The answer is:

• An old auto parts store
• One customer
• And a very determined 9-year-old with a great idea

At least this is what happened to young Caine Monroy, who hand-built his cardboard arcade – Caine’s Arcade – in his father’s auto parts store.

His story may not be a traditional inspirational tale of entrepreneurial success, but if it is not a testament to the power of passion, creativity and determination, I don’t know what is.

It is also the kind of story that leaves you without any excuses of why YOU can not follow YOUR dreams.

Watch it and tell me what you think.

Visit Caine’s website and support the Caine’s Arcade Foundation!

I manage to squeeze in a meditation, and if I am lucky – I actually take time to sit on the balcony and savor my lunch.

What I can’t seem to get round to is cleaning. It has got to the point where I try to walk around the house looking straight ahead. I guess I hope that doing so will make it easier to ignore the fingerprints on my glass top of my coffee table, the crumbs on the kitchen floor and the layer of dust on the bookshelves. But no matter how hard I try, I still know that all of it is there.

For the last 6 days, I have woken up and promised myself that today is the cleaning day. But every time something more urgent came up and I let myself get pulled into a whirlpool of busyness only to go to bed in a bad mood.

Today, I finally managed to fulfill my ‘womanly duties’ and now my sweet home is sweet, airy and smells of a mixture of lemon and cinnamon spice.

And it is not because I had fewer tasks on my to-do list, or because I thought I would catch up with my work on the weekends. No. I made the time. And what helped me was a Slow Down Manifesto I accidentally stumbled upon this morning.

Here is what it said:

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall slow down in the office, and on the roads. We shall slow down with growing confidence when all those around us are in a shrill state of hyperactivity (signifying nothing). We shall defend our state of calm, whatever the cost may be. We shall never surrender!”

Hey, your state of calm is more important than any urgent deadline, grocery shopping or a party that you agreed to go to only because you were caught off guard.

If you need to take a break to regain your peace of mind and get your thoughts centered, do it!

Make a conscious effort to slow down. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Get up and brew a cup of tea. And as you are savoring every sip of your delicious beverage, ask yourself, what is the one thing that you can do today for yourself?

What activity would make this day worth living? What is the one task that will help you to distract yourself from the noise of activity and bring your attention inwardly?

Believe me; no one has ever thought on their deathbed “I wish I had worked more.” There is no sense in rushing through our life instead of living (and enjoying) it.

Here is a list of 15 activities that make part of my “Slow-Down Agenda”:

1. Concentrate just on one task at a time
2. Turn off the TV for the evening
3. Take 10 minutes of silence (even if I have to put in earplugs)
4. Give up one commitment. Sometimes it is the only way to make time for exercise, relaxation, hobbies or my family.
5. Take lots of mini-breaks from work.
6. Breathe from the diaphragm.
7. Dedicate a few minutes to observing something. Be it a flower, a painting in my house or my desktop wallpaper; take a few minutes to really look at it, noticing all the details and trying to commit them to my memory.
8. Do hands-on activity, like cleaning, cooking, gardening or fixing something around the house.
9. Run one or two fingers over my lips. Touching your lips stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system that is responsible for producing a feeling of relaxation and calm in the mind and the body.
10. After 6 pm switch my cell phone to vibrate mode.
11. Recharge myself with a meditational walk. If the weather conditions and my surroundings allow it, take my shoes off and walk barefoot, making a conscious effort to walk very slowly. Concentrate on the sensations in my feet as I touch the ground.
12. Give people that I care about most 15 minutes of my undivided attention.
13. Start and end my day with a meditation or a prayer.
14. When I am taking a familiar route home, pull over a nice spot and absorb the scenery.
15. Make a mental effort to just sit there for a few minutes instead of jumping right to the activity
Do you sometimes let yourself get carried away by busyness and “not-enough-time-for-anything” lifestyle?

What do you do to slow down and defend your sense of calm?

Who would ever guess that he had speech difficulty as a child and was considered “slow-minded” by his own parents? Or that the brightest mind of our century failed his University Entrance Exam? Or that when Einstein had applied for promotion from patent clerk third class to patent clerk second class at his first job, his request had been rejected on the grounds that he was not “fully familiar with mechanical engineering.”?

There is no doubt that Albert Einstein has been an inspiration for many great minds of Physics, but he also knew quite a bit about the Laws of Life as happiness and success.

Here are 11 Most Amazing Success Lessons from Albert Einstein himself:

1. Keep your mind opened

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”

If we think we already know something, we stop learning, we stop questioning, we stop innovating, and, inevitably, we stop improving. Do not let your dysfunctional beliefs, your negative experiences or your education, keep you from moving forward. Sometimes the best way to make a breakthrough in  life is to leave your heavy baggage of knowledge behind.

2. Get curious

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

Curiosity is one of the rare qualities that we should learn from our children. It is what keeps us young, interested, engaged and fascinated. Curious people are “seekers” – they not only try get to the bottom of things, but embrace new experiences and actively look for challenges that will stretch them, whether that involves making new friendships or learning new skills.

And while everyone knows exactly what curiosity feels like, we often forget to apply it to our day-to-day lives (even to things and people we think we know most about!) When we approach the world with a curious mind and an opened heart, there is simply no reason to feel bored, cynical or demotivated.

3. Persist

“It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

How long are you willing to stick with your goals or look for solutions to your problems? How about 5 or 10 per cent longer than you normally would? A lot of times it will be enough to turn your luck around and help you to become successful.

4. Welcome Mistakes

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Making mistakes is a necessary part of being successful. Not only by making mistakes we learn what does not work, but some of these mistakes actually turn into happy accidents that adjust the course of our professional or personal path and guide us in the right direction.

5. Change Your Attitude to Change Your Life

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Your reality is a reflection of your thoughts. A cause of every problem or every challenging situation that we have brought upon ourselves is rooted deep into our past negative thinking patterns. We can not change our past. But we can change the way we choose to respond to these problems and situations Right This Moment.

Sometimes choosing to emotionally let go of the problem is the fastest way to make it disappear.

6. Live in the Moment

“I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.”

Having goals and thinking about where you want to be physically, financially and professionally is crucial for our success. Correctly-chosen goals, as road signs, point our efforts in the right direction and help us to stay focused. However, having plans for the future is not the same as obsessing over everything that might or might not happen 5-10 years from now.

7. Create Value

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

The way I see it, there are two choices when it comes to attaining success and making money: you can either concentrate on what you want to get from life and those around you, or you can concentrate on how your business, services, products or your efforts can add value to the world around you.

If you concentrate on the first, you can make a decent living, but only if you concentrate on adding value, you can be truly considered a  successful person.

8. Seek Experience, Not Information!

“Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.”

You can learn about certain subject all you want, but you will never truly grasp it until you put your knowledge to practice and turn it into your personal experience.

9. Always Do Your Best

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

Success in itself is an ability to do something better than most people would do it. If you want to be successful in any area of life the rules are always the same – try harder, persist longer and practice more than you normally would.

10. Take Risks

“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

Common sense is a great tool that can contribute to our success, if used moderately. However, being too cautious and always choosing the most “achievable” goals is what keeps so many people living below their God-given potential.

11. Focus on What Matters Most!

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

This is a sign that hung in Einstein’s Princeton University office as a reminder of the truly important things in life. To him it was love and happiness.

What counts most in your life?

Are there any other Success Lessons that Albert Einstein’s example has taught you?