Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Compensating

Tags

Attacking the Week, Compensating, Do What you Can, Making Adjustments, Monday, motivation, sticking with the plan, Tracking Results

One of the hardest time to be motivated is when I’m sick. Last week, I did most of the things I set out to, but put a lot of it on hold to recover. So, here we are! I’m finally over this cold. I still have remnants of sickness, still blowing the nose and the like, but the difficult part is over. I attribute this to knowing what to do to take care of myself.

The first thing I did was turn off exercise. There’s no sense in it. You go to some popular websites and they talk about driving through, or continuing to exercise, but honestly, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. When you get sick, your whole body is in a war with the virus or bacteria that broke through. I believe the best way to fight this is to go to a doctor (if needed), get the necessary drugs or OTC medicine, get plenty of rest, drink a lot of water, and stick with the regimen of less is better when you’re sick. For me, this works. For others, going to the gym and continuing with their exercise regimen works for them. Enough said.

This week, we’re back on track. Here’s my schedule:

• Reading daily
• Working on my Fiction Book daily
• Exercise (but taking it easy) daily
• Learning daily (currently taking an MS Publisher course)
• Coding daily (Python is the language I’m learning)
• Meditating daily
• Blogging daily
• Posting quotes and articles to Social Media daily

This is it for the week, folks. I hope everyone is having a great week so far. Happy Monday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – I’m Sick

Tags

Aches and pains, Cold, Fever, Flu, Grinding Through, Pushing forward, Sick, Sore Throat, Stuffy, Using Common Sense

Well, folks I’m sick. I have the flu or a cold or something. That being said, I’ll still plug away at my daily rituals and tasks, but will avoid exercise until I’m back to normal. For me, a flu will normally stick around for a few days with symptoms lingering a few days after I’ve beat the majority of it back.

I will not be posting a workout routine today. I’ll just be chilling out with herbal teas, lots of water, and some rest in between my work sessions. It’s no fun being sick, but there is still a lot we can do to tackle our tasks and keep moving forward.

I hope all of you have a terrific week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – End of Year Recap

Tags

2020, Achievements, Failures, family, Friends, Goals, New Year, Planning, Strategy

Here I am for one day to document my goals for 2019 and how it all panned out throughout the year. When I return finally on the 2nd of January 2020, I’ll post my 2020 goals. I wanted to get this out to you before New Year’s Eve as promised. So here we go!

Physical

1. Develop a life-long workout routine for home and gym
2. Reduce Weight to 200 lbs
3. Get to your Dental Appointments
4. Get Annual Physical
5. Chiropractor monthly to keep back and joints in order
6. Eye exam

Learning

1. Complete 12 courses online this year

Financial

1. Save 1200.00 by year’s end

Spiritual

1. Complete Book discussions
2. Participate on panel at Regional
3. Participate at HI retreat if invited
4. Kick off the Art of Spiritual Dreaming
5. Complete Light and Sound Discourse
6. Send in 12 Initiate reports
7. Spiritual exercises 20 minutes per day
8. Read Shariyat (My Bible) daily

Reading

1. Complete 48 books by year’s end

Writing

1. Finish Recruiting Book this year
2. Learn outlining for nonfiction books
3. Learn outlining for novel creating steps

Blogging

1. Build followers to 1000 by year’s end

Social

1. Stay in touch with family and friends

So everything that is in red is where I fell short of my yearly goals. Here’s what I learned.

Reduce Weight to 200 lbs – Missed

Losing weight is all about calorie deficit. You won’t lose weight if you do not decrease your intake. This is hard, no doubt about it, but I’ll be adding this again to my yearly goals for 2020. I’ve purchased a food tracker and will continue to strive to build a nutritious diet that is sustainable for the long-term. If any of you have followed my blog for this year, you know I gave the KETO diet a try. It didn’t work. I lost weight, but could not sustain the diet for the long term. Back to the drawing board.

Save 1200.00 by year’s end

Again, another tough one. You would think it was easy, but when you’re on a retirement income, it is not. I have morphed my budget in the last few months that should help me with this goal. This will also go back on my list for 2020. I plan on saving more than this, but this is the goal, since I couldn’t hit it this year.

Build followers to 1000 by year’s end

Another tough one. I thought I would make it, but have just recently breached the 650 mark for followers. This will be a goal of mine again, but this year will be more realistic. I’ll shoot for 800 by year’s end 2020. I’ve got some plans to change out some of my content for the upcoming year, sticking with the topics people enjoyed and leaving aside those topic areas where no one seemed to be too interested or where I wasn’t getting the traffic I wanted.

What I’m going to keep.

I had great success in the areas of book reading, classes taken and completed, and book writing. I also knocked it out of the park on my exercise, my spiritual areas, and my social areas. I haven’t finalized what my goal list will look like yet. I’ll be thinking about those things tomorrow and New Year’s Day.

I know a lot of people have given up on setting New Year’s resolutions, because they seem to fail or lose interest after a few months. I would urge you to set them anyway. Just don’t set too many. Shoot for one or two areas you’d like to improve this year and stick with them. Who cares if you miss the mark, the key is the process of trying to meet them. It really makes life very interesting. You will also make some progress. Relish that! That’s where you can become even more motivated. When you begin to see progress in an area you want to improve, you’ll be that much more driven to keep pushing!!

One thing I discovered is that my goals were not specific enough in some areas. I will reword them this year, so they are measurable. Tracking goals is really important. To properly track them, they have to be specific metrics. You’ll see this in my upcoming goal’s list.

Well, that’s it for today! I hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season. I did. My brother and sister came out for the holidays and it was terrific! We had a great time as a family.

Happy New Year, readers! I hope all of you have a wonderful time at the parties you are going to or hosting. I also wish each of you great happiness, adventure, love, and an outstanding 2020! Remember: You can’t lose if you don’t quit!!!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Mondays – Never Give Up

Tags

Always a Solution, Always an Answer, Always an Opportunity, End of Year Push, motivation, Persistence, Success

Never, never, never give up.

Winston Churchill

There is always a way. Wise words.

Too many give up on their dreams. They blame others. They stop searching for a solution when one is waiting for them around the next corner. Don’t be one of these people. You can find solutions to your problems. You can find ways to overcome obstacles. You can succeed when it is seemingly all lost.

We only have 15 days left. Try to knock out a little bit more. Take a few more steps. Finish the year strong!

Here’s my schedule for the week:

• Exercise daily
• Meditate daily
• Read daily
• Learn daily
• Code daily
• Finish my assigned tasks and to-dos daily

I know you’ve got family coming in. You’re decorating. You’re doing all of that last-minute shopping. Put a little time each day toward your most important goals. You can still get a lot done, despite the “extras” during the holidays.

If you don’t make it, fine. You have next year. Your goals aren’t missed unless you stop working toward them. Always keep moving forward.

I hope all of you have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Mondays – Failure is Not a Waste of Time

Tags

Defeat, failure, Keep going, Learning, Setting Goals, Stretch Goals, The Journey

It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Bill Gates

As we wind down 2019, I wanted to use that time to address failure.

Failure is a teacher. It is not something to get upset about or worry about. Failure shows you how not to do something. It teaches us where we went wrong. If we pay attention. If you fail and learn nothing, the true failure is failing to learn something.

I set some stretch goals at the beginning of the year. Did I meet all of them? No. Was I planning to miss the mark? No. That’s what stretch goals are about. You stretch beyond what you did previously to see if you can pull it off. I’ll get into detail in a later post when I do my end-of-year evaluation and reset for next year, but when you achieve more, feel great! When you fail to achieve what you set out to do, learn from it. Did you stretch too far? Did you miss some principle or lack the technique or ability to do more? This is where the true wins are. You can fail over and over and over again. The key is to keep going.

Here’s my weekly schedule:

• Blog daily
• Work on my Story Beats daily
• Exercise daily
• Meditate daily
• Socialize daily
• Journal daily
• Learn daily
• Code daily
• Share articles and quotes daily

When you set your goals for next year (hopefully sometime this month), keep in mind that you may fail to achieve some of them. That’s OK. Goals are meant to stretch us. Sometimes you can’t stretch enough to achieve them. The real benefit of this exercise is to continue to do better than you did yesterday.

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Completing your yearly goals

Tags

Consistency, December!, End of Year Eval, Holiday Season, motivation, Serving Others, Setting New Goals, Weekly Schedule

Well, we are in the last month of the year. It went by quickly didn’t it?

This is the month to grind it out before we hit the holiday weeks. When the holiday week hits, the family will be coming, you’ll be doing last-minute holiday shopping, and it will preclude anything you want to finish. So dig in now, at the early part of the month and knock down any of the goals you have left. It’s not too late.

Between Christmas and New Year’s is the perfect time to take a tally of what you set out to do this year, where you missed the mark, and plan accordingly for the new year. There are a few goals I missed, not due to a lack of effort, but they reached a little too far. This year, I’ll use that data and set more realistic goals that I can achieve by the end of next year. They’ll still stretch me, but won’t be so far off in the distance that it will be impossible to accomplish.

One of the greatest learnings I have discovered this year is consistently showing up. I started the year with a goal of reading 48 books, at last count, I am at 60+ for the year and still going. I also finished the rough draft of my non-fiction book on technical recruiting and began work on my fiction story. These would not have been possible, had I not done something every day to move the needle forward.

What goals did you set? Did you accomplish them? Did you fall short like I did? If you fell short, how will you goal yourself in that area next year? I’m really curious to hear from others on this topic. Feel free to respond in the comments below. Ok, here’s my weekly schedule!

This week:

• Work on Story Beats for my Fiction book daily
• Exercise daily (see my workout routine for the week of Dec 1, 2019)
• Read 1 hour daily
• Meditate daily
• Complete 1 session for each of the 5 classes I’m taking daily
• Clear the circles on my Apple Watch Daily
• Hang out at my local coffee shops or a restaurant daily
• Read my Bible Daily
• Do a random act of kindness while I’m out running errands daily
• Help my wife with her Master’s Degree work daily
• Have some fun daily (Netflix, Xbox, NFL Football, or Disney+) daily
• Log my food in MyFitnessPal daily

Well, that’s it for now, folks! I hope each of you are looking forward to the holidays like I am. I realize there are some in my audience who dread the holidays and my heart goes out to you. You know what I’ve found? When you’re down, volunteer. Go to an animal shelter, an orphanage, hospice, or some other charitable organization and pitch in. It’s a great time to do this, and it is also a way to focus on something else. I have always found that giving and serving others is a great way to cheer up.

Have a great Monday, all!

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Getting Started

Tags

Baseline, Goals, habits, improvement, Mark Twain, Planning for 2020, Stretch Goals, Tracking

” The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain

Courtesy: Brainy Quotes

We are getting close to that time of year when we begin looking ahead to the new year. What did we do? Did we achieve what we set out to do? Did we give up on some things?

Take the month of December and think about 3 or 4 things you want to do next year. I would recommend setting a goal physically (health), intellectually (learning), social (improving/establishing relationships), and spiritual (if you follow a religious path).

When you select a goal, be realistic, set milestones you believe you’ll hit every 90 days, and track your results digitally or on paper. I’ll let you know how I did this year before the end of 2019 and will share my goals for 2020.

Goals don’t have to be crazy. Maybe you’d like to read more. Good! Set a goal to read 12 books this year. Physical goals could be about nutrition, losing weight, exercising more consistently or something along these lines. Intellectually, you could set out to learn something (instrument, language, computer programing, digital art making, etc.). Socially, you could join a local meetup, a book club, volunteer for charity work, or spend more time with your family and friends. If you are religious, set yourself a religious goal. Maybe you could volunteer more or read/study more, or get more consistent with the practices your religion asks of you.

The key is to start and start early. The best place to start is to find out where you are right now, then set some goals that will stretch you in the areas you want to grow in. I picked these four areas, but you may have more to choose from. It’s up to you. Take some time doing this, write out your plans, set dates and times when you look to be at a certain level and you’ll do well.

Well, that’s it for now. Here’s my week:

Before I get started, this is a holiday week for Americans. I have family coming in on Wednesday to celebrate Thanksgiving at my home. These days will be mandatory do nothing days to hang out with my sister and family.

Mon-Tue (Work); Wed-Thu – off for Thanksgiving; Fri-Sun (Work)

• Exercise daily
• Meditate daily
• Work on my Fiction Book daily
• Blog daily
• Take my classes daily
• Code daily
• Journal daily
• Socialize in the community daily
• Read my bible and religious study daily
• Have some fun daily

Have a great week, everyone.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Do Not Stop

Tags

Consistency, Continuous Improvement, Elastic Habits, habits, motivation, rituals, Stephen Guise

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

Confucius

Here we are! I like this quote because it aligns perfectly with a book I’m reading, called Elastic Habits by Stephen Guise. His new book describes how to have flexible habits so that on days that suck, you do the bare minimum to continue your streak, medium level habits for normal days when you are motivated to get something done, and elite level for those days that you are wired to crush the day. He also provides alternative tasks that augment your goals. Let’s say you want to get in the habit of exercising every day.

You could pick weight exercises, cardio exercises, and perhaps a sport like swimming, basketball, or tennis. On a bad day, you do a pushup, walk for a minute, or knock a few balls around on the court. For your medium-level you could do 20 pushups, or a 20-minute run, or play a set of tennis with a friend. For elite-level you could do 100 pushups, run for 45 minutes, or swim 10 laps in the pool. This lateral as well as multiple levels of your habits, provide you with maximal choice and the ability to elevate or deflate your daily accomplishments based on your mood, time available or energy available.

If you are interested, you can pick up a copy on Amazon. Elastic Habits on Amazon.

I am not an affiliate, just a HUGE fan of Stephen’s work. The book will run you 7.99 and is only available in e-book form.

The advice provided by Confucius aligns perfectly with this book, because Stephen provides you a mechanism to always take one step forward with all of your habits. I can’t recommend this book enough!

Here’s my week:

• Get an advertisement in the Jeffersonian for my book discussion on Dreams
• Get copyright message on Poster for book discussion on Dreams
• Help my wife study for a teacher’s certification test daily
• Exercise daily (see workout routine)
• Eat a vegetarian breakfast (altered from my workout routine for breakfast instead of lunch) daily
• Meditate daily
• Take online classes daily
• Blog daily
• Work on my fiction book daily (outlining, story beats, character development, world creation, etc.)
• Read a chapter daily
• Post quotes daily
• Share an article daily
• Eat out for lunch daily

Well, that’s it for this week folks. I hope all of you achieve your goals and have fun while you are doing it. Living a life with healthy habits is a wonderful thing. This new book, Elastic Habits, will show you how to do it with no chance of failure.

Have a GREAT week, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Act as if

Tags

Achievement, Act as if, Faith, Goals, Keep going, motivation, Optimism

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Helen Keller

How many of your friends talk about doing this or that, but never quite get around to it? I used to do that all the time, many years ago. What did I discover? I discovered that we have to act as if. We have to act as if we have the skills, knowledge, and ability to achieve whatever goals you set for yourself. At a minimum, this will at least help you move forward. You can only fail at something if you quit. It’s just that simple.

So dream. Dream big. Then, set your sails for that destination.

Here’s my week:

Build an annotated bibliography

Reduce my topic of focus down to a research question

Read daily

Write daily

Learn daily

Spiritual Exercise/Meditate daily

Exercise daily

I hope all of you have a terrific week! You’ve got this!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday -Here We Go!!

Tags

Achievement, Consistency, Dreading Monday, Drive, Goals, habits, motivation, rituals, Routines

It’s time to grind folks!

Are you one of those folks who dreads Monday? I think it’s pretty common across all cultures. For those of us that work Monday – Friday, the weekend is our relax, binge-watch, and laze-around time. Then we have to get up on Monday and head to work.

Since retirement, I’ve tried to keep a Monday-Friday schedule. Last week I tried an experiment of not having a real weekend. In other words, I kept my daily schedule consistent across 7 days. I still have a blow-off day on Sunday called “my do nothing day”, but this last week I continued to plug away at all the things I schedule for myself daily.  What did I discover? My Monday wasn’t that bad when I consistently kept doing what I normally do during the Monday-Friday workweek.

For me, consistency is the key to accomplishing what I have set out to do. This consistency is what keeps me going. I love to habitualize everything. I find comfort in the consistency of my schedule and the automation of daily tasks and routines. The key, however, is I love everything I am doing.

When I retired I knew I would still want to be active. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of binge-watching videos, playing video games 12 hours a day, and all the rest. I wanted to finally do what I have always wanted to do–focus on exercise, learning, writing, reading, meditating, and coding. Subsequently, this is my day. I love what I do. Since I love what I do, I am no longer “working”. It is a great place to be.

For those of you that are still doing the 9-5, find aspects of your job that you love. Then, carry some of these things into the weekend with you. Instead of piling up all the personal things you have to do during the weekend, spread them out through the week. Clean as you go, do your laundry in batches, prep all of your meals on Saturday or Sunday. What you’ll find is your weekend will slowly begin to blend in with your workweek and each day will be more consistent.

I started doing this in my final years in professional recruiting. I used to do something work-related each weekend day. Maybe I would source for candidates and begin building out call logs for my work week. Maybe I would do some research into some company or new technology hitting the market place. I could even knock out some social networking. I thought that if I make everyday the same, there will be no more “Monday dread” because there would be no separation from my work day and my weekend.

Give this a try. You may be like me. You may enjoy the consistency of your day and thrive on it. I know I do. I just feel good when I can knock out little chuncks of my goals each day. I wake up each day knowing what I am going to do and it never changes. This consistency is my life line. I’ll stop here.

Here’s my schedule for the week:

• Work on my book daily
• Work on my blog daily
• Learn daily
• Journal daily
• Meditate/Spiritual Exercise daily
• Exercise daily (See my Workout Routine Posting today)
• Eat less than 2500 calories daily
• Read daily
• Get out of the house and interact with the public daily

Ok, folks. Get out there and crush your goals and have a great week ahead!

Until next time…

Dave