A Tribute To The Living Legend, The King Of Pop Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is and will be the most influential person the world will ever see. Through his music, humanity, and pure genius; he has touched so many lives the world over. 

I am so very happy that God allowed me to live on the Earth while Michael Jackson was here. The impact he has left on my life and in others who are true DIEHARD FANATICS just like me - i cant explain in words the love i feel for him. 

Lord knows ive cried and cried and cried. Im still in shock. I guess Michael's work on Earth was finished. I take great solace and comfort in knowing that Michael is now finally free of this world and how cruel it has been to him in recent years. I hope and pray that his children and family can press on through his untimely and tragic loss. 

It pains me in reading some of the things that some people wrote on here about him. I want it to be known that there are billions more fanatics and fans like me out there who love and adore Michael. Y'all haters just remember, the world stood still and honored the life of a Living Legend. 

To all of the other Fanatics and Fans, my prayers are with you all. I know the pain you all must be feeling.

God Bless... 

    FUCK THE PRESS CAUSE MICHAEL JACKSON WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST THERE WAS, THE BEST THERE IS AND THE BEST THERE EVER WILL BE 

We all want to be amazing

We all want to be amazing. We all want to be successful, happy, and regarded as important figures in our fields. I am sure that you’ve heard all of the keys to success before: planning, hard work, perseverance, etc.

But today we are going to look at the one factor that will likely make or break your success: the people you surround yourself with.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

Want to be Amazing? Surround Yourself with Amazing People

The Make or Break List

A good friend of mine once told me of a man he knows who brought himself up from rags to riches.  Living paycheck to paycheck was a luxury for this man, and he decided that he was tired of being trapped by his own life. The poor man looked around at his friends, and noticed that one of them – who wasn’t particularly smart or more talented – had become quite wealthy. He asked this man how he accrued this wealth, how he was able to become a millionaire. The wealthy man’s response was simple: “keep the right company.”

The man took that advice to heart. He quickly noticed that all of the other friends he had hated hard work and had no desire to improve themselves. So he sought out new friends, he went around to conventions and seminars to connect with people who had made something of themselves. After he had completely replaced the people in his network, he decided to make a list. This list was simple. It had a column for people who would improve his life, and a column for people who would drag him down.

If someone could improve his life, he spent as much time around them as possible. If someone could drag him down, he never spent more than five minutes around them.After following his “make or break” list, the man was able to become a millionaire within three years.

No One does it Alone

The five-minute rule may be a little extreme, but there is an important lesson to learn from it: if you surround yourself with positive people who build you up, the sky is the limit.

There is an ideal in our society of the “self-made” man – a man who is able to find success through his own efforts. Now, don’t get me wrong, success does require an immense amount of determination and personal grit. However, success also depends on the ability to connect with people who have already made it.

There was once a man named Ernest Hemingway. If you aren’t familiar with Ernest Hemingway, he was one of the greatest American writers of all time. Even a great writer like Hemingway didn’t succeed on his own. He worked at a newspaper where his boss – a writer named Sherwood Anderson – helped him get his first novel published. Hemingway then connected with other no-name writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.

This community of great writers helped to influence his style, success, and drove him to write every single day and become one of the greatest authors of his generation.

Hemingway is a testament to the fact that innate talent alone does not equal success. It’s hard to keep up a strict schedule to perfect your craft or improve yourself if you don’t have people around you with similar interests. Your network – your five key people – will determine the way you think, the way you act, and the way you approach your life goals.

Three Essential People

A mentor once told me that no matter how many close people you have in your network, if you want to be truly great, you must have three essential people in your life at all times: 

1.  A person who is older and more successful than you to learn from
2. A person who is equal to you to exchange ideas with
3. A person below you to coach and keep you energized

A great figure of history who embodied this principle was Aristotle. Aristotle was one of the greatest minds to ever grace this beautiful Earth, but this was only so because he was constantly challenging himself and working to refine his talents. He exchanged ideas with other Greek philosophers in the “Academy,” learned from his mentor Plato, and taught a young boy named Alexander…who would later become “Alexander the Great.”

Every great person was, is, or will be successful because of the company he or she keeps. They will make an impact because of a successful network of driven peers who provide both inspiration and healthy competition.

If you want to be remarkable, you must constantly challenge yourself and surround yourself with remarkable people. So think about what your goals are, and take a look around you. Do you need to write a “make or break” list?

Do you have the kind of people who are going to lead you to live the life of your dreams?

“Don’t join an easy crowd. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform and achieve are high.” – Jim Rohn

Strive to be better. Strive to be more. Strive to be AMAZING - Pream Anand

Why You May Not Be Truly Happy With Your Life

I have 100′s of people reaching out to me each and every month, asking me the same question over and over again. The question is…… “I am not happy with my life, what should I do?”

I have to admit, I had the same question as you many, many years ago, until one day, I decided to open my mind and actually take in the advice that so many of the most successful people out there were already telling us. There is a pattern, a formula, an answer and it’s out there. It has been shared to us all by billionaires, millionaires, celebrities and winners. It’s no secret, and I’m sure you have heard it a million times before, but there is a reason why you hear it over and over again, because it works, and how it works is easy when you are willing to make a move.

To be truly happy in life you have to: 

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION!

It’s really that simple. The hard part for most is finding their passion, and I believe that can only be accomplished through a series of experimentations.

Life is made up of a million daily experiences. Each and every second we are experiencing movement around us, things changing, growing, dying and multiplying, we are all part of an ever evolving experience which we call “Life“.

We are all unique, yet a majority of us run through similar protocols and systems, and the thing is (and most people don’t know this), “that you can’t understand a system until you try to change it”, and that takes me back to the importance of experimenting.

How do you know for sure that you wouldn’t be able to start your own successful business when you have never written down a plan or even looked into it?

Or that you won’t be able to get a job at one of your favorite companies if you never even apply?

You need to start experimenting, you need to open your eyes, ears and start using your hands, whatever you have to do to make some noise and shake things up. The resources that are out there in this world are endless. Learn to be resourceful, sit down and actually write a list of The Top 5 Things That You Love In life, and start researching to see if there are careers in your areas of interests. Then… start looking for opportunities, put your name down in every facet of that field until something sticks.

Nothing is ever handed to you on a silver platter when it comes to finding your passion. No amount of money can buy you your passion, it is priceless, and it is up to each and every one of us to discover what we can truly love, grow and expand major value with.

I have worked just for the money before and it straight out sucks! Only when I followed my passion, I felt truly content.

Until you find your passion and pursue your dreams you will be wandering around, with something missing. We have to find our purpose, that is what makes us whole, along with family, friends and the opportunity to share our experiences with loved ones  - Pream Anand

FOLLOW YOUR DAMN PASSION!

What is the Definition of Religion?

The question is not easy to answer. As St. Augustine said of time, most of us know perfectly well what religion is - until someone asks us to define it.

The groups, practices and systems that people identify as "religions" are so diverse that it is no easy task to bring them all under one simple definition. Of course, this difficulty has not stopped people from attempting to define religion. While no one definition of religion can completely sum up what religion is, they all tell us something about religion and perhaps bring one to a closer understanding of what we mean when we talk about "religion."

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"Religion: A general term used... to designate all concepts concerning the belief in god(s) and goddess(es) as well as other spiritual beings or transcendental ultimate concerns."

~ Penguin Dictionary of Religions (1997).

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"Religion: Relation of human beings to God or the gods or to whatever they consider sacred or, in some cases, merely supernatural."

~ Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (online, 2006)

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"Religion: Human beings' relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine."

~ Encyclopædia Britannica (online, 2006)

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"Religion: (2) a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; (4) a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith."

~ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (online, 2006)

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"The religious response is a response to experience and is coloured by the wish to provide a wider context for a fragile, short and turbulent life." 

~ Philip Rousseau, The Early Christian Centuries (2002), p. 4.

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"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opiate of the people."

~ Karl Marx

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"Religion is the human attitude towards a sacred order that includes within it all being—human or otherwise—i.e., belief in a cosmos, the meaning of which both includes and transcends man."

~ Peter Berger

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"Viewed systematically, religion can be differentiated from other culturally constituted institutions by virtue only of its reference to superhuman beings."

~ Melford Spiro

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"Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness."

~ A.N. Whitehead

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"...for limited purposes only, let me define religion as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence."

~ R.N. Bellah

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"Religion is the daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." 

~ Ambrose Bierce

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"A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."

~ Emile Durkheim

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"One's religion is whatever he is most interested in." 

~J.M. Barrie, The Twelve-Pound Look (1910)

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"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of." 

~ Mark Twain

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"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." 

~ Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

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"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet." 

~ Napoleon Bonaparte

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"We go into religion in order to feel warmer in our hearts, more connected to others, more connected to something greater and to have a sense of peace."

~ Goldie Hawn, Beliefnet interview

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"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." 

~ Bertrand Russell

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"Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience." 

~ George Santayana

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"Religion is all bunk." 

~ Thomas Edison

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"To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbour in relation to God." 

~ C.S. Lewis, "Lilies that Fester" in The Twentieth Century (April 1955).

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"Pure religion and undefiled before God the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." 

~James 1:27, New Testament

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"Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble." 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"Religion itself is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better." 

~ William Penn

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"Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life." 

~ William James

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"Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them." 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The King With Four Wives

Once upon a time there was a rich king who had four wives. He loved the fourth wife the most and adorned her with rich robes and treated her to the finest delicacies. He gave her nothing but the best.

He also loved the third wife very much and showed her off to neighboring kingdoms. However, he feared that one day she would leave him for another.

He also loved his second wife. She was his confidante and she was always kind, considerate and patient with him. Whenever the king faced a problem, he could confide in her to help him get through the difficult times.

The king’s first wife was a very loyal partner and had made great contributions in maintaining his wealth and kingdom. However, he did not love the first wife but although she loved him deeply, he hardly took notice of her.

One day, the King fell ill and he knew that his time was short. Thus, he asked the 4th wife, “I have loved you the most endowed you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I’m dying, will you follow me and keep me company?”

“No way!” replied the 4th wife and she walked away without another word.

Her answer cut like a sharp knife right into his heart.

The sad king asked the third wife, “I have loved you all my life. Now that I’m dying, will you follow me and keep me company?”

“No!” replied the 3rd wife. “Life is too good! When you die, I am going to remarry!”

His heart sank and turned cold.

He then asked the 2nd wife, “I have always turned to you for help and you’ve always been there for me. When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you out of this time!” replied the 2nd wife. “The very most, I can only send you to your grave.”

Her answer came like a bolt of thunder and the King was devastated.

Then a voice called out: “I’ll leave with you and follow you no matter where you go.”

The king looked up and there was his first wife. She was so skinny, because she suffered from malnutrition. Greatly grieved the King said, “I should have taken better care of you when I had a chance!”

Our 4th wife is our BODY. No matter how much time and effort we lavish in making it look great, it’ll leave us when we die.

Our 3rd wife is our POSSESSIONS, STATUS and WEALTH. When we die, it will all go to others.

Our 2nd wife is our FAMILY and friends. No matter how much they have been there for us, the furthest they can stay by us is up to the grave.

Our 1st wife is our SOUL, often neglected in pursuit of wealth, power and pleasures of the ego. However, our Soul is the only thing that will follow us wherever we go. So cultivate, strengthen and cherish it now! It is your greatest gift to offer the world - Pream Anand

Secrets of Happiness

A man and his fiancé were married. It was a large celebration. All of their friends and family came to see the lovely ceremony and to partake of the festivities and celebrations. A wonderful time was had by all. The bride was gorgeous in her white wedding gown and the groom was very dashing in his black tuxedo. Everyone could tell that the love they had for each other was true.

A few months later, the wife comes to the husband with a proposal: I read in a magazine, a while ago, about how we can strengthen our marriage." She offered."Each of us will write a list of the things that we find a bit annoying with the other person. Then, we can talk about how we can fix them together and make our lives happier together. The husband agreed. So each of them went to a separate room in the house and thought of the things that annoyed them about the other. They thought about this question for the rest of the day and wrote down what they came up with. The next morning, at the breakfast table, they decided that they would go over their lists. I’ll start, offered the wife. She took out her list. It had many items on it. Enough to fill 3 pages, in fact. As she started reading the list of the little annoyances, she noticed that tears were starting to appear in her husband’s eyes."What's wrong? She asked. Nothing" the husband replied; keep reading your list. The wife continued to read until she had read all three pages to her husband. She neatly placed her list on the table and folded her hands over top of it. Now, you read your list and then we'll talk about the things on both of our lists. She said happily. Quietly the husband stated, I don't have anything on my list. I think that you are perfect the way that you are. I don't want you to change anything for me. You are lovely and wonderful and I wouldn't want to try and change anything about you. The wife, touched by his honesty and the depth of his love for her and his acceptance of her, turned her head and wept.

Listen to the god's Peace and Blessings Be Upon Him when he said: 

No believing man should hate a believing woman; if he dislikes one of her characteristics, he will be pleased with another. This saying shows how humble and kind the husband is, he might dislike one of his wife’s characteristics, but he will do his best to find another quality in her which he may like and so, he will not care so much about what he dislike in his wife.

IN LIFE, there are enough times when we are disappointed, depressed and annoyed. We don't really have to go looking for them. We have a wonderful world that is full of beauty, light and promise. Why waste time in this world looking for the bad, disappointing or annoying things when we can look around us, and see the wondrous things before us?

I believe that WE ARE HAPPIEST when we see and praise the good and try our best to forget the mistakes of our spouse. Nobody's perfect but we can find perfection in them to change the way we see them. It is necessary to understand the difficulties and be a helping hand to each other....THAT BRIGHTENS THE RELATIONSHIP - PREAM ANAND

The Cockroach Theory for Self-development; Response Vs Reaction

At a restaurant, a cockroach suddenly flew from somewhere and sat on a lady. She started screaming out of fear. With a panic stricken face and trembling voice, she started jumping, with both her hands desperately trying to get rid of the cockroach. Her reaction was contagious, as everyone in her group also got pan

icky. The lady finally managed to push the cockroach away but it landed on another lady in the group.

Now, it was the turn of the other lady in the group to continue the drama. A waiter rushed forward to their rescue. In the relay of throwing, the cockroach next fell upon the waiter.

The waiter stood firm, composed himself and observed the behaviour of the cockroach on his shirt. When he was confident enough, he grabbed it with his hand and threw it out of the restaurant.

Sipping my coffee and watching the amusement, the antenna of my mind picked up a few thoughts and started wondering, was the cockroach responsible for their histrionic behaviour?

If so, then why was the waiter not disturbed? He handled it near to perfection, without any chaos. It is not the cockroach, but the inability of the ladies to handle the disturbance caused by the cockroach that disturbed the ladies.

I realized that, it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife that disturbs me, but it’s my inability to handle the disturbances caused by their shouting that disturbs me. It’s not the traffic jams on the road that disturbs me, but my inability to handle the disturbance caused by the traffic jam that disturbs me.

More than the problem, it’s my reaction to the problem that creates chaos in my life.

Lessons learnt from the story:

I understood, I should not react in life. I should always respond. The women reacted, whereas the waiter responded.

Reactions are always instinctive whereas responses are always well thought of, just and right to save a situation from going out of hands, to avoid cracks in relationship, to avoid taking decisions in anger, anxiety, stress or hurry - Pream Anand

Enjoy your life at every moment.....

Once a fisherman was sitting near seashore, under the shadow of a tree smoking his cigar. Suddenly a rich businessman passing by approached him and enquire as to why he was sitting under a tree smoking and not working. To this the poor fisherman replied that he had caught enough fishes for the day.

Hearing this the rich man got angry and said: Why don’t you catch more fishes instead of sitting in shadow wasting your time?

Fisherman asked: What would I do by catching more fishes?

Businessman: You could catch more fishes, sell them and earn more money, and buy a bigger boat.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could go fishing in deep waters and catch even more fishes and earn even more money.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could buy many boats and employ many people to work for you and earn even more money.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could become a rich businessman like me.

Fisherman: What would I do then?

Businessman: You could then enjoy your life peacefully.

Fisherman: What do you think I’m doing right now?

MORAL – You don’t need to wait for tomorrow to be happy and enjoy your life. You don’t even need to be more rich, more powerful to enjoy life. LIFE is at this moment, enjoy it fully.As some great men have said “My riches consist not in extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my wants”.A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble - Pream Anand

ENJOY YOUR COFFEE

A Group of friends, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups…..And then began envying each other’s cups.

Now consider this: “Life is the COFFEE; the jobs, money and position in the society are the CUPS. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us”. God brews the coffee, not the cups.

NOTE: The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly.

                                                      

 ENJOY YOUR COFFEE - PREAM ANAND

INSTALLING LOVE

Customer Service Rep: Can you install LOVE?

Customer: I can do that. I'm not very technical, but I think I am ready to install now. What do I do first?

Customer Service Rep: The first step is to open your HEART. Have you located your HEART ma'am?

Customer: Yes I have, but there are several programs running right now.Is it okay to install while they are running?

Customer Service Rep: What programs are running ma'am?

Customer: Let me see....I have PASTHURT.EXE, LOWESTEEM.EXE, GRUDGE.EXE, and RESENTMENT.COM running right now.

Customer Service Rep: No problem. LOVE will automatically erase PASTHURT.EXE from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory, but it will no longer disrupt other programs. LOVE will eventually overwrite LOWESTEEM.EXE with a module of its own called HIGHESTEEM.EXE. However, you have to completely turn off GRUDGE.EXE and RESENTMENT.COM. Those programs prevent LOVE from being properly installed. Can you turn those off ma'am?

Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?

Customer Service Rep: My pleasure. Go to your Start menu and invoke FORGIVENESS.EXE. Do this as many times as necessary until GRUDGE.EXE and RESENTMENT.COM have been completely erased.

Customer: Okay, I'm done. LOVE has started installing itself automatically. Is that normal?

Customer Service Rep: Yes it is. You should receive a message that says it will reinstall for the life of your HEART. Do you see that message?

Customer: Yes I do. Is it completely installed?

Customer Service Rep: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other HEARTS in order to get the upgrades.

Customer: Oops...I have an error message already. What should I do?

Customer Service Rep: What does the message say?

Customer: It says "ERROR 412 - PROGRAM NOT RUN ON INTERNAL COMPONENTS". What does that mean?

Customer Service Rep: Don't worry ma'am, that's a common problem. It means that the LOVE program is set up to run on external HEARTS but has not yet been run on your HEART. It is one of those complicated programming things, but in non-technical terms it means you have to "LOVE" your own machine before It can "LOVE"others.

Customer: So what should I do?

Customer Service Rep: Can you find the directory called "SELF-ACCEPTANCE"?

Customer: Yes, I have it.

Customer Service Rep: Excellent, you are getting good at this.

Customer: Thank you.

Customer Service Rep: You're welcome. Click on the following files and then copy them to the "MYHEART" directory: FORGIVESELF.DOC, SELFESTEEM.TXT, EALIZEWORTH.TXT, and GOODNESS.DOC. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching any faulty programming. Also, you need to delete SELFCRITIC.EXE from all directories, and then empty your recycle bin afterwards to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back. 

Customer: Got it. Hey! My HEART is filling up with really neat files. SMILE.MPG is playing on my monitor right now and it shows that WARMTH.COM, PEACE.EXE, and CONTENTMENT.COM are copying themselves all over my HEART!

Customer Service Rep: Then LOVE is installed and running. You should be able to handle it from here. One more thing before I go...

Customer: Yes?

Customer Service Rep: LOVE is freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everybody you meet. They will in turn share it with other people and they will return some really neat modules back to you.

Customer: I will. Thank you for your help