Suzan Svatek

What is holding you back from achieving your dreams? Is it a hard pill to swallow to think that YOU are the only thing between you and your dreams? “Don’t complain, Don’t Explain,” Wayne Dyer. Besides your Creator, Source, God, whatever title you are comfortable with, YOU are the only one you ultimately answer to. Therefore, YOU are the one who determines your destiny.

To achieve it, you first have to dream it. You must have a burning desire for your dreams. Do you live your life making excuses for why you cannot achieve your dreams? Take a moment and think about what your excuses are. Are you fearful of failing? Are you harboring any of the 9 Negative Emotions:

1. Fear
2. Jealousy
3. Hatred
4. Revenge
5. Greed
6. Superstition
7. Anger
8. Lack
9. Victim Mentality

Living your life with these emotions is an assurance that you will live your life making excuses and never achieving your dreams. These negative emotions, if you are using them as excuses, will make you a bitter person, holding dreams inside that are never fulfilled.

“Don’t believe everything you think,” Wayne Dyer

What would your life look like if you couldn’t use these excuses? Would you feel truly free? When you begin to realize that, why wouldn’t you choose to eliminate excuses? Go into your imagination and dream about the life you would create for yourself if you could have anything you wanted. After you have captured that thought completely, how does it feel? Stay with the feeling. That feeling is what you can call on whenever you begin to make excuses about why you cannot do something, to pull yourself back to the reality you wish to create.

How do you continuously reinforce this new way of thinking? Talking to your subconscious. Your conscious mind is dumb as a rock. It only regurgitates back to you what you have memorized. Your subconscious is the smart one and that is what guides your every thought. Therefore, wouldn’t it make sense to tap into your subconscious and change what you don’t want? Change all those thoughts and feelings that just seem to pop up out of nowhere and are not constructive.

You must do things that make you at peace in order to tap into your subconscious. Before you go to sleep each night review your positive affirmations instead of reviewing what went wrong during the day, or conjure up one of the 9 negative emotions. By implanting positives into your subconscious at night, you’ll have 8 or so hours to recycle those thoughts through your subconscious so that during the day, your subconscious will return only positives.

Making excuses instead of creating dreams is self-destructive. Excuses keep us stuck. Breaking lose from excuses free us to reach our dreams and become the people we wish to be.

With the rat race we live in, it is difficult to think about how to make OURSELVES happy, much less how to help others feel good about themselves. We rush through our days without taking even a moment to stop and relax.

However, focusing on helping others feel good is actually a wonderful way to improve our own lives, that of our community, as well as society in general.

Martin Luther King, Jr. so wisely stated, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’” Mark Twain has his own slant on it saying, “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”

In fact, helping others feel good reverses feelings of isolation, helplessness, and depression, and boosts your immune system. When you are kind to others, your own feelings of optimism, emotional resilience, self-worth and joy are enhanced.

Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of training at the Sedona Training Associates explains why helping others feel good goes to the core of our being:

“The reason we feel good when we’re kind to others is because love is our basic nature and taking these type of actions gives us an excuse to love. In fact, the more you give and the more you love, the better you feel.

If you recognize that giving without wanting anything back in return — and expressing the love that you are with the people around you — always gives you more than you appear to be giving away, this tends to motivate you to want to do this more and more.

So love and give and do with abandon. You’ll find the more you give without wanting anything back in return and the more you go out of your way to make others feel good the richer and happier you’ll be.”

You are probably wondering, exactly WHAT can I do to help others feel good? Here are some simple actions you can take today!

1. Get to know your neighbors and share with them. We have a neighbor who picks up our newspaper at the end of our driveway every morning, and brings it close to the house. In turn, we help him repair his lawn equipment and do odd jobs for him. It brings joy to our lives to have such a neighbor, and in return, helps him feel good.

2. Demonstrate love to those around you. Showing love, even to strangers, is possible and in doing so can infinitely boost their spirits. Simple things like buying a bag of groceries for a homeless person, or sharing advice or a few words of kindness with someone in a letter or email can make a difference in their world.

3. An unexpected compliments. Give a warm, sincere compliment and brighten someone’s day.

4. Be a Volunteer. You cannot give a better gift than giving of yourself. There are numerous homeless shelters, or be a Big Brother or Big Sister to a youngster. Choose from the numerous organizations you feel are worthwhile and give of your time.

5. Service to Others. Bring a co-worker, or your mate a cup of coffee if they are having a hard day. Be aware of those around you and their challenges. Give moral support.

6. Have an attitude of gratitude. Be grateful for everything and everyone around you. Show or express that gratitude in small caring gestures. Your attitude of gratitude will reflect in your interactions with others and in turn, help them feel good about their lives.

7. Practice true compassion. We are all different, with different likes and dislikes, values, judgments, and opinions. Even though someone may have a different way of viewing life, it is in our best interest, as well as theirs to listen to, and understand them. We don’t necessarily have to agree with everything, but accepting and understanding each other leaves each of you feeling good about yourselves. Your compassion and understanding will be an inspiration to others.

To help others feel good is actually a way of helping YOU feel good about yourself. Just a little caring, sharing, compassion, and love goes a long way for anyone around you needing a little boost. Even without seeking it out, your actions will return great rewards in the form of loving, caring relationships.