Category: Uncategorized

What Do You Feel?

Whether you realize that you are feeling something or not, you are feeling.  We all feel.  Yes, all the time.  Sometimes we grow callous of our feelings. And sometimes we just bury our emotions with all the other things that we have to do. When we don’t feel well, it is easier to hide our feelings than to understand why we feel the way we do and fix what is wrong.

Sometimes trying to understand feelings is just overwhelming. I remember one day when my coach gave me a paper with pictures of 30 different feelings on it. She asked me how I felt. I couldn’t choose, I could not pick anything. I was overwhelmed. There were just too many choices, and I could not figure out how I should feel. And that was my big mistake.

When it comes to feeling, there is no right or wrong. There is only what is. And yes, it is vital for you to understand how you feel. If you feel good, knowing why helps you to repeat the experience. If you feel bad, knowing how and why is a starting point so you can work on helping yourself to feel better.

No one else, not spouses, counselors, coaches, doctors, kids, or the family can make you feel better. It comes from you, from the inside. All the others can help, but it boils down to you. And yes, we are all overwhelmed today. There are just too many outside stimuli. So if you have problems with this, find a quiet, comfortable place where you can spend some time each day and work on better understanding yourself.

Although you are the only one who can genuinely help you, coaches and counselors and mentors can help. It is a sign of strength to realize this and asked for assistance. Asking means you recognize the need to move from where you are, to where you want to be. And when you ask, skilled helpers will often be there to assist.

Indeed, nobody can do this for you, yet where you are others have been. I have learned this myself through intense trial and error. It was not easy. It was much better than staying where I had been.

Everyone feels. And everyone feels the entire range of emotion at one point or another. It is better to understand why you feel and what you want to do about it.

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

Choices

As we talk about moving into the future and planning our route, we need to understand that sometimes we will end up on a plateau. The trip to where we are going is not as much an inclined plane, as it is a series of steps. We rise by learning new things and then stand on firm ground to practice them and understand meanings and actions. And sometimes the best way requires taking a step down on the ladder of success to go up again.

I would like to revisit the story of an old Master Sergeant who climbed this ladder. He started off as a recruit in basic training. All he had to do was learn, do with those in charge told him, and try not to look too far ahead. When he graduated basic training, he was promoted earning his first stripe. After the nine-month tech school in electronics, he was sent to his first duty assignment and promoted with his second stripe. He was now an Airman First Class

It took him a short time to see that the sergeants told the airmen what to do, and the airman went out and did. And in time he was happy to become a sergeant. As the years went by, his number of stripes grew as he was promoted. And, as he was promoted, he was given various additional duties and details which were demanding at times and did cause stress. Finally, he earned his sixth stripe. He was now a Master Sergeant.

As time went on, he ended up the shop manager for a one-of-a-kind satellite depot. He ran a shop of 25 people, and they were charged with fixing broken components, and repairing or modifying satellite ground stations around the world as needed. He also owned the stress and concerns that came with the job. One day he was standing at his office door watching as the airmen repaired circuit boards and tested them to ensure proper calibration. And, he started to think, how great it would be to sit at the bench again and only have to fix circuit boards.

We all have times, as we go through life, where we think of how great it would be to go back to a simpler time. And if we did so, how much easier life would be. Many people feel embarrassed by these feelings. However, taking stock of where you are, how you got there, and where you’re going is a good thing.

Checking on where you are and seeing if you really want to be there helps you to know if you are in the right place and on the right path. Although many stop and think about the simpler times, it does not mean that they are on the wrong path. Sometimes, it just helps to reinforce the fact that it’s better to be in the wheelhouse helping to make decisions, then to be in the boiler room doing the work and not having a say.

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

Do or Do Not

I have to start off today with an apology. I wrote a fantastic blog yesterday, which my computer locked up, dropped, and lost as soon as I completed it and started the save process. This is not the first time I have been foiled by electronic technology. And I am sure it will probably not be the last. Yet, I cannot merely leave it at that point.

First off, electronic technology problems are a side issue. I take full responsibility for not delivering your blog to you yesterday. I assure you that I will take more productive steps in the future to ensure your blogs are ready to be sent and will be in place when you wish to read them.

Secondly, and I have just had a poignant demonstration of this very recently, complaining, never gets anything done.  Doing consists of the actions you take after you realize only because you complain, a fix usually does not instantly and magically appear.

If you want something done, it is up to you to help determine and understand the root cause. With the root cause found, a permanent fix can be developed and implemented. With the problem permanently fixed, it gives you more time for things other than worrying and complaining.

Of course, if you are actually looking for peace and quiet, you may have something with the complaining. If you complain that long enough, loud enough, pretty soon no one will come around to talk to you or call you back when you call. The problem with the constant complaining is the harm it does to your blood pressure, possible aneurysms, and your overall health in general.

As a mean old Master Sergeant, please allow me to suggest that you take the steps of a wise old saying. Do something when you can, understand why it cannot be done if you cannot fix it, and have faith in yourself, and others, that you will be able to tell the difference. You could be like the man of old, always riding off to tilt at windmills, yet does that really fix anything? And you could fold up your tent, sneaking off in the middle of the night claiming that nothing could be corrected, but that would rob others of your ability to work at the things you could change.

I am not telling you what you should or should not or must do. Only you can know that for yourself. The choices are yours. You have to choose what is important enough for you to go tackle. And understand what your abilities to correct something actually are. As for me, I am going to work at ensuring my products meet my client’s expectations, and I can deliver them as promised.

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

Your Path – Your Choice

Yesterday the question was asked, “Are you willing to do what it takes to learn what you want to know?” This is a question that each of you must answer for yourselves. No one else can speak up for you. And, there is no one flying around in a tutu, smacking people upside the head with a wand, and granting them complete knowledge over a subject. You must make the decisions, and you have to do the work.

Nothing in the world is stagnant. Whichever answer you give moves you in a new direction. And whichever direction you go in will bring you closer to, or farther from your goals. If you plan to spend your time doing something, shouldn’t it move you closer to your goals?

It sounds strange, but sometimes the smallest of actions can make a considerable determination in placing us closer to our passion or farther from our goals. These are the things you have to take a close look at as you plan what you want in life, and where you want to end up. Reinforcing your decisions actually helps determine what you do next. If you’re going to go for your gold, is it time to start some actions?

One of the first actions in finding out what you want to do is learning about it. YouTube adventures and trips to the library are both excellent starts. You will probably find out, though, the best way to understand what you’re life goals are about is to talk to those in the industry. Find out who is doing what you would like to do and make an appointment to speak with them.

Find out if there is a shadowing program where you can go out with somebody for a day or two and see what they do and how they do it.

Just a side note. If you’re thinking of becoming a cowboy, going to a dude ranch does not count as job shadowing. In this case, job shadowing may include riding a horse, herding cattle, sleeping under the stars and other real work that cowboys do.

As you explore your passions and what you would like to do in life, you want to make sure you’re seeing the real thing and not a glorified idealism of what people think the job should be. You will do much better as long as you’re looking at real-world work and not just what you think it should be. Sometimes you’ll find the realism harsh, and in that, you’ll know if you’re on the right path or not.

Unfortunately, there is little I, nor anyone else can do for you. We can encourage, give thought, listen, suggest, and other sideline actions. Only you can do and only you know if it’s what you really want to do or not.

This time is filled with both doubt and excitement. And, these actions are vital to your later happiness. It is it much less stressful and less costly to recognize something and change plans now than it is to chase a false dream for a decade or two and then realize it’s not where you want to be.

Just remember you’re never too young, and never too old. You are the only one walking your path, and you are the only one who can make your decisions.

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

Are You Willing?

We can all step up to the occasion and do something positive if we have to. Anyone can get lucky one time or another. The question becomes, are you willing to apply yourself to your endeavors? Faced with being put on the spot most people can Buffalo their way through most things, even with not knowing all the facts that are pertinent to the subject. Therefore, the question becomes, “Are you willing to do what it takes to become good at your craft?”

Everyone knows some things, no one knows everything. You have to figure out what you already know and what you are willing to learn? If you want to know about something, reading a book is a good start. If you wish to know some more about anything, you take a class. Taking a class provides you with somebody who you can interact with and ask questions. This is also a good step. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much to really teach you.

If you genuinely want to learn about something, you need to teach what you know on the subject. If you’re thinking, “I can’t do that, I don’t know that much.” In my answer to that is both yes and no. Yes, you don’t know as much as you’re going to have to you teach the class. And no, you know more than the people you are teaching. Remember, you are not trying to make them gurus of the subject. You are only trying to teach them what you know.

I’m sure your next question is, and please correct me if I’m wrong, “How are people who do not know as much as I do, going to teach me more than I already know about the subject matter?” This is a very fair question. And probably because I have done this, the most straightforward question for me to answer.

You are teaching people who do not know as much as you do, which means you are helping them by teaching them what you know. The class, in turn, helps you because they will ask you questions you never thought to ask, yourself. You may feel that this puts you on the spot. And it might. Just thank the person who asks the question and let them know you’d prefer to research the right answer and bring it back to them. Explain that it is better than just giving something made up off the top of your head. The class will respect you for that.

When you’re given a question that you do not know the answer to, make sure it is written down. Bring it back to the next class. And explain it not only to that person but to the entire group, because other people will want to know the answer. The more you do this, the larger your reputation for understanding and sharing the truth will become. Also, the more you do this, the more you will learn. You must, because you have a whole class counting on you to do so.

The only question, “Are you willing to put this much work into knowing more?”

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

As We Would Treat Ourselves

Why would we treat anyone else differently than we would treat ourselves? Should we demand more from someone else than we could do in the same circumstances? And even if we expected them to provide that extra service, are we requesting that service in a way that we would be willing to give it if the shoe were on the other foot?

We all believe that we are reasonable people. And the questions we asked for others or the demands we put upon them are fair to the situation. Yet sometimes, we need to ask ourselves, “How would I react if somebody asked me for information or to do something the way I just spoke to that person?”

We would all like to believe that we are even-tempered and caring about others. Unfortunately, sometimes, our own whole nature is not quite up to par. Please remember it’s not what you say that counts as much as what the other person heard you say. And most of the time, the words serve very little importance. The words themselves get skewed by tonal inflection and body language. When everything is stacked together, the words by themselves mean very little.

If you’re not getting your questions answered. If you feel like everyone is an idiot, or that no one will tell you the truth, you need to start by checking in the mirror. If the whole world seems to be against me, I have to take a look at the law of averages and begin by looking at what I am doing. Weighing the option of 7+ billion people in the world decided to have a pick-on-Mike day, or Mike having an off day? The odds just don’t stack up in my favor, and therefore, I need to assess and make the change.

We need to remember that people are fundamentally good. We want to help others. If others are in a stressful situation, we want to put them at ease. If they say, “I don’t know, you should ask the person in charge of that,” it usually means they are telling the truth. And they have given you the next step to help you find an answer.

In this day of specialization and more work being done by fewer people, we may not know, but we can get you to the person who does. And this is very good. I would rather know this and ask a second person, then have the first person who has no clue whatsoever, giving me an answer that they have just made up to keep me happy and quiet.

I know many workplaces of today seem busier and less personally connected than workplaces of the past. Yet, by being able to ask questions that lead you to the right people, and with use of your smartphone or tablet to help you learn a little more of what you are asking about, we all end up a little smarter. So, before our body language goes negative and the inflection gets surly, check the person in the mirror and make sure that person is on even footing.

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

A new Market Economy?

Is the Internet, and all the technology which is available there for you? Or, are you there to buy the use of the Internet and pay others for what they want to charge you? This is a fair question. Let me see if I can boil the words down a little. Is the Internet made available to help you, or are you there, so the Internet has someone to sell something to?

Please understand, I don’t have an axe to grind, and I’m not complaining about anything. I’m just asking a question. I ask it because quite a bit like our telephone system which now has us inundated with Robocalls, I cannot believe the spam and the number of items on the Internet which we are being pushed to buy.

I do understand that for something to exist, it has to earn its own way. There is no such thing as a free lunch. I remember a proposal once where energy providers in California wanted to charge utility users a Sun tax. I even remember hearing that the truth about the plastic which now clogs our ocean is not the fact that it cannot be destroyed or recycled, the truth is you can’t make any money in doing it, so no one wants to bother.

Right now, it seems there is a multitude of gadgets on the Internet, and way too many gimmicks to try to sell them to you. It’s hard to do anything enjoyable when you are stopped every five minutes or so to watch ads. I would not mind so much except I can only view the same ads for so long, and then I just have to turn the app off. Actually, too many of the same ad could be a good thing. If the ads are finally forcing people to turn off the game and do something productive, we may have just solved video game addiction.

I told you I’m only asking the question. I would relish reading your ideas on these thoughts. I believe that we should use technology. I also wish for a strong economy. I feel what this means is if the technology is going to take away many of the dangerous, dreary and dirty jobs from humans, it is only right that we get to use technology to play our part in building a new style of the market economy.

If we are going to have a new style of a market economy, then we need to ask some questions. How do we balance the playing field? How do we ensure a fair wage for fair work? And how do we protect the people both large and small?

It seems that today, I have many questions. These are questions I have wondered about for a while. And I would love to have a conversation with others on these thoughts.

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

Remembering

Ever try to make a list of everyone you have ever met? It is tough to do. Our fantastic mind that stores all of our data appears to drop a few files every now and again. Even worse, rather than storing the factual data, it stores just our memories of people and events. And sometimes, I think that past events stored in our mind might get corrupted by the newer data that we occasionally receive. Does this sound a little bit confusing and overwhelming? No wonder I have a hard time remembering.

You can take everything and put it into the computer. And then all you need to do is try to remember which pages went into which files. And know which directories they are stored on. And what cloud all that went to. Finally, after figuring all that out, hopefully, you get the completed page and not just a placeholder page that you started but never really filled out. Are there better ways to keep the memory of things? There is.

 You can make a journal. Journals of been around as long as people have been able to write. When royalty could not write, scribes took dictation for them. You can keep a journal online, or you can write a journal in a notebook. There are a few key reasons that I like the physical notebook over the computer at times. Yet there are also a few key reasons I prefer the laptop over the written word.

The actual act of writing takes a little more time, yet, it allows you that time to think about what you are writing. This actually does help embed that knowledge into your memory. You have everything in one book, or as time goes on, a set of books. You can go to these notebooks and look something up. Because they are not on the computer, others cannot hack your system and read your journals.

The computer is helpful for journaling if you can keep control of it. If you have a particular format you use which works well for you and use a speech to text program or dictation on Microsoft Word®, you can put down your thoughts 80% faster than you can by writing with pen or pencil. Also, with the computer, you can put in a keyword and search your journal for something specific that you are looking for.

We each have our own ways of preferring to do different tasks. Sometimes the important thing is not how you do something as much as the fact that you do it. When we are setting out on life’s journey, we never think about some of the things that will be so important to us as we grow older.

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

We all Have Addictions

Addictions are nothing new, they have been around as long as people have.  I’m not sure if Eve ever really had an addiction to apples, it might’ve just been a phase. As for me, my number one addiction is breathing. Please trust me; it’s not my only addiction. Old science fiction movies, social media, computer games, burritos and trying to re-engineer everything I see, are just a few.

Having something that we like and doing it over and over again is not necessarily a bad thing. I want to point you back to the idea that I am addicted to breathing. At the same time, some addictions get in the way of living a good life. We all understand the addictions of smoking, drugs, alcohol, and some other addictions which devastate not only the person but all those around them. Yet there are so many other addictions which steal from you when you’re just not looking.

These addictions will sometimes take your money, and yet that is small considering what they really steal, your time. If you find yourself playing computer games when you should be doing something a little more productive, that is a red flag. If you can’t wait for the game to rejuvenate the power to keep on playing, that could be an addiction. It may not be illegal like drugs are, or as devastating as alcoholism, yet it is an addiction, and it steals from you your ability to reach more productive goals.

I’m not saying the electronic game itself is evil. What I am saying is if you would rather play the game than do other things you need to do the game is getting in your way. At this point, you have a decision to make. Are you going to continue on with the distraction stealing the time you need to do more critical tasks, or are you going to rein it in and only play it during 20 minutes of dead time during the day? If you cannot bring it into 10 or 20 minutes a day, then you are truly addicted. At that point, the best thing to do is to remove it from your phone or computer until you can better control it.

This does not have to be a game; it can be anything that takes your time away from more important work or tasks you would really like to be doing or really need to be doing. It can be anything. And only you know what that anything could be. The neat thing is you can control it if you want to. And you can decide what is most important in your life for you and do that.

The great thing is that we all have the freedom to choose. We also have the strength to overcome the problems and concerns in life with which we have to deal. I cannot tell you what is best for you, and neither can most other people. This is something that you have to look within yourself to decide and then act accordingly.

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

Finding the Good in Us All

It is important to remember that no matter how much we like or how much we do not care for someone, there is good and bad within all of us. Just because we do not like the way someone does something, it does not mean that another person has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Many times, we are swayed by popular thought or even isolated instances. We need to remember to take a look at the whole picture, not just the bits and pieces which suit our point of view.

Just because our customs are different, our thoughts are different, maybe our religion is different, does not make other people better or worse. Some things, such as whether or not you open your eggs from the top or the bottom, are just not worth going to war over. And it does take wise men and women to understand this.

The important thing, especially in a democracy, is that we can bypass each other’s faults, and find the good that is hard at work within each other. We need to know that together, we help humanity to grow and strive to make the lives of those around us better.  We do this because we are only able to improve if we do so as a member of humanity.

I was especially Proud of Beto O’Rouke yesterday. He was asked if he could say a good thing about the President.  He thought for just a moment and said there was. 

This came after months of Democrats bashing the President and his colleagues in the Senate and treating them terribly when they came to the hill to testify. The question, itself could have been a lead into more bashing of the presidential party. Mr. O’Rouke was better than that, and he showed that on national television.

When asked, he said that he did have a good thing to say about the president. And, Beto talked about a real need in our country to help veterans with mental health needs and trying to prevent the high rate of suicides amongst veterans. He worked with colleagues from both parties, and after crafting the bill, it was signed by the president.

I find this to be an excellent demonstration of how we can work together and even bring opposing viewpoints together for the common good. We need to remember that we are not a country of one party or another. We are an accumulation of all of our citizens across our nation.

Have a happy Memorial Day.

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