E  ver heard the phrase, “Misery loves company”?  Well, I ran into one of misery’s cousins named “complainy” a few days ago and found out that complainy loves company too. 

In life, I’ve found these types of incidents to be very common and I don’t think I’m alone.  I’ve also discovered that the easiest conversations to engage in with strangers are the ones where they’re complaining about something and for some odd reason politics seem to be the most popular.  It’s easy for the “average” person to add to the fray by complaining too, but much tougher for the “average” person to be creative and insert a positive, uplifting comment while smiling.  It appears to me that shared conflict has a knack for bringing people together for a journey down a road of complaining.  May I humbly suggest that we not go down that road?  The world needs “non-average” people like us sprinkled around in many areas to capitalize on the many opportunities to insert flowers of positivity where weeds of negativity are trying to grow. 

So, I humbly ask that you join me today and everyday hereafter in being anything but “Average”.  Don’t miss the message today.  Let’s continue to lean forward and be the example as we attempt to make it GREAT.

“AVERAGE”?  I think not.

 I  remember as a kid we used to play the ever-so-popular game called “Hide & Seek”.  The rules were simple.  Everybody finds a place to hide while one designated person seeks them out one by one.  The seeker’s job was to count up to the number 10 or 20 and then yell, “READY OR NOT, HEAR I COME!”  If we weren’t ready we could easily yell out, “DO-OVER, I’M NOT READY!” and the seeker would oblige us by starting the count over. 

As a seeker I remember having a hard time finding the older kids because they were usually good at hiding, but in spite of this fact, I still managed to have a load of fun.  The actual thought of this childhood memory brings a big “Cool-aid” smile to my face and cranks up feelings of nostalgia for me.

The interesting thing is today as an adult I feel like we play a game of “Hide & Seek” with life, and once we reach adulthood life becomes a seeker and screams out, “READY OR NOT, HEAR I COME!”  The only twist is, if we’re not ready, we can’t call out for a “Do-Over”, not this time.  Life comes at us fast and furiously and we all have to be ready for it, not just at the beginning of adulthood, but everyday thereafter.  

So the question today is, “Are you ready?”  because ready or not, here it comes again and again and again.  Also beware because no matter if you’re young or old, rich or poor, big, small, short, tall, hair or bald life is guaranteed to find us all. 

My unsolicited advice today is, Don’t Get Ready for life’s ups and down, Stay Ready for life’s ups and downs.  Let’s stay ready and make it GREAT!

At times I’ve found that one of our greatest assets can sometimes be the memory of our last challenge and how we overcame it.  Having a good memory definitely comes in handy under circumstances and situations where we need to recall how resilient we really can be.  In any noble cause, we must resolve to stay the course until success shows up because others are secretly counting on us to win.
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