Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Changing your life…

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Carol Burnett, Changing your life, Making decisions, Research

“Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.” – Carol Burnett

Are you satisfied with your life? If you are terrific. If not, how would you like your life to be? What actions can you take to make the changes necessary to get the life you want.

I think one of the biggest challenges all of us has is the influence of advertisers and marketers who try to show us what the good life is. These advertisements show a life that is typically unattainable. They also influence us in many respects to do or buy things we really don’t need or want. The other influence is from those around us. Maybe you are jealous of someone who has a nice car, nice house, nice boyfriend or girlfriend. The point I’m trying to make here is that some of us are unhappy with our lives because we are being shown daily what a “good life” is and we are convinced that our lives aren’t good enough. Subsequently, we chase after a life that perhaps we do not really want.

The other challenge when we seek a different existence is the inability to decide what we want. Do I want this or that? Do I need this or that? Do I need to find a better place to live? Do I need to get in better shape? Do I need to go back to school to get a better job with more security, pay, and benefits?

Take your time when deciding about what you want. Really contemplate on it. You’ve lived the way you have for some time. There’s no rush.

Once you have found something you’re interested in doing, investigate what others before you have done to achieve what you want. You’ll find some good advice out there in books, online blogs or articles, even YouTube videos, and Vlogs. Once you’ve decided on what you want, set a plan and go for it, adjusting along the way.

Personally, I’ve found I wanted an uncomplicated, minimalist life. I don’t want to carry around a lot of paper or books, so I scanned in all my important papers and only buy kindle books or borrow books from the library. I got rid of all the clothes I never wear. I keep my wardrobe to what I need in a 7-day week, other than a suit I always keep handy for special events.

I also wanted to focus on my health and wellness. To accomplish this, I read as much as I could on these topics. I found out that the two biggest contributors to wellness are meditation, exercise, and a good diet, filled with natural foods (no processed foods).

Another area I found that contributes to my well being is doing things for others. This led me to do some internet searches for acts of kindness. Some of these are simple, easy to do, and don’t take a lot of time. It also feels good when I think about what the person would feel like on the receiving end of my giving. One thing I do is randomly drop a sticky note with words like: “You are loved”, “You are amazing”, or “You are appreciated”.

I also discovered during my journey the necessity for rituals in my daily life. My rituals include daily writing, daily reading, daily contemplation, daily religious study, daily learning, daily journaling, and daily exercise. These things literally transformed my life. I have a purpose. I have a schedule to follow. I have something to look forward to.

I hope some of these suggestions help you. They have helped me tremendously.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Get yourself out there…

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Getting out there, Interact, Listen, Opening up, Self-protection, Walls

“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.” – Jim Rohn

To really be engaged in life we must be willing to put ourselves out there. This is hard to do sometimes. Maybe we’re shy, maybe we are a little untrusting, or perhaps we are suffering from a loss and we only want to be alone and suffer in solitude.

I have experienced some real “knock-down” life experiences. Some of these were self-inflicted, others just happened. Each experience we have is important to our growth.

If you are struggling with ideas to “get out there”, here are a few for you:

• Find a local meetup and attend a meeting (www.meetup.com)
• Attend a religious service
• Go to a local coffee shop to do some work on your laptop or journal
• Go to your local gym and workout
• Visit your local library
• When the weather permits, go to a park
• Attend a public venue like a mall, a flea market, or festival

There are a lot of ways to just be around other people. There are ways to open yourself up. Get out there, make new friends, meet new people, experience things. Be vulnerable, listen, and share a little of yourself with others.

You’ll find that sharing and interacting with others will reestablish your faith in other people. You’ll find new connections, new people to converse with, and learn more about other people, while learning more about yourself.

Be willing to embrace sadness, happiness, and every type of emotion. To get one you have to be willing to accept the others. Take down the walls you’ve built around yourself and let it all in. You’ll find life to be very exhilarating when you do.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Workout Diary

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Cardio, healthy living, strength training, Workout Routine

Well, folks, today was the last workout of week 4 of my workout routine. I really enjoyed this program and will repeat it again starting on Monday of this week. The tweak to this program will involve doing some cardio on my off days so that I will be in the gym 7 days a week.

Routine:

Monday – Legs and Abs

Tuesday – Chest and Triceps

Wednesday – Cardio

Thursday – Back and Biceps

Friday – Shoulders

Saturday – Cardio

Sunday – Cardio

This will be another 4-week plan and I’m excited to get started. I hope you are all having a great weekend!

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quotes – The Plus Factor

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Deterioration, improvement, Selfishness, Serving Others, The Plus Factor

“The more we do, the more we can do.” – William Hazlitt

This quote speaks to me about our ability to continually improve or continually deteriorate. There are some days where everything I do builds on previous successes. At other times, I feel less than motivated to do anything. Interestingly, it is easy to fall into a pattern pursuing improvement or deterioration.

Have you ever witnessed someone who is happy and motivated? Everything they do is out of joy. Everything they do adds to them. Conversely, we probably all know that one friend or acquaintance who is avoiding life. They drink too much, do drugs, engage in overindulgences of all kinds, never realizing how they are wasting away their own life.

Positive lives filled with continual improvement are driven by goals and achievement; negative lives are those that are whimsical, procrastinating, and lack focus. One life is increasing, while the other is decreasing. I think all of us have experienced a traumatic situation that has put us in a tailspin. We lose all motivation. We lose that spark within that encourages us to pursue higher achievement. We stop living.

I’ve experienced these dark periods of life. Divorce, bankruptcy, losing my way, and feeling that I am some sort of victim that life will never give anything to. Have you experienced this? It is a tough place to be and sometimes the hole we’ve dug for ourselves is so deep and dark, we don’t even remember what a good life is. What did I discover during these dark times?

I discovered that much of our misery is caused by focus on the self. When you focus only on your feelings, your comforts, your wants, the selfishness begins to isolate you. It creates an emptiness that has no end. When I began to realize this, I sought to look outward. I sought to give of myself to others. How could I make someone else’s day just a little better?

When you focus outward and serve others, even if it’s a smile or wave at a stranger, a light begins to show itself. Our suffering begins to taper as we focus more and more on others. I can’t explain this but do know it’s true. The more we focus on others, the less we think about ourselves. The more we give, the more we get back.

Imagine a world where there was a peak of achievement. Once that achievement was accomplished there is no “better”, no improvement, no more hills to climb. Can you imagine how boring that existence would be?

I believe that we will never be perfect but the road to perfection is infinite. There is always one more thing we can do, one more step to take, one more place to go. This plus factor is what makes being human a wonderful experience. We can always achieve more, learn more, listen more, love more, and so on. This is what this quote means to me. “The more we do, the more we can do.” What a great life this is.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Funny Friday!

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Friday Funny, Funny, Jim Carrey

“Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” – Jim Carrey

True comedy is funny because there is always some truth in it. It causes us to laugh at ourselves and take life a little less seriously. I hope you enjoy it!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Thinking before doing

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Contemplation, David Allen, Execution, Getting Things Done, Learning from Others, Prioritization, reflection

“Follow effective actions with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” – Peter Drucker

Anytime I’ve taken the time to really think through a project before I begin working on it, the more effective I am. It took me a long time to realize the wisdom in this. I, like a lot of my colleagues, would just jump in and get working only to find out we wasted time, missed critical steps, or hit the wrong target.

This quote offers a simple truth: Anything we create is first created in our mind, then brought into reality. I accomplish this kind of work by thinking about what I want to do. Then, I take some time to research, investigate, inquire about what it will take to accomplish a certain goal. Most of the time, someone else has already done this. So, it makes sense to look at what steps they took and then use this as a model for my own projects. Obviously, there may be some unique steps you need to incorporate to accomplish your specific goals but always remain open to other people’s experiences. They may offer a way to do something that helps avoid problems they already experienced.

This idea was reinforced by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free productivity. He talks about the natural planning model, which looks like this:

• Defining Purpose and Principles
• Outcome visioning
• Brainstorming
• Organizing
• Identifying Next Actions

Each of these steps is natural to the way we create things. We first develop an idea and begin thinking about how that idea would look in our reality. We then brainstorm and research all of the things we need to do to make our idea a real thing. We then organize the actions we uncover during our research and brainstorming and then begin working through these actions in the form of next actions.

The real challenge in using this model or way of working is to take the time to really reflect. What do we want? How do we get what we want? Take your time. Think. Then execute. After you begin executing the action steps you’ve devised, you’ll begin to realize some gaps or the need for further action steps, particularly if this is something you’ve never done before. That’s ok. The key is to reflect each day on what we did yesterday, plan what we will do tomorrow, and execute.

Planning becomes easier when we learn the length of time it takes to do something, it also helps us figure out what is really important for the next day and helps us complete things in the order we’ve set them to be executed. Take some time at the end of your day or at the beginning of your day to choose which action steps you’ll take and then get them on your calendar, keeping in mind all of the other commitments you have made (dentist appointments, gym time, etc.). Once you have your plan in place, just knock out the steps. Then do the same thing the next day.

David Allen defines a project as a task which contains more than one step to accomplish. Subsequently, you probably have a lot more projects to accomplish than you would initially think. Take the time to brainstorm each of these projects. What do you need to do first? What do you need to do next? What other steps need to be added based on your current activities? Take the time to think through all of these things and you’ll get closer and closer to your goals much sooner and in a more organized fashion. You’ll also capture the things you learned along the way, so if you ever tackle this type of project again, you’ll have a much easier time knocking that one off of your to-do list the next time around.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope you have a great Wednesday!

Until next time.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Hiring up..

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Hiring, Lee Iacocca

“I hire people brighter than me and I get out of their way.” – Lee Iacocca

I’m a little under the weather today folks. Caught a cold and trying to get rid of it by taking care of myself. I hope you are having a great Monday!!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk – Listening to the other side

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bias, Inclusion, Learning, Listening, Racism, Tolerating

This is a truly eye-opening Ted Talk. I have been working on this for the last few years. It is really important to understand others, even with diametrically opposed views. We are all here. We are all on this planet. Ignoring or nullifying someone else’s opinion is fruitless. As Zachary points out in this video, we must listen to the other side to learn.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Forgiveness

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Contentment, Forgiveness, Inner Peace, Love

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.” – Reinhold Niebuhr

Have you ever held a grudge? Have you ever felt uncomfortable around a loved one you wronged and haven’t made up with? Have you ever thought about something you did in the past and not forgiven yourself for your actions? These are all deep and heartfelt questions.

When we hold a grudge, we hold onto a past transgression as if it happened yesterday. The grudge mindset is self-destructive. This mindset continually relives a wrong, repeatedly. In most cases, it blows the action out of proportion and sustains the grudge feeling even more.

If we’ve wronged someone else and fail to apologize, the situation festers and gets worse with time. When we see that person again, we either tuck that wrong away or avoid any type of talk about it. We feel guilty, we feel ashamed, but we don’t know how to progress. Instead, we avoid, we ignore, we may even cut off contact with the person we wronged because of the shame that arises inside when we think about them or see them in person.

When we do something wrong, something we know is wrong, a part of us dies. Like the situation above, we avoid thinking about it, we ignore it, we put it aside. We lie to ourselves to keep some semblance of internal peace. But, the thing we did is still there, poking and prodding us whenever and wherever it can.

How do we avoid all this trouble? We can simply forgive. We can forgive ourselves for something we did, realizing we are learning. We can apologize to the person we wronged as soon as we recognize we harmed them in some way. We can forgive ourselves.

Forgiveness repairs. Forgiveness reduces tension. Forgiveness expresses respect for those we have wronged and to ourselves for being human.

If you have someone in your life you need to forgive, do so. If you have that “thing” in your past that you know was wrong but did anyway, forgive yourself. If there is someone you know that you wronged, apologize. They may forgive you or they may not. Regardless, apologize and move on. Close the loop.

In the future, move more quickly to forgive yourself and others. Apologize immediately if you’ve hurt someone’s feelings or screwed something up. Forgiveness is about love. Forgiveness is about loving others despite their shortcomings, and more importantly, loving yourself for your own shortcomings.

Forgiveness is the final form of love.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Funny Friday

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Funny Quotes

“All generalizations are false, including this one.” – Mark Twain

Have a great weekend everyone!

Until next time…

Dave