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The phrase is ubiquitous and oft-repeated in relationship circles, but do we really know what it means to “Be His Peace”? Women have been mandated to take on this role if they want to love their men correctly. Many have insinuated that many men step away from relationships due to a failure in the woman’s ability to do this. Does being his peace mean the woman can never articulate displeasure? Does it mean she must put her problems on the back burner because he needs peace? The answer to both is absolutely not. So, what does it mean? Being his peace reflects your demeanor and your spirit. Your essence can reflect a tone of calm amid chaos. A peaceful woman is a safe place where the man is free to be vulnerable without the risk of being attacked or hurt while his guard is down. It is also an indication of how optimistic your outlook is. We must remember that the nature of a good man makes him a “fixer.” He feels like the problems of his friends and loved ones are automatically his problems, and a good man feels uncomfortable leaving issues without a solution. The amount of pressure that the world places on manhood is not easily quantified. Men are raised to be indestructible and impenetrable machines who repel the harshness and cruelty of the world while simultaneously being the protector and leaders at home. Therefore, during your daily conversation with your man, if you inundate him with issues, complaints, problems, and disagreements, you have supplied him with a fresh list of things he must fix. You have disrupted his peace. Everyone knows the story of Sampson and Delilah. Sampson was one of the great Judges who was ultimately responsible for the needs of masses of people and was constantly flooded with requests for his assistance. Sampson did not have a quiet and peaceful place that was void of expectations and needs. He was burdened with feeling as if he was always in superhero mode. Even while knowing Delilah’s intentions were duplicitous, Sampson continually went to Delilah’s home because he took solace in the fact that she provided a safe place without demands. She simply listened and stroked his head as he unburdened himself. This ought to give you an idea of the lengths a man will go to in a desire to obtain peace. In a twisted way, although Delilah was Sampson’s conspirator, she was his peace. If peace is unavailable, a man will find it. This is not always found in another woman, but it is often manufactured in an emotional and physical man cave where he can sit quietly and remove himself from the daily demands. Peace is an encouraging statement, a word of affirmation, a soft touch, or simply an interaction that does not require his assistance. Be his peace, or you will be the one that drives him towards it. #changedmindschangelives #bethesunshine

Take a moment and think back to everything you did to get your job. Your resume, your interview, and even your first 90 days of employment were flawless. You may have arrived early and stayed late, volunteered for committees, or done whatever you could do to represent the perfect employee. Ultimately that level of tenacity decreased as you became comfortable and more confident with the trust your superiors had in you. Ladies, in your current relationship, it may have taken 6 months before he saw you without makeup. Many of you would sacrifice split ends by refusing to wear a scarf to bed. You were also highly interested in your physical appearance. Many times he would have to call you back after your workout was complete. Ultimately as you became comfortable you adopted the attitude of "what you see is what you get" or "love me as I am." Now he gets to see the "real you" too often. He is horrified as he watches you shop at Walmart in the same scarf you slept in, and the workouts have all but disappeared as the person that was presented to him has become "more to love" Men are just as guilty. We enter relationships with major life goals and business plans that make promises of a prosperous future. We tap into our former athletic selves and make every attempt to keep that young man alive by spending hours in the gym. We date, bring flowers, provide romantic interludes, and commit to providing the desired love language. What happens? After getting comfortable, we have now embraced the "Dad bod." We assume our presence alone is a blessing. We only buy flowers on birthdays, and we isolate ourselves inside our caves. Let this be a lesson if you do not have the fortitude to maintain the attributes of the representative, do not send him. However, some of us need to go back and become the representative we sent. Look back at the pics of your 1st date, your wedding, or your first week on the job. Is that person 20 pounds lighter? Is that person clean-cut or displaying a beautiful mane? If so, you are guilty of false advertising. The person you originally presented is who that person chose. So, whose fault is it if he or she appears disappointed with the current product? Do not take this to extremes; looks will fade as we age and our hair gets grey. However, I am referring to a desire and action to still provide others with the "best" you as often as you can. Find that representative and become that representative. You did it once, you can do it again. Remember, comfort is the friend of mediocrity and the enemy of progression. #changedmindschangelives #bethesunshine ReplyForward

Visualization can be defined as the act of mentally imagining oneself performing tasks successfully. Great athletes utilize visualization to improve their performance in a selected sport. The mental rehearsal of actions have been shown to improve physical and psychological reactions. As you rehearse and visualize yourself successfully performing a task, you actually stimulate the same regions of your brain and the same muscles as if you were actively engaged in the task. To state it simply, you are who you think you are and can do what  you have convinced your brain you can do. When you visualize yourself graduating, being promoted, giving a great speech, running a 5K, etc. You are training your brain to succeed. Visualization can have negative outcomes as well. Many of us visualize a negative outcome and we rehearse that negative outcome mentally until it manifests.  We have convinced our brain to fail. Studies show that young Black men that grow up in poor neighborhoods  can be placed on a positive or negative trajectory based on interactions with authority.  If law enforcement, educators, or even parents diminish their self-concept through negative interactions the young men will convince themselves that they are unable to perform well which results in lower test scores and grades. It is no secret that men are stimulated and motivated by visualization.  However, gazing at a beautiful woman is not the problem.  When a man mentally rehearses or visualizes certain actions with that woman he starts to train his brain to react in certain ways and the body follows. What are you visualizing? Are you picturing yourself as a successful husband or wife or have you manifested the negativity of divorce? Have you trained yourself to  be successful by imagining yourself at the finish line? I challenge you to cast your eyes only on things that you wish to manifest and visualize positive results.  It is too easy to focus upon everything that could go wrong but remember your mind will focus all its attention on your imagery. Visualize success Visualize peace Visualize prosperity Visualize a happy ending #changedmindschangelives #bethesunshine

The word prepare is derived from the Latin word prae, meaning before, and parare, meaning make or ready. Thereby the meaning of prepare means to get ready before. The key part of this commonly used word is the prefix "pre." Many of us could benefit greatly from utilizing this prefix more often. Can any of you attribute some of our failures to this prefix? For instance, "I wasn't successful at my job or my marriage because I wasn't prepared for the obstacles or the difficulties that would arise. " As the saying goes, "success is where preparation meets opportunity." Why have we stopped preparing? Even in our maturity, we have failed to "get ready before " trivial or important things in our life. The military does an excellent job of foreseeing and therefore preparing for every situation. The military is staffed 24 hours daily (someone is always on alert), even while in garrison. Every exercise, every weapon, and every inoculation is preparation for what can happen. They stay ready, so they don't have to get ready. Shouldn't we have the same mindset of being ready for whatever comes? We send our kids to preschool to prepare them for kindergarten. Athletes train to prepare their bodies for punishment. However, many times we just simply approach a situation leisurely or do not give our best effort in anticipation. I'm not sure if we fail to embrace the importance of certain situations or if we have become so accustomed to flying by the seat of our pants that it has become habitual. When we approach life like this, we inevitably become wasteful. A simple trip to the grocery or department store can easily become an unanticipated debt if we haven't created a list or budget. As we all know, in today's economy, the smallest economic misstep is hard to recover from. I am convinced that if we pre-pare we can pre-vent ourselves from situations that we should have pre-conceived and could cause us not to pre-vail. It should be our desire to pre-sent ourselves in a positive light as a pre-lude for our trustworthiness so we can pre-side in places of success. Take pre-caution with those that pre-tend to pre-vail while instead connecting with those that pre-clude their pre-sentations with pre-dated pre-paration . If you fail to pre-pare you will continue to fulfill pre-conceptions. Are others pre-sumptuous of who you are due to pre-conceptions, or have you just failed to pre-pare, and your actions have pre-cluded who you are First impressions are usually a pre-lude to future behaviors .

We have always been taught to sit at the feet of those older so we can receive their transfer of wisdom. Those who came before us have always been seen as the measurement of knowledge. It was instilled in us to make sure our elders influence us to be successful and even more remarkable than they could have ever hoped. Well, in my opinion, this has become an antiquated ideology. Don't get me wrong; I still believe some from the older generations have a lot to offer. What I am saying is, I have met some old fools! I have discovered that age does not equate with wisdom, and you must be extremely careful who you allow to speak or pour into you. The loudest one in the room is seldom the most intelligent, and I'd venture to say that the introverts carry the most knowledge and will only offer their opinion if asked. Remember, it's the empty container that makes the most noise. Memorizing useless facts and regurgitating them while steering the conversation in your direction does not display wisdom. It shows a fear that sharing the stage will display your lack of knowledge and confidence. These old fools will essentially make you an actor in their charade as you continue to sip the kool-aid. The expertise and instructions they offer can not be trusted because you will never be able to tell the difference between the truth and their fabricated facade. Just like we interview a new job candidate or date our potential spouse, we must do the same with those we allow to influence us. Have they produced real fruit? No, I don't mean money and property. Do they have the fruit of lifelong friendships? Does their family love them? Do people really enjoy being around them? Have they been a positive influence on others? We too often listen because someone talks but do they really have anything to offer? When you reach a certain age, you begin to realize that your time is precious. I'm not saying every interaction has to be a lesson, but I am saying you should never leave an exchange without feeling edified in some way. One of the worst feelings is feeling like you have just wasted your time. Choose your influences wisely. #changedmindschangelives #bethesunshine

Good morning 3M, Have you ever stopped to think that life is a series of hoops we must navigate through in order to progress? When we were younger, we were told that to be successful; we had to get a high school diploma. Among adults ages 25 and older, 61% of Asian Americans, 42% of White adults, 28% of Black adults, and 21% of Hispanic adults have a bachelor’s degree or more education. . Although the number of degreed Americans has increased, many have expressed they simply cannot afford education. In 2022, it appears imperative to have at least a Bachelor’s Degree to stay above water financially. Among adults without a bachelor’s degree, Hispanic adults (52%) were more likely than those who are White (39%) or Black (41%) to say a major reason they didn’t graduate from a four-year college is that they couldn’t afford it. Each level or each hoop we are expected to jump through comes with its own cost financially, emotionally, and physically. Unfortunately, many of us have become content with avoiding the rat race. We have become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Learning to go along to get along will only guarantee a life of mediocrity. Comfort and contentment are the enemies of progress, and consistency will destroy mediocrity. Our society is created to only award the strongest and hungriest. Turning your back on the hoops that you should be jumping through only guarantees there will be one less person in the competition. We work five days per week, and then we decide we owe ourselves some rest and time to be void of productivity. However, if you don’t own your own business, you have spent 40 hours on someone else’s vision, and when it is time to work for yourself, you decide just to shut down. A vision without a plan is just a dream, and a plan without action is simply a display of wasted potential. The statistics mentioned earlier can be looked at in two different ways. You can say the unaffordability of college is your reality and accept it, which means you have turned your back on another hoop, or you can look at it as another obstacle on your track to success. In other words, your mindset is the only difference between an explanation and an excuse. Remember this, Excuses are tools of incompetence used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness, and those who use them seldom specialize in anything else. We must approach every hoop or obstacle as a necessary part of our progression. Giving up is too easy; successful people push through, jump over, or destroy the obstacles that stand in their way. So your charge for today is to give your dreams a vision, give your vision a plan, and give your plan movement. I’m not telling you to stop dreaming; I’m telling you to wake up and put it in motion. #changedmindschangelives #noexcuses #bethesunshine

Regardless of how educated you are or what you accept about the treatment of Black people in this country, slavery happened, and the dehumanization persisted beyond abolition. We have fought through Jim Crow, Redlining, and Segregation. However, there has always been residual classism that exists within the Black culture. Primarily you had the house slaves who thought they were better than the field slaves, and fast forward; the suburban Black people tend to thumb their nose at the lower class or ghettos. Has the church become the new weapon of inner class separation? We started with the divisions, such as Apostolic, Church of God in Christ, Pentecostal, etc. Now we have begun to separate ourselves through our perceived levels of commitment. You know how it goes in the Black church; you have the saved, the sinner, the servant, and the backslider. The servants separate themselves from all other classes and use the Bible as an excuse. The interesting thing about the Black church is that they judge you based on your attendance and the number of ministries you serve. They use this as a gauge of your commitment or relationship with God. The reason for having a door is to be able to close it and keep the public out and your trusted loved ones in. In other words, we don't know the level of someone's personal relationship with God. I would never disavow the need and the synergy that exists in corporate worship. There is definitely strength in numbers. However, no one gets to decide how much or how often you engage. The truth is we don't see what others do behind closed doors. Just as we don't know what the "servants" do in the privacy of their own homes. Regardless of these factors, you will be deemed off limits or "unclean" if you fall into a category other than" "servant." God forbid if as a former servant you decide your season of service is over, you are deemed worldly, carnal, or a backslider. I may not know it all, but I'm pretty sure God promotes inclusiveness, not classism. I guess I am expecting too much from a race that has been oppressed; we become the oppressors in some form or fashion. The church has just become another tool to climb the ladder while looking down on those at the bottom. Yes, I am specifically talking about the Black church because I have never known this to be the culture at the White church. If you know of a different reality, I am open to listening. Do your best to remember where you came from. Looking back at the person you have matured from will reconnect you with your humility. Our state in life, our position, our neighborhood, or our titles do not make us any better than anyone else. We are all simply growing through different stages in life at different times. If you have succeeded, throw the rope back over the gate and help someone else. Don't take the rope with you! We are better together and weaker when separated. #changedmindschangelives #bethesunshine

As we head towards our weekend, I want to save you a load of frustration. Stop expecting “You” in other people. What do I mean by that? Well, even with all of our flaws and shortcomings that we are undoubtedly aware of, we think we are pretty amazing. The way we handle business, the way we organize, the way we engage our friends, etc. We feel very comfortable in our actions and routines. We get frustrated when we expect others to act similarly or precisely as we would. Many times, we have an internal dialogue about the actions of other people that sounds like, “I would have done it this way,” “Why didn’t they do it like this,” “Why are they not prepared,” and the list goes on and on. Now, it’s okay to secretly criticize if it’s not causing frustration in you, but if you are internalizing the “whys,” you have to learn to step back and stop expecting to see “you” in other people. Sometimes you just have to step back and say, “Not my monkey, not my circus,” and sip your drink. Admittedly this is quite difficult based on your closeness with the person or how their actions directly affect you. Suppose you are a prompt person, and the person you love is always setting their exit based on a GPS (that doesn’t account for accidents, traffic, and construction). In that case, it becomes challenging to not wish they were more like you. We end up riding their roller coaster with them because of our connection. Also, if you greatly value your time, and a Teams Meeting is fruitless, and you start to think of all the work you could be accomplishing, it’s hard not to get frustrated. I must be honest; I haven’t mastered any of this 😊I am befuddled when someone is late or unprepared. I feel like the world should be on time, prepared, and accountable. I feel like everyone hates being a part of group text messages! But I am mature enough to know that’s not reality, so as simple as it sounds, I’m learning to stop expecting “me” in other people because, quite simply, “it’s not my monkey, not my circus.” Enjoy your weekend! #changedmindschangelives #notmymonkeynotmycircus

(Victims’ Memorial at Tops Friendly Markets, Buffalo, NY) Good Morning 3M, After returning to my hometown of Buffalo this past week, I had a barrage of thoughts. With that in mind, I will share a couple of times this week. First, I felt an urge to talk about how we should make sure we appreciate and love our family and friends while we still can. I am the youngest in my family, which means that as I age, so do my Mom and my siblings. I am constantly reminded of our mortality just by watching the news, but it hit home when a dear friend lost her mother unexpectedly this past week. Although this individual did all she could to love and honor her mother while she was still alive, nothing could prepare her for the reality of being without her. Can you imagine the pain’s intensity if there were unresolved issues, strife, or inadequate communication? If you have not noticed, life is very fragile, and our loved ones can be taken from us in the blink of an eye. “For what is your life? For you are a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.” (James 4:14). However, inevitably, at every funeral, we hear the same thing “we have to do a better job of getting together; life is so short.” What is also inevitable is that we never take heed to that statement. We too often claim to be so busy or entangled in our issues that we do not have the time to check on people. Our family was not our choice, but it is our blessing. It is hard to find three people you know who would do anything for you in our current society. Our family may not be perfect, but they have unconditional love for us. We are all guilty. Some of us will not reach out because our family does not reach out to us. Others have grown apart because of distance, unforgiveness, or endless other excuses. It does not take much effort to text or call someone to let them know you were thinking about them and wanted to ensure they were healthy and happy. The same holds for our lifelong friends. We should never expect someone to assume we love and care about them because of our history. It is always a good reminder to hear the words. On Father’s Day, I text chatted with three men I respect dearly. We promised to do lunch soon. It is now July, and none of us have sent the invitation. Today I am going to reach out. I will take the first step. I will also make it a point to contact my siblings weekly. I need them to know I care and do not want any regrets when they are called home. The families of the victims of the shootings at Tops Friendly Markets would do anything for another phone call or one more lunch with their loved ones. My friend would love to hear her Mom’s voice. I challenge you to keep family and friends close. Let someone know you care about them today and regularly afterward. Start now! Life is truly a vapor, and time is something we can never reclaim. #prayingforloves #reclaimyourtime #changedmindschangelives #sunshine

Good morning 3M SCAR TISSUE Scars usually appear after some form of trauma to the body—the body scars as a part of the body’s healing process. The body sends collagen fibers to the site of the injury as a method to heal the wound. Scars can take an extended amount of time to disappear, while some never disappear at all. The external scars are easily noticeable, but internal scarring is cloaked. The inner scar tissue is usually the result of the most traumatic injuries to the body. Individuals who have had surgeries will develop internal scar tissue that can cause long-term issues, especially if the body requires more surgical procedures. Trauma to a person’s emotional health can have progressive repercussions causing compounded emotional damage, and emotional scars are always obscure. The same holds true for emotional scarring; extended healing time is needed, while some never repair. This is not intended to be a medical post but is designed to be a reminder that you never know what a person has endured before they encounter you. The stressors in our current society are evident, and many people are in a fragile state. So, how will you impact someone’s life today? Your encounter with your barista, customer, or customer service representative can sometimes make or break that person. The way you treat others can be the bright spot or encouragement they need to stay alive or hold on for another day. In a world where we are now terrified to shake hands and give hugs, a smile, and a kind compliment can go a long way. So, I challenge you today to be kind, smile, say “thank you,” and be encouraging to someone. You may be part of the healing process, or you can be the cause of more scars. #changedmindschangelives #transformationalchange #sunshine

Good Morning 3M! As I was driving into work today, I was thinking that we actually do command our day by commanding our thinking. Time Magazine has an entire issue dedicated to the power of positive thought. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) believes that how a person perceives a situation will determine their feelings and emotions. In other words, if you believe it’s going to be a bad day, your body will start to experience negative emotions such as anxiety and sadness. “As a man thinks in their heart so is he.” In contrast, positive thinkers are more successful, more productive, have better focus, and make better use of your time. And to be honest they are probably just more fun to be around. I am very conscious to be thankful for things on a daily basis. I am thankful that those that I love are still alive and healthy, thankful for the sunshine, and thankful for a mind that is relatively sound 😊 So how are you commanding your day? Do you start your day worrying about the bills and what you have to do at work? Or do you start the day just being thankful? I would never disavow the fact that being a “grown up” in today’s society is challenging, we can talk forever about gas and grocery prices, but what good does that do? I challenge you to start your day with 10 affirmations. If you find this difficult it may indicate that your way of thinking needs to change. The affirmations don’t have to be big; they just need to be positive. I am challenging you to truly command your day. When I say “make it a great day” I want you to make it a great day! Remember “changed minds change lives”. #commandyourday #MelangeMiscellanyMismash #transformationalchange