Rather we are thinking about the childhood friend that we walked home from school with every day, or the one that you had countless slumber parties with, or the first boyfriend or girlfriend we had that we thought we would be with always and forever, maybe you are thinking about a teacher, coach, family member or anyone that you thought would be a significant part of your life until the end of time.

I have always been a strong believer that people enter our lives at the right times to give us some type of learning experience. Please, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all of those experiences are or will be pleasant, however, I still think there is a purpose and it is up to us what we will walk away with from each of those experiences.

Every person that we feel deep in our hearts is not meant to be with us a lifetime. Some are here with us for a SEASON, A REASON OR A LIFETIME.When I say this I simply mean life is unpredictable, we don’t know what will happen from day to day, no matter how organized we are no matter how much we have our days mapped out for us. We can be here today and gone tomorrow (not to sound depressing) but it sure gives the statement “Live your Life to the Fullest” a whole new meaning. We need to start enjoying our lives more, stop waiting on change to take place and start making the necessary changes, when we start to feel that our situations are not what we would like them to be.

At this point I feel that as the seasons change, so do each of us. We grow, with life experiences, our ways of thinking, the new things we start to do in our own personal lives change,the goals we set that we strive to achieve. We get to a point where, what satisfied us before isn’t so satisfying and pleasing anymore. This is where it is very important for us to move on to the next phase of our lives. Often that means, walking away from people, places and basically all of those things that you feel are holding you back from reaching the next level. Not always an easy job to do. We get caught up in trying to please everyone else in our life, we think more about if i make this change in my life how is going to effect everyone else in my life. Will he be mad? will she talk to me again? will I ever see them again if I say or do this? It is important that you take care of number one, which is YOURSELF. Things will fall in line from that point on. Some things are simply only their for a season, we shouldn’t try to make them last beyond the expiration date.

What is the Reason? In our day to day activities we encounter people that seem to have a purpose for entering lives, no matter how brief or seasonal the interaction(s) may be. We find ourselves saying or thinking things such as….Wow, I didn’t know that before, or I can’t believe someone could or would do something like that, or I never want this to end. Not all of these reasons are or will be appealing to you. That is where your own thought process needs to take control and take the reason good or bad, and turn it into a learning experience a personal development. A teaching time, that should trigger something within us to notice the things we want, don’t want, won’t tolerate, need, and so on.

The Life Time interactions are those that are just that, those people that are there with you throughout your lifetime, once you have come in contact with them. These are the people that constantly show you support throughout your seasonal changes, and throughout all of the reasons why things and people are changing in your life. The ones you can count on when things are going great and will also be there when times are rough. It is not always the people you see on a daily basis, these are also the people that may have moved away,often the people that you didn’t think would be in your life very long, the ones you see once in a while, the ones that you know without a doubt that you can drop by to see them, call them, send them a email or text at any point and time, and they will be glad you did just that.

it’s not always easy to see the seasons change, we often try to hold on to the things we want to hold on, we want to keep people and situations in our life that don’t belong there, we want to change people to fit into the season that we are entering in our life. We have to realize that sometimes the reason a person is sometimes to help us get through a season of tough times, good times,or to help teach us something we need to learn or to realize. We have to stop trying to force everything and everyone to be part of our lifetime, life long experiences. Like most things, time will tell who is your season, reason and or lifetime. It is our job to let life take its course, and be happy with the lessons we learn along the way, that give us self awareness, confidence, strength, and a desire to do the things we need to do to get to where we want to be.

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” -Groucho Marx

Today people always ask for an honest opinion. They want to know the truth about their Broadway performance, their cooking, their artwork, their writing, everything. There’s nothing wrong with that, a little honest criticism never hurt anyone, but a lot of honest criticism has. If you go on and on about one little flaw in a person you deserve to get popped in the mouth, if you say that one thing nicely and only once, you’re a caring and honest guy.

But what if someone has a lot of flaws? What if someone has too many flaws to count and doesn’t even realize he has them? What do you say then? Do you just let it go and hope he learns? Or do you start your list and tell them all to that person one by one? If you did that other person would be pissed right? That’s because what you are doing is the true essence of evil.

True evil branches from true honesty. Everybody has their flaws and their quarks. We know that. What most of us don’t know is that we all have at least one incredible insecurity. Something that, if mentioned, has the potential to drive us into either a blind rage or a blind depression. Few people realize what their greatest insecurity is, and it takes real balls to admit what it is. It’s a bad idea to say it, even around trusted friends. Especially, around trusted friends.

There’s nothing worse than being betrayed by a best friend and having your greatest insecurity used against you. If someone you’ve trusted for years decides out of nowhere to turn on you and use everything in his power to make you look like a fool and a coward, there’s no recovering from that. You either begin seeking revenge or go into a permanent depression that can never be lifted.

People are just that easy to mess with and that easy to mess up. It hasn’t always been this way though. Imagine the same situation if the word “sorry” actually meant something. Today that doesn’t cut it, that word has to follow some great moving speech, the kind of speech most people could never come up with. Coming ups with a good speech really isn’t that hard.

Say, for example, you’ve been best friends with Mark for seven to either years, he’s confided everything to you, including his one and only insecurity, his hair, he doesn’t like his hair. Let’s say it’s too curly. One day he comes to you looking troubled and tells you his girlfriend dumped him. And out of nowhere you decide to say, “She probably doesn’t want to be around a curly headed freak all the time,” you then walk away and go home. Later he might call you back and ask what’s wrong and you proceed to talk about how you’re tired of all his drama, tired of listening to his whiny, insignificant drama and hang up on him. If your friend continues to try he may walk up to you the next day and ask what’s going on, you then say, “Nothing, my life is perfect, my parents are great, my friends are awesome, I have everything I need, I just don’t want your mop of a head for a friend anymore.” You then walk away yet again.

At this point your friend is probably in shock and he’s probably pretty mad too. Later, say your with your new friends and as he walks by you all laugh at him saying things about how he’s stupid, worthless, dumb and last but not least his hair looks retarded. Then later that same day you decide to go that one extra step and beat him up with your new friends then take whatever he has on him including his wallet.

A true evil no? To have the lack of heart to be able to go so far in a random betrayal. There is nothing more disappointing or more frustrating than someone you trust and love just standing up and saying, “I’m out of this relationship and I’m going to make your life a living hell.” Completely out of nowhere, for no reason at all.

Just in case you ever do need to apologize for such a betrayal, how do you recover from such a thing? What could you possible say or do to rebuild a relationship in which you randomly betrayed someone, used their greatest insecurity against them and jumped them and took their money? The answer is a lot more simple than you think, but still no easy task.

It would all start with the return of his wallet and money because possession is more important than an apology. Then you would have to tell your new friends to back off your ex-friend. Because reputation is more important than an apology. Then a good speech, walk up to that ex-friend of yours and say something like, “Look, I had no reason to treat you the way I did [look down, stutter the word “I” for a bit, look back up and right into his eyes] I’m sorry.”

A perfectly executed apology. Your friend will remain mad at you but in good time you’ll be able to overhear him talking to someone and join in the conversation. Because eventually he’ll forget, no matter how bad it was, as long as it doesn’t continue.

Yet sometimes it is best to tell someone the ugly truth. The tricky part is when they won’t accept that truth. What do you do? Do you just keep repeating it? Or do you just let it go? In all honesty if can be a tough call sometimes, but if someone isn’t willing to listen now, they never will be. You gotta’ just ignore it and move on. Otherwise you’ll end up in a very painful place, full of headaches and anger.

There’s always a person out there with a very large list of flaws, a list so large it would take hours to go down. How can you tell a person about those flaws without making them mad? Isn’t listing them off one by one just as bad as repeating the same flaw over and over to people like this? How do you handle that? It’s impossible, even if you mentioned on flaw per month. Eventually the person is gonna’ get mad, eventually your gonna’ earn yourself a new enemy. The harder you try to change somebody the harder he’ll take it.

It’s good to tell the truth, tell someone they need to lose weight if they ask. Tell someone his Broadway performance was bad, his cooking tastes bad, his artwork looks horrible, he can’t write for the life of him, or anything else. Just be honest if someone asks. If a person doesn’t ask there may be a reason. Maybe he’s heard it all before and is just tired of it. Just because someone isn’t making the effort to become a better person doesn’t mean he’s stupid and lazy. It doesn’t even mean he’s satisfied with his life. It just means he’s not in a position to change.

People need to quit trying to criticize each other and just live their own lives. If you are asked to criticize, criticize. If not just keep your mouth shut and stay away from the situations or people you can’t stand. It all comes down to the old walking away strategy.

And that, as I always say, it today’s quote.