Note: This is part of a series where I fea­ture peo­ple who are on their true peak jour­ney.  If you’re inter­ested in shar­ing your story, please con­tact me.

“A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles must begin with a sin­gle step.” ~ Lao Tzu

Today our guest is Chris­t­ian Hollingsworth, from Smart Boy Designs.  Chris­t­ian writes about blog­ging and life at his site, and has cre­ated an active com­mu­nity through the sto­ries he weaves.

Below Chris­t­ian shares a part his story, as he has con­tin­ues his true peak journey.

Please read and enjoy…

I’m going to put it bluntly, straight­for­ward from the beginning.

I found my true peak by for­giv­ing myself and under­stand­ing that I make mis­takes.

The past cou­ple of months have been a whirl­wind of learn­ing for me. A time to pon­der and con­sider the great ques­tions of life. For a year I was serv­ing as a ser­vice mis­sion­ary in Col­orado and then Novem­ber of 2010 I got incred­i­bly ill. At first it was thought to be the flu, but I never got bet­ter. Heart prob­lems, stom­ach issues, joint pain and more. At this point, over seven months of being ill, the doc­tors still don’t know what is wrong.

It’s been dur­ing this time that I’ve grown the most.

Let’s Go Back a Lit­tle Bit

I feel like I’ve had a blessed life. A life full of oppor­tu­nity and kind­ness given to me. Brought into my life my forces unbe­knownst to me. Life has been handed to me – and I’ve always had no excuse (in my mind) to be my very best.

In short, I have always been my own worst enemy and critic.

Whether it’s a sim­ple draw­ing or essay, I’ve always been the one to judge myself. The one to say I haven’t done my best. That lit­tle voice who dis­tills in my mind – bring­ing the neg­a­tiv­ity. Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever feel like you’re the tough­est per­son in the uni­verse, on your own work and out­put? I often did, and still do sometimes.

I Choose to be Positive.

In order to fight it, I had to under­stand and firmly believe in a sim­ple truth.

Neg­a­tiv­ity is not my nat­ural spirit.

That’s not how I’m sup­posed to be. That’s not who I am. Those feel­ings are and were only the feel­ings of the neg­a­tiv­ity we face on a daily basis – that creeps in from the world.

From our youth we are often pos­i­tive. We’re going to climb the high­est moun­tains and be the next astro­naut on the moon. We’re going to accom­plish every­thing and take oth­ers with us. Then the world, peo­ple and our own selves start to voice their own opin­ion. They tell us it’s not pos­si­ble, we can’t make it, and what we’re bring­ing to the table isn’t enough.

Don’t believe them.

My True Peak

Let’s go back to my orig­i­nal thoughts. Being ill.

It’s been dur­ing this time that I’ve been hum­bled to the core. I’ve been brought down to a tremen­dous low. It’s often dur­ing these times that we rise, and make some­thing great out of the dust.

From being ill I’ve reached my True Peak – because I am quicker to for­give myself. I’ve come to under­stand that I will make mis­takes, dif­fi­culty will arise – and that I have the power within to overcome.

That’s the true peak. That’s the peak we each face every day. The moun­tain we climb.

We’re going to make mis­takes – but we’re also going to reach the peak, and summit.

It’s the happy mes­sage. The one we should be proud of.

I don’t know that I’ll ever fully reach my True Peak in this life, but do know that I reach smaller, less pro­nounced peaks each and every day. I’m still young, and have so much to learn.

I’ve got my back­pack, filled with some tools of life – and I expect it’s going to be an inter­est­ing climb.

Chris­t­ian Hollingsworth is the cre­ator of Smart Boy Designs, where he talks about liv­ing your life to the fullest, with a spe­cial atten­tion toward cre­at­ing an online pres­ence.  Keep up with Chris­t­ian on Twit­ter and Face­book.

Note: This is part of a new series where I fea­ture peo­ple who are on their true peak jour­ney.  If you’re inter­ested in shar­ing your story, please con­tact me.

“A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles must begin with a sin­gle step.” ~ Lao Tzu

Today our guest is Gina John­son, from goodthingz.  Gina is a life/business coach based out of Illi­nois.  About a year ago, she cre­ated the goodthingz site, as a way to really focus on the good things that were uplift­ing and ener­giz­ing for her.  This is a won­der­ful story of how we truly become what we think.

Below Gina shares her story, as she has con­tin­ues her true peak journey.

Please read and enjoy…

Almost one year ago, I decided to start a social net­work­ing site aimed at inspir­ing peo­ple to live pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive lives. goodthingz is the name of the site, and it is the home of the goodthingz movement.

What is this goodthingz move­ment all about?

Well, it is really about 3 main things.

1. Choos­ing to be/ stay solu­tion focused when deal­ing with neg­a­tive events and/or peo­ple in life.
2. Search­ing for and focus­ing on what is right in life rather than what is wrong in life.
3. Cel­e­brat­ing one’s joys and inter­ests with oth­ers, and in turn choos­ing to walk away from unnec­es­sary drama and gossip.

All three of the above sen­tences can be summed up in four words, “Be the bright side”, and this is the goodthingz slo­gan.  It is a slo­gan that reminds me that my atti­tude and out­look are always my choice.
 

What inspired the goodthingz movement?

I was inspired to start the goodthingz move­ment after I had been post­ing on the goodthingz twit­ter site for about 6 months.  I started the goodthingz Twit­ter account because I was at a dark and lonely place in life. My dad had recently passed away, and I was simul­ta­ne­ously expe­ri­enc­ing many other big changes, both per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally. To say the least, there were a lot of stres­sors, and not a lot of obvi­ous pos­i­tives sur­round­ing me at that time.

Unfor­tu­nately, I allowed my think­ing to fol­low the course of the events/situations around me, and I immersed myself in a lot of neg­a­tiv­ity. Neg­a­tiv­ity bred neg­a­tiv­ity. Neg­a­tive thoughts led to neg­a­tive behav­iors which attracted neg­a­tive peo­ple. You get the idea; I chose to deal with life’s neg­a­tives by being neg­a­tive, and my reward was unhap­pi­ness. Luck­ily, at some point, I real­ized I wasn’t going to get my life back on track until I made a point to get my think­ing back on track. As a licensed men­tal health ther­a­pist and cer­ti­fied life coach, I was well aware that I could not just tell myself to think dif­fer­ently, more pos­i­tively, that is. Instead, I needed a strat­egy, a way to struc­ture my think­ing and to fol­low up with positive/productive actions.

It was then that I decided to make a game out of it. I opened a twit­ter account, named it goodthingz and chal­lenged myself to find 10 “good things” to post each day. I wish I could say that it was all down­hill from there. No, I quickly learned that find­ing 10 good things to post each day was eas­ier said than done. How­ever, I was deter­mined to feel bet­ter, and I knew an adven­ture in positive/productive think­ing and behav­ing was the treat­ment I needed. I asked myself what I enjoyed before life (and I) had taken a neg­a­tive turn, and I returned to those things (i.e., music, art, design, self help articles/books, movies, bicy­cles, pho­tog­ra­phy, nature, etc). I then made  a point to post some­thing from  those cat­e­gories every day.

While at first, it felt as if I was going through the motions, it didn’t take long for me to start expe­ri­enc­ing joy when look­ing and find­ing my good things for the day. Per­haps, more impor­tantly I noticed that in my down­time, away from work, I was think­ing dif­fer­ently, in a more positive/productive way. Rather than wor­ry­ing or dwelling about the neg­a­tives in life, I was deal­ing with them and mov­ing on. Mov­ing on to learn­ing more about an author that I  found while search­ing for my goodthingz site, or I was off to take a photo to share, or to look up a new song title.   I was mak­ing time for the good things and it was pay­ing off. Pos­si­bly best of all, I was learn­ing how to bet­ter con­nect with other peo­ple through pos­i­tive things vs. neg­a­tive things. All of the above left me feel­ing more ener­gized and invig­o­rated. Instead of feel­ing bogged down by life’s prob­lems, goodthingz gave me more energy to work toward solv­ing those prob­lems. Slowly but surely I changed for the bet­ter and so did my life.

After 6 months of post­ing good things on Twit­ter and expe­ri­enc­ing pos­i­tive changes in my life, I decided that I would like to cre­ate a venue for other peo­ple to do the same. I took my idea to Sur­face 51, a local web and design firm,  that is com­prised of peo­ple I gen­uinely like and trust. They were imme­di­ately on board and after a lot of hard work, the goodthingz site was up and run­ning. We also have sev­eral plans for future devel­op­ment on the goodthingz site.

How to get involved with goodthingz

First, visit goodthingz and join our com­mu­nity! Next, find and share your good things with us.
 
Here are a few exam­ples of how peo­ple are cur­rently using the goodthingz site and con­tribut­ing to the community.

• To develop a more pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive mind­set. Make a goal to find and post 2–3 good things a day. (It can be any­thing, a pic of some­thing cool, a story about some­one thought­ful, a great song you heard on the radio, or a piece of art your friend showed you.) Don’t sit back and wait for good things to cross your path; go search­ing for them and bring them to us! The acts of search­ing for and shar­ing good things day after day is a proven way to bet­ter your over­all mind­set and mood.
   
• To main­tain and grow an already pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive mind­set. We are all adversely affected by neg­a­tiv­ity bias; search­ing for and shar­ing good things each day helps pre­vent neg­a­tiv­ity from tak­ing hold of us. Even more, find­ing and shar­ing good things pre­vents stag­na­tion and pro­motes growth.
   
• To inspire, encour­age and moti­vate oth­ers. By con­tribut­ing to the goodthingz site you are help­ing to cre­ate a data­bank of good things…a data­bank that any­one can and will visit to find strength, encour­age­ment, wis­dom and humor. You never know when some­one will tell you that your post made their day.
   
• To build and store col­lec­tions of good things unique to you. Goodthingz gives you one place to store all of the pos­i­tives you find in life. Are there cer­tain songs that moti­vate you, cer­tain places that hold spe­cial mem­o­ries, pic­tures that make you smile, videos that inspire you? Col­lect them and store them on your goodthingz page. What a great place to return, to share laughs with friends or to find some relief after a stress­ful day.

It is my hope that goodthingz will mean many things to many peo­ple. Per­haps it will mean inspi­ra­tion to some, safety to oth­ers and hope to all.  I would love to see you there!

Gina John­son is the founder of goodthingz move­ment, an online com­mu­nity to share all the things that inspire and ener­gize.  Keep up with Gina on Twit­ter and on the goodthingz site.