Category: Uncategorized

Do you Trust Yourself

When you start to believe, do you sometimes trust in everyone else first, or do you believe in yourself? I am not saying any of us are perfect. I know that I am not, and I do need the help of many others around me. Yet, when it comes down to believing in someone who has my best interest’s truly at heart? Is it me, or is it someone else?

We should all ask questions, study the answers, and do our best to understand what we hear and see. Part of that understanding is whether the thought shared is right for us.  There is only one person out of over 7 billion on this planet that can tell us the answer.  The person is hard to find. However, if you look in the mirror, then you may find him or her.

You know yourself better than most people.  You are also the only one who must live with whatever you do.  Others can stay or go.  When you are doing well and are on top, everyone is there for a piece of the action. When you fail, your waiting room starts to look like a ghost town.  So, you should always have the final decision.

If you are not sure, start small.  As you get better at choosing a snack or a cup of coffee, Step up your game.  What movie would be best for tonight? Do I want to eat out or stay in and cook a steak?

Trust is like anything else. You need to practice and learn to get good at it.  Your first trust moment should not involve which stock you invest in with the entire family fortune.  Just relax and take trust easy, seeing how it works for you. You can make the right decisions; you only need to get used to the idea.

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

Gratitude

Everyone has a reason to be grateful.  Did I wake up today, Great, I am very thankful that I did.  I count that as my first success of the day.  If I take the time to make my bed, it is the second success of the morning.  Hot water in the shower and I am on to the trifecta.

Gratitude is nothing more than the things we know are not guaranteed, and so, every time they happen (whether they usually do or not,) I am happy they did.  I am grateful for my wife and my kids.  I am glad they are happy and healthy.  I am thankful that I have a passion for life, and I have something I can use to help others.

Many people keep a gratitude journal, and they write down what they are grateful to have and do.  I am starting one.  Although I am 67, I am a little late to the game.  I am just thankful that I made it here.

I encourage everyone to set aside a little time each day to think of what went well for them that day. And think of what they were able to do for someone else that may have made that person’s day.  It does not have to be a lifesaving feat or an outrageously generous payment.  The simple, little things often mean so much more.  Think about it.

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

We All Do It

Mistakes happen.  We are human and, as such, are not immune to errors.  So, when you make a mistake, what do you do?  Do you cover it up, or do you involve others who can help you set it right?

If you cover it up, it is still an error that you caused.  It is still out there.  Covering it up is like putting a bandage on a festering wound.  It will flare up again.  You will not know where or when, yet the problem will reappear.

If you recognize the mistake and work to fix it, you are doing better.  If you need help, bring in the right people.  Make sure that those who need to know do so.  And let them know and see that you are doing everything you can to make the situation right.

By identifying errors early, and working hard to fix them, you are doing a good thing.  When people see that you are willing to stand and own your mistakes, they have more respect for you.  Those people would instead work with someone who is honest and takes responsibility than someone who does not.

Trust yourself and check your work.  Know that if you make a mistake, there are 7 billion more of us that also cause errors.  You are just a member of a massive club.  Welcome aboard.

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

The Time Is Here

As a little green friend on the silver screen once reminded me, there is no trying; there is only doing or not. Either you are doing something, or you are not. There is no in-between.

What projects do you Have on your calendar? What needs accomplishment, and what do you see that is important to you?. What is vital to your business? Or, Important to your lifestyle? Are these projects and ideas started? If not, why?

We all have grand ideas, and yet how many of those magnificent ideas do we accomplish? Money can always be found or gained. And an even bigger question, why not?  We are human beings, and we can do anything we want to and anything we need to accomplish. If we do not know how to do something, we can bring in paid consultants, college interns, or volunteers.

There is only one reason that something gets done, or something fails to make the grade.  The fate of our desires rests in our hands and not the hands of others. If you’re waiting for something, what? And if you’re not expecting something, it is time to get to work.

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

 

 

Future Destinations

Anything worth building does not get built overnight. It takes time. Patience and restraint procured in industrial-sized containers usually provide some assistance.  No matter how greatly we care about the project, we need to go forth with the belief that our end goal will happen. And we must do those things which we believe are required. Patience, and the ability to plan, is essential along with an ability to know what the final destination will look like once we are there.

I have worked most of my adult life, first to become a trainer, and now a life coach. It is something that I have worked my whole life towards, since high school. And just because it took till nearly my second childhood, it is of no less interest or caring to me then when I put my first foot on the path to go forward into the future.

We all have dreams. We all have desires. We need to work at them wisely. Not because they may bring us fame or wealth, instead we work at them because they are the things that our passions need. And, our desires are the glue that holds us to the path that will take us to where we want to go in the future.

How important is sticking to your path? Let me explain it to you like this. You are going to the future, whether you want to or not. You can go there with your plan, to take you where you want to go, or you can just let the future pull you. If the future pulls you, you end up wherever it drops you. And it doesn’t care much where you land. If you walk your path, you hopefully end up where you decided you wanted to go.

I would rather be where I wanted to be than where something just dropped me. The destination, at least, is my personal choice.

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

What-If

Ever have one of those weeks?  The kind where you plan well and start-off great, and then for some unknown reason, you end up missing just about every scheduled meeting.  The day where the plans you made to conquer the world falls apart like a magical misadventure as soon as your feet hit the floor? What are you going to do?

I see it as two choices.  Choice one, you go back home, get back into bed, and pray that tomorrow will be better and the curse on your plans lifted.  Or, you can do something else.

Stop believing in voodoo and get ahold of yourself.  When plan A fails to work, go to plan B.  If plan B does not work, try plans C or D.  You do make and keep contingency plans, don’t you? We have talked about this before.  Please don’t tell me you went back to bed those days.

OK, one more time.  There is an aura in the world that has one main job.  Its goal is to thwart any plan that gets put into motion.  The military has battled this nemesis for thousands of years.  The only way they have found around it is to have the contingency plans ready and practiced.

As a warrior in the not so peaceful world of growing your business, you need to follow the same planning strategies and have your contingency plans ready. If you have a line of people two blocks long each morning, waving $100 bills and chanting your name, that is great.  It would be best if you still had a plan for the day those people do not show up at your door.  What are you going to do then?

Planning helps you to think of all the what-ifs.  If you are used to thinking of the what-ifs, you are more on your toes and ready to react with steady movements rather than drastic over-corrections. Your life and your business have an excellent chance to move forward, no matter what that aura called life throws at you.

Please don’t take my word for this, test it out for yourself.  You may discover things that will fortify your earnings and maybe even make them stronger.  Like everything, do this in proportion.

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

The Challenge

As you probably already know, I am a Life Coach.  Several weeks ago, I was in a training triad (a small group that practices a modality in life coaching) on procrastination. Those who were in my triad gave me a challenge when I told them I had been ducking this work for years. It was a challenge to clean up my art studio. I took up their urge, and even though it took well over a month to complete it, I finally got the art studio cleaned and arranged.

The project was no small undertaking. Everything had to come out of the room. A large amount of sorting had to take place with about a third of the contents and half the furniture planned for donations to the local GoodWill.  It had to go away to make a space for those things I was keeping. If this sounds like over-exaggeration, please take a look at the pictures below.

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Once the room became empty, I made a do-it-yourself craft island out of a 5-tier shelving unit I purchased for $69. The top was pieced together out of bits of wood and other material I had on hand. I then slowly sorted out what could come back and what had to go. Much Of the room’s contents went to Goodwill.

Although I could not freely shop for what I wanted because of the COVID-19 virus, I was able to fashion What I needed from what I had around the house. Everything slowly came together until I ended up with a room that I could work in, and could store what I needed to store within it. The Art Room now looks as you see below.

I sincerely thank my study partners and instructor for giving me this challenge. It helped me to get out of a rut and accomplish something that I had wanted to do for years. I believe I owe them a debt; and, I am not sure I can ever correctly repay it. Although anywhere I can find a way to do so, I definitely shall.

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

Mindfulness

I just earned my certificate as a mindfulness practitioner this week.  It is my third practitioner certificate. I have my practitioner diploma for life coaching, and a practitioner certificate in Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) and now a practitioner certificate in mindfulness.

Gaining this certificate does not mean my studies are over. On the contrary, it is barely beginning. I have started a course in cognitive-behavioral theory.  I believe I owe this to my clients because the more I know, the better I can help the client find their paths to where they want to go.

It is not what I know. It is how much I desire to help the person or people sitting across from me. And just because I learn more does not mean that I am above all the errors of being human. I still acidentally lock my keys in the car, leave home without my cell phone, and occasionally get times for workshops mixed up. I am a work in progress, and I can live with that.

Covid-19 has hit us all hard, and the pain of social injustice has doubled down on the sad times.  We each need to find our way to what this means for each of us personally. To do this, we need time for personal reflection, and we need discussion with others.

Do not try to do this alone.  Talk with your family and friends.  Maybe a neighbor or someone you trust.  Together we are strong, and we can find the correct path to our future and the future of our nation. 

Will things change? Of course.  Yet things have been changing for hundreds of thousands of years.  It is the one thing the Earth is good at doing.  The change will continue because we learn new information and work to make life better.

You can talk on the phone, the cell phone, the computer, or across the back fence (remember, 6 feet.)  The idea is to communicate.  We are not rocks unto ourselves. Instead, we are part of social infrastructure; our healthy existence found predicated on the well being of all those around us.

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

We Are Doing It Again

Yesterday I told you that I was not a big proponent of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And yet there is an even larger cry to defund police departments and go in other directions. My question is, “What are you going to do?”

 Who is going to stop people from breaking into stores? Perhaps that would require hiring protection?  Maybe we will need to appoint block captains to do safety and wellness checks.  If we hire enough state troopers to stop speeding and road rage, will the problems go away or just change jurisdiction? Are we all going to need to hire private security firms to protect our homes and families?

Some people in Police Departments have made some vast and horrendous failures to protect the people they serve; there is no doubt about that.  And yet, many terrific people in police departments try hard and are the cause of good things happening daily. I know it’s hard to see the quiet goodness when we have the atrocities shoved in our faces.

Yet, we may want to put trained review boards in place run by the local citizenry.  Review all personnel records and interview each officer to ensure they have earned their place in the department and are the people we want there.  And Replace those who are not genuinely qualified candidates.  We need a reliable and responsible policing agency to protect our businesses, ourselves, and our families.  What we do not need are those who think they can wield life and death at their discretion or those who need to make the right call.

We must understand that many policemen and women are there to do the right thing and help.  We need to encourage those first responders to take a stand for what is right.  And we need to understand that, as the citizenry, we must oversee the protectors.

Time to Stretch

We are built, as a nation, to be a beacon on the hill, destined to be a shining light to help others find the goodness within each person. We are a nation, built as the model giving other countries something to strive to become.  As we look around now, the question becomes, are we still that light, or has our beacon been blocked by smoke and ash?  It is a tough question, and yet, one we have to ponder.

When our citizens are in the street, literally risking life and health to do so, we must ask why.  We are not talking a few malcontents, instead hundreds of thousands protesting in every major city.  From celebrities to politicians, to the backbone of our nation, everyone sees the outrage and the need for change.

When we have the largest outbreak of a world pandemic, something is wrong.  It did not start here, we knew it was coming, and yet we were struck hard.  Many third world countries did better than us in identifying the need for action and putting it in place, being able to save thousands of their citizens. Why didn’t we?

 I am not writing this to complain.  I am not a believer in tossing the baby with the bathwater.  I do believe in stopping to take account every once in a while.  I think making many minor course corrections is better than making one massive course correction.

I am also not saying anyone should expect anything to be handed to them. We are born without a contract or any guarantees in life.  It is up to every one of us to find our way and eventually help with our offspring finding their way also.  If we find happiness, that is great.  There was probably hard work involved to obtain that happiness. 

We each need to do our best for ourselves, our children, and our destiny.  Too many think they are to be given something because of something from their past.  Not true. What they have is the right to the ‘Pursuit of Happiness.’ There is no guarantee either explicit or implied.

What you get in life depends on you and your skills.  Your skills including smart planning, thriftiness, hard work, a little luck, and never taking your eye off your dream.  Can you do this?  Some have and have gone far.  Can you wait for it to come to you? Too many, wait and find themselves with little or none.  If you want the brass ring, you will need to stretch.

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