Have you ever watched a pot-stirrer at work?

Yeah, they exist everywhere and in almost every organization, and they really can bring down the spirit of everyone around them because pot stirrers make it unsafe to just have great days and lots of sanity and things that work.

They say things that sound innocent but aren’t intended to be innocent at all like “do you know Julie just got that project, do you think that’s fair?” or “gosh, I don’t mean anything bad by this, but Jim Bob just got promoted and I sure think he doesn’t have what it takes to make that happen”.

Those kinds of statements create all kinds of craziness within an organization because they’re not direct requests of someone who can make a difference.

Ask yourself if you ever stirred the pot and, if you have, forgive yourselves of everything from the past because you can’t change that. What you can do, alternatively, is decide never to be a pot-stirrer again.

Your workplace needs you to bring the highest level of integrity to what you do. And so, it can’t just sound like it seems innocent, it must really be innocent – and you know the difference.

My dad gave me $20 to go to college. I was 17 years old. I didn’t have a backup plan. I didn’t have somebody I could call home to and say, “Send the check.” At that point, I knew I had to figure it out.

I had three jobs while going full-time to college, it was just what I did because it was an opportunity. I realized that my past circumstances were no indication of my destiny.

I got to choose my destiny of what’s next based upon the fact that I was not going to accept what I had, but I wanted to have something better to move forward.

The same opportunity is there for every one of us, every day. Our past circumstances are not necessarily going to drive the trajectory of the rest of our lives.

We simply have to intervene and decide what we want and decide to roll up our sleeves, get busy, make that happen, and develop ourselves in such a way that people will give us the chance to make those things happen.

Your past circumstances are simply that. They are not your destiny.

My father had a dream for me. Because I was the fastest typist in my typing class. He said, “Honey, you could stay right in town here, and you could type loan papers and other papers for the law firm in town.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I heard those words, it was like, some kind of dagger in my heart. I decided at that time, that is not my dream.

I want something else in life. I wasn’t sure exactly what it would be, but I knew it wasn’t going to be typing papers at the law firm.

I decided I wanted to have something different.

I think the power of great dreams is the power to understand that any one of us can make a difference in other people’s lives.

Meaning, I never knew that I could use that skill to become a New York Times bestselling author because that was something that just came as a result of my commitment to helping other people.

I wonder what happens when you have great dreams about the impact you have on your customers, about the impact you have on the rest of your team, about the impact you have on your own life, your own family, your own community.

It’s astonishing what can happen when we have dreams about being of service to others. Welcome it.

When Henley wrote, “I am the master of my fate, and I am the captain of my soul,” what he failed to mention was that it’s true because we have the power to control our own thoughts.

Is this your last day on planet Earth? Probably not, hope not. And yet you never know.

There is no guarantee how long we get to go around this planet. But the reality is that we can make every day we live on this planet our masterpiece by creating opportunities and seeing possibilities and living vivaciously as if this could be our last day on planet Earth.

Yet many people plod along, they wake up in the morning, they make coffee, they drive to work, they punch in, they do their job, they punch out. They drive home, they watch television, they eat dinner, they go to sleep, they wake up, they make coffee, they drive to work, they punch in.

They’re not making their life a masterpiece.

We have one chance every single day to start from scratch, to create opportunities that could change our life forever.

Decide to make today your masterpiece.