I am ______ - What’s the first word that comes to mind? Happy? At peace? In love? Healthy? Strong? A good friend? Nice? Honest? If you are anything like I was 7 or 8 years ago then the words that would fill that blank would be much more dismal - I would have been using words like; lost, confused, dishonest, selfish, lazy, mean, disconnected, depressed, delusional, and addicted. The beautiful thing about this life is that we’re blessed with a conscious and free will, which enables to assess and evaluate ourselves and decide if the choices we’re making are the right ones that will result in feeling good about who we are - I am is a very important statement we have to make - we are creators and we have the responsibility to mold ourselves into the person we want to be - everything is a choice - we can choose to live with integrity, honor, and self-respect or we can choose to be a liar, a criminal, or a jerk - its up to us to decide who we become and who we want to present to the rest of the world - it all starts with paying attention to what were thinking and how those thoughts lead to feelings and feelings to actions and actions lead to results. Another beautiful blessing this life affords all of us is multiple chances to get things right - we can mess things up over and over and over again until one day the lightbulb goes off and just like magic we can change our ways - make better choices and turn our lives around filling in that blank with words that we can be proud of - So I challenge all of you to fill in your blank and see what you come up with - see if there’s some areas of your life that might need some work and some adjustments - before we can make any changes we first have to identify that something’s not right - then we decide to do something about and formulate a plan to make it happen - so today I challenge you and myself to evaluate who you are and who I am and together let’s make some changes that will make OUR WORLD a better place. And let’s do it with smiles on our faces Have a great day!

Much of our learned behavior come from the adults that we emulate and imitate as we grow, mature, and develop into our own person. In most cases these people are our parents, our grandparents or our guardians. Respect was always a quality that was discussed and expected to be taken seriously in our family. It started with self-respect – then we were taught to respect one another’s differences and individuality – respect our elders – and always have respect for our earth. Without self-respect it is virtually impossible to have any respect for anyone or anything else. Without respect for other people and our earth the results can be devastating.  I’ve been taught and now believe that it is imperative that we learn to respect our body, our mind and our spirit in order to become a powerful human being - able to reach more of our potential, which will manifest into a natural desire and ability to respect all things living on this planet.

John Nies

Transformation - You are truly a rare breed if you aren’t in need of some kind of transformation. I bet it’s probably safe to say that most of us are here on this earth to learn some valuable lessons - We all live and we all learn - we are all students that will eventually ask the same questions - who am I? - why am I here? - where do we go when it’s all said and done? - I once read that in order to understand what we ARE we first need to understand what we ARE NOT- in order to to comprehend such profundity we are required to live through a plethora of experiences that will hopefully shed some light on our confusion - we’re on a journey - an exploration of self that is replete with many hardships, emotional ups and downs, challenges, fears, doubts, and insecurities - often times these experiences force us to run, hide, escape, ignore or develop coping skills that will temporarily make life manageable but there’s only so much of it that we can take. That’s when we draw the conclusion that there’s got to be something more to life than this and we start to desire change - a more meaningful connection and that’s when you start your transformation from a life rooted in fear to a life full of peace, love, health and happiness.

John Nies

Courage - So many of life’s circumstances can be quite challenging and present difficult situations for us to deal with. Courage is our defense mechanism that does battle with our fears, allowing us to face them head on with the fortitude to overcome them. Courage is called upon when you realize its time to follow your dreams, to speak your truth, to change your situation. Courage is what people have who choose to follow the road less taken, to listen to the voice within, or to create the life they want to live. Today’s world can be a very intimidating place and courage is a very useful trait to develop. Courage is an attitude, a way of looking at things. Courage is what helps us get back up when we get knocked down and motivates us to keep fighting, through whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.

Always try to move courageously through life believing that no matter how difficult things may get – no matter what obstacles stand in your way there is a way to come out on top.

John Nies