Shaun Rosenberg

Whether you believe in Karma or not it is always good to treat others like you would like to be treated. When you treat others with respect they remember it, and they may help you out in the future.

These Karma quotes can help inspire you to observe how you treat other people and whether you are putting off a good vibration into the universe or putting off a bad vibration into it. After all I’m sure you would want other people to treat you with kindness and generosity, why not make the first move by treating others with the same generosity you would like to be treated with yourself.

Did you enjoy these karma quotes? Did they help you to learn something? When you put out a good vibration into this world people respond to it. They remember you and they may help you accomplish your goals.

Karma goes both ways. If you treat others like crap, they will treat you like crap. The universe will always find a way to pay you back. But if you treat others with respect and with generosity than the universe will find a way to bring good fortune and love into your life.

In the end, karma is always there. It always exists and has a huge impact on our lives. Here are a couple more Karma quotes that you might want to remember.

“Contrary to popular misconception, karma has nothing to do with punishment and reward. It exists as part of our holographic universe’s binary or dualistic operating system only to teach us responsibility for our creations-and all things we experience are our creations.” Sol Luckman

“Karma moves in two directions. If we act virtuously, the seed we plant will result in happiness. If we act non-virtuously, suffering results.” Sakyong Mipham

If you like this article you might also like the article, does karma exist? It asks an important question about the nature of Karma and what you should do if you are ever in a moral dilemma.

In my opinion, taking the high road will always benefit you in the long term, and it will help you to feel better about yourself and about the person you have become.

Do you have any more quotes about karma that you would like to share with us all? If you do comment below, and share with us your favorite sayings.

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Inspirational Quotes About Life

Quotes About Courage

Mohandas Gandhi Quotes

Everyone wants to be a genius! Everyone wants to have other people think highly of them and to believe that they are one of the elite gifted people on this planet.

While we all want to have a high IQ and we all want to look cool, sometimes we need to take a step back and acknowledging that every one of us is still at least somewhat of an idiot.

Accepting that you can be an idiot has its advantages after all.

It Gives You Permission To Fail

Trying and failing is an essential part of human life. We wouldn’t get anywhere if we didn’t try out new things fail at them once and a while.

If you’re convinced that you are a total genius, then you are not allowed to fail. Each failure that you have is an unwelcomed reminder that you may not be as perfect as you thought. Failure reminds us that we are human and that there are things in this world that we just don’t know. It reminds us that we may have to struggle to learn and to grow.

When you tell others that you are a genius you have to impress them. You have to keep showing them that you don’t have any faults and that you can’t fail.

The problem with pretending to be a genius, is that you avoid doing the things you don’t know how to do in order to avoid failing.

You can’t try out a risky investment or get involved in an emerging business because you may just fail at it. And if you do, you’ll be looked at as an idiot. When you’re a genius you have to know all the answers before you start. You can’t fail, you can’t be left in the dark, so you avoid anything that isn’t certain. The problem is, by doing so you also avoid all of the opportunities.

When you’re an idiot you can fail, because nobody is going to care. People expect an idiot to make bad decisions and to fail at things. That is what allows them to keep trying new things and keep following their dreams.

The ironic part about all of this is that while the “Genius” is sitting back on his high chair following the easy path and not trying out anything new, the “Idiot” is taking chances, failing, and getting smarter every day.

Eventually the “Idiot” is going to be a lot smarter and a lot more successful than the “Genius” simply because he has more life experience.

It is inevitable! Those who try new things and don’t care about looking foolish are going to grow while those who avoid failure totally are going to stay where they are.

The idiots has the advantage in life and that is the reason why the world is run by idiots. 

Idiots Don’t Have To Feel Bad When They Fail

An idiot doesn’t have to feel bad when they fail, after all there idiots! Geniuses on the other hand, can’t fail. They have to do everything within their power to make sure that they won’t fail, even if it means denying they were wrong until it is too late.

When an idiot is wrong they can quickly accept that fact. There were bound to be a few mistakes along their path and so why not just accept them and learn from them. By accepting the fact that they were wrong an idiot can turn things around, cut their losses short, and figure out a better strategy for the future.

When a genius is wrong they have to deny it. They have to appear to be confident, smart, and error free. So they deny it, pretend that the ice berg in front of them doesn’t exist, and hope everything works out in the end.

When you are a genius, you are not allowed to switch sides. It’s a sin to admit you where wrong. But when you are a idiot, admitting you are wrong and finding a better solution to the problem is just another day in the life.

No big deal, we all make mistakes, now it’s just time to correct them.

Idiots Can Improve

If you’re a self proclaimed Idiot, you admit that there are a lot of areas in your life that you can improve upon. Maybe you need to work on your social abilities, your abilities to think freely, or your abilities to do math, or maybe you need to work on everything.

If you’re an idiot there are a lot of things that you can do to improve. There are areas that you can grow in and there are things which you can learn. Being an idiot and learning to blame yourself instead of others means you’re going to get smarter, you’re going to start growing, and the odds of you making the same mistake twice are pretty low.

On the other hand if you are a self proclaimed genius, you can’t really improve. Maybe you can tweak your personality here or there, but you’re pretty much done. There isn’t much you can do to someone who is perfect in every way, so why bother.

Instead of blaming yourself for your problems in life and instead of looking for ways to get better you accept yourself for the god you are and stay put. As a result you stay in place and stop looking to better yourself, while all along the “idiots” in life and sailing past you at a frightening speed.

Idiots Don’t Have To Fake An Image

As a self proclaimed genius you may have to go through a lot just to keep up your image as a genius. This can include things like cheating IQ tests, avoiding areas in life that you are weak at, and reading about things you don’t really care about just so you can impress a group of friends.

Faking an image of a genius can eat away at your time. It can also make you avoid taking chances just because you might fail at them if you do. Eventually working too much on your image may lead you to living a life that you don’t want, but rather a life that other people want for you.

When you consider yourself an idiot it really doesn’t matter. You don’t have to worry about your image. You can spend your time doing something more useful and enjoyable like following your dreams and building relationships.

Everyone wants to be successful, but success has little to do with how smart you are and more to do with how much courage and passion you have. When you consider yourself a genius that cannot fail, you trap yourself inside a box that may actually prevent you from following your dreams in life.

We are all idiots and we are all geniuses, the trick is to not go so far into believing that you are a genius that it ruins your life. Remember the idiot side of you and remember that you are allowed to make mistakes. After all we all do them, and they are the only way to grow.

Don’t Let School Interfere With Your Education

The Only Thing We Can Control

The Goal Is Not To Be Perfect, The Goal Is To Suck Less

School is not the same thing as education! It may be hard to distinguish the difference at first especially if you have grown up in a household where getting an education means to go to a college, get a degree, and hope for the best.

It’s a modern day myth that if all you do is focus on getting a college degree than you’ll be looked at as a genius and your dream career will magically fall on your lap. In the real world, if all you do is get a college degree, you’re in trouble.

College used to be a perfect way to distinguish yourself as someone who went above and beyond the rest. Today as more and more people graduate from college having a degree really doesn’t separate you from everybody else.

A degree won’t cause any jaws to drop. It’s becoming something that is expected rather than something that is favored. Just because you have a degree doesn’t mean you are educated. It doesn’t mean you will find your passion in life and go down a path you love.

What separates you in the real world is your knowledge, drive, passion, and courage, all of these things you can learn outside of the classroom.

Education gets a bad rap in our society. When most people think about education they think about writing, memorizing, and reading long textbooks that are written with the same enthusiasm as the Webster’s dictionary.

In the end you put a lot of effort into something you may not even like doing just to get a degree which may or may not help you get a real job in your future. College and education is looked at as something you have to do and not something you want to do just like hard work is looked at as a chore after school rather than a pleasurable experience. Despite the myth, real education isn’t boring.

Real education comes from passion. It should be fun, not tedious. It comes when you seek out knowledge just because it is interesting and you want to learn it rather than you have to learn it.

Think about how well you remember what you learned in a specific class and compare that to how well you remember learning something from your favorite video game. Chances are you remember a lot more from your favorite video game because you had passion and desire to seek out the information you wanted to learn.

Granted a lot of the information you have learned while playing video games may not help you in the real world (unless you plan on becoming a programmer), but it was fun and you learned a lot from it as a result.

That should be the ultimate goal of education. Not to simply write down and memorize things, but to find a passion and to learn from that passion because you want to learn.

We all have a desire to learn and to grow, some people just never tap into it or they use it for something that doesn’t help them in life. The real power of passion comes when you put it to good use and find something you really love that can help you grow.

For me it’s the internet. I love learning to improve my writing and finding creative ways to get people to my site. It’s a game, it has its advantages and disadvantages, but it is fun nonetheless.

I don’t think I would have still kept on going after all this time if I didn’t have a passion for it. I love it, I seek out information for it, and I remember what I have learned. This is what real education is, learning because you want to learn and remembering it because of your passion.

There isn’t much that I have learned in school that I think I can use in the real world or that I have actually remembered to a tee. But I as I learn more about the internet I retain what I have learned and I put it to good use, simply because I am passionate about it.

Education is all about creating and standing your ground in a field that you love. Just because it isn’t in a text book doesn’t mean it isn’t education. If fact if you have a genuine passion for the subject, it may give you even more of an education than you can possibly get in a class room. You’ll remember it more and it will help you out more.

That isn’t to say that ignoring school completely is the best way to educate yourself. If you find a class that you really like, and are really interested in, than by all means enjoy it. Learn as much as you can about it.

Don’t just settle for what they teach you in school; embrace your passion by researching about it outside of school. You can’t go wrong by learning one thing a day about something you love.

School is boring; it forces you to do something that you don’t want to do. As a result you may not even remember it later on. Finding a passion and learning as much about it as possible, now that’s education. That is how you really learn and expand your mind.

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You become what you think about! If you have mostly positive thoughts than you are drawing into your reality positive events and people who can help you get ahead in life and reach your dreams.

On the other hand if you pollute your mind with mostly negative thoughts than you are drawing negative things into your reality which may stop you from reaching your goals and prevent you from finding true happiness.

Complaining has a negative impact on your life, whereas learning how to love yourself unconditionally and thinking positively can push you farther than you have ever imagined possible.

The key to success is to be optimistic and to never underestimate what you are really capable of. If you can’t think positive you’ll never find opportunities that can help take you farther in life. It will also mean it is more difficult to go after the opportunities that you do find because if you can’t think positive than you won’t be able to sustain the effort and willingness needed to follow through on them.

When you learn how to be positive you start attracting things into your life that can help you advance farther. So, how can you do this? What are some strategies to lower the amount of negative thinking you do and increase the amount of positive thinking you do?

Surround Yourself With Positive People

It is hard to be positive when the people you surround yourself with are always bringing you down. Your reality is very much shaped by your friends and family because these are the people who are influencing your thoughts. They are either building you up to want to succeed and go after your dreams or breaking you down to make you want to give up on life.

It’s our natural instinct to want to fit in with the crowd and to be on the same level as everyone else. If you are always surrounded by people who are constantly complaining or who are always bringing you down than you are going to subconsciously inherit some of that negative thinking. It’s only natural that your environment helps shapes your personality, and therefore your life.

It is also natural for people to not want to feel left behind. If you are planning a major change in your life and are trying to break free than negative people will only hold you back. They will tell you that it can’t be done and give you reasons to quit trying.

Negative people make it hard to break free, to find opportunity, and to focus on the positive side of life.

Positive people are just the opposite. When you surround yourself with positive people you find support, energy, and new opportunities. Positive people will help you to improve your health, your finances, relationships, and your life in general.

They will give you the energy and inspiration needed to help stay afloat during bad times and to grow during the good ones. Positive friends are understanding, and they will try to pull you up there with them so that you can reach new heights which you never thought were possible before.

It can be pretty difficult to find new friends and to say goodbye to people in your life who are always bringing negativity into the room. But it is necessary if you want to learn how to be positive. You can’t be positive when people in your life are always polluting your mind with negative thoughts and holding you back. If you are in this situation you have to break free.

The best way to do this is to learn to maintain a positive attitude in your life. This will attract more positive people to you. Share with others, donate your time, invite positive people to hang out with you and your friends, and realize that positive people are out there and they are plentiful.

Sooner or later you’ll find that the more you remain positive the more positive people you will attract to your life. You’ll also find that the negative people in your life will either switch their mindset and start thinking more positively or they will completely disappear from your reality.

Positive vibes sometimes scare away people who don’t understand it. Everything happens together, when you focus on surrounding yourself with positive people it will undoubtedly help you to think more positively as their influence rubs off on you.

Focus On Positive Thoughts

Even the most optimistic people around have a bad thought here and there. The difference between optimism and pessimism is how often you have these thoughts and how much emphasis you put on each thought.

The key to getting rid of negative thinking isn’t to completely eliminate it from your mind. Bad thoughts are something that happens naturally and therefore some negative thoughts will always slip through to your mind no matter how often you try to avoid having them. If you do the same thing you may do with other habits (reward and punishment) you may never end up getting anywhere.

If you decide to punish yourself for each negative thought that you have that isn’t going to work. By doing this you’re bringing more negativity into your reality because you focus on the negative. You are assuming that you must be at fault for the bad thoughts that you have and that you are the one who needs to pay the price.

Punishing yourself when you have a negative thought isn’t going to help you become more optimistic at all, since the very act of wanting to punish yourself or to feel bad for thinking negative thoughts is a negative thought itself.

The answer to thinking more positively isn’t to focus on not thinking negatively, that is going to happen. The answer is to focus on the positive.

Whenever you have a positive thought expand it, let it grow, and try to branch it out. For example if you have a thought about a possible opportunity that you can go after hold that thought.

Write it down, expand it by seeing how you can improve that opportunity or look for other related opportunities that you can go after. Concentrate on that thought and brainstorm with it, see where it takes you.

On the other hand whenever you have a negative thought don’t punish yourself for having it. Just let it pass. Don’t give it much attention, don’t focus on it or acknowledge it for more than the two seconds it takes to go through your mind.

Instead continue to focus all of your energy on staying positive and expanding the positive ideas that you have.

Remember your brain is a muscle, what we don’t use we lose. If we put very little influence on our negative thoughts eventually those thoughts are going to slip away and have less of an impact on your life.

As you focus on the positive you will find that having positive thoughts becomes easier, seeking opportunity and joy becomes something that is much more common in your life. Optimism is a disease, and once you reach it, it will expand into all areas of your life. The more you focus on it the faster it will expand.

Realize Life Is A Game

You don’t have to feel bad about life whenever things don’t go your way or whenever things change. The world is always changing, life never sits still, and if there is one thing we can know for sure, it is that tomorrow will be a slightly different day than today.

The key to life is to look at it as a game that you can win. Instead of fearing the challenge of the everyday obstacles that come your way, embrace the challenge. Learn to fall in love with life and all of the challenges that it brings.

The reason there is so much change and so many obstacles in this world isn’t so we will have a headache, it is so that we can grow and expand. This ever-changing world is something we need to have if we want to follow our dreams and become the kind of person we seek to become.

If things where stable, there would be no opportunity. Our world would be dull, boring, and have no purpose. Life needs some sort of change to let new people become leaders and experience new things. Change can also help give you a push in the right direction when you are too afraid to do it yourself.

Creating your own reality is something that is only possible thanks to this change. Instead of focusing on the bad things that happen, focus on creating your life plan and on finding the ground you want to stand on.

Embrace that life is a game, and embrace that you are in control of your own reality. If you lose at the game don’t be discouraged. We all have bumps along the road, we all make mistakes.

Instead of feeling sorry for yourself and instead of focusing on the bad, realize that you simply made a wrong decision somewhere. Figure out what it was and remember it. Change it out, do something different next time.

Life is something that is meant to teach us. When we learn from our past and put what we learned into our future our possibilities are nearly limitless.

Look For The Opportunity

No matter what happens there is always opportunity. You may have heard the phrase, “when god closes a door he opens a window” even thought you may not know it at the time, whenever something bad happens in your life there is a way to recover from it and to become even stronger.

When I look back on my own life, many of the things that have caused me much pain and suffering, actually turned out to be a good thing. Sometimes I need a little kick, I need to see the door close in order to realize that there is an even bigger door right next to it, that I have been ignoring because I was comfortable in my life.

Sometimes you need to get pushed a little just to see what is right in front of you. Most of us have a lot more potential than we realize. There are a lot more doors to success and doors to happiness than we can keep track of.

If you are not on the right track in life and know it, I believe there is an invisible force out there that will guide you to your destiny. Focus on the opportunities in your life and focus on the future, rather than spending your time focusing on what has already passed.

If you are dealing with a stressful situation in life don’t look at it as a negative. Look at it as a learning experience. What changed? What can you take away from this experience that you can take advantage of?

Opportunities are always there, you just have to look for them. When you focus on the things that are waiting for you and the possibilities in life you automatically focus on the positive. Life is a game; it is built to have winners.

It is built for you to grow and shape your own reality. Never forget that a man with passion and determination can never be stopped. Your world is under your control, you really do have that much power. And I think looking at life from this perspective makes it very easy to stay positive and to look at the world from an abundance mindset.

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You probably know someone who loves to complain about everything. Heck you may even be one of those people that loves complaining. While this is a common personality type, it is also pretty destructive.

When bad things happen, these people want others to feel sorry for them. They want to be looked at as the victim and they want someone to come save them from all their troubles. It is the whole, “woe is me” story that I’m sure you’ve heard a million times before.

Most of us aren’t complaining about life all the time, but we still have things we want to complain about and we still have times when we want people to feel sorry for us. The problem is complaining doesn’t help us. This mindset only attracts more bad things into our lives.

According to the universal law of attraction what we think about influences the reality we experience. When we complain about a life we don’t want to have, we are drawing it closer to us and asking the universe to give us more of it.

It is almost as if when we complain about something we are telling the universe, “I like to complain, please bring me something else I can complain about” as a result our car breaks down, Ac stops working, robbery happens, or some other major event in life occurs that gives us more things we can complain about.

The universe answers our wishes, even if they are wishes we didn’t realize we were making.

Complaining leads to a cycle of terror and discomfort. As we complain about the bad things that happen in our lives we attract more bad things, which in turn attract more complaining. It is a never ending cycle that can bring us down and ruin any shot we have of living a life filled with peace and happiness.

The longer we keep focusing on the bad and let the cycle bring us down, the harder it is to stop. We can get used to things falling apart and dreams being shattered. We can get used to complaining and seeing our reality react to our complaints.

But that is not what life is really about! Rather when you complain and see what you complain about you are experiencing the reality that you are creating for yourself. You are simply seeing your own creation, your own world, built with your own biases and opinions factored into it.

It may be real for you, and it may feel very real. But it does not mean it is real for everyone. Someone else with a different view on life can be living in a completely different reality, one with peace, prosperity, and good fortune.

Your reality may feel like it is as real as it comes, like no other reality is possible, but it isn’t so. You are the maker of your own fate; you create your own world. Remember that you are living in the world you have created for yourself, and at any time you can choose to change it. You don’t have to live in a world filled with things to complain about if you don’t want to. You can choose to find the light in your reality and move towards it.

You can choose to follow delight instead of despair, opportunity instead of misfortune, and abundance instead of scarcity.

At any moment you can choose to shift your focus away from the bad things in your life and focus on the opportunities and the changes you want to see happen. You can choose growth and find happiness just as easy as you can find scarcity, but it is going to take some effort to get out of the life you are used to and start seeing the world in a different light.

Realize You Are Not Your Thoughts

If your thoughts are what are bringing you down it is easy to get mad at yourself for having these bad thoughts to begin with. The problem is that this is just bringing more negative thinking into your life and reinforcing the belief that you do think negatively. It doesn’t solve the problem and only strengthens it.

A better solution is to realize your thoughts are not you. They are simply something that is going through your head during a given point in time. It doesn’t mean that you are a negative person. It simply means that a bad thought is going through your mind and you can easily stop that thought and start focusing on the positives.

It is similar to how you may download software onto your computer. That software is not part of the computer; it simply occupies a section of that computer for the time being. It may harm your computer (ex computer virus) or it may help your computer (anti-virus, word, internet explorer) but it isn’t your computer.

At any time you can choose to delete the software from your computer and look for new software to download. .

Viewing your thoughts in the same light can help you to overcome negative thinking. Whenever you have a bad thought realize it isn’t you. Simply work on deleting that thought from your brain and replacing it with positive thoughts and thoughts of opportunities instead.

Focus On What You Want

The reason complaining shapes your reality is because you are focusing your energy on something bad. This makes you put out a negative vibe into the world and draws more negativity to you.

Some say that the best way to avoid this is to focus on the positive side, but this can be a trap if you are still doing it with a negative vibe. For instance if everything else falls apart in your life and you say, “at least I still have my health” you are still putting out a negative vibe because you are saying you’ve lost everything but your health.

You are telling the universe that you give up on everything else and that you haven’t lost your health just yet. It’s a scarcity mentality because you imply there are only a limited number of things you can have at one time. Your health is a positive, yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for just having perfect health.

If you want perfect health and friendship than you can have them both. If you want money, you can add that into the mix too. You don’t have to limit yourself, life is filled with abundance. Life is prosperous; there aren’t very many limits you can’t break past.

Instead of simply focusing on what you have left, or instead of just humoring people who tell you to focus on the positive side of things by focusing on what you have left, focus on what you want. Focus on the life you want to be living, the people you want to be with, the house you want to have.

Create a life plan and focus on creating your own reality. This way you are still focusing your energy on something, you are still dragging that something closer to you, but it is a positive thing. When you focus on growth and opportunity, you learn to love life and its challenges.

You learn that things aren’t all bad and that you have a lot of potential as a human being. When you complain about life, you remain focused on the bad things that happen to you. This brings even more bad things your way.

When you focus on what you want and look for opportunities to get there, the universe helps send you signals and gives you life lines you may have never even thought of using before.

Have you been able to start focusing on the positive side of things when you feel like complaining? Has it helped you? What steps did you take? Let us know below

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Do you love your critics? It’s an odd question isn’t it? Most of the time, when we think about critics, we aren’t exactly thinking about them favorably. We talk about moving forward despite our critics and learning to overcome the “Nay Sayers”.

We like to think of critics as people we have to ignore and deal with in order to get ahead in life. But that is not always true, sometimes you have to stop ignoring the peanut gallery and start listening to them. You need to embrace what they are saying and see if you can use any of it to improve.

You can’t ignore them completely otherwise you may go too far off the deep end and find yourself in a situation you really don’t want to be in. The universe gave us critics for a reason. They help us learn, grow, and think differently. They are the only way we can get better at something and they give us an accountability bar to reach for.

One of the overlooked advantages of critics is that they give us a much needed reality check when we go too far. It is easy to get caught up focusing on one area of life and drag ourselves down that road no matter where it takes us.

When we do, it is our critics that help bring us back to reality. They give us a second opinion and help us look at a problem from a different point of view. Our critics let us know when we are missing something important.

That extra piece of the puzzle we need to make it all “click” could be completely out of our sight when looked at from our point of view, but it could be unbelievably obvious when looked at from someone else’s.

Even if you believe you know more about your field than your critics, they can still help you look at things from a different perspective and that could be just what you need to help you solve difficult problems and come up with unique solutions.

Our critics are there to help us grow. When things go wrong they can be there to point out why they went wrong. Even though it isn’t as easy to listen to someone tell you what you did wrong in a given situation as it is to listen to someone tell you what you did right in that same situation it is just as necessary. Probably even more so.

Even when things go right it is still important to listen to what your critics have to say. They are the ones who are going to show you how you can improve and reach the next level.

If you are an innovator who has created a successful product and are selling it on the market it is your critics who will let you know what is wrong with your work. They are the ones who are going to help you come up with new ideas on how to improve.
By listening to them you can create better products which can reach new markets and expand your company.

If you are an artist, writer, musician, or painter, critics may also help you. They can show you what you have done wrong and this can help you come up with ideas to improve your work and to better express your message to more people.

They can help you to come up with new ideas that you may have never thought of before. They can help you to learn to embrace change and to identify when change needs to take place.

Learn To Weed Out Bad Critiques

You don’t have to listen to all critiques. Just because somebody gave you their point of view on how you can make something better, does not mean you should follow it blindly.

In my college English class we were required to write a rough draft of our paper and bring it to class. This way we could switch with other people and give each other ideas on how we can improve for our final draft.

The person who switched papers with me told me that she liked my paper, but the wording on one area of it didn’t fit. They gave me a couple suggestions to change it up, but as I looked at it, I couldn’t see any of their changes expressing what I wanted to express.

I decided to leave it for now. Later the teacher went over all of our rough drafts with us and told me that he liked my paper. He even said that he liked how I worded it and since he was the one who was ultimately going to decide what grade I got I decided to leave it as it was.

Other people will always have their own opinions, but that doesn’t mean their opinions are any better than yours are. In fact if you spend your time becoming an expert in your field and learning at least 1 thing a day, chances are you’ll end up knowing more than 99% of other people out there.

You’re the expert here, you’re the one who knows what you are trying to express. Critiques may be helpful for giving you new ideas, but some of those ideas are simply going to be useless to you. Maybe you’ve tried it before and it didn’t work, maybe their critiques don’t fit your high standards, or maybe there is a practicality issue that makes their idea worthless.

You’re the one that get’s to decide. They may have no idea what they are talking about and that is ok. Don’t discourage people from criticizing your hard work because they may still help you come up with some great possibilities to improve.

Instead treat critics like an idea machine. They are there to help you by spitting out ideas on how you can improve and how you can look at things a little differently. The vast majority of the ideas you get may be worthless, but some are gems that can really change your life and help you to grow.

What can you learn from your critics? It may turn out to be a lot more than you think. They can help you to grow, come up with new ideas, and achieve more. They are a good thing to have in your life, and they mean that people are noticing you. It’s a good sign.

Learn to love your critics! Don’t follow their word blindly, but don’t shun them away either. Take them as a starting point, ask questions, learn to love them, and try to see things from their point of view.

The most you can lose is a few minutes of brainstorming and listening, but the amount you can gain from this is limitless.

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How To Change Hard Work Into A Good Thing

10 Reasons To Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

I remember when I first started to shoot pool in college. At first my friends and I would shoot balls around and if something went in a hole, somewhere, we got to go again. It wasn’t until later that I noticed something very interesting.

The people who seemed to be the best at pool all played “call shots” which means they had to call what was going in and how it was going to go in before making the shot. If it went in a different hole, or if hit another ball in at the same time, it didn’t count. They wouldn’t get to shot again and the ball may even be taken out (depending on how strict they were playing).

Learning this I decided to call my shots as well. I held myself up to higher standards at the pool table and my game drastically improved.

There is an interesting phenomenon out there that reaches across all areas of life. The more you hold yourself up to higher standards and challenge yourself the stronger, more skilled, and better off you will become.

Holding yourself up to high standards and raising the bar has some excellent benefits to it.

1. It Keeps You Focused

One advantage of having high standards is that you become more focused on what you want. In my pool sample if you are just shooting for anything to go in than your relying on luck to help you out, luck doesn’t always happen.

When you focus on what you want than you have a good starting point. You can line your shot up and come up with different strategies to reach your goal. You’re more likely to achieve your goals if you know what they are.

Even if you miss your shot, you can learn from it because you knew what you were aiming for. Did you hit it at too much of an angle? Did you not put enough English on your ball? Were you too focused on the next shot?

When you know what you wanted to do and fail, it will be easier to see how you can improve because you will have a better idea of why you failed than if you didn’t have such strict goals.

2. It Builds You A Stronger Back

You may have heard the old saying, “Don’t ask for a lighter load, but rather ask for a stronger back.” That saying can literally change your life.

When you take the easy way out and always hope that you will never have to challenge yourself, guess what happens? You may help yourself in the short run, but you are making yourself weaker in the long run.

When you have high standards that you follow in life you force yourself to become stronger just so you can actually follow those standards. You learn to challenge yourself to be the best and that is the only way to growth and prosperity.

When you challenge yourself you learn to be creative, and learn to find extra hours in the day. When you push yourself you learn new things and you are better prepared for whatever life throws at you in the future simply because you have been through so much and know you are capable of great things.

3. It Gives You More Respect

When you hold yourself up to higher professional and moral standards in life people take notice. You get respect and are looked at as a strong and capable person.

When you have high morals and do good things, not only will you feel good about yourself, not only will you have good karma in life, but other people will also notice and that may help you out later on.

When you have respect people look up to you, they may offer you new opportunities, and they will probably side with you and help you out when you hit a low point. While you shouldn’t worry too much about what people think about you, it is good to have some respect on your side. You never know when it is going to come in handy.

4. It Forces You To Look At Yourself

When you have high standards that you try to reach it forces you to look in yourself for your successes and failure instead of the outside world. If you want to be a world famous golfer and shoot par or better on each hole you can’t blame the trees whenever you hit one.

Other golfers are making it past the trees and if they are you should be able to also right? After all you are made of the same basic materials as Tiger Woods, he just has higher standards and a whole heck of a lot more practice on you.

If you already have high standards than all you need is the practice.

There is a lot of power in blaming yourself. This world is filled with so many variables and so many obstacles that you can’t possible have control over. How could you control what other people do or what the environment does? The only thing you can control is yourself, what your standards are and what you are doing about it.

When you look at yourself for the answers you begin to come up with some very creative ideas. You begin to come up with things you may have never thought about before. You begin to grow and set your personal bar even higher. You start becoming a better you.

5. Why Settle For 2nd Best?

Don’t you want the best for yourself and for your kids? Why should you bother to settle for 2nd best when you realize you don’t need to. You’re just as capable as the next guy and a little competition can be a good thing.

When you have higher standards you are telling the world that you are here, you aren’t going to settle for mediocre, and you are willing to fight to be the best. Having higher standards can be that little thing you need to push you over the edge and to line you up for greatness.

Having higher ethical, moral, and professional standard may seem to be a disadvantage in the short run as others with lower standards take the lead. But as you grow stronger and learn more you’ll find that raising the bar up and only shooting for the best is the only way to grow. It will get you much farther in this world than taking the easy way out ever could.

Abundance vs Scarcity

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Creating And Standing Your Ground

Does karma exist? That is a questions I’ve been asking myself recently. I had a relationship that didn’t exactly end on smooth grounds if you know what I mean. 7 months later she asked for a T.V. she left over at my house back.

In all honestly I really don’t want to talk to her anymore and it would be easy to simply tell her she isn’t getting it back. She waited so long to do anything about it that the law would be on my side. But I know that isn’t the right thing to do.

She is the one trying to get on her feet and can use it more than I could. I really never watch T.V. and wouldn’t miss it for a second. My roommates would, but I’ve got a spare T.V. in the garage that will work just as good as this one, plus they both have their own T.V.’s in their rooms.

My life wouldn’t change either way, her life would. So against my urge to F#*& my ex one last time, I’m simply going to give it back to her and move forward from there. I’d rather not bring all that bad karma into my life anyways.

But this begs the question, does karma exist? Is there really a force that punishes people for the bad deeds that they do and rewards people for their good deeds? I think there is.

You never know what will happen or who you will run into again. I could be in need of help in the future and she could be the only person who is there to help me. Or maybe a friend of hers will have a huge impact on my life one day.

If a situation like that ever came along I would be much happier if I wasn’t a jerk to her today. I’d wish I would have done something kind instead. You just never know when your actions will come back to bite you in the ass.

I’ve seen a few situations where karma has come back to hurt people. I’ve actually talked about an old roommate of mine in the article The Power Of Blaming Yourself and brought him up again in 10 Reasons To Give Minimalist Living A Try.

He seemed to be a nice guy, until he stole my identity, created credit cards in my name, and I heard stories about things he’s done to other people. He’s basically a con-artist who will do anything he thinks he can get away with, and all the bad karma that comes back around to him is incredible.

When he was living here, he seemed to be one of the most “unlucky” people around. He would get flat tires in the middle of the freeway without anyone but me to help him out. He got jumped by a group of people in a bowling alley (which I’m sure had a story behind it) and then try to sue the bowling alley for not being able to break it up for a couple minutes (even though they probably saved his life).

During the time I knew him, he kept hurting other people and brining bad karma into his life. As he started to slip away from being a man with so much potential to being a man who’s family is disowning him, friends turning on him, employers firing him within weeks, and police interrogating him, he continues to have problems.

“When you plant a seed of love, it is you that blossoms.” Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

In his case he is brining a lot of “Bad” Karma into his life, and it is showing up on the surface. He had so much potential in his life and ruined it all by going down a dark path.

The good news is that karma doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You can also get good karma into your life by doing good deeds. I wouldn’t consider myself a saint, but I try to help others out, I always look after people who are in need of help or who are in need of a friend. I donate money to the Red Cross every month and I try to make the world a better place.

Somehow in response to my good deeds, I have lived a life that is pretty good, good things seem to happen to me. Whether it is because of all the good karma I put out there or whether I believe in the universal law of attraction and falling in love with life I don’t really know.

What I do know is that if I need a helping hand I will always have friends out there to give it to me. I consider myself lucky and I see examples of this all the time. I’ve had people give me money I didn’t ask for, people have done good deeds for me that I didn’t need. Life has been pretty abundant; I live in a world full of love and believe that we all have that same possibility.

Karma does exist in some way shape or forum. That doesn’t mean we know how or why it works. It may be a hidden power of the universe, it may be that people are simply retaliating against you, or it may be that your fear and guilt is what is shaping the world around you.

It doesn’t really matter why there is a such this as karma, what matters is that there is. In my opinion it’s not worth fighting with another person just to harm them, I’d rather not focus on the bad things in life and instead focus on creating my life plan.

“Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.” – Elbert Green

I’d rather create peace in the world and start living my life knowing I am doing good things, rather than living it in fear of who is going to retaliate against me. There is so much opportunity out there for people who are playing by the rules and bringing good into this world that you don’t need to start doing bad things to succeed.

Good deeds attract good things. Make a vow to do good things in your life and start spreading the love from now on. Now I’d like to hear from you. Do you believe in Karma? Does Karma exist? Or is it all in our heads?

“Some day people will ask me what is the key to my success…and I will simply say, “good Karma.” K. Crumley

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What’s on your mind? Do you tell anyone? Do you let people know when they are doing something you don’t like? Or do you simply accept whatever situation life has given you and never raise your voice to tell the world what you want?

If you’re not used to being assertive it can be easy to just let others push you around and to not ask for what you want. Being assertive can be difficult at first. The good news is once you start being assertive you will love how much better you feel and how many more things go your way.

Being assertive is something that comes with practice. The more you take action, the more you see yourself as someone who takes action and the easier it will be in the future. But for those who are tired of being walked on and want to change, here are some tips to help you start being more assertive.

Have Beliefs/Opinions

There is no point in being assertive if you don’t have anything to say. I think a lot of people who don’t see themselves as being assertive enough are simply that way because they don’t have many beliefs and opinions to act on.

Think about life, read books, and form your own opinions. When you do you’ll be able to take over the conversation and show the crowd that you are a creative and assertive person. The stronger beliefs you have the more inclined you will be to defend them if those beliefs ever get challenged.

The more you defend your beliefs the more you get used to being assertive and the more likely you are to be assertive in other areas of life as well.

Figure Out Exactly What You Want

A lot of people aren’t assertive because they don’t have goals. When you don’t know exactly what you want to accomplish it is a lot easier to just go along for the ride and hope someone else has your best interests in mind. (Which of course they don’t, they have their own best interest in mind)

If you ordered a turkey sandwich at a restaurant and they give you a burrito instead you know exactly what you want and you know what they gave you. It doesn’t take more than two minutes to go up there and say, “Excuse me I didn’t order this”

In most cases you can get it fixed quickly and neither side will think about it anymore after it is all said and done.

When you are in a situation like a partnership you also have to know exactly what you want and what both parties expect. Because if you don’t one party can take over and change things up in a way that doesn’t benefit you anymore.

Before you can be assertive and stick up for what you want, you have to clearly define what it is you want. If you are just being loud and annoying for no reason, people will simply consider you a jerk. But if you have a reason, other people will work with you to help you out.

Know Your Situation

Before you start throwing your weight around understand what your situation is. Who are you dealing with? What are your rights? And who has the power?

I hardly ever make any big decisions without looking at all the facts and knowing exactly what the pros and cons are. When I was getting my tires realigned they noticed that my front tire had worn down so much that it needed to be replaced.

They wanted to replace it for $95. I looked at it and saw that it defiantly needed to be replaced, but I also knew that the Wal-Mart down the street could give me a brand new tire for $86, so I wasn’t about to pay $95 for it here. I let them know and they agreed to lower the price to $85 to beat Wal-Mart.

This is an example of what can happen when you know what situation you are in. When you know your rights are you know what you can fight for and how you can go about it. If you don’t you may walk away saying “oh well, nothing I can do about it” instead of walking away saying, “I got what I wanted”

Just Say “No”

When someone says something you don’t agree with or when someone else puts words in your mouth, it is ok to say NO. I know it can be a lot easier to simply go along with other people, especially if they are assertive themselves.

But you’ll feel more like a winner and you’ll get what you want if you speak your mind. It is ok to disagree with people. You’ll get more respect if you have your own opinions.

Just speak your mind and say “no” when you don’t agree. It may be hard to do it at first, but the more you do it the easier it will become.

Ask Questions

You don’t know until you ask. The worst someone can say is no, and if they do nothing changes. If they say yes than your world can change. Doesn’t that make 1 yes worth more than 50 no’s?

I started to learn about the power of asking questions when I was a little kid. Even though I was never a great student I knew the importance of getting good grades. Sometimes I would forget to turn in huge assignments on their due date or forget to study for a test. It was never really something I put a lot of effort into.

Luckily since I knew the importance of answering questions I would always ask the teachers for help. If I missed a paper I would ask if I could turn it in later for partial credit, If my grade was low I would ask if there was any extra credit, and if I simply wanted to learn something that wasn’t covered in the book I would ask about it.

It didn’t always work. Sometimes the teachers told me they couldn’t help me and that I should have been more responsible. But sometimes they actually saw things my way and were more lenient. I was never a very good student and I’ve always put other passions ahead of my school work, but I was able to pass with a B average mainly because I knew the importance of asking questions.

Realize That You Are The Only One Who Has Your Best Interest In Mind

Sometimes people are silent because they want to have someone else take control of the situation. But when you do you are giving up your free will to someone else. Remember, you are the only one that is going to care about your best interests.

Sure other people may be concerned about you and may want to see you succeed, they may even stand up for your rights (when they are in the same situation as you), but you can’t rely on other people to fight all your battles for you.

You are the one who cares about your interests more than anyone else and so you are the one who needs to fix any problems you may have. Nobody else is coming to the rescue. So remember if you want to change something, just jump in there and change it. The worst that can happen is someone else says no and if they do you are back to where you started from. You can’t lose.

Realize You Don’t Need To Look “Cool”

Sometimes people aren’t assertive because they don’t want to embarrass themselves in front of other people. Sometimes it isn’t cool to make a big fuss about the bill at a restaurant (even if they are trying to rip you off).

The easiest way to get around this is to remember that you don’t need to be cool. You don’t need to refuse to take action just to keep up your image. In fact that is a stupid idea.

If you don’t ask for what you want because you are afraid of looking like a fool in front of other people you are never going to get what you want. Remember that you will never be here again and if you want something, now is your time to get it.

Don’t worry about what other people think about you. Remember, being assertive and not caring what other people think about you are both very attractive qualities to have. It can make you look cool because you’re not afraid to speak your mind and tell it how it is.

Dress Well

There is something to be said about dressing well. When you dress well you feel better about yourself. You feel more confident, and as a result you display more confidence in front of other people. It makes it easier to go out and be assertive when you feel like you look good and you look like a professional.

Another advantage of dressing well is that other people will see you dressed well and they will be more likely to respond positively to your assertiveness. While people may still help a man dressed in rags, a man dressed in a suit is going to get more help and respect.

Pick Your Battles And Admit When You Are Wrong

Don’t be a jerk. You don’t need to yell at the waiter and call him names because he got your order wrong. People make mistakes, so be kind to them. Just don’t let them push you around, but don’t push them around either. It takes a little balance to get it right and that is why you have a conscious and a code of ethics.

Always remember that you can be the one who is wrong in an argument just like anyone else. Admit when you are wrong and don’t point fingers at a designated scapegoat. There is power in blaming yourself as it helps you to grow and other people respect you more.

Start forcing yourself to speak up and to be assertive in everyday life and eventually you’ll get to a situation where it comes naturally. When you can balance assertiveness with ethics you’ll find that life has a lot more options in it.

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