Do you know the secret to becoming a bigger, better, bolder person? In this episode, Jimmy shares a simple, yet powerful method to help you become more than you are today.
Episode Keys
- The outcomes of giving of yourself to those in need in your community or family.
- Why your internal riches are worth far more than external wealth!
- How to help others grow in their self-esteem while simultaneously growing yourself.
- When you should be sharing the fruits of your labor with those around you.
- Why Thanksgiving is a verb!
Podcast Transcription
Good morning. It is Thanksgiving. Oh my goodness. I can just smell all the pumpkin, the turkey. I don’t know about you, but, well, this is the time of year. I can gain weight just by simply smelling it. Hey, this is Jimmy Williams for Live a Life By Design, your Monday morning moments of motivation that are coming to you here Wednesday morning. The day before Thanksgiving, I know it’s one of my favorite holidays and I hope it’s one of yours today. I want to take just a few minutes and perhaps you’re listening to this while you’re driving to a loved one’s home, uh, or in preparation of your own cooking that your home. For example, I just wish from our entire team, from our engineering team, marketing teams, content creators, everybody here at live life by design. We wish you and your families, the happiest of Thanksgivings.
And if I may share with you for just a few moments, I would like to take this time to simply add a few thoughts to your already busy mind. I’m sure for the holidays now thought number one, I want to make certain that everyone listening for our subscribers in 57 countries, man, we are beliefs beyond belief on this program. However, I want to take one area off your mind today. I just want you to take this one suggestion and take it away from your mindset and just don’t even think about it. Don’t waste your mental energy on this one area. And that area is what you were thinking about. Getting me for Christmas. Now, listen, I know a lot of you, a lot of you’re probably ordering coal, uh, switches, uh, things like that. Uh, don’t even worry about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t ship it to me.
I’m in great shape on those. Still have a lot from last year. Perhaps I’ll be good this year and get something a little different. I hope. But anyway, I have just having some fun with you on a more serious note. Let’s take just a few moments and reflect on why this holiday Thanksgiving in the United States is so vital to the families of our country. I want to take just a moment and reminisce for you. I go back and love those days when I actually had to sit in the living room at the coffee table, because there was not enough room at the dining table and the youngest kids had to sit somewhere else. If the weather permitted, you sat out in the garage or you sit on the front porch, you said anywhere, but at the dining table, those were the days when chicken and dumplings, candied yams, Turkey breasts, ham slice with pineapple.
I mean, I’m getting hungry, just thinking of all this. But those were the days when we really emphasized the importance of thankfulness with our families. You know, this is a different world. We live, I get that. But at the end of the day, we’re all just the same people seeking for some acceptance, some love, some admiration and affirming to those around us that we give them the same. This is the time of year where we should be bonding together, not breaking apart. One of the greatest heartaches that I see are families that are going through turmoil, whether it’s due to the disruption we’ve had, whether it’s personal matters, whatever it may be. But those families going through turmoil where those children will not have the memory of eating on the front porch or the coffee table or in the garage or wherever they may be put because there’s not enough room around the dining table.
To me. Thanksgiving isn’t just a noun. No, I think it’s far more than that. Thanksgiving to me is an action verb to me, giving thanks requires effort. It requires mental facility. You have to be thinking and you have to be focused to properly give thanks. Now I’m going to visit with you just a few moments today about giving. Thanks for certain things in life. For one, I want you to know today and I sincerely mean this from our entire entire team at Live a Life By Design that we thank you. We are thankful for our listeners and subscribers, the kind words, emails, the Facebook posts, the things that you do to let us know that we are in a communication with you really makes us feel wonderful. So to return some of that, we simply want you to know if you get no other word from anyone else, by listening to this episode today, you truly, and I hope, you know, we sincerely appreciate, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
If you want to share some of this good news, tell a friend, send them the link of the episode. But at the end of the day, know that you, by just simply listening and communicating with us, have our utmost respect. But when you take action to give, thanks, it does require an energy on our part. You see, we need to focus our thoughts, our mind. We need to focus our energies on giving more and taking lists. You know, that’s just the opposite of today’s world. You see so many people are trying to gain power. When the true growth of a person is giving it away by giving thanks. You are giving a vulnerability of yourself to that person you are saying to them, Hey, I appreciate you, uh, admire what you do. And thank you for being in my life. It’s often said that we work so hard in the process that we don’t work on the process.
One simple letter and I, or an O changes the entire structure of what we’re working. So I want you to know today. I want to work on my capabilities to provide you thoughtful, sincere, thanks, and what we do together on this podcast. I want to thank our engineering team. A gentleman named Dakota and Shelby, a lady that does an outstanding job on everything from engineering, helping fix all the mistakes I make. And boy, I make a few per episode and then shale B. She does all the transcription. She makes actual words and complete sentences from some of the jibberish I place on audio. I want to thank David, who is our webmaster that takes care of the posting for our URLs and gets things done on the podcast website about the pop reads and things that I want to get out to you from our team of communicating ways to be more positive, more big, and bold in your process of being a greater you.
The second thing I want to focus on with thankfulness and think giving that thanks, giving peace. I want to talk about the word, give it’s this time of year that our hearts are really torn. When we see those that are less fortunate than us, simply wishing to survive through the holidays. They don’t have a roof over their head. They have no meals in the refrigerator because they have no refrigerator. They have no shoes on their feet. They’ve got clothing that is threadbare. You’ve got them in your city. I’m sure every city in this country, as blessed as we are in the United States of America has a problem that we have others that are not as fortunate this holiday season to truly give things would ask that you reach out to at least one family in need and truly show them the importance they play in our community by providing a meal clothing, anything that you can afford to do.
I know that they would be grateful at the end of the day. It is simply one of those things in life that we must help our neighbor by giving of ourselves this year alone, we have seen so many families affected by loss of employment by sickness, these types of things that are out of their control. And they find themselves at this time of year in a difficult and precarious position. It’s not one they wish to be, but it is where they are. And it is important for those of us that have been blessed beyond belief to reach out to those that could use a helping hand and not simply a handout. I encourage you to look for these individuals in your communities. You’re driving a buyout. If you’re riding on the subway, wherever you may find yourself, look around you be observant, but it’s in the giving that you truly gain your self-esteem.
You truly gain power when you give it away. And that sounds like an oxymoron, but the truth of the matter is it works. It works tremendously. There are books called the go giver that have been outstanding in my reading that helped me become a better giver, a more charitable person. Now I’m not telling you that for my own benefit. What I am telling you is is that through the blessings of life, we have more than we need, and we should share with those that have greater need. Now, the third thing I want to visit with you about on thanks giving is simply this we’ll be busy eating on Thursday tomorrow. We’ll probably eat two or three times that day and really just have our bellies fool. Then we’ll turn on that boob tube and hopefully watch a little collegiate football. And then we might, at the end of the day, have a family function.
I’d like for you to reverse that a little bit. I’d like for you to think about those in your family that may or may not have the best relationship with you today. Now I’m not saying to go start up anything in terms of a disruption for your family. But I am asking you to sincerely give some thought and earnestly consider the reconciliation you might make with a family member. This holiday season, this Christmas, this Thanksgiving, these times for which we should be celebrating our families. We should be reaching out to those of which we need a better, more deep relationships so that we can truly be thankful for those real true assets in our life. You know, I always tell people that the Bible tells us to the riches are faint. Those riches will just fly away in a heartbeat or rust or fall down over time.
But the relationships that we have will sustain themselves for a millennium, those relationships that we build and we give of ourselves to help others grow themselves are seeds that never reach maturity. They just grow and grow and grow for perpetuity. We were lucky to take a trip to see our daughter in California earlier this summer. And we went through the great forest. Those redwoods you see in far Western California, as we drove through them, I was looking and noting that the size of these giant trees in comparison to the SUV, we drove. As a matter of fact, they had one tree that had been hollowed out that you drove your car through. Literally we have photos of it. It was a gigantic creation, but as we got out of the car and we started walking through that forest and just enjoying the size, the opulence of those trees as they spread those giant limbs above us, they darkened the floor of that forest.
We appeared to be almost in sunset where it was dark enough that they covered so much with those giant limbs and leaves. And those trees really amazed me. Now, the tree itself didn’t do anything that day, but B itself, it didn’t change. It didn’t drop limbs on me. It didn’t drop leaves on me. It didn’t uproot itself. It just simply stood its ground in the same manner. I would like for you to think about what are you standing for this Thanksgiving and Christmas season? Have you in 2021 reached a level in your growth? Well, or have we grown that you see a bigger, better and bolder you in 2021 November than you did in 2020 November? The key to life is to learn and grow so that we become a better person as we age. I’m not saying to you as the giant Redwood did that, you’ll stand taller and be larger in life than anyone around you that may occur.
It may not. But speaking from the standpoint of giving thanks and kindness, you can be the biggest person in the room by simply being sincere and sharing a kind word with those around you. The world right now is seeking out some means of peace. It is that time of year that we all think of peace. So let’s work together. This Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays all throughout these next 30 days that we seek out others who need us and we need them so that we may give of ourselves to help them become bigger, better, and bolder themselves. Thank you for listening today. I hope your Thanksgiving is one that you’ll never forget that the memories will be so bold and the food be so good that your memory will never fade of these few moments with family and friends around a Turkey and some other food go out this week, seek those that need your help, give away your mindset of gratitude. So others will take this contagious infectious feeling and share it with others around them. And you know, it might just happen that you become the bigger, better, and bolder you. Thank you for listening. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone from our family at Live a Life By Design to yours.
