To our loyal subscribers. We have been a bit quiet the last week or so. We are having to take a step back a little as we are overwhelmed with business tasks at this present time. Wake Up With Caz and Craig is a hobby for us at this time although we are wanting to take it further. However priority at this stage is creating wealth and time freedom for our family and our focus needs to be more on doing just that.
We aim to continue to provide you with daily inspirations and video messages as often as we can. We are currently working on future projects and reevaluating our path forward. Thanks for your patience and stick with us. As always we improving and growing which we are sure you will reap the benefits of. We will be traveling again for a short Spring break and will be bringing you our tales from our life on the road exploring and enjoying our beautiful planet. It’s what we do best!
We’d love to hear from you today! Share with us one of your favorite inspirational stories. It could be something that happened to you or something you heard about. Anything at all that inspired you or taught you something magical about life! The comment box is awaiting your reply.
I speak frequently on this blog about the benefits of being nice and how this can raise your attractor factor. Your attractor factor is all about your ability to raise your vibrational level to attract great things in your life . Make yourself into a magnetic being so that wealth, love, happiness and more are attracted into your life easily and effortlessly.
A very easy way to raise your attractor factor is simply to be nice. When you are nice, happy and friendly, others wish to be around you. The positive energy you put out there attracts others to you. This then makes others want to help you in many ways. In my every day life I notice a severe shortage of nice people. It seems as if people are missing the very simple, basic concepts of being nice and attracting happy people and circumstances into their life as a result. Being nice works, period! I know from my experience traveling the world and interacting with hundreds of different people. Being nice leaves a memorable impression on others which always returns to you in many positive ways.
Here are my top tips on how to be a nice person:
Smile When You Greet Others and Ask How they Are
Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. ~Mother Teresa
While this seems pretty simple and straightforward do you know how many people don’t do this one simple thing? Being friendly in this way opens up so many avenues for conversation. You immediately disarm a person when you give them a smile and ask how they are. You let them know you are happy to see them and care enough to ask after them. Smiley, happy, friendly people attract smiley, happy, friendly circumstances!
Use Your Manners
Manners are free and the most powerful way for you to receive great rewards for nothing!! Please and thank you go a long way. I rarely hear people say it anymore, especially our youth. This is something we encourage in Kalyra constantly and we always receive comments from others about her lovely manners. It brightens peoples day when you show them this small bit of recognition and they remember you forever because of it. Manners makes a lasting impression.
Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use. ~Emily Post
Ask others about their life, listen and respond
If you want others to like and remember you then spend time getting to know them. Ask questions about their life and then listen. Let them know you are interested in what they have to say. Make encouraging comments and smile in your interaction with them. I grew up as a very shy and insecure person. I never knew what to say to people. I overcame this by putting all the responsibility on others. I simply asked a lot of questions about the person I was conversing with and their life. I allowed them to talk and I filled in the gaps. Not only did this develop strong social skills in me but it gave the person I was talking to a sense of importance. People love talking about their lives and they love people who show an interest in them.
Praise and Encourage
Give people simple statements of praise and encouragement. Find something to compliment them on. It’s easy “I like the way…..” “You’re hair looks great!” “That’s a cool way of thinking” “Awesome” Good On Ya” You rock!” and the list goes on. People will remember you when you do small things like this. You will be the one they will turn to when they need a boost of encouragement. You’ll be the one they will want to hang out with as you will make them feel good.
Be Lighthearted
Bring laughter into your conversations with others as much as you can. Laughter equals joy and there is no higher emotion. Make your interactions with others light-hearted and fun. Forget about moaning and complaining about others and your circumstances. This never makes anything better and just drains the energy from those listening to you. Talk about fun and interesting things and just kid around. Life is far too serious, bring some release for others with your positive and light hearted conversations. It’s far easier to praise, encourage and smile from this state also.
If you’re green you’re growing, if you’re ripe you’re rotten!
On this Sunday Funday Team Makepeace are getting organized and creating some improved changes to our daily inspirations blog. Whatever you are doing in life organization is key. This helps you to know what you are doing with a plan and to have all your filing and paperwork neatly organized. This is such an empowering task as it clears up that negative energy that hangs around with clutter. It also lets the Universe know that you are ready for unlimited wealth to appear in your life and you are making space for it.
So yesterday, we bought our filing cabinet and comfy office chair. And we are all set for serious business.
We are putting together a plan for the future of Wake Up With Caz and Craig and we’d love your input.
We are going to mix up our video posts with some other inspirational videos, either submitted to us through our readers or what we find ourselves on the net. We also want to include some written blog posts as well, reviews and interviews. So each day will be a different format. We are still wanting to keep our song of the week, some travel stories and sports inspiration!
What would you like to see on Wake Up With Caz and Craig? How can we best inspire and motivate you to live your best life?
Leave a comment in the box. Change means you are evolving and growing and evolving means you are still alive and flourishing! We love to live and would love your help to continue to do so!
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness- Mark Twain
Travel is our passion for these very reasons. Today’s travel lesson talks about the benefits of travel. It has opened up our minds to a whole new world that is full of diversity to embrace and enjoy not to be fearful and prejudice of. Travel gives you the opportunity to experience people from all works of life and understand just how alike we all are. This fosters peace, love, tolerance and acceptance in our world and what a better place it makes it for all.
We know this because travel did indeed kill prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness for us and our life is so joyful as a result. It should be a requirement of all people when they leave high school.
Another travel quote on open mindedness that we love:
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page
Thai Friends
Expand your mind and expand your world. Read the whole novel of life, it’s beautiful, it’s fascinating and each character brings to it it’s own special role of importance and value. Discover a kaleidoscope world viewed through the eyes of commonality
Today’s Daily Inspirations on Video: Traveling around the world has given us a great insight into how others live. We feel so lucky as we can pick and choose and adopt what we like. Craig and I really consider ourselves to be children of the world. We love our country, Australia but we don’t feel as if that is our first and only identity. We love to live through an expansive viewpoint of first being a human being who shares so much in common with others. We love to incorporate traditions from other cultures into our life.
There is so much to be enjoyed and appreciated in others cultures. One of these is the various forms of greetings from around the world. We love to see how other cultures respect and honor each other. In the video we talk about kisses in France and Australia, the great big bear hugs of the US, the wai of South East Asia and the Universal word to show recognition of the divine in another human being.
When you first meet a person the first thing you should recognize and honor is the divine human being in them. Namaste…
It’s Travel Thursday on today’s free daily inspirations via video. We go to South East Asia where we learn to have a laid back attitude and enjoy your life. People from South East Asia really know how to relax. They have down pat the art of relaxation.
They move through life with an attitude of “Mai Pen Lai” which means no worries. We learned a lot living in Asia and this is one of our favorite places to go for this reason. It’s relaxing and chilled out. You really get to learn that life is just there to be enjoyed and it’s too short to be stressing or getting anxious or angry when things don’t go the way you want them to. Asia really showed me the beauty of life in simplicity.
Here’s an extract from my diary in Laos:
“I am now faced with my most difficult task right now in Laos. I must judge and time the swing on my hammock accurately so that I am able to reach and grab my beer from the small table next to me. This is Lao! This is the Asia that I love, not a care in the world!”
The Art of Relaxation
If you have trouble relaxing then go to Thailand or Laos, you’ll soon learn how to relax and you’ll enjoy your life so much more. Why would you choose stress and anxiety over fun, freedom and serenity? Mai Pen Lai! Just develop a laid back attitude and enjoy your life!
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” Roman Philosopher
Welcome to Travel Thursday. Thursdays are going to be dedicated to sharing travel lessons and stories with you of all we learned when we were adventuring around the world. Today’s travel lesson is all about when preparation meets opportunity and luck is created!
Luck is a dis-empowering word. When you look upon the achievements of others as just being lucky you are just giving yourself another excuse to not be a success story yourself. There is no such thing as luck- it’s all about desire, determination, being willing to make sacrifices and taking action.
This is the magic potion for achieving your dreams
“Everything that’s really worthwhile in life comes to us free- our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our intelligence, our love of family and friends and country. All of these priceless possessions are free.” Earl Nightingale
Watch today’s daily inspirational story on developing an attitude of gratitude. Start by understanding that there is always somebody worse off than you and be grateful for all you do have instead of focusing on what you lack. Craig talks about our travel experiences in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, yet some of the happiest we have met. Malawi is known as the warm heart of Africa because of this.
Read more of Caz’s blog post on greeting the day with awe and gratitude.
My name is Caroline, or Caz for short, and I’m married to Craig and we have a beautiful 2 year old daughter named Kalyra. The meaning of Kalyra’s name might give you a little insight as to who we are.
Kalyra Wineries, California
Kalyra at 18 mths
Her name is an Australian Aboriginal name that means ‘a wild and pleasant place.’ We discovered it on our travels through the USA at a vineyard in Santa Barbara. We stumbled upon “Kalyra Wineries” on the tour and found out it was owned by two Australian brothers.
We immediately loved the name because it’s unique, it came from our traveling experiences, it’s from our country, and we are all about living a wild and pleasant life. (oh and she’s named after some very nice wine, I might add!)
Craig and I love to travel. I threw the backpack on the day after I graduated from Uni, did a little trekking around Indonesia and then headed to London to start my teaching career (in the worst section of London!). I had a wild time in London for two years, traveling the UK and Europe and living in a house of 12-25 crazy international backpackers. From there I did a summer season in the bars of Dublin, Ireland (working that is-for the most part!) before traveling through Vietnam and Thailand on my way home.
Monument Valley, Utah
I was hooked on travel and knew that this was the life for me and was ready to go on my next adventure. That was when I met Craig, who shared the same passions as me. Craig spent the early part of his teens and twenties playing a Professional sport in Australia called Rugby League, until he retired due to injuries. He fell into a career in construction, but the passion just wasn’t there and he wanted to go on an adventure around the world also.
Three days after we got married, we headed off for a 5 year honeymoon working and traveling across the globe. We taught English in Bangkok, Thailand for 6 months and traveled all over Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. We then lived in Dublin, Ireland for one year. From there we traveled throughout the UK and then backpacked East Africa, from Kenya to Cape Town for 5 months visiting 8 countries along the way.
Koh Lipe, Thailan
However, the money started running out and we were getting ready to move to the USA for our next working adventure, so to earn some more income, we worked on a Pearl Farm in a remote location off the coast of Broome in Western Australia. We had to catch a sea plane to the farm, where we would live and work everyday at the crack of dawn for 5 weeks at a time. It was backbreaking work but we were prepared to do whatever it took to get us to our destination.
New York City
Once we gathered enough money we moved to Raleigh, NC in the USA and worked for 2 years. We loved living in the States and road tripped from sea to shining sea. We thought we were ready to go home to settle, and so moved back to Queensland on the east coast of Australia, but not without spending a couple of months in China, Laos and Thailand first. It was at this time that we realized we wanted to start a family.
We knew that we could never give up travel, it was what we lived for – the passion, the excitement, adventure and freedom of it was deeply entrenched in our soul. But we knew backpacking just couldn’t be done with a child so we began to explore other options to create the money needed to travel more in style. During this time we had our daughter and also decided that we wanted to relocate back to Raleigh to live and so here we are now.
We made some mistakes along the way and realized we had some work to do on ourselves to raise our
Sand Dunes, Namibia, Africa
attractor-factor.Our focus had switched from adventure and freedom to ’settled and paying bills’. If only we knew then what we know now – we got what we focused on that’s for sure! We didn’t understand a lot about business and personal development and never really had a great teacher to learn from.
I guess you can say we always had the entrepreneurial spirit though without ever really realizing it. The life we led was brave and daring, and it was a path that we carved for ourselves. Life was totally on our terms. We decided where to go and what to do. We know what it takes to make dreams happen.
Also, previous to our travel adventures, we had purchased two real estate properties, and ended up doing very well out of them, even though we didn’t really have experience in that field. We just acted on “gut” instinct and it paid off!
Life as a backpacker can be very tough and challenging. Traveling for months on end, living out of a backpack and a tent, riding around on local transport (ie: on the back of a pick up with twenty other people, chickens, bikes, sacks of rice and potatoes) and living like the locals. You have to be made of strong stamina to survive it. But the rewards are so worth it.
We witnessed some incredible sights and did activities through 33 countries…
Gorillas in Uganda
Massai Worriors in Kenya
Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe,
Angkor Wat in Cambodia
Safari’s throughout Africa
Octoberfest in Germany
Running with the Bulls in Spain
3 month Road trip through Europe
Magnificent Beaches
Whitewater Rafting the Nile River
3 month Road trip through the USA
Hiked the Grand Canyon
New Years Eve in New York City
Rock Climbing in Thailand
Hiked the Yangzee River in China
Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island home in South Africa
War Tunnels in Vietnam
War Memorial sites in Gallipoli-Turkey
St Patrick’s Day in Dublin, Ireland
Snorkeling amazing reefs
Partied Hard
and met some AMAZING people.
Campsite, Malawi, Africa
We learned that if you want something bad enough, and if you are willing to withstand the challenges, it will come to you and it will be so worth it!
This is what got us through the bad times and we’ve now come to realize through the help of many great teachers that we have got what it takes. We have since learned about entrepreneurship and now we think and act like entrepreneurs. Our travels have taught us so much about life and the enjoyment of it. We have learned many lessons along the way through our struggles also. We’ve experienced a deep and rewarding life and wish to impart our wisdom to others so they can do the same.
Craig and I knew that we had so much within us to share and we weren’t doing that. After much soul searching we finally
Rocky Mountains, Colorado
understood thatall the knowledge and insight we gained through traveling was done for a purpose. Not to be hidden within our souls but to share with others so that they may see a brighter future and a bigger more powerful world. Our mission is to help each individual grow to their full potential. In doing so our precious planet that we have grown to know and love so much will benefit. A better, happier you means a better, happier community, and a better, happier earth.
Craig and I know how to live life to the fullest. We are great at inspiring others to live their best life, and showing them how to enjoy all the wealth and happiness this amazing planet has to offer.
Live Your Best Life!
Caz & Craig Makepeace
P.S…..”The World is a Book and Those Who Don’t Travel Read Only a Page!”
Uncategorized | cazcraig March 10, 2010 | 
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