Christmas Day

Give thanks.. thanks that Jesus Christ was born and that we all have the ability to love.. Christmas is all about love. this is the most unselfish day of the year. this is the one day when even making money is secondary.. we live in a very cynical world and we need days like this to remember why we were put on this earth. not for ourselves, but for others.. I am so appreciative for my family and friends. i reflect so often that i have to pinch myself for all of the blessings that God has blessed me with. i feel like the luckiest person on earth.. and i want to make sure that everyone that is in my life knows how much i love and appreciate them.. You should express that to those you love as well. 'people never get the flowers while they can still smell them'. that's a quotes that made me get up off my ass and verbalize my appreciation for others, instead of taking it for granted.. But i want to take it a step further. I want to challenge all of you to take the feeling you had on this day, and apply it to the other 364 days of the year. and 366 on a leap year.. apply the same unselfish values which makes Christmas so special to all of us.. So that's my challenge to you... Are you up for it?

? is Christmas Eve the ugliest day of the year

Oh Christmas Eve, oh christmas eve.. the laws are out and about trying to catch people slippin, good thing i haven't been drinking. yet.. malls are the most annoying place on earth. everybody's trying to get to where they need to be, but it seems that where they need to be is where everybody else is trying to be at the same time.. people are stuck in traffic jams and screaming at everyone else for being in the same predicament their in.. i saw a woman run over another woman in the mall without even thinking twice about apologizing to her.. But i'm not going to put all of this ugly behavior on christmas eve. i'm going to place it on lack of time.. when your in a hurry don't you sort of become a different person? don't you become a lot less patient, and the most important thing to you is accomplishing whatever it was that you set out to do.. It's such a transition to Christmas Day when everyone is in a great mood. i don't even curse on christmas day. i'm lying, but you get my point.. christmas eve is the culmination of all the emotions. gestures. and thoughts you did or didn't get to do in your preparation for christmas day so i can understand the frustrations. it was just amazing to me how ugly people were treating each other so close to the most unselfish day of the year.. I hope next year i'll be writing about the great things that people did on christmas eve.. but i have one word of advise for everyone.. October!... what do you think?

? what's the difference between being Cocky and being Confident

I honestly couldn't tell you. i tread the line between the two so often i have to check myself in mid sentence sometimes.. It's damn near impossible not to be one or the other from time to time. confidence breeds off of the fact that you think you can perform a task(s) better than other people. but within the same feeling is where cockiness resides.. Now let's be clear. there's nothing wrong with knowing how good you are at something. one of the greatest gifts someone can obtain is the ability to know your strengths and weaknesses. all of us are bad at probably several things. so shouldn't we be excited about the opportunity to be good and even great at something? Kanye West is a perfect example of how self acknowledgement comes off as cocky. he is one of the only artists in music that puts out great music that actually sells.. he receives the cocky label and rightfully so because he walks that same line i was speaking about earlier except he stays on either side for a while, he's never in between. but my point is that how can you reach that level of success without thinking in your own mind, 'i'm better than everybody'.. The truth of the matter is that the difference between confidence and cockiness is humility. the ability to know your not bigger than the situation. the ability to know that you may be the best, but your not the only great one.. humility changes the entire ball game and as soon as you obtain it you'll be seen differently in the eyes of others. even if on the inside your saying to yourself, 'I'm the greatest'... what do you think?

? can you accept Criticism

So can you handle the truth? can you handle it when someone tells you what they think of you when it's not positive? i think it can be so arbitrary when it comes to other peoples opinions that i don't listen to so many people.. but there are those who you speak with consistently enough who can give you some good information about yourself. and those are the people who can give you some insight into how what you are doing is being perceived.. I believe that nobody knows you better than you know yourself. i had a friend of mine tell me something about myself today, and since he is truly someone i feel knows me i put some thought into what he said. i could see some of the habits he spoke of playing out throughout this past weekend, but not enough to force me to change my habits or alter the way i'm currently living.. When you have different relationships with certain people there are certain things that you just have to take with a grain of salt. you may curse in front of one group but not in front of others. you may drink and smoke in front of one group and go to church with another group. but either way your still being you.. Now you can't be the type of person who is so hard headed that you can't even check the information your given for constant improvement. pride can be a blinding element to evolution. some things people say are just true and should be analyzed thoroughly.. but you have to do enough self evaluations so that when those situations do come up and your tested, you can speak with conviction about any issues pertaining to you personally. and you can either tweak some habits. change some habits. or just stay who you are.. because at the end of the day nobody knows you better than you know yourself.. NOBODY!... what do you think?