Category Archives: Learning By Example

Susan Who?

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I know this is old news, but the message of it is timeless and it felt sort of “right” to post about it this week. :)

Remember Susan Boyle?

Back in 2009 her courage to follow her dream inspired millions.

If you don’t know who Susan Boyle is then take 5 minutes to watch: Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent ’09.

Too many of us would have clammed up under the skepticism and undisguised ridicule she faced from the moment she walked out on that stage up until she started to sing her song “I dreamed a dream”.

Who would have believed that it was even possible that this 47 year old woman from some village somewhere had what it takes to be a star?And yet she did and she took the chance to prove that she could shine as brightly as any of them.

If you don’t agree that she was outstanding during her performance that’s OK. The point of it is that scads of others who watched her were changed a little after watching her – and there precious few who can say that they have been able to give that kind of genuine inspiration during their 15 minutes of fame.

So, what is your gift?

You know what it is. It is probably even definable in a single word like: William Shakespeare: story-telling, Albert Einstein: intelligence, and Martin Luther King Jr: leadership.

However, the gift/word itself had very little significance.

It was the mindfully strategic use of those gifts that actually changed the world.

If it wasn’t too late for Susan Boyle to show off her talent, then it certainly isn’t too late for you either.

“What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” – Robert H. Schuller

The Mystery of Motivation

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Sometimes, I get lucky and am sent an extremely encouraging message exactly when I need it.

This time, a little bonne bouche came in my junk mail folder (which I hardly ever check by-the-way). The subject of the email was “The Mystery of Motivation“. (Intriguing right?)

The following is a blog post by a member at SparkPeople, username: SHAPNUP. SparkPeople liked it enough to email it out to all of their e-newsletter subscribers. ☀ Note the social media trick here. Did you notice it? It was free content for them, and they encouraged their member by sharing her message.

How does motivation work? What makes us pick up our feet and do what we gotta do? Well, for me, motivation works the same way, backwards and forwards.

It’s like this…

BACKWARDS:

  • I eat one Hershey’s Kiss. I am motivated to eat more. ◄ LOL! Isn’t that sadly true!?
  • My job is mostly sedentary. I am motivated to be less active.
  • My co-workers (mostly healthy weights) like to snack (on unhealthy foods). I am motivated to do the same.
  • I find comfort in certain foods. I am motivated to drug myself with them.
  • None of this takes much effort. I am motivated to do even less.

FORWARDS:

  • I read a success-story blog on Spark. My endorphins kick in. I am motivated to want success.
  • I skip an unhealthy snack. It isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I am motivated to do it again.
  • No pasta or pizza till I can’t breathe, and I sleep better. I am motivated to eat more healthfully and lightly.
  • Moving, even a little bit, raises my energy. I am motivated to move more.

What we feed grows.

If we feed the negative in our lives, it gets bigger. It becomes an unending cycle of drudgery and pain. And it continually gets worse. I am an EXPERT at feeding the negative. I think we all know how to do that.

If we feed the positive in our lives, it gets bigger. The cycle is now made up of health, strength, and energy. Feeding the positive, well, that’s a learning experience for me. It takes planning and effort and action. It takes overcoming LAZINESS, which I believe is a huge part of my negative cycle. I’m not so good at feeding the positive.
I’d like to get better at this myself.

This weekend I’ve been feeding both. Talk about confusion. No wonder my mind and body can’t quite get it together.

I’ve fed my negative cycle with poor food choices and poor sleep.

I’ve fed my positive cycle with lots of water and some great physical exertion. It’s a start.

My goal is to replace the negative with positive.
My goal is to replace negative with the positive… Hear hear!

Looks like my work is cut out for me.

How do you feed the positive in your life? What makes you pick up your feet and do what you gotta do?

(I put in a few things in bold, added a few bullet points, and a word or two in red; otherwise every word in black and white was hers.)

My final thoughts:
There is really not much one can add to this except that this motivational message can be applied to any aspect of our lives: business, family, friends, or our own health.

Whatever our goals are, we should surround ourselves with influences that will help us accomplish those goals. If we are always letting something or someone else discourage us, then isn’t failure practically inevitable?

Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead

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Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead
It is currently available to watch from netflix instant queue if you want to check it out.

The Foundational Value of the Film
We eat so much over-processed and vitamin/mineral depleted foods that our bodies are fighting a losing battle to stay healthy. A pure juice fast is a semi-fanatical idea but it really opens your eyes to the benefits of restoring the nutrients back into your body to allow you to fight sickness and disease.

During the movie, they visited a juice bar in Australia that happened to claim that the following ailments can be cured or eased by putting these fruits and vegetables into a juicer and consuming them in all their natural glory. (Some of the concoctions really looked disgusting, but then again so does chocolate cake when you think about it.)

Ailments – and the natural supposed cures
Anemia – carrot spinach watercress
Arthritis – carrot cucumber beet grapefruit
Asthma – carrot celery grapefruit
Cellulite – apple ginger carrot beet
Cleansing Cocktail – carrot apple beet ginger
Cold – carrot parsley ginger garlic
Constipation – carrot spinach apple
Depression – carrot apple beet spinach
Diabetes – carrot celery parsley
Diarrhea – mixed vegetables
Eyes – carrot celery
Fatigue – carrot spinach/orange lemon grapefruit
Gout – carrot celery parsley
Hangover – pineapple honey brewers yeast
Headache – carrot celery parsley
Hemorroids – carrrot spinach
Hypertension – carrot spinach beet pineapple papaya
Impotence – carrot parsley cucumber orange papaya honey
Indigestion – carrot cabbage beet
Kidneys – carrot beet celery
Memory loss – peach lime banana brewers yeast
Menstral – pineapple ginger apple
Nervousness – carrot celery
Peptic Ulcer – carrot cabbage pineapple papaya
PMS pineapple banana soy milk spiru-tein
Stress – banana strawberry pear brewers yeast
Vericose Vein – cantelope banana kiwi

You Have 3 Minutes!

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I am tired of hearing that old saying “Time is money”.
But here’s the real truth: Time is way more valuable than money.

Money can be earned, but time can only be saved. (And no, I didn’t get that from the book, I figured that one out on my very own. :) )

This week I read:

You Have 3 Minutes!

Learn the Secret of the Pitch from Trump’s Original Apprentice
Written by Richardo Bellino

Is it really possible to sell anything in 3 minutes?

“My answer is not only is it possible, but it is also the only effective way to sell an idea.”

- Ricardo R. Bellino, Founder, TRUMP REALTY BRAZIL

Set the Limit


A forward from Donald J. Trump precedes the content of this book. I read Donald’s carefully assembled opinion of Ricardo Bellino and how he decided to make him a partner during those first three minutes of meeting him.

More than anything else, it was his following statement in the forward that stood out:

“It’s surprising what people can do with a deadline.”

- Donald Trump

So simple in it’s structure and yet so complex in its meaning. Don’t you think? Well, maybe it was my state of mind when I read it that made it more profound that it actually was. You now how it is. Sometimes we are just more “inspire-able” than other times.

I was motivated to save myself even more time during my business day because summer seems like the most difficult time to stay on track. Maybe it’s because the kids are out of school or because it’s just so nice outside that I make any excuse I can to get out there.

How many amazing things could you have already accomplished in your lifetime if you always given yourself realistic deadlines and then been disciplined enough to stick to them?

Would you have started that business venture? or written that best seller? or broken that bad habit? or mastered that vital skill? or learned that foreign language? or permanently dropped those few extra pounds?

Optimize the Time Given

Read this book. Buy it. Borrow it. Whatever. It’s worth reading the tips on image (Are people buying your image?), negotiation (When should you listen to intuition? How should you make snap decisions?), and effective communication throughout a business venture.

It’s all there plus a lot more.

Droplet is to Ocean as Choice is to Change

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Both significant results: OCEANS and CHANGES, begin with perceivably insignificant ingredients.

Alone, no drop of water can sustain magnificent marine life such as blue whales that grow as large as 100 ft long and sea turtles that have been known to live as long as 250 yrs.

If you can try and imagine 74,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 drops of water coming together to make up the oceans you can easily imagine them being big enough for over a hundred million different species of fish and sea creatures to thrive.

What’s Up with the Ecosystem?

This week I’ve been looking into water conservation and what the current state of our water affairs are actually in. The more research I’ve done has disturbingly revealed quite a desperate imbalance of our ecosystem right now and how quickly our situation is getting worse.

Baby Steps Taken Together

If each of the 6 trillion+ individuals on this planet began to conserve just one glass full of water a day and then steadily join the efforts to begin purifying the water the we have …

How many fresh water lakes would we be saved from drying up?

How many sinkholes wouldn't happen because of our bleeding out underground water sources?

 

Photo Credits – Lakes Dried Or Drying Up & Sinkholes

Is it always going to be human nature to want instant gratification? Are big improvements going to be impossible until there is an urgent, present need?

As individuals, we feel impossibly helpless to slow or reverse the impact of over-consumption and contamination of Earth’s fresh water.

Blue Gold: World Water WarsWe watch videos like: Blue Gold: World Water Wars
and see that there are some very real issues to be looked into.

Are we really poisoning and spreading our water sources too thin?

Questions that Need Your Answers

1. Where / When / How do We Start taking action and preventing rather than reacting in shocked horror to the degradation of the water cycle?

2. How can we, such insignificant creatures on this planet, have such a deadly depletion of a force of nature that has been roughly in it’s present life sustaining state for thousands upon thousands of years since the last ice age?

Hint: question number 2 is a statement in disguise.

Conserving and Purifying Water

  • 10 Ways to Conserve Water at home
  • Harvesting Rainwater (more Resources)
  • Learning more about water stocks – “Even as water supplies dwindle, demand is gradually increasing around the world with some analysts calling for global water usage to be 40 percent greater in 2050 than it was in 2000. Depleted aquifers and an aging and inefficient water infrastructure present opportunities for water investors – particularly in the water conservation and purification sectors.” – This info and more can be found at How to Invest Water Stocks by TradingStocks.me
  • Desalination desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove some amount of salt and other minerals from water.

    - This is the process of transforming salty ocean water into fresh drinking water.

The Blue Gold movie discussed: Project Blue Alternative which highlighted some conservation groups getting together to build water catchments.

Use Your Life to Serve the World

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I’m not Oprah Winfrey’s #1 fan or anything, but I do believe that she is an exceptional woman. I have seen my share of of her shows over the years, but I really don’t watch any talk shows on a regular basis.

There are some people who worship Oprah and then others who believe that she is pure evil who only does anything for self-serving purposes. I think both reactions are silly.

Oprah’s success is due to the fact that she is very human and capable of great things or terrible mistakes.

Whatever your opinion of her, you cannot deny that she has changed more lives and inspired more charity than any other human being alive.

What would it be like to know that about yourself?

Oprah’s Final Words of Her Final Show Transcribed

We all are called. Everybody has a calling, and your real job in life is to figure out what that is and get about the business of doing it.

Every time we’ve seen a person on this stage who is a success in their life they spoke of the joy and of the juice they received from doing what they knew they were meant to be doing.

A calling lights you and lets you know that you are exactly where you are supposed to be and doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. And that is what I want for all of you. Live from the heart of yourself. Know what sparks the life in you, so you in your own way can illuminate the world.

You will receive in direct proportion to however much you give. You have the power to change somebody’s life. You carry whatever you are supposed to be doing. Carry that forward and don’t waste anymore time.

Start embracing your life that is calling you, and use your life to serve the world.

- Oprah Winfrey during her final episode of the Oprah Show

Transcribed from What Oprah Knows for Sure video.

I am not really a big bible quoting person or anything, but I do always remember one particularly wise passage regarding gifts. In the middle of Luke chapter 12 verse 48 it is stated that

“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required”

And isn’t that the truth?

Oprah has given a lot over the years. She has also received a lot in return. I can’t help but wonder what she has actually given up to be Oprah.

What would it be like to never go anywhere without being surrounded by masses of people who either love you or hate you.

What is it like to have millions of people expecting great things from you and millions more just waiting for you to mess up royally so that they can self-righteously judge you for all your shortcomings?

Keep Your Blog Alive

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live pulse
Last week I wrote 5 posts about the five main reasons that so many blogs are dying out.

1. Lack of Time

Make sure you know the answers to these questions for your own blog:

► How often do I have to write a post for my blog?
► How long should my blog posts be?
► What is my schedule and time limit for writing each post I plan to publish?
The first step to prevent your blog’s extinction is to know and keep in check each necessary attribute of a successful blog:

Time, Good Content, Focus, Responses, and Benefits.

- Continue reading 5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 1)

2. Lack of Content

The biggest key is making sure that your content is unique.
Even if you are writing a post about someone else’s post, after giving proper credit to your inspiration, let the reflections or creative writing come from you.

- Continue reading 5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 2)

3. Lack of Focus

Narrowing down your focus to prove yourself the expert of your own niche.

- Continue reading 5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 3)

4. Lack of Response

Appreciation for your blog posts mostly comes in two forms:

► Number one is lots of comments.
► Number two is more subscribers.

- Continue reading 5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 4)

5. Lack of Tangible Benefits

What is your motivation for blogging?

Blogs that make a steady income are rare considering the absurd number of blogs existing in the nameless rabble of websites that host their own or offer free blog spaces.

- Continue reading 5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 5)

Ok, I am going to write it out loud. In some cases, the death of a blog this isn’t a bad thing.

But what do you need to do to make sure your blog doesn’t fall victim to one of these deficiencies? My advice is sprinkled throughout this group of posts.

Let us know if you have anything to add or a link to your own posts that contain related content.

5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 5)

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Every day this week I am going to write about the five main reasons why so many blogs are dying out.
1. Lack of Time / 2. Lack of Content / 3. Lack of Focus / 4. Lack of Response / and 5. Lack of Tangible Benefits

Lack of Benefits

What is your motivation for blogging? Blogs that make a steady income are rare considering the absurd number of blogs existing in the nameless rabble of websites that host their own or offer free blog spaces.

To put it simply, millions of blogs have failed. The most important question for you must answer for yourself is: “How do you measure the success of your blog?”

The Money

The following are the most basic avenues to earn some coin for all of your hard work.

  • attract sponsors
  • attract advertisers
  • charge for access

These aren’t really very successful until you get some serious traffic. e.g. 50 to 100 hits a day.

The Marketing

For most businesses, blogs aren’t created to be a source of residual income as much as they are a source of marketing their actual business. And we all know how much good marketing costs. :)

  • gain credibility for your business
  • brag about your business

Or the Outlet

Sometimes, the benefit of writing a blog is simply an artistic release.

  • write for the sake of writing

5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 4)

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Every day this week I am going to write about the five main reasons why so many blogs are dying out.
1. Lack of Time / 2. Lack of Content / 3. Lack of Focus / 4. Lack of Response / and 5. Lack of Tangible Benefits

Lack of Response

Appreciation for your blog posts mostly comes in two forms:

  1. Number one is lots of comments.
  2. Number two is more subscribers. (Number two probably being the most important.)

In October and November of 2006, Problogger.net and Copyblogger both posted articles about getting the coveted responses all bloggers want. Regardless of the dates of these old articles the advice is fairly timeless.

The information surrounding each point in each blog post earns a decent recommendation for reading from me to you.

10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers
Written by Problogger – Oct 12, 2006 Written by Copyblogger – Nov 14, 2006
1. Invite Comments 1. Make it Easy and Obvious
2. Ask Questions 2. Be Laser Focused
3. Be Open Ended 3. Offer a Bribe
4. Interact with Comments Left 4. Use Viral E-books
5. Set Boundaries 5. Dedicated Subscription Landing Page
6. Be Humble 6. Become a Guest Blogger
7. Be Gracious 7. Start a Podcast
8. Be Controversial? 8. Post in Forums
9. ‘Reward’ Comments 9. Networking
10. Make it Easy to Comment 10. Cross-Promotional Deals

The only one that no one seemed to consider is the fundamental importance of reliably and consistently authoring the stimulating kind of leading-edge content.

5 Reasons Why Blogs are Dying (Part 3)

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Every day this week I am going to write about the five main reasons why so many blogs are dying out.
1. Lack of Time / 2. Lack of Content / 3. Lack of Focus / 4. Lack of Response / and 5. Lack of Tangible Benefits

Lack of Focus

Most writers find it difficult to write about one main topic. Choosing a blog name and finding a niche is very difficult. That’s why choosing a focus will help you create a better following.

Narrowing down your focus (i.e. writing about basketball vs. just sports or reviewing bar and grills vs. just restaurants) is helpful because you can prove yourself an expert of your own niche. Start small and branch out eventually.

Choosing optimal keywords and categories and tags will help your blog become more search engine index friendly. This will help your blog to become more popular and inspire more targeted visitors to encourage real conversations.

This leads me to tomorrow’s important point: reader’s response whether in email form or comment form is validation and the lack of it is discouragement.