“The more you are liked — or the higher your likeability factor — the happier your life will be.”
— Tim Sanders

Tim Sanders calls this the likeability factor. I would also call it the Law of Attraction. But whatever you want to call it, I believe that it will make your life happier. His book shows you how to raise your likeability factor by teaching you how to boost four critical elements of your personality:

• Friendliness: your ability to communicate liking and openness to others
• Relevance: your capacity to connect with others’ interests, wants, and needs
• Empathy: your ability to recognize, acknowledge, and experience other people’s feelings
• Realness: the integrity that stands behind your likeability and guarantees its authenticity

When people like you because you are friendly, you can connect on their terms, you relate to what they are experiencing, and you live authentically, you tend to attract more people like you in your life.

“Friends are the mirror reflecting the truth of who we are.”
— Author Unknown

Have you ever had someone say or do something that really bothered you? It could have even been something that was even very minor, but it irked you or maybe even angered you at the time.

What should you do in such a situation? Ignore it? Walk away from it? Make a conscious effort not to feel that way again? Actually you should walk right into it. I’m not saying you should start a confrontation with the other person. But in your mind, you should start examining why that issue bothered you so much because it was a clear message that there is a strong lesson in it all.

You may discover that the reason it triggered such a strong emotional reaction was because it reflects something in you that needs to be recognized and dealt with within yourself. Someone around you always angry? What anger issues have you been ignoring within yourself? Lazy people really bother you? What are you procrastinating doing in your life? And so on.

“You get what you think about, whether you want it or not.”
— Esther and Jerry Hicks, Ask and It Is Given

There is a device at the base of your brain called a reticular activating device whose job it is to filter out information that we have concluded is not important and assists you in noticing the things that you have decided are important. Another way to see it is that it works in conjunction with your belief system.

For example, if you have decided that the world is full of mean people, you will primarily notice all the mean people in the world. If however, you have made it a belief that the world is full of love and miracles, you will notice more love and miracles than someone who believes otherwise.

This is also the Law of Attraction in work. Because you get what you think about, even if it is a negative thought (mean people) you will actually attract (and notice) more mean people in your life.

So do this experiment: Focus only on the things that make you feel good. Take an important relationship in your life that may not be as optimal as you would like it to be and focus only on the positive aspects of that person for one week. You will notice their behavior will actually change positively as well.

“All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you.

The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.”
— Wayne Dyer

Often blame is a convenient way to distract oneself from looking at the root of the situations at hand. However, it also tends to make a victim of yourself by placing your life in the hands of others.

Take control of your life and your emotions by granting forgiveness to those that have hurt you. Focus on understanding the lesson that may have come with that challenging situation. This will allow you to truly change your life and your life circumstances.

“You are always a valuable, worthwhile human being — not because anybody says so, not because you’re successful, not because you make a lot of money — but because you decide to believe it and for no other reason.”
— Wayne Dyer

What if today you lost your job or your possessions. Would you be worthless? What if someone walked up to you and told you that you were stupid, would you believe them?

Base your self-worth on who you are at your source. You are not what you do, you are not what you have, you are not what others think of you (both positive or negative).

Believe you are of value because that is the reality for every single person in the world no matter what they do or don’t do, what they have or don’t have, and what others think of them or don’t think of them.

“You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.”
— Marian Wright Edelman

When I attended a seminar one summer, I learned a very valuable lesson that I didn’t even realize I needed to learn. It was about staying in the game. Not taking myself out before I even gave something a go (thanks to that little voice in my head coming up with all the reasons I shouldn’t do something). I didn’t know that I did this, but I had to admit, once the concept was presented to me that I did indeed, at times, take myself out of the game before I even started playing.

For example, have you ever really wanted to do something you had never tried before, but chickened out even before giving it a real effort? Perhaps a dream job that you don’t apply for because “they wouldn’t hire you anyway” (your ego calling out to keep you safe). Or that solo in the choir they are auditioning for — “they always use the same person for the solos”. Perhaps they always use the same person because no one else bothers to even show up to audition!

Stay in the game. Maybe you won’t win all the time. But that’s ok. Just don’t take yourself out before “the tribe has spoken” (for all you Survivor fans). As the cliché goes, “You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.”

“Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.”
— Czech Proverb

I know some people who have been hurt, emotionally, by people they thought loved them. And understandably they are now cautious of trusting again, loving again. So they put up their protection shields to keep people out. That way they won’t get hurt again, right?

But what are they keeping out? Perhaps they won’t get hurt by others, but the life they are now creating seems to be hurting their chances for joy, their chances for feeling love again. As much as we all would prefer to live without hurt, keeping everyone out for fear of them hurting us again will also keep out all who would love us again.

Instead of surrounding yourself with a fence of mistrust and fear, surround yourself with a circle of supportive and loving friends. Allow yourself to attract those that would love you by loving others first.

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
— Melodie Beattie

Wow! The power of gratitude. Here’s a fun way to remember to be grateful everyday and to unleash this power for your life: Make a nice box, decorate it as you wish, or just buy one that you really like. Write little notes about all the things you are grateful for in your life and put them in this beautiful box. Now, everyday — you pick a time that works best for you — pull them out and think about each and every one of them with love and gratitude. Really feel each one.

Once you get the hang of doing it for the things in your life that you already have, throw in some things that you want to have in your life and feel the same feelings of gratitude. See what happens.

“‘I have done my best.’ That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.”
— Yutang, Lin

To put it simply, your purpose is to live authentically — be who you really are at your core, and you are living your purpose.

So it is not about getting that star job. It is not about getting that dream home. It is not based on circumstance.

It is everything and anything that you do, and doing it with joy and authenticity.

“As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless.” — Rodney Yee

The thought of death often brings about feelings of fear, doubt, anxiety, confusion, etc. It is unfortunate that in our society we do not better prepare ourselves for the complete cycle of birth, life, and death.

In Michael Newton’s books, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls, the author explores life between lives. They are books unlike any other book on reincarnation as they deal with the moments between each lifetime as well as the past and future lives of our souls.

If you are dealing with the grief of losing a loved one, this book can bring wonderful comfort as it validates that the person you love is not really gone and how their souls can continue to communicate with you through quiet contemplation and meditation and removing any blocks of doubt.