Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Making Adjustments

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Adjustments, Learning, Learning from Others, New Plans, Tweaking, Unknown Unknowns, wisdom

Image by yogesh more from Pixabay

When it is obvious that I cannot reach the goals, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.–Confucius

Read more at Brainyquote.com

How many of you have set a goal, laid out the action steps, and found out you would not achieve the goal after beginning the work? (I raise my hand). This will not be a rare occurrence. The reason it will not be rare is that we are doing something we have not done before. We are traveling in uncharted territory. So what do we do? We take the learning that we have gained and re-apply that knowledge to the original plan and try it out. We continue this until we have achieved what we envisioned to be the goal.

Look at any art. Writing a book? Composing music? Painting a picture? If you take any artistic goal, you find that art is a series of improvements. You write the first draft. It’s ok, but needs a lot of work. The work is where the art is. You change a sentence here, move a paragraph there, change the title or order of your chapters to make your work more readable or fluid. This is yet another example of being flexible with your plans, knowing that you will make mistakes as you go. We make mistakes because we don’t know what we don’t know.

How can we avoid mistakes? Well, I think it’s impossible to avoid mistakes entirely. You can minimize mistakes by learning from others. There are many people on this planet and a lot of them who post tutorials, lessons, and other information that worked for them. Heck, right here on WordPress, you can find articles about anything. Some of them are terrific! For others you may have to find something on YouTube, an online course, or your local library.

You could use this as part of your plan to achieve a goal. Learn how to do what you want to do at some point. Let’s say you want to learn how to write a nonfiction book. You can find books, papers, classes all over the internet discussing this very topic. Fiction writing, writing poetry, or writing a short story are waiting for you to read, watch, and learn.

One of my bucket list items is to write a mobile app. I’m taking courses on Codecademy to learn the basics of programming. Then I can look for classes on mobile programming and I’m almost home. Then it’s just a matter of developing what I want to create for my mobile app and then learning the processes involved for submitting my app to the iTunes and Google Play stores. I haven’t looked yet, but know there are courses and tutorials available for this thing.

If you have your goal set in your mind, the pieces of the puzzle you need to complete that picture are waiting for you. Remember that you will make mistakes. That’s ok. It’s all part of learning how to do something. Once you know how to do something you can do the work and bring it home.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope some of you enjoy this. If you have any stories to tell about how you found out how to do something, post a link here.

As always, have a great Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Daily Agenda: What Are You Really Doing?

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5MHW, Agenda, Focus Keeper, Freebooksy, Goal Setting, mini-habits, Scribd, Success, Time Tracking

“The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.” – John C. Maxwell

Quote credit: Brainyquote

What do you do every day? What do you really do?

I went through a Dale Carnegie course on leadership about a decade ago. During one of our initial sessions, we were given a few sheets of paper with “:30” on every other line. We were instructed to fill out these sheets for 5 days, tracking what we did every 30 minutes. This is an eye-opening exercise.

When each of us returned to the class, we had to brief the group on our sheets. Almost every person who stood up to brief explained it took at least two days just to get in the habit of tracking their time accurately. It was the same for me. After I began tracking my time I was shocked at what I discovered. I was not working as hard as I thought I was. I was unfocused most of the day, flipping from doing actual work to non-work items almost every 30 minutes. This exercise motivated me to begin looking at not only how I spent my time, but what I wanted to focus on.

Success is different for all of us. We all define it differently. I think some people’s problem with success is that they are having their ideas of success defined for them. Success to me is being healthy, happy, setting, and achieving goals. That’s it. Your definition may be different. What is it?

Think about what you want out of life. Write down the things you want to do. Just write down as many things you can think of, whether it’s learning how to do something new, improving your relationships, improving your health, anything. Your list is your list. No one else’s. Then, once you have gotten your big list, go through the list and identify three things you want to focus on first. Once you have spent some time deciding what your focus will be, write down what you will need to do each day to get yourself closer to achieving these three things.

Here’s an example: Let’s say I want to read 48 books this year. I write down getting books. I also write down reading books. I have two sources for the books I read. The first is a service called Freebooksy. The second service I use is a subscription service called Scribd. Between these services I have no shortage of books to read. Other sources I could use if I needed to are my public library and a Barnes and Noble store. The next step I will take is actually reading the book. One of the things I schedule daily is reading one chapter of a book. That’s it.

Your agenda or daily to-do list should be composed of the things you want to focus on each day. Obviously, you have a job you go to each day. This will eat up 8 hours of your life. Then you have 8 hours of sleep. That leaves you 8 hours to pursue the things you want to. This where you have to make a decision about what it is you want to do and how much time you will dedicate to it. We all have busy lives. I would recommend putting 30 minutes into each of your three things each day. If you want to exercise every day, that’s 30 minutes. If you want to read every day, that’s another 30 minutes. If you want to write every day, that’s another 30 minutes.

Spend 1 hour and 30 minutes each day on the three things you want to work on right now. To get your 30 minutes, you can use a focus timer. I use an app called Focus Keeper. It is a simple Pomodoro timer that will track 25 minutes of focused effort on each of your top three.

Track your progress for 5 days. At the end of the 5 days, did you spend your 30 minutes daily on each of these top three tasks? If not, begin looking at what happened instead. Do the 5 day evaluation of your focus for another work week. Did you make it this time? You’ll find that you may have some work to do in the focus area, if you keep missing your 30 minute times for each of these tasks over a two-week period. You can continue this exercise until you have established the habit of doing your top three things every day.

Here’s another example of what your agenda may look like:

• Read 30 minutes everyday
• Exercise 30 minutes everyday
• Write 30 minutes everyday

Let’s say you try out this exercise of monitoring your focus for 3 weeks and still struggle with putting in your 30 minutes on one or more of your top three tasks. That’s ok. Maybe that’s just too much. You can try the Mini Habits technique to help. With Mini Habits, you won’t be so focused on the time you spend, but rather a specific task that takes minimal effort to accomplish. Instead of reading for 30 minutes each day, you could opt to read 1 chapter every day or read 1-2 pages every day. Instead of exercising for 30 minutes, you could use an app like the 5MHW. Instead of writing for 30 minutes you could write 250 words each day. You see how flexible this can be? This hack is used to establish habits and help you move a little closer to your goals each day.

Try this out, folks. If you struggle with setting and achieving goals, find out what you really want to do, set aside some time for these things each day, and then do them, even if you start out only doing 5-10 minutes of work toward each one of your goals initially. Even this small time commitment will generate results.

Remember, success is what YOU decide it is. Your definition will change over time, but remember success is self-defined. Don’t try to make success what other people define success as, even your favorite self-help guru. Success is yours, no one else’s.

I hope each of you has a terrific Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Awareness

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Aeschylus, Awareness, Hump Day, Intuition, Learning, Wednesday, wisdom

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” — Aeschylus

Credit: Brainyquote

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is about learning and growth. Look back over your life for a few minutes today. Think about the time you grew the most, learned the most, or made a life-changing decision. I bet these were times of great pain and suffering.

I don’t know why, but these times, although unendurable at the time, are the times we grow the most. The point this quote makes is that it is impossible to grow or learn when things are easy. When things are easy, the human mind likes to live in its repetitiveness. Why change? Everything is wired, and the brain loves repetition. Then–BAM!! You get blindsided.

The blindside could be a financial problem, a friend or loved one that betrays you, your job goes away, or any number of disasters. Immediately you go into “scramble mode”. At these times of high stress and trouble we become very creative. We reach out to friends, we read, we do Internet searches, anything we can to find potential solutions to our pain. It is these times that we truly grow.

We learn the things we did or didn’t do that caused our problem. Sometimes we learn that the things we just lost weren’t that important to begin with. Maybe the relationship you were in was on its way out months or even years ago and you’ve held onto it, even though in your “heart of hearts” you knew it wasn’t working for you or them and neither of you could drum up the courage to end it. Maybe you lose your job, again, knowing the company was having financial problems and ignoring the signs. You see, we ignore these signals because our brains want things to stay the way we are. As human beings, we just don’t like change, even though some changes are needed. We just let things go to maintain the status quo, only to discover that they will change anyway—normally at the worst time possible.

None of us want pain in our lives. None of us want change, but life tends to have a way of forcing change, even if we don’t want it. We get sick because we don’t want to change our diet or exercise. We get blindsided by a layoff when we knew we should have started looking for a new job months ago. We knew our significant other wasn’t really into us anymore but stuck around, anyway.

The pain we suffer results from our attachment to the status quo. We like things the way they are and we don’t want them to change, even if the change is happening right before our eyes. So why not make the change ahead of time? It’s hard. We are so good at telling ourselves lies and procrastinating. So what do we do?

The only advice I can give is to be decisive, ask the hard questions, learn what the right thing is and do it. You know when you’re putting on weight, your job isn’t working out, or even a relationship that isn’t fulfilling anymore. You feel it in your bones. You just know. We all have this intuition. We also get warning signs in advance of a real disaster.

These warning signs normally start out as gut feelings. Something isn’t right, but you can’t put your finger on it. Then they elevate. They become more blatant. Now you know something isn’t right but you still avoid doing something. Then, it’s a baseball bat to the head or a kick in the gut. You guessed it. You got blindsided again.

Pay attention to these intuitions. They are not crazy or paranoid. We all get them. It’s important to act on these intuitions, even if it is just looking for more information to test them out. Do not ignore them. I’ve learned this hard lesson so many times and it took so many disasters before I woke up and figured it out.

Now I pay attention to all of them. If something happens that doesn’t make sense or I get the feeling that something is going sideways, I immediately begin digging and looking to verify whether this is something real or my imagination is just overactive. More times than not, the intuition is right. By acting on these intuitions we can avoid a lot of pain and suffering. Being blindsided is no fun. It is better to avoid bad situations by circumventing them now instead of letting them fester.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope all of you have a terrific Wednesday.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Special Moments

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Listening, Love, memories, Selflessness, Special Moments, Treasures, wisdom

Image by Candace Hunter from Pixabay 

I often ponder certain periods of my life. How did I end up where I am? Why did I learn the things I did in this life so far? What were the turning points? What moments are the most memorable?

When I think about my life’s most memorable moments I remember my wedding, some of my birthdays, graduating from college, retiring from the Army, and so many other things. The most memorable and important moments are those moments where someone was kind, giving, loving.

I remember the birthday presents and Christmas gifts my family sent to me when I was abroad. I remember the letters my late Grandma wrote. You know a gift from a lady that barely had enough to live on was something I will never forget. It warms my heart to think of those moments.

Then there are the family board games, playing Scrabble with my Mom and Grandma. Thanksgiving dinners. Christmas day. My first surprise birthday party thrown by my wife. The moments that stick with me the most are those that you can’t buy. These moments are the ones that really count.

Our lives are so busy. We work, we run errands; we pay our bills, and on it goes. It’s the little moments when someone shows us kindness or expresses their love for us. It isn’t the words “I love you”, but the acts that show that love. I still tear up when I think of some of these special moments in my life.

Today, even if it’s only a few minutes. Take that time to think about your special moments. The times someone smiled at you, helped you with something, spent time with you and just listened to what you had to say. These moments will carry you through the tough times. They will warm your heart when you lay in bed at night waiting for sleep to arrive. They will make you smile as you do your daily work. These moments when someone gave you their time or did something for you with no expectation or demand. They just did something that touched your heart.

These are the moments that hang on. These are the moments you take with you wherever you go. These are the moments that leave their mark. I love thinking about my special moments. They make me laugh. They make me cry. They make me feel loved.

Ah, these special moments that we carry with us. They are like the patchwork of a quilt, each one unique and contributing to the whole. Hold on to these special moments. They are a treasure that continues to hold its sparkle.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Treatment of Others

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Abigail Van Buren, Actions, Character, Friends, Listening, Seeing, Watching

Image by Mircea Iancu from Pixabay 

“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.” ― Abigail Van Buren

Have you ever been in a restaurant and watched someone treats a waiter or waitress with disrespect? Have you seen someone taunt a homeless person?

I have learned that the adage ‘actions speak louder than words’ is true. I’ve learned that people say a lot of things. They say them to make themselves feel better about themselves. Then you watch them act and in some cases it is exactly opposite. This is wisdom. It will help you negotiate who your friends are, who you do business with, and protect you from the people who lie to you and themselves all the time.

Wondering if you should go out with that guy or gal? Wondering if you should be friends with this person or that person? Watch them. Listen to them. If they walk their talk consistently, you’ve probably made a good choice. If not—run!

Let’s say you like a guy or gal. You set a date with them to go out. At the last minute, they bail. Then you set another date with them to go out and they do it again. This is probably someone you should avoid going forward. You can be friends or acquaintances, but they have shown you they don’t care about your time or you. Cross them off your list.

Let’s say your “friend” starts talking about another one of your friends behind their back. Again, another character issue. If they talk about your friends behind their back, what do they talk about behind your back? Cross them off your list.

Let’s say your friend commits to helping you out on one of your projects. They commit to doing something that is crucial to your project’s completion. They drop the ball and avoid you for weeks. Cross them off your list.

Actions speak louder than words. You want to know someone? Stop listening to what they say and begin watching what they do. You’ll soon learn who your true friends are.

Have a great Wednesday everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Do One Thing

Tags

Ego, Expectations, Giving, Lifting, Love, One Thing, Rising, Sacrifice, Slight

Image by andreas160578 from Pixabay

Before you can improve your life and find a measure of happiness, you must learn to do one thing every day out of pure love. That means, don’t expect anything in return—neither thanks nor happiness. Pick that occasion carefully. Then, whatever that one act of giving of yourself to someone else is, do it with all your heart.

—Harold Klemp

The Language of Soul

What does this quote mean? I pondered this quote for years before I really understood its meaning. It means to literally do something for God. I like to focus on yard work for this one daily gift. I do it as a means of pitching in around the house, but anyone can go through the motions. When you do something out of pure love, it means you put all you have into that one thing. You take one more step to do the job better than you would normally do it.

When you do something of this nature every day, you get something back, even though you don’t expect it. The ego depletes when you do something of this nature. That is a good thing. The ego tends to get us in trouble, particularly when we feel like we’ve been slighted or disrespected. When the ego is eliminated or ignored, you cannot be slighted or disrespected. The ego is the only thing that can define slight or disrespect.

It is hard to explain the feeling that comes when you’ve done a good job for a good job’s sake. It is there, even if it is slight. You feel a rising inside. You feel something that is deeply fulfilling. Try this out for a day if you’d like. Then, pay attention to how you feel as you do the job and afterwards.

It’s these little things we can do each day that make a huge difference in our lives. I have found that the little things we do have the largest impact.

I wish all of you a great Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Moving Mountains

Tags

change, Consistency, Focus, habits, mini-habits, Moving Mountains, Resistance

Image by Frank Winkler from Pixabay 

“The man who moves a mountain begins carrying away small stones.” – Confucius

This is a great quote for anyone that is trying to do big things in their life and tries to do too much or is trying to do too many things at once. My wife and I had a quick chat yesterday, and she is focused on two things and nothing else. The first is a bodybuilding competition she’s headed to in 6 days; the second is a test she has to take for a teaching credential. The rest of her day is eating, maintenance, errands, and sleep. She knows that focus and consistency are important when accomplishing one’s goals. She also knows that you can’t do everything. You have to decide and execute.

Learning how to make a choice and sticking with something has always been a challenge for me. I like variety in my day. I like the spontaneity of the moment. Unfortunately, you can’t get anything meaningful done that way. So I began a search for information on how to get more focused, decisive, and consistent. During my search, I discovered a book called Mini Habits by Steven Guise. He suggests doing something very small each day will build a habit over time. The key is something small, but not too small. For example, Steven’s first Mini habit was doing 1 pushup every day.

I have used mini habits for a good 5 or 6 years now and it works. The trick is not to overwhelm yourself or expect yourself to do more than necessary. You really want to stick with small things until they become habitual. Each of us is unique. The time it takes for you to form a habit may be much shorter than it is for me or someone else. The key is to keep it small, so your mind doesn’t catch on that you are making a change. The mind gets overwhelmed very quickly, when taking on new things. If you try to start too many mini habits at once or your mini habit is too much (like I will write 1000 words today), the mini habit will not take hold.

I have had to learn this lesson more than once. Trust me. The mini habits work because they avoid overwhelming your brain, which will resist change if you hit it with too much. Start small. The key to the mini habit system is consistency. Reading for 10 minutes each day may not seem like a lot, but over a year that is 3650 minutes of reading. It may not seem like a lot, but if you are not reading at all right now, trust me, this is a lot of reading (60 hours).

You can apply mini habits for anything. You can use it for exercise like Steven did, you can use it for reading, writing, learning a language, learning to code, anything. You just have to use a little creativity, carve out a few minutes of your day to do the mini habit, and then track it. I use a repeating to-do list for mine using Google Tasks, but whatever you use, even a wall calendar and a marker will do. Try this out if you are having a hard time starting something you’d like to start working on. Resistance is psychological. It is your brain telling you this is too much. Some folks have very resistant brains, while others do not. It is very individual. Experiment until you find your own sweet spot.

I hope each of you is having a terrific Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Adjusting to a New Home

Tags

Adjusting, change, Improvising, Learning, Overcoming, Solving Problems, wisdom

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay 

Today’s image is a great segue into my topic for today. Sometimes we wake up and realize the tools we are using to negotiate our lives are no longer effective. We are literally trying to fix our watch with a crescent wrench. This is a sign that something has changed internally.

Have you ever woken up feeling like you are in a different place, confused, and disoriented? I have been in this state for a good few weeks. It’s like the feeling you have when you move to a new city or state. You new surroundings excite you, but you still feel you are in limbo. You have yet to make new friends and still depending on your phone to get you to the grocer, the gas station, the post office, and many places commonplace in your previous home.

When these changes occur internally, they can be disconcerting. You feel you need to do something different or more. You feel out of place in your own home, neighborhood, and town. It’s hard to describe.

I was doing some research on this and found my answer. The answer is to just be. Changes occur around us all the time. We get nudged to change our routine, change our diet, change our workouts. We get nudged to change jobs, change locales, and change our associations. This is all about the mission you have in this lifetime.

My religion discusses this phenomenon in great detail. Soul, the real you, decides what it wants to learn in this lifetime before it arrives here and takes a human body. It decides what experiences it will have in this lifetime. Sometimes soul needs to experience poverty or riches, health and sickness, ecstasy and horror. These make up the fabric of the life it chooses.

The best solution to the feelings I have been having is to reexamine my goals, set up new ones, get a good plan together to accomplish these things, and execute. By doing this, you can adjust to the internal changes that have taken place and help the physical catch up with the spiritual. This happens all the time.

There is a quote from Jewish scripture that is appropriate here. The quote is: “As above, so below.” This suggests that we have an internal or spiritual life with a physical life in the human body. When soul makes a gain spiritually, the physical or human body has to play catch up. The way to do this is to reexamine how you are doing things and make adjustments to them to be in alignment with the new home soul has found for itself.

I realize that today’s post may be a little “out there”, but my spiritual path has never steered me wrong, just like your religion of Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam has never steered you wrong. Each of us is in the religious path we need to achieve what we need to achieve in this lifetime.

For now, I need to be patient, remain cognizant of any inner nudges that come my way, and be patient. Everything is in its rightful place in the worlds of God and God never gives us a problem we cannot solve.

To summarize. If you ever get the “feeling” like your out of place or something is not right, realize that Soul has found a new home or place to explore in the inner worlds. This feeling is a sign that you are growing. Rejoice. This is a good thing. We need to grow and experience and learn. The process of improvement and getting better never ceases. You may rest awhile here and there but the drive to improve our circumstances never stops.

I hope each of you has a terrific Wednesday! I’m off to do some chores around the house and get in a workout later today.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Changing Things Up

Tags

Adapting, Adjusting, change, Creating, Goals, Lost, Planning, Resetting

Image by Jan Alexander from Pixabay 

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

Recently I had the feeling of being out of place. You know that feeling you have when you arrive at a new town or take up a new job and you are excited and yet lost. The feeling came over me a few weeks ago. I can’t shake it. It’s like I am learning where the grocery store is, the closest gas station, the post office, and all the rest. Have you ever had this feeling?

To solve this problem, I looked for a solution. I ran across an article that suggested that once in a while our mental landscape changes. It isn’t drastic or anything, but produces the feelings of being out of place. It suggested a few things: 1) Set new goals. 2) Create plans for those goals. 3) Execute the plan with your whole heart. 4) Set even newer goals if needed and so on.

I went through this exercise yesterday and I have to admit that it is working. I spent most of the last two days examining my current goals and decided there were a few of them that weren’t worth the trouble. Then I created some new goals that aligned better with where I am today. Most of my goals stayed, but the exercise was worth it.

Going through this exercise caused me to realize that my goals weren’t the problem—my way of approaching them was. I was “going through the motions”. I wasn’t putting my heart into my daily goals. I was giving less than I am capable of.

Do I still feel a little lost? You bet. These feelings occur from time-to-time. It takes time to adjust to our new surroundings, even if our new surroundings are the same, but viewed through a different set of eyes or mindset. Be patient with yourself. Reexamine what you are doing with your life. Look at your motives. Why are you pursuing certain goals? What is the purpose? Does this ritual or routine still work?

I enjoy blogging because I can communicate to a wide audience and discuss these kinds of things with total strangers. I hope this article helps you if you are feeling like I do. I will continue to seek new answers. For the time being, I’ll continue to work with what I have and see where this takes me.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Brother’s Last Day

Tags

Brother, Chernobyl the series, Dead Space, Eating out, family, Game of Thrones, Heading Home, XBOX gaming

Well, today is the last day my brother will be here. I’m taking him to the airport later today. We had a great time while he was here. We went out to eat a few nights; we got caught up on Game of Thrones and watched a show on HBO called Chernobyl, and played some video games, which we both enjoy immensely.

He’ll be heading back to Phoenix today to get back to work. My sister got a new job at GM and started on Monday. This week is predominantly orientations and training. My Mom’s cataract surgery went well. She has some follow-up appointments in the next week.

I’ll be back up to a full blogging schedule starting tomorrow. I wanted to avoid my daily rituals while my brother was here to make sure someone entertains him. Most of my day is writing on my laptop. We did get in a few workouts at the local Planet Fitness. My black membership allows me to bring one guest for free.

It’s always fun when my brother comes out. I’ll head to Phoenix sometime this year, but don’t know when yet. Maybe during Christmas or even around Thanksgiving time.

That’s all I got today, folks. Have a great Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave