Blog

Building Life Foundations | Blog Post 2 of 8 (Success Without a Blueprint series) _________________________________________________________________________ A smoke detector doesn't know the difference between a house fire and a pot of water boiling over. It just knows: smoke. Alarm. Get out. That's a good system when there's actually a fire. It's a real pain in the neck when all that happened was you made dinner. Turns out, a lot of us are walking around with the same kind of

Building Life Foundations | Blog Post 1 of 8 (Success Without a Blueprint series) Every builder needs a blueprint. Without one, you can still put up walls. You can still pour a foundation, hang doors, run wire. But you're guessing at every load-bearing point. And a house built on guesses tends to hold — right up until the moment it

Sonny Robitaille Positive change can turn a bad habit into a positive power. It changes how one looks at their position in life and how they can move forward in a way that makes their life more comfortable and less restrictive. Positive attitude and behavior can build inner strength as well as improved discipline and the ability to create a stronger sense of character and self discipline. However to continue on a path of successful change not only must a person improve negati

From the outside, everything looks successful. The career is stable. The bills are paid. People respect you. Friends tell you how lucky you are. By every outward measure, you should feel accomplished. So why do so many high performers quietly ask themselves the same question: "Why do I still feel stuck?" It's a question many people never say out loud because they're afraid they'll sound ungrateful. They wonder why they feel restless when others would gladly trade places with

If you've ever caught yourself saying, "I'll do it when I feel more confident," you're not alone. It's one of the most common beliefs I hear from people who want to improve their lives. They want to change careers, start a business, speak in front of an audience, improve their relationships, or finally pursue a dream they've put on hold. They're waiting for confidence. The problem is confidence doesn't usually arrive before action. It arrives because of action. The Confidenc

If you ask most people why they're exhausted, you'll hear familiar answers. "I'm working too many hours." "I'm just overwhelmed." "Life is stressful." Sometimes those answers are true. But often, they're only describing the symptoms—not the cause. I've known people who worked twelve-hour days and came home energized because they believed in what they were building. I've also known people who worked a standard forty-hour week and felt emotionally drained before Wednesday. The

Life has a way of changing our plans. Sometimes it's gradual. Sometimes it happens in a single phone call. A divorce. The loss of a career. A financial setback. An addiction. A betrayal. The death of someone you love. Or simply waking up one morning and realizing the life you've been living no longer feels like your own. Every one of us will face fire. The question isn't whether it will happen. The question is what happens after it does. Why the Phoenix? Throughout history, t

If I handed you $86,400 every morning with one condition—you had to spend it all before midnight—how careful would you be? Would you waste it? Would you hand it away without thinking? Or would you make sure every dollar had a purpose? Most people would create a plan because they understand that money is a limited resource. Now let me ask you a different question. Why don't we treat our time the same way? Every day, each of us receives exactly 86,400 seconds. No one gets more.

Personal healing is a transformative journey, often accompanied by moments of unexpected triggers that resurface from the past. These triggers can disrupt our progress and challenge the idea of a linear transition from our old selves to our new selves. It is crucial to recognize that healing is not an event but rather a marathon, where we encounter instances of regression. We are going to explore the significance of triggers, the role of emotions like embarrassment and guilt,

I’ve had Henry Ford on my mind for the past couple of days. There are a lot of stories and phrases associated with him, some I have talked about earlier. There is a story about when he was hiring people to work on his idea of the assembly line. He would always have the interview during a meal. Right after the meal was brought to the table was when he knew whether he was going to hire or decline the candidate. What he was looking for was an open mind, one that was open to ne

It’s time. It’s time to stop waiting for life to happen to you and start taking charge of your own destiny. If you want to achieve your goals and dreams, you need to be proactive and make things happen. It's easy to fall into the trap of waiting for the perfect opportunity to come along. You may tell yourself that you're not ready yet, that you don't have the right experience or skills, or that you'll start working on your goals when the timing is better, blah, blah, blah. Bu

Let’s think back for a minute. Think about a project, thought, or positive action you had that half way through, it fell apart. Now really think about that for a minute. Was there self-doubt? Or was it a bit deeper than that? Maybe just a fleeting thought that totally destroyed the thought process and thus destroyed your chances of being successful in what you were trying to accomplish. That’s all it will take, just that fleeting thought, even that little voice in the back of

Have you ever had something to do and you just did it, almost in automatic mode? What about something you had to do and you KNEW you couldn’t do it? Well, you were right in both instances. Henry Ford said “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” The reason you were right in both instances is because you KNEW the result before you even started. You KNEW you could get it done, and the only thing you were thinking was “what can I get done after this?” In

Here’s a question to think about: why are you taking advice from people who are not on the same journey in life as you? I get it, you ask your friends and family for advice, but you always get the same type of advice. But there is something deep down inside of you screaming “this is not the best way to handle it”. “There has to be a way that aligns with my value system.” There is, and it is always one that lets you sleep at night, one that will always be the easiest for you

Why are you still thinking you are not good enough? Aren’t my previous blogs and videos clear enough to get you motivated and confident enough to start your new life? A lot of self-esteem issues come down to what we have been told in our past: either it’s a waste of time or we aren’t good enough to accomplish something we had our heart on for a long time. Our dreams and ambitions were absolutely crushed when we heard things like that. Now self- esteem is the foundation upon

Michael Barnes Building Life Foundations How does your comfort zone keep you from attaining greatness in your life? Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “expecting a different result after doing the same thing over and over is the truest form of insanity”. So that means you will get nowhere in life doing the same thing over and over again. I can think of a lot of times in my life where I was expecting things to change but they never did. And it was all because of my unwilli

Michael Barnes Building Life Foundations Losing a job can feel like the most devastating event in your life. There are a myriad of emotions when they tell you “we don’t need you anymore”. When this happens, it hurts. You are being told either they want to do things another way or you’re just not good enough for what we want. Don’t be embarrassed about it, it happens all the time, but why do we feel this way? Circumstances in life are neutral. It is only the thoughts we have

Without self-confidence, there is no hope. There was a time in my life where I thought I wasn't good enough or worth enough to do anything worthwhile. All I did was exist, but never living with no hope for anything worthwhile. Then one day it hit me like a ton of bricks: I am in a prison, and I have the keys to let myself out. I was in a prison of my own making, everything from my decision making to my few actions I actually did, I locked myself there. So, what do you do t