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 It's 7:00. My mother gets us ready for bed, and she does three things before we go to bed. She makes sure that we've brushed our teeth, that we've washed behind our ears, and she makes sure that we get a big spoonful of cod liver oil. Yuck! Seven at 7. So, she'd line us up every night before we went to bed and made sure those three things happened. We brushed our teeth, washed behind our ears and got a big spoon of cod liver oil. Fast forward 30 years. Before I go to bed, what do you think I do? I brush my teeth, I wash behind my ears, and I do not drink cod liver oil. But why do you think I do those things 30 years later? Because those things have become a part of what I do. They've become a habit.

But how do we structure, how do we get habits? We get habits through routines. Because I did those things on a regular basis, I did those things on a regular basis, they became a habit. So we know that a habit is a learned pattern of behavior that's become automatic, but what is a routine? A routine is a cognitive, something that you think about. It is also something that is scheduled, so it is a cognitive scheduled behavior that we do on a regular basis. And we do that so much that it becomes a habit.

So if you have bad habits, what does that mean about your routines? You once had bad routines. Smokers, when they first start out, have to think about buying and getting cigarettes until it becomes a habit, and they don't have to think about it.

It's funny, Kung Fu fighters and Wing Chung masters and boxers and athletes, they practice these moves over and over and over and over again. They go through drills. They exercise their mind, thinking this thing through. They stretch. They prepare. They do all of these things so that when game time comes it has become a habit.

Whatever you do on a regular basis, that you're cognitively thinking about, something that is important to you, those things become your habits. Be careful what routines you set because that's a powerful thing, because those routines will become your habits, and those habits become the sum total of your behavior. And your behavior is what people see about how you act.

We are so nosy! We're so nosy. I mean have you been in a traffic jam only because people were rubber necking and for those of you who don't know rubber necking is when somebody is looking at an accident while trying to drive, and the accident is some place else than where they are. 

So they slow down and tie up traffic, yeah were so nosy. The whole soap opera industry, what is that stuff called now where you watch people live their lives, reality shows right. That is all about being nosy. We're such nosy people. I was reading a book, Jack Canfield's, Success Principals. And there was something that stuck, that spoke to me that took my attention and raptured my imagination and it was this one phrase. "That what other people think about you is none of your business." Wow! We're so nosy. 

What other people think about you or how they feel about you has nothing to do with you. It's what they think, it's what they feel. The most important thing is what you think about yourself, and what you know about yourself. Because let people talk. The only things that will hurt you are the things you accept as truths about you.

On this day I encourage you to not be so nosy.

Atlanta, we're all hanging out and we're talking and reminiscing and all this kind of stuff. And for some reason ‑‑ well, there's lots of food around, right? And so, we're talking about different foods and meals and what people brought and what they like to create and all sorts of stuff. And my sister, Crystal, chimes in and she says, "Do you guys remember that one time when we had pancakes for breakfast" ‑‑ I mean, for dinner ‑‑ "we had pancakes for dinner?"

And so, yeah, we started chiming in and we're talking about how that was our favorite meal. It was so exciting and different and all sorts of stuff. And there's joy and laughter and we're just laughing about it, and we're having a good time.

And my mom is sitting there. So it's Damion, Crystal, William, and myself, right? We're sitting there and then my mom just smiles with this great grin and she just kind of shakes her head and closes her eyes. And it's just giggling and kind of bubbly with that.

So Damion looks over at Mom and says, "Mom, what's so funny? What's going on?" And she looks at us and she says, "You guys just didn't know." And we're like, "What, Mom? What do we not know? That was our favorite meal."

That stuck out above all else that she's ever cooked for us. That one meal made a lasting impression on us to the point that we talked to our nieces and nephews, our children, about this one experience. And she just looks and she says, "You guys, the reason we had pancakes for dinner is because that's all we had."

Wow. It's really interesting what happens when we give all that we have. When we give something our best, we make that sacrifice and we make things happen for people. They typically remember that kind of stuff.

Now, it speaks to a lot of things about my family, about poverty and not having, and all this absence. And we can look at all of those things as negative things, but one of the things that I'm so happy about is that we may not have had much money but we were never poor in spirit.

We always had something driving us to understand how beautiful the world is. And although we may not have had any money or anything else to eat, that one meal changed that course of our family history.

You don't have to have a lot to be a lot. You don't have to collect the riches and the cars and the houses. All you have to do is give the best you have of yourself and people will remember that.

Respect can never be earned. It has to be given. The odd thing is the respect has to be given in the face of disrespect for it to be earned. It is easy to respect those who are respectful to us. It says more about our character to respect someone then it does about them and other people are watching us. Popular thought say that "Respect must be earned" We disagree and this video explains why...