Tag Archives: Helping Others

Our Personal Assignments

June 28, 2022 Jonathan Hilton Leave a comment

I was reading a great article the other day, which stated that we all have a list. This list contains people who need us or has needed us at some point, in some way in their lives. Our personal assignments will help us achieve, get through, or overcome something. Or perhaps to help make their lives a little bit better and brighter. When you look at life like this, each interaction you have throughout the day can put a new person on your list if you want it to.

How many times can you choose to do something for someone else that will make their day a little happier? Quite a few, I bet. Each conversation, chance meeting, or interaction provides the opportunity. Those people just made your list. I encourage you to start looking for the times you were a gift to others and for those who were a gift to you.

You, Will, Look at People Differently

Train your mind to see the good in every situation — The good is there when you look for it.

Start making a list for yourself right now. Think about just the last 24 hours and the interactions with people that you have had. I guarantee that each provided some energy to the participants, from the most intense to the most distant. Whether that energy was positive or negative is the question you have to answer.

In these interactions, most provided something that you needed, someone else needed, or both. You are the catalyst in these situations that dictate what energy surrounds you. Make this list, see what you are contributing to the lives of others, and, almost as significantly, what they are contributing to you.

Be Positive with your List

People will become more interesting, and you will view each interaction under a different scope. I often feel like my interactions with people are beneficial for both parties. However,

Be kind to one another — Kindness is a simple thing

; I also notice things I want to avoid.

When I am conscious of what I am contributing to others and they to me, negative things seem to stand out. When a person engages in gossip about someone else, I know nothing I want to be involved with. I always say something positive about the person or situation being discussed. After a while, people give up talking about other people around them. This makes your conversation with them more favorable for both parties involved. They are definitely on your list.

Value those who lift you up

Noticing the tenor and tone of interactions will also allow you to appreciate the positive energy that people bring to your life because you are clear on their list. When you recognize the positive energy, you are left with after encountering someone, it is common sense to seek them out more often. All people want to feel good, and those who make us feel a great need to be in our lives more and more. Make sure you allow yourself to be added to their list. Conversely, those who leave us feeling tired, angry, or just plain old negative about things, need to be avoided. Life is too short to be miserable. Eventually, you have to shorten your list by avoiding the habitually negative.

Look for more people to add to your list.

Each person that you come in contact with is a potential member of your list. Add them freely and look for the moments that you can add a little positive momentum to others’ lives. It can be as simple as smiling, holding a door open, or giving a compliment. These things happen all the time and should be appreciated by all parties involved. It is simple to make a living a little bit more positive for all involved, and it all begins with a conscious effort to be kind, considerate, understanding, or giving. Look for the people who are your personal assignments today. They are there waiting for you.

Try A Little Kindness

June 19, 2022 Jonathan Hilton Leave a comment

It is part of life. Most people experience some pain daily because of the selfish, thoughtless behavior of others, and this phenomenon has been

Be aware of your imprint on the world daily. It exists.

occurring throughout time. Just as there have probably been people like me, who have realized the pain that we might have caused others, not only by what we said to or about someone but also by the things we didn’t say or the small acts we didn’t do when they might have made all the difference to someone else’s outlook on life and experience, it amazes me so much anger and unhappiness could be avoided in life if we would take a moment to say the kind word or do the thoughtful act for someone. These are the little pieces of hell we perpetrate on ourselves and others throughout our lives. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We always have a choice. We can always practice kindness

Be Responsible for Someone Else’s Smile

It is estimated that 90-95% of a person’s behavior is completed without the benefit of conscious thought. We react based on patterns and stimuli that have been ingrained in us through experience. So when we are faced with a situation where our kindness needs to be consciously shared,

We fail to do it because we are reacting rather than caring.

Our daily lives provide opportunities for growth and kindness regularly, and our ability to see this chance and seize upon it can change someone else’s life in a better way and improve your life as well. When choices are made that honor ourselves, the enjoyment derived from our lives increases. The simple things can do the trick to speak kindly, forgive a transgression, allow someone to feel valuable, and celebrate the smallest of accomplishments with enthusiasm. Still, someone else’s happiness and well-being are ahead of your own. It can be as simple as smiling.

You cause a little hell in someone’s life when you deprive them of this experience because you are too busy or wrapped up in your own life or just unaware of how your kindness could make a difference in someone else’s life. What kind of world would it be if being kind and caring to others were the focus of our lives? What kind of difference can you make?

Accepting of Things

Our thoughts are as dangerous for creating small hells as our words or actions. How poor, different, short, tall, beautiful, or ugly someone is

be a good person — To Be A Good Person, or at the least, don’t be a jerk.

It shouldn’t be the first thought that comes to your mind. Your negative ideas about others will lessen the positivity in your life, and each view that demeans another diminishes your reality.

This doesn’t mean that you accept the poor behavior of others. Never tolerate behavior that is against common sense or decency. But don’t follow that act with one conscious choice that is just as harmful to you. Judge the action but send understanding to the people. Even the worst criminal was once an innocent person with hopes and dreams, but their experiences led to poor choices that didn’t honor themselves.

All actions and consequent blanket judgments of others are not honoring thoughts. They bring negativity to your life and diminish the positive capability of making a difference in the world.

Final Thoughts

Consider your actions, thoughts, and words in all situations and evaluate them honestly. Do they bring a benefit to the lives of anyone? Do they honor you? If they don’t, it is best to focus on other things. Every day, we all have this choice in each thought, word, or action to extend a little heaven or a little hell to someone.

We are unique people, and our value to the world is not determined by how much money we make, the size of the house we live in, or the status of our social circle. The value we bring to the world is in the little acts, thoughts, and words we speak each day. Each person, from the richest to the poorest, leaves the proof of a person’s ideas, ideals, and character in their wake. There is either a garden or mangled wreckage left in someone’s path. Which have you left behind you?

“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can see.” -Mark Twain.

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.” -George Sand.

“A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.” -William Arthur Ward.

“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.” -Albert Schweitzer.

“Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.” -Princess Diana.

“Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver.” -Barbara de Angelis

Lose Your Attitude

March 3, 2022 Jonathan Hilton Leave a comment

Attitude-a way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically is in a person’s behavior.

Attitude is everything because it is a result of the way we think and feel about everything in our existence, and shows the world just what we believe about ourselves. If you are not conscious of your attitude and why you think or feel a certain way about something, then you are at the mercy of that thought pattern. Many of our destructive issues resulting from low self-esteem stem from our attitude about ourselves and perceptions of the value we bring to. Today perceptions make a pact with yourself to be conscious of your position and the resulting experience that comes into your life because of it. Look at your thoughts, words, and actions and see how they reflect your attitude toward life, other people, and, most importantly, yourself.

Attitude Toward Life

Most people look at themselves as adults like they are set in stone. It is as if their attitudes about the world were poured into concrete when they were very young, and they never seek to revise them or improve them in any way. It is our attitude toward life that determines life’s attitude toward us. You will get precisely what you believe you will get from experience—your att, and yours the catalyst for life’s behavior toward you.

What do you believe about life? Is it fair? Is it cruel? Is it difficult? Whatever your attitude is toward life is what you will get from experience. Take a moment and become conscious of what those beliefs are. If you radiate confidence and self-assurance, then the world will react accordingly. The same will be true if you lack confidence and are insecure. Life is an equal opportunity provider of challenges. Your attitude will determine the ease or difficulty with which you will face challenges. Create awareness in yourself of your feelings toward life. Expect more good than bad, and that is what you will experience.

Attitude Toward Others

It is essential to develop a positive attitude toward other people because success rarely comes to one person by themselves. We are all interdependent in living our lives every day, and there is someone you rely on and someone that depends on you. It is our attitude toward others that determines their attitude toward us.

Your attitude should be to treat every person that you meet as if they are the most critical person in the world. Developing this mindset is a much more difficult task then it sounds. We are filled with bias, discrimination, judgment, and selfishness that limit our interactions with others. Being conscious of this will eliminate it as you treat others to treat you. Change your life by putting your interest in the stories of others ahead of your own. What can you learn from them? How can you help them? This attitude will increase your enjoyment of life and opportunities for success. Life isn’t all about you, understanding that is the beginning of really living.

Attitude toward Self

All people look at themselves as the hero of their own story. Their attitude and will determine if it is a success story or not. Your opinion about yourself develops continually over your life, and you can change that perception at any moment for the better or, the worse. It changes because of your actions and your attitude about these actions. Before a person can achieve the kind of life they dream about, they must become that kind of individual. If you want to be successful, then do the things successful people do. Set goals, take action, and be persistent in those actions until your goals are achieved. If you think you want to be something but set no goals and take no steps toward it, then you do not want that. This is your attitude.

Too often in life, we shortchange ourselves because we fear failure or what others are going to think of our efforts. These fears manifest in our minds and tell us: “You can’t!” “You mustn’t,” “People will think I am crazy.”, or any other negative message you can think of. A positive attitude toward yourself will erase those things. The human mind is only capable of entertaining one thought at a time. There is no benefit in negativity and many benefits to being positive. Why not consider positive thoughts and create an attitude of success for ourselves? Attitude is everything when it comes to success or failure.

So the challenge is to be conscious of your attitude today and be honest with yourself about what you find. If you lack in confidence and self-assurance, then start to change this. Set goals, write them down, take action toward them, and be persistent in following through until the goal is achieved. Your attitude will determine your experience in life with others and yourself. It all starts with knowing your thoughts, words, and actions today. Act as if success is already yours.

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” ~ Maya Angelou

“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” ~ Og Mandino

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” —Ayn Rand

“Do what you have to do until you can do what you want.” —Oprah Winfrey

“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.” —Henry Rollins

Help

April 6, 2021 Jonathan Hilton Leave a comment

Everyone feel like this sometime — Everyone feels like this sometimes.

For many people, including myself, there are times when we are not sure what to do next. A new situation confronts us, and we have to move left or tack right. Something is headed right for us! What do we do?

Now for me, either because of the way I was brought up or because I am just a very stubborn person asking anyone for help or advice is almost always out of the question because it would reveal to the world, gasp, “I don’t know everything.”

Okay, I am sure that the world doesn’t care if I know everything or not, so why would it bother me to ask for help?

Recently I have contemplated this mystery because someone recently asked me if they could help me. My initial reaction was pretty typical. I think, “No, thank you, I am fine.”

Then I stopped to think about it. I am not perfect, and I don’t have all the answers. Perhaps there is some assistance that I could get from someone else’s insights, experiences, or knowledge. I then remembered two things. There are people who I knew were in deep.

trouble and I offered to help them, and they said: “No thanks, I am fine.”

The second thing I remembered was when I was at the lowest point of my life. I was struggling to make it through each day, and if anyone needed help or encouragement, it was me, and continually I would pretend that everything was fine, I was OK. In reality, I was really in distress and just too proud or stubborn to let anyone know about it or help me navigate through this difficult time.

In retrospect, this was very foolish behavior. I could have had the smartest person in the world at my disposal, and it wouldn’t have mattered because I was intent on keeping my problems to myself—no point in burdening anyone else with my problems. The result is needless suffering.

Help is not a dirty word. It doesn’t mean you are weak if you lean on someone else for advice, assistance, or support.

In fact, it shows two things. First that you are intelligent and

It would be nice if this guy showed up when you had questions, but life usually chooses more accessible messengers. Listen to them!

Recognize that you need some information that you don’t have to move forward most efficiently. Secondly, it gives others a chance to help you.

Most people have great intentions and want to make your life a bit easier by sharing their wisdom.

This doesn’t mean that you have to listen to every person you meet in a coffee shop; rather, I think it means that if you need help, don’t be too proud to ask or too stubborn to accept it when it comes to you.

That is how the world works best, with all of us working together.

The Little River Band had it right……………

Jonathan Hilton Mind Connections

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