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...

Challenges are a part of life and they are especially part of an amazing life. Loving your life does not mean that you love dealing with challenges. It means a commitment to dealing with any and all challenges that come your way. Part of life is learning to deal with challenges in a better way and exploring how to succeed despite them.

When I want to take on something amazing, a big part of the process is understanding how my physical disability or mindset blocks are going to limit me. The goal is not to ignore these challenges or let them be roadblocks. The goal is to look at them creatively and navigate them on the path to amazing success.

I don’t love being disabled. I don’t love my speech impediment. My disability has provided me with a certain kind of unease, discomfort, insecurities and other emotions that can have the potential to kill my ambition, drive, and love of life.  To be honest, it has the potential to slow me down, and, in the past, it has.

I always...

I have a deep love of life. I love the possibilities of life. I love the opportunities of life. I have many experiences, both professionally and personally. I have the opportunity to inspire people. My career has introduced me to many unique experiences, which I cherish. I had the opportunity to have lifelong friendships and have a great time with the people who I love being with. I get to collaborate with amazing thinkers. Finally, I love my family, from my parents to my wife to my favorite boys, Andrew and Tyler. I love being a father, a husband, a friend, a professional, and a partner in crime to many. Frankly, I love life.

There is a difference between loving life and loving every single aspect of life. In fact, part of having an amazing life is dealing with struggles in order to find the parts of life that you love. I deal with my physical disability, and the psychological ramifications that go along with it. I also deal with the every day challenges of creating an amazing...

I have spent an exorbitant amount of time, energy, and money studying what it takes to live out an amazing life. I read books, attend conferences, and try to learn how I can achieve amazing success despite my disability.

There have been times when I blamed all my stress on my disability. In the past, I have started thousands of sentences with the phrase if I were not disabled…. That action does not empower me. It also provided many negative emotions and created feelings of victimhood.

With the pursuit of amazing success can come additional stressors and overwhelming factors. In fact, most of the challenges in my life are not because of my disability per se. They are because of the fact that I am going after an amazing life. I chose the challenges of becoming a speaker, writing a book, becoming a husband, and becoming a father.  My job is to enjoy my life and take on the challenges in a positive way.

Most people in the U.S. don’t have $400.00 in case of an...