Category: Uncategorized

No Games Here

This weekend I took all the game apps off of my iPad. You may think that that is an overreaction of spending too much time playing games. And, the day after I did so I would’ve agreed with you. Yet, it had to be done.

Games do have a tendency to reach the inner psyche and in time become habit-forming time-stealers. And it is not easy to kick the habit. Yet I have to little time and too much which I feel it is vital for me to do. Therefore, I had to make a stand, and this is it.

Right now, I am redoing a pilot course on mapping your future which I plan to have out by the end of the week. I also have another class on getting employed which I’m cleaning up and hope to have out in the next three weeks. I am studying with the NeuroLinguistic Program (NLP) Acology to start offering life coaching, and I am rewriting some of my earlier books to bring them up to date and republish them. Right now, I have way too much to accomplish and almost no time to play games.

The truth is, I like it that way. I have always been that way with any job I worked. And as I face retirement, and delve into my interests, I see no reason to change. And, although I am not trying to be the voice in the wilderness, I would like to make a recommendation.

If you have things you want to accomplish and yet have little time to do so, take a look at where you want to go and what you want to do. Try to figure out what is important for you to do, and what can be put aside. Sometimes the things we think we cannot do without, are the ones we have to set aside momentarily to make way for the larger endeavors.

With your permission, and please comment one way or the other, I would like to tell you a little bit more about what I do during this week. Some of my work might help, I would be glad to share it with you.

Until tomorrow, Have a great day.

 

 

 

 

Want to Be Younger?

It’s a silly question, everyone at one time or another would like to be younger. Time is relative, so there is your actual age and the age that you present at. I had known some people who honestly looked to be about forty when they were in their seventies. I also know some people in their fifties who look like they’re in their late sixties or early Seventies.

Your genes play a role in this, as does your environment and your disposition. More than anything else is activity. You want to stay young? Stay active.  Activity keeps the joints moving, the mind functioning, and spirits soaring.

There is a point at which we as humans feel the desire to sit back and let things ride. When you hit this point the decision is yours. I do challenge you, though, to think back to your younger days when you could let things ride. When you were going places at a younger age, and you allowed things to ride with the momentum, could that be because you were sledding down a hill? I used to take my bike to the top of a large hill and ride down it, just coasting along and letting it ride.

Does this mean that if we want to stay young or at least have the appearance of being younger we have to work at it? Well, aren’t the best things in life worth working for?

Just one man’s thoughts.

I look forward to writing again soon.

The Leader Within

Have you ever been working a project and somewhere towards the latter middle stage it starts to stagnate? This happens to many people, including myself. The significant action is to move past the lull, and forward with the project.

At times, and for many reasons, moving forward through a lull is hard to accomplish. And many times, having a project slow down can cause it to be shelved for months or even years. Many great projects, once slowed down and tied up in red tape, falter and fail. Not because they weren’t fantastic ideas, because they lost the momentum to find completion.

This is where real leadership stands out and does its best. It takes a real leader to understand the value of a project, and the return on investment the project can bring back to the business. A real leader can often spot the concerns which would bog down a plan and take steps to prevent the slow down before it occurs.

Now, I have a secret nugget of wisdom for you. There is a real leader within each and every one of us. The leader is there waiting to be encouraged and brought forward. The real leader will put the need of the project, and the needs of the people ahead of the fear of standing out or being noticed. The real leader is not as worried about ridicule or words sent her or his way,  as much as she or he cares about positive outcomes.

You hear many people say that the idea is great, only they can’t do it. Most people, though, will be able to encourage others and keep the project moving if they just try.

It takes courage the first time you stand to lead because you haven’t done it before. And yet, the more you do it, the easier it can become, and the more people will look up to you as the ‘can-do’ person.

Do not go out and look for a stalled project that you can elbow your way into. Just keep your eyes open and work your projects as they come up. If you keep them rolling on a positive track, people will sit up and notice.

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

Taking Time to Help Others

One thing we have in common with others is a sense of empathy. It is something that every person has, whether they’re willing to admit it or not. And on occasion, we find an overwhelming desire to help.

We see people helping by donating monies to telethons. We see people giving even more valuable commodities such as time to work with, or for, those in need. I sincerely encourage everyone who feels the empathy and desires to help, to find a way that is best for them to do so.

I would not recommend selling everything, putting on sackcloth, and living in the street. That would not do much to help others and would make this person who does so destitute themselves. There are much better ways to help others.

To help others, could be to tend to their needs by donating usable items you no longer use instead of sending them to the landfill. Giving a few hours to talk and work with those less fortunate is even better. For someone who is stuck in a problem,  not finding his or her way out, just being able to talk to another human and work out a few concerns would be a wonderful gift.

As much as anyone would desire to, we cannot solve all the woes of others within the world. And yet we can do something. If you help two people, and they go out and help two people each, and the trend continues, think of how many people could be helped. And, with that many people being helped, think of how much better those in our world would be.

Just one person’s thoughts.

Thank you for reading. I hope to be here again tomorrow.

Marketing?

I am cleaning up a new class which I wrote and am republishing this week. I love to write courses that help people. I hate to pester people or nag them. This leaves me in a small quandary; how do I market my new product?

I have done some studying in marketing. As a solopreneur, I have a lot of people who market to me incessantly. With marketing funnels, emails, and even showing up as advertisements in my game apps, I wish not to cause anyone else the anguish that all the marketing focused on me causes. So, as I go through this week of questions to my audience, I have to ask a question. How do you prefer to be marketed to?

I don’t ask this to be trite. Instead, I’m asking because I really like to know, I am very curious. I am looking for and trying to design a marketing system for my products which is as noninvasive as possible. I would not market at all except for the fact that after four years of not marketing, nothing has sold. This proves the theory that if a course is developed in the woods, nobody hears it.

If you have any good ideas or find you have an idea which you think the public might like, please let me know. In the meantime, I am going to work hard at getting information of the course out to the public while trying not to disturb the public’s Qi.

Thank you for thinking about this and helping me.  Please send a comment with any thoughts you may have.   

Certified or Expert?

It would be great to be a certified expert in that which you love to do. And looking at it from the consumer’s point of view, with all things being equal, an accredited expert would be the best deal. Sometimes, though, the best people are not always certified. And sometimes those who are certified are not the best at what they do.

I know this sounds strange, yet I have seen this so many times in so many ways. People who have the money to pay for certifications and merely scrape by on the academics. They are too busy in other areas of their lives or don’t see the need for extensive training. Therefore, they end up buying expensive certificates while putting in only minimum work.

On the other hand, I have seen people who have put in a lot of work with a genuine passion for the subject they are studying. They become totally immersed in the subject matter. They learn everything they can about it. And they come out of the experience with vast knowledge. They are the go-to people, yet finances or other concerns put them in a position not to have the expensive certificate.

My question is an easy one. To whom do you want to turn when you need the help? Do you want to go to the person with the certificate? Or, do you turn to the person with knowledge?

Please weigh in on this question. Please send in your comments, and unless you asked me not to, I’ll share them on the blog. If there is interest, I will find a way that we could have a good discussion on this subject.

Thanks for reading and I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Protocols

It’s another day, and my list of things to do is growing, and growing, and growing. I was explaining to a good friend yesterday a portion of what I was trying to do. The conversation helped me to realize how much I’m trying to accomplish and made me ask the question, “Am I actually accomplishing something, or am I just continuing to add to the heap?”

Often, I feel like I am trying to level a mountain, and it just keeps growing under me. How does this come to be? Not being able to say no very well. Wanting to do many things. And the biggest of all not having a robust set of procedures to help manage my personal and professional life.

Most successful people have some plan to help ensure good self-care. Good self-care helps to ensure you are ready to do good for yourself and others.  They start with a set of protocols for self-care. They have a process and a time for preparing and going to sleep. They have a set of actions and a time for getting up in the morning and know what they’re going to do to prepare for the day. These protocols may be identified as morning rituals, standard operating procedures, processes, or something else. It doesn’t matter what they’re called the only real question is whether or not they work. Protocols only work if they are used.

If you don’t have protocols for self-care, it is never too late. You set your mind to the fact that you will try something and stick with it.

You can set a time to go to bed, and prepare for that time by curtailing the use of interactive electronics about an hour before then. You could choose to write or read instead of playing computer games. Sleeping in a cool room without much light gives you better rest.

Plan when you will wake up in the morning and what you’re going to do. What do you need to do to feel good at the start of the day? Take a shower? Shave something? Exercise? Grab caffeine or something to eat? Go over your plans for the day?

You can do many things to improve life and make it work in your favor. Only you know what is best for you. You are the one that will know for sure. I can tell you that a little planning and commitment can go a long way in helping.

Mind Control

I find myself slacking sometimes. Not because I am not working, because I get sidetracked and am working on things that I really don’t need to do at that point. And I need to find a better way to manage what I do and how I do it.

I am a person who can be pulled off point by an annoyance of the computer not doing what it’s supposed to, or some other technical problem. When I hit a real time crunch, the television streaming services launch the latest season of a binge-worthy show which I have followed for the last six years. Or when I think everything is running well, we get a thunderstorm or hail, and I am asked to leave my office to provide comfort and protection to those in the house.

I am only a mere mortal, and I need to remember that when I am striving to develop books and courses and hoping that they will be the best thing since baked Alaska, I must give them my time. My problem is I come up with intriguing ideas, and I would like to have them done yesterday. I need to learn that anything worth doing is worth doing well. And I also must remember that time is an essential ingredient.

At my wedding reception, my father-in-law spoke of the heart containing a series of rooms. One For each person you love. As people come into your life, other rooms are formed. My father-in-law was very poetic, and his thoughts were very accurate.

Just as the heart makes rooms for people, when we work on multiple projects, and most of us do work on numerous projects between work, and home, and self, we end up with rooms in our mind for each project. Each room has positives and negatives. And each room must fit into the overall timeline of the mind. Not fitting into the minds timeline, will develop a very messy room because of neglect.

The trick is to only keep the projects and their rooms that you can successfully maintain. The rest of the projects should be delegated to others or discussed with superiors to maintain balance.  Keeping balance is akin to sanity.

Thank you for reading today. I hope to have another post out tomorrow.

 

 

Positive Growth

We had a pleasant rain in the middle of the night. Not very hard. Just a touch of hail but it was minimal, and although it was a thunder and lightning storm, even that was very quiet. When I first went to the Azores, it only rained at night. I thought, “what a wonderful idea. How do they get the weather to cooperate like that?”

Actually, later, when I move there with my family, I learned I was just lucky the first time. This thought brings up another good question. How often do we see a rare occurrence when we are someplace new, and just think that that’s normal for the place we are? This is a fair question, which grows based on assumptions.  The question also works both ways. How often when visiting another area do we see something that’s normal for them, and consider the occurrence rare?

Both questions are based on what we know at the time. And, both thoughts could have right or wrong answers depending on whether or not we have all the facts. And to have all the information, we have to engage with others.

When you engage with others, you will open yourself up. When you open yourself up, you can share and learn, learning more and growing. Often this positive effort is hindered by fear.

When we open ourselves up, we have to trust in others. We fear they may think we are uneducated, unknowing, or nosy. What we may fail to understand is they probably have the same worries. Yet, if we are willing to take a chance, and they are also willing to take a chance, there could be a profound mutual benefit and positive growth on both sides.

I guess the question here is, do we want to live a negative life of fear, or a positive life of engagement? I think only our egos know for sure.  Yet I can speak from experience, there usually is more positive than negative in life if you look for it.

Have a positive day.

 

Where Are the Answers

It is not that I’m a doubtful soul. It’s just sometimes I look at some of the news that is run, and I begin to wonder why? And, what are they trying to hide? Something happened a year ago, and it was taped, why wasn’t it brought up then? Especially if it was devastating are degrading to a large group of people.

I understand that sensationalism is often saved until the book is ready to debut. And sometimes, national news is the greatest advertising one can obtain, not to mention that it’s free. Yet, how truly meaningful and caring is the writer if they sit on the knowledge of wrong-doing until the book is written and they can make a buck off of it.

I canot entirely blame the writer. After all, money is money, and without income, it’s hard to buy the groceries. What really bothers me is professional news organizations with limited airtime, choosing to sensationalize tell-all books when there is news which goes unreported. It almost starts to feel like the standard government plan of ancient Rome. Keep the people entertained and fed.

Truthfully, I cannot even blame the news people. So many viewers watch shows where people are invited to discuss their personal problems. When two or three are on stage the screaming, cursing, and name-calling commence. If the audience is lucky somebody throws a punch or chair. Then the host opens an envelope to reveal a paternity test, or drug test, or the results of the lie detector. Then, the show is over with a few lives better and most lives even more devastated. It makes me wonder, is this the modern-day video Coliseum, although I’m told people watch these shows so they can feel that there are people worse than they are.

Do we want to make our decisions based on the fact that there are people that are worse than we are? Or, do we want to make our decisions based on something good that we can strive for? It is up to each of us, and the answers are not within mass distribution. The answers are within ourselves. If others won’t turn off the conspiracies, the hatred, and the false entertainment. Maybe it’s up to us to turn off the sensationalism and find something better to do.