For the past many years on the occasion of my birthday, it has been my custom to give a gift to my friends in recognition of their help and friendship over the year past. I’m reminded of that old saying that a man is as rich as he has friends. If this is so, then I’m wealthy beyond my dreams. I do appreciate all that you have done and are doing to make my journey through life as full and rich as it has been.
This year my birthday holds special significance as it represents the completion of a many-year project of writing a book on my viewpoint of selling. The book, called “The Natural Laws Of Selling” is complete, formally published and available as an eBook and in Paperback on Amazon.com and other sites. I’m very proud of the book and early reviews are uniformly enthusiastic about the universal value of the work. After all, it is a book about life as much as it is a book about selling. There is something for everyone.
Many of you have reviewed the work in progress over the years and your feedback, suggestions, and comments have helped make the work better than it would have been otherwise. My sincere thanks to all of you.
My gift this year is to share with you a collection of my observations and thoughts about life and living that I have found to be of value. I hope that you may find one or more of these that will assist you in your life. Written as a gift to my friends on my birthday, 2014, with thanks and affection,
Written as a gift to my friends on my birthday, 2014, with thanks and affection,
Daniel Jacobs
THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS
Your attitude in the present can change your future – your attitude about the future can change your present.
Your life will be as good or bad as you decide it’s going to be.
The circumstances of life do not determine your attitude. You choose your own attitude about anything.
Want to know how your life will turn out? Take a look at what you’re doing today.
Once you decide to change your life, the first thing you run into is the reason you haven’t done so before now.
Even a slight shift of viewpoint can precipitate enormous positive changes.
Principles are immutable, natural laws. They do not change because you lack the self-discipline to learn and use them.
If something doesn’t feel right, it’s not right.
Average can always find an excuse. Exceptional will always find a way.
Self-doubts and self-confidence alike require constant nurturing and attention to become reality.
Courage is not the absence of fear or insecurity. It’s being willing to face what needs to be done, and going ahead in spite of your fear.
Internal changes precede external changes.
Nothing can stop you unless you first agree that you want to stop.
Nothing can change you unless you have decided you want to change.
Nothing can start you until you resolve that you want to start.
Nothing can harm you unless you consider that it is harmful.
Your footprints on the sand of life will remain to inspire and influence others long after you are gone.
To get anything worthwhile done, ignore all the reasons, explanations, and justifications why it can’t be, and follow your dream. Where you put it, it is.
What you reward with attention, interest, or admiration, you tend to get more of.
The only real obstacle to achievement is desire. How much do you really want it?
Assuming anything without first verifying invites disappointment.
Only when you stop trying to be someone else and start being who you really are, will happiness find you.
Many personal problems vanish once you recognize the importance of the twin towers of human attention and admiration.
Focused, disciplined practice is how you internalize basic principles. It is also the backbone of confidence.
He who trusts no one, must, by definition, include himself.
Good luck can’t find you if nobody’s home.
Never let what you’re saying or how you’re saying it get in the way of your message.
All emotions are personal. If they don’t feel it, they won’t believe it.
Emotion is the bridge between thinking and doing.
Why not let them worry about what you think for a change?
If you say it, it’s doubtful. If they say it, it’s true.
A solution that can’t be implemented is part of the problem.
Living to avoid losing is a game for losers. It focuses your attention on holding onto the past instead of creating your future. Be audacious.
It may seem easier to search for solutions than to face problems directly. It isn’t.
Shame lies not in failure, but in failing to try again.
Trying to create a future with your attention stuck in the past is like trying to drive your car with the emergency brake on.
Don’t let rules get in the way of doing the right thing.
Don’t ask permission to be yourself. Once you decide, who’s going to stop you?
Lying to avoid causing a problem is the surest way to create a new one.
The right solution to the wrong problem is no better than the wrong solution to the right problem.
Goals and obstacles expand with attention.
Justifications, explanations, rationalizations about what you could’ve, would’ve, or should’ve, change nothing. Do it now.
You can’t create a future with your attention stuck in the past.
There are an infinite number of reasons why something can’t be done (if that’s all you’re looking for).
Make a clear, unambiguous decision of what you want, and the universe begins to align with your dictates instead of the reverse.
Our lives are enriched as much by the process as by the result; perhaps more.
Disorder tends to generate more disorder. Order creates order.
If you want to stand out from the crowd, tell the truth.
The first step to solving any problem is to recognize that there is one.
Improvement begins once you realize there is more to learn.
Hidden beneath most miscommunications, you will find a false assumption.
Any thorny problem contains something you don’t know about. If you knew everything about it, it would vanish.
A false diagnosis or a wrong solution are both worse than none at all.
To live well, live in the present and create your own future.
When nothing’s working, remember your principles and adjust your methods.
If you strive to be understood, slow down.
Master one thing at a time, and you can master anything.
Two rules for happy living:
1. Be true to yourself.
2. Refer to rule #1.
Exercise persistence and patience when you have nothing; gratitude and appreciation 
when you have everything.
To live well, live in the present, but plan for and create the future you want.
Being interested in life makes you (and your life) more interesting.
(c) By Daniel Jacobs, May 2014
Photo by Myrna Jacobs
METAYA 
Very cool … love the last one “Being interested in life makes you (and your life) more interesting.”
thanks!!!
In my view, if all webmasters and bloggers wrote content and material as good as you do, the internet would be a lot more helpful and interesting than ever before! – Mc.