As I get older, I value patience more and more. Ironically, people have always remarked about my patience. They pointed to the fact that I am always willing to repeat my words, and everything takes more time, more energy, and more focus.  While this is true, I never saw myself as a patient person. I was always in a hurry.  When I am alone, I drive fast in my wheelchair.  My brain is always going at 100 miles per hour. I love the big city.

This year, one of the habits that I value more is patience. The value that I get out of patience is that time makes a situation less reliant on emotions and more reliant on logic. In order to take direct action, you need to be more considerate. 

I was working on a marketing project and I was disappointed by the results. My first instinct was to try something different right away. I had a lot of emotions and excitement invested in the project. When it didn’t go well, I was disappointed and emotional. Instead of jumping in...

The right focus is crucial for amazing success. However, it’s important to have breaks.  In our culture, the 80-hour work week or total commitment is celebrated. The problem with total commitment is that it turns into an unhealthy obsession. In order for amazing success to happen, you need time to focus on something else or you need time to let your actions take effect.

As a writer, many of my ideas for blog posts, online classes, books, and other products don’t come to me when I’m in the office. They come to me when I am playing with my kids, taking a ride in my wheelchair, on vacation, or even watching tv. I also get ideas while reading other’s work about my topic.

Noah St. John writes about goal free zones, which is the idea that ideas don’t come to you while you are working on them. They come to you in the oddest of places. They come to you in the shower. They come to you while you are working out. They come to you when you are having drinks...

A critical part of amazing success is dealing with challenges or limitations without being totally consumed by them. Challenges should not be ignored and require the right amount of focus and attention. It is imperative to focus on dealing with your challenges, but not letting them consume you.

When I was 20, my disability started to consume me. Before I turned 20, my disability never seemed to get in the way. When I was growing up, all my peers needed help from their parents. They needed rides. They did not wander too far from home. After high school, people my age were moving out of their houses, going on trips without their parents, and going off to college. Shortly after my 20th birthday, my disability and my challenges consumed me. I would think about everything that my body would not allow me to do.I wondered what it be like to go off to college and everything my disability robbed me of. To say that I was focused on my disability, and everything that it prevented me from...

Last week, I wrote about focus. This week, I am writing about focus and how the right focus can lead to an amazing life. We live in a time where we have an abundance of information at our finger tips. We can literally call up any information that we want, sometimes we can even see the last thing our favorite celebrity ate, or what kind of jeans they were wearing. When I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, you had to buy a magazine or wait for a show to get this information.

The good news is that there’s more information than ever that can help you become amazing. There are blogs, podcasts, online classes, forums, and other avenues that can help you become amazing. On YouTube, there are funny videos, cat videos, videos of kids playing with toys, and videos that can help you live an amazing life.

The opportunities to focus on amazing are endless and abundant. On the other hand, the opportunities to be distracted and overwhelmed are ever-present. In addition, there is an...

Focus is a part of amazing success. If you go out to a restaurant with your loved ones and you are having a good time, you are laughing, enjoying a good meal. However, if the waiter is a little rude, or flippant, or just having a bad day, are you going to focus on the good food, the good company, and the great ambiance, or are you going to focus on the waiter’s negative behavior? You can take the example and extrapolate into any situation. Unfortunately, our brains are wired to focus on the negative. This wiring goes back to pre-historic times.

It’s easy to focus on the negative. It’s challenging to focus on the positive all the time.  With an abundance of information comes the abundance of negative information.  Now, more than ever, we are bombarded with messages about what we should do and who we should be. On the other side of the spectrum comes the abundance of messages that can empower us to be amazing. It is challenging to focus on the positive...

Part of amazing success is performing the activities that are required at a high level.  When you perform these activities, they feel uncomfortable. We all have a tolerance for discomfort. Part of being amazing is increasing the tolerance for discomfort.

There is a difference between complaining about your work environment and actually looking for a new job. There is a difference between putting up with unpleasant people and changing the dynamic of the relationship. The former might be complaining to someone else. While the latter may be confronting them. Although the former may seem uncomfortable or annoying, the latter requires being really uncomfortable.

There are activities that we say are uncomfortable, but, in reality, there is some comfort in them. There is some comfort in complaining about our situation. There is some comfort in being passive aggressive. There is a comfort and ease in doing the same thing over and over. After all, we are creatures of habit. There is...

With ambitious goals comes challenges. When we have ambitious goals, we may incur obstacles and roadblocks. When we encounter these, our first instinct is to work through them or put energy towards the goal. For example, if our loved ones have a bad day or encounter an obstacle, our first instinct is to try to solve the issue. We want to quickly get past the issue. In reality, the best thing that you can do may actually be doing nothing. That’s right do nothing. Don’t even bring it up.

I was working on a project that did not yield the results that I would have liked. My first instinct was to stop what I was doing and try something else. I decided that I needed a timeout from that challenge. Once I understood what went wrong, I started to do nothing. I realized that I was too emotional and too raw to jump back into it.  This was not my natural instinct. My instinct was to put more effort and more resources into my venture. I decided that I was not going to do...

At one point or another, we all had dreams. Maybe it was dreams about success.  Maybe it was dreams about love. Maybe it was dreams of adventure. Whatever it was, dreams need attention. What gets in the way of dreams? Life. We attend to what is immediately in front of us. We all have obligations and priorities. These obligations and priorities may be paying for a mortgage, a car payment, children’s activities, and any bandwidth leftover we want to go have fun. This can be going to the movies, going out to eat, or going on a weekend getaway.

There is nothing that is left over for our dreams and our true purpose in life. Your dreams require energy, time, money, focus, and commitment. Bottom line is it takes sacrifice! 

A payment for a dream is sacrifice. 

Your dreams are alive in you. Whether it’s a desire to write a book or open a company, whether it’s engaging in a creative venture, and even traveling the world. These dreams are alive and in you....

Two critical factors to amazing success are inspiration and motivation. The main difference between motivation and inspiration is that motivation has to do with the everyday motions of life. Being motivated to be present with your family, being motivated to put in effort at work, being motivated to do the right thing or partake in self-improvement are all examples of daily motivations. On the other hand, inspiration has to do with the big picture of life. What do you want for yourself? What do you want for the people that you love? What kind of experiences do you want to have?

You can also be inspired by the negative. What if you kept ignoring your dreams?  What if you ignored the big idea or your big dream? One of the issues that inspires me is the thought that, at anytime, my disability can literally stop me in my tracks. The same goes with my fears or insecurities. The more I focus on my inspirations, the less those fears will come true. There were days where the only factor...

On your journey to amazing success, you are going to deal with challenges and part of dealing with challenges is facing discouraging moments. These moments can either stop you or empower you to pursue amazing success.

Throughout my journey, I had and continue to have many moments that are discouraging. Some of these moments are directly related to my disability, but most of these feelings are related to my desire to become amazing. I chose to be an author, a speaker, a father, a husband, and I chose all my ambitious crazy dreams.

If I am not careful, I can be daunted by negative emotions and feelings. With regard to my disability, I can be consumed by everything I cannot do. I can be consumed by my speech impediment, the fact that I need so much help, or the sheer effort that my disability requires. My disability makes most activities exponentially more challenging. In my pursuit of amazing success, I have to deal with marketing, sales, leading a team, and everything that it takes...