and irritable because things aren't happening fast enough. When you're patient, you tend to be more methodical in what you're doing so you don't rush through and make mistakes and waste a bunch of energy having to do it over again. And when you're patient with others, you tend to hold on to less resentment and get less stressed out by their Behaviors because you have more compassion for them. So you nurture those relationships. You actually enhance those relationships by being patient instead of critical or irritable. Enjoyment creates abundance because, hey, guess what? You are enjoying your life. You are looking around and you're actually picking up your head and noticing the things that are good. Yeah, some things may be crappy, but you're also noticing some of the things that are good in your life, which can help you feel more abundant and more fulfilled. Respect for yourself and others helps create abundance, because if you respect yourself, you are going to maintain your boundaries. You are going to do what is necessary to take care of yourself so you can be there physically and emotionally for others. When you respect others, you are respecting their boundaries and you are giving them the kindness and compassion that you would expect from them. So you're modeling this behavior that you expect in return, and that goes a long way to creating healthy relationships. Forgiveness. And that kind of goes along with patience, but it's a little bit more. We can be patient and not forgiving, which you know isn't great, but when we are patient and forgiving, forgiveness is a power play. Forgiveness says, you know what? I don't like what you did. I don't like your behavior. However, I am not going to allow it to take my energy anymore. I am going to say what's done is done. I am going to learn from it and I am going to move forward. I am not going to keep letting you steal my energy because I am holding on to and nurturing resentments. Earnestness means dedication. Basically, when you do things earnestly, you really focus on one thing in the moment. You act in a way that shows people that you have integrity, compassion. Well, of course, when we are compassionate with ourself and with others, it's likely going to help create abundance because it's going to create happier, healthier relationships. And those relationships, those people, become our support, become resources in our life that we can lean on when we need to, which helps us with abundance so we don't have to do it all on our own. We actually have a support system. Truthfulness and authenticity, which means being truthful with yourself as well as others. Well, it's going to be a lot easier to create healthy, productive relationships when you are honest with others about your wants, needs, thoughts and feelings. When you're truthful, you're not spending as much time trying to remember your lies and keeping everything straight. And when you are truthful with others about what you need and you live authentically, then you're more able to get your needs met. When you get your needs met, that contributes to your abundance. That fills up your love stores, if you will. Selflessness is recognizing other people's achievements. Selflessness is getting out of your own ego and recognizing what other people contribute to random acts of kindness. Doing things that are kind and compassionate, not because you want attention for it or approval for it, but because it's the right thing to do and you do things literally out of the goodness of your heart. Meekness means being humble and recognizing that you can't do everything and you can't control everything. And acknowledging that other people have talents that you don't have. Well, you can synergize. Then when you see them as someone to synergize with instead of somebody to compete with, it uses a lot less energy and it strengthens your resources because now you have somebody who can complement the skills and tools you already have. And endurance. Endurance means keeping going when the going gets tough. And it can be challenging sometimes to keep going. But endurance means you're going to keep putting one foot in front of the other and being courageous and doing the next right thing, even when it's not 100% comfortable. And that shows people that you have integrity. That shows people that you're being truthful and authentic. And a lot of times when you're enduring something, your support system rallies around you so you don't have to endure it alone. There's a preparatory exercise in the beginning of the book that encourages you to create a vision of what life, what a life of love and abundance looks like for you. And you're given some writing prompts to start defining your goals. Because when you're thinking about a life of love and abundance, when you're going through these different activities, you're going to regularly ask yourself, how would doing this help me become or create the life that I am hoping for? This life that's rich and meaningful and abundant? Chapter one focuses on developing patience. Patience conserves energy that used to be wasted nurturing anger or being impatient. It improves blood pressure and blood sugar regulation due to lower levels of your stress hormones. It improves health due to lower oxidative stress. You make fewer mistakes when you take your time. It helps you spread your energy around to all of the things that are important to you. You have improved concentration, improved relationships and work product. When you have more energy and focus and you're less irritable, it improves your self esteem. Because you focus on progress and not perfection. You don't get impatient to get done with it. You focus on and enjoy getting each step done and doing it well so you can look back with on it and be proud of what you've done. It improves your self confidence because by taking your time, you're able to do it right the first time and make fewer mistakes. It reduces emotional turmoil when others don't behave the way you want them to. When you can be patient with other people, it saves a lot of energy. You improve your relationships because you're less critical, more supportive and more empathetic. And it enhances compassion when you step back and try to view situations from the other person's perspective, when you try to be patient and see their point of view. A Patient Self Assessment Patience means tolerating delays and enduring provocation without responding with anger, which triggers your stress response. So think of three examples when you've had to wait for something and you were anxious or impatient, did anxiety and impatience make them happen any sooner? Think of three examples when something was hard and you wanted to give up because you didn't get it right immediately. That was calculus for me. Did impatience make it any easier to get through it? Did it help you get through it any faster? How did anxiety and impatience impact your sleep, appetite, pain, health, mood, attitude and relationships while you waited or while you struggled to get through something? And how would that have been different had you have been? Would you have been more patient? Strategies for Developing Patience and these are the daily activities and you're given meditation, journaling, discussion prompts for each. Define what patience looks like Beta testing, which means breathe, evaluate the situation, think about what your options are and then act tentatively so you're going to finally make a decision and start moving forward. Set micro goals, practice empathy and perspective taking and finally on Friday, radically accept what is going on and use your distress tolerance skills. Now if you don't not familiar with those, those are thoughts that are empowering and distress tolerant activities that can help distract you or help you feel better. Guided imagery and sensations Patience can help you cope with things that are out of your control and slow down to improve your effectiveness. Patience with yourself Improve self esteem Patience with others improves relationships Patience helps you more effectively use your energy to change the things you can. Sounds kind of like serenity, doesn't it? And effectiveness, self esteem and healthy relationships are all resources that can help you create that life of abundance. In chapter two we start talking about enjoying the moment. Part of a mindset of love and abundance is being mindful of enjoying and being grateful for all of the things that you have in the moment. When you pay attention to the things that you do have instead of always focusing on what you lack, you often start feeling more supported. Content and encouraged. Positive feelings when you have them cause the release of relaxation and happy chemicals which will help further reduce stress and improve energy. So your Self Assessment for Enjoyment how much time do you spend living in the future and dreaming about how you'll be happy one day? Make a list of things that you enjoy or are important to you in the present. How much of them do you miss because you're living in the future? You're so busy daydreaming about things that you miss the good things that are happening right under your nose. How will you feel in the future about missing out on those things? Strategies for enjoying the moment include mindfulness and purposeful action, developing an attitude of gratitude, taking optimism breaks, practicing hardiness, which means identifying all of the things that you're committed to, focusing on addressing the things that you can control, and viewing issues as challenges instead of barriers, and finally, assumptions and jealousy. It's hard to enjoy the moment when you are making assumptions about what other people think, feel or want, so enjoying the moment also pertains to getting the facts in order to reduce unnecessary stress. It's natural to be more aware of threats. That's just the way you're wired because your body wants to survive. Your brain can be trained to also recognize the good things and help you create balance. Though instead of being in a perpetual state of saying I will be happy when switch to just saying I will be happy right now. In chapter three, we start talking about respect for ourselves as well as others. To create a life of abundance and love, it's necessary to be respectful of yourself and others and recognize both the similarities and differences between you. It's also necessary to develop self respect for your strengths and your individuality. Instead of constantly judging yourself against other people and thinking how you should be, try to be the best version of you. Everybody has different experiences which have shaped their beliefs, behaviors and reactions. And people also have different temperaments, preferences, and even love languages. So how much happier would you be if instead of judging people for having different thoughts than you, you just accepted their perceptions are their reality and their reactions and behaviors make sense to them through their lens. You don't have to agree with them because you've got different experiences, but respect means accepting their beliefs and reactions are valid for them. Respect Self Assessment do you say things to yourself you would never say to anyone else? That's do you hold yourself to a standard higher than you would hold other people to what makes a person deserving of respect? Are you that type of person? What does respect actually look like in your mind? And do you regularly give respect to yourself and others? Strategies for Developing Respect Self Talk Positive, empowering, and constructive self talk can help you start being more respectful of yourself. And when you use that to talk to yourself, you're also likely going to use that when you talk to other people. Ditch Conditional love Conditional love is loving somebody for what they do. Separate what they do from who they are. You may not like their behaviors, or you may love their behaviors, but they are human beings. Love them unconditionally, and then you can choose whether you like or dislike their behaviors. Be assertive People cannot meet your needs if they don't know what they are. So it's important to be assertive in communicating what your thoughts, wants and needs are. Explore alternate explanations when somebody is irritable or does something that you don't like, try to think about it from their perspective and explore other reasons why they may have acted or reacted that way. And the Golden Rule do unto others as you want done unto you. That is kind of the epitome of respect. When you're respectful of yourself and others, you accept personal responsibility for your life. You feel worthy and others view you as worthy. You value yourself enough to make healthy choices and feel empowered to follow your values and maintain your own boundaries. This helps you feel happier, healthier, more self confident. You're better able to see other people's perspectives and respect them, and you strengthen your relationship with people who can support and nurture you when you're respectful. In chapter four, we start talking about forgiveness. Guilt, anger and resentment are Guess what? The opposite of forgiveness. Guilt is anger at yourself for things that you did that you think you shouldn't have done, or things you didn't do that you think you should have done. Now guilt is overblown in our society because a lot of times guilt is used to manipulate people. So it's important to look at your guilt and and evaluate Is this accurate guilt? Is this something that I need to learn from and do differently the next time, or am I putting undue pressure on myself? Anger and resentment often occur when people do something that makes you feel unsafe or rejected. Forgiveness involves accepting that nobody's perfect. It doesn't mean that you agree with or condone the situation, but you're choosing to stop using your energy to either beat yourself up or dwell on resentment, and instead you're using that energy to move toward the people, things and experiences that are important in your life. Your forgiveness. Self assessment. Make a list of all of the things you feel guilty about or regret. And then make another list of all your resentments. This helps you start getting an idea about what you might need to think about. Forgiving. What were you taught about guilt and forgiveness when you were growing up? What parts of those lessons, when you look back on them now, were correct and what parts were wrong and why? A lot of times we are taught things when we're growing up and we never actually critically think about them when we get older. Think about them now. Are the things that you're telling yourself accurate or not? What were you taught about resentment, anger and forgiveness? And again, what part of those lessons were right? What parts were wrong, and why do you believe that now? What are you afraid might happen if you forgive yourself? And what are you afraid might happen if you forgive others? And I know that is a really big topic. Forgiveness strategies the four R's of forgiveness. This is where you start with, where you start responsibility. Taking responsibility for your thoughts, actions and behaviors if you did something wrong. Expressing remorse, rectifying it, Releasing the hurt and anger. Learn from it to enhance safety. You know, when you are, when you forgive somebody again, it doesn't mean that what they did was okay. So it's important to say, all right, I don't like that behavior and I don't want to experience that again. I'm not going to continue to hold on to it and dwell on it, but I'm going to learn from it so it doesn't happen again. Consider whether it was really about you. Sometimes people do things and it's more about them and their stuff. They, well, whatever. You'll think about it more in the book. Recognize that people do the best they can with the tools they have at any given time. Most people don't get up in the morning and say, hey, I want to be a screw up today. You know, they're doing the best they can. They may be stressed out. They may not have the skills or tools. They may be sick. There's a lot of reasons. And it's important when you are evaluating their actions to take that into account and finally create a guilt bill of rights. And this is where you start evaluating all of those things that you feel guilty for, like taking a break or relaxing sometimes and evaluating, you know, is this something that I quote, should feel guilty for? And a lot of times the answer is going to be no. So on one side you're going to talk about what you feel guilty about, and on the other side of the Bill of Rights. You're going to say, I have the right to relax, I have the right to take time out for me, or whatever it is for you. So again, there are discussion, writing and meditation prompts in this chapter as well. Guilt, anger, and resentment can suck up a lot of energy. These emotions are designed to tell you to check something may be wrong and if there is, do something about it. Don't sit there and just nurture the negativity and the stress. Your body is dumping hormones and blood sugar to give you energy to fix the situation, not dwell on it. Chapter five We Start Talking about Earnestness when you're earnest in what you do, you are laser focused. You're mindful of one thing in the moment, giving it your full attention to prevent making mistakes. So patience and earnestness often kind of go hand in hand. This dedication to what you do is an act of integrity, and it tells people that when you make a commitment, you give it your all, whether it's work in relationships or even the way you take care of your physical health. When you are earnest in all that you do and true to your word, people see you as a trustworthy person and are more likely to be willing to help and support you. Think about it. Do you want to help or work with someone who is undependable, unpredictable, and not true to their word? Probably not your earnestness Self Assessment do you give your full attention to the things that are important to you, or are you always multitasking? Are you content with just getting it done, barely passing? Or if you decide to do something, do you give it your full attention and strive to do it the best that you possibly can? Think about your five most important relationships. How many of those do you regularly dedicate time and focus your attention on? You know, so how are you earnest in your relationships? And what does it look like to be earnest or dedicated and focused in your relationships? What kind of behaviors would someone who's dedicated in their relationships do? Strategies to Develop Earnestness Focus on one thing in the moment. So stop multitasking. Enhance your motivation. It can be difficult to keep going and plugging along, so motivation is going to come up repeatedly. Know your mission and vision. What is your mission in life? Where do you see yourself going? What does that life that's rich and meaningful and abundant look like to you? And how is what you're doing helping you move toward that vision and helping you fulfill your mission? Make mindful decisions. You know, it's too easy to say yes really easily without thinking about whether you've got enough time, or whether it's a good use of your energy. So when people ask you to do something, or before you do something, think about, is this a good use of my energy to help me continue to move forward on my journey? Is it going to help me stay focused on my journey, or is it going to be a distraction? And finally, visualize success and reward. Regularly step back and think about what abundance looks like for you and recognize the parts of it that you already have. Developing a support system that can help you become abundant requires dedication, integrity, earnestness, whatever you want to call it. When you give your very best, people respect the effort and are often more likely to show you the same in return. In chapter six, we move on to talking about compassion. Compassion, by his very definition, reduces suffering in yourself and others. So we keep going back to self and others. What you do for yourself shows people how you should be treated. But what you do for yourself, you're also more likely to do for others. A lot of people will show compassion for other people and not themselves. So it's important to show compassion, respect, integrity, all that stuff to yourself as well as others. Compassion motivates pro social behavior. It improves your health by acting as a buffer to anger and stress. It improves your relationships because you're less likely to get irritated and hold on and nurture resentments about things. It expands your awareness of commonalities with others. When you're compassionate, you can step back and go, I can imagine what that must be like, I'm a parent too, or whatever. It increases your understanding of how you impact your environment and those around you, and how your environment and those around you impact you. Your compassion Self assessment. When you wake up and feel tired or sick, do you have compassion for yourself or do you tell yourself it's no excuse and you just need to suck it up and move on? How does it impact your mood, your attitude, your efficiency and effectiveness? If you're sucking it up and pretending that there's nothing wrong, when you make a mistake, do you accept it as a learning experience or beat yourself up for being imperfect? If you beat yourself up, how does that impact you? If you accept it as a learning experience, how does that impact you? What's the difference? When others are having a bad day, do you cut them some slack or do you hold them to task? When you hold them to task, what does it communicate to them? How does it impact your relationships with them and with others who know them? So if you are holding somebody to task and they just can't do it and you know you're kind of being a taskmaster. Not only is it probably causing problems because you're not showing compassion to them, you're not being empathetic. But others who know them are seeing this interaction and going, wow, that person really doesn't have much compassion. Strategies for Compassion Practicing the Loving Kindness Meditation One of my favorite meditations. Empathy always it doesn't mean you have to love it, but empathy means walking in a person's shoes so you can at least get an idea of where they're coming from. The third activity what would you say to a friend? A lot of times we are much more demanding and critical of ourselves than we are of anybody else. So if you are being uncompassionate with yourself, stop and say, is this something I would say to a friend? And if not, what would I say to them if they were in a similar situation? Silence the Shoulds Shoulds tend to cause a lot of problems. They lead to guilt. They lead to anger and resentment. So silence the should in order to develop compassion. What can you do? What will you do? And develop? Emotional intelligence, the ability to be empathetic with others, and the ability to recognize and regulate your own emotions. In chapter seven, we move on to truthfulness with others and authenticity, or truthfulness with ourselves. Being truthful requires a whole lot less energy than lying. We don't have to keep stories straight. We don't have to come up with something. Being truthful strengthens your relationships, which means more support and resources, and it creates more abundance. Being truthful or authentic with yourself means knowing your thoughts, wants, and needs and living in a way that's responsive to those needs. When you're truthful with others about your thoughts, wants, and needs, then you're more likely to get your needs met. If you expect mind reading, you're going to be out of luck. And if you don't tell them truthfully what you need and want, they don't know, so they can't be expected to meet those needs. Being truthful may not always be fun in the present moment, but it saves a lot of energy in the long run. Your Truthfulness Self Assessment do you tell the truth to the best of your ability, or do you use half truths to manipulate people or try to avoid getting in trouble? Are you honest with yourself about your thoughts, wants, and needs, and do you regularly check in with yourself to figure out what you need? Do you ignore your thoughts, wants, and needs and try to be whatever everyone else wants you to be? Or do you live in ways that are true or authentic to yourself. So often we're raised in environments where we're taught that we're supposed to be chameleons. We're supposed to do what others want us to do and not check in to see whether that is authentic and and meeting our own needs. And it's really important to recognize what your needs are and then make educated decisions about where and when you're going to compromise on those things. Do you expect others to know what your thoughts, wants and needs are? Or are you open and honest about them? Strategies for Authenticity Start with mindful self awareness. You can't be truthful if you're not aware of what's going on. So being aware of your thoughts, wants and needs, being aware of what's going on will be the first step. Second step is self esteem enhancement to reduce fear of rejection. When you start becoming authentic and quit being a chameleon and agreeing with everybody, even if deep down inside you don't really agree, you may hit some bumps in your relationships initially. And it's important to recognize and validate your thoughts, wants and needs and feel okay being you and not require other people to constantly validate you and tell you that they agree with you. It's okay to have differences of opinion. Activity 3 People pleasing and Authenticity Moving from being a people pleaser and always yes ing people to living authentically and setting and maintaining boundaries. Developing authentic supports is the next activity that helps you start looking at your relationships and becoming more authentic with the people that are important in your life so those people can be more supportive and you can be more supportive of them. And then practicing the pause before you say yes, stopping, you know, kind of goes back to beta testing. Breathe. Evaluate what's going on. Think about your options and then act tentatively. Developing truthfulness and authenticity can help you recognize and get your needs met and strengthen your relationship with yourself and others. In chapter eight, we start talking about selflessness. So this would be the end of the second month of going through this. So hopefully there have been a lot of changes by now. Being selfless helps you identify and connect with others. It doesn't mean being a doormat when you are not acting out of pride or for a desire to be noticed. It helps keep your ego in check. Authenticity and selflessness may seem at odds with each other. However, when you're authentic and you make sure you get your needs met, then you're healthier and have more energy to do things for others so they actually work. Being authentic helps you have the energy where you can be Selfless. You do have energy to give. When you can be compassionate and of service to others, then they are often eager to return that favor. Your selflessness. Self assessment. Even if you're not having the best day, do you try to at least be kind to others? Do you notice and acknowledge the people stocking the shelves at the store? Or are you so caught up in your own stuff that you don't even really notice them? If someone seems to be struggling to pay their bill, do you even consider helping them to the extent possible? Now, you may not be able to afford it, and that's cool, I totally understand that. But if you can, do you even consider paying it forward? Do you make a point of taking care of yourself so you can be as supportive and helpful as possible to other people? And finally, how do you feel when someone acts selflessly towards you and think about when they do that? How you feel? How awesome would that be to help other people feel that way? Strategies for selflessness Random acts of kindness. It's one of the easiest ones. You know, pick up trash, feed the stray cat, whatever you're doing. Activity 2 remembering and really ingraining in your mind that self care is is not selfish. Self care gives you the energy so you can do those random acts of kindness. Be compassionate and selfless. Notice and celebrate other people's achievements. Get out of your own head. It's not all about me, me, me all the time. And being selfless means being happy for somebody else. Even if they got the promotion you wanted. Being happy for them is being selfless. And that also helps you recognize that, you know, there are other opportunities. Develop an abundance mentality, which means recognizing that there's plenty to go around. There are plenty of jobs, you know, maybe not at this particular agency. Maybe there's only four slots available for the job you want. But there are other agencies with similar jobs, so there's plenty of jobs. There are plenty of opportunities, and an abundance mentality focuses on what we need to have that rich and meaningful life to get our needs met and recognizing how abundant and how blessed we are when we actually have our needs met. And, you know, not even going beyond that to where we are getting all of our wants met and practicing awareness of your environment. Selflessness encourages you to take care of yourself and set healthy boundaries so you can consistently be present and helpful to other people. Selflessness is not people pleasing. When you are selfless, you care for others not because you need their approval, but because you have the desire and energy to proactively enhance other people's or environmental abundance. Chapter 9 focuses on meekness and it's similar to selflessness, but takes it a step further. A little bit of a different direction. Meekness can be thought of as humility, which allows you to acknowledge that you don't know everything, and it creates curiosity that motivates you to learn and seek out others with complementary strengths. Instead of seeing them as threats, you see them as assets. You see them as people that you can synergize with. When you're not in competition with others and you celebrate other people's successes, it strengthens your teams and your supports. They are happy to be around you, they're happy to help you, and it creates a feeling of love. Meekness helps you learn to tolerate not always being in control, which means it's easier to handle change. When you're meek, you recognize that you don't control everything, so you're able to step back and take a breath and go, okay, well, I'm going to let that one go by because I can't control it. Humility makes you more relatable and creates a safer environment for people to be authentic. If you're not always being flamboyantly egocentric, if you're not being boastful a lot of the time, then people feel more comfortable. Comfortable being real around you, being authentic around you because they see that you are real and authentic. Your Meekness Self Assessment Think about which of the following statements is true for you. I am willing to face things I don't like about myself. That requires some humility. When something goes wrong, I know it must be other people's fault. Not so humble. I get upset when my achievements are not acknowledged. When I do something well, I always focus on how it benefits me. Getting attention from others is important to me. Other people have very little that they can actually teach me. I have difficulty accepting advice from other people. I generally have a good idea about the things I do well, but I'm less aware of my weaknesses. And when presented with ideas that are different than my own, I often feel attacked or threatened. So obviously, with the exception of number one, all of the other things, if you said yes to any of those, those are an indication where you may be not so meek. Strategies for Meekness Giving credit where credit is due. You know, what did people do to help you get to where you're at? You know, yes, you may have been the one that, you know, went to the gym and went to practice every day and whatever, but was it only you out there on the football field? Or did you have an entire team and did you have coaches and did you have, you know, parents who were supportive of you while you learned your skills growing up? So meekness means not taking the credit, all the credit for something that's a success, but recognizing everybody that contributed. Seek feedback without defensiveness. People who are meek are willing to admit that they don't know everything, they can't control everything, and they're willing to ask for help. It doesn't mean they're being weak, it means that they are being humble. Be open to learning from everything and everyone. Everybody can teach you something, either about what you want to do or you don't want to do or about yourself. But if you start paying attention, you will recognize that some of the children and cashiers at the grocery store and whatever actually do have things to teach. You do have life lessons. Maybe not in their words, but maybe in their behaviors. Accept the things you cannot change and seek out awe inspiring experiences. When you seek out awe inspiring experiences, it makes you feel smaller. Meeker and I've used the example before of a football player by the name of Emmett Smith, who played football at the University of Florida when I was there. And watching him run is just mesmerizing. And I think, you know, I would never be able to do that. How incredible are the gifts that, that he has? But it helps me recognize that, you know, I have my strengths that are, you know, very good. However, you know, other people also have other strengths, and the world is not all about me. In a society of abundance, people don't worry about being the first, the best, the strongest, the brightest, because they recognize there's plenty to go around. By becoming aware, curious, grateful and humble, you open yourself up to learning more, connecting with others, and more effectively using your skills and gifts to create abundance. And finally, in chapter 10, we're going to talk about exuberance. Being exuberant in the way you live your life and desire to try to learn from others and from hardships can help you gain knowledge and resources to achieve your life of abundance. So go at it with enthusiasm. Exuberance or enthusiasm also triggers the release of positive brain chemicals like dopamine and norepinephrine that help with motivation and energy. And becoming an exuberant may require a change to your mindset, seeing challenges and opportunities instead of barriers and hardships. Hunter S. Thompson once said, life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly Used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride that is exuberance. So for your exuberant self assessment, when you think about life, is it in shades of gray or is it in rich, inspiring colors? Which emotion words are you more likely to use? Words like okay, fine, or words like amazing, thrilled, or devastated? When faced with something that seems difficult, do you dread it or are you excited by the challenge? When bad things happen, do you feel hopeless, helpless and unhappy, or unhappy but determined? Do you get excited about the things only when they're perfect? Or do you celebrate progress? And the key word here is celebrate. And do you cheerlead and encourage others as well as yourself? Strategies for developing exuberance Be a survivor. And there's actually several good songs that are called, you know, I'm a Survivor that you can find that can be empowering. But being a survivor, not a victim. Seeing ways that you have championed an unfortunate event instead of focusing on the ways the event negatively impacted you. Seeing the positives and the progress instead of waiting for perfection and always seeing the negatives or the imperfections. Choose the right goals to get what you want and the right, right rewards to help you stay motivated. If you are doing something, if you have a goal that is helping you move towards your rich and meaningful, abundant life, then that's exciting and you look at it with anticipation. And the right rewards help keep you moving forward even when you kind of hit a headwind. Get encouragement and support that can help you get your exuberance going again. If you start feeling worn out and finally spend some time living life through the eyes of a child, whether it's your inner child or you've got a child, you can go hang out with kids, look through, look at life with exuberance, with awe and wonder, and they're fascinated. I remember going to the museum with my son and this wasn't just once. This was, you know, every time we went to the museum for the period of about six years and I would be plumb exhausted by the time we left because he would just zip through there and everything was so exciting. And I mean, his enthusiasm was palpable and it was contagious. It was thrilling to see him so happy. But wow, was he exuberant. Exuberance can help you release some of that norepinephrine and dopamine. That will help you get and stay motivated. Exuberance is contagious. If you're enthusiastic about something, then the other people on your team or in your family are also probably going to get a little bit more exuberant. At least exuberance doesn't mean being toxically positive. It means leaning into or embracing challenges as opportunities and reveling in successes and what currently is.