To see this online, click here.

Thanksgiving

I've been listening to a lot of Tony Robbins recently. He's really clear that what you focus on is what you get. In other words how we language things has a major impact on how the world occurs for us.

I can't help opening my eyes and seeing another individual tormented by the fact that Trump will be our next president and so and so will be our next head of XYZ agency, and that the world as we know it is going to hell in a handbasket.

These, the same people that got up in arms when Trump said he'd wait and see if he'd accept the election results when Hillary looked like she'd win, seem incapable of accepting the result when their candidate has lost.

Wishing things were other than they are is a sure-fire way to a unhappy life. On the other hand, giving thanks can put us in a different place altogether. And we have a lot to be thankful for.

Tomorrow will not be much different than today.

You will wake up. You will have all your faculties. You will open your door and feel fall in the air. You will go where you usually go. And see what you usually see. And meet who you usually meet. And be who you usually be.

On the other hand, many people will die. Some kid will be beaten by his dad. Someone will go hungry. Someone will be torn away from his family and made a child soldier, or a sex slave. Someone will see his father beheaded right in front of him.

Now this can be as big a deal as you let it be. You can choose to be bored. Or you can choose to be surprised by every moment of this, and every day. You can suffer Trump, or even celebrate him, but your life probably won't change. Or you can find what to be thankful for, how lucky you just to be alive where you are.

America is Already Great: Tomorrow Will Be Amazing

The truth is Trump is only one person, and can only do so much. On the other hand, you are also one person, and you can do even more. If you're concerned that Trump is going to wreck the environment, well why not work on wrecking his plan to do so. Celebrate the good start that electric vehicles and solar panels and alternative energies have made, and devote yourself to so increasing the efficiencies in these technologies such that coal becomes downright expensive in comparison.

If healthcare is your concern, do the same. In ten years, with the technologies coming on-line, medicine could look radically different than it does today. If Trump frees up the market, that might be an opportunity for advances in regulation that might actually keep up with the technology. Find a way to take advantage, and carry that forward.

And maybe Trump's team is out to gut social assistance, food stamps, welfare, and even public education. It might just give the impetus for people to start thinking about how they can help themselves, it might cause a radical rethinking of society and our role it in. That might not be so bad, especially if we are the ones doing the thinking and mining this for opportunity. It might even cause the right to rethink its stance on immigration.

America is Already Great: Why Don't They Know it?

Celebrate and be thankful for the “marketplace of ideas.” It's not only reactionary numbskulls that voted for Trump, but we could learn something even from them.

Again you could choose to suffer, or choose to grow. Right now there are a lot of people who can't imagine how so many could vote against their own interests in voting for Trump. You could be in that camp, and then you could choose to go out there and get what really bothers people and understand why they would do that.

You could take this opportunity to go out and make a whole raft of new friends. Go on a listening tour. See why people don't think America is great. Maybe, as this message is trying to do, you can help them to focus on how it already is great, to focus on the opportunity instead of what they think they've lost.

So here are some questions I'd like you to take forward into this holiday weekend, because if you don't, who will?

• What do we already have in common?
• What can we do to make tomorrow better than today?
• What can I do to make tomorrow better than today, or today better than yesterday?
• How can we work together so that we are both taken care of?
• What can we celebrate together?
• What can I celebrate today?
• What gifts has America given me?
• How can I share those gifts with all Americans?
• How can we make this moment the best moment in our lives?
• What can we do to make the next four years better than any four years we've ever enjoyed together?
• What can we do to end suffering?
• How can we ensure that next election, we have two candidates that everyone can celebrate?
• What can we do to make sure our kids have a better tomorrow?

One of the things we can certainly be happy about is that we've got a bunch of Americans that are out there looking to solve billion people problems, but not enough. Maybe if we all took that approach, we'd see things a bit differently.

Let's make this the line in the sand. Turn off the news. All you are going to see there is another incensed Clintonite going to tears in the face of another smug Trumpist. Tell facebook you don't want to see another person from your side trumpeting the rightness of your view. All you're going to see is political chest-thumping and righteous indignation, anyway.

You might as well focus on something else. What you have to be grateful for is a good start.

Happy Thanksgiving