The world won’t change overnight. Even if most people changed, there would still be a large number of people who refused to be anything but self-centered and stubborn in their selfish ways.

Imagine if you chose not to throw trash out of your car. Didn’t use the world as your ash tray. Chose to follow the simple laws, even if they don’t make sense to you. If you truly feel that your rights as a human are being violated, then do something that will actually change the situation, instead of breaking the law to get your way. Imagine if you reached out to the people you met every day. Said “hi” to a total stranger. Offered to help someone stuck on the side of the road. The little things add up, even in your own individual life. Imagine how big of an impact there would be if we were all making the small changes.

It’s contagious. If we all just made a conscientious effort to be a little nicer, kinder, and more friendly… wouldn’t the world slowly turn into a better place? We need to set the example. Pointing fingers, placing blame, and complaining about how horrible our lives are won’t change anything. In fact, all it’s doing is delaying the solution.

Be the change you want to see. Do it for your health and mine: happy people are healthier.

Photo cred: Timothy Lloyd@flickr

If you approach life with the mentality that you will fail, that you aren’t good enough, and that nothing can or will ever be better, you don’t even try to break out of that rut. Therefore, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy automatically, because if you don’t try to make things better the chances are slim to none that they will improve on their own. Even if they did, you probably wouldn’t accept it, because you would feel you didn’t “deserve” it. You might not even notice, because you’re so busy throwing a pity party.

On the other hand, if you approach life with a positive mentality, convinced that you are meant to succeed, you are more likely to succeed. In fact, you won’t feel as depressed even when you don’t. Why is this? Because you develop a sense of self-esteem and purpose. You take advantages of opportunity. You become a happier, more fulfilled person. No matter what your situation, you will be better off than if you chose only to shrug and accept the circumstances. You are living life, instead of life being a timer counting down to the end while you stare at the clock, like a student waiting for a boring class to be over.

There are a lot of things we can’t change. We can’t control other people. We can’t always control our environment. However there are a lot of things that we can change. We can control how we deal with other people. We can creatively handle the situations given us. We can choose to place ourselves in good situations as much as possible. We can find solutions to problems, instead of focusing on complaining about the things out of our control.

Opportunity is everywhere. It is your choice to take advantage of it. You can only fail by quitting. For every success you make, you will probably have 10 or more perceived failures. It’s part of the learning process! Take knowledge away from every experience and you will be the wiser for it. How is it a failure when you learned something invaluable?

I encourage you to think of one thing in your life that you want to improve, or change in some way. Whether it’s personal, political, or whatever it is, brainstorm a creative way to make a change in that area. Then do it.

Photo cred: lilit@flickr

I think that we are making equal opportunity and fairness something it was never meant to be. Yes, we should all get a chance. However, those who put in the effort and the ones who perform the best for the job should get it. We use equal opportunity as a crutch, we know that we’re wasting our time and effort because that’s not what we’re being judged on.

This, in turn, has taught us that being intuitive and inventive does not reap benefits. This, in turn, has taught our generation today to be lazy. The only time we use our creativity is to get out of needing to use it in another situation. Kids these days put more work into making a paper for school look like it’s the correct length using tricks in Microsoft Word than they would have if they had just written the damn paper.

Being creative about solving your problems is invaluable. Aren’t going to make the rent this month? Do you just let it happen or do you seek out creative (and legal!) ways of making an extra buck, like washing your neighbor’s car. You’ll be surprised how sympathetic someone might be to your situation if you’re willing to earn the cash instead of just borrowing it.

There are numerous ways of getting creative, from deciding to start a business to making the process you use to clean your dishes more efficient.

Leave your creative ideas in the comments. What is a problem you solved using a non-conventional method?

Photo cred: muppetcakes@flickr