Daily Ramblings – Workout Routine – Week of July 13, 2020.

Tags

Body circuits, Constistency, Discipline, Exercise Bands, Home Workouts, Improvise, Overcome

Happy Monday, peeps!

This week’s routine will again be at home, because of the gym closures in our area. It appears we in the U.S. jumped the gun a little too quickly and are not facing some pretty big numbers of people getting the nasty bug running around. So now, many states are re-instituting lock downs in areas that are most affected.

This is the beauty of planning ahead. I developed a pretty decent workout routine with exercise bans and I am glad I 1) purchased them when I did and 2) use them on my workout days. It’s cool how a little bit of improvisation can eliminate the annoyance of not having a gym to go to right now.

On with the show!

Monday – Saturday – Full body circuits (3)

Full body circuit: Squats, Bridges, Ab crunches, Incline Chest Press, Triceps extensions, Bicep curls, Bent-over rows, Shoulder presses, and Calf presses. I try to do a set of 10 for each body part with no rest for the entire circuit, then rest and kick into the next circuit after about 2 minutes of hydration and resting.

I hope each of you are working out ways to continue your exercise routines, despite outside, uncontrollable circumstances.

See you at the finish line!

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Storytime Sunday – New Posting

Tags

Entertaining, Fun, Monthly, New Posting, Short Story, Story telling, Sunday

Folks, I had this idea a few months ago and I’m going to give it a shot. Initially, I’ll commit to one short story per month. If I can pull that off, I’ll begin bi-monthly posts, perhaps weekly, if I have enough ideas. We’ll see. I just wanted to give everyone a head’s up, so you can keep an eye out for it.

This is going to be fun!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Act As If.

Tags

Atwood, Dorothea Brande, Execute, Masterclass, motivation, No excuses, Patterson, Writing

To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.

Dorothea Brande

I’ve been busy taking a lot of writing courses on Masterclass. If you’ve not taken any on here, it is a great platform and the teachers (experts in their craft) are wonderful to listen to and watch. There is one underlying theme common across all the writers I’ve been watching—write. No excuses, no worrying about whether it is good or bad, just write.

My favorite so far has been Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale. She said that the wastebasket is your friend and God made it just for you. Her point is that if you can’t work it out, trash it and start with another idea. The same goes with your initial draft. You can revise it. So, no excuses—WRITE!!

It is liberating to keep the mindset that you cannot fail. You really can’t fail when it comes down to it. Even the exceptional writers have been rejected by publishers, or written books that won’t ever be seen by the public. They keep writing because this is what they do.

I’ve also begun to get the idea that writing on paper is probably the best way to create. There are no distractions, you can get your ideas down on paper without the temptation to auto-correct or edit what you are doing, and you can get the first draft done! James Patterson, another author who offers a class on Masterclass, said to drive through the first draft like a freight train. Like Atwood, he made it clear that the rewriting will also occur. Get the story out of your head and onto paper. Then the real work can begin.

Keep this quote in the back of your mind as you tackle that next challenge. You’ll be more motivated when you realize that the project is not complete until you say it is.

Have a great week, everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Week of April 27, 2020.

Tags

Mental, motivation, Physical, pumped up, recharge, Social, Spiritual, vacation week

It’s Monday!!

Time for another installment of my Motivation Monday. I’m enjoying a vacation this week, but still take a bit each day to tackle my highest priorities: Reading, Writing, Learning, Exercising, Spirituality, and interacting with family and friends. Oh, and video games! I’m currently playing a game called Rage 2 and it’s quite good, if you like open world adventure games. Here we go!

Physical – eat right, drink water, follow CDC guidelines, exercise, and get plenty of rest.

Mental – Continue coding work, read, write, and learn

Social – Stay in touch with family and friends as best I can with the lockdown, post meaningful posts and informative articles on my social media channels, keep up my blog and interact with other authors and comments

Spiritual – Spiritual exercises, spiritual readings.

Nothing specific this week, folks. I’m taking my first staycation of the year. Have a great week and remember to take some vacation time too. It is great to recharge the brain and body with relaxation, mindless video games, and hanging out with the family.

Have an awesome week, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spread Your Wings Sunday – Weekly Challenge Week of April 12, 2020

Tags

Brainstorm, Execute, Make a list, Plan, Prioritize, Spread Your Wings, Sunday, Weekly Challenge

This week’s challenge: Go through your to-do list or create one. Then decide what is the most important thing to get done first, and so on. Prioritize the most important tasks you need to get done first, brainstorm and plan, and execute.

This will help you knock down that to-do list that continues to grow and get you back on track doing the most important stuff first. Procrastinators (like I used to be), tend to focus on the easy stuff, while those big, painful projects just sit there. Before you know it, the year is gone, and you still have those big things sitting there. Prioritize those big things and get’em done. You’ll feel great when you do. The easy little tasks will still be there when you’re done.

As always, if you do this challenge, reply to this posting in the comments. I’d like to hear how this helped you.

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Spread Your Wings Sunday – Challenge Week of March 22, 2020.

Tags

Connect, Coursera, Duo, Facebook messenger, FaceTime, family, Friends, Learn something, Separated, Skype, Take a course

Here’s your weekly challenge:

Challenge:

Take a free course on Coursera

There are a ton of courses on this site that should interest anyone. Get in there and take a course. You’re hunkered down in your home. Why not?

Alternate challenge:

Use a video chat app, like Skype, Google Duo, FaceTime, or Facebook Messenger to connect with family who are separate from you. It make take a bit getting coordinated with the other person, particularly if they are not that great with technology, but it’s a great way to stay in touch with people and it’s fun!

Stay safe, stay informed, and stay calm.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Week of March 16, 2020 – Updated

Tags

Blogging, Coronavirus, Exercise, Learning, motivation, Reading, social media, spirituality, Writing

***Both of my gyms have closed. I’ll be moving all of my workouts into the home with my exercise bands.*** 

Well, it’s another week, folks!

What are you working on? As always, I packed my week with reading, writing, educating myself, spiritual work, and exercise. It’s going to be great fun!

My schedule:

• Scene construction for my fiction book – daily.
• Blogging – daily.
• Spiritual reading – daily.
• Spiritual exercises (meditation) – daily.
• Exercise – daily (see my workout routine) – daily.
• Algebra, Spanish, Python, NLP classes – daily.
• Post articles and quotes to social media – daily.
• Read writing book, fiction book, and Bible – daily.
• Journal – daily.

With all the news about the coronavirus (COVID-19), I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss it briefly. My advice: take all measures specified by your government. If you get sick, stay home, watch your symptoms, and get yourself to a hospital if your symptoms get worse.

Take care of yourself. Eat right, drink plenty of fluids, keep social distance, and help out your friends and family if they need it. My folks are in their late 70s and early 80s, so I’ll be on hand to step in and help if they get sick. We’re in a pretty small town and have not had any cases arise yet. We’re monitoring it.

What to do? Read, catch up on your movie watching, pay attention to your new outlets, exercise at home if your gym is closed or too far away, and follow any protocols your employer has put in place. My brother, sister, wife, niece, and nephew have all been moved to remote work/school, so life will be different for a few weeks.

Most important: Do Not Panic. I know it’s hard with the 24-hour news cycle, but use your common sense and don’t go overboard. Everything will be alright.

Have a great week, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Funny Friday – Another Little Johnny Joke

Tags

Chuckle, Funny Friday, Giggle, Joke, Laugh, Little Johnny, Party time, Relax, Weekend

Little Johnny likes to gamble. One day, his dad gets a new job, so his family has to move to a new city. Johnny’s dad thinks, “I’ll get a head start on Johnny’s gambling.” He calls the teacher and says, “My son Johnny will be starting your class tomorrow, but he likes to gamble, so you’ll have to keep an eye on him.” The teacher says, “Okay,” because she can handle it. The next day, Johnny walks into class and hands the teacher an apple and says, “Hi, my name is Johnny.” She says, “Yes, I know who you are.” Johnny smiles and says, “I bet you $10 you’ve got a mole on your butt.” The teacher thinks that she will break his little gambling problem, so she takes him up on the bet. She pulls her pants down, shows him her butt, and there is no mole. That afternoon, Johnny goes home and tells his dad that he lost $10 to the teacher and explains why. His dad calls the teacher and says, “Johnny said that he bet you that you had a mole on your butt and he lost.” The teacher says, “Yeah, and I think I broke his gambling problem.” Johnny’s dad laughs and says, “No you didn’t, he bet me $100 this morning that he’d see your ass before the day was over.”

The joke was provided by the Laugh Factory

I know this is a long one, but it’s terrific. Have a great Friday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Solving Problems

Tags

Bifurcation, Chaos, entropy, Problems, Solving Problems, Spiritual, Systems, Transformation

There is nothing wrong with asking for help, but we must remember that our purpose for being on earth is to learn how to arrive at the correct solution to our own problems. We have to write the script and—as well as we can—figure out how to untangle the plot.

Harold Klemp, ECK Wisdom on Solving Problems, p. 2.

Imagine yourself in a boat. You’re enjoying the breeze coming off of the water. You see the sun dance across the surface. Everything is sublime.

You look down and see water coming into the boat through a hole. “Oh, my.”, you say to yourself. Troubles come into our lives unexpectedly. We’re floating along without a care in the world, and then a hole appears, and the water comes flowing in.

Problems in our lives arise this way. Some we can see coming. Others are unexpected. They blindside us.

Sometimes when we solve a problem, we try to bail out the water coming into our boat, hoping we can get rid of the water more quickly than it comes in. This is an example of our “system” trying to rid itself of entropy by getting rid of the excess energy coming into a system. This will work for a while, but we soon conclude that we have put a bandaid on the problem, but not solved the underlying cause behind the problem–the hole in the boat is still there.

Another solution to our leaking boat is to block the hole. This is like blocking out the entropy coming into our system. Here, we pull off our shirt or grab some item we brought with us and block up the hole. Is the hole still there? Yep. This didn’t solve the problem either. The underlying cause is still plaguing us.

Then we finally arrive upon our answer. We let the boat sink and swim to shore. We transform the system by throwing out the faulty boat and learn to swim in the water without a boat.

In the abstract, a problem is entropy throwing our system into chaos. The boat is our system. The hole is the problem. The water is the entropy overloading the system because of the weakness (hole) in it. Subsequently, the chaos overcomes the current system, and it transforms the system to a new and stable one that can withstand the water.

This is how problems transform us. When our lives are calm, we are satisfied and ride the wave of life. When a problem arises, sometimes we can block the problem, run away from the problem, or transform. Blocking or running away are temporary solutions. Transformation is the key. We have to rewrite the code that caused the problem in the first place.

Many of our problems are a disconnect with what is and how we want things to be. It isn’t the situation that is problematic; it is the way we “see” the situation. The problem is internal. Change the way you view a problem, and the problem typically ceases to exist.

I hope each of you has a terrific Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Life Will Hit You

Tags

Consistency, DON'T QUIT, Drive Through, Get Up Off the Dirt, Persist, relentless, The Wall, You Got This

Here’s a great video to start your week.

I remember when I was in Ranger School going through the land navigation portion in the Ranger School’s zero week. It rained cats and dogs and that Georgia clay turned to glue. I was running out of time and ran the entire way back to the start point to pass the test. I passed, but the price I paid for running in the glue called mud in Georgia were two hyper-extended knees.

I said to myself, “Fuck. If these knees don’t settle down, I will wash out in the first week.” I don’t know how but in a few days my knees got better. I think this is what this video refers to. You set your sights on a goal. Everything is going well. Then…BAM!! Life beats you upside the head and says, “What you got now?” You keep pushing and the universe steps in and gives you a hand.

One of my favorite quotes is: You can’t lose if you don’t quit

It’s part of a title for the Skip Calhoun’s book, You Can’t Lose if You Don’t Quit: The Life and Times of Doyle Hall. What a great quote right? But this simple collection of seven words is the key to succeeding at anything. With that, let’s get to this week’s schedule.

This week:

• Work on Fiction Book daily
• Learn Algebra daily
• Computer Science Path daily
• Exercise Routine daily
• Meditate Daily
• Read 1 Chapter daily
• MS Publisher Class daily
• Journal Daily
• Blog Daily

Thanks for all the new followers this week and the comments. I’m enjoying the interaction and look forward to more. If any of you would like help to put together your own daily rituals, reach out. We can connect and I’ll walk you through it. It’s easy and powerful when you realize how much you can do by doing little things each day.

Well, that’s it for today. Have a great Monday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave