George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish playwright, once said “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”

It’s easy to give up on an endeavor, a person or a situation as failure, or failures, mount. But, if we allow failures to stop us then we should completely throw away any notion of success, development and hope.

Failures are our learning opportunities, even if it’s a major failure. Failed marriages can teach us things about ourselves and our desires that we didn’t know before. Failed attempts at losing weight can allow us to figure out how our bodies work. And in truth, history is filled with people who achieved great things in part because they failed so much.

• J. Paul Getty was an extremely wealthy and successful man, yet was married and divorced more than five times. His business success and acumen wasn’t something he could bring into his personal life.
• Abraham Lincoln lost multiple elections and was often berated for his stances against slavery.
• Jim Plunkett, who led two Raiders teams to victories in the Super Bowl was considered a failure during his days as a quarterback with the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers.

Dealing with failure is hard, it’s not easy to look into the mirror after a terrible loss and try and believe that success is possible. It’s easy to use all sorts of cheesy sounding sayings and terms and then let failure sit in your belly. What’s difficult is taking time to examine your failure, learn from it and fight to get over your fear of it.

We’ve all been dumped, fired, yelled at, fallen down during a big event, allowed a bad habit to get the better of us and simply failed at something that seemed easy. However, if we’re going to succeed in life, achieve our goals and do anything of merit, than we have to allow these things to make us stronger.

If you want to be able to take care of your family, your aging parents, your employees and so on, you need to manage your own health as a primary concern. Does this mean drinking all the orange juice in the house and yelling at your spouse if you get less than seven hours sleep? No, but it does mean you need to realize that your body is a machine, and machines need a certain amount of care in order to run properly.

Here are some tips to keep your own body running like a well oiled machine:

1. Quit the leaf! Whether it’s tobacco, chewing tobacco or even marijuana, these things have harmful affects on your body. Legality aside, the harmful chemicals brought into your system as a result of using these items are known to cause cancer, emphysema and other serious medical conditions.

2. Green is your favorite color. And not just for the environment, green should be the color of most of your food as well. Raw leafy greens are fantastic forms of vitamins, anti-oxidants, nutrients and more. Spinach, broccoli, asparagus, romaine lettuce and all their wacky cousins will give your body what they need.

3. Don’t be a juicer. No, I’m not talking about steroids, I mean orange, apple, pineapple and cranberry juice. Check out the sugar content on the label of your favorite drink and you’ll see that you’re ingesting high amounts of fructose, high fructose corn syrup and all sorts of unnatural items. Water, tea, natural juices (check the label) and other drinks low in sodium and sugar are where it’s at.

4. Find your happy place. You need 30 minutes of alone time a day, not matter how hard it is to find that time, you need it. Find it in your car, the bathroom, a closet, wherever and whenever you can get time to clear your head, read the bible, zone out and whatever else you need to do. There will always be needy people, but you need time to yourself as well.

5. Know your booze. A glass or two of red wine is actually healthy, even a beer now and then isn’t bad. However, three Red Bull and Grey Gooses every Thursday through Sunday is gonna turn your liver into mush and ruin just about every other organ as well. Hard liquor can be enjoyed in moderation, but moderation means high quality liquor once a month, tops.

6. Quit fast food, as fast as you can. Watch “Super Size Me.” Then, after you’ve finished cursing McDonalds, make an eating chart that you keep in your bedroom or bathroom. Keep track of every item you eat during a month and see how often you eat out, that means pizza, Taco Bell, Burger King, restaurants and so on. Eliminate as much garbage from your diet as you can, especially if it’s made by people wearing silly hats offering you fries with your meal.

7. Practice the three R’s: Reading, reading and reading. Yes, television is the cheap whore who will give herself to you as often as you want her. But, it’ll ruin your physique, cause you to lose your vocabulary and even keep you on the couch eating chips so much that you’ll forget what the sun felt like on your skin. Subscribe to two magazines you like to read, make a list of books and try to bang one out a month and set one night aside in your home to focus on reading something, maybe even out loud.

There are two artists though, one popular today, one popular many years ago, who can both inspire and calm you at the same time: Jack Johnson and Cat Stevens.

Both artists are guitar players by trade, and singer song writer is a moniker they both wear well. But, more than just lyricists or “cool frat boys who play the guitar” these two artists are poets who have inspired musical talent.

Jack Johnson has a funky explosion now and then, and Cat Stevens can’t help but sound like the 70’s, but their collective musical history helps bring about a state of mind that isn’t just numbing out the pain. Cat Stevens for example believed in peace and love, and his music translates his passions well. Jack Johnson believes in togetherness and family, so much so that the recent “Curious George” film used his music as the score.

Pursuing a more pure and holistic life includes finding influences that will leave you a better person after the experience. A night of Cat Stevens and Jack Johnson playing while you cuddle with your significant other or while you make dinner will give you the best hangover you’ve ever had.

The key is to talk to your inner Jedi, a little guy named Yoda. Sure he was only a puppet (or CGI animation depending the movie) but his wisdom was relevant a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and right here, right now.

“Do or do not… there is no try.”

It’s not a matter of “trying” to overcome procrastination, it’s a matter of “doing” what needs to get done. In essence, it’s all about your mindset. Stop trying to be a better time manger and get off your butt and do what needs to be done!

“Size matters not, … Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?”

Whether it’s a thousand random projects or one humongous one, don’t judge your to-do list by it’s size, or by your abilities. When we judge our abilities, we look at our past, what our track record is, but when we give it all we have, and then some, we’re not judging at all, but doing.

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”

Be honest with yourself, what can you honestly accomplish? This works in tandem with the previous point. You can’t judge yourself too harshly, but if all you do is create impossible tasks then all you’ll ever do is pity yourself for what you can’t accomplish.

“[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.”

Again, you are not your past. If it’s noon and you’ve made your to-do list and nothing is finished, so what? Belief accompanies goal setting like a bride to a groom. If you only set out to accomplish blowing your nose, and you don’t believe you have a tissue, then what can you accomplish?

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.”

Your day is an opportunity, and every minute you let procrastination have is one minute less you have. While laziness is not an evil emperor, it is a thief that comes to take away what is rightfully yours.

“Always in motion is the future.”

Every time you get something done, you’ve changed history. History isn’t a gigantic plant, it’s an amalgamation of a zillion random particles coming together. When you see history and the future as a collection, rather than a finished product, you can feel more motivated. Get your projects done now, and the future will hold promise, sit back down on your couch with a beer and watch your future disintegrate.

“Always two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice.”

Throughout childhood we have coaches, grade school, little league, high school football, but then we graduate high school or college and all of a sudden we decide that we’ve had enough of all that. Around your office, your neighborhood, your place of worship and your community are people who are fantastic at time management. Find them and learn from them.

Life seems to have a funny knack for filling each day with different varieties of irritating situations. If you are a commuter, then quite possibly the only thing you know for sure when you wake up every morning is that something or someone is going to get on your nerves within the next twelve to sixteen hours.

Sometimes it’s the guy sitting next to you on the bus or the train who takes up almost two seats and is discussing rather personal issues loudly on his cell phone. Sometimes it’s the construction workers who callously close the same lane every morning and never show any particular consideration for your timetable. It can even be as soon as you get out of bed and immediately begin to shiver because your landlord just got the heating bill and is trying to cut back on his expenses.

These small irritations have a tendency to pile up and cause headaches, migraines, stress, anger, or depression.

So why am I reminding you of daily frustrations that you try so hard to avoid? Because there is a way to deal with them that relieves the symptoms of daily frustration. Eliminate frustration through acceptance.

Understand this concept, be ready and willing to apply it,and you are ready to embark on a peaceful life journey. Please allow me to explain.

Acceptance

Yes, acceptance. Applying acceptance means recognizing that everyone and everything around you is exactly how it is supposed to be at that exact moment.

Our frustration at the world around us usually stems out of our discontent with it. We often become dissatisfied with our surroundings because we can think of a million different ways that they could be better. We become obsessed with the phrase “if only”. If only the train would come on time, if only the homeless man wouldn’t sing, if only my wife wouldn’t snore, if only my boss would show more compassion, etc.,

Acceptance eliminates our dissatisfaction. For example, rather than ruminating on the thought of how disturbed you are by the loud obnoxious person next to you on the train, you could stop, and tell yourself that the person is exactly the way that they are supposed to be. That they are acting in the only way that they know how to act, because their life up to that point was a series of events, unknown to you, that shaped their personality in such a way that to you they appear to be loud and obnoxious. You can then breathe a sigh of relief because there is no longer any rational use to pondering about that person’s defects. No matter how much mental energy you employ at being irritated by them, they will remain themselves; simply because that is the way they are supposed to be at that exact moment.

How?

Here are the three simple steps to practicing acceptance in your daily living:

1. Acknowledge the situation or person that is making you irritated.
2. Accept that the person is doing exactly what he/she is supposed to be doing at that exact moment, and that no matter how much you may want the person to be different they are going to continue to be the way that they are.
3. Remove the negative thoughts from your mind, and rest assured that there is a reason beyond your knowledge for whatever is happening and that there is no need for you to further contemplate the situation.

Why?

Whether you are an agnostic, an atheist, or a steady and active church member you would most likely agree that the world we live in is governed by laws. No matter how hard I may try, I cannot transcend the thick walls of a bank vault and fill up my wallet, nor can I surpass the laws of gravity and fly to work when the trains are running late. These are of course laws that deal solely with the material world and have nothing to do with the people around us, but there is a social lesson to be learned from them.

The lesson is that people, very much like a thick bank vault or the laws of gravity, have limitations and parameters. What do I mean by that?

I mean that the people who you may find irritating are acting the way that they are because to them that is the only way they can act at the time. Seeing as how we are not omniscient, we don’t know everything that happens to everyone around us, so we cannot be aware of the situations in other people’s lives that cause them to act the way that they do. All we need to know is that we do not need to take it personally because the person would still act that way whether we were around them or not. We need to accept that that is just the way they are, and are acting the only way they know how to act.

Experiment with this new way of perceiving our surroundings and it may bring you the peace and serenity you seek.