The ego is never happy.  It always wants more and sends us on this compulsive pursuit of ego gratification or satisfaction from things outside ourselves.  Its needs are endless and it always convinces us that it will be happy when we achieve this or buy that.  Have you ever achieved something that you always thought would make you tremendously happy like a promotion, a certain level of income or the purchase of your dream house and looked around and thought “is this all there is?”  You didn’t feel the level of pleasure you always thought you would when you achieved it.  The ego then sends you on another mission to achieve more or buy more or accomplish more.

The problem lies with losing your capacity to enjoy the journey along the way.  In your obsessive drive to reach your destination, you forget to “stop and smell the roses”.  That’s when you know your ego is driving your life rather than your spirit.  There’s nothing wrong with pursuing goals and striving to achieve more and attain more.  It is a natural part of life.  We are expansion beings and we love to grow, expand, create and accomplish things.  It’s only when we lose our happiness and our joy in the quest for happiness outside of ourselves that we are robbed of our ability to enjoy our life along the way. 

Carl Jung describes his encounter with a Native American many years ago who was puzzled by the white man’s never-ending drive for more:  “They are always seeking something.  What are they seeking?  They are always uneasy and restless.  We don’t know what they want.  We think they are mad.” 

Does that describe you?  Are you always seeking something, uneasy and restless?  Are you puzzled about what you even want and what will ultimately make you happy?  Do you feel mad sometimes because it never seems to be enough?

Don’t let the ego trick you into thinking happiness is outside of yourself.  All of the happiness you need can be found within.  Learn to enjoy the journey.  There are plenty of celebrity examples which prove that fame, fortune and power do not equate to happiness.  Learn to be content and grateful for what you have obtained in life and all of the good things in your life now.  Celebrate your successes and find joy in your life today.  Silence your ego by finding happiness within and letting who you are and what you have now be good enough.

If you haven’t read Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now, you should definitely pick up a copy and read it today.  It is a powerful and insightful book about how to quit obsessing about the past or future and live in the present moment now.  In the book Tolle describes the power of now as the “power of your presence, your consciousness liberated from thought forms.” 

Many of us experience the loss of now because we are always trying to get somewhere other than where we are right now.  We allude ourselves into believing that fulfillment is right around the corner.  We become focused on becoming, attaining, achieving and accomplishing.  We obsess over the past and convince ourselves that the good old days were the best days of our lives and we’ll never be able to be as happy again or we allow past pain to rob us of our ability to experience happiness now. Most of our “here’s” are just never good enough. 

When we no longer depend on the future for fulfillment and satisfaction and we no longer use the past to cause us more pain, then we will begin to experience the magic of the now.  We will develop of sense of ourselves just from being, not from becoming.  As soon as we honor the present moment for what it is, unhappiness and struggle can dissolve and life can begin to flow with joy and ease.  We can choose to focus our consciousness on the present moment.  Wherever we are, we can choose to be there totally. 

Bring your focus and our presence back to the present moment.  Tolle says that “the quality of our consciousness at this moment determines our future and the degree of our presence in this moment determines the quality of our consciousness.”  So what guarantees an outstanding life?  It’s your ability to live fully in the here and now!  If you string a lot of wonderful present moments together, you will have a magnificent life full of joy and happiness.

John Bradshaw, author of Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child, says that we have around 25,000 hours of parent tapes running through our brain at any given time. Those tapes can be full of messages of criticism, unattainable demands and thoughts of never being good enough. The good news is that these tapes can be erased and re-recorded at any time. No matter what kind of parent you had, you can become a nurturing and loving parent to yourself and interrupt the negative messages you’ve been playing in the tape-recorder of your mind. You don’t have to continue the harmful patterns of a painful past.

One of the most empowering things you can do to heal yourself as an adult is to love and nurture your inner child. We all have an inner child who may have been wounded or damaged in the past. You can practice what John Pollard, author of Self-Parenting: the Complete Guide to Your Inner Conversations calls self-parenting. You don’t have to continue the abuse and disapproval you may have experienced as a child. You can make adult choices now to love, praise and encourage yourself positively. You are in control and can choose joy rather than pain.

Treat your inner child as you would have loved to have been treated growing up. Don’t wallow in blame for your parents or bitterness from your childhood either and use those as an excuse for your current unhappiness. If you continue to blame others then you remain in victim status and are using your past as a justification for not creating the life you desire. Recognize old patterns you may be perpetuating and make the conscious choice to care for yourself in a more loving and positive manner. Choose affirmative and encouraging inner dialog today.

Become the parent you wish you had had! Try mirror work where you repeat positive affirmations to yourself like, “I love you and am proud of everything you have accomplished in your life.” Visualize your parents differently and give yourself what you desired as a child. What is the one thing you always wanted to hear as a child but never did? Say that to yourself repeatedly. Welcome your inner child and rewrite your childhood!

One of my favorite exercises at Unleash the Power Within with Tony Robbins was imagining the process of burning bad childhood memory tapes in a bonfire and then re-recording them the way we wanted them to be. It was very powerful and healing. Picture yourself as a child, or find a childhood picture of yourself, and send affirming and loving messages to yourself. Wake up every morning and repeat encouraging, rather than discouraging, messages. You want to wake up excited about the day ahead, not scared to get out of bed. Remember that it is impossible to love and accept others if you don’t love and accept yourself. Self-love begins with remembering, loving and nurturing your inner child.

We’ve become addicted to pain, struggle and negativity.  The media feeds off of it and loves to bring it to the fore front of our brain every time we turn on the television, radio or read a newspaper.  It’s what Christiane Northrup calls “negative pleasure,” where we find some pleasure in other people’s pain, especially the rich, beautiful stars who seem to have it all.  Somehow, it makes us feel better about our own lives.  Practice undo-ism and undo your blocks to joy.

The more you begin to deliberately choose to put more joy and wholesome pleasure into your own life, the less appeal negative pleasure will have for you.  Why read or watch the bad news?  You aren’t going to miss anything.  Plenty of people will inform you of what’s going on.  Become media savvy and begin to be aware of the information you are putting into your mind which is contributing to the lack of joy and happiness you experience.  Every time you are watching or reading something idly, ask yourself if this is something you want to manifest in your own life.  If not, don’t focus your attention on it.

Focus your attention on what you want, on the positive aspects of life and your environment, the things you want more of. It takes practice and discipline; especially if you grew up in a negative home or culture.  It begins with your thoughts.  86% of the 60,000 thoughts we have per day are negative and repetitive and 98% of the things we worry about never happen.  We have developed habitual thought patterns which have created massive blocks to our joy.  Many of these thought patterns began before we were even aware we were creating them but we are allowing them to control and determine the level of joy we have in our life.  We can make the choice to shift our thinking and filter the negativity we allow in.

If you don’t make a conscious choice to deliberately put more joy into our life through our thoughts, feelings, emotions and activities then we will end up doing it by default through sugar, drugs, food and alcohol. Choose joyous thoughts.  Every thought you think creates a cascade of biochemical changes in your body that are measurable and communicate to every cell in your body.  Choose joyous company, and raise your vibration by the people around you.  Choose joyous entertainment and realize the healing benefits of laughter and joy in your life!  Begin to undo your blocks to joy today!

Life is meant to be joyous!  The process of creating life is joyous.  (At least it was for your father.)  At the time of your conception, there was a huge burst of nitric oxide.  Nitric oxide is the life force or chi chemical which opens up blood vessels in your body and allows your blood to flow freely and easily through your veins.  It was the research of nitric oxide that led to the creation of Viagra, a benefit of which we are all aware.

Every time you feel joy or ecstasy, you generate massive quantities of nitric oxide in your body and produce one of the most powerful anti-aging drugs in the world.  Not only does it keep you younger, it enhances your creativity, produces DHEA, boosts immunity, and stimulates your metabolism.  All for free.  Forget the plastic surgeon, just feel, experience and deliberately put more joy into your life!

Joy brings out the best in you, raises your vibration and therefore the vibration of the people around you.  There is an amazing book on the market called Messages in Water by Motto.  It cites studies which have shown that the hydrogen and oxygen bonds of water are tremendously affected by the music played around them.  If a sad and depressing song is played, the bonds are chaotic.  If a soothing, happy song  is played, the bonds are beautiful and flowing.  Since our bodies are 87% water, it is easy to see how the nature of our thoughts create our bodies and our health.

Choose joyous thoughts, entertainment and company and learn to produce more joy in your life every day.  You’ll live longer, be healthier and have much more fun along the way.

As a child, I vowed that when I became a father, I would take my family on lots of fun trips.  One of my best childhood friends was Bill Silcox, who lived right across the street from me in Panama City and whose birthday was the same time as mine.  His family took me in and his dad, Bud Silcox, was like a father to me.  They included me in so much like fishing, boating, and scalloping, but there were times when they needed their own family time and couldn’t take me along.  Some of my most painful memories as a boy were watching their family pull out and drive away on their way to a family vacation.

As a father of four boys now, my dedicated commitment to family trips has caused some heated debates for Donna and me through the years.  There were times when I had to drag her kicking and screaming that we didn’t have the time or the money for this or that vacation.  We were creative though in the lean years.  The boys still laugh at their packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at Disney World.  One of our favorite, inexpensive trips was camping in Fall Creek Falls in Pikeville, Tennessee.  For the cost of a $10 per night campsite, we created some of the fondest memories of our lives:  attempting to build a campfire that couldn’t begin to compare to our neighbors, fishing on a little boat all day long and not catching a single fish, hiking down to the bottom of the falls and listening to the boys gripe all the way back up.

When we get together as a family, we bore our daughter in law, Bailey, to death with stories and laughter over some of the crazy memories we have from our early family vacations.  She’s been in our family long enough that she’s heard just about all of them several times and can tell them better than we can now.

It’s never the destination though; it’s always the not so perfect moments on the journey.  Those are the memories that stand out the most and make you crack up looking back on them.  There was the time we had to drag Brad, who was eight, to the ski lodge and plop him on a sofa by the fire in Maggie Valley because he was sick with a stomach bug.  We weren’t about to miss out on the skiing.  Then there was the time Drew and Chris jumped off the sailboat with their dad in the Bahamas because the boat wasn’t going anywhere and the guide was yelling at him.

We really laugh over the reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg and the 12 hour ride home in our mini-van where Brad accidently stuck a penny up his nose demonstrating a magic trick for his brothers.  It was scary at the time but hilarious to look back on.  We all giggle over five year old Josh’s absolute refusal to turn off the flash light on his head while we were tubing through the caves in Cozumel so we could appreciate the darkness of the cave.  All you could see was one little light going back and forth across the top of the cave as Josh shook his head vehemently back and forth no.

It may feel like there are times when you can’t afford to invest the money or the time on a family trip.  But there are so many alternatives to having fun even if you don’t spend a lot of money.  You really can’t afford not to find a way to get the family away from the normal routine and create magical memories.  The kids and the parents will remember the good trips and the bad trips and look back and laugh for the rest of their lives.  Those trips and their memories will build character, pull the family closer together and take them through some tough times when they need to laugh a little.  Besides, they will also vow to make sure their future families create the same magical memories as well.

The fire was blazing; we popped some microwaveable popcorn, cuddled under the blankets and enjoyed the night.  I looked around during the movie and expressed gratitude for all of the things I have to be thankful for.  Sometimes, with all that we have going on in our busy lives, relaxing and not doing can be easier said than done.  There is power and beauty in choosing to live in the now.  Even though there is always more to be completed and more to attain, making memories that last a life time and spending time with loved ones are what’s really important.  At the end of our life, it’s not what we’ve achieved, accomplished or acquired that matter, it’s the relationships we’ve built and the people we’ve loved.

I was talking recently with a business owner who expressed the pain of losing his wife unexpectedly several years ago.  He said the most difficult part about it was the feeling of regret over how busy he had been and how much time he had spent traveling for his demanding corporate job.  It had prevented him from spending quality time with his wife and family and that is what caused the most pain for him with her loss.

Many of us have great intentions of making changes in our lives in the very near future so we can spend more time with our families but we don’t always know what tomorrow holds.  We need to live today as if it were our last and make sure our loved ones know how much they are cherished and appreciated.  Like Tim McGraw’s popular song says, we need to live like we were dying.  What would you do differently, what changes would you make in your busy schedule, how much more time would you spend with the important people in your life?  Begin to make those changes now because now is all you really have.  There’s nothing you can do about the past and there is no way to predict the future.  All of the power is in the present moment.  You deserve to enjoy life’s journey, every single moment of it!

When did we stop having fun? Certainly not in middle school, that was a blast.  Flirting with the boys, making fun of the teachers, pulling bra straps or going all dressed up to the dance, middle school was very amusing.  Most of us had loads of laughs in high school too:  proms, awkward first dates and exciting sporting events.  I can remember when our two oldest sons won a state championship in basketball.  The stands were always packed with kids who were having the time of their lives.  For many people, college life brings back some of the fondest memories of their lives where life was still very entertaining and pleasurable.

When did your life become so serious? Was it when you decided you needed to stop having fun, get a job, and take on adult responsibilities?  Our society gives youth permission to have fun, to laugh, celebrate, make noise and goof off but there seems to be an unwritten rule in our culture that all of that has to stop when we grow up.  About one of the only times we’re given the okay to celebrate is when our favorite team wins a game.  Then we can jump up and down, cheer, whoop and holler for joy.

The truth of the matter is that no matter what we are doing or what our adult responsibilities are, life is supposed to be fun.  It’s supposed to be an exciting adventure where we learn, grow, enjoy ourselves, live completely in the here and now and experience life to the fullest.   As adults, so much of our lives are spent stressing over things long past:  from our childhoods, from five or ten years ago, from the mistakes we’ve made, the people we’ve hurt or the people who have hurt us.  If we’re not stressing over the past then we’re busy worrying about the future like how we’re going to make next month’s mortgage payment or whether we’ll get that big promotion we’ve been wanting.

Our well-developed egos just won’t allow us to enjoy the now!  It’s a hungry beast who is never satisfied and always wants more.  It keeps us away from the joy of living fully in the present moment.  The eight boys on Josh’s team had fun because they were living in the current minute.  They weren’t stressing over the past or the future.  They were living from their spirits not their egos!

Defy your ego today and live from your spirit. No matter where you are or what you are doing, stop for a few minutes and have some fun!  Find a reason to smile from ear to ear, to belly-laugh, to run, jump or leap for joy.  Take a moment, reach your hands to the sky and twirl around until you are dizzy.  Giggle until your ribs hurt or laugh out loud for no good reason.  Try it on the elevator and see what kind of response you get from the serious adults around you.  Become a kid again and have some fun!

The major premises of the book:

1.     Imagination.  The greatest gift that you’ve been given is the gift of your imagination.  Everything that now exists in the world was first in imagination.  It’s the only thing you have that is available to you at all times to create the life you want.   You have to go within first and create it in your imagination and then hold it in your imagination no matter what the world around you says or does.  The only way to change the concept of yourself is through your imagination.  You have to become free of the “good opinion of others” as Abraham Maslow would say.

You must contemplate yourself surrounded by the environment of the life you wish you create.  Find your calling and then add passion and enthusiasm (God within) to it.  If you have passion inside of you about something, that is just God within talking to you.  Don’t die with your music still in you!

2.     Think from the End.  Whatever you place in your imagination, you can create.  Think from this place as it is the only place where anything can be created.  Get yourself out of the way and let God use you.   Einstein says that the imagination is more important than any knowledge you can obtain so utilize this incredible tool because it is the most powerful one in your arsenal.  There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come and there is a powerful solution to every problem you face.

3.    Set an Intention.  Become inspired.  When an idea gets a hold of you it will begin to take you where you’ve been called to go.  An intention isn’t something you do; it’s an alignment with the force of love and getting in alignment with source energy and power.  This is where synchronicity will begin to occur and you begin to collaborate with fate.  Align with Source, not your ego which is your false self that believes you are what you accumulate or accomplish.  The ego believes that you are separate from God or others and always asks “what’s in it for me?”  The spirit always asks, “How may I serve?”

4.    Assume the feeling.   This is the fun part.  Experience the incredible feelings which go along with fulfilling your desires.  Then be steadfast in it. If you can’t imagine a solution to something, then you are giving up the only tool and the only chance you have to solve the problem.  The biggest problem that most of us have with our imaginations is that we have been taught and told what’s true and isn’t true or what we can or cannot do.  We should begin teaching our children that they are incredible and that they can fulfill their dreams and desires.

In Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton says that we all have a lifetime of thinking habits to overcome.  These are viruses of the mind and a virus does nothing but infiltrate, duplicate and spread.  These are ideas that have been conditioned into us about what we can accomplish and we need to begin to examine and questions these beliefs.  Even people using the excuse that this is the way I am because of my DNA or genetics can’t use that excuse anymore because scientists are discovering that even your DNA can be reprogrammed.

Begin to imagine differently and change your thoughts about what is attainable.  This is the greatest gift that we have been given:  the gift of creation and manifestation.  You experience feelings in your body.  How does the accomplishment of your dream feel?  This is the great secret and what keeps most people from manifestation.  They don’t put their attention on it and get their feelings, emotions and body involved in it.  Don’t believe everything you’ve been taught.  Louise hay was 61 years old when she wrote You Can Heal Your Life.  Now’s she’s 83 and is the owner of the largest publisher of higher consciousness books in the world.  What if she had believed what other’s told her that she was too old to start a new career or that it couldn’t be done?

Every time you hear how hard something is you have to go back to your imagination and put your attention on the feelings you’ve already assumed there.

5.     Move it into Your Subconscious Mind.  This is the part of you that controls most of your behavior, your habitual mind, everything you do without thinking about it, your automatic mind.  If you’ve driven a stick shift for years, it is in your subconscious mind, you don’t have to think about it, it is automatic.  If you practice this thought enough in your imagination, it will move into your subconscious mind and become automatic.  Habits rule the unreflecting.  Begin to figure how to access the subconscious mind because this is the place where you begin to interact with universal intelligence.

For the last five minutes of each day, which are the most important minutes of every day, you should place your wish in your imagination and let it marinate for the next eight hours while you sleep.  What you think about before sleep is powerful.  See it working out for you, imagine how that feels.  Then your mind will begin to say, “Oh, so this is how you want things to be?  Okay, that’s what we will create for you then.”

The degree to which what you place in your imagination feels natural to you is the degree to which you will be successful in attracting it to yourself.  Does it feel natural for you?  It needs to.  Go back to the state of well being.  Feel it.  Synchronicity will begin to take place because you will be aligned with your source.

You can manifest anything you desire using these steps.  Don’t let obstacles keep you from your fulfilling your desires.  Reconnect to your source.  When you are inspired to a higher purpose, all of your thoughts break their bonds, you expand your consciousness in all directions and you will find yourself in a whole new world.  You will find yourself to be a much more beautiful person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.  You will become a host to God rather than a hostage to your ego.

Wayne talks about two of the greatest teachers in his life, who have been inspirational examples to him of people who lived life according to their inner voice rather than following the current sentiment of the culture they were surrounded by:  Ralph Waldo Emerson & Henry David Thoreau.  We all have within us everything we need to be able to live life at the highest level and accomplish all of our goals and dreams.  This is an insane world and we shouldn’t underestimate the level of insanity which surrounds us.  We have to become the truth we live by and recognize who we truly are so that we aren’t swayed by other’s good opinion.  We need to understand that we all come from a source of love and that life is an exploration of discovering how to return to the place from which we originated.  We have to realize ourselves in a God-realized way.

One of the questions we need to ask ourselves is the question Einstein said was one of the most important questions in the world:  “Is this a friendly universe?”  Our answer to the question will reveal a tremendous amount about our beliefs and values.  If we see this as a friendly universe we activate different standards, thoughts, actions and feelings in our life.  We all have to begin to think as God thinks and understand that we have the workings of the universe within us.