As I look around today, in a moment of  midday contemplation, a moment in time nestled aptly between the past and the future, I sit pondering. Pondering as I so often do the mysteries of the universe, exploring my inner depths for solution and resolution. As I sit, thoughts of days past flash through my mind. Images are projected in real time upon my mental inviting me to remember myself sitting in this very place a year ago today. Just as then, now  filled with  hope, and a measure of uncertainty. So many things have I desired but with no reasonable solution as how to claim them.

I had no clue of what today would look like or what the days leading up to this day would contain. Looking back, I am awed.

I am so humbled.

The miraculous processing of my  mental faculties has permitted my eyes to remain open to my soul’s refrain and heaven and natures response.

There is no way I could have known or foreseen all that has befallen my lot this year. Today, all I can do is sit in the seat of gratitude as I muse over the many miracles that have taken place over the year to get me to this very moment. There is no way I could have made the leap from the precipice that I stood on in 2014 to the mountain I stand on here and now in 2015 without miracles of divine proportions.

My thoughts do not merely cease there, they always extend outward. As I sit thinking about  humanity, I felt a great emptiness, fragmentation, and incompletion. There is so much  missing in humanity at this point. We are a lost and broken people. The destitution of our spirits if far-reaching. Despite our growth as a global population, we are dying. This is heart wrenching.

We have added so much to the world technologically and scientifically but yet we are in a state of constant devolvement.

We are in retrograde and all of nature is rebelling.

We live with too much expectation.

As a people, we have become hell-bent on degradation to ends of self-gratification and self-edification.

There is no communal  unity, there is no we, it is only about what “I ” think and what “I” believe, all the whilst trampling the experiences of all other living beings. At the end of the day, it is not what I can do for you but what you can do for me.We are the biggest manufacturers and sellers of greed. We consume more than we seed.

The most important system is a vocal majority of naysayer’s, of pompous relativists, a multitude of indignant and self-righteous”me’s”.

We have lost touch and we can no longer see. We are groping in the dark  and every tragic step pushing us further from the light.

We no longer see the miraculous in the mundane.

There is nothing sacred or divine.

There is nothing holy or refined.

We set aside nothing and worship everything.

We leave nothing to the imagination and boast in our vanity,  posting our shame to entertain, living by the mantra “life is a stage and all men merely actors.” Why not play the game.

Everything for us has become like cellophane use, abuse, and throw away like refuse.

Now is the time for a change. Now is the time for revolution and resolution. Now is the time for transformation and rebirth of civilization. It starts with you. The future is what you make. It is what we make it.  Will you make the leap with me to succeed

I could not but fathom the miracles I have received, can you imagine what is waiting for you and me in 2016. I don’t’ know, but I am ready to believe that what is waiting for me on the other side is everything, more than I  ever dreamed. What do you say will you fly with me?

One of the most detrimental things to one’s success, achievement, and happiness in life is comparing oneself to another.

It is willfully admitting that you are not enough.  It is an admittance that there is something wrong with you, a  fallacy that if embraced will destroy as it eats the individual from the inside out.

This cankerous belief system will erode one’s spirit, confidence, energy, and desire to progress and thrive.

In turn, it rob’s the world of the unborn potential and the greatness that was built inside of you.

We are all meant to succeed

Everyone wants to be somebody.

We all want to achieve, to do something brilliant with our lives.

Everyone should because it is our birthright.

Brilliance occurs along a spectrum, a broad concept that covers varied fields.

Just as every star has its purpose, illuminates its corner of the sky, an area that would be entrenched in darkness without its light no matter how bright. Such is the same for every individual born into this world.

We are born to progress, to reach, and to grow.

We are born to do?

Thus, we are born to achieve and succeed not merely to thrive.

Why comparing is counterintuitive to achieving excellence

1. Success is not formulaic. Success was always meant to be fluid, varied, and self-defined.

Success is not one size fits all.

There is not one precise definition of what success looks like.

It should not be. It was never meant to be as such.

Just as nature is diverse in its beauty and each component unique, just as the wind, the river, the land, and the trees, so are we meant to be.

We are a reflection of nature.

A tree was never meant to be a flower.

A rose never meant to be a buttercup.

The sun and moon were created with their own majestic glory and their own roles to carry out.

With the same token, we are meant to find our own successes.

We are meant to achieve our individual purpose not that of someone else’s.

Comparison is the death knell of all success.

2. We are all working from different blueprints.

We cannot effectively compare our gifts to that of others.

We all were handed a different set of tools in our toolbox when we entered this world.

You can’t build a bridge if you were born with the talents and the ability to work wonders with a knife, a fork, and a spoon.

Those who continue to try to build a bridge when not equipped with such tools will always live a bitter life. They will never have what is necessary to succeed.

Sadly a lot have succumbed to this.

Many are not meeting their potential because they are busy trying to be the next Obama, King, Jordan, Tiger Woods, Beyonce, Pharell, Diana Ross, Einstein, Edison etc…

The fact is, they will never be the next version of these individuals because they were not born a doppelganger  or with identical genetic blueprints. Their  gift signature is different.

Success is the result of trying to be the best you.

3. We will never live up to someone else’s achievements and success.

There will never be another you, who was put here to do what only you can do, at the level that you can do it at.

We are all originals.

Additionally, it is impossible to compare our life’s circumstances to that of others.

Our journeys or our personal sagas are our own and our success result from our own personal experiences. Thus, our victories will be different.

4. We are all on different legs of this journey called life.

We cannot and should not compare the stage of our journey to another’s.

Instead

If we wish to be successful we must always look at ourselves and try to be better today than we were yesterday.

We must excel and break our individual boundaries and limits and be confident in our abilities, efforts, and outcomes.

Aspiring to be you and great at what you can do is what sets you up to be the G.O.A.T at what you were purposed to do.

We must strive to connect.

Connectivity is the foundational principle upon which humanity; brotherhood/sisterhood rests.

of such is constructed indestructible bonds, comprised of an obscure glue holding everyone and everything in unity,  miring us in togetherness.

When we find those things which bridge us,  laying open our vulnerabilities and humanness, that is when our bonds solidify. The point, where the indomitable human spirit is most evident.

We must remember that everyone has an untold story.

In each person, there is a song yet song, a novel yet to be written. Inside each one of us, there are accounts of pain, joy,  struggle, victory, of life, things we all identify with.

These are the things that make us human, our experiences.

These are our points of connection.

It is the sharing of such that links us.

We must take the time to listen, not just hear.

It is through listening that we unfurl our spirits and open our souls.

We remove our armor and defenses and permit ourselves to feel the experience of others, without judgment, with unfeigned acceptance and understanding.

We must seek to do more of this. This is where the healing of humanity and our success journey as a collective begins.

This calls for more than a surface understanding.

Deep understanding is the root of compassion and empathy

On the surface lies all vanity.

Vanity is shallow and fleeting.

Nothing solid can be built upon vanity as vanity creates mirages and disillusions

It is hard to form attachments to mirages and disillusionment, as these things are insubstantial and alien.

It is difficult to care for that or those with whom there is no attachment.

Those people and things wherein there is no connection, it is easy to dehumanize to abuse, or to destroy because they are not kindred to you. You cannot feel their pain or sympathize with their suffering.

To cause harm or desire the destruction of others like you, is to wish and inflict the same upon yourself.

Thus, the basis of compassion and empathy is finding a link; finding yourself in others.

Compassion and empathy begin with connectivity.

Let’s begin the healing and progress forward today, connect with someone on a deeper level, listen to their story let yourself fill the extent of their experience.

Life is what you make it.

How you define the meaning of life  is left for you to pen.

No matter what, you make life all that it is ,or  all that it is not.

Some let others define the meaning of life  while others live within the parameters that other set.

Then there are those who are not afraid to define and live life and harness all their creative power in their today’s’ to  create their own unique and beautiful existence.

We all have been given this  gift wrapped in  endless strings of sunrises and sunsets.

Within that gift raw materials and resources to create something beautiful.

As a bonus  creative ingenuity, and free will.

Each one equipped with tools unique and varied.

If used, to develop experience richly unique and beautiful.

You are the craftsman that must make something out of what you are given.

You can look at the clay and see embossed within, the statue of David, and use every drop of your time and talent and carve out brilliance

You can look at the clay and just see dirt; lament, moan, and hope that something will become of the clay that you have inherited.

You are in complete control and no one is responsible for the myriad of outcomes you experience but you.

Success begins with  inquiry.

You must inquire of yourself  often what am I doing?

Is life what I want it to be?

Am I living my best life, why or why not?

If not ask yourself these questions?

Is every day an exercise in seeking sunsets.

Am I  counting the minutes until work ends?

Am I  just waiting for the weekend, holiday, or for my next vacation?

Are  your today’s full of hopes, idled behavior, musings forward, always  hoping for resplendent dawns, yet, with no plans or changes of habits in your today’s to make it happen.

Is your  every day an exercise in counting sunrises.

Are you mesmerized by today, a start, a renewal of purpose and opportunity?

Are you eager to meet the rising sun?

Do you anxiously cast of the nightscape so that you can meet the morning sun with expectation?

Do you desire to push back the horizon and impede the setting sun to squeeze the last bit of time out of today?

If you are not where you want to be or desire to be, ask yourself if you are counting sunrises or sunsets?

Are you looking forward but failing to live today?

Remember that no one can ever behold the tomorrow they desire without fully investing in their today.

Count your  sunsets and use them to the fullest you will be surprised what masterpiece your life will become just like that of Michaleangelo.

At 87 Michaelangelo had this bit of wisdom to share with us.