Gratitude is a feeling of appreciation felt by the recipient of gifts, help, or other types of generosity towards the giver of such gifts. Gratitude is a powerful process of shifting your energy and bringing more of what you want into your life. It unlocks the fullness of life.

We are all surrounded by blessings and reasons to be grateful, but few realize this, due to obsessively rushing to get to the next thing.

When you are grateful for what you already have, and work hard for what you don’t have, you will attract more good things. Gratitude opens the doors to abundance, self-power, wisdom, and the creativity of the entire Universe.

“Gratitude unlocks all that’s blocking us from really being happy.”

When you cultivate gratitude in your life, it’s like a self-control buffer too. It not only attracts the good things in your life, it also helps you resist temptation from toxic habits you are trying to rid yourself of.

By taking time to count your blessings and focus on things that you are grateful for, you enhance your self-control, and this helps you increase patience.

Gratitude Leads to Patience

There is no need to keep waiting to live the life of abundance you deserve. You can start living it right now by developing just the right mindset.

The virtue of patience is a quiet one, it is often exhibited behind closed doors, not on a public stage. In public, it is the impatient ones who grab all our attention. Grumbling customers in long lines at the grocery store, the friend who complains about how long it’s taking to find a long-term lover, the boss who wants things yesterday.

Recent studies have found that sure enough, good things really do come to those who wait.

“When we cultivate patience, we cultivate abundance.”

Patience is a form of kindness. Patient people tend to be more forgiving, more equitable, more grateful, more empathic, and more cooperative. When patient people come together, abundance is achieved faster.

To cultivate patience, we need to practice gratitude. People feeling grateful are also better at patiently delaying satisfaction. When given the choice between getting an immediate cash reward or waiting for a whole year for a larger amount, less grateful people will choose the immediate payment offer.

Grateful people, however, could hold out until the end of the whole year for the full amount. If we’re thankful for what we have today, we’re not desperate for more stuff, or better circumstances immediately. Accumulation over time leads to abundance.

Patience Leads to a Better Life

Having patience can calm your mind and make you feel more grateful, more connected to humanity and to the Universe, and a greater sense of abundance.

Patience can improve your health too. Patient people are less likely to report health problems, because patience helps one to cope with stressful and upsetting situations.

In a world filled with aggressive and often selfish people, demanding jobs, self-entitled children and a demanding family life, we need patience just to survive it all.

A Dutch proverb says, “A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.”

Patient people make better decisions and achieve better results in life by waiting for the right time and opportunities.

Leonardo da Vinci is credited with saying, “Patience serves as protection against wrongs… as clothes do against cold.

When we observe nature, it becomes clear that everything works in an orderly fashion, and that vegetation comes in different seasons. You can’t rush the growth of a fruit tree, just as you can’t change when it’s winter vs. summer.

Patience give us strength and endurance. Patience is a form of restriction. Think about a light bulb. The tighter the filament (restriction) between the positive and negative poles, the brighter the bulb shines. If you connect both poles without filament (restriction) you get a big flash and burn out.

“Having patience also means being able to calmly face adversity.”

When we practice patience, we allow more Light to shine in our lives. We give time for the bigger picture to emerge, and this provides us access to a better life instead of the burn out that comes from fast gratification.

In my recent Rant & Grow life coaching podcast, I spoke with a young entrepreneur who has taken on the responsibility to elevate the living standards of his entire family. Bogdan was being a little hard on himself for not having fully achieved his financial goals yet. Mind you, he is 23 years old.

“Patience produces character, and character produces hope.”

I don’t know many 23-year old’s taking on the big responsibility of financially caring for an entire family. Gratitude starts with appreciating yourself, and who you are, and with self-acknowledgement. We focused our discussion on being grateful for his spirit of kindness, and generosity.

Bogdan learned from the coaching session that it is okay not to have achieve everything yet. We have to learn to take our time towards big desires. Greatness takes time. Rome was not built in one day, and similarly careers can’t be build in just one day.

After helping him develop gratitude for himself, we shifted our focus on developing patience. Patience is a way of being kind with yourself, and allowing yourself to learn and grow and expand in such a way that is sustainable for the long haul

“Patience is the key to unlocking your fullest potential that will lead to a more fulfilling life”

Listen in as we talk about ways to apply gratitude and grow in patience, in order to achieve goals and maintain the right mind-set of perseverance.

Just click on the play button to listen to the podcast right here.

There is no doubt that masculinity is generally considered to be associated with strength and toughness, but that is not what masculinity is about. Fire energy is actually a more feminine quality.

I am not talking about men vs. women here, rather I am referring to the attributes that both men and women can embody as fully integrated human beings.

Most modern women do a better job to integrate both masculine and feminine energy in order to accomplish various tasks, goals and objectives.

A lot of men who have been raised to believe that they should not be in touch with their feminine energies, like creativity, love, and even intuition have more difficulty leading balanced lives.

We mostly associate masculinity as toxic arrogance, manipulation, war thirst, and domination. History has proven these traits to be mostly true in the form of wars, terrorism, cults, rape and murder.

However, when a man is integrated, he has the incredible ability to create space for others to feel safe to be themselves. A mature masculine expresses compassion, empathy and deep feelings of love and care with ease.

Conditioning and modeling can rob society from such an incredible gift, let alone create internal conflict in a man that surfaces as violence and anger. This causes men to focus more on factors like wealth, conquests, material goods, status, and prestige.

Yet, when a man integrates fully his feminine energy, he can create a heart space to both express unconditional love and receive it.

“The nature of an integrated man with both masculine and feminine energies, isn’t a force of competition, it is a force of creative intelligence.”

Feminine energy is about growth and life. Mother nature represents the force that gives us vegetation, and all we need to live and thrive. It is also an unstoppable force, as we experience in storms. When a hurricane comes, nothing can stop it.

The same way you can feel mother nature in the stillness of a lake, and during a hurricane, feminine energy gives us the ability to have feelings, and intuition along with wisdom.

The thinking that men are masculine, and women are feminine is not only wrong, it’s limiting us as a society. Having feminine energy as a man or masculine energy as woman doesn’t’ make a man weak, or a woman a bitch.

Finding Balance

Integrated women and men make great parents, CEOs, mentors, and teachers. They know how to balance relationships and work life. It is possible to have a thriving love life and a successful work life.

Here are some tips on how to achieve a well-balanced life:

1. Set Specific Goals and Specific Time to Achieve Them

You have to set your priorities right. For instance, you can decide it’s work first and later in the day its personal/family time or vice-versa. Personal time includes spending time with family, visiting a doctor to take care of your health, going on road trip with loved ones, etc. Create time for anything that is a priority in your life because. Personal relationships play a huge role in our overall quality of life and happiness. They deserve attention.

2. Establish Boundaries

Set reasonable limits on what you will and will not do both at work and at home. Clearly communicate them to your coworkers, partner and family. For example, you may decide to work during the day without interruptions from family members, but not work at all at night unless it’s an emergency.

3. Balance Sacrifices

If one or both partners want to pursue a high-profile career, it is almost a guarantee that sacrifices will have to be made. Accept and acknowledge the importance of your partner’s sacrifice to further your career and be willing to do the same for their dreams now or in the future.

4. Work Smarter

Adopting the right combination or time-management practices can cut out stress and save you up to an hour a day. This can include avoiding procrastination and learning to say “no”.

Work-life balance is important for better relationships between employers and employees. When employees feel a greater sense of control and ownership over their own lives, they are able to set clear demarcations between their life at work and home.

Balanced Leadership

Both masculine and feminine energies have uniquely powerful strengths. It’s up to us to learn and expand these attributes in ourselves and respect them in others.

All of us have both of these energies.

To live a happy and balanced life, we must bring both of these energies into balance, and master when to use them accordingly.

In a leadership capacity, creating an environment where people can be transparent and support each other, is rooted in masculine energy.

On the other hand, if you want to increase sales, gain new markets, you’ll need the quality of feminine energy working for you.

Feminine energy is about nurturing relationships, being vulnerable and open, having vision, and having the courage to take on new challenges. Feminine energy is about the power of manifestation.

Most people think that to go after new markets you have to think like a hunter, and that a hunter is masculine — that could not be further from the truth.

Conversely, if you want to create a more compassionate organization that practices more empathy, you’ll have to lead with more masculine energy.

We have to stop talking about men vs. women, in terms of leadership qualities, and start focusing on masculine vs. feminine energies that both men and women need to harness, in order to become fully integrated human beings.

The mindset to go and hire more women to balance a predominantly male board of directors, is important, yet limiting to achieving true leadership balance.

“To achieve leadership balance it is important to learn how to harness both masculine and feminine energies so that each person can be a fully integrated human being.”

In my recent Rant & Grow podcast, I spend 30 minutes with Jamie Greene, a renowned relationship expert, about the topic of becoming an integrated man and woman.

Listen in as we talk about ways to balance both energies in order to lead an elevated and extraordinary life, with a special focus on how to manifest successful relationships.

Just click on the play button to listen to the podcast right here.

Intention guides our actions. It is a deep strong desire that stimulates our will to pursue and focus our attention on things that are purposeful in our lives.

Having clear intention harnesses various cognitive processes such as our neural networks, leading to actions and usage of all available resources to translate our wishes into reality.

Intentionality is a cognitive skill that can be learned, and a must-have for leaders. Any professional who is eager to have a clear direction with their career, and to have successful relationships, can also benefit from being intentional.

Your intention could be as simple as to convince your company to assign you an upcoming project. It might be even broader such as to give more time to invest in your fitness, relationships or to save money for a new car.

Importance of Defining Intentions

The foremost benefit of intentionality is that it introduces you to yourself. Because to set an intention you have to first answer:

Who am I?” “What am I doing?” “What do I want from my life?” “What capabilities do I have?” “Am I clearly going in the right direction”? “What is the plan of action to achieve my goals in life?”.

Intention setting gives you a clear picture of your life, life goals, and activities. It helps you categorizes your actions as “right” or “wrong”, so you can eliminate unnecessary chaos and confusion from your life.

Intentionality gives you direction. For example, most people have multiple skills, but they are not clear what profession they want to adopt to establish a career. They spend a major span of their lives oscillating between careers focused on getting by, and fail to gain contentment, fulfillment, and happiness.

The one thing responsible for this kind of failure to achieve fulfillment, is lack of intentionality. Intention defines your goals (i.e. you want to establish your own business). With the goal to establish your own business, you are not going to search for jobs. Rather, you will be focused on developing a business plan, organizing capital, and aligning your resources accordingly.

Clear intention would keep you away from distractions like a handsome salary package from Microsoft, or an investment scheme in public bonds.

“Intentions are fundamental to focus and direct your energy towards your desired life outcomes.”

Defining a clear intention is in fact defining your life. If you are not clear what you want from life, you will end up whirling around struggles without gain.

It is scientifically proven now that intentions give clear messages to your mind. The mind creates an energy field around you based on those intentions. This field creates a favorable atmosphere to materialize these intentions. 

When you act without intention, you have no aim. The Universe will always respond in kind. Conversely, having a clear vision of what you want out of life will help the Universe offer it back to you.

“Struggle is obvious when you lose sight of the bigger picture for your life. Intentions define what will happen.”

Another impact of setting intention is that it results in your personal satisfaction out of life. You might be doing tasks that seem boring, or annoying to you. However, knowing how those skills will contribute towards achieving your ultimate goals in life, will make them more enjoyable and satisfying. 

“Even a boring task with the right intentionality, can become strategically valuable.”

Put Your Intentions to Work

Once you have set your intentions, announce them. You will create a sense of accountability towards your goals knowing you’ve set expectations. This is especially useful if you are a person of high integrity.

If you intend to succeed in your new project, tell your colleagues that it is going to be best work you’ve done to date. This way you would be more inclined to work hard toward making it a success.

If your intentions are long-term, divide them into small doable tasks, and write them down. At the end of every week, month, or year reconnect to your intentions and check your progress periodically. Your goal is to direct your actions to fulfill your intentions.

If you intend to innovate a product, hire professionals with updated knowledge and experience. Provide them the resources and tools they need to succeed. Research the market for competitive goods to gain perspective on what you want to do different and better.

“Your intention will become your reality by taking direct and focused actions.”

I recently discussed the power of intentionality, along with focused actions in order to fulfill career goals with Carina Kalaydjian. She was my recent Rant & Grow podcast guest. Carina wants to manifest her dream career, but lacked making her intentions known clearly in her resume and communication with recruiters. 

Check out how I help her to develop the right attitude, and action steps to get her career on track. I invite you to listen to our coaching session. If you’ve been looking for tips on how to be more intentional with your life, especially with your career — you’ll find them in this episode of the Rant & Grow podcast.

Just click on the play button to listen to the podcast right here.

Self-confidence is knowing, acknowledging and acting your worth. It’s a magnet that attracts success. It is an ethereal idea that everyone of us desires to have as a strong trait. Naturally, it is not something we are born with, and it is not something you can achieve by dreaming or fantasizing.

Anyone with high self-confidence has made some effort and taken some actions to boost themselves there. 

“If you want to be confident you have to take action steps to develop confidence.”

If you feel you are not very competent, not very smart, or not very attractive, there is a way to enhance all these traits and resultantly your self-confidence.

Taking Actions

Low self-confidence will hold you back in your personal life, at your workplace and collectively in every aspect of life. Having confidence is indispensable, so is taking action to boost it.

Confident people are able to put their resources and energy in the right place at the right time. Rather than worrying that they are not good enough, their energy is devoted to cultivating positive outcomes.

For instance, if you are going to make a presentation and you are confident about it, you will focus on your arguments and on convincing the audience with your point of view. Contrarily, if you lack confidence in your communication skills, you are going to be pre-occupied with thoughts like “no one is listening”, or “I can’t get this proposal approved”. 

Consequently, you will struggle to concentrate, and this struggle will reinforce your belief that you are bad at giving presentations.

Secondly, the people who have built their skills in any field and have developed confidence from applied experience in their abilities, perform better as professionals. In every instance, taking actions to develop your skills and knowledge will increase your self-confidence.

Suppose you had a fear of public speaking. You can develop confidence by making multiple efforts to improve your knowledge and speaking skills. 

You would invest in observing successful speakers on YouTube. Take a public speaking class. Ask friends you trust to be your audience as you practice speaking in front of them. As you develop the ability to speak in public, your self-confidence as a speaker grows. The bonus of growing in capabilities and in confidence is that the practiced skill becomes part of your personality.

Building self-confidence is a journey that comprises various steps towards a more confident you. Another benefit of this journey is that your actions beget confidence against your fears and as you get good at one thing, you also gain the strength to fight other fears. That’s the gift of growing in self- confidence.

“Taking actions to learn and grow enables you to become a more confident person, and this helps you gain more trust from everyone around.”

Boosting Self-Confidence

There are always reasons that results in low confidence. If you want to boost your self-confidence, fix those things that make you feel less confident about yourself. No one is perfect and everyone has room to learn and grow, there is no need to feel shame for lacking confidence. 

“Self-confidence results from getting better at the things we need to practice and learn.”

Want to be able to show up to a dinner party and feel confident to play the piano? Practice. Do conversations about politics make you feel unintelligent? Read up about politics. Educate yourself. 

If you are reluctant to speak in public, listen to experienced speaker to boost your knowledge, and practice in front of friends.

“Nothing is going to be better in your life, until you take the actions needed to learn and grow.”

Your wardrobe can have a dramatic effect on your confidence level. When how you look synchronizes with how you want people to view you, confidence in your appearance will definitely follow. If you want to feel more confident at a job interview for example, dress to feel impressive by investing in improving your wardrobe. Notice I didn’t say “dress to impress’” Self-confidence is a very personal thing. It’s about you, not what other people think of you.

“Only take actions on improving the things that you feel less confident in to please yourself.”

Having an active lifestyle and exercising regularly will have a tremendous effect on boosting self-confidence. Investing in having a workout routine will pay off greatly in boosting your self-confidence. It will release a cocktail of endorphins that make you feel good. In the end, you have tangible proof that you have done something constructive.

Face your fears head-on to gain confidence by doing that particular thing every day that scares you most. 

If you have been holding off doing some inspirational videos and sharing your knowledge with others, because you are concerned that you’re not so photogenic, the only way to get past that is to come out of your comfort zone and just do it.

“As you do the action you build the confidence.”

My recent Rant & Grow podcast guest Michelle Allaire is a charming artist, actor and model. She is looking forward to having more acting and modeling roles. She was a little uncomfortable about her upcoming pool photoshoot, but we developed a plan for her to take the actions needed to boost her self-confidence.

I invite you to listen to our coaching session. If you’ve been looking for tips on how to increase your self-confidence, you’ll find them in this podcast episode.

Just click on the play button to listen to the podcast right here.