The Simple things!

Rule #6 of CDR'S 10 Steps to Happiness is cling to the little things in life when tragedies arise, the little things will make you smile.

Resurrecting the Good you by killing the bad you!

I wrote this on Easter Sunday of this year. I posted it on another forum and thought maybe I should post it here as well. Enjoy:

The word Resurrect according to Webster’s Dictionary means 1: to raise from the dead, 2: to bring to view, attention, or use again. Though a great definition it lacks the poetic overtones that I like. Let’s focus on the raise from the dead part. A lot of Christian Scholars when defining the word resurrect in references to the Resurrection point out one defining moment. When the old life dies a new life begins. Those same Christian Scholars will state that we will all fall short of the glory of God. Within these two statements, I believe great wisdom lies for those that subscribe to the Christianity life and those that don’t.

If you believe that happiness is a journey and not a destination, then you know that you will face roadblocks along the way. Those are not as hard to overcome as the roadblock that is there in the beginning. The great roadblock that stops you from beginning your journey of happiness. We all have that one thing that drains our happiness on a daily basis. That one thing that blocks our starting point on the road to happiness. There are a variety of objects that it could be; a person, an addiction, ourselves and much more. Identifying that first road block is the first step.

Once you identify that road block, you have to make a decision and that decision will be one of the toughest decisions ever. At that point, you have to decide whether or not you will allow the road block to rule you or you will rule your road block. Sometimes it takes walking away from something we think we love, but that is killing us slowly. Draining us of every ounce of happiness we have. Those roadblocks are what I call “Emotional Siphoners.” Sometimes the “Emotional Siphoners” is so great it becomes a part of us, like it’s embedded in our DNA. Sometimes the only way to kill the parasite is to kill the host. Now I am speaking metaphorically and not literal. Sometimes before we can reach the beginning of the journey to happiness, we have to let go of all that holds us back. Sometimes the “Old Us” must die so the “New Us” can arise from the ashes. Not totally unlike the mythical bird the Phoenix from the Greek and Roman Legends that arose from the fire and ashes to become a new creature all together.

Today is Resurrection Sunday all around the world for those who believe in Christianity, but it also can be a special day for all of us. Today is a day that we can do an emotional inventory on ourselves. Dividing those things that make us happy and those things that are draining us of our happiness. This is the start of identifying that one major roadblock that is blocking our start to the journey to happiness. Happy Resurrection Sunday to everyone!

Chasing your dreams one step at a time!!!

I wrote this a few years ago but I just reread it and wanted to filter it back to the top. To be honest I did give up on my writing and this blog for a while, but I'm determined to bring life back to both. I hope you enjoy this throw back blog as you wait for new material from me:

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."--Thomas A. Edison

As you follow me, you will find that I tend to jump around a little. I believe it is the writer in me that wants to write the story at hand. This week I thought maybe we would start a little different. I have been doing a lot of self-inventory as we study the art of happiness. What is it that makes me happy? Great food, great music, and good friends to name just a few of the things that make me happy. Writing, of course has to be in the mix, but ultimately it is following my dreams that makes me happy. I guess you could say chasing them for a lack of a better word.

As I cruised Facebook this weekend, I came across a post from a young struggling artist. She talked about how for a decade she had worked as a full time hairstylist and how fulfilling that had been. In this post, she thanked those who had made her career a success and even had a picture of her empty work station with the first dollar she ever made sitting on the counter. She then explained that there are chapters to life that wouldn't be there if it wasn’t for the previous chapters. As a writer this made me smile, because each chapter in a book ties together to make the story. I have often said that the pixels of life are more important than the final picture.

She went on to thank her family and friends for making this chapter a success, for putting up with her crazy music schedule. Then she announced that she was moving to Nashville, TN to pursue her music career full time. Then she closed with this: “Excited? YES Am I scared? OF COURSE! I'm human! But this is a dream, and like every dream, you can't make it a reality if you don't give it your all and try!” What a courageous young girl to have the guts to pick up and move to a strange place in an effort to further her dream.

As I finished reading her post, it made me realize sometimes your dreams won’t just happen. Sometimes working it isn’t enough and sometimes following your dreams won’t yield the results you need. Sometimes if you want it bad enough, you have to pack your bags and chase your dreams. You have to be proactive instead of just waiting for something to happen. It is kind of like when someone says, I wish I’d win the lottery and then they tell you they never buy a ticket. You have to play to win. In the 1990 movie The Hunt for Red October, Sean Connery’s character Captain Ramius say’s “When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result his men were well motivated.” This is true with your dreams.  Sometimes you have to step out with no guarantee there will be something there to catch you. They don’t call it a leap of faith for nothing.

For more information on the up and coming music star I was talking about check out http://www.jessiebrownmusic.com. Jessie Brown is the real deal and I believe she will make a splash in the music world very soon.

It's Our Duty to Share Our Happiness!

Little late night or early morning post however you want to look at it. Trying something new today. I am posting from my phone, where I usually use my computer. Hope everyone is doing well out there and continuing on with their happiness journey.

I was asked today why I think I am a happiness expert? What gives me the right to speak on such a topic like happiness? This is not the first time I have heard these questions, but I thought maybe this would be a great time to answer them again.

I don't think I am an expert on happiness. I think happiness, like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. You and only you are the one who can decide what happiness is for you. I think that is why so many times we get side tracked on our happiness journey, is because we are always looking for an expert to tell us what makes us happy. I'm not that guy, what I am is one who is willing to share my past tragedies and what steps I took to find my way back, in hopes that it will help someone someday. You must decide what makes you happy, I'm just an expert on me!

What gives me the right to speak on such a topic like happiness? Well if you have found something that works and you don't share it with the world then what kind of person are you? This plan worked for me and I want to share it with anyone willing to listen. I believe it is my duty.

What kind of world would we live in if we all decided not to share anything, let alone happiness. I love to converse with Daymond John through his social media channel. I absolutely love his new book The Power of Broke. That book has helped me and it is on its way to help millions. His story of how he functions with dyslexia, how he just puts it all out there, and how if he reads something wrong so be it, has inspired me. See I have a horrible time with spelling/grammar and usually my writing goes through several proofreaders before I post. Now these guys have other full time jobs and volunteer to help me so they don't catch everything, but it's better than my freestyle attempts. Sometimes waiting on them slows this process down, but Daymond has inspired me to freestyle if the urge hits me and my editors can fix it later. What if he didn't share his story with the world, this blog would be waiting in a file to be proofed and not live? Daymond believes it's his duty to share with the world.

One more quick story. I received a message tonight from an up and coming country music star named Jessie Brown. If you have never heard of her please take the time to look her up. My family and I attended one of her concerts and at that concert her music inspired my daughter. Watching her performance on stage and then Jessie taking the time for a photo op with my kids and my sisters kids proved to my daughter that if you dream it you can achieve it. What if Jessie didn't share her music or her time for a photo? She knows it's her duty, as a stronged willed woman who is living her dream, to share her music/time. 

We are all intertwined human beings and everything we do is like a stone in a pond. The ripples that stone causes or not unlike the actions we choose to do. Are we sharing negative ripples or positive ripples? Be the light not the darkness!

#StayPositive #stayhappy

“An Expedition of Life” CDR 1998

I am a firm believer that we all have a “Happiness Tank,” not unlike a gas tank on a car. I believe that the hardships and tragedies of our lives drain our “Happiness Tank” as we walk through life. Hell, anymore, just living life can drain those tanks fast. We must identify those things that make us happy, those things we enjoy, and those things that restore our sanity, because those are our “Happiness Stations,” just like a gas station is to a car. Just like a car can only go so far before it runs out of gas, we can only go so far before we have to refuel our “Happiness Tank.”  I know some of you are waiting for the continuation of yesterday’s blog post, but like I said too much tragedy in one day isn’t good. So I spent some time reading old writings and listening to some awesome music to refuel my “Happiness Tank.”  As you read my throwback Thursday Blog Post ponder these questions:

1: How full is my “Happiness Tank” today?

2: What are five things that I encounter on a daily basis that drains my “Happiness Tank?”

3: What are five things that I love to do that will refuel my “Happiness Tank?”

“An Expedition of Life”

CDR 1998

Life is more than just living.

It is an opportunity to greet each tomorrow with open arms.

A chance to meet each new challenge head on.

If our fear of tomorrow forces us to live in the past, and forces us to relive each yesterday that we know so well,

then our lives become dull.

And soon we become liars and sinners against our souls, because life is meant to be a forward motion.

An expedition of heart, soul, and mind.

It has been said that you can never go home again.  It’s not that you can’t go home, it’s just you’ll never be able to relive that exact second ever again.

One must greet every day as if it was the last, because one day tomorrow will not come and the sun will not rise for us.

Then what?

If we have lived in the past all our lives, then we have never truly lived.

We will be remembered for the yesterdays that we always lived, not for the tomorrows we urged to come.

If you will not heed to my challenge and meet with me, then I ask of you to awake tomorrow with open arms and greet the sun.

Go out and do something you have never done before, no matter how small or great.

Greet each day with the energy that God has given us, because one day they will shut the casket,

and there will no longer be a tomorrow like today and yesterday.

60 minutes to a happy hour, 24 hours to a happy day, 7 days to a happy week

One of the most inspiring and depressing quotes is, "from the moment you are born you start dying!" As basic, shocking, and heart breaking as it is this is the truth. I prefer to look at it in a positive note. If I live to be, let's say 80 years old. If there is 365 days in a year and one day equals 1,440 minutes (60 minutes in an hour multiplied by 24 hours a day) then I have 42,048,000 in my lifetime to make everything I want happen (1,440 minutes in one day multiplied by 365 days in a year equals 525,600 minutes in a year a non leap year multiplied by 80 years equals around 42,048,000 minutes in that life time. Give or take a few and not counting in leap years). Everything over that I will consider a bonus.

Each minute of your life is a blessing and should be used to the best of your ability. You never know when your time will truly be up. My 1st wife, if my math is right, only got to use 14,252,610 minutes, but in those few minutes she inspired masses with her kindness and her words. What will you do with yours? Below is a blog that I wrote 4/17/14 and I wanted to share this for review because as I go forward with my Blog you will hear some of these statements used. Hope you enjoy this throw back:

60 minutes to a happy hour, 24 hours to a happy day, 7 days to a happy week

If there is 60 minutes in every hour, 24 hours in each day, and 7 days in one week that means we have 10,080 minutes in one week. How will you chose spend those minutes this week?  Will you choose to spend them unhappy or will you choose to spend them happy?  Will you spend your minutes on endeavors that will not promote your spiritual well-being or will you choose to spend them on tasks that will help refuel your “Happiness Tanks?”  Remember a week is from Sunday to Saturday, so at midnight last night you are already down to 8,640 minutes. How do you plan on spending those remaining minutes and how do you plan on making up for those lost minutes?

They say that money can’t buy happiness, but why do we see so many happy people? I believe that we see so many happy rich people because that is what we want to see. I would challenge each one of you to open your eyes a little wider and I think you will see that there are happy middle class and happy poor people out there. On the flip side, I believe you would see that there are unhappy rich people. The difference in the happy and the unhappy isn’t money, it is choice. The happy choose to spend their 10,080 minutes engrossed in activities that make them happy, not in those activities that make them unhappy.

I know what you will say next, because I have used it so many times, “but some of the things that are happening to me are not my fault, they are out of my control.” True and I said that once to an older coworker and her response was, “suck it up fat boy.  We all have a sad story to tell, that’s life.” After I got done thinking the nerve of this old bag, I realized that she was overwhelmingly right. We all have things that are out of our control happen to us on a daily basis and that isn’t the important part of our story.  The important part is how we react to those situations. Do we choose to let the situation rule us or do we rule the situation? Do we choose the path of unhappiness or do we choose the path of happiness? Do we give up or do we stand up and prepare for the next round?

If you were asked to write a story of how you spent every minute of one week and share it with the world, could you do it? Could you one write it, two share it with the world, and three would you be proud of it? Would it be a success story or would it be a tragedy you would write? Would it be 10,080 minutes of complaining about how God gave you a bad hand or would it be 10,080 minutes of reflection on what was given to you and how you choose to deal with each. God has given us 10,080 minutes in one week.  The choice of how we spend those minutes is up to us. Maybe we will stumble one minute into the week, but that doesn’t mean that we have to spend the next 10,079 minutes crying over that lost minute. It just means that we have 10,079 minutes to finish strong. No matter if we have had 10,079 minutes of crap in one week, we still have one minute to finish strong. Each minute of our life is like a pixel in a picture.  It takes every pixel to make a picture, just like it takes every minute to make a life. We are going to have bad minutes, maybe bad hours and yes bad days, but we have to choose to turn those bad minutes into good minutes in hopes that we will have good hours and yes good days.

How will you choose to live your minutes this week?

Reintroducing Cecil Douglas Rowlett Jr. Part II

Originally Posted on 4/4/14

Reintroducing Cecil Douglas Rowlett Jr. Part II

Like I said in the original post, I am the writer and this is the story of my life so I can control the way the story flows. I think that is what attracts me to writing.  I have the ability to control a world, although fiction, in an uncontrollable world of reality. I felt for theatrical effect, I had to tell you about my tragedies first and now I want to paint in some scenery that will help tell the story better.

I often wonder if I was born a writer.  Is my talent a God given attribute and yes I know how arrogant that sounds, but again this is my story, this is how I feel. On a car ride to kindergarten one day my mom looks at me and says, “You do your best thinking in the shower!” Strange statement from a mom to her son, but she was right.  Even at that age, I did my best thinking in the shower. To this day when facing a major decision or a tragedy, I don’t sleep on it.  I shower on it! How did my mom know that about me, when I myself was just discovering it? I once told Rebecca that demons must be like cats, they must not like water, because only in the shower could I never hear them mock me. Did my mom have some kind of insight to me that I didn’t or do moms just know us better than we know ourselves?

That wasn’t the last time that she gave me an insight on my future.  A year or so later, she looked at me and said, “With your words, you can build a person up or tear them down.  You will have to be careful how you chose the words you speak and write.” I never knew I was a writer, but I wrote my first story in second grade and from there I started a long journey of a writer. Jump forward to a week before my mom dies.  A Sunday evening and my mom asked me to share a bowl of ice cream with her as she lies in bed. Today I know she was dying, but then I was whining about having a test the next day and needed to go to bed. Even though I had all those pressures of a teenager’s life, I did what every good son does; I had ice cream with my mom. She gave me a talk that has been with me all my life and if you want to know what she said listen to “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.  It is almost like they were under the bed with a notepad. It would be the last talk we ever had, because the next morning when I looked in her room to greet her, she screamed at my dad and told him to get that boy away from her. I’m not a doctor, but I have been told that her body was shutting down and focusing all its energy into just surviving. For the next week she thought my dad was her dad and that I was there to hurt her.

I wrote a lot in the days, months, and years after her death. I wrote a lot in the days, months, and years after Rebecca died. In good times, I wrote happiness and in tragedies, I wrote some of my darkest words. After each tragedy, my writings would save me, for the time being. After I buried Rebecca, I never thought I would find another person I would love, but I did. With her help, I published the 1^st Edition of “The Long Step Forward” through a small publisher. Somewhere in there, we had a daughter named Bostyn and then a son named Denver. Life was a fairytale, but life was life and a wife demands certain things from you. I’m not sure about other writers but I have always found it hard to be husband and writer. So at the request of my wife, I shut off the writing, which proved harder than it sounded. Picture a garden house with a lot of water pressure and then you plug the end of that hose without shutting off the water. Well, I thought I shut off the writing.  I didn’t know that was impossible to do, that you really just plug the hose, but the writing still tries to flow. A non-writing Cecil is an unhappy Cecil, a bad Cecil. The fairytale started to turn to more of a horror story. The hose was plugged, the writing was trying to flow and yes it eventually exploded. I was told that I needed to seek out counseling before I lost my marriage.  I was forced to move out until I dealt with my issues. Now I was always the one who said counseling is for freaks and wimps. I wanted so badly to save my marriage that a few days later I found myself in a room with soft sea sounds playing on a stereo.

I remember my counselors first words, “tell me your story?” I told her what I thought was my story.  I told her about my failing marriage and how I wasn’t the best husband in the world. When I was done she looked at me and said, “You’re an ass,” and my reply was “I know.  How do we fix that?”  She said, “You aren’t crazy.  I can medicate crazy.  You are the most complex yet simple man I have ever met.  Now really tell me your story.” Over the next eight weeks, I told her my story from conception to the eighth session. Her diagnoses, “You are a writer, not because you want to be, but because you have to be, don’t ever turn that off again.  Publish, don’t publish.  It doesn’t matter, but write.”  I discovered who Cecil Douglas Rowlett really was.  The counseling didn’t help save my marriage, but it helped me save my true self and come to terms to who I really am. I learned that my second wife wasn’t in love with me as the true Cecil, and that was fine, but Cecil can’t be anybody other than who Cecil is destined to be. I was destined to write, I may not be destined to be famously published, but I am and will always be a writer.

In my life, I can think of three times that I wanted to kill myself and each time I found the light at the end of the tunnel. I always heard a voice that said you are not done yet.  I will let you know when you are done. I have gone from a man who hated counseling to one who says I want to help counsel people like that. Never again will I plug the hose of my writing.  I will always let it flow. I no longer say I want to be a writer.  I say hey I am a writer. Over the last two years, I have republished “The Long Step Forward” and I published my novel “The Last Winter” under my own publishing banner, Bad T Publishing & Productions. Soon I will start my training to become a counselor so that I can help others with my story. My blog is finally up and running and I am looking to publish more books soon. I have a great woman by my side; I have two great kids, two great future stepdaughters, great friends and a great family who accept me as the writer I am. Life is, well it is life! I am ready for Act III and more. I refuse to be a bystander and let life rule me.  I plan on ruling life. It is all choices in life and I choose happiness. Each day that I live from here on out, I plan to not just have a great day but I plan on making it a great day. Stay tuned……

This post is dedicated to Cecil Douglas Rowlett Sr. 9-24-1945 to 8-18-2013 RIP!!!