JosephBinning.com

In the End All That Matters Is What You Do

Life has a funny way about it. Sometimes were up, sometimes were down. One thing is sure, we all go through stuff, but in the end all that matters is what you do with it that counts.

“A happy person is not a person with a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes”

— Hugh Downs American TV Producer

I always say happiness is a choice that leads to an action. External circumstances cannot provide lasting happiness. The shiny new car will bring temporary happiness until your neighbor drives up with a newer one. That new outfit will bring temporary happiness until you see someone else wearing the same outfit. That new toy will bring about temporary happiness until it breaks.

For some, happiness can be very elusive. They just can’t seem to find it, but they keep looking everywhere and everyplace. To no avail. I was like that, always looking for something to make me happy. But it never lasted. Until I figured out the happiness is an internal choice and has nothing to do with external circumstances.

Lasting happiness will never materialize in your life until you stop looking for it. Yes, that is correct, until you stop looking for it. Something will always come up that puts a damper on it. It rains on your wedding day, and you planned it outside. That new car gets a scratch in it, ouch! The new outfit fades, etc. etc., etc.

The only thing that matters in the end is what you do with it.

One way to maintain happiness is to realize that we will all go through stuff in life, that’s guaranteed. The only thing that matters in the end is what you do with it.

I play golf every week with a set of friends for years now. It’s our way of keeping in touch with each other and getting outside to exercise. The beauty of playing golf is typically what you talk about is how well you hit your last shot, or how badly you missed it.

This week we have a 30% chance of rain on the day we are scheduled to play. Out came the message from one guy questioning if we should play or not. He sends out a message the there is a 30% chance of rain so should we take a chance and show up or cancel the game?

Back came a reply from one guy, “yes there is a 30% chance of rain but there is also a 70% chance of sunshine”. In the end all that matters is what you do. We’re showing up to play.

Far too many times people over think things. They play the what if game over and over and over until they talk themselves out of what they were thinking about doing? While analyzing your options is a smart thing to do before you do something, over analyzing something has the opposite effect that we desire for the outcome. It stops us from ever starting.

We have a choice in life, let it beat you up and make you bitter, or accept it and not allow it to damper your happiness. The choice is ours, and only we have the power to decide what the outcome will be.

So how do we choose to be happy? Im glad you asked.

• Know that where you have been is not who you are as a person.

Know that where you have been is not who you are as a person.

We all make mistakes in life, it’s designed that way. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, failed 10,000 times before his idea worked. When asked how it felt to fail 10,000 times, his response was “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” [1]Had he chosen to believe that his failures made him a failure, we would all be in the dark.

Do not allow past failures (lessons) to stand in the way from you seeking your happiness. Just because it didn’t work the last time does not mean won’t.

Live with no regrets

Failure is never final because we will always fail in one way or another throughout our lives. Never regret decisions and or their outcomes. Failures are ways that did not work on your way to finding what does. When life blesses you with a lesson, never regret it.

Regrets prevent our happiness from manifesting in our daily lives. They do the opposite of being happy; they make you bitter. Trust me, bitter does not look good on you.

Change your perceptions of how you see things

Edison knew that failure was part of the process and understood that. He knew, just like when he learned to walk that he would fall (fail) before he walked. A lot. Just like you did. By changing the way you look at things, you can drastically improve your life.

Stop looking for an external source for your happiness. Happiness is a choice that leads to and action, that leads to a feeling. Be happy.

Forgive yourself for lying to yourself by thinking you could never be happy

Far too many times people make mistakes and hang on to them. We keep them in baggage that we carry around with us from circumstance to circumstance, never letting go. We tell ourselves that we keep them around to remind us not to do something again, but it only reminds us of what won’t work.

By carrying these memories around each day, we focus on them because they are in the front of our mind. What you focus on, you get. By addressing the issue and allowing yourself to be human, forgiving yourself for the issue is easier, and liberating.

I remember a friend who counseled me on an issue that I was holding over my head and could not seem to forgive myself over. His advice was “you make a lousy god because only a god has that much power’. Forgiving yourself is the first step to allowing your happiness back into your life.

You can read my other article about forgiveness here: FORGIVENESS Is Not for the Other Person

It’s what you do with what life throws at you that matters.

Here is another article about Happiness that will help you: How to Find Happiness in Hard Times

If you have enjoyed this article, please visit me at www.JosephBinning.com for more helpful tips and articles.

You can also get more helpful information in my book You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don’t think so

For my free report Happiness Is A Choice click here: Happiness Is A Choice Free Report

Remember: Happiness is a choice, so choose to be happy.

[1] Goodreads.com/ Thomas A. Edison > Quotes/accessed 10/24/2020/ https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3091287.Thomas_A_Edison#:~:text=Thomas%20A.%20Edison%20quotes%20Showing%201-30%20of%2057,it%27s%20dressed%20in%20overalls%20and%20looks%20like%20work%E2%80%9D

Develop success from failures.

Discouragement and failure are two of the surest steppingstones to success.

— Dale Carnegie

Unless we maintain a forward-directed focus and a strong belief in our “Self”, it will always be easy to allow our failures to block our progress.

Failures do not identify who we are. Failures are lessons that teach us what did not work.

— Joseph Binning

Realizing that there are no mistakes in life without lessons is the first key to seeing that our mistakes, or—as you may refer to it — failure, is an opportunity to learn or experience something new. There are no mistakes without lessons. Everything happens for a reason, for our learning.

You probably don’t remember learning to walk. But can you imagine what your life would be like if, after your first fall, you had said, “Well, that was a major mistake. I failed. I guess I’m not meant to walk. I give up.” You’d be crawling through life. Not a pretty picture. Sounds ridiculous; yet, that’s exactly what you do when you call yourself a failure at something and carry that around in that expanding sack on your back. You know the one I mean. It’s the one you pull out so you can see all the examples of past failures when you tell yourself, “I just knew I’d fail. ”

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me…

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

— Walt Disney

Most of you have either been to, or heard of, Walt Disney and the famous Disneyland theme parks throughout the world. Walt Disney started as a cartoonist with a great vision. A vision so great most people of his time era couldn’t grasp the concept of. He had created a character and called him Mickey Mouse. He found great success with that character, so great most would have stopped with that accomplishment. He saw a vision he called Disneyland.
They rejected Walt Disney over three hundred times, bankers who thought his idea was absurd. The city of Anaheim rejected his original idea for his theme park, fearing it would only attract riffraff. But Walt was a man with a strong sense of self. He realized that failure was not the end, just an opportunity to learn what didn’t work and try again. So he did, over three hundred times until he perfected the vision enough for a banker to see it.

In his article “Thomas Edison and Michael Jordan Were Failures” (Under30CEO.com), Scott Cowley writes:

“they considered Michael Jordan one of the greatest basketball players of all time, he ‘single-handedly redefined the NBA superstar’ and yet, to get there, he openly admits to failing more than most. In a famous ad campaign launched by Nike, Michael said that he has, ‘lost almost 300 games’ (that’s more games than many NBA players have court time in)’, ‘missed over 9000 shots at goal’ (again more shots than an average NBA player even takes), missed 26 times he had the ball passed to him to take the game-winning shot.’

Jordan said that the reason he has succeeded boils down to his constant failure and his use of failure as motivation to shoot for success. Jordan viewed failures as stepping-stones towards success. His shooting average was just below fifty percent. So, to score, he would have to take two shots, one to fail and the other two score.”

We considered Thomas Edison the greatest inventor of his time, a man responsible for over one thousand different patents, some of which were refinements of previous inventions, but many were new ideas. Edison is famous not only for his inventions but also for his attitude toward failure. To him, failure was another stepping-stone on the road to success. Unlike Michael Jordan’s rate of one failure for every one success, Edison’s rate of success was significantly lower. Unlike most of us, Edison continued to try again. The famous story tells that Edison failed to perfect the light bulb, despite having made 9,999 attempts. Rather than accepting failure, he said, “I have not failed. I have just found 9,999 ways that do not work.” His 10,000th attempt was successful.

Can we heed the learning of these two great men and others like them? Could we use our failed attempts, not to define us or create despair, but as outcomes that showed us what didn’t work, so we could discover a different time or method that does? Can we learn from our mistakes, knowing they are just stepping stones to our successes?

I remember being 18, broke, and alone, with no job, and no place to live, no one to help me. It would have been easy to quit on life, to just give in and give up. But I didn’t. I found thick a field of bamboo that had the perfect clearing in it, just big enough for me to lie down in. Next to the field was a yard full of construction equipment. In it was a cement mixer covered in a tarp. I climbed the fence and stole the tarp and made a tent out of it in the bamboo field. This is where I lived for the next few weeks.

I found a job as a dishwasher in a local department store restaurant. The pay was three dollars per hour. Part of my pay was one meal a day. That was my only meal each day. I would show up early to work so I could wash myself in the sink in the bathroom every day. I kept to myself and didn’t socialize with my coworkers. I told myself, and remind myself to this day, that you have to do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.

Today, I am the founder and CEO of a nationally recognized company. I have traveled the world. Ive been to the top of the Swiss Alps, ate dinner in Paris in the wintertime, walked the streets of Rome, ate in a fishing village in Portugal, and relaxed on the sandy white beaches of the Caribbean, to name a few of the many places I have been. None of this would have been possible if I had listened to my critics, or myself, and decided that I was a failure, even though by many people’s standards, and many people’s eyes, I was.

I had a choice to believe them when they all said I was a failure, or to CHOOSE to not listen to them, and do what I had to do, so I could eventually do what I wanted to do. Making this choice, to not listen to the critics, allowed me to find my way forward to the place I am now. Sharing my story worldwide, to you hoping this will help you find your way forward.

Where in your life can you use your failures to find your way forward?

I leave you with this quote I am very fond of. I hope it helps. Now find your way forward.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

― J.K. Rowling

fail

In The End All That Matters Is What You Do

In the End All That Matters Is What You Do

FAILURE✵Your Past Is Not Who You Are So Don’t Give Up!