Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Consistency, Exercise, Learning, motivation, Patience, perseverence, Persistence, Skills, spirituality

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” Walter Elliot

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/walter_elliot_190719?src=t_motivational

Want to learn a secret? Here’s a secret that will change your life.

You will accomplish whatever you set out to do if you do not quit trying to accomplish it.

I don’t care if you are trying to lose weight, stop smoking, read more, write more, learn more. Say you want to learn a new language. Learning a new language is hard. Quitting a bad habit is hard. Learning how to do something you’ve never done before is hard.

Learn incrementally and continuously. Take a little bit of new information, study it, read it, do something with it in little bite-size chunks on a daily basis and before you know it you’ll own that new knowledge. You’ll build the skill. The challenge with this type of learning is consistency. You have to keep doing it over and over and over and never stop. You must really want the new knowledge or skill.

If you keep pushing forward, keep digging in consistently, keep pushing the envelope, you’ll see some dramatic results over time. Stick with it and you’ll achieve your goal over time. It’s really that simple.

Here’s what I’m up to this week:

• I’m leading a Book discussion class on Past lives, dreams, and Soul travel today at a local library
• I’m still sick but doing some home workouts to get back into my routine of daily exercise
• I’ve read 2 books of the 48 I am goaled for and currently reading 5 books simultaneously. Each month I’m tackling 4 books—one fiction book, one history book, one book on philosophy, and one on self-help. Currently I’m reading book 2 of the 2136 series, book on Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, Unit 731 – Japanese biological warfare unit in WWII, and The One Thing.
• I’m finalizing the initial rough draft of my technical recruiting book.
• I am working through a basic JavaScript programming course on Codecademy.
• I just wrapped up a course on WWII that was offered for free by Hillsdale College (hillsdale.edu).
• I’m watching a course offered by Dr. Jordan Peterson on Personality and transformation on YouTube. He currently teaches at the University of Toronto. All his courses are available on his YouTube channel. The current lecture series is composed of 20 lectures spanning between an hour and two hours each. It is time-consuming but interesting.
• I’m starting to brainstorm my own YouTube channel. I am still thinking about what I would like to do with this. This is probably something I’ll investigate next year but will begin putting together a plan for this by the end of this year.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope all of you are keep pushing forward with your goals.

Have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Goals, Going for it, Meaning, motivation, Persistence, Purpose, Structure

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” – Charles Kettering

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/charles_kettering_121333

I’m finally over this bug and got back to the gym this morning! It felt good to get in there and get moving. Today was a full body workout with weights. We had some snow come in last night and it was nice looking at the white covering everything as I drove to the gym.

Today is a work day. Since I’ve retired, I’ve learned that I need structure. So, I treat my Monday through Friday as my work days. Subsequently, I’ll be working on my book, getting my reading in, my JavaScript programming courses, lectures by Dr. Peterson at the University of Toronto, and pursuing my other interests. For those of you who haven’t retired, keep this in mind. You may not be working for other people, but we all require some structure and goals to pursue. This provides us with meaning. The folks who reduce their lives to watching tv, playing video games, and all the rest, won’t last that long. When you lose meaning and purpose in your life, your life tends to turn into absolute misery and boredom. Stay busy and pursue the things you couldn’t when you worked. The world still needs you!

I’ve recently signed up to the Poetry Foundation. You can find this at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ It’s a great site and if you sign up (it’s free), they’ll send you a daily poem to read. I really enjoy the random poems they send because it exposes me to people I would have never found on my own. Try it out if you’re interested.

We’re in the part of the year when we reexamine our lives and look forward to the new year. Some of you may have already set your New Year’s resolutions, while others may still be looking at what you are going to accomplish this year. As today’s quote states, set your goals so that you pursue something meaningful. What do you want to do? What have you always wanted to do but decided not to pursue because you’ve convinced yourself you can’t do it? Take the can’t out of that sentence and go for it. It is really liberating to pursue something you might have to work really hard to achieve. Imagine how you will feel if you accomplish something you didn’t think you could?

Goals should stretch you. Why set up something you know you could accomplish? Is that really a goal? Failure? You can’t fail if you keep moving toward your goal, regardless if you crawl, walk, or run. You can’t fail if you don’t quit. Get at it!

My decision to learn how to write computer programs has been exhilarating. Yeah, there are times I get stuck and frustrated. That’s normal when you’re learning new things. Imagine how much impact this new skill would have on your ability to make money or just create useful programs for yourself and your family?

I wish all of you the best of luck this year! I hope all of you achieve what you have set out to do. Persist. Adapt. Continue. You’ll get where you want to if you keep walking.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Persistence

Tags

involuntary change, Paulo Coelho, Perseverance, Persistence, voluntary change, wisdom

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”―Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

If you’ve never read this book, I highly recommend it. I read through it in a few days and it is a wonderful story. Today’s Wisdom Wednesday is about persistence. As I work through developing the character trait of forgiveness, there is one thing that is important about adding this character trait to my toolbox–persistence.

Each change that is introduced into your life will be accepted or fought against. Those changes that come about voluntarily, like my pursuit of 12 new character traits over the next year, are easier to deal with because you volunteer. You are the one instituting change. If you institute a change in your life it is much easier to deal with because you can always abandon the change, whenever you wish.

The changes that arise in our life like a job loss, the loss of a loved one, or the loss of health, are all much more difficult to deal with because they arrived uninvited. They are also not going to go away because they are changes to the outside of you. You cannot control your employer. If they economy goes into the gutter your employer will be required to tighten their belt. This tightening sometimes requires the elimination of people who are typically the highest cost a business has. This change requires us to find a new employer.

Losing a loved one to disease, old-age, or in the case of romance, are also involuntary changes to your life. They hurt because people who leave us, particularly those that we love, leaves a hole in our lives. Having someone in your life 24-hours a day to not having them in your life causes upheaval. In some case, this upheaval is too great for a person to handle and they do all sorts of harmful things to compensate. Others will take stock of their situations, alter their lives to compensate for this person being out of their life, and get on with it.

Losing your health to an injury, old age, or a disease that is incurable are other types of changes that we must deal with. If we’ve been injured, we heal. We compensate for the injury or ailment and get on with our lives the best way we can. Involuntary changes are hard to work through because we have no choice. We have to adapt to the things that happen to us.

Change is inevitable. Throughout our lives we learn which things we habitually do that are beneficial and which ones are not. When we take charge of our lives and decide to get rid of certain habits or activities that are not in our benefit to continue, we voluntarily opt to make a change.

If you’ve thought about all of the necessary things that warrant a change, stick with them. You put a lot of work learning about the detrimental effects a habit has on you. Persist as you begin the process of learning a new habit, a new way of doing things. If you miss a day or two, don’t beat yourself up. Just pick up where you left off and continue to move forward. At some point you’ll feel a shift and you’ll know you’ve adopted this new thing. You’ll know because it will feel uncomfortable to not do that thing you’ve established as a habit. This is when you know you’ve internalized a new habit in your life. Persistence is the only thing that will get you to this point.

I hope everyone is having a great Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Consistency, Persistence, self-criticism, self-improvement, self-judgment, Self-love, self-support

“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.” – H. G. Wells

Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/h_g_wells_163592

One of my largest challenges is learning how to be non-judgmental and self-criticizing. I want to do so many things, get moving toward them, and then…You know the rest. I wanted to take a little time today to discuss the importance of “giving yourself a break.”

I am currently working through a meditation series on my Calm app called the “Relationship with Self” series. It is a series of 10-minute meditations that address things like self-criticism, impatience with self, judgment of self. Think about how many times in the last week you said, “I should…”. For me, it is beyond counting.

I have discovered over the last month working with the discrimination character trait that when you rise above the mind and realize your true nature (awareness), the negative and positive of things fades away. There is no good or bad, up or down, here or there. It all just is. It is just experience. When the mind gets involved it must label, compare, or judge. This is what the mind does—it must examine and measure to make any sense of what it takes in.

Does beating yourself up really make any difference? Not really. It just adds to your guilt, your angst, and lowers your self-esteem each time you start ranting to yourself about how you should have done this or failed to do this. This doesn’t make any sense, does it?

Instead, look at each day as an experiment. What works? What doesn’t work? Just like the quote for today, we all fall, we all screw up, we all fail. Today, we can get up, and try again.

It’s the start of another week. Be patient with yourself, be kind to yourself, love yourself. You should be your best cheerleader, not your best critic.

This week I’ll continue to work through my coding classes, my mindfulness course, writing my book, blogging, and of course, working out. I’ll also squeeze in some reading here and there and journal.

I hope each of you has a terrific week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Brainstorming, Exercise, Persistence, Reading, reflection, spirituality, Thomas Edison, Writing

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison

Happy October!!

Here we are again at the beginning of a new week. I use Sundays to reflect on my life, reflect on the weekly goals I set the week before, and examine all my projects to determine where I am at and what I have left to do.

I realize where I made progress, realize where I messed up, and think about new ideas to move my projects and goals forward. I do what many call a weekly review. This allows me to look at my calendar, my mail, my email, my project lists, my to-do lists, my bucket lists, anything that I have some interest in. This one day a week I label my “do nothing day” but this is a misnomer. I really do things on Sunday but do less than I normally would and use the day to re-charge, re-focus, and restart stalled projects.

I think this is what Edison is driving at. If we learn that something we are doing isn’t working—we re-tool. We try again. If we realize we haven’t been doing this or that—we re-tool. We try again. If we catch some inefficiencies, we can re-work the game plan we have for a goal or project. We can try again.

If you are stuck, not motivated, and frustrated, take some time on Saturday or Sunday and re-think what you are doing. You’ll get new ideas, you’ll see potential opportunities to try something different, you’ll find avenues to travel you haven’t been down yet. Try them, explore them, take them.

This week:

Still plugging away at the Kris Gethin 4-week-to-shred workout. Still plugging away at my books and working through a 7-week course on Coursera. I’ll also be working on my non-fiction book. Spiritually, I’ll be meditating daily and reading my Bible and other spiritual works.

Have a great week everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Thomas A. Edison Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Website: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_149049

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk Tuesday!

Tags

Adam Grant, creativity, Fail often, Improvers vs. First Movers, Persistence, Procrastinate

Adam Grant brings to light the ability to join the ranks of “The Original” by making slight alterations to the way we do things. I think you’ll enjoy this one. It’s humorous, has some surprising insights, and shows that these folks are not much different from the rest of us–they just try more.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

accidents, Attitude, Character, despair, Determination, Persistence, Self-discipline

“As our self-discipline increases, we discover that life can no longer defeat us. We move tranquilly under the protection of that Presence we know as the ECK, or Divine Spirit.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Self-discipline. This is one of the hardest things to master. When we discipline ourselves, it is NOT about what other people or society require of us—it is what we tell ourselves to do.

Managing ourselves is hard, particularly when examining bad habits. Habits like drinking too much, smoking too much, doing drugs, eating too much, not exercising enough, not sleeping enough, gossiping about other people, and the list goes on and on. To simplify this, it is about keeping promises to ourselves. If you tell yourself you want to exercise and then blow it off, this hurts us inside. It eats away at our inner core. It is like you are looking at yourself walking off a cliff and you cannot stop yourself. You know what you’re doing is harmful, but you just can’t stop. You must have another chew, another smoke, another drink, another candy bar, another bag of chips. You can’t stop talking about other people, you can’t get up on time, you can’t stop watching the television, or playing just one more video game.

It was quite a few years ago and I discovered a truism for myself. It was this:

“The moment you discover you cannot keep commitments you make with yourself is the day you discover you are absolutely fucked.” – Dave Gardner

This was my situation. At the time, I was overweight. I was in an unbelievably horrible position financially. My marriage was falling apart. My career was in the toilet. If anything could go wrong, it did. I think, in retrospect, that we cannot really grow or improve until we’ve hit this level of despair. We finally begin to understand that when life goes sour it is not because of outside circumstances in most cases. It is about what is going on inside of us. Our internal attitudes, the way we look at the world, our character, are what cause us the most pain.

I realize that some folks are hit with something that is unbelievably horrible. When I think about natural disasters, car accidents, crime, illness, and any other situation that comes out of nowhere and knocks us in the dirt, it is a different situation. Many people, because of their inner strength and self-discipline can pull themselves out of these things and continue to thrive. When you cannot trust yourself or do what you know you need to do—it is horrific.

Attitude has a lot to do with our lot in life. Victor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor. He witnessed his family systematically murdered by the Nazi regime. He experienced untold horrors at the hands of these animals. In light of this, he learned a great deal about himself in the camps. The one quote I came across that really stuck with me is here for your review:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Victor Frankl

Our attitude has a lot to do with self-discipline. The way we interpret the world is filtered by our attitude. If we believe we are a victim, we will assume that everyone is out to get us. We will look outside of ourselves to blame circumstances on our lot in life.

Let’s return to the statement I made about natural disasters, car accidents, and other items of chance that happen in our lives through no fault of our own (in most cases). One person will look at it and blame God, the universe, or wallow in self-pity. Another person will not blame anyone, accept the situation for what it is and get on with their life.

When I began to realize that my attitude and my ability to control myself were responsible for my lot in life, I began to change the way I looked at things. This was not a quick fix. It took a lot of pain, suffering, and time to get through all the problems I had created for myself.

I began to set little goals for myself. I felt if I could begin rebuilding trust in myself I could pull myself out of the pit I created. I started by getting up at a certain time and making my bed. Then I began exercising. Not a lot of exercise, mind you, but exercise. I began eating right. I called creditors and set up payment plans I could handle. I got a physical and went to the dentist. I began reading my Bible and praying regularly.

I began small. I set little commitments and kept them. After a while, I began to increase my personal commitments to challenge my new-found discipline. Sometimes I slipped and fell. I picked myself right back up and re-committed. I kept going. I began to realize that I could not lose if I kept going. Each time I slipped in my self-discipline, I forgave myself, got up, and started again. This was another major learning event for me. I realized another truism:

“You can’t lose if you don’t quit.” – Dave Gardner

What is the moral of the story? We are responsible. We choose how we respond to outside events. We reap what we sow. We can recover from despair and bad situations. We can overcome our weaknesses and rise again. Our internal character, self-discipline, and attitudes are what create our external realities.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thinking Thursday

Tags

adaptation, change, Character, Persistence, Preparedness, Stephen Hawking, Survival

Thank you for following Daily Ramblings!

Daily Ramblings has gained another 7 followers! Thank you! I am glad you are on board and I hope to meet your expectations. For those of you who are new, my blog postings follow a daily theme. Motivation Monday, Ted Talk Tuesday, Wisdom Wednesday, Thinking Thursday, Funny Friday, Spiritual Saturday, and for a brief time, Series Sunday. The upcoming series of essays I am going to write will focus on character attributes I am trying to build for myself personally. I hope you visit!

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/intelligence

Thinking Thursday!

The late Stephen Hawking was one of the great thinkers of our time. He wrote multiple books, gave a myriad number of presentations and talks, and was the guy that gave us more insight into the black hole—all while stuck in a wheelchair with the equivalent of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Talk about an achievement.

Our ability to adapt to change is literally what helps us survive. We get sick, we get old, things happen we didn’t see coming that throw our world into chaos. It is our ability to accept and adapt to these changes that mean the difference between our surviving the change and thriving despite it.

I like to read about folks like Stephen Hawking because it provides me with a great perspective. His life tells me that regardless of what life deals out, we can overcome these challenges and live extraordinary lives. If you are ever down in the dumps, ready to quit, read stories about Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and the other greats. You’ll discover that their lives were wrought with the same challenges you and I face, if not worse. They demonstrate by their actions and character, that true greatness is not having everything go your way. It is about recovering from the disasters and tragedies that sometimes occur for no reason and seemingly through no fault of our own.

Books:

Ethics, Aristotle

The Shariyat Ki Sugmad, Paul Twitchell

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

Classes:

Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential, Coursera

Western Heritage, Hillsdale College

Mini-Habits Course, Udemy

Documentaries:

I’m a Killer (Netflix) – decided to stop watching this one. It was a little too dark for me. As I grow older, the violent, bloody, and vicious don’t appeal to me anymore.

Movies:

Fun:

The West Wing (Currently on Netflix)

I’ve been playing a video game with my Army buddy called StarCraft II. It is great fun.

Change is inevitable in our lifetime. Our bodies change, our relationships change, our jobs change, our health changes. Learn new skills, develop new character traits, be prepared. You are stronger than you think you are.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday

Tags

Consistency, failure, Mistakes, Perseverance, Persistence, Planning

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

I like quotes like these because they truly reflect reality. There is nothing that you will do in life that will not result in mistakes. Mistakes are what makes us human. If we fear to make mistakes we will never accomplish anything. Those of us that accomplish a lot also fail a lot. Those of us that accomplish a lot are not afraid of making mistakes.

The lesson: Make mistakes. Make many mistakes. Continue pushing forward and make more mistakes. If 10 mistakes result in achieving something—make them and achieve.

Take some time today and look at some of the goals you have set for yourself. Which ones have you put off? I bet there’s a little fear inside of you telling you that you are not good enough, you don’t have the right skills to do that, or you don’t know where to start.

Today, I challenge you to grab one of those goals and think about what your life looks like when you achieve it. Then, once you know where you want to be, put together a rough plan. Don’t do anything else, just put together a plan.

Tomorrow, look at that plan and flesh it out a bit. Get some specifics in place. Set a few milestones (deadlines) for those specific actions you have created for yourself.

On Friday take one of those initial actions and do it. On Saturday look at your plan and schedule execution on another one of your action steps to be finished next week. Try this out. You’ll find that once you’re moving on these action steps you’ll begin to feel better and better about achieving your goal.

One of my major goals is to lose weight. I’m down 28 pounds so far. When I started, I went through the same actions above. Has my weight loss been consistent? Has it been perfect? No, to both questions. I have had to continue to adjust, realize I made some mistakes, fix them, and get back on track.

When you are looking to lose weight, you must do one thing: create a calorie deficit. We analyze what we are currently eating by monitoring our food intake for a week. We don’t adjust yet. We just write down what we are eating every day. Then, once you’ve done this for the week, you know what you are currently eating (calories, carbohydrates, fats, proteins). Then we adjust. I’m at 2300 calories per week, but do not hit that calorie goal every day. I lose about a pound a week. That’s all I want to lose. I’m not in a rush, I want to keep off whatever I take off.

My plan:

• Collect food intake
• Determine total calories consumed each week by macro (Carbs, Fats, Proteins)
• Then reduce the calories by 500 (3500 calories in 1 pound of body weight)
• Stick to the new calorie goals

Assumptions:

• This is not an exact science
• My body will react differently over time as it adapts to the diet
• I will need to adjust as I go, but the adjustments need to be gradual and consistent

You see how simple this is? You can do it too. You just need to take a little time to create a plan, break the plan out into actionable steps, and execute each step. You’ll get there—I promise.

If you are stuck and still don’t know what to do, feel free to reach out. I like helping people with achieving their goals. Simply reply in the comments and tell me how to contact you. I’m not looking to make money here, just help others to achieve what they want to achieve.

Making mistakes is part of being human. Make them. Fix them. Move forward.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Conscious Competence, Conscious Incompetence, Daily Rituals, Persistence, Unconscious Competence, Unconscious Incompetence

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Confucius

Today’s Monday Motivation is about persistence. Persistence is the ability to continue to move forward despite difficulties, failures, and doubt—it is the ability to continue that is a truly powerful ally, particularly when we run into challenges.

When I volunteered for Ranger School, one of the pieces of advice I received was from a recent graduate. That soldier told me that “persistence defeats resistance.” Boy, was he right. You really have no idea how hard this school is until you’re doing it. At one point in the final phase of the school, my body was so worn out that I was literally thriving on willpower alone. My body was just broke.

This same type of persistence is required when pursuing any type of goal that stretches your limits. I am on a journey to weight loss. I had a difficult back surgery in 2003 and have been struggling with my weight ever since. I’m making progress, but this progress is slow. I’m not concerned. Weight loss should be slow. It took me 15 years to get to the weight I am at, I’m not concerned if it takes me that much time to lose what I put on. I will achieve my goal.

I am also pursuing a goal of writing some books. Again, this is not an easy journey. It is tough work to create something-something that is original and my own. I will achieve my goal.

I am dedicated to living a healthy lifestyle. My physical and mental health is important. I meditate daily. I exercise daily. I continue to study and read all the latest information on improving physical and mental well-being. I will achieve my goal.

A key piece to mental health, particularly the brain is in eating right, sleeping enough, physical exercise, and mental exercise. I have embraced the concept of life-long learning. I also enjoy playing video games, not just because I find them fun and entertaining, but also because they stimulate the brain and my hand-eye coordination. I’m a big fan of strategy games and first-person shooters like Call of Duty.

I have set a personal goal of reading 36 books this year (around 3 a month). I’m close to hitting that goal. Once I achieve it, I’ll set my goal to 48 books next year. I have found that doing a little each day is really the key to achieving these types of goals. Frankly, it works for most of the things I am pursuing. Little things add up to really big things. Therefore, my focus is more on my daily accomplishments, rather than on long-term or even short-term goals. I have goals, but it is the daily accomplishment of critical tasks that build up in the long run. Read a chapter a day and you will read 365 chapters a year. I read much more than that, but you get the point.

Book writing is the same. Working just a little each day will build the book. As I get better at the writing process, writing more books will be much easier. It’s always the first step that poses the most difficulty. It is like taking a step in the dark when traversing uncharted territory. We take small steps initially. Once we gain confidence in the path, our steps are less tentative.

The key point to this posting is the ability to build confidence, by persevering. Each day we do something we get better at that task. Each time we improve our proficiency in something we are unskilled at, our confidence improves. If you have ever read any type of training or teaching material, you’ll realize the wisdom in the four levels of learning. These four levels are: 1) unconscious incompetence; 2) conscious incompetence; 3); conscious competence; and 4) unconscious competence. At each level, we grow in proficiency.

Initially, we must be taught, or we must learn how to do something we don’t know how to do. Then we begin to realize how little we know about a topic or task. After some practice, we become proficient in the task but need to pay attention to what we are doing. When we have truly mastered a task or skill, we can do the task without thinking about it. It is a part of us. This is the unconscious competence level. Authors like Stephen King are like this. This is how he has become so prolific in his writing. Another author that comes to mind that is like this is Isaac Asimov.

Persistence is required when we attempt anything new. Whether it is a new diet, a new exercise regimen, writing, public speaking, or web development. Every new skill we pursue requires us to pay a price. This price involves learning something new, then practicing and practicing and practicing. This process never ends—ever. You can’t master anything if you aren’t willing to make the sacrifice to learn the task and then practice the task until you become unconsciously competent in the performance of the task.

You will make mistakes. You will be frustrated. You will have to change course. This is what persistence is. I hope all of you have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave