Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. - Thomas Mann

As another year passes I reflect upon the good and the bad and in the end I’m thankful that friends and family made it through pretty much unscathed.

I am thankful that my eyes are opened to the blessings in life instead of focusing on the negativity.

A good friend Sanjay and I had a long talk yesterday about weight loss and spirituality as we are prone to do. I was telling him how nice it was that every day when I get up and write one of these gratitude posts that it just sets the mood for the rest of the day.

I would be lying if I told you this were untrue. I would also be lying if I would tell you that even just a few weeks ago I would believe this could be true, but it is.

What I have learned in the past couple of weeks is that people can affect our lives, but it truly is up to us how much we allow them to affect our lives. Ultimately it is we who are responsible for our own happiness, and yes, sadness.

I have also learned that I cannot concern myself with every thought that goes through my head, attempting to stop even one negative one. However, I can recognize the direction those thoughts are heading by my feelings. These are both very powerful bits of knowledge.

To put it into a quick example, there have been days in my past where I just wrapped up the most wonderful time with either family or friends. I’m talking hours of sheer joy, and on the way home almost get side swiped by some uncaring fool on the road.

This encounter would then lead to the inevitable bickering, cursing and yes my favorite one fingered salute (I am patriotic that way). But it would also lead to me allowing a dark cloud to cover what was a very blessed day I had been having so far. I had given a random individual the power to enter my reality and alter it to fit his. Well not really, this is where the powerful stuff comes in. I am responsible for my own feelings and emotions and so are you.

Now that I recognize this I handle situations much better. If I am driving down the road and some uncaring individual almost side swipes me I recognize the feelings that come with this encounter. I still get anxious, angry, frustrated, and so much more, but now I maintain that power over my own life and the direction it heads, I maintain power over the reality I am creating for myself and it stops there.

I recognize the fact that this is an uncaring individual and that since I am responsible for my own reality, I am not responsible for his. Now there is no need to be frustrated, I’m not going to spend the next five minutes attempting to prove why I think they are wrong and should feel bad. Since our encounter ends there and I make sure not to allow this individual to put me into a similar situation I am no longer anxious or angry.

Instead I look for things that will make me happy. I turn up the music and start singing my butt off, or I repeat my mantra of “I attract love, I attract success, I attract respect, I attract money.” Sometimes I’ll call a friend. Whatever it takes to get my mind off the negative thoughts that want to start pouring from my body and get back to creating positive thoughts that will manifest themselves into my reality.

So yeah I’m thankful that I now have the tools to create my own happiness.

Have A Safe, Blessed, Happy New Years!

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To come to be you must have a vision of Being, a Dream, a Purpose, a Principle. You will become what your vision is. - Peter Nivio Zarlenga

When I redesigned CaryDarling.Com, I didn’t know in which direction I would take it, let alone the direction my life was heading. I now seem to have a purpose for this site and it seems my life and I hope it shows.

I knew that when I took down all the poker content that I wanted to focus on the changes I was making in my life towards self improvement whether that was discussing my weight loss, educating myself, or reexamining my spirituality. But still I had no real direction, I didn’t know where to begin, I knew there had to be a destination but all I could see were the obstacles in the way.

The journey of a 1,000 miles begins with one step - Old Chinese Proverb

What did I do? Well for one I had opened myself up to the universe, I let it be known that I was searching for something and a very perceptive friend recognized this and stepped out in faith and shared with me something meaningful to him. That simple bit of action on his part stoked a fire deep within me and gave me a sense of focus I have not had in years, I now had a purpose, I wanted to learn more about how I could create happiness and abundance in my life.

I am grateful that I now have a purpose, a goal, a vision of becoming and that 1,000 mile journey started out with one step, or for all intents and purposes, one post. A gratitude post.

Wake up today and find something to be thankful for, write it down somewhere, utter it aloud because when you do, you allow something that was just merely a thought to become reality.

I welcome you to share something you are grateful for here in the comment form.

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A few days ago I wrote a post titled “Money Comes Easily and Often,” where I discussed how I always seemed to break even.

I am not one to shy away from the truth when I write, as I don’t wish to create a false impression about who I am or what I am. So in keeping in line with that let me point out a simple truth.

When I wrote that post and saved it in my wordpress software I still had $100.00 left in my bank account. That was before I took my family out to dinner on Christmas Eve.

That dinner actually left me with $16.00 in my pocket on the 26th, the day I published the post. Ten of which I put into my gas tank so I could run a few errands.

As I drove to my first errand I began to get excited thinking about that post and how I told people that “money comes easily and often.” I started to laugh thinking about how I would stop by my P.O. Box and find a check from some company and post a picture of it on my blog.

It has happened before. In the past I have received affiliate checks for $1,000’s from companies who for some reason or another lost my personal info or just failed to send them.One such check was over $3,000, another over $1,000.

My heart began to race as I drove to the UPS Store where I have had my box for almost 5 years now. But sadly as I opened the box all that was in there were some bank statements telling me what I already know.

But I didn’t let that get me down. I just knew that somewhere, somehow money would come flowing in and it did. I decided last night to stay the night at the girls’ place and watch some movies with them. The girls I’m referring to are of course my sister and two nieces.

when I arrived there was a Christmas Card from my Mother’s sister waiting for me. Inside I found $25.00.

No it is not much, but it is a start, and once again reaffirms exactly what I was telling you. For me money comes easily and often, I have always known this, that I attract money. I just now need to attract more, and learn how to hold onto it a bit longer.

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If you think that the world means nothing, think again. You might mean the world to someone else. — Anonymous

I received a call yesterday from a good friend who while out on the town saw something and immediately thought of me and my needs.

How many friends like that can you count? If you have just one you are blessed, if you have more than one then the Gods have smiled upon you. In both cases be thankful.

Just a few short weeks ago I would remind myself how broke I was. Sure I had money in my pocket, but not near enough for the things I wanted in life. But once again I had another friend who was thinking about me, and was wanting to share something with me, but didn’t quite know if I was ready for it. This person was thinking so specifically about me that they debated with themselves whether or not it was time to give me this gift.

A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.– Anonymous

This gift was a spiritual kick in the ass. It has put me back on the right path, and in the right frame of mind and awakened me to the knowledge that because of these acts of kindness I am in fact a very wealthy man.

So today I am thankful that I am in someone’s thoughts.

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I scrapped the old CaryDarling.Com design and site a few months back, and I was just going through and uploading some of the photos I had posted years ago.

I took these at the 2004 World Poker Tour Five Diamond Classic at Bellagio. In the pictures you’ll see some poker fan favorites such as Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harman, Humberto Brenes, Marcel Luske, Devilfish Ulliot, among others.

Daniel went on to win that tournament, he had an amazing year where he was not only the player of the year at the World Series of Poker, but if I recall he was also the WPT Player of the year and might have even been Card Player’s Player of the Year.

In the pics you’ll also see my good friend, and now roommate, the Fist Lady of Poker, Ms. Linda Johnson. She is one of those amazing friends I mention often in my blog.

I consider Linda and her business partner Jan Fisher not only as two of my dearest friends, but my mentors. These are two of the most caring, giving, loving, individuals you would ever have the pleasure of meeting.

Now onto the photos, more to be posted later.

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Ask … Believe … Receive …

I have owned my own name as a domain for years now, but originally kept some poker content on it. I recently changed the direction my life is heading, and this of course changed the direction the content of this blog was heading.

I have never really tracked how much traffic I would get to this blog. I had no real reason to, in fact I still don’t but for interests sake I went ahead and installed the Google Analytics code. Okay, I’m lying. I do have a reason, vanity. If you have ever owned a website then you know you want the world to take notice when you scream “look at me ma!”

Well, it has been 24 hours and the code is working and I had 6 whole visitors yesterday. A couple were referrals through email, which is hopefully a good sign, and a few searched through Google. One, I swear to God was a a search string that included these words in it… “donkey with woman in tijuauna.” Yes the misspelling of Tijuana is “correct.” It seems some poor individual was attempting to find some kind of stage show in the crazy border town, when he came across my site.

When you do a search using that misspelling, you’ll see CaryDarling.Com come up first in Google due to an article I wrote awhile back poking fun at Phil Hellmuth, this is the excerpt they show in the search results.

I felt like a gringo walking down Revolution Blvd in Tijuauna. Oh and there are rumors that Hellmuth will be performing a live donkey show. …

Yes I have completely gotten off track to the point I was trying to make. I got 6 visitors, and I want more. I am asking and I am believing that my blog will have an impact on someone today, and they will share the URL with a few friends, and just like the shampoo commercial, they will tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on.  So now I am receiving traffic.

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“All of life is a journey which paths we take, what we look back on, and what we look forward to is up to us. We determine our destination, what kind of road we will take to get there, and how happy we are when we get there.”

We have all been lost at one time or another as we’re driving through a new city, or just a different part of our own city and we don’t recognize a single thing around us.

Along with confusion anxiety begins to set in and what happens? Things seem to just get worse and spiral out of control. You are no longer keeping your eyes on the road so you miss the clues that would get you back onto your path, you fail to stop at a sign and almost hit some unsuspecting traveler, and if there isn’t anyone to yell at in your car, then you’re sharing your frustration with the rest of the world while educating them on New York’s state bird.

That’s where I was for years. I was running around my life without any direction, anxious and in a state of confusion and this caused me to miss all those clues that would get me heading into the right direction for success.

Thank the good Lord for friends. Because it was friends who stuck by me during this time and reminded me of the great qualities within me that I have to offer this big blue marble that helped me to finally get back on the right path, and here I am.

I am thankful I have found my path again, I am thankful that because I am on the right path that the things I believe I deserve in life will now become reality.

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Do you need an idea for a book, a movie, a business, a joke? Then you came to the right place, because I am a talented and creative person who is blessed with numerous ideas daily. I am an idea man.

I would have to say that I was born this way, it is not necessarily a talent I developed but a gift bestowed upon me by a higher power. But like any gift not nurtured properly you can lose it.

Your mind is like a well, if you keep taking from the source without finding a new source to feed it, it will eventually dry up, and that is what happened to me for the last couple of years. My mind had one track, and one track only. Poker. I lived, breathed, and ate poker, nothing else mattered or existed in my opinion, and because of this one dimensional mindset I had developed, the ideas just stopped coming.

After I quit poker I was sitting at my computer and I quickly realized that I didn’t really know anything, and had no ideas on how I was going to move forward from there. I now know why I had no ideas, it was because I had shut myself off to the universe, the ether, my idea source.

I had to fix this and if you too are in the same situation then you are probably wondering, when the ideas stop coming, how do you change this? How do you reconnect with the source?

• Invite creativity back into your life, and fill your life with the joy that it is missing.

• Find a nice comfortable spot in the house like a recliner and remove any hint of negative clutter around it. Nothing blocks creativity like seeing a pile of unpaid utility bills.

• Change into something comfortable, something safe. Everyone has an old tattered t-shirt, or pair of sweat pants they would die a thousand deaths if any of their friends saw them wear it. I myself have a swear shirt that is almost ten years old, the cuffs are starting to separate from the sleeves. Wear something loose fitting, something that screams freedom. Ward Cleaver wore a suit at home, last time I checked Ward Cleaver didn’t pen any great novels.

• Grab a notepad and some pens, and sit down in that comfortable old recliner and turn on some music close your eyes and let your mind just wander.

• Music not doing it for you today? Read a book. Something uplifting, or something humorous. Put down the technical manuals, and true crime stories.

• Put yourself into a receiving mindset, don’t force it just let it happen, and the ideas will come.

This was meant to be  solely a gratitoodz post, but as you can see I just opened my mind to the source and let it flow through me and all of a sudden I have an article.

The ideas are coming for me again, I have topics for posts to keep me going for days now and as I research those topics, more ideas come flooding in. I am thankful that once again the universe uses my brain as its very own set of 3×5 cards to jot down whatever random thought it comes up with.

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Money comes easily and often. Funny, but as I sit here with my last $100 in the bank, I know this to be true.

I have told people for many years that “no matter what, I always break even.” My life has been very similar to the episode on Seinfeld where Jerry tells this to George, and to test this theory George asks for $20 from Jerry and then proceeds to throw it out the window. Jerry is angry for only a second, because as he is putting on a jacket he hasn’t worn in months he finds a twenty dollar bill in the pocket. He broke even.

I have had this happen to me all my life. I could take this last $100 and put it all on red and lose it only to wake up tomorrow morning and somehow come into another $100.

I had accepted “breaking even” as my fate, but no more. It is because I have created this reality, and accepted it as my reality. I have set a ceiling on the rewards I can expect in my life and because of that it has been virtually impossible for me to just move beyond breaking even.

If I would lose a job, I would gain a job. No real increase in pay, no real increase in duties, no gain in experience, I would just move laterally from one place of employment to another. This could be applied across my entire life. Lose a friend, gain a friend. Lose a car, gain a car. Always breaking even.

I accept the responsibility I play in my life, so now instead of telling people I break even, I will now tell them, “Money comes easily, and often.”

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I am so thankful to be alive.  I am starting to sound like a broken record, but it is true, every morning I am so excited now to wake up and get to my blog and write about something I am thankful for.

I am thankful for life, and what it brings, both the rewards and challenges.  As a poker player we may claim we want to win all of the time, but then where would the fun be?   So just like in poker life wouldn’t be that interesting if we always won.  There needs to be the challenges to remind us how exciting it is when we do win.

I love the lessons life brings.  I love learning something new each and every day and life takes care of what today’s lesson is going to be.  You don’t have to worry about seeking out these lessons, they find you and the interesting thing is, life doesn’t bring you a challenge you aren’t capable of handling.  Whether you realize it or not you have been prepared for today’s lesson, as challenging as it may seem.  Sure you might be sitting there trying to figure out how you are going to get through this challenge, it may seem like there is no light at the end of that tunnel.  There may not be right at this exact moment, but you will figure it out.  All of the challenges you’ve been through up to this point will teach you to navigate through that tunnel, or create that light to guide the way.

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