ROADBLOCK? TAKE A DETOUR!

Persistence and determination propelled successful people to the heights of their goals’ abundance. They didn’t see difficulties as stumbling blocks rather they saw it as stepping stones to success. They saw it as opportunities to better things. For them if a door closes they find other doors to that will open for them.

Obstacles can be very heartbreaking, they can be very overwhelming that it is easier to give up and surrender to defeat. And sometimes the universe will really test us and give us roadblocks to test our commitment to our vision. However successful people pursue and persist and just take them as lessons that can be used to overcome apparent obstructions.

Not even our well-meaning parents, relatives, friends and colleagues can tell us no and get a real job. These should not be reasons to turn our backs to our dreams. Our dreams are our real job and it is our fulfillment to achieve them. No amount of rejections and NOs should stop us to achieve our hopes and dreams.

From Fundamentals of Success:

Whenever you confront an obstacle or run into a roadblock, you need to stop and brainstorm three ways to get around, over, or through the block. For every obstacle, come up with three different strategies for handling the potential obstacle. There are any number of ways that will work, but you will find them only if you spend time looking for them. Always be solution-oriented in your thinking. Persevere until you find a way that works.

For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action.
You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

-Mary Kay Ash
Founder, Mary Kay Cosmetics

Persistence and determination alone are omnipoten.
The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

-Calvin Coolidge
Thirtieth president of the United States

KAIZEN:

A Japanese term for constant and never-ending improvement, an age old philosophy used by warriors and modern businesses. It has become a personal mantra of millions of successful people. The world is experiencing a lot of change. Technology and the way of life is a proof of this, a perfect example of this, where Filipinos have used as a necessity and a status symbol is the Cellphone!

Similar trait of our Achievers in this modern world is their ability to adapt to change, may they be in business, sports or the arts. They are committed to continual improvement. Main reason why they remain on top and continue to be the best at what they do. Of course, they’ve learned from mistakes but remained to be focused on their vision. They have checkpoints to assess and evaluate their standing; a way or a process to always get better.

So what would it take to become successful or stay successful? We need to learn to ask ourselves, “How can I make this better? How can I do it more efficiently? How can I earn more from it? How can we do this with greater Love? If we keep an open mind and heart with the answers to those it will be sure to achieve Kaizen.

We have an innate desire to endlessly learn, grow, and develop.
We want to become more than what we already are.
Once we yield to this inclination for continuous and never-ending improvement,
We lead a life of endless accomplishments and satisfaction.

-Chuck Gallozzi

People call me Perfectionist, but I’m not. I’m a “Rightist.”
I do something until it’s right, and then I move on to the next thing.

-James Cameron

UNLESS YOU SEE IT IN YOUR MIND, IT WON’T BECOME REALITY

From “8 Secrets of the Truly Rich.” By: Bo Sanchez

Deep within you, you’ve programmed your life to operate on a particular level of income and total net worth. Because this is your psychological wallet or money-comfort zone, you cant see yourself earning twice as much or becoming a millionaire. You simply can’t. Something within you says, “Are you Nuts? Me? Earn twice as much? Become a Millionaire? Hah! I might as well imagine I’m Donald Duck.”

So you stay in you money comfort zone for the rest of your life.
It affects your love life too.
More likely, you’ll subconsciously get attracted to marry someone who also has the same size as you psychological wallet. So both of you can comfortably live in that zone happily ever after.
Well, I’ve got news for you.
Do you know who set that dial of your inner financial thermostat?
You did.
So anytime you like, you too can enlarge your psychological wallet at any size you want. You can raise your money comfort zone.
How? Start with your imagination.
Imagine yourself earning double of what you’re earning now by next year – through wise investing and some side business.
That’s right. Double.
Get comfortable with that.
See yourself not spending it all, but actually saving it, learning how to invest it and seeing your money grow.
See yourself with a business on the side, aside from your fulltime job.
See yourself as an investor.

See yourself giving generously – writing large checks – addressed to Bo Sanchez for his projects for the poor and his media ministry. (as you can see, this book as ulterior motives.)
You’ve got to see it in your mind.
Each week, Bro. Mike Velarde preaches to 300,000 people in the El Shaddai prayer meeting. That figure boggles my mind. During their anniversary, a million people congregated at the Luneta Grandstand. It was the late Jaime Cardinal Sin who asked him, “Bro. Mike, what do you have that I don’t have? Why do these people come when you call them to come?”
One day, I had a three-hour chat with Bro. Mike Velarde to ask him why.
“The Grace of God.” He said over and over again.
I believe him. Last Christmas, he invited me to preach to his massive audience – and I saw it before my eyes. Three hundred thousand people receiving grace!
And Bro. Mike does it by giving them hope. That’s why they keep coming back.
Bro. Mike asks them to raise their wallets for financial blessings – and 300,000 wallets go up.
He asks those who want to migrate to other countries to raise their passports – and thousands of green booklets are up in the air.
He makes them imagine their answered prayer. That they are healed. That they are debt-free. That they are working abroad.
In a very simple way, he makes them set goals and aim for them by the power of their imagination, by the power of their faith.

Unless you see it in you mind, it won’t become reality.

FEEDBACK:

One of the dreadful things to hear is feedbacks; because of the fear of failure and not being good enough, most of the time we dodge feedbacks. I know of a man who fear so much what people say to him and would avoid and escape when the time comes to evaluate his results. Obviously this man have not matured enough and hindered his growth as a person.

Feedback can either be good or bad to us; it is our means to evaluate our growth and effect to other people. Should we use it to our advantage we can capture our patterns and work to improve from there. It is also a great way to understand another individual and know their needs and their come from. It can be a tool to change our strategy and just a way to better handle the truth.

But is all feedback accurate and true for you? We also must be careful and consider the source. Not all feedback is useful for us. We should look into the situation and the psychological state of the person giving us the feedback. A person with psychological distortion who gives us feedback may not be speaking the truth. An angry-envious-drunk friend or colleague that tells us you’re a no-good f&@$ or tells us stop dreaming coz you’re hopeless is probably not a useful feedback. Now that’s something not accurate and not useful for us. However looking at the person’s psychological capacity is something that we should consider, obviously not a good source for feedback.

As a sales person, I’ve been successful in closing projects and accounts because I listen to my customers. Their feedback tells me what they need and what I can do for them. I listen to their complaints about my product and look at it as an opportunity for improvement. It may be tiring at times but bottomline we are both happy with the benefits that we get when things are getting better.

So what do we do when somebody tells us that we failed? Look at it as another opportunity to succeed and be better. But first acknowledge yourself for the effort that you’ve done. That it was the best you could do during that time. At that moment it was the most excellent work you’ve given considering your knowledge, awareness and skills. Be aware that you are still alive and that you have survived that setback. Look at the patterns of the people giving you the feedback. Find similarities from it, journal the learning or the lessons you’ve come across with and maybe title it as “what I’ve learned are….” And just be responsible with the results of that failure. Make sure that the necessary regrets or apologies are communicated to the people involved. Honest communication would ease out the situation especially when the failure is openly communicated.

However do not forget to go back to your successes. To keep your sanity and catch yourself from depression, make sure that you remind yourself of the successes in your life. This will remind you that it is okay to fail or have mistakes because you have proved to yourself that you are capable of success. And that you’ve done more things right than the wrong ones. Spend more time with people, who are positive and share the same vision as you. May it be your friends, family or colleagues that could compensate the Love and Affirmations that you need at this point in your life.

Lastly, go back to your vision, keep in mind the lessons learned, recommit to your goals and plans or better yet incorporate a new plan of action. End of the day, move forward to fulfill your dream. We will make a lot of mistakes but what is important is we learn from them and so the next time we may not do it again… and let us not be so hard on ourselves..

FAIL YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS:

This story is about Soichiro.
He began by making piston rings. He tried selling it to Toyota but they rejected him. Business was so bad, he pawned his wife’s jewelry to keep his business afloat. After building his factory, it got burned to the ground.

What did Soichiro do? He built it again.
That was when it burned down a second time.
He built it up again.
Not long after that, an earthquake tore his factory.
He built it up a third time.
Because of the war, gas was expensive. So to go around, Soichiro used his bicycle. But he attached a little engine to it so that he didn’t have to pedal. When everyone who saw it wanted one, he knew he had a winner in his hands.

His full name is Soichiro Honda. He became the first mass producer of motorcycles.

He says:

Success can be achieved only through repeated failure. My success represents the one percent of the work that resulted from the 99 percent that was called failure…

FEAR

Those feelings that stop us from doing what we need to do. I’ve plenty of it to be honest with you. My fears come from deep rooted beginnings; and it was molded since I was a child. And I bet you’ll agree. As a child we’ve been programmed to fear a lot of things. And we have been carrying it in our present age right now.

But it makes us wonder why other people can do what we fear to do. How can they act so brave and courageous? What makes them so different from us? Sometimes we just answer like “iba sila sa akin” or “may pera sila kaya ganun.” We just let it go and kill our dreams because we could not face our fears.

But mind you those people who succeed in what they do have experienced the same fears as ours. The only difference is that they chose to face their fear and just go for it. And the fear becomes a feeling of liberation because they triumphed over what they thought was scary.

Fear can be defined as:

Fantasized
Experiences
Appearing
Real

We are in the times where fear is not at all a life-threatening consequence. Unlike millions of years ago where Cro-Magnons treat fear as a signal of threat in their lives like if a saber-tooth tiger is nearby or a wild beast is in front of them. People in this age experience fear and are being triggered by their thought or mind. Mostly we scare ourselves by fantasizing or thinking of the negative results of what we have to do. But fortunately we are also the ones who can put a stop to the fear that we are going through.

We can choose to be sensible. Rather than focusing on our negative imaginations. We can face the actual facts and bring ourselves to a state of clarity and peace. Focus on your intentions when you decide to do things, imagine what you will feel when you accomplish it. It might be frightening but just do it anyway… you’ll never know, you might be great at it!!



Reference: “The Success Principles” by: Jack Canfield

Is your Job your Passion?

How many of us Pinoys can really say that our Job is our passion? Unfortunately most of us are not really doing what we want to do. We were brought up believing that we can only improve our lives by working in a company that can provide our basic needs. But most of us don’t really Love our Job and just living our daily routine at work to get that paycheck twice a month. At the end of the day, we produce mediocre actions and mediocre results.

Surveys will show that a lot of employees are not really passionate about what they are doing in their everyday work. And if you come to ask them, they are passionate on something else. Isn’t this Self-Deception? We keep doing what we are doing, but in the end it doesn’t give us Happiness. And what does that give you? Burn-Out…

So what’s stopping us from pursuing what we like? Concerns will arise like:
“I don’t have the means to do this.”
“I will have to sacrifice a lot of things.”
“I fear that I will fail.”
“My family will disapprove.”
“I am already comfortable, I cannot let go of it.” Etc. Etc.

Successful people have undergone the same fear and challenges. But what made them successful is that they chose to go beyond those limiting and defeating thoughts. They had focus on doing what makes them happy and what gives them fulfillment in life. Success was just a consequence from their happiness.

“The Secret to Success in Life is making your vocation your vacation.”
-- Mark Twain

Successful people never get tired of doing their job, because it is their source of happiness and reward.

And so stop fooling yourself. Be honest with yourself and find that passion inside of you. Look for the thing that truly gives you fulfillment and happiness. Challenge yourself and believe that you can be successful in that passion as well. You are born to be Great and you deserve all the Greatness in Life!!!

Heal your Life

During my past jobs in the past years, I’d get colds once in a month or two. Being a workaholic really has its negative effects in our bodies. Getting sick is always a sign that there is something wrong with how our mind is functioning, or how it is operating (or sometimes we deliberately wish to get sick just to have an escape with the busy life that we are living in). We work very hard to achieve our tasks but our tasks just seem to pile up every time; leaving us with so little time to relax and take care of our body.

We might not be aware of this but the state of our mind or thinking causes our sickness or diseases.

To give you an example, Colds is a sign that our mind is experiencing too much going on at once, or we have a mental confusion or disorder. I normally get colds when I have a lot of things to accomplish in my hands. I am overwhelmed by too many projects and the anxiety of achieving all the target dates. As a result, I end up in bed feeling cranky and sore but no other choice but to lie down and get a good rest.

Yeah multitasking is a great deed but sometimes it leaves us to be unfocused with our deliverables and priorities. I am sure that most of us are juggling more than one priority in our lives and by not accomplishing all of them we end up unfulfilled and unsatisfied with ourselves. Sometimes we just have to pause and regroup to keep us on the right track.

I discovered how Great the mind is again, that it is actually the source of my disease and it can be the remedy to my dis-ease… Going back to Colds, since the cause of this is confusion and disorder in my life, I see to it that I STOP and meditate to keep me on track. I follow a mantra, that goes:

“I allow my mind to relax and be at peace. Clarity and harmony are within
me and around me.”

Once I get that relaxation, all solutions and activities to my priorities falls back in sequence and gives me sight on how to accomplish everything. Sometimes anxiety gives me a roadblock but I fight it and let all the fear stop and just focus on myself for awhile. This process doesn’t take that long, you can a lot an hour of your day to do this, and know that you deserve this time of break. And in so doing, the clarity flows through me and the struggle stops leaving me less colds every year or should it attack me I get to heal myself fastest time possible.

Here are some of the common diseases that we experience, its cause and how you can help heal yourself by the power of your mind or simply changing your mental pattern:


Stomach Problems:
Probable cause: the stomach is the entity of the body that holds nourishment and digesting ideas. Problems arises in this area when there is dread, fear of the new, the inability to assimilate the new.
New thought pattern: I digest life with ease. Life agrees with me. I assimilate the new every moment of every day. All is well.

Teeth Problems:
Probable cause: represents decisions. Longstanding indecisiveness. Inability to break down ideas for analysis and decisions.
New thought pattern: I make my decisions based on the principles of truth, and I rest securely knowing that only Right Action is taking place in my life.

Blood Pressure:
Probable cause: Represents joy in the body, flowing freely
HIGH: Longstanding emotional problem not solved.
LOW: Lack of Love as a child. Defeatism. What’s the use; it won’t work anyway.
New thought pattern:
HIGH: I joyously release the past. I am at peace.
LOW: I now choose to live in the ever-joyous NOW. My life is JOY.

Heart: Represents the center of love and security.
Probable cause:
PROBLEMS: Longstanding emotional problems. Lack of joy, hardening of the heart. Belief in strain and stress.
ATTACK: Squeezing all the joy out of the heart in favor of money or position, etc.
New thought pattern:
PROBLEMS: Joy, Joy. Joy. I lovingly allow joy to flow through my mind and body and experience.
ATTACK: I bring Joy back to the center of my heart. I express love to all.

Addictions:
Probable cause: Running from the self. Fear. Not knowing how to love the self.
New thought pattern: I now discover how wonderful I am, I choose to love and enjoy myself.

Cancer:
Probable cause: Deep hurt. Longstanding resentment. Deep secret or grief eating away at the self. Carrying hatreds. What’s the use.
New thought pattern: I lovingly forgive and release all of the past. I choose to fill my world with joy. I love and approve myself.

Venereal Disease:
Probable cause: Sexual guilt. Need for punishment. Belief that the genitals are sinful or dirty. Abusing another.
New thought pattern: I lovingly and joyously accept my sexuality and its expression. I accept only thoughts that support me and make me feel good.

Think your day in Advance!

Did you ever watch your colleagues at work about how they start their day? People watching has always been an entertainment for me (..mind you, it’s a great form of amusement especially when coworkers play pretend early in the morning..) and I get a good kick for the laughs that they give me.

I remember this colleague of mine who’s very quirky and gets to be so OC (Organized Chaos, not Obsessive Complusive) in the early stages of the morning. you’d find him rushing sometimes at the start of the day setting up his laptop in his desk, and in a minute he’ll be going through all the files in his desk and as if he found the file that he needed, he’ll leave them where he picked them up and then go to the pantry to get his coffee… When he goes back to his chair, he’ll pick-up the newspaper and starts reading the “entertainment” section. After which, he’d open his internet explorer and browses through his Friendster account, hotmail, yahoo mail…and then opens up his MS Outlook, browsing through his emails… and then finally gets his planner and then writes down his To Do List... and by the time he starts his first task for the day, its almost Lunch Break… And I think to myself “WOW!” What a way to be Organized and Productive!! NOT!! (I’m sure you’d think I wasn’t productive as well coz I just watched the whole morning.. well that was part of my plan for the day… I planned to have fun …)

But you see it is such a waste of time, not only for the person doing it but you are robbing the company of time and production as well! (I’m a Manager, I’m concerned about the company, Not!!! Well I’m concerned about the figures and the pressure to deliver them on time.. that’s for the company too…)

So this guy is supposedly a support for our team and clearly he supports me on getting my laughs everyday. But then again, seriously speaking, the goals of the company will not be met with this kind of time management. Tendencies will be the deliverables will not be given on time. I’m sure you’ve witnessed a lot of people in your work area who pretend that they are busy to seem that they are working hard. But looking at it objectively they didn’t do squat.

What I normally do when a day comes is that, I visualize my TO Dos the night before. What clothes to wear for the next day, what tasks to accomplish and achieve for the next day. What would be very effective is before you close your eyes and doze off to sleep is to write down your To Do List and rank them in terms of priorities; targeting the most difficult task first thing in the morning so that everything else will be peanuts for you for the rest of the day.

And as you do this, you will notice that your day becomes smooth and easy. We’d be more productive and efficient that it gives us more fulfillment and happiness for the day.

But don’t get me wrong I PRETEND as well, usually nearing the end of the day where I flip through my files pretending to read them, but actually just having fun putting them from one place to another and just return them to where they previously are. Or pretend to call for a meeting but just gossiping and talking about each other’s life. You see I have the luxury to do this because my major tasks for the day have been accomplished already…

So think in advance… gather your thoughts, organize your actions in your head for the next day and as you wake up and prepare for the day, you are already programmed to accomplish what you want …

Reversed Paranoia

Paranoia, those disturbed thoughts that are lurking in our minds, the feeling of anxiety and the excessive emotions of fear. Did it ever occur to you that at some point in your life (or I hope to God that its not every point in your life..) you have felt these emotions? That you feel the people around you is plotting something against you or to do you harm? Suddenly your life seems to suck and appears to leave in a awful end? Most probably (or not, if you are not human..) you might have been in this kind of dump at some point or another…

What if we try to reverse that thinking? To try to think that the anxiety we feel will lead us to a better end? Imagine how much easier it would be once we think that those people who try to plot against us or the negative circumstances will be just become instruments to make us achieve something better? Suddenly, those obstacles that we face are not seen as another “Oh, this is a crappy life” but we’d see them as opportunities to grow, to change and to succeed.

Was there a part of your past that you think you failed but because of that situation it opened another door for you or has become a blessing because it gave you a new opportunity to run after what you like?

One of the most tragic parts of my life was when I worked in a local IT company and the President was clearly not happy about me, did not trust me enough and didn’t believe that I can accomplish my functions. I was martyrishly (is that even a word?) working long hours and still have to study when I reach home, and just for the President to make me feel that I wasn’t good enough. I was really unhappy and after a year I decided to resign without a security of a new job.

But that circumstance gave me a new opportunity to do something that I do like. It gave me a chance to travel other countries (which I was dreaming to do) and have the best vacation of my life. And when I finally spent my last money, I decided to come back to the Philippines and work again. Guess what? Found a new job and it gave me better compensations and a lot of room for growth. Now that company opened a lot of doors for me because till my position now, I am using the experience, the knowledge and the network that I’ve gained.

That a*s of a President was really a blessing in disguise because he gave me a push to reassess what I want to do in my life… Honestly speaking I wanted to hate him till my dying days but how he became an instrument in my life, I Super Duper Love Him!!!

And so kids, we have a choice to become “inversely paranoid.” No matter how we dislike a person or a circumstance, let us be paranoid that they can become instruments for our greater being. We can treat every negative event in our lives that it can give us equal benefits in the long run… (let me share you a secret, this is how those little people with big successes thinks, clever aren’t they?)

i've always been the opposite of paranoid.
i operate as if everyone is part of a plot to
enhance my well-being...

--stan dale

The 18/ 40/ 60 Rule:

Have you ever heard of this rule? Well again, stumbled into another chapter of a book (that I’ll be recommending soon once I’m done with it…) and it gives me a laugh because I find it funny at the same time so painfully true…

It goes something like; when we were 18 we worry too much about what other people thinks of us, and so we do the dumbest things (or not do what we like) just to fit in and appear to be cool; and when we reach 40, we don’t give a damn what anybody will think of us; then we reach 60, where we find out and realize that nobody’s been thinking about us at all. tragic...

Funny isn’t it? I think I might have been in that kind of crap when I was younger and, ok ok, most of the time, frankly because I wanted to please my boss, my company, my family, my friends and maintain a reputable status in society. We become very self-conscious, very restricting and watch ourselves all the time coz we don’t want the people around us to think otherwise and destroy the reputation that we’ve built.

(say it with me) its becoming so tiring already and sometimes we just want to scream and shout, dance the silly chicken dance, and laugh out loud and not to give a damn about what other people will think!! And just be who we really think we are, the way we should be…

But this might come as a surprise for you, people around us doesn’t really think of other people that much because they are also busy worrying about what other people will think about them…

Of course we pass on judgments, we build impressions toward people the way we see them.. and these people also build judgments and impressions towards us that we don’t like.. and we in turn pass again judgments and impressions towards people that we don’t like.. and people that we don’t like pass judgments and impressions towards us…. and if they are really thinking about you at all..they are wondering what you are thinking about them… Ya dah..ya dah..ya dah.. see its a freakin vicious cycle and we are all caught up in it…

So why do we keep allowing ourselves get tangled up in that dumb cycle, where if we look at the results, it is not even giving us any good results. It is really a big waste of time.. and it is not helping us achieve the goals that we intend…

I have been adopting a very simple saying, a motto if you will and I am gonna write it down in my slum book, together with my crushes, favorite color, favorite food, what do I want to be when I grow up, etc.. etc… and it goes something like:

“WHAT OTHERS THINK ABOUT ME IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS..”

Let’s think about it, we waste time worrying what other people think about us and jeopardizing what we really want, sacrificing our happiness, disregarding what really matters in our lives… where we can make ourselves busy by thinking about how do we achieve our goals, how do we hit that target, how else we can attain a bigger sale, how we can be able to get that guitar lessons, how we can add our skill set.. and basically how do we become successful doing what we really like…

Besides trying to please and patronizing other people is way so NOT cool anymore and in this new generation, people wants REAL people… that’s why reality TV is such a HIT.. get it?

E + R = O

Event + Response = Outcome



Basically what this formula presents us is that in whatever (O)utcome we experience in life are the results of our (R )esponses to the (E)vents that are presented to us. may it be success or failure, wealth or poverty, health or illness, intimacy or estrangement, joy or frustration, negative or positive.

Sound simple enough? I have come to encounter this formula from a man that I admire, Mr. Jack Canfield and in a way simplified my way of looking at how we go through in life. It tells us that everything we experience today is the result of the choices and decisions we have made in the past.

So how do we respond to an unlikely, annoying, difficult, oppressing or maddening event that befalls you? In normal circumstances we’d complain, blame, fight, sulk or self-destruct. And eventually hating or harbor ill feelings toward the incident. So how de we avoid this catastrophes in our lives? The formula would lead us to assess our responses, simply watch our responses and change it to lead to the outcome that we want.

This formula merely teaches us to be responsible for our own lives, to change whatever we have control over. Change our thinking, change our communication, change what we imagine and see in our head, and change our behavior. Change the conditioned responses that we have built since our early years.

And so we have to give up Blaming, we have to give up Complaining because most often than not we blame and complain to the wrong person. If we look at it closely, we allowed that circumstance to effect in our lives. And there is no one to blame but ourselves.

We are responsible for our lives; we either create or allow everything to happen to us. Our actions or inactions give us the results of where we are now. Sometimes we do not choose to act because it could be very uncomfortable to us. We fear risks, inconvenience, loss of security, confrontations because it’s uncomfortable. But successful people face uncomfortable circumstances head on to achieve the outcomes that they want. Successful people don’t wait for disasters to happen and then blame something or someone else for the bad result.

Once we start to decide to act and choose how to respond, we have to keep in mind the result that we want in life. We have to focus on what is important to us and what would really matter at the end of the day. And when we do we begin to feel great, there is the fulfillment that we can make things happen and that we are in control. Life becomes much easier for us.

The bottom line is we are in charge of our lives. We are the one who is creating our lives. The lives we currently live are the results of our past actions and thoughts. We are in charge of our current thoughts and present feelings. We are in charge of what we say and what we do. We are in charge of what is going on in our minds. Our actions are under our control. To achieve the results that we want, all we have to do is act in ways that produces more of what we want.

Its that simple….

all blame is a waste of time. no matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you.

--wayne dyer