Author: Mike Balof

A retired Air Force Master Sergeant, Mike used to lay in bed at night and worry about what would happen if his plant closed or found himself without a job. One day his plant closed. Rather than panic and hysteria (OK, maybe a little) Mike found himself carried away on the adventure of his life. Mike started with the best job he ever had working at Home Depot. He spent 8 years working with job seekers at a local workforce center, helping them to find employment. He then started his own company developing courses, writing books and urging others to follow their own paths into the future. Mike holds a Master of Arts in Adult Education and Training and a Bachelor of Business Management, earned through the University of Phoenix and an AAS degree in Electronics Systems Technology from the Community College of the Air Force. Mike is a member of the Delta Mu Delta Business Honor Society.

Friday Counts for Something Again

Today I’m working from my office downtown. I am excited to be here. It is the first time since March I’ve been able to work A Friday in my downtown office.  And, to make it even sweeter, this is a 3-day weekend for Memorial Day.

My joke has always been that Monday has always been the most important day of the week. No Mondays, no Fridays. It’s not just the name of the day. It is the idea that the Monday experience is getting up and going to work, leaving the weekend behind.  Friday does the same for the end of the week.  Leaving work at the end of the week and moving on to the weekend relaxation.

When our lives become stagnant and one day just runs into another, it disrupts our whole routine. We find ourselves adrift and susceptible to depression. The choice is to continue to drift or get up and fight back.

We can do many things to set up new routines and expectations in our quarantine, nothing though, is quite the same as getting out of the domicile even for a little while. It allows for a return to what we consider more normal times. And throughout our lives, we always seem to crave the way things used to be.

As we go forward, we need to remember the lessons of the last few months.  We want to go back to normal, and over time, we will.  In the meantime, we need to remember our new lessons learned and do whatever we can not to face another outbreak of this virus. 

We also need to stand guard against any new viruses that may threaten us. After all, we are the masters of our fate.  We know we are smart enough and talented enough to handle almost anything that comes our way and even prosper from the experience.

Thank you for being with me today.  I hope to be with you again soon.

A Time for Everything

There are times in our lives to do many things. There is a time to sit and hide; also, a time to run free in the fields. You will find time to rejoice with abandonment, and there is a time to work hard and quietly, rebuilding yourself from the inside out. Now is the time for the latter.

There are things that we can safely do and things that could put us at risk. We need to work from the point of safety out rather than working from risk inward. Working this way is easy to do. Start with yourself. Diet, exercise, and making your home more livable and friendly. These are good Starting points.

Now is the time to change the room, if that is what you need, or make your workspace better in a home environment. You do not have to spend much to make your living arrangements better. And what you do need, you do not have to go out to a store for, a trip to the Internet will have the store bring it to you.

As you start to work, you will find your mood improved. I know mine did as I worked on a recent project. I did end up putting the room together and pulling it back apart about three or four times until I got it the way that I wanted it. Once I had it there, everything worked out well. And there are still finishing touches and final cleanup to accomplish on it. I also need to clean all the other rooms I disturbed while working on that project.  Doing this gave me a real sense of positive work and accomplishment.

I do have many items I need to send to goodwill. The cost of redoing the room in a significant makeover turned out to be roughly $110. The price stayed low because I was able to make some DIY purchases and crafted everything myself. I believe this will be an excellent multimedia art studio, and I cannot wait to start my first projects in it.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Keeping Others Safe

The days are dragging on. I am lucky that my co-working center is open to the point that I can go and work in my office. I still have concerns about our pandemic and the virus. I mainly get nervous when I have to go to a store and shop. Too many people are coming back to stores with little or no self-protection and in more massive crowds.

I do not dislike people. I love humanity. It is the people without masks and gloves that I’m not sure I want to be around right now. Also, I never was a fan of crowds. I am sure that this will continue for a while, and as long as the numbers keep going down, I think we will be OK.

I just find it hard to have confidence in any defense against an enemy you cannot see, feel, taste, or touch. In America, everybody has the right to think and act differently as long as they don’t cross laws that we enact for the good of humanity. I do believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that sometimes we need to look past our needs and focus on the greater good.  When we might have an infection that is known to present no symptoms, we need to take precautions. We need to prevent passing something harmful and deadly to those around us.

We do not want to sicken or kill someone because we think we are special and can ignore safety rules.  If you are just infecting yourself, that is one thing.  If you are hurting and killing others, that is something else.  With this virus, you do not know until after the damage happens.

Wearing a mask and gloves, plus staying 6 feet apart, is not going to put that big a crimp in your lifestyle.  Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) can be your new look.  You could even make it look good. 

Thank you for being with me today.  I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Staying in contact

We are fortunate to be living in this day and age. Today we have many marvels which allow us to stay in contact with each other.  We have numerous email accounts, social media accounts, FaceTime, and other video chats. We can use these apps, whether living next to each other or half-way around the world. Yet having them does not make us connected.

If we are to stay connected, we need to monitor our connecting accounts and know who is reaching out to us and when. Then, we must be sure to answer. How much time do we devote each day to monitoring our accounts? And how many times do we miss things that we fail to notice?

 I have had people in a working environment tell me that they do not read or answer most emails because they get over 800 in a 10-hour shift. If you are in business and you are monitoring communications and know who is writing to you and why then you are doing more than just missing out on many opportunities.  You are setting yourself up for your failure and your departments’ downfall. You will need to stay focused on your communications for it to be of any meaning to yourself or those who count on you. To do this, you will need to spend time in front of the computer managing your communications.

Things such as CRM can help. Cutting the joke teller’s and sellers out of your email listing may help somewhat. Try to keep your business communication just that, business. Keep social accounts separate. And try to remember, at the office, you do not have to read the latest gossip.

I have learned, recently, how easy it is to drown in information and knowledge. Pour in a little stress, add a little bit of angst, and the next thing you know, the river of knowledge becomes a quagmire of quicksand. Now is the time for you to take control of things so that you do not have to face fate. It is not a pleasant thing to face.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Life Takes Courage

Life is not easy, even in the best of times. It takes courage to get out there and do something. There will always be people who care for you, and there will always be people who just do not care about anything. Please just remember it’s your life, no one can tell you what is right and wrong because they are not you. And no one can tell you what you need to do or not do to succeed. Because 90% of the time, others are only seeing part of your picture.

What you need to do is sit down and take the time to understand yourself.  Where do you want to go? And even more important, at the end of your life, where do you want to end up? What is it that drives you? And what are the things about which you most care?

It’s hard for you to make sensible decisions until you have sat down and tried to understand yourself. Understanding yourself is not always easy. Many people spend a lifetime never figuring themselves out. If you take the time, though, you may find some great insights within the depths that you may have to travel. And then, with those insights, you will know yourself and be better able to understand what you need to do and what directions you need to go in.

You should set some time aside to find out more about yourself. Understand and write down your insights, your vision, and what you perceive to be your mission in life. If you are not sure about what you are interested in, then try to take an assessment or two. Or, try a long walk or two. The answers are there, and as you spend the time, those answers will make themselves known.  Do not give up.  You are worthy of doing this.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

More Than One Way

There is always more than just one way to do something. I am not talking about the thousand ways to do something crazy. I am talking about all the little things that you want to do around the house, in the yard, or in the office. Those little things which can make life better yet annoy you because you cannot find the right bracket or thing-a-ma-jig to make it work right for you.

I drive myself nuts trying to make something new. Something that would work well, take up less space, and help keep the place neater. Right now, I am building a craft center for my art studio. I found many that look just wonderful and are on sale for only multiples of thousands of dollars. I decided I wanted something functional, good looking, and does not cost anywhere near $1000.

 I put my mind to work and came up with a simple idea that would work and would only cost about a few hundred dollars. Unfortunately, as I started to build out my vision of the art center, I kept on running into problems finding the materials I wanted. I cannot just jump up and go out anywhere because of the virus that is going on. I did what I could online, and then shopped in stores where I was buying other things I had to get anyway. What I found out was that if you go to the store to buy something, that is probably the one thing they will not have. And trying to find a suitable substitute will drive you nuts.

The other thing I learned while trying to find gadgets was that while you’re at the store trying to find whatever it is that you need for your project. You end up figuring out another way to use something else you already have at home. You realize it might be lost or buried somewhere at home, and you leave the store having not purchased what you needed. But you go home knowing you will get that part of the job done anyway.  All you need do is find the right hiding place with the correct part.

After multiple starts and stops, I think I have gotten to the point where I can complete my project. And therefore, complete my art studio cleaning. I plan to have it done by the end of this weekend. If all works well, I will do a follow-up to this blog telling how I did it and giving pictures of how an art studio, which is clean for the first time in over two decades, Looks.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again soon.

We Need a Better Internet

I took my wife to the lab today so she could get needed recurring blood testing. There was almost no one there, literally. The lab would only work with one person at a time, and my wife was the only one there to be tested. The whole thing seemed a little spooky.

I know that we worry about the virus that’s going around. And if we want to get rid of the virus, we need to have a respectful fear of it. A little fear and respect may keep us from going out and doing dumb things just because we think our constitution gives us the right to do so.

There is talk now that they want to re-open the schools, even though children have their own deadly reactions to the virus. I am the father of three wonderful men who used to be my boys. I do not believe I would let my boys go to school with this virus on the loose. I would instead have them go to school online through the Internet. I would recommend that to all parents who have school-age children. And we can do it. We can do it on a worldwide level, and we can do it on our national and state levels.

We are not living in the 1960s, where such Abilities were nonexistent. And we have both the technology and equipment in most homes to do so. We might have to strengthen our Internet with more fiber-optic lines and faster hubs. We would also need to run fiber-optic lines to rural areas too.  These are things that we’re working on and doing anyway.

They say America is the greatest of Nations and that we can do anything that we set our minds to doing. Going to the moon, I believe, is one way that proves the statements. After all, how many other nations put men on the moon?

We didn’t go to the moon by talking about it. We will not solve this pandemic by talking about it. And we will not safely move into the future by talking about it. We have what it takes, and all we have to do is go out and do it. Thank you for being with me today.  I hope to be with you again soon.

How Did We Get Here

How did we get here? The question is often a fair one to ask, and we do so all the time. There are many reasons that we find ourselves where we are. And, we could spend a lot of time going over the past and trying to figure things out. But we are not going to the past; we are going to the future.

The more relevant question would be, where am I going from here. It takes no quarter and lays no blame On the past. It does cause us to reconsider how we look at things. Rather than trying to repair a past that we can no longer get to, we need to think to the future where anything is still possible. And therefore, the future is where we need to focus our intentions.

It is often hard for us to focus on the future rather than the past. The past is more comfortable; it already happened. The only part of our past we can change is our understanding of what happened. And we often find our mind does that for us.

The future is harder because it has not yet happened. Therefore we have to create it from scratch. And that takes a cumbersome thought process. Yet there are positives in looking to your future.

If that’s the direction you’re going anyway, and there aren’t many other directions to go. Then you should find the paths that help you get to where you want to be. Try to understand what it will take, what the rewards are when you get there, and How stable will your position be. You need to think hard, plan well, and be ready for the little changes that are going to come up no matter what. The idea is that you have taken the time to understand where you are, where you want to be, and how you can best get there.

The first steps toward success are vision and planning. The next step is to keep up with the changes between now and then as they come up. None of us are able to know what the future holds. Yet with a little forethought And planning on our part, we are in a better position to get the future we want instead of one that someone else hands to us.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Times a Wasting

We have been at home for a while now. And what have we done? Played with the kids and spent time with the spouse? Binged watched whatever? Have you slowly gotten bored with everything you have done? Now what?

The answer is easy. What was it you wanted to do when you had no time to do it? Not the part about sailing around the world or hiking the Appalachian Trail. What did you want to do that is possible within the confines of your present abode that you could never get done because of a time factor? What are you going to paint? Write? Draw? Whatever it was, that is what you need to be doing.

Too noisy? Too busy with kids, homework, the duties of the house? It sounds like it is time for some time management.

It might feel like you have all the time in the world. The truth is you only have 24-hours in a day to get everything done. The laws of the universe have not changed because of one pandemic. If you were looking for a time to get away from one thing and into another, this is it.

Need knowledge? We have more technical devices that can put you on the Internet where you can learn and research almost anything you would ever want to Know. Need some bits and pieces or even a kit or two? The same Internet will allow you to order it and have it delivered directly to your door. The web works well for groceries too.

Are you starting to think it is too late to do this because we are going to re-open? Think again. If you get to go back to work soon, that is great. The truth is this is not going to be an easy road. And, we may be going in and out of isolation for the next 18 months to two years. How long might it take you to do what you want to do? If you are going to do something, now is the time. If you wish to spend your time binge-watching tv, it is your time. If you want actually to accomplish something, the world (at least your domicile) is your oyster.

Only one person can let you do this. And, only one person can stop you from accomplishing your dreams. And that person is the same in both cases. If you want to talk to him or her, find a mirror.

Just a thought from the mean old master sergeant, when it is time to do something, get going.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

What is Best?

We see the sun out. We find a little warmth in the air, and we are ready to go out and play. Unfortunately, we are still in quarantine. What we must remember is that the reason that we still feel good and are not infected is that until now, we have not gone out to play.

We see the number of new cases and deaths rising in our area every day. We need to maintain our quarantines. We know that we must act carefully. Or else, we may end up as one of those numbers. We must do this for the safety of all.

I know how hard it is to sit on the sideline while work goes unattended, and money does not come in. I know this because I opened my life coaching office in January. By the middle of March, I was not able to actively go to it anymore. I finally went back one day this week, and although the office complex was open, there was almost nobody there, and I still had no clients.

I  still would like to go to the office at least weekly. I do not expect clients and need to dress in a face mask, gloves, and a hat to prevent, hopefully, contracting the virus. I need to be careful of accidentally bringing the virus home and infecting my wife. That is something neither of us would enjoy.

Yes, I watch the numbers and the forecast. I need to be realistic. If I catch the virus, I am probably a goner. My wife would end in the same fate. I must be careful.

For now, I am starting to work through various social media and trying to find some clients. I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep my wife safe. And I’m going to work on ways that my business can thrive through alternate means.

I’ve told you this, hopefully not to bore you, or give you one more person to worry about catching something. Instead, I have explained myself because I am here to ask you a question or two. How are you doing? Are you worried about your job or your position? And, do you think you do so more or less than the average person? Are you finding what you need to survive the pandemic? And most importantly, are you taking care of yourself?

I worry about people, and if you want to talk, please contact me. As a reader of my blog, I am always interested in talking to you. We can chat on Zoom or email back-and-forth. Please let me know how you are doing and how you feel about your situation.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.