Joyful Jubilant Learning

My bag gets filled

In this monthly theme of "Packing Our Bags of 2008", I have already learned to pack gratitude and to unpack my ears to listen.

I am a wordsmith of sorts and pack my bag with words where ever I go. Writing about the detritus was not enough. As an optimizer, I felt the need to do more.

I am packing my bag with some stuff but not like Rosa's stuff.

I am packing my bag with stuff that could go into a skip.

As my wife, Dolores, and I go for our weekly walk, I am carrying a bag that starts empty. I pack it with bottles and cans that I find along the road. Yes, Dolores gave me that look, too. You know the kind only a loved one can give when they think you are acting crazy. Heaven forbid someone think I am destitute and picking up the cans for the money.

I persisted. I stopped here and there to pick up a bottle along the walk until my bag was full. I will not get it all at once. I know that. I am also patient. I plan on walking regularly. With a little time, a little effort here and there, the bottles and cans will gradually go away.

I may even get a logo bag to advertise my local blog. Other walkers in town could do the same thing. And then with apologies to Arlo Guthrie,

Learn to Build Your Personal Brand

“Most of all, I don’t want to be defined by anything not of my choosing.”
~ Phil Gerbyshak

I consider myself a newbie as far as being an entrepreneur. For the first three decades of my working life, I was Mz. Corporate America, and for most of those thirty years I didn’t think like Phil did, mostly because I didn’t really think about it at all.

For most of those thirty years there was also no such thing as the internet, and building my own brand meant the hard road of building my own business, something I wasn’t ready to take on. During my time in retail in particular, my customers and suppliers regularly asked me, “Rosa, you’re good at this; why don’t you open your own shops?” and my reply would be, “I have a great employer who I like working for, and who willingly takes all the financial risks for what I do; this is perfect for me just as it is.”

Today, that is a sentence I would never say. I have no regrets about my corporate time, it was pretty great, but knowing what I know now, I’m not going back. Reading back on it, I could say that sentence again, but the ‘employer’ I’d be talking about would be me myself, and I.
[See From Corporate Life to Self-Employment at Talking Story.]

As I got older, and better at what I did, financial risk became a minimal concern for me. Not because I had a lot to cushion any deficits, but because I had learned how to make money and spend it wisely to curb those deficits; cash flow is important, but it became just another “tool of the trade.” I had developed that entrepreneurial mindset needed to succeed on my own because my financial literacy had grown with me.

A bigger concern reared its head and became more and more intrusive every day, and that was this: I paid a high price for the comfort of staying with my employer –––as great as that employer was. The price was the loss of substantial intellectual property; while I was on their dime they considered my brain something they owned, especially because I’d become an executive. Once you get that corner office, there is no such thing as personal time off the clock; that bigger paycheck you get means your ‘boss’ is now also your owner. Whatever you might create doesn’t belong to you, even at midnight sitting at your own kitchen table.

The day came that I no longer felt comfortable with “having it good” as Mz. veteran executive. I wanted my creative discomfort to pay off for me and my family personally.

When I walked away from the corporate world in 2003, I had a terrific reputation, but I did not yet have a personal brand. Big difference. Your personal brand is about your own message, your own mission, and your own vision, and your reputation. Entrepreneurship is about keeping control of all those things in your own good hands.

“My message is consistently spread because I took the time to build my brand. If you don’t take the time to build your brand, you run the risk that someone else will. And I don’t want someone else to say who I am, I want to be part of that story!”
~ Phil Gerbyshak

When you have crafted a personal brand, you have crafted a significant driver in your reputation; for remember, a reputation is something you are awarded by others. Think of brand as cause (will it be yours, or your employer’s?) and reputation as effect.

The good news is that today, you can do what I couldn’t do in my yesterday: You still need to steer clear of the executive suite to pull it off, however you can reap the benefits of working in the corporate world and create your personal brand at the same time.

Phil Gerbyshak is one of the best examples I know of, and we can all learn from him. The quotes I’ve shared here come from an interview he’s given to Ron “Buzzoodle” McDaniel of Buzz Marketing Personal Brand as lead up to a presentation Phil is doing in Las Vegas in January. I encourage you to read through Phil’s interview with Ron, for you too can begin to build your personal brand today.

~ Rosa Say, JJL Contributor, and author of Managing with Aloha Coaching. A related posting made back in June on Talking Story, is the Not-so-Secret Weapon of the Self-Employed.

~ Read more about Phil in his index here at Joyful Jubilant Learning, and at his blog, Make It Great!

~ As JJL Contributor Greg Balanko-Dickson would say, “Live Large!” Grab more inspiration for building your personal brand from these JJL categories:

• BHAGs and Bigger Dreams
• Connecting and Relationships
• JJL Forum 2007: Make A Difference

Making A Difference: A 5-Point Plan of Action

As of this weekend, our JJL September 2007 Forum draws to a close.

Or does it?

In September, we set our sights on these questions:

How has your learning already made a difference, or how do you know it will? What is the difference you are learning to make, and what are you doing to make it happen?

We received a variety of answers, and I have a challenge for you. Think of getting started with this as your JJL Weekend Project:

You have read much on what others think about making a difference. Others have shared their stories of learning, and their tales of doing. Now...
What will be the story you start to write for YOUR life today?

In one word, my challenge to you is HO‘OHANA. Weave in whatever inspirations you gained here over the last month into a plan of action whereby you can work with purpose, working directly on the difference you hope to make.

Most of my learning (and perhaps I’m not alone in this!) has not been from books, nor courses, but from Life itself.  Events that paint a picture.  Failures that teach me what not to do next time.  Successes that teach what works.  Conversations that  help me ‘join the dots’ and nurture new ideas. —Pete Aldin, the Great Circle Coach, in Anxiety Writes the Script

To the left, you will see that the Make A Difference compilation page link will remain parked under our Recurring Features heading. Here is a possible 5-Point Plan of JJL Action for you.

1. Choose a post or combination of them which truly resonated with you. In your heart, mind, and soul you know they called out to you because you can do what was spoken of or dreamed of: You know you can make it real. You know it will make a difference for you to make a personal resolution and follow through. If it makes a difference for others too, all the better, but you know you need to start with you first, and as Greg had said, BE the change.

2. Get specific: With that post as your catalyst, write a vision for where you will be with your intention-turned-action a year from now. What will be your best possible outcome? Articulate what it will look like, sound like, and feel like for you. Eventually I hope you will toot sweetly, but for now, tell yourself.

3. Plan concrete actions: Brainstorm a list of possible actions you can take to arrive at your vision step by step, action by action. Then, give yourself a time table and pattern to follow with diligence, perhaps weekly (maximum effect) monthly (also good in theming – like Joanna does with her writing ingredients, and as I do with values) or quarterly (can be best when you enroll a team in your plan, but individually you are better off with weekly or monthly patterns).

4. Now go back to the post which inspired you, and Enroll us in your goals. Jump into the conversation there and get the author to mentor you. We keep our comments open here, and no matter how far these posts drop into the archives, the author who had penned that post gets an immediate email notification when any comment is made.

Connect with them. Subscribe to the RSS feeds or email alerts on their own blogs, for chances are you will find strong connections there to whatever they may have written about here. Notice that I purposely coached you in 1.,2., and 3. to do your own draft first: that prep is important if you are to raise the level of conversation with your chosen mentor, and not simply agree with them – this is your plan, not theirs. They are here to help support and coach you.

5. Now Do it. Work your plan, and Make your difference. Keep your plan ever present in mind so you can be alert to possible High Quality Interactions that connect with it. Then next September, when our forum rolls around again, grab our invitation to post and take the next step – share your lessons learned, and you will inspire; you be the next mentor. You’ll be ready to make bigger differences in waves that enlarge your circle of influence, becoming the pebble that creates the ripples in the pond.

Learning to Live Large!

September 1 st, 2006 I was moved reading one of Rosa's posts when something she stated got my attention:

"And yet… not a day goes by that I do not wonder, Did I end up to be who I am, doing what I am doing as my mission because it IS my calling, and it IS my innate talent, or because I ENDED up believing it is? Am I at a place of knowing, or of way TOO practiced believing? Could this MWA journey actually be just another chapter for me, and do I still need to do some self-discovery myself? What will be that BHAG I’m pretty sure I still want to come up with?" Via LEARNING: A Place of Knowing and of Practiced Believing

I responded with the following comment on her 2006 post:

"Your posts are so full of many deep and wonderful observations. As I was reading I was thinking of my own ‘Ike loa and when you spoke of coming up with your own BHAG - I saw it ever so clearly - I need my own BHAG.

I have a recurring vision where I am surrounded by hundreds, even thousands in a celebration of abundance. People from all walks of life, especially young adults who have accomplished amazing business achievements.

Whether that vision is fulfilled in this life or the next matters not. Today I choose to believe that we can and do experience a taste of heaven if we dare to believe.

Today I declare that my Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) of impacting the lives of 1,000,000 business owners before I leave terra firma.

May your Aloha be visible and vibrant, may you experience a new found sense of Mahalo and be willing to embark on your own version of ‘Ike loa.

Aloha fellow Explorer!"

This was an unusual step for me. I had never set a BHAG at this level before that day. In fact, I always avoided people with large goals, which I now know as Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and anyone that seemed to over-hype their business or opportunity.

What I did not realize until recently, is that when people set a BHAG they do it for themselves. To awake themselves from the deep sleep of complacency and mediocrity.

Mediocrity and complacency, that is where I found myself and it was time to change...

Make a Difference in the World? Sure! Why not?

We are excited!

October 1st will be our first birthday here at Joyful Jubilant Learning, and we are gearing up for the big day with our 3rd annual September Learning Forum. If the math seems off, here is a quick history: the forum was hosted by my first blog Talking Story for the first two years, and it proved so successful for our learning community there, that JJL was created as our new year-long home.

So we started thinking, now that we are JJLers all the year through, what will the theme of our September forum be?

We wanted to “go big” as April would say, and with collaborative learning as our core community value, that thought itself gets us pretty energized. In a brainstorm done by all of our contributing authors, a mantra of “Let’s make a difference” emerged early, loud and clear.

JJL has become quite a global community in our first year, and we are eager to see how learners everywhere are dreaming about, and committing to make a difference for themselves, for their families, in their work’s passions, as they volunteer in their neighborhoods, and as they plan to impact our world.

The world?

Well sure, why not?

When I look back over our first year, and all that has been written and talked about here at Joyful Jubilant Learning, it is crystal clear to me that people are much more powerful than they give themselves credit for being. We human beings are capable of so much. There will be sharing expressed here on what someone has learned, and there will always – yes, always, be a glimpse of how what first seems to be one person’s experience has actually made a larger impact of some kind – or can. Learning, reach, and growth are unmistakably connected; there is a pervasive ripple effect that happens inside out, where the “inside” is a tapping in of someone’s yet-unfelt, still to be released possibility.

One of my favorite mantras to live by is this one:

Everything is – and was – impossible until the first person does it.
Can’t is not can’t, it’s won’t – so when will I?

At one time, people only reached across the globe with handwritten, posted letters, and now we do so with instantaneous clicks. At one time, people thought we would never actually see the surface of the moon, and now we can walk on it. These are but two; there are so many more examples of the impossible becoming the new normal – what will be yours?

Learning IS the catalyst, and today is yet another day I am counting my blessings that I can do so here in your inspiring company. I am so looking forward to JJL Forum 2007, and I hope you decide to write an essay and participate! Let’s make a difference.
~ Rosa Say

Unlearning mediocrity

It is easy to "just get by." Ask me how I know. For much of the previous two decades, I knew what it took to fly under the radar, stay out of trouble and do just enough.

• Mediocrity - The quality or state of being mediocre.
• Mediocre - of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance; Ordinary, so-so

That about covers it.

I always knew I had more potential. Why did I live that way? Why do I still have to fight to keep from going back there? Phil asked me a very similar question. My answer - fear. "Of success or failure?" he asked. Both.

This unlearning of mediocrity is the reason I said "Yes!" to JJL. I have found the first and best step to overcoming this fear - don't look at it as success or failure, just learn and trust the process.

My goals as defined through the 7 Wonders of Jubilant Learning

• Listen to those around me.  They have so much to offer and they do so freely.
• Laugh at myself. There are few things that should be taken so seriously.
• Learn everyday. Or relearn. Or unlearn.
• Link into community. Singularly we are wonderful - collectively we are masterful.
• Love the life I am in while striving for the life I want.
• Live to give back.
• Leap even if I am afraid.

That's the opposite of mediocrity.

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Post author April Groves is the author of Making Life Work For You providing information on community, success, and life management in real estate sales, and My Beautiful Chaos, a personal weblog which celebrates her family and friends, and her spirit of play.

Discover your students' dreams!

During the month of August, I would like to encourage the educators in our JJL family. As an educator myself, though I have enjoyed my short summer break, I am rejuvenated for the new year ahead. If you are a teacher or administrator, you might know what I mean.

It’s a new year packaged with new students, new challenges and new unknowns. I love fresh starts! There is nothing I can do to change the past but I can certainly use it to impact the future! One of the challenges I give myself when starting a new year is to love my students, their parents and my colleagues better than last year. No conditions…no exceptions.

With about thirty years of starts behind me I realize that this is no easy challenge. How will I include each child into my heart? How will I unconditionally love each parent? How will I lead a colleague who has been inflexible and resistant to new ideas?

For the teacher, here are some ideas to consider as you start a new year:

1. Create specific plans to celebrate each and every student around you. Start the day with a 5 minute “connection time”; this technique can make a huge difference. I love Rosa’s 5 minute plan in her book Managing with Aloha. This works for students and colleagues as well! A major benefit to you is the insight and understanding you gain; the benefit to others is the powerful truth that they are valued.
2. Teach your students the value of being themselves and how to appreciate differences. Authenticity can be realized only when we are willing to be who we truly are. Everything around children tells them to be someone else; those who have fragile self esteems are certain prey.
3. Discover your students’ dreams and encourage them to never give up pursuing them. Everyone has dreams; some are wisely fueled and guided. Others are extinguished before they have a chance. As a teacher and a dreamer, I tried to guard myself against saying things that would destroy a dream and tried to focus on how I could guide the student toward it.
4. Tell your students that you admire the strengths you see in them. They all have strengths. Tell them what you see and differentiate lessons so they can work from those strengths.

Discovering your students' dreams and encouraging the pursuit of them is as important as celebrating, accepting and admiring them. What a powerful impact each has on children!

Do you have dreams for this year? I hope you not only have them but share them with others and with the JJL family. May you find yourself looking toward this new year with exciting expectancy!

~ Dean Boyer

Start a Bigger Thinker’s List: “What I Want to Learn”

I have begun to read The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I’m only about seventy pages into it, but I can already tell it will be one of those books that really gets me to re-think about things that I have come to believe I’ve already thought through. It’s a book that is telling me how wrong I am on virtually every page, and I’m okay with that. In fact, I’m thrilled. Ferriss can give my brain as many kick-starts as he wants.

You can never get too lazy about thinking. Thinking is the humility muscle in your brain that lies somewhere in-between those other two halves some people talk about. Far as I can tell, there’s no learning without thinking. I call it the ‘humility muscle’ because it can handle that bully we all have inside us called our ego.

Now thinking can be laborious and joyless, or it can be liberating and jubilant. So far, Ferriss is giving me the liberating and jubilant kind of thinking, and I really, really love it!

In what I’ve read so far, there’s been one thought in particular that keeps bugging me though, so much so that I had to put the book aside for moment to write this for you.

Ferris says that “most people will never know what they want” and the more I think about this, I realize how right he is about that.

Most of us struggle with our goals because we are really terrible at dreaming up the good stuff. We just copy-cat the dreams which currently seem to be popular with most of the world, even though they don’t keep us up at night chomping at the bit for them. If we actually manage to nail them, we then wonder why achieving our goals is kind of boring, and not all they’re cracked up to be.

I run into this within my coaching business when I challenge people with ‘Imi ola, the Hawaiian value that urges us to seek (‘imi) our best possible life (ola). I ask them to describe what their best possible life would be, and what should be a really easy question turns out to be pretty difficult for them.

Why is that? Why is dreaming about what we want, and learning to articulate it so hard for us? Why can’t we think bigger and brighter, and more lick-our-lips eagerly about what we want?

Now consider this, written by a good friend of mine, a very wise, wily Coyote kind of guy;

Learning and living are the same. When you stop learning, you start to die a little every day. Strong scientific evidence links between brain cells can regrow at any age if you give them some exercise. Your brain is a case of "use it or lose it."
—Adrian Savage

I agree with Adrian, and here’s my theory: If we can dream bigger about the things we want to learn about, our dreams for our best possible lives will get better too. We’ll be more daring, break some rules, continually ask “Why not?” and go for it in more joyful, jubilant ways.

How about testing this theory with me?

Do you know what you want to learn about? Can you write a list out for yourself? What would be on it?

• How about speed-reading?
• Another language … something exotic like Etruscan or Patois?
• Can you draw a family tree? How about genealogy, or about parenting step-children?
• How about Paleontology, or making life-sized dioramas?
• Appreciative inquiry or Stand-up comedy?
• Bungee jumping or para-sailing?
• How to make a salt-water fish tank, or the world’s largest ant farm?
• Needlepoint? Ice-carving with a chainsaw? Making spun sugar? Mud wrestling?

You can do me better, I know you can.

Start a Bigger Thinker’s List. Call it “What I Want to Learn for No Reason Other Than the Joy of it.” Keep a slip of paper with you for the next week, and just write down all the intriguing ideas which come your way. Just one guideline: It has to make you smile broadly or giggle like a silly child.

Better yet, don’t wimp on this with a slip of paper. Go get a flipchart sized page and doodle your list all over it. Roll it up and carry it around with you with a bunch of colored sharpies. Be brave: Show it to people and ask them if they can be crazier than you. Laugh about it together.

And for goodness sake, do NOT begin to list any reasons why you can’t learn any of the things on your list, for you can learn them all. Remember that can’t usually means won’t.

Dream like a Bigger Thinker dreams.

Are you with me?

35 Learning Links, and more to come!

Wow, some early fireworks are going off around here!

This has been an unusually full writing and blogging time for me away from JJL, with much going on behind the scenes of tackling our Ho‘ohana for July (at Managing with Aloha), and a Ho‘okipa community forum this month (at Talking Story). However the collaborative synergy here at Joyful Jubilant Learning is still capturing my fascination.

This is a great example of a time when blogging gets a bit challenging, but supremely energizing; I feel like all my senses are on turbo-charge.

Sidebar: So guilty as charged ... I did not get to my every-Saturday posting for our JJL Learning Project #2 ... in light of this excitement, how 'bout we all work LP2 project-privately to the Saturday after 07-07-07? I promise you our strengths journey is not going away!

Listen, Laugh, Learn, Link, Love, Live, and Leap to Wonder

This morning I am helping with the early compilation of the 7 Wonders of Learning Page we’ve turned into a BHAG for 07-07-07, and it is blowing me away. In the event you are a Sunday web reader, I want to call your attention to it. Jump into it within whatever peace Sunday still holds for you, for believe me, you’ll want to get the head start.

I’m also posting this, realizing that those of you who are primarily feed-only readers may think it’s quiet here if you don’t click into the blog for the comments and compilation-page updates your RSS reader will miss.

What started as a fun game in anticipation of next Saturday’s 07-07-07 calendar page, is tapping into the best-memory of those who are very passionate about learning. I have taken all 28 learning links submitted, discovering why they are each contributor’s favored bookmarks, and I am feeling I have been given the most spectacular gift of human-valued knowledge. The remaining 7 were my contributions, and while I still feel great about my own learning links, I am also feeling more challenged to keep looking for more I can share from other teachers, coaches, and mentors!

These have been the first 5 submissions of 35 links, with a very special thank you to David Zinger, Karen Chung, Steve Sherlock, and Terry Starbucker for allowing us to get a head start on our goal: Once again, we’re at Day 7 of our countdown to collecting 777 submissions!

P.S. Numbers 1. and 34. are feel-good-all-over tear-jerkers :-)

Learning to Talk to Each Other

I hope you will read this, even though you have decided not to participate in JJL LP2, for I would love to talk story with all of you about this particular learning. I suspect that the struggle some of us encountered with this step is one you might encounter with some other projects of your own choosing. When I chose the TypePad categories for this particular post, so many of them were appropriate (as you can see in the footer.)

My Step 5 Results? Relationship First

Learn to Lead with your Strengths has been an online and offline project for me. When we started it here on JJL, I also bought a half-dozen books for a few managers I know (two each in three different companies, also as a 70+ contribution) and asked them to do the project along with us.

Lot of reasons for me, the primal one being my ho‘ohana (mission) as a workplace coach, and these;

• As you’d expect from someone who started blogging with one called “Talking Story,” talking to my own managers about my strengths and weaknesses would never have been a challenge for me, and I know I’m “not normal” in that respect. I needed a task force of sorts with this project so I’d have more empathy and a real-time project laboratory.

• Before reading the book, I had already heard from our JJL community that Step 5 was where they met challenges, and this was coming from people I know are already high up the dial on their SET scores. Their cautions were not to be ignored.

• Because my personal blog is called Talking Story, and has three years of posts for the search spiders to gobble up, my stats reveal that someone searches for “how do I talk to my manager about _______” nearly every day. Once infancy is over, we talk as unconsciously as we breathe, yet silly as it sounds, we do have to continually learn to talk to each other, especially when it comes to challenging or more difficult conversations.

I’ll share more from my six managers’ results in total later, but in regard to Step 5 I’ve come to this conclusion;

Creating My Mountain

Living Large was something of a new concept to me a year ago.

This month marks my first year of blogging and if you've read my blog or the telling of my story on Talking Story, you know that I've come a long way in that time. Since these things have been on my mind, it seems fitting that Rosa would tag me.

Living Large reminds me of an article I wrote in the early days of blogging. The article talks about everyones desire to be a part of something important.

"Infact, higher purpose is such a vital ingredient to the human psyche that a scripture says, 'Where there is no vision, the people perish.'"

Higher purpose or that sense of having something important to strive for is what I think of when it comes to goals and Living Large. In the beginning, I spent time setting goals and striving for the summit of the mountain but now as I reach the summit I realize that those goals aren't audacious enough.

With that in mind, I re-evaluated them and here is what I've come up with:

• Make my first $1,000,000 AND insure that everyone I care about finds financial freedom as well.
• Work on my spiritual relationship with the one who created all things and gave me breath.
• To one day thank each and every one of the people who have touched my life and helped me in my process of becoming a leader, in person (Can't wait to get started on this one).
• Find more time to get back to writing the books, articles and blog posts I've been meaning to work on.
• Travel and see the world. Namely Japan.
• Be more vocal about my love and affection for all of you. I want to develop better relationships as a whole with people.

My mountain has just gotten much bigger hasn't it? The experience of creating my own mountain instead of allowing it to create me is such a fascinating experience.

Most of the points above stem from a desire to pay forward on the love and guidance I was afforded. I suppose you could say that I decided to start listening to what people are telling me. You see, since started writing at Live Your Best Life, an increasing number of people have been telling me that I have a talent for words and those words are inspiring.

Compliments have always been something I'm swift to hand out. Accepting them on the other hand has always been difficult. I suppose this is why I struggled with the role of being a leader or mentor.

However, I see that it is my transparency and giving nature that lends to my ability to lead. So, my final goal in the Living Large category is to mentor and build up everyone who wants to create change in their life. Life is to short to remain repressed and broken.

A quote shared by Karen Wallace sums it up perfectly. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me".

---

Tim Draayer feels blessed to have been invited to contribute to JJL and to be surrounded by a terrific group of readers and contributors.

5 skills that will make you rich

The great Jim Rohn (he's the one on the right left in this picture) says "don't wish things were easier, wish you were better." Life is no walk in the park.  We are all presented with challenges that we must overcome.  Winter always comes.  In order to succeed at a very high level you must develop yourself and grow as a person. To grow, you need to master the 5 skills of personal development:

1) Absorb
Be a sponge.  Learn whatever you can, everywhere you are.  Take in the experiences of life: the words of a book; the lyrics of a song; the advice of a friend. Be able to learn from everyone and everything.  Don't miss anything that will be valuable to your future.

2) Reflect
There is value in the past, and much more if you can remember it.  Learn to reflect on what you've taken in.  When should you reflect?

• At the end of each day, reflect on it.  How did you do? What did you learn? Who did you help?

• At the end of the week, reflect on the past six days.  Now you can see what you need to do in the next six days. Invest what you learnt in the past six days into the next six days. Life demands measureable progress in reasonable time; after 6 days you should see progress.

• At the end of the month, reflect.  Success is a numbers game - know them! How much time did you spend with the people you love?  How much profit did the marketplace reward you with?  How many times did you exercise? How many books did you read? How many pages did you write? If you aren't seeing visible progress after a month of action, re-adjust your plan.

3) Respond
Let life touch you.  Let sad things make you sad, let great things inspire your soul. There is something inside everyone that recognizes extraordinary things.  Let beauty affect you. Let your mistakes frustrate your conscience into inspirational dissatisfaction.

4) Act
Get excited about being able to work the six days.  The six days are where fortunes are built. Rest doesn't build a fortune, the six days builds a fortune.  Work works the miracle. Learn to embrace and love work.  The six days allow you to create a great life for yourself.  Ask, who can I help this week?  Whose life can I touch? What can I give to the marketplace and my clients?  Relish every hour of work, no matter how hard it may seem. Always do more than you get paid for, as an investment in your future.

5) Share
Something I told my Winning With People class last week is that in order to be a leader, you need to go from being 'learning based' to being 'teaching based.' Learn with the intention of teaching it to others.  Hear a great story in order to tell it to someone.  Read my newsletter thinking of how you can use these ideas to help your friends and colleagues. When you share, it is a true win-win situation.  The listener is transformed by the knowledge, and you are transformed by giving selflessly.

In order for things to change, you must change.   Learn the skills that will help you grow, and you will create a magnificent life for yourself.

Benjamin Bach helps people build their wealth through smart real estate investments. You can find his blog at http://www.kitchener-waterloo-real-estate-investments.com/ and reach him by email @ benjamin AT benjaminbach DOT com.

Each day a new leaf

2006 calendar year comes to a close this weekend. It has been a full and eventful year for my family and for me personally. Considering many of the interactions we have had, I am sure your review would be full of similar highlights and significant events.

January saw (amongst many things) the publication of Aloha Rosa.

February was the advent of new templates for my Blogger sites.

March had much to chose from but one key link is my guest posting for Ronni Bennett.

April and spilling into May saw a series of conversations/interviews with Women and the Power of We which took place on the Blog Synergy.

May was a series of family celebrations: First communion, confirmation, graduation and multiple pictures to record the events.

June uniquely had 06/06/06 occur.

Work: What Do You Really Want To Do?

I was watching the Larry King Live show titled "The Power of Positive Thoughts" and today what follows are my comments on the show.

MP3 File

KELSEY: I love where I work. But I live within my means. However, each month I'm living seemingly paycheck to paycheck. How do I value what I earn, versus the satisfaction I get from working at a career that I'm passionate about?

PROCTOR: I don't think you should mix them up. You're looking at your job as where you get your money. Your job is where you get your satisfaction. Set up different ways of serving people where you can earn money. You don't have to be there. You can earn it while you're sleeping.

ASSARAF: You also can't look at your present circumstances and allow it to control your thinking, because then you're going to create more of the same circumstances. You've got to get out of that loop and ask yourself, what I do really want to do, and then follow that.

Link to Transcript of the show: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/02/lkl.01.html

Notice that John Assaraf said to 'follow that'. he did not say that it would be an instant answer to all your dreams, but to 'follow' it. That implies that we are on a journey and while on the journey we need to make some changes.

We have to avoid allowing our current circumstances to control our thinking. We get so hung up thinking that we have to 'be qualified' and we have to 'earn our success. This type of thinking is flawed and was what we were told in school and by our parents. Ever remember being told that "You need to study and do well in school if you want to get a good job!" Hogwash I say!

What ever happened to entrepreneurship, business, and creative careers like acting, artist, or being a speaker etc. as being a viable alternative? I think we lost that when they created the education system, as we now know it, back in the 1850's. In those days the entire focus in the 19th and 20th century was to train workers for the 'industrial revolution' and train people to do what they were told to do but as long as they did not 'think too much'.

What nobody foresaw was that we would end up creating a caste system filling elitist educational institutions that would churn out obedient, task oriented people to follow the structure set up for them.

Eventually, the constant reminders that we need to 'perform' to be accepted and promoted in our the jobs... we let our dreams die. We stopped thinking about what we really wanted and 'settled' for what was socially acceptable or worse settled for what someone else told us we were 'qualified' for. It's like going to school for more than 12 years would somehow prepare us for everything we would need in lives and our careers.

Today we have people having to adjust and create new careers because their jobs have been superseded, replaced by technology, or outsourced. My father had a few jobs whereas I have had a number of careers, I know he would be surprised to see how many careers I have had and yet the interesting thing is I feel like I am just getting started in my 50's.

When I get together with my other coaches I am always amazed how much time we end up discussing how to help our clients to "decide what they want". We often say, "You can get anything you want, but first you need to know what you want."

I am beginning to see this as a major deficit in small business. We need to give ourselves permission to dream, to dare to believe that we can become more than what we are today.  That the world is a buffet and not a fast food meal. We need to learn to think for ourselves, know what we want, and know how to go about creating it.

• When did you let go of your dream?
• How do you feel about your 'lost dream' today? Is it still on your mind? Do you have a new dream?
• When did you quit believing in yourself?
• When would be a good time to stop pleasing everyone else and start pleasing yourself and start doing what you have always dreamed?

So what can we do? We need to learn how to think about 'what is possible'. To be willing to investigate options and try new things. To learn to indulge ourselves by stopping trying to please everyone else but ourselves.

First, we have to start to believe that there is something more out there for us and that we are capable of changing, growing, and learning. That it is possible to set a vision, pursue it and live the dream.

Let us throw off everything that hinders and set sail to the horizon of the land of milk and honey! I will see you there...

Learn to Be, or to Become?

I had written two columns for Lifehack.org (one, and two) and then my husband showed me this:  The point that I was trying to make with Berkeley Breathed was able to portray in a single, insightful cartoon strip.

photo credit to the Washington Post
Click on the link above or the image for a bigger view to read.

I must add art to my list of what I must learn.

Those articles I'd written were:
Why Work? and
Break the Mold and Create Your Own Work