Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – May in Michigan

Tags

Accomplishment, Goals, job, Mood, motivation, reduce, Resistance, Simplify, weather

May is a very strange month for weather. It will either be sunny, calm, and getting warmer, or it will rain, stay somewhat cold, and continue for the bulk of the month. If your mood is impacted by the weather, you are not alone. Many people suffer ill effects when there is less sunshine.

Regardless of your mood, you have a job to do. You have goals to achieve. You have the means and ability to do what is required. So get out there and get it done! You’ll feel great when you achieve what you set out to do, be it a day, a week, month, or year.

Feeling overwhelmed by it all? No problem. Break down some of the steps in your action plan to an even smaller degree. You’ll see that the smaller the task, the less resistance you’ll have in completing it. That’s the key. Reduce your resistance to something you have to do, so you can do it, without procrastination rearing its ugly head. Once you’ve gotten some momentum going with these smaller tasks, you will see how quickly these small tasks build to bigger accomplishments.

Have a great week, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk/Thinking Tuesday – Rosa Parks

Tags

Accomplishment, Black History Month, Civil Rights Movement, Icon, NAACP, Rosa Parks, Service, Torch Bearer

Photo Credit: Photograph of Rosa Parks with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (ca. 1955) Mrs. Rosa Parks altered the negro progress in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955, by the bus boycott she began. National Archives record ID: 306-PSD-65-1882 (Box 93). Source: Ebony Magazine

When we hear the name Rosa Parks, we all remember the incident where she refused to move out of a “white only” section of a bus and was arrested, turning the fledgling civil rights movement into a national phenomenon. Watch this short video to see what else she did in her life. I think you’ll be surprised.

If you’d like to learn more, here’s a link to read about her and her life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

When you look at the large list of her accomplishments, think about the Jim Crow laws and all the other roadblocks that were put in her, and other African American’s lives during one of the darkest periods of American history.

Have a great Tuesday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Overcoming Obstacles with Contingency Plans

Tags

Accomplishment, Achievement, Dedication, Discipline, Drive, Monday, motivation

Whenever you embark on a new goal or strive to achieve something you’ve set up for yourself, you will run into obstacles. Obstacles, like my gym closing in the middle of last week, after COVID came raging back and caused a lot of open places to close again.

How do you overcome them? Well, sometimes you have to put a contingency plan in place. A contingency plan is something you put in place in case something you planned to accomplish is disrupted. My contingency plan is using exercise bands and a supine bicycle or stair stepping to replace my gym workout.

There are many examples I could give for obstacles and overcoming them. Let’s say you are working on a book and your laptop or desktop crashes. If you save your work in the cloud, you have nothing to worry about. Always plan for the worst and develop a contingency plan to handle the unexpected.

So there you go. My way of overcoming obstacles. Always plan for the worst and have a go-to plan waiting to be initiated if that worst thing happens.

Have a great Monday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – 2020 Goals – Here We Go!

Tags

Accomplishment, Achievement, Attack!, Consistency, Goal Setting, New Year, Push Yourself, You Got This

Drum roll, please…

As promised, here are my goals for 2020.

My 2020 Goals:

• Reduce Weight to 200 lbs by year’s end (weigh-in weekly)
• 365 gym visits
• Finish Rough Draft of my first Novel
• Complete 12 Online Courses this year
• Complete Computer Science Path on Codecademy this year
• Save 1200.00 by year’s end
• Finish Yearly Religious Discourse
• Run 12 book discussions
• Read 60 books this year
• Take a personal vacation once per quarter exploring a new town each time
• Visit the library 52 times this year
• Follow 200 new blogs this year
• Attain 800 followers by year’s end
• Track goals

It will be a great year! I can’t wait to knock this stuff out. Consistency is key. Just doing a little each day can produce huge results.

What are you goals for 2020? I suggest you set a few and make them public like I do. It adds a little more pressure, and it is great how people cheer you on throughout the year once they find out what you’re trying to do.

Send me your list if you’d like or send me a link to your annual goals you post on your blog.

I wish everyone a terrific 2020, filled with love, accomplishment, good health, and success. Let’s Go!!!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Fear of Failure

Tags

Accomplishment, failure, Fear, Frank Herbert, Mistakes, motivation, Overcoming Fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”―Frank Herbert,Dune

Fear. It causes us to pause, to procrastinate, to react to all those hidden demons our minds create. Fear warns us that we are not good enough. Fear predicts our total ruin. Fear predicts the destruction of our reputation. Fear is an enemy to be dealt with if you are going to do anything meaningful with your life.

We all deal with fear in one way or another. Fear can come in many guises. We can be fearful of a confrontation with a colleague or a loved one. We can be fearful of failure. We can be fearful of standing up for ourselves. We can be fearful of moving forward with a project we really want to accomplish.

I have found that the best way to conquer fear is to eliminate the ego. How many wars or arguments could have been avoided if both parties put their egos to the side. The ego is something you’ll never get rid of, but it can be put to the side. When you are creating something new, you will make mistakes. Embrace mistakes. Embrace failure. These are two things you have to get through if you are going to achieve anything. If you avoid assigning failures and mistakes to yourself personally, you will feel bad, upset, angry, etc. Instead, play a game. Laugh at yourself. Realize what you’ve learned. Look at the failure or mistake and dissect it. How did it happen? What did I miss? More importantly, how can I avoid this mistake in the future?

Set your goals, establish a plan to achieve the goals you have set, and stake out actions to move you through your road map. Make your daily contributions so minuscule that you’ll do them without resistance. You’ll make mistakes. You will discover your plan has problems and needs to be adjusted. Failure occurs only when you fail to act or give up on your goals and dreams. Keep this in the forefront of your mind—failure occurs when you quit. You avoid failure if you keep moving forward.

I had a heck of a time yesterday with my Dad watching the Superbowl. We were a little disappointed in the game. The commercials were OK, but not barn burners. The game was exciting toward the end, but the first half was boring. In the end, however, it was nice watching the game with my Dad.

Tomorrow is the State of the Union and I’ll be engaged with that most of the day. This week I’ll continue my reading, writing, exercise, meditation, and learning schedule. I interact with a lot of authors online and discovered a great writing tool. It’s called Scrivener. I just downloaded it today and will be working through tutorials and such for most of the week. Once I’ve got a good idea of how to use the tool, I’ll begin moving my book to it. I discovered that using a word document straight up is probably not the most efficient way of putting together a book, particularly now that I am in the re-write phase of the operation.

That’s it for today folks. Have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thinking Thursday

Tags

Accomplishment, Choices, Decay, Productivity, Slovenliness, Waste

“The condition of health that we suffer is actually a tool to raise us another degree in our state of consciousness.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Anytime we have an issue with our health, God is trying to teach us something. Maybe it’s something we are eating. Maybe it’s something we are not eating. Maybe it’s something to do with the amount of exercise we are doing or not doing.

Each of us is a unique being. My mother has all kinds of food allergies. So, does my brother and sister. I am one of the few in the family that can eat what I want. Each member of my family that has an issue with some type of food deals with it. That’s the way life is. We are hit with a problem. We either learn to solve the problem or live with it.

I find it interesting when I run across people who complain about their life but do nothing to change it. This tells me they are either happy with their situation and just complain because it has become a habit, or they are too lazy to get off their butt and do something about it. This leads us back to the previous sentence—they are content with the way their life is, despite their complaints.

Each of us is on a trajectory in our lives. This trajectory offers a full life with rich experiences, adventures, and accomplishment or it offers a life of mediocrity, slovenliness, and decay. Life never stays in one place—it moves forward, or it moves backward.

I am beginning to learn a terrific lesson. A lesson about people. Some people enjoy their suffering. Some people enjoy living a life of waste, a life of accomplishing little to nothing, a life composed of laziness, a life of inaction. These same people complain, are bitter, and have lost any ability to improve themselves, expressing jealousy when they discover someone who is better at milking the system than themselves.

We all have a choice. We can choose to fight for our goals, set our sights high and strive for them, step out of our zones of comfort and take risks to do more, be more, and achieve more. It is all our choice.

I choose to live a life of accomplishment. I choose to live a life that strives for better. I choose to live a life that exposes me to new challenges, new skills, and wonderful experiences. I choose.

Here’s what I’ve done this week:

Exercise Program:

Jim Stoppani’s Shortcut to Size – (www.bodybuilding.com) – I’ve done this workout before and returning to it because it is just a good all-around weight routine. It’s 8 weeks in length, a 4-day split with 3 rest/cardio days mixed in.

Books:

Armor, Steakley – Recommended by an Army Buddy. A terrific book so far.

The Shariyat Ki Sugmad, Paul Twitchell – This is my bible. I finished it and will re-read again. This book is a permanent fixture on my reading list.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe – This was a terrific book. Now I know much more about the abolitionist movement during the 1800s. HBS really digs hard into the evils of slavery by depicting the horrors of slavery in this book. The separation of families, particularly for the women were absolutely heartbreaking. I highly recommend this book.

Classes:

Web Development Path – Codecademy – Currently learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and REACT. – Completed the HTML course. Now, I’m working through the CSS tutorials and projects.

De-mystifying Mindfulness Course – Coursera – I’ve completed all the coursework so far and waiting until Nov 4, 2018, for the course to continue. One drawback of Coursera is the scheduling. Udemy allows you to buy the whole course, complete the whole course on your schedule and provide a certificate at the end.

Documentaries:

Movies:

Fun:

Ozark – Netflix (in the cue) – Re-watching Season 1 to remind me what’s going on. I’ll kick into Season 2 when I’m back on track with this one.

House of Cards – Netflix – Final Season. I can’t wait to dig into this one. It just started today!

Interesting Apps:

Codecademy – This app is a companion app to the Codecademy website. For $19.99/month you can learn quite a few languages, work on projects, and a whole bunch more. It is terrific! This app has daily quick lessons (<10 minutes) followed by practice quizzes to test your knowledge. It’s a great app. I highly recommend this app and the companion website for anyone looking to learn how to code.

I hope all of you are having a terrific week! See you tomorrow for Funny Friday!!

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday

Tags

7 habits, Accomplishment, Achievement, Big Accomplishments, Getting Things Done, mini-habits, Small things

“The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.” John Burroughs

Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_burroughs_120946?src=t_wisdom

Consistent Small Actions Lead to Huge Results

Sometimes taking the smallest action can lead to greatness. How many pages will you read in a year if you dedicate just 10 minutes a day to reading? How many pages could you put toward your book if you wrote one page a day? How many miles could you run if you ran a half-mile each day? How many books could you read, classes could you take, languages could you learn, if you only did a little each day?

I asked you all these questions to drive home a point. It’s the small actions, compounded over time, that deliver results. Not only do these small actions build upon one another, but they also build your confidence, improve your self-esteem, and give your brain a good dose of pleasurable neurochemicals.

I don’t care how big your goal is. Break it down into tiny, discreet, steps that you can accomplish in a short time. After a few months, you’ll see progress. That progress is motivating.

Another benefit of tackling these small steps is that you can work on multiple fronts and still accomplish a great deal. Read a little, write a little, exercise a little, pray a little, learn a little. Over time you will have accomplished a great deal, not to mention avoiding the stress of trying to take on projects that are too big, goals that are too big, or jobs that are too big.

Three Books

Consistent action, moving forward methodically, and just chipping away at something works. I learned all this reading a book called, Mini Habits by Stephen Guise. It is one of those books that you read again and again.

In fact, there are three books I read each year in December, right before kicking into the New Year. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, and you guessed it, Mini Habits by Stephen Guise.

Each book contributes to my new year differently. 7 Habits contribute by refreshing my drive to improve my character. Getting Things Done helps me refresh my desire to be organized and productive. Mini Habits helps me revisit the power of creating life-long habits by doing “stupid-simple” tasks each day that transform into powerful habits over time.

I really enjoy reading and learning new things and always on the lookout for that next, great book that will have a real impact on my life. I haven’t found any new ones but I’m still looking. If you are having difficulty in your life and you want to take charge of yourself, these books are a great start. You may not get everything that I have gotten from them, but you will learn something and that “something” will alter your current glide path.

There are so many personal stories I could tell you about failure and disappointment but who wants to hear about that? Take my advice: Read these books. In combination, if you buy the Kindle versions, they’ll run you less than $30. Thirty dollars is two large pizzas, a Starbucks coffee for six days, or a trip to the movie theater. If you’re tired of failing, lost control of your life, and have lost track of where you want to go in your life, read these books. They are life-changing.

For those of my readers in the United States, I hope you had a nice Halloween. We had plenty of Trick or Treaters visit our home yesterday.

Enjoy the rest of the week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wednesday Wisdom – You Must Pay the Price

Tags

Accomplishment, Discipline, Goals, Paying the price, Self-delusion, Success

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” – Jim Rohn

Dictionary.com defines discipline as an activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill. But I think it is so much more than this. Discipline is about doing what is necessary or needed, regardless of whether a person likes doing what is necessary or not. I think this definition is much more accurate.

Discipline is nothing more than the price that must be paid to attain something. Nothing in this world is free. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that believe they can “cheat” the system. Lie to a customer, lie to your wife or partner, lie to yourself. Of these three, the most insidious of these lies is oneself.

Lying to yourself will bring you a lot of pain and suffering. You will succeed at everything in your mind, but in reality, fail in everything. What satisfaction is there in achieving something that is easy to attain? Nothing. There is no victory when there is no challenge, no risk, and no possibility of failure. The victory in these circumstances is empty–meaningless.

When we embark on working toward a goal or establishing a new habit we have to make a decision. Do I want to pay that price? If you are comfortable with doing that, then go for it. If you are not willing to pay the price your goal or new habit requires, drop it and do something else. If you are not willing to pay the price you will NEVER attain the goal or establish the habit you are shooting for. There are no shortcuts to meaning.

I like using exercise as a metaphor to explain myself. Exercise is the one area you cannot cheat. The gym, the equipment, and the weights do not lie. You can either curl a 25lb dumbbell or you cannot. You can run on the treadmill at 10 miles an hour or you cannot. You can squat 200lbs or you cannot. The gym will not let you cheat, nor will the scale when you weigh yourself.

If you want to lose weight, it’s simple. Eat less of what you are currently eating and eat nutritious and dense foods that are NOT processed. I don’t care what label you find on that cereal box or dinner. I don’t care if the meal is labeled low-fat, low-carb, or organic. Processed food is processed food. It is horrible for you. It will put chemicals into your body you can’t even pronounce and labeling today is such that most companies aren’t even truthful about what they are putting in your meals. That is one price you must pay. Eat healthy food. In other words, food that is not in a box.

If you want to be healthy, drink water, eat unprocessed foods, take your vitamins and other supplements, get enough sleep, and make sure you align your diet with the appropriate protein, carbohydrate, and fat levels. Is it easy to measure out your food? No. But it’s another price you must pay on the road to health.

Do you drink? Do you do drugs? Do you smoke? Again, all this needs to go away. You won’t be healthy doing any of these things. Your body will take it and one day you’ll wake up with heart disease, cancer, or maybe even a stroke. You drop these things and your road to health and weight loss are yours.

You want to make gains in the gym, track what you do. If you do not document what you are doing you have no idea where you are and where to push to. It’s like traveling in a foreign land without a map. You will not gain as much as you would have had you documented what you did.

These are just some of the prices a healthy body and decent weight cost. Are you willing to pay this price? If so, bravo. If not, do something else and save your time.

This may be harsh, but it is the reality of the situation. If you want something, look at what other people have done to achieve it. Follow in their footsteps. They have shown you how to do it, how much it costs in coin, sweat, and tears. You have all the information you need. Then it’s up to you. Do you really want to pay that price? If so, it’s yours. If not, don’t lie to yourself. You won’t achieve the same results. Find something else to pursue.

Discipline is truly the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quotes – Patience and the “Compounding Effect” of daily progress

Tags

Accomplishment, Compounding Effect, Instant Gratification Culture, Patience

Well folks, today I couldn’t find a quote that was worth your while. That happens from time to time because my quote sources just don’t give me what I’m looking for. That being said, I did want to provide a little chat on patience.

We are “trained” to want everything instantly. Think about how easy it is to purchase things today. You go to Amazon or iTunes or some other shopping venue, click on something and it’s either automatically downloaded to your mobile device or it is shipped and at your home in a few days.

Obviously, this is an awesome aspect of our technological capability and one that is really convenient. The problem: We expect this same kind of ease and speed with everything. This is a difficult thing to deal with when you are pursuing a long-term goal like weight loss, writing a book, or earning a degree. These things all take a consistent effort over months and years to attain the final goal or product.

Think about the amount of time it took you to get the body you have. It took years. We don’t notice this because when you are satisfying your sweet tooth, the satisfaction we receive from eating these treats, overrides any sense we have about our health. Subsequently, we slowly but surely gain weight, get out of shape, and wake up one day when none of our clothes fit comfortably anymore.

How do we counter this aspect of our lives? Well, it’s hard. It’s hard because eating healthy takes adjustment. It’s hard because going to a gym and exercising takes adjustment. The key is to remember how long it took to get your body where it is today and realize it will take the same length of time to get back to where you were before you began gaining weight.

Patience is required when we pursue anything that requires a long-term commitment. Losing weight, learning a language, earning a degree, or even writing a book, requires consistent effort over time. What makes these types of commitments easier for me is the “compounding effect” that occurs when you stick with something. Reading a chapter a day yields 365 chapters a year. Exercising daily subtracts from our caloric intake. If you did 20 minutes of cardio every day and burned 100 calories, that’s 36,500 calories a year!

The next time you start losing motivation for doing something, go through this exercise. It will help you see the benefits of what you are doing and provide you the means to make one more step. This is a great way to really see what you are capable of accomplishing in a year.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Accomplishment, Planning, Quotes, Setting Goals, William Shakespeare

Today’s Quote:

“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.” – William Shakespeare

I’m currently reading a book by Marcus Aurelius called “Meditations”. It is interesting to note how much of our present-day thought has been influenced by both of these men. I think that each of us should be taking the time to really plan out our actions; really watch what we are doing and accomplishing. Too many people just “wing it”. Though they may feel free, the effectiveness of these individuals is questionable.

Take the time to really plan out your day. Start today! It will make a difference in your life, knowing you are doing exactly what you planned to do. If you take this further, set a goal for a few months off and concentrate your efforts on this one goal for 12-13 weeks. You’ll be interested to know that this is the focus of one of the journals I’ll be writing about and posting here before the end of the weekend. I hope all of you can read it.

Setting goals, planning the steps to meet those goals, and accomplishing goals is a constant circle of activity. Accomplish this goal, on to the next. I hope this inspires some of you to plan each day and move closer to the things you want in life.

See you tomorrow…