Daily Ramblings – Merry Christmas!!!

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2018, Christmas, Contemplating, Dreaming, Gratitude, Planning

Well, folks, we have come to the end of Christmas 2017. Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family who wished me a great Christmas on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and LinkedIn. It was a great Christmas for the Gardner Family and one I will remember for some time. I hope all of you had as great a day as I did. The above picture is my family (- my sister who was taking the picture) right before digging into a homemade feast of Goose, Mashed Potatoes, Squash, Cranberry Sauce, and Dressing!

I had a great time with my family, had some great food (courtesy my Mom), and just relaxed, enjoying the time we had together over the last few days. Tomorrow everyone will be back to work and the day-to-day buzz will drown out the solitude some of you may have experienced. For the remained of this month you’ll be getting prepared for New Year’s celebrations, tidy up last-minute details at work, coordinate your plans and get ready for the big “ball drop” day.

For the remainder of the year, I’ll be continuing my battery re-charge, coupled with a lot of reading and contemplating the goals I have for 2018. Some I am working on currently, others are yet to be discovered. My days will be filled with dreaming, contemplating, and planning. They’ll also be filled with watching the DVDs my Dad and I got, reading some of the books I got, spending time with Mom and Dad working on one of the two jigsaw puzzles we received, and maybe, just maybe, playing a little of the Xbox game my niece sent me. It’ll be a great time!

Recently, I reconnected with a friend. This guy served with me in the Berlin Brigade (West Germany before unification). He reached out to me on Facebook “out of the blue” and it’s like we were never apart. Obviously, we both have a little grayer in the temples and beards than we did “way back when”, but he’s the same guy that used to kick my butt in chess on a daily basis. That was a special “Christmas” present that was totally unexpected. I’ll be spending some time with him over the next week as well.

Wherever you are, a new year brings hope for better times, working on new habits and getting rid of some bad ones. The new year brings new experiences, new jobs, getting married, having babies, making new friends, graduating from college, and so many more wonderful things. It’s doctor, dentist, and optometrist appointments, it’s grocery shopping, it’s a new promotion, it’s moving on to a new job. Perhaps your new year will bring moving to a new place and start over or donate time to your favorite charity. The new year presents endless possibilities, waiting to be discovered.

Enjoy the last few days of 2017.

Prepare for 2018.

Love one another. Cherish your friends. Appreciate the place you call home, your family, your pets, and all of the wonderful things in your life. Be grateful for the blessings that this life brings. Be grateful for the laughter, even the tears. Be grateful for the God-given talents you have and the ones that are waiting for you to uncover. Be grateful.

As we wind down 2017, I am grateful to you, my readers. I wish all of you the very best over the last few years of 2017. I hope you attain even greater heights of love and happiness in 2018.

For those of you that are having a tough time right now, remember to cherish even the smallest things. Life will get better for you. Life always does. During these times of trouble, be patient. Trouble will pass and good times will return. Make an extra effort to give of yourself during these troubled times. You’ll find that your giving will be returned in one way or another.

I’ll post again on New Year’s Day. I’ll see you then.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Winston Churchill – Reflection

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Beginning anew, Goal Setting, Planning, Recharging, reflection, Winston Churchill

“Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.” – Winston Churchill

I’m a huge fan of Winston Churchill and this quote is right on this time of year. I always get giddy during the holiday season. I enjoy the giving and grateful feelings that arise during this time of year. I also enjoy the time to relax, reflect, and the process of reviewing the year and how to move forward in the new.

What did I accomplish this year? Did I hit the goals I set for myself? What could I do better? Where could I focus my efforts in the New Year?

As I review things there are a few high points. The first is this blog. I didn’t realize how great it would be to create and write a blog. It’s awesome to see people from all over the world reading my postings and responding to them. The technology of today truly has created a global dialogue where people of different countries, cultures, and languages can interact with each other, learn about one another, and exchange ideas. It truly is a great time to be alive. Who knows what the future will bring. My guess is that we’ll see new devices, new technological breakthroughs, and a whole lot more.

I’ve written quite a bit about goal setting, self-discipline, leading a balanced life, and most recently about finding and pursuing your passion or life’s work. It’s hard to pursue these things when you’re supporting a family, working 9 to 5, and all the rest, but it is possible. If you are truly passionate about something, you’ll make it happen. For me, this year was the first year of my early retirement. I’ve found out a few things about myself that are quite interesting.

Retirement really isn’t retirement to me. I still have goals, I still have things I want to do in this life, and I still have a drive for a consistent and productive day. The only difference is that I am now in almost 100% control of my day. It is quite liberating, but also requires that much more self-discipline. Have you ever heard that saying, “The more rope you’re given, the more rope you’ll have to hang yourself”? This is the potential for retirement. You can either set up a daily schedule, plot out your goals and pursue them, or surf the net all day and get ZERO accomplished. Time will go by and you’ll wake up one day saying, “Where the hell did the year go?”

This year was a year of adjustment for me. Adjusting myself to a reduced income. Adjusting myself to all the time I have. Adjusting to living home with the parents and getting used to interacting with my Dad who loses more of his memory daily.

This month I’ll be finishing two books I read this time of year as part of my reflection. The first is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. The second is Getting Things Done by David Allen. I thoroughly enjoy both books because they really get you thinking. They also provide some helpful frameworks for planning, setting goals, and pursuing excellence in all areas of a person’s life.

I’ll begin work on the first of many books this year. The first step was finding a local coffee shop I could go to for my writing. I found one! It is called the Exquisite Corpse and it is nice. It will be my haunt after I get done with my gym routine. I like writing in areas where there are other things going on. I don’t need absolute solitude to create. Right now, as I write this blog posting, I am listening to some music. Music is one of the keys to my writing.

The rest of this month, in and around the holidays, will be mapping out the first quarter of the year. What do I want to accomplish? What’s the goal for the entire year? Once I’ve got things mapped out it’s off to set up a daily schedule to accomplish the things I set out to do. I really look forward to the New Year.

Well, that’s it for today folks. I hope you’ve enjoyed my writings this year and hope to continue to improve this blog to gather more followers. It’s all about the content and I’m still refining mine.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Today’s Quote – Life Fulfilling Work

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90-day Goals, Eileen Fisher, Follow Your Heart, Life Fulfilling Work, Listen to yourself, passion

“Life fulfilling work is never about the money – when you feel true passion for something, you instinctively find ways to nurture it.” – Eileen Fisher

This is truly where a rich and wondrous life is gained or lost. Each of us is born with God-given talents. Each of us is unique. Sometimes we discover our talents by accident, other times we have a “feeling” that this is what I’m supposed to do.

I mentioned how goals can sometimes slip from us. I have found that the goals that slip by the wayside are those that either belongs to someone else or it just isn’t the right time to pursue them. You have to be your own judge in this respect. This is why I’ve changed the time I use to pursue a goal. Instead of setting long-term goals or a yearly goal (except my book reading goals), I tend to look at 90 days and that’s it. If after 90 days I lose interest in something, I put it aside and focus on something else.

Sometimes you have a great goal that will go beyond 90 days. That’s ok. I would recommend breaking that goal down into a 90-day window and see where it takes you. If you achieve that interim goal, set another for the next 90 days and see what happens. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.

Your life fulfilling work could be writing, drawing, music, creating a business, creating a non-profit organization, a religious pursuit, or anything not mentioned here. Listen to yourself inside. Experiment. Find out what really wakes you up in the morning and pursue that.

I discovered my love of writing while in school. I attended college in 2003 and didn’t stop until around 2014. I earned a Bachelor’s degree, a Masters degree, and completed all coursework and what is called the comprehensives for my doctorate. I didn’t finish the dissertation but did discover I had a knack for writing. I began writing short stories soon after. None of them are published, but I enjoyed writing stories. I know what I like in a story and know that I can create stories that others will enjoy.

In January I’ll begin work on a number of books. Some of them will be non-fiction, but the ones I really look forward to are going to be fiction. I have so many ideas at this point that I’m taking the time to really figure out between now and January which one I want to start with. I’m close, but still deciding.

Whether my books become best sellers or aren’t bought by anyone is irrelevant. I just want to tell a story and get it out there. One of the best things about publishing a book is that it never goes away. It will be there for people to read forever. It’s nice to think that I will be leaving some semblance of myself that others can enjoy when I’m gone.

Have you found your life’s passion? Have you figured out what wakes you up every day? If so, start putting together a plan to pursue it.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Workout Diary – Taking the rest of the month off!

Tags

enjoying the food and drink, enjoying the holidays, Rest, Time off

Well, folks. I’m taking the rest of December off for a break from exercise. We have a lot of folks coming in from out of town, the food will be fabulous (most of which I would never eat during a serious workout routine), but I will be partaking in.

I’ll see all of you on this article posting in January.

Happy Holidays to all of you. My daily quote posts will continue.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Pablo Picasso – Procrastination

Tags

David Allen, Discomfort, Fear, Getting Things Done, Pablo Picasso, Procrastination, To-do Lists

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” – Pablo Picasso

Well, this quote deals with procrastination.

Why do we procrastinate? There are quite a few reasons. These reasons can all be distilled to two things—Fear and Discomfort.

We fear we’ll screw up. We’ll fear that we aren’t good enough. We’ll fear that we’re wasting time.

Discomfort deals with those tasks we just don’t want to do. We don’t want to clean our home, cook that meal, or go to the gym. They are all uncomfortable. Most people don’t want to do these things. So, we put things off and off and off and we end up adding to a pile of things we haven’t done that we should have.

How do we counter procrastination? By taking action. We do something. Whether it’s writing a page toward your new book, grabbing a vacuum cleaner and do one room in your house, or grabbing that first dirt dish and putting in the dishwasher. Take action, regardless of how small that thing we have to do is.

Once you complete this little action you’ll feel better. You’ll feel a sense of accomplishment. You’ll feel relief that you did one thing on that long list of to-dos.

Or don’t. It’s your life. You can let the things you need to do pile up and get to a point where you won’t know where to start. You’ll be paralyzed. Your stress levels will increase because things that are not done produce stress, particularly if you know you have to do them at some point.

So, take some time today to brainstorm and write all of the things down you need to do. Some of these things will be daily activities that you’ll have to add to some sort of checklist. Others will be “one and done” tasks. You do them once and they’re done. Others will be more complex and tasks that may take a few months to complete. With these, you’ll have to spend some time breaking that task down into meaningful steps and knock each one out as you go in the order that makes the most sense to you.

One book I read every year is Getting Things Done by David Allen. This is one of the best “how to” books on personal time management there is. I highly recommend it. The book will give you a system of tracking your tasks, executing those tasks, and how to keep moving forward. I highly recommend it.

Well, that’s it for today folks.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Earl Nightingale

“Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.” – Earl Nightingale

This is one of those great quotes that I enjoy. So many people are chasing happiness. There’s always one more thing that they need to finally be happy. If only I made more money. If only I had a guy or gal in my life. If only I could work here or own this or that.

Happiness is a state of mind. It’s just that simple. If you need something or someone to make you happy, you’ll be chasing it the rest of your life. So, be happy. Just be happy.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Workout Diary

Tags

Dental Appointments, Exercising, Holidays, Relatives, The 7-minute workout

Well, folks, more disruptions to the schedule, a Dental cleaning, and the holidays are right around the corner. I did my 7-minute workout this morning and will continue on this path until the New Year.

I’ve got another cleaning tomorrow (Dentist is doing one “quadrant” at a time) and then the relatives will begin arriving and we’re off to the holidays.

Thanks for following my postings. It really does mean a great deal to me. It is motivating to have to “report” to my reading audience because it keeps me honest. I really do appreciate all of you.

See you tomorrow!!

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Living With Change

Tags

Adapting, change, Gaining Experience, God's Love, Our Reality, Walter Scott

“We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.”  – Walter Scott

This quote reminds me of the temporal nature of this reality we live in. Our bodies age and die, attitudes change, new ideas emerge and the old is thrown away. This is the nature of our existence. So why do anything if it is all going to fall away?

Simple. We are here to gain experience and learn how to give and receive love. The changes that occur around us provide the necessary tapestry to gain the experience we need. When I look back on my life, it has been an absolute whirlwind.

I have traveled all over the world, experienced some very “exciting” things, from jumping from an airplane, falling in and out of love (multiple times), and learned a great deal from the people I have interacted with across the globe. One of the things I’ve learned is explained by this quote. Change is a part of our reality, but yet, people are the same everywhere.

We all want to be safe, we want our families to be taken care of and protected. We want our children to have a better life than the one we had. I don’t care if you are in Europe, the Middle East, or Asia–the people all want the same things. Sometimes I think God put me in all of these places to learn this fundamental truth.

Yeah, we speak different languages, we have different holidays, cultures, religious rites and rituals, but nonetheless, there are timeless truths that apply to all of us in the human race. Love, safety, improving our circumstances, and taking care of our loved ones are all part of the overarching needs all peoples pursue in one way or another.

Another thing we learn about change is that it isn’t the change that causes problems, it is our inability to adapt to the changes that cause the difficulties we experience. Once we stop fighting change, we relax, and life gets better–it smooths out. This life is all about learning this fundamental concept. The waves of life will hit you in the forms of splitting up, financial woes, health problems, death, and so many other things that just come about. When I realized that I could survive these things and be happy while I survived, my reality changed.

I survived by being creative and maintaining an attitude that I could not control what other people did, what happens in the world, or anything else. The only thing I could potentially control is my ability to accept things as they are, adapting to the changes, and moving forward. The one thing that has helped me do this is depending on something that does not change–God’s love for me.

If you take a moment and realize that God loves you, regardless of the shape or form that IT takes in your life, you’ll find that the change or whirlwind going on around you becomes a joy in your life. Without change, life here would be so boring. The change is what makes our lives worth living. We may not like all of the changes that take place, but change happens regardless of our personal preferences.

Health is good than bad. Marriages are good sometimes and not so good at other times. Our loved ones are happy and healthy and then, one day, they’re gone. No one is immune to the changes that occur in our lives. No one. So, you can either be upset with life, upset with the changes you dislike, or you can wake up and realize that without change life would be mundane, boring, and not as rich as it is now. You will also realize that without change, challenges, and hard times you will not grow. Who is motivated to change just for the heck of it?

We change to adapt to our ever-changing environments. Sometimes we adapt well. At other times we fall on our face. After a time, we get up, dust off our clothes, and start over. We find that after all of our pain, comes a sunrise and we learn that we are stronger, better, and more loving.

I hope this posting finds you well.

Until next time.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Funny Quote

Tags

family, Friends, Gratitude, Holiday Season, Johnny Carson, Recharging, reflection, Resetting

All, I’ve decided to move my Ted Talks and Funny Quotes to Sunday. It’s a good day to have a giggle and enjoy a nice video that I’ve hand-picked over a nice cup of coffee or tea, with some of your favorite music playing in the background.

Here’s today’s funny quote:

“Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.” – Johnny Carson

I’m old enough to remember the late Johnny Carson, one of America’s iconic late night talk show hosts. Johnny was a nightly companion when I was growing up because Mom and Dad loved watching him. His humor was always terrific and he had some of the most interesting people as guests.

Today’s talk show hosts just don’t hold a light to this guy. I wish all of you, regardless of your faith, a terrific holiday season, filled with joy, love, and companionship. This time of year is truly my favorite because I missed so many of these while I served in the US Army. Now, I really take the time to enjoy myself, my family and friends and relish every moment.

I can only hope that you find peace, companionship, and have some time to really enjoy your holiday season. I use this time to reflect, recharge, and prepare for another great year.

If you are one of my followers, Thank you so much for taking the time to follow my blog. I just started it this year and have learned a great deal from your blogs and find new and exciting content here every day.

Happy Holidays to all of you!

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Workout Diary

Tags

family, Friends, Holiday Season, Self-Knowledge, Time off

Hey all!

I’ve made what I call a “Command Decision”.

We have had so many interruptions the last few weeks with unannounced friends and family coming in for the holidays, that it has been tough keeping some form of schedule for the gym and my exercise.

So, we’re going to take a few weeks off to enjoy the holidays, eat some stuff I probably shouldn’t, and spend some quality time with the family, friends, and visitors that show up on our doorstep.

I’ll be picking up my workout diary again in January 2018. Yeah, I know, one of my goals was to get down to 15% bodyfat, but there are just too many temptations around the holidays and I don’t want to deny myself all of the great things that are a part of the holiday season.

I’ll be starting this part of my blog again after the New Year!

Happy Holidays to everyone. I hope your holiday season is as nice as mine will be.

Keep following and reading my other postings on daily quotes, ted talks, and anything else I come up with.

See you again in January where we kick off another terrific year of health and fitness.

Dave