Better Than Your Best

If you're new here and you want to learn how you can become your better Self and do better than your best, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Please feel free to use these prayers for your own use in whatever context you feel they are appropriate. 

Invocation

Lord,

Help us to remain true to the self-evident truths so long ago proclaimed but existing from the beginning of time, that we are all created equal, and that we are endowed by You as our common Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

Imbue us with a renewed enthusiasm and respect for these, our mutual rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Cause us to know without doubt that from these rights issue forth genuine responsibilities to work for the common good so that all can truly experience the true fullness of freedom.

We pray the presence of Your Power to be within and among us this evening as we seek to manifest these truths within our individual hearts and within the soul of our nation.

We seek Your guidance as we again pledge our allegiance to the timeless proclamation of individual liberty and our uncompromising independence from any tyranny, foreign or domestic, that would seek to deprive us of any of it.

Steady us in these turbulent times, Lord, so that we will never waiver from our reliance on our faith in Your unyielding love for each of us.

Benediction

We now depart in Your love and with Your peace. But we are no longer the people who earlier gathered; we are now the people who leave to live with renewed passion, filled with infinite power and divine wisdom to be co-creators with You to make all things new.

We leave with deeper commitment to embody the words of the one in whose honor we have gathered this evening:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in . . .”

By Ken Wallace

After hours of frustration trying to get my drain unclogged, I finally broke down and called a plumber. Upon arriving, he asked where the problem pipe was located. I took him to the bathroom and, pointing to the open doors under the sink, I said, "There's your challenge, right there."

He spent a few moments surveying the situation and then took from his toolbox a simple pair of pliers and gently tapped the entire length of the curvy piping. After just a few minutes of inspection, he wrapped his pliers with a bright red bandana he took from one of the many pockets in his tattered blue overalls. With precise aim, he drew back and struck the pipe about halfway between the bottom of the basin and the point where the piping disappeared into the wall. 

It worked! The water flowed freely and all was right with the world. The entire visit lasted a mere five minutes. The plumber wrote on the invoice the following words: "House call . . . FREE; Knowing What to Do (Where to Hit the Pipe) . . . $75.00.

But knowing what and where is not enough. The noted comedian, George Burns, was said to have interrupted a person who was not quite finished asking, "What is the key to comedy?" with his answer: "Timing!" In addition to what and where, you must also know when.

There is such a thing as "putting the cart before the horse:" you wind up having to pull a load you wouldn't have had to were you to have done things in the proper sequence and at the right time. You cannot hope to reap without having sown or to acquire wisdom and solid character without making the daily choices to discipline your baser instincts.

Wisdom comes from understanding what you should be doing with your time. . . right now wherever you are. Getting to the place where your knowledge, skills and experience position you to "move the needle" and succeed faster is the essence of living in peaceful abundance. When you know you know you can make things happen, you become equipped with the power you need to achieve what you want. Furthermore, what you want becomes shaped by what you know you can accomplish rather than merely hoping for something you doubt that you can achieve.

This, indeed, is a peaceful – and powerful – life that emerges from finding your better Self.

Whenever I hear this phrase uttered, I think not of radical railing against the "establishment" but of what people with power actually look like. People with power are people with poise, purpose and peacefulness. When you possess power, you know it; and you also know how to use it, for that is the prerequisite of power – being the one in the room who knows what to do . . . next.

Power originates in perception and manifests itself within the individual. In other words, when you know what needs to be done for the benefit of others and are committed to getting it done, you are perceived to be powerful by others and are then able to empower them to help you accomplish that goal.

We all need power to get what we want for ourselves. We also need power to give what we want to others. Power is experienced when you know what you want to both give and receive and when you know that what you want is worthy of your better Self.

"Power to the people" is really power through a person to the people. Are you that person in your world? 

You can choose:

Where you live

Where you work

How hard you work

Who you are friends with

How much you want to earn

What to do with your spare time

To help others solve their problems

To think more about others than you do about yourself

_______________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

The last three lines are for you to fill in what you know you have personal choice over that are not mentioned in this list. Every choice you have means that the world is yours: you can make it what you want and get from it what you desire – depending on the kinds of choices you make. Choose wisely, choose well.

If we took $5 Trillion dollar bills and placed them end to end, how far would they go?

Take a guess:

1. From St. Louis to Chicago

2. From St. Louis to Hong Kong

3. From St. Louis to the moon

4. None of the above

The answer is 4. The line of bills would stretch 473,484,848 miles. That enough to encircle the earth 19,048 times. It would make it to the moon and back 991 times (it's 238,857 miles from earth to the moon).

The interest on $5 trillion dollars, using current rates, is almost $400,000,000,000 (count those zeros!) per year. That's over $1 billion per day!

This is for ONLY $5 trillion.

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 16 Nov 2009 at 09:53:02 PM GMT is: $12,006,580,141,918.41 (that's over $12 trillion). So the figures above need to be over doubled to account for our current debt and interest obligations. By the way, the national debt is expected to double in ten years, by 2019.
 
The estimated population of the United States is 307,299,348 – so each citizen's share of the November 16, 2009 (the date of this posting) debt is $39,071.28. Do have that laying around to give to the government? What this means is that the government needs to get this money from you in some form or fashion – the sooner the better. What are your plans to give the government what it has already taken from you – without asking you?

Another little tidbit of gloom: The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $3.85 billion per day since September 28, 2007!

For an up-to-the-minute tracking clock of the U.S. debt, click here.

In my recent book, “Your Better Self: A Simple Guide to Where You Want to Be,”I cite Benjamin Franklin’s 13 Virtues as being an excellent beginning for your journey toward manifesting your worthy aspirations and becoming your better Self. I’d like to share now Ben’s friend, Thomas Jefferson’s, 10 Rules that helped guide him to the astounding achievements credited to him.

Let me know if you think there is value to how he lived his life. Do you think you can benefit from organizing your life around the following?

1. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend money before you have earned it.
4. Never buy what you don’t want because it is cheap.
5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We seldom repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How must pain the evils cost us that never happened.
9. Take things always by the smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred.

Click here to read Paul’s comments on what has recently happened in America.

Please comment on his blog – and here, as well.

Ken

One Christmas, when my son was seven years old, he received a gift that I thought he would love – a harmonica. The moment he opened the present revealing the harmonica he looked up to see me pointing a camera at him. He smiled as big as he could while proudly holding the box in one hand and gently touching the harmonica with the other. He looked completely happy to get the harmonica.

Immediately after the photograph was taken, however, he threw one of the biggest tantrums I have ever seen him throw. He screamed, tossed the harmonica to the floor, ran through all the rooms of the house crying that we really didn’t love him.

Perplexed, I asked, “What’s the matter? You looked so happy to get the harmonica. Why did you smile so big when you opened it up? He said, “Because I didn’t want to ruin the picture!”

We paint the picture we have of ourselves in the actions and attitudes we exhibit. This is another way of saying that what’s on the inside eventually finds its expression on the outside.

What self-portrait are you painting today with your actions and attitudes? Is it your better Self – or something less?

After his mother’s funeral, I received a letter from a member of the congregation. In part, it read:

“Earlier in the week while thinking about writing to you, something became clear to me that I hadn’t realized before. In the past, when considering how much to give for a special offering, Mom would ask me how much we were giving. I would suggest a specific amount and she would suggest a larger amount, usually double what I suggested. I just assumed that she thought that we should give more than I suggested. I now realize that she initially was inquiring as to how much I wanted to give, then she was saying, ‘I want to give, too!’ I have already indicated my gift. There’s no doubt in my mind that if Mom was here she would suggest that we give double the amount I indicated we should give. Therefore, I am enclosing an amount equal to what I gave for Mom. She wouldn’t want it any other way.”

What you give (I’m not talking just about money) often becomes the baseline for what others give. If you want others to give more, give more yourself.

An elephant, with his trunk, can easily pick up a one ton load. Have you ever visited a circus and watched those huge creatures standing quietly while tied to a small wooden stake?

While still young and weak, an elephant is tied by a heavy chain to an immovable iron stake. No matter how hard it tries, it cannot break the chain or move the stake. Then no matter how large and strong the elephant becomes, it continues to believe it cannot move as long as it can see the stake in the ground beside it.

Many intelligent adult humans are like the circus elephant. They are restrained in thoughts, actions and results. They never move out any further than the extent of their own self-imposed limitations.

If this is happening to you and to your life, resolve now to uproot the states that hold you, break the chains of hindering habit and become the person you know you can become and should become.

Make the choice now to do just one thing different than you’re comfortable doing now.