One of my favorite writer/speakers is Simon T Bailey  (twitter: simontbailey) and I love his wording of, what I believe, is a universal truth:  “you attract what you respect.”

That has become one of the golden rules in the engel household, and a phrase you will often here repeated around here – simply because we believe it so very much.

The things you ‘respect’ (and let’s define that as, giving honor: a high priority in your thoughts, choices, conversations, behaviors) – you get more of.

So – complaining, criticizing, holding grudges, being pi**ed off at, worrying, etc – when these things take a large percentage of time and energy – they multiply.

I don’t want that. I bet you don’t either.

Years ago Marcus and I made a pact. Being on the road so often there is plenty of things that happen to tick you off, make your day more stressful or just plain annoy the crap out of you. And sometimes these things are very big deals! So what do you do? It’s very very easy for one jerk TSA agent to distort the entire rest of the trip. And then? You don’t notice the 99 percent of times that folks are wonderful and easy and things go smooth as can be.  So, we decided, that for every one complaint letter we found it necessary to write (and sometimes – you have to do that!) we would send five compliment letters to the folks who ‘got it right’ or went out of their way to make our experience better.

I can’t tell you how greatly this has improved our enjoyment of life!  On the off occasion something happens – we take the appropriate action, ie: speak to a supervisor, file a complaint, etc. – then we start looking for people to ‘thank’.  This trick has ‘saved’ more trips from disaster than any other single thing we do!

This past weekend we went to Orlando to do some biz and visit with the kiddos – and it was very natural to compare what I like about x place verses y place… and there are some major differences to discuss! However – the biggest thing I felt when I jumped back aboard our delta flight headed north was gratitude.

Each place – each season – each experience provides something unique. A lesson, a joy, a challenge, an obstacle, an opportunity. And I don’t want to miss a single one.

So keep bringing in NYC – we’re ready for ya and loving you! J