I recieved a text tonight from my son. He said he will be starting aat outside linebacker in his next football game. Needless to say, he was exceited. See, all year he had been on the bench. He used his sparce time to play as hard as he could. He spent his practices working hard, hitting hard and keeping a good attitude. Though he is a team favorite, the coaches chose others to start in front of him. With three wins against tough teams, you have to believe the coaches know what they are doing.

I told Joe to suck it up. Don’t give up and show the coaching staff, the team and all who know him what kind of man he really is. See, Joe has never had any adversity. He was always a starter on both sides of the ball. This is the first year he has had to work to become a starter.

And he finally did. And I do not expect him to lose it. He worked. He never gave up. He battled his emotions on the sidelines waiting for the few precious seconds to show his wares. And he finally got a shot.

I always believed that a good person will get his/her chance. All that person had to do was stay on track and not give up. I have faced that a lot of adversity in the last few years. unsure of how I am going to play my bills, the devastation of a divorce with a vicious ex-wife, insecurity about how my kids feel about me and losing my job in an unstable job market. But I have always pulled through and knew that things would turn out.

Now, that does not mean I have faith that things would turn out. I would have to plan and be disciplined. But if I was on the line of making it and disaster, I always fell on the right side.

So, how did I go about achieving this? I have a few simple rules that I follow and they have always worked for me:

1. Treat people as you want to be treated. That does not mean be nice when getting your butt kicked. It means respecting people and they will, eventually, respect you. There are people who can’t stand me and I can’t stand them, but I deal with it (there may be yelling, but in a reasonable way). Eventually respect comes.
2. Take responsibility for your actions or inaction. This is huge. Today’s world is a blame game. Many do not respect people who dodge taking responsibility for an issue. It may save your job at that moment but, trust me, those people are delaying the inevitable. Take responsibility for a screw up. For get the excuses. Others will respect that. Who doesn’t respect integrity.
3. Be proactive. Why work to solve a disaster if you could have avoided the disaster in the first place. Life works in the third dimension. Take the blinders off and look around. Express concerns that might be out there. Solving problems before the become problems may not be flashy, but it may save a heart attack in the future,
4. Never envy others for what they have. I know lots of people who thought the grass would be greener on the other side only to find that things weren’t what they were suppose to be. Enjoy what you have, enjoy who you are. It is OK to dream and strive for more and to be better but don’t let your goals eat you and become a drag on your life.
5. Never sell your soul for protection. Honor and ethics should never be given up. Lying is probably one of the worst things to do because it is like a drug. It becomes easier and easier to do each time it is done. It is also the coward’s way out. It takes courage to take responsiblitiy for something. It takes no courage to hide the truth.
6. There are two things in my apartment: luxeries and needs. Luxeries include my television, air conditioning, juicer, books and IPad. Needs are food, water, electricity and family. Never make you luxeries into needs. If the television goes out, know you’ll survive. If the IPad or smart phone breaks, know you’ll survive. The less needs you have in life, the easier life is.
7. I like the television show, The Big Bang Theory. It makes me happy and I find my mood sky rockets when I watch it. I like putting my thoughts on the Internet through my blog, I feel like I have accomplished something even though I know no one is going to read this. I like walking my dogs. I like watching television with my daughter. When I get home, I will only have my dogs and myself a lot of the time. Why is it I don’t go nuts (though some think I am)? Because I can always find something that makes me happy and costs no money. There is not a night that goes by that I do not go to sleep content.
8. This is a fast paced world with a lot of distraction. Sometimes it’s hard to focus on what’s important. What I do is list the top four things that are most important to me: God (I know things will always work out if I don’t give up because God is there), family, my health, my integrity and my career. Whenever I am a little lost and have a decision, I review this list. It is amazing how easy the decision is when I know what is important.
9. Never look back. I have had some awful things happen to me the last few years. Things that I thought might break me. But I was instructed to look forward. Never look back. It took me almost a year to get this little jewel. When I did, nothing bad stays in my mind for very long.

Karma i the belief that good things done will be received. I believe this is true and can cite hundreds of examples from my life that prove this. My nine rules have kept me on track.