http://motivate2inspire.com Life doesn't get easier. You just get better. Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:47:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/why-do-we-feel-so-entitled/ http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/why-do-we-feel-so-entitled/#comments Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:06:32 +0000 The Lermz http://motivate2inspire.com/?p=4678 Many of you that read this blog have probably done a lot in your lives. You've grown up from childhood. Perhaps you've graduated high school. Perhaps you've even graduated college. Maybe you're in the middle of your career now. Or maybe you're retired (lucky you!). In each of these cases, one can argue that you've personally done a lot in life. You've probably received awards. You've probably received promotions. You've probably put in countless amounts of hours doing the best you can in your career or whatever is most important in your life. By putting in this tremendous effort, you start to feel like you deserve to be making more money. You deserve to have things given to you. You deserve to get a thank you and gratitude. What causes us to feel that we are so entitled? It is something that I want to explore today. Don't get me wrong, I have the same line of thinking almost on a daily basis. When you put in a lot of effort towards things in life you expect some kind of reward for it. Sometimes you are just looking for a simple thank you from someone to acknowledge your hard work. Sometimes you just feel like something is owed to you. I struggle with this sometimes because whenever you put in that hard work of course you want to be acknowledged. I am convinced though that we should not think this way. The bottom line is we should expect nothing. It sounds so negative doesn't it? Let me explain my train of thinking. Every situation where we think we are owed something for what we do is a bad reflection of yourself. It shows a side of you that is not good and pure of heart. A lot of things in life should be done without requiring any acknowledgment. Whenever you make a donation, you shouldn't go out and announce it on Facebook or brag about it to friends. You should take solace in the fact that you made a difference. That's the real purpose of donating isn't it? Or how about at work. You should not expect a promotion everytime you do something great at work. The purpose of working as I see it is to do your best every single day. It means doing something great in everything you do. Whether or not you get rewarded is irrelevant. People will notice what you do and that you are the best at your job. Your clients or whoever is directly affected from your work will notice what you do. It is a matter of working towards making things better, not working towards what the rewards are. I firmly believe that God put us in the world to do good. We are here to do his bidding and to make the world a better place. We can do this by letting go of our feelings of entitlement. We need to let go of this constant need to feel rewarded. We need to realize that the energy that we would put towards wondering when we get our dues, we can put towards making others feel good and by being the best that you can be. So for today, I would like everyone to think about the things in their lives that you think you should be rewarded for. Remember that you should expect nothing from these situations. Don't expect praise. Just keep doing what you do, and do it well. That's how you do good in this world. That's how you get the best reward. ~The Lermz]]> http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/why-do-we-feel-so-entitled/feed/ 0 http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/a-simple-hello/ http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/a-simple-hello/#comments Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:03:08 +0000 The Lermz http://motivate2inspire.com/?p=4674 The other day I was on Facebook and I noticed that one of my friends was online. Now it's not very often that I really chat on Facebook, I've always found it a bit odd. Anyway, I decided to say hello since I hadn't talked to him in a long time. I found that his response was really interesting and it made me think a bit about how Facebook and email has changed the way we communicate. He said: "I'm really happy to hear from you. It's not every day that a friend makes the simple act of saying hello and reaching out." I immediately thought to myself, that's a really nice thing to say. But the more that I thought about it, the more it made me sad. I think it's sad that in this day in age, "it's not every day that a friend makes the simple act of saying hello". What has happened to us? What has consumed our lives so much that we can't do such a simple act? Thinking about how I grew up I was always around my friends. I saw them at school while in Elementary, Middle and High School. Then in College I lived amongst all of my friends. We saw each other everyday. We ate at the same dining halls. We hung out in each other's rooms and played videogames. Even my friends that were far away, I was able to maintain conversations with them via instant messenger, a phone call, or a text. Then I graduated college. That's when everything started becoming different. Everyone moved to the different parts of the country. Some moved out of the country. The more time I was not around people, the less I heard from them. What ends up happening is that you have a select few friends that actually make the effort to say hello once in awhile. It's no longer once a week, it becomes once a month and in really bad cases, maybe only a few times in a year. How do we go from caring so much for each other to not even being able to say hello? It's a very disturbing thought because to really understand how it is, we all need to accept that we don't do as good of a job as we can keeping up. I am guilty of this. There are friendships that I had where I thought that the other person would continue talking to me. I had expectations and they never would contact me. It used to make me really mad and sad at the same time. How can things change so suddenly like that? But then you realize, sometimes life just takes over. Sometimes you just get really busy. Sometimes you add a wife into the mix that you have to devote your time towards. Perhaps there is a new pet. Maybe that person has a baby. Combine that with a person's goals and passions as well as their job and you have the perfect situation to not contact anyone outside of your day. I think we're all guilty of this. My friend's simple statement made me think. Maybe we should make a dedicated effort to say hello to a friend every single day. What if it is just a simple 5 minute conversation? What if it is just a hello? What will such a thing do? Well in my point of view, I get really happy when someone says hello. It makes me feel like someone cares about me. It makes me feel good. Why can't we do this for people in our lives? Don't we want to make people feel good and feel loved? We really should do to others what we want to happen to ourselves. My challenge to you all today is to talk more to people you know. Say hello more often to everyone you see, whether it's the janitor in your building, your boss, your coworkers, or your friends on Facebook. Make that effort to tell them you care. Find out how life is going for them. You never know what a simple hello can do for a person. ~The Lermz]]> http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/a-simple-hello/feed/ 0 http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/back-from-a-hiatus/ http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/back-from-a-hiatus/#comments Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:40:15 +0000 The Lermz http://motivate2inspire.com/?p=3870 Hello everyone! It's been awhile since I've gotten the chance to write an entry on the blog. My apologies for the hiatus. KristaRose and I have been really busy with wedding preparations the past few months. The big date is in July and there are a lot of things that we have been doing including invitations, goody bags and finalizing all of the decisions. It has been a big help that Krista's parents have been able to come visit us as well. They have been able to really help with a lot of the work. Especially with Krista's illnesses and dealing with work, it just is great to have that additional help. Over the past few weeks I've really been thinking about how lucky both KristaRose and I really are. We have a lot of people in our lives that really care about us. When we first sent out the save the dates, we thought what we were sending was a pretty cool save the date. It was unique because it was like a library card (by the way, our theme is books since we are complete nerds and love reading a great book). Both KristaRose and I had some friends where their automatic response to the invitations was to book their flights. There was no hesitation, it was going to happen. It's really heartening to have that. To know that you are loved that much. It is also very awesome that we get to share this big day with so much family. Fun fact, I am going to be the 69th member of the the Martirez clan and the 124th member of the Mijares family. This is a huge step from my very small world. I grew up as just an only child. I rarely got the chance to visit family and until I was out of college I didn't even know that I was adopted. I must admit that it was a bit daunting at first to meet all of KristaRose's family. Early in the relationship when we would take trips to Chicago to visit I often did not know what to expect. After all, I still am a shy guy at heart so I usually don't have too much to say haha. Anyway, as the years have gone by I've gotten a lot more comfortable and I see just how loving her family is. I count myself very lucky to be included in the family in less than two months. Other than that, life is progressing as normal. Both of our jobs take up a lot of time but we still find ways to get at least some time to relax. We've gotten into spending time in the evenings and watching some TV series. Our current one is Star Trek: The Next Generation. I grew up watching this whole series as reruns on TV. I always had a fascination for the show and about exploration and all the problems they had encountered. Of course as a child, I never understood some of the underlying issues of the show. I always just thought how cool Captain Jean Luc Picard was and how cool it was to see different races of organisms. The show really does have a lot of themes it discusses and I now have much more of an appreciation for that. Anyway, I got a bit off topic there but Krista and I have been trying to take the time doing something together. We might not always be solely focused on the show (both of our laptops are usually out and we do some work) but just being in each other's presence does a lot for our relationship. For the site, I've been spending a lot of time trying to go back and make it look more professional. I am currently in progress of making sure each article has a picture so that it looks visually better. I will also be changing the theme sometime soon so please do be on the lookout for that. I've realized in my absence from writing that for awhile I didn't have anything really to write about. I guess that's just what happens sometimes in life. However, the more I think about it, the more I realize this is one of the only projects that I continually come back to and improve. I always have ideas and sometimes it is hard to execute them properly. However, there is something within me that compels me to continue blogging and continuing sharing uplifting and inspirational things. I know the audience might be small but I know how many people do appreciate it. I think we need more of it in this world anyway. I think this might at least be part of my calling. I can't say I have it all figured out (in reality how would you know, only God knows the plan for you!) but I do know that I will continue coming back to the blog and trying to make this corner of the internet a better place. I just want to thank everyone for their continual support and love for this site and for our upcoming marriage. We are very excited and I hope I can provide some thought provoking posts in the next few days. ~The Lermz]]> http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/06/back-from-a-hiatus/feed/ 0 http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/03/the-prodigal-son/ http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/03/the-prodigal-son/#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:55:25 +0000 krazykree http://motivate2inspire.com/?p=3864 Happy Easter! I know that some of you may wonder why I wrote "The Prodigal Son." The priest from today's gospel talked about Easter, of course, and Jesus risen, but he also mentioned of the Prodigal Son from a few weekends ago, as well. He talked about how that was one of Jesus' most powerful stories, that God was willing to forgive us for all our sins...that no matter how much we sin, He will welcome us back. (He also did mention that Jesus dying on the cross was "a zillion times more important" than this gospel, because God did not wait for the repentant sinner to come to him, but already forgave them.) The fact that the priest talked about the Prodigal Son really hit me because you usually don't hear about the Prodigal Son on Easter. He talked of the son wasting his inheritance and partying all the time and when he ends up sleeping with the pigs, that the Father welcomed him back and forgave him. This doesn't mean that you can just go on a sinning spree because you know that if you mean that you're sorry later, than it's okay. You may even be committing a mortal sin (which occurs when (1) the sin is of grave/serious matter (2) you know that it is a sin and (3) you commit the sin with full deliberate consent [which means you are committing the sin because you want to not because someone is forcing you...]). But what really caught me about the Prodigal Son was the "faithful" son that was angry that the Father had accepted his brother back after sinning so much. I think that this is such a great lesson in the Prodigal Son that is often omitted and if it isn't omitted, it is often skipped in the homily. This jealous son teaches us that as the faithful, we should not be angry at God or our brothers and sisters when God forgives them and welcomes them back to His Home and His heart. We should not be jealous or full of pride (two of the seven deadly sins) and say to God that it's unfair for Him to welcome them Home. We should love our brothers and sisters no matter what. When I was younger I asked my parents if there were tiers in Heaven and Hell...like those who sinned more got punished more and those who were more faithful were a "closer" tier to God. I know now that that is impossible, at least in Heaven, because God loves all His children of equal magnitude (but don't get me wrong, it's an infinite magnitude) and He wants us to see that we are all equals and should love each other with agape, the infinite love He has for us. Happy Easter to all! -Kree]]> http://motivate2inspire.com/2013/03/the-prodigal-son/feed/ 0