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 – 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 – Thankful Thursday – Life

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experiences, Foreign Lands, Joy, Jury Duty, Learning, Life, Service, Travels

Thanks to all my new followers this week. I am always thankful for even one new person who follows Daily Ramblings. It is a real treat.

Today I am thankful for my life. I have had so many experiences that have contributed to who I am today. I was thinking about my 20 years in the Army and the opportunity to serve my country in multiple capacities. I was thankful for the places that service allowed me to see. I am grateful for all the people I met, and the friendships made.

I am grateful for the great times I had in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. I am grateful for the experience of living in these places and learning more about the people that lived there. I am grateful for these experiences and how they helped me grow as a human being.

When I look back over my life, I have a deep gratitude for everything that has happened. Each event added to who I am today. I would change nothing. Every single thing that I have gone through—be it good or bad—was necessary. My life has been one grand adventure that continues to bring new experiences every day.

This week, I had my first opportunity to experience jury duty. I have been selected before, but never actually picked to come into the courthouse. It was an interesting experience. The people I met were nice and the experience overall was great. I spent two days there because the previous day was interrupted quite a bit by a previous jury’s deliberations and the judge had to bring us back to finalize jury selection. It was nice hanging out with the people there and getting to know a few of them.

Well, that’s it for now, folks. Have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – You Don’t Need Motivation to do What You Love

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Commitment, Dedication, Exercising, Focus, Learning, Meditating, motivation, passion, Reading, Writing

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Happy Monday!

What do you have planned this week? I had a great conversation with my wife yesterday. She just placed 2nd and 5th in two different bodybuilding categories at a competition in Las Vegas. I asked her what she did to get into the shape she got into for the competition. Here’s a bit.

Two workout sessions each day in the final 8 weeks. She does 1 hour of cardio (treadmill) followed by 45 minutes in the Sauna. She eats only chicken, rice, oatmeal (dry), protein shake, and egg whites. In the last 4 days, prior to the competition, she ate only chicken with ¼ cup of rice in the evening. Her weight training sessions are an hour to an hour and a half after a long day of work (she’s a special education teacher). She eats about 1.5 lbs of chicken each day. The only thing she can drink is water. No coffee, no tea, no soda, no protein shakes, nothing.

Sounds tough right? Not if you are driven, dedicated, and motivated and love what you are doing. My wife loves exercise and lifting and competing. To her this is not that big of a deal. She inspires me.

The picture above is in Las Vegas this last Saturday. So proud of my wife!!!

So what do you want to do, but can’t seem to get yourself to do? Take a measure of your motivation. Do you really want to do this? Is there something else you would rather do? Find something that really motivates you. Maybe your drives lead you to writing a book, starting a business, learning a new language, traveling, or something else. Find that thing. Find the thing you can dedicate your time to without breaking yourself against your own willpower.

We all need to exercise and eat right. These are a given, but we don’t need to put ourselves into a situation like my wife does. She does it because she loves it. Find that thing that you need to put a little effort into, but is really effortless. We all have that one or two things that we are excited about.

Here are the things I enjoy every day. I love exercising, reading, writing, meditating, and learning. I also love video games, movies, and music. I exercise every day. I read every day. I write every day. I meditate every day (twice), and I love learning (I’m learning computer programming via Codecademy). Initially, I had to figure out how to get all these things into my day. Once I figured out how to get all of these things into my day, I moved to tracking them by putting them on a to-do list that repeats indefinitely. I used Google tasks for this process. Google tasks is available in your Gmail account, can be displayed to the right of Google calendar, and is an app you can download to your phone. Since most of my work is on my computer, I keep track of what I’ve done and what I haven’t done on my computer using the task list in Google Calendar.

Start small, especially if you are trying something new. When I built my reading habit, it was literally reading just a few pages each day. Now I’m up to a chapter a day. I read a few pages in my Bible and then I read a chapter.

What about scheduling you ask? Well, that depends on your life. I’m retired so my schedule is a little more dynamic. I tend to just tackle what I need to in no specific order. My exercise routine used to be first thing in the morning, but that’s tough when either my Mom or I have to be home to take care of my Dad. He has “episodes” where he literally passes out and someone must be here every day with him to make sure we are around to revive him if this happens. So, I have to work around my Mom’s errands and such so one of us can be with Dad. No problem. I can exercise with my exercise bands, I can use one of my exercise apps. The rest is all at my computer, so not a big deal.

You may be working, so you’ll have to look at what you want to do daily and physically schedule this stuff in on your calendar at specific times. Find out what you are truly passionate about and get to work.

Here’s my plan for the upcoming week:

• Read 1 chapter daily
• Write one section in my book daily
• Read my Bible daily
• Exercise – Cardio and Weights, Bands, or Calisthenics daily
• Meditate 2x daily
• Complete one lesson on Codecademy daily

I hope each of you has a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Experience

Tags

Albert Einstein, Experience, Getting out there, Learning, Living, Spiritual, wisdom

“The only source of knowledge is experience.” – Albert Einstein

Quote provided by: Brainyquote.com

Read about any sport. Now go play the sport you read about. Huge difference right? This is what Albert is referring to. Albert Einstein is well known for his thought experiments but also for his prowess in Math and Physics.

Look at anyone who is gifted in a particular area. All of them practice. All of them do. They gain knowledge of their sport, their gift, or their talent by learning how to do it themselves. Look at any sports hero you admire. Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan started out just as ignorant as the rest of the folks who ever picked up a baseball bat or basketball.

I don’t care what field of study or endeavor you look at. Every person has to start out as a beginner and work there way to expert. Some read about what they need to know to accomplish something, others learn from a coach or mentor, some just grit through it and learn on their own.

Think back to a time you learned to ride a bike, drive a car, or learned how to operate a cash register in your first job. Someone told you how to do it, then they showed you how to do it, and then they let you do it. It took a little time, but you learned. With time, you can now ride a bike, drive a car, and operate a computer or some other complicated machine with ease.

We learn all kinds of things through experience. We learn how to ask a girl out on a date. We learn what it means to be nice or polite. We learn how important it is to keep our commitments to other people. Some of this learning is through trial and error. We ask a girl out on a date and totally flub it up. Then we ask out another girl and it goes a little better. We learn what to say. We learn how to react to the responses a girl gives.

Sometimes experience isn’t so nice. Think about a time you committed to something and couldn’t keep your promise. The person we made the commitment to is upset with us and we feel guilty. We learn that we need to be more careful when committing to something because breaking that commitment hurts worse than the disappointment someone expresses when we tell them we can’t do this or that.

There are so many experiences in a lifetime. All of them teach us something about ourselves and other people. We learn all the time if we pay attention. We learn more if we are willing to get out there and do something. Life is about gaining experience. We need experience to grow. We need to learn what to do and what not to do. Through experience we gain wisdom.

I hope each of you has a great Saturday! The weatherman predicts thunderstorms today. Today will be a day of reading, writing, gaming, and catching a series or movie in the den with Dad. What are you doing today?

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk Tuesday – Teachers as Champions

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Caring, Champion, Dedication, Inspiring, Learning, Teachers, Teaching, Ted Talk

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

We all had that one teacher that made a difference. In my case, there were a few. Rita Pierson is one of those teachers that treats her job responsibilities seriously and realizes the importance of her role as an educator. For me, my favorite teacher was Mrs. Feick in the 5th grade. She was so innovative. I think I learned more in her class than most of my elementary education combined. Rest in Peace Mrs. Feick.

Do you have a teacher that made learning fun? Did you have a teacher that held you to a higher standard, knowing you could do more? Did you have a teacher that made you feel like you could take on the world? Watch this Ted Talk. It is worth it.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Persistence

Tags

Exercise, Insomnia, Learning, My week, Persistence, Reading, Spiritual Work, Writing

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison

Hello, folks! Happy Monday!

I found this quote and felt it was exactly in alignment with what I wanted to talk about today–persistence. Persistence is what gets you through anything. It helps you when you doubt what you are doing. It helps when the obstacles to your progress pile up. It is supported by faith. The faith that you do have what it takes to succeed. We all have this capability. We just have to stick with what we are doing to get to where we want to go.

I try to keep my life simple. Read daily, write daily, learn daily, exercise daily, and spiritual exercises daily. This is it. Where I have fallen down this year is in the exercise arena. I go, then I don’t go, I start this program and then I stop this program. Today, I’m revamping my exercise routine and starting again. Exercise is important to me and once in a while I’ll lose track of that key point. I’m not into exercising for aesthetic purposes. I don’t care about posting an infinite amount of selfies showing off this or that. For me, it is just about feeling good, sleeping well, and taking care of myself.

For a few weeks, I was going through some horrific insomnia. I couldn’t sleep. One of the primary causes for this insomnia was my lack of consistent exercise. You see, I have always been hyperactive. If I don’t get rid of some energy doing yard work, exercise, and some actual brain work every day, I am not tired at all when I go to bed. I just lay there tossing and turning. I realize some folks suffer a form of insomnia because of worry. I do not fall into this category. My life is pretty calm, without too much drama. I feel for you if you cannot sleep because of excessive worry. This is a horrible place to be.

Ok. This week, we’ll be hitting it hard in the gym (check my workouts on my Workout Routine posts). I’ll be doing some work on my book, continue to post here, and work through an NLP course I signed up for on Udemy. I’ve also got my daily yard work to do, pending the weather. I hope each of you has a terrific week!

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 – Motivation Monday – Failure Builds Character

Tags

Character, failure, Learning, motivation, Persistence, primitive brains, Success

Image by yogesh more from Pixabay

“You Learn More From Failure Than From Success. Don’t Let It Stop You. Failure Builds Character.” – Unknown

Quote courtesy of http://www.briantracy.com

Failure. We all fear it. It’s interesting when you think about how our brains work. The brain doesn’t like change. It doesn’t like trying new things. It doesn’t like this because change is fearful to that part of our brain that warns us about danger.

Why? Well, our ancestors needed to be warned about everything by their primitive brains because mistakes could be deadly, particularly when there were creatures all around that wanted a meal. The brain’s warning system worked pretty good. We are still here after all.

How do you counteract this part of your brain to try new things? Our brains are much different from our ancestors’ brains. Our brains are much larger and have evolved to a point that we can override this prehistoric brain. We can choose to make changes despite our brain’s warnings.

Our ability to direct ourselves to do things that are unknown or challenging is a gift. We still have to deal with the fear of failure and all the rest, but now we have the ability to reason with ourselves. We can evaluate an action and deem it safe, despite the risks for failure and move forward. This is challenging, but possible. It merely requires us to be persistent and push forward with our goals.

All of us are unique. Some of us see a threat while others see an opportunity. What I have found to ease my angst is to get out there and learn from other people. I learn from books, online courses, and YouTube videos. If you see someone else doing something you want to do, the fear dissipates somewhat. I say to myself, “If they can do it, so can I.”

Then there’s practice. It’s hard to learn something new without getting your hands dirty. You can read about a topic, learn about a topic, and even watch someone else does something, but it is so much different when you do it. You will make mistakes. You will mess up. Each time you mess up, you learn. You learn that this is not the way. Then, if you are paying attention, you’ll avoid that mistake in the future and go on to the next step.

Fail. There is nothing wrong with it. Learn from it. Start again. Persist. You can’t lose if you don’t quit.

This week is a busy one. I’ve got a few books to finish, a chapter to write in my book, workouts to do, and of course, posting to this blog. It’ll be a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Arthur Ashe

Tags

Arthur Ashe, Learning, Making Mistakes, moving forward, Perfecting, Self-doubt, The Journey, wisdom

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe

I don’t know about you, but I am always doubting what I do. Is it good enough? Is it right? Will people like it?

When I was younger, I played Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. If you are not familiar with the game, it allows players to create their own fantasy worlds where players go on adventures, rescue damsels in distress, fight dragons, and other creatures commonly found in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. For the game to work, you need a Dungeon Master (DM) who creates a world, the adventures the players will embark on, and acts like a judge when game play needs an outside advocate. I enjoyed writing the stories and creating these worlds. It was great fun getting the feedback from the players that were part of my game and watching them enjoy spending time in my world.

Jump ahead 30 years and I am in a doctoral program specializing in Information Technology. In the 13 years I was in the program I was writing 10-25 page papers every week. Needless to say, writing has been something I figured I would be good at, since I finished my doctoral program with a 4.0 grade average. I also realize that at some point I will be too old to work any type of job that requires manual labor or something as physically taxing as my service in the military. So, here I am, writing on this blog, working on books, and starting to figure out how to publish various essays I come up with to Medium.

The point I am trying to make is that regardless of what or who you want to be, what goals you want to achieve, or where you want to go in life, you have to start somewhere. Like the quote says, you have to begin with whatever you have at the time. This is wise advice because you will never be good at anything you try until you begin doing it. If you pay attention, you will run across people who will give you feedback. You will learn from other people who have already done what you are trying to do.

So you start doing and learning and doing some more. Then one day you figure out that you really don’t want to pay the price that this “thing” requires of you. That’s ok. Set your sails for a different shore. Try something else. It is the doing in life that brings rewards, not just the winning. Once you’ve won, it’s over. Once you accomplish a goal, it’s done. Now it’s off to the next adventure.

Every person you can think of that has made a big dent in this world, started somewhere. They either didn’t know what to do or doubted themselves. They started. They committed. They gave it their best shot. If you never start or take a risk you will never accomplish anything worth accomplishing. Keep plodding forward. It will be worth every step.

Until next time…

Dave