Recently I attended a retail forum and after delivering the closing keynote, of which recognizing and rewarding appropriate behaviour was a key message in my talk, I was invited backstage to recognize and award a retailer of the year.

I was thrilled about being invited to do that, as I have never done that before. However, the awards were randomly passed out to a variety of business personalities, and not necessarily in a way that reflected their character or what they stand for.

Well, I opened mine to read what I was awarding. It was discount retailer of the year. Immediately, I told the backstage organizer that I cannot award this, and that created a wave of problems for them and the other business personalities, which was not my intention.

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A–Accept
Accept others for who they are and for the choices they’ve made even if you have difficulty understanding their beliefs, motives, or actions.

B– Break Away
Break away from everything that stands in the way of what you hope to accomplish with your life.

C–Create
Create a family of friends whom you can share your hopes, dreams, sorrows, and happiness with.

D–Decide
Decide that you’ll be successful and happy come what may, and good things will find you. The roadblocks are only minor obstacles along the way.

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For the husband who complains when his dinner is not on time because he is home with me, not with someone else.

For the teenager who is complaining about doing dishes because that means she is at home and not on the streets.

For the taxes that I pay, because it means that I am employed.

For the mess to clean after a party, because it means that I have been surrounded by friends.

For the clothes that fit a little too snug, because it means I have enough to eat.

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There are things in life that we cannot control, and things that are under our full control. One of the first things we must do is get into the habit of distinguishing which is which. Then we can start to take control of our lives and our destiny.

Each day we go out into the world where we are faced with the many external influences that are not part of ourselves, not under our control, and that causes us to react in the way we do. Influences like the weather, the news, the traffic, the crowds of people or the lack of people, and the comments we hear.

When you wake up to a rainy day, versus a sunny day, do you see things differently?

When you get caught in traffic, how do you react?

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