With a little willpower, it takes roughly 30 days for a person to form a new habit.  As with mastering anything new, the act of starting and getting beyond the preliminary stage where everything feels awkward is 80% of the battle.  This is precisely why it’s important to make small, positive changes every day over the course of at least a 30 day period.

It’s like the old saying:  “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.”  The same philosophy holds true for making changes in your life.  Trying to bite off more than you can chew will only make you choke.  But taking smaller, manageable bites, one at a time – eating a little healthier, exercising a little, creating some simple productive habits, making small changes in your Chiropractic practice for example – are amazing ways to make positive changes and get excited about life.

And when you start small like this, you won’t need a lot of motivation either.  The simple act of getting started and doing something will give you the momentum you need, and soon you’ll find yourself in a positive spiral of changes – one building on the other.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate self-discipline as an invisible magic.  You can’t see, taste, or smell it, but its effects are unmistakable.  It can transform overweight into slim, uninformed into expert, poor into rich, and misery into happiness.  It’s the submerged part of the iceberg others don’t see when they see a person’s “genius.”

It’s easy to feel that success comes easily – that it’s just a matter of luck, or an innate gift.  But anyone who has achieved anything has done so because they’ve been able to control and direct their own inner strengths and actions to the extent that has enabled them to become super-skilled at what they do.  And this kind of self-discipline, like a muscle, can be developed by all of us, including you

Your body has five senses, but not to be ignored are the inner senses of your soul: intuition, foresight, and self-trust.  The most common differences between successful and unsuccessful people lie in their use of these inner senses. This makes all the difference in the world.

Being true to yourself takes work, because it’s so easy to get sidetracked and influenced by others.  It’s easy to get caught up in the drama.  You have to put in the effort and stand strong every day to honor your own ideas, feelings, intuitions and aspirations.

I challenge you to make this your lifelong motto: “I respectfully do not care.”  Say it to anyone who passes judgment on something you strongly believe in or something that makes you who you are.  People will inevitable judge you at some point anyway, and that’s OK.  You affected their life; don’t let them affect yours.

Those who complain the most, accomplish the least.  It’s always better to attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.  It’s not over if you’ve lost; it’s over when you do nothing but complain about it.  If you believe in something, keep trying.  Don’t let the shadows of the past darken the doorstep of your future.  Spending today complaining about yesterday won’t make tomorrow any brighter.  Take action instead.  Let what you’ve learned improve how you live.  Make a change and never look back.

And regardless of what happens in the long run, remember that true happiness begins to arrive only when you stop complaining about your problems and you start being grateful for all the problems you don’t have.

1. You have an interesting life and it is magnificent, even during the toughest times.  Keep this in mind, and live it accordingly.  You are in control.  Change your thoughts.  As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there” somewhere else – as long as you think that someone or something else is responsible for your suffering – your situation is hopeless.  It means that you are forever in the victim role, that you’re suffering even in paradise.  Don’t do this to yourself.  Be your hero, not your victim.

1. If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.  Feelings, good and bad, always come and go.  The trick is to be grateful when your mood is high and graceful when it is low.

The most important currency in life is experience.  Money comes and goes, but your experiences stay with you until your very last breath.  So don’t be afraid to mix things up and challenge yourself with new life experiences.

When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.  Life gets easier when you delete the things and people that make it difficult.  Get rid of some of life’s complexities so you can spend more time with people you love and do more of the things you love.  Get rid of the clutter so you are left with only that which gives you value.

What worries you, masters you.  Stress thrives when your worry list is longer than your gratitude list.  Happiness thrives when your gratitude list is longer than your worry list.  So find something to be thankful for.  And remember, pretending to be happy when you’re struggling is just a small example of how strong you are as a person.

If you feel like others aren’t treating you with respect, check your price tag.  Perhaps you subconsciously marked yourself down.  Because it’s YOU who tells others what you’re worth by showing them what you are willing to accept for your time and attention.  So get off the clearance rack.  If you don’t value and respect yourself, wholeheartedly, no one else will either.

Oftentimes, when we strive for happiness, what we are really aiming for is to feel perfect. But perfection is an illusion.

We are imperfect beings, operating in a very imperfect world, and that is just the way it’s meant to be.  Striving for perfection is a hollow goal, one that can never be achieved.

Society shows us doctored images of perfection constantly in marketing and popular media.  Do not buy into this illusion; it will only lead you into darkness.  Embrace your quirks, your flaws and the fact that life is a roller coaster at times.  Strive for excellence, have high standards… but never confuse that with the crippling behavior of perfectionism.

Rather than striving to be perfect, embrace and appreciate all the imperfections of life, and use these things to grow stronger, wiser, and more whole as an individual.

You achieve happiness over time through meaningful experiences and "service to a greater cause".

Currently the focus tends to be on "today’s must-have dose of happiness", as such we become more of a taker rather than a giver.  When we focus all of our attention on ourselves our immediate desires are met, rather than considering new ways to make a rewarding, lasting difference in our lives and the lives around us.  We prioritize "our pursuit" over all the people – family, friends and strangers – who need us.

The truth is, making a difference by giving to others is actually one of the greatest ways that we can find happiness.  There is no exercise better for the heart than "reaching down and lifting people up".  It gives us a greater sense of meaning, purpose and fulfillment and often makes us feel much more content with our lives and who we are as individuals.

“Don’t think about eating that chocolate donut!”  What are you thinking about now?  Eating that chocolate donut, right?  When you focus on not thinking about something, you end up thinking about it.

By persistently trying to move away from what you didn’t like and don’t want, you are forced to think about it so much that you end up carrying it’s weight along with you.  But if you instead choose to focus your energy on moving toward something you do like and do want, you naturally leave the negative weight behind as you progress forward.

Bottom line:  Running away from your problems is a race you’ll never win.  Move TOWARDS something instead of AWAY.  Rather than trying to eliminate the negative, focus on creating something positive that just happens to replace the negative.

Ninety-nine percent of the time life delivers the experiences that are most helpful for your personal growth.  How do you know it’s the experience you need?  Because it’s the experience you’re having.  The only question is:  Will you embrace it and grow, or fight it and fade?

The key, of course, is to accept that not everything is meant to be.  When things don’t turn out how you expected, you have to seriously sit down with yourself and come to grips with the fact that you were wrong about it all along.  It was just an illusion that never really was what you thought it was.  It’s one of the most difficult realizations to accept, to realize that you feel a sense of loss, even though you never really had what you thought you had in the first place.

Today, the only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.  Prove yourself to yourself, not others.  You are GOOD enough, SMART enough, FINE enough, and STRONG enough.  You don’t need other people to validate you; you are already valuable.

If someone says “no” to you, or if someone says something negative about you, that doesn’t change anything about YOU.  The words and opinions of others have no real bearing on your worth.  Certainly it can be helpful and desirable to make a good impression in certain situations, yet it’s not the end of the world when you are faced with rejection.

It’s great to receive positive feedback, but it simply doesn’t always happen.  That’s OK though, because you know where you’re headed and you know your true worth does not depend on the judgment of others.  When you set out to make a true difference in life, there will be those who disagree with you, those who ignore you, and those who flat out reject your ideas and efforts.  Look beyond them, step confidently forward, do what must be done, and let them think what they will.