Special Friends, Part 3

You now know my special friends Harley and Mike. So now I want to introduce the very special friend, partner and without a doubt the right person to be my life’s companion. Micki is her name, Oh that’s not her real name, it the name she gave herself and I won’t reveal her real name because she doesn’t like it. Not to offend anyone I won’t reveal her real name.

Why is she so special? Only some stories about Micki and I will reveal why she is so special. Let start right after we were married. Micki was still active in her sorority, so when they had a party for the sisters and their dates, and in our case husband, Micki took great pride in introducing me to all her sorority sisters. When we got to one of the sisters who was with an old school friend of Micki’s, she introduced me as her first husband. Now you can imagine what he thought. But instead of explaining she went on talking and to this day I am not sure if they know that I am still Micki’s first husband.

At that time I should have know that being married to Micki was going to be a great and enjoyable journey through life. I could write a book on Micki’s humor, but I’ll just give you some of the highlights.

Micki and I were married a little over a year. She was still going to college and I was deeply involved in my first job. Like all first jobs the pay scale was at the lower rung. Being a business major in college I had a budget for Micki and me to live on, in fact during the year I revised the budget several time and still I couldn’t make to work on my income. So I had the big talk with Micki about the financial short fall. She listens very intently and when I stopped talking she very calmly told me she could solve this problem. I told her I was all ears. Again very calmly she said that I should earn more. So she gave me a goal. For some reason or another I did what she suggested.

Here is the latest Mickiism. We wanted to have a quite anniversary dinner at a local steak house. Micki was to make the reservation, which she did, but not without a Mickiism. When she was asked if it was a special occasion she let them know that it was our forty fifth wedding anniversary. Then she asked if they had walkers. She said the man on the phone lost it and Micki was again helping the world have fun.

Fun and humor go hand in hand. I promised you that there was a common thread which bonded all three of these friendships. If you haven’t figured it out by know it’s OK. Having a sence of humor makess relationship work so much better and by the way he helps a lot in enjoying life.

Happiness with Wealth to you

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Special Friends, Part 2

Without good friends life wouldn’t be worth a lot. I talked about my special friend Harley, now I’ll tell you about Mike. He is a fun guy to be around. You can’t help but laugh with him. We met almost four decades ago. We both moved in the same neighborhood. He was right across the street so it was easy to talk almost every day. Mike likes to help others. When my big TV went out he said “Wait be for you buy a new one I think I can fix it”. That following Saturday he was over with all his electronic testing equipment. In a few minutes we had the TV out and he started testing things. Not long after he had the TV out he stood up and proclaimed that the picture tube was bad and he was going to get a new one for me.

Why would I let my neighbor take my TV apart? Will Mike was a graduate electronic engineer so fixing a TV was kids play for him. Yes he got a new picture tube and we had the TV working. Mike was also a fabulous fisherman.

Mike decided to teach me how to fish. Fishing we went. Out in the Everglades, you can feel really alone when you get in the back waters. Mike picked out a good spot. He looked around and then made a perfect cast and guess what, he caught a fish and it was a big one. The rest of the day seemed to go like this I kept casting and Mike kept catching fish. What I learn about fishing, Mike was very good and the best thing I could was watch ans enjoy the weather.

Mike and I don’t fish anymore, now we play golf. We just seem to laugh are way around the golf course. I bitch about his driving and he looks for bigger holes to run into. We are a real team. You might say we are like Mott and Jeff.
When we talk next about special people, I’ll l go over the common thread that makes these friendships so special?

Happiness with Wealth to you

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Special Friends, Part 1

We all have special friends in our life. Some are friends from the good old days like college or early jobs. Others we have picked up over the years. Then there are the very very special fiends. Actually they are more than friends they are our partners for life, our spouses.

Here is a story about one of my college buddies, Harley. When Harley and I first met I wasn’t too sure of him and I don’t know what he thought about me. As time went on for whatever reason our friendship grew. Looking back I think it was because he had had a real drive to be the best he could be. And that is the something I wanted. We put on some of the best fraternity parties on campus and built an award winning homecoming float. This doesn’t seem like much now but at the time it made Harley and I feel real good.

After Micki and I got married Harley would come over and help me with home project. We punched a hole in our master bedroom wall to put in a wall A/C. When we got done it looked good. He helped me lay sod with some other fraternity brothers and we managed to get the green side up. But our crowning achievement was building the wooden deck. It took a lot of beer and white paint.

Harley moved to California so we didn’t get to see him much after that, but our friendship never wavered. Last year we met Harley in Los Vegas for a day and had a wonderful time.

Just to show what kind of parties we put together here is an example of one. There was this island in the middle of Bellville Lake. No one lived on it, but in the winter duck hunter would use it. Harley and I thought it would be a perfect place for a party. All we had to do was build docks on the mainland and island, plus get a generator to power the light and music on the island. Oh, we also need a couple of boats to carry the party goers to the island. Yes we got boats and the party was an over whelming success.

That’s my very special fiend Harley. They don’t make them any better.

Happiness with Wealth to you

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Success

We all want success in one way or another. And that is good. Success is seen in the eyes of the beholder. Meaning we have different measures of success.

Some people want fame other want a fortune. Let’s take a look at that those that want fame. First fame can come in many ways. You could be rock star with millions of adoring younger folk clawing at you. That doesn’t seem to appealing to me, but everyone to their own. Maybe deep down I am jealous of rock stars. Sorry about that. Fame can come from being a great actor or actress. Just think of going to all the grand openings of your movies or if you are a broad way performer the joy of the multiple curtain call. Fame can come to authors. Just think you get to go on the talk show circuit for months at a time. On some days you might do two or three talk shows. But just think of all many books you are selling by being on these talk shows.

As you can see fame can have some draw backs. You can lose a lot of you own personal time. Time lose with your loved ones and friends. I guess that’s the price of fame.

Success can come with money. Look at Donald Trump. He seems to be everywhere and despite thee resent bad times he is like the Eveready Bunny contently moving. You can have great financial success without fame. I would talk about them but you can’t find their name anywhere, but we all know they’re there. Just drive through the well to do areas in any community and see all the beautiful large homes. You can’t live in homes like that without a lot of money.

Success can come by just knowing that you are doing the right thing. What is the right thinks. How about living by your personal values, having real friends that you would do anything for and they would do the same for you. If you did just those two things, I and most of the rest of the world would consider you a very successful person.

To you success.

Happiness with Wealth to you

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Podcast: http://tinyurl.com/cqbdem

Being you

So many people want to be somebody else. I can’t figure this out because everyone us has something that so different than anyone else, maybe is because some people have not found what make them so unique.

As speaker I not only speak to others but get hear many speakers want to be. I love hearing the very natural ones. Yes they are prepared but most important they project them self. What I mean by this they are them self and it shows. I can’t tell you how many times I heard speaking coaches say “relax and be yourself”.

Being you sounds so easy and it is. If you find it hard let’s take a look at how you can find out about whom you are. Start going over things you like then look at the things you are good at. It is not hard so do it. Grab a piece of paper and start now. Don’t’ start judging your ideas, just make the list. One for what you like to do and the other what you do best. Stop reading and start the list.

OK you have list. Now start to rank the things on the list. Put the things you do best and like most at the top and continue to ranking all the items. Just look at it. Now look at what ranked the best of what you do and do the best.. You don’t need an answer right away. Sleep on it or what I do and wait till my thoughts crystallize. Than out of nowhere bam good ideas strike.

Write the ideas down as soon as possible. What you will find is that you have something that no one as has. This is the start of being you. Now you don’t have to be someone else because now you can be that very special person, you.

I’ll bet, and I am not a betting person, that if you work on what you like and do best, some good things will start to happen. One thing for sure you will have gained some will needed self-confidence. Also you will start to see in yourself the real you and like it.

Being you is the only way to go.

Happiness with Wealth to you

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Results

Results are what’s makes the world go around. We can study and plan but without result nothing happens. Thus there is a big need to get results. With that all said there is an important part of getting results that I need to tell you. Results have to be Win Win. If you win and the other person loses, I am not talking about binge pong, and then in reality everyone loses.

There is a balance in nature that somehow keeps track of things like this, so if you think you one and other person loses in the long run you will loses. It is a very simple system. If you live by it in th

Why can I say this, because it has happened to me? I won’t bore you with all the details but some very bad things happened to me that was out of my control. I could have just curled up and quit, but I didn’t.

For some reason not known to me I started a whole new career. Instead of felling sorry for myself, for some reason I felt like this was a new beginning. Now it is very important to me to make sure that whatever I do, it is a win win for all.

To advance in my career as an author, speaker, consultant and coach I use my life experiences and do a lot of research. That might seem like doing a lot of different things, but in reality it isn’t. To write I do a lot research which give me so much more knowledge than the topic I am researching. This knowledge I can use in consulting and coaching, which is real plus for my clients. In this case everyone wins.

So I live by my values and help others win and get results, which also help me. Not bad. Go for the Win Win.
Happiness with Wealth to you

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Want a happy marriage? Part Three

Having a happy marriage is not as hard as some people make it out to be. You don’t have to spend a lot of time looking for partner and we talked about that. Knowing your self is important and knowing and understanding others particularly you partner is also important. So what else can help in having a happy marriage? How about a since of humor? Yes a since of humor can certainly smooth out some of the rough spots in a relationships.

In my book “ Happiness in Eight Steps” I go over how important laughing is. So if you have a since of humor you going to have to laugh. It does so much for you and the also releases tension, both for you and your partner. Here is a story about Micki and I when we were first married.

We were in our first house all 1150 square feet of it. Oh it did have a basement to. Being this was our castle we wanted to make it look like one. The entrance way was small with at lot of corners, so when we went to wallpaper it we got a real challenge. First off we never wallpapered before. Second this wallpaper we picked out had a pattern, so you had to match it when hanging it.

It is important to know that this was very inexpensive wall paper and paper it was. You would have to laugh at how we set up to start papering. I got two folding chairs and a small sheet of plywood and the top of the back of the chairs. It worked but you had to be careful not to knock the plywood off the chairs. Then there was making of the paste. We started with a five gallon bucket and a brush we had from an earlier painting job. My job was to measure and cut the wool paper and Micki’s was to put on the paste. Micki is perfectionist so putting on the past took longer than it would have taken most people because she would not have even the smallest lump of paste on the back of the paper.

Ok we hung the first piece of wallpaper. We both had to step back and look at our master piece in the making. Now came the corner. Micki did her usual great job on the pasting and I started to hang the paper. Then it happened the pattern did not match. I could not hold myself back. I said some not so good things about my helper for cutting the paper on the wrong spot of the pattern. Then the light went on I realized I was holding about fifty cents worth of wallpaper and I was just about ruin a marriage for fifty cents.

Will here is where humor really helps. After I cooled down Micki looked at me and in a very soft a warm voice said “You can’t get good help anymore”. With those few word all my tension was gone. I think we had a beer and went back to putting up the paper. By the way to save the fifty cents of wallpaper I hung it upside down and being in the corner and with such a small pattern know one ever notice.

Have a happy marriage and have a since of humor.

Happiness with Wealth to you

Visit: http://www.happineswithwealth.com

And: http://www.lindemannletters.com

Podcast: http://tinyurl.com/cqbdem