Follow Your Passions

This week has been particularly hectic. New posts starting tomorrow, meteors striking the earth not-withstanding…

I’ve had a few great inspirations for topics this week, but today, I’m in more of a mood to just share how the house hunting is progressing, and a few other personal notes.

We’ve met with our mortgage guys, our financial advisor, and our realtor now, discussing strategies with each one (we still need to meet with the accountant to chat about tax implications). The question has shifted from where we want to own a house – we have our area pretty well decided on, and there are ample houses in our price range on the market there. Now the decision to make is whether it is wise or even doable to keep the condo as an investment, renting it out to someone attending the nearby colleges and university. All signs so far point to yes, though it is a less conservative move than we’d usually make since you have to rely somewhat on having a renter in the unit for most of the time. Exciting times are afoot!

I spoke previously about my current neighborhood, and made somewhat sarcastic remarks about how you can occasionally see a star or two in the sky through the light pollution. But stars in the night sky is something I grew up with, and now I am moving to a place where I can see them again and still be ten or fifteen minutes to work most mornings.

A few other loose notes: I think it is amazing and wonderful that we are almost at the target for the month of raising $100 for Maggie’s Place, and the month isn’t even halfway over. Way to raise the bar, people. My wife pointed out to me recently that it makes sense to have my efforts tied into Maggie’s Place too, since it is a place where women are trying to pick their lives up and I am in a position to arrange for some good financial education and guidance to help them on their way. So I am likely to look into making something like that happen, and I’ll let you know how that progresses.

This week is going to be full, as I try to get a few things finished and off my plate. I’ll try to minimize the impact that has on my posting frequency. Oh, and one last thing, the charities for the next two months have been identified to raise money for via the ChipIn widget, and a few other cool opportunities have come to my attention that I will bring to yours as soon as I have more info myself.

Have a great week!

The February meeting of the Social Media Club was originally set to be a discussion of the tools that exist to implement and participate in social communities. To an extent that did occur, but the meat of the meeting ended up falling into two other categories.

There was an interesting debate begun around whether social media has a dehumanizing effect on us. When you build a community completely virtually, isn’t there a certain level of connectedness that is lacking which only being able to interact face-to-face can produce? The general consensus was that, as with so many other tools, it is up to the user who wields it to determine how to use it appropriately. It was pointed out that whether you are offline or on, you can affect a different version of yourself for different situations and put on personas as you desire – it may be more challenging to be a completely fake version of yourself in person, but it doesn’t take technological advancements to allow humans to put up different veneers. Additionally, some felt the web could have the opposite of a dehumanizing effect, wherein someone who feels socially inept in a crowd of people might be able to come out of his or her shell in a web-based environment, grow social skills, and apply those to be more able to connect to new people IRL (In Real Life).

My personal take on this discussion is that things like blogs, IM clients, discussion forums, and so on are simply additional ways to communicate, much like a telephone or writing a letter and sending it through the post office via “snail mail”. They each have their usefulness, they each have their limitations. For example, if you’re on a conference call and need to communicate something quickly to another person on the call, rather than interupt that call you can send them an instant message. Just yesterday I was on a call where we were both on AOL Instant Messenger too, and the conversation went “And then earlier I got an e-mail with this link,” I sent the link to the site via IM, paused, then continued “and as you can see on the left side of that web page, you could use that concept to…” and so on. The more you explore different ways to communicate, the easier it will be to get information out and the more powerfully that information can be delivered.

The other largest amount of time spent on a particular subject during the meeting was an around the table introduction of all of the attendees, what they did, and what they were there to hope to accomplish regarding social media. There were a few that had little knowledge and were just intrigued as to how the concept might enhance their business, life, or whatever they were trying to accomplish. As the discussion progressed however, I took note of some of the more intriguing personalities and social media efforts being shared.

• HOA Freedom dot com – a discussion forum to come discuss the good and bad aspects of HOA living (judging by the title, I suspect I can guess which side of the fence most people using the site will be on)
• Helloworld, a company focusing on video e-mail and other video-based social media tools.
• IT people from the Rich Dad company
• The VP of Jobing.com, which recently launched a blogging feature
• Business Blogging Pros, which helps businesses understand how blogging might enhance their efforts.
• An Account Executive from Business Wire
• A woman who takes old home movies and slides from the 40s – 60s (primarily) and transforms them to digital formats that can be shared over the web, e-mail, etc.
• A reporter from the Business Journal of Phoenix

The most interesting idea to me that someone was working on involved using social media to provide small businesses with a sort of virtual board of advisors/directors, bringing the possibility of expertise to them that larger businesses with bigger coffers normally can afford to obtain via an experienced board of directors.

A final thought – I shared with the Social Media Club that many moons ago I played Everquest, a big online game that many people find very addictive. I mentioned that what I thought made it so addictive was it gave you a false sense that you were accomplishing something, when in a sense you weren’t really accomplishing anything “real”. The discussion turned to Second Life, a similar game people have actually used to make a living by creating products and offering services within the game environment.

I think that Stagecoach Island, Wells Fargo’s venture into online gaming, is a great next step in this particular social media concept, because it creates an environment in which you actually are accomplishing something – increasing an individual’s knowledge of how to invest money and use it in different ways to increase wealth. I’m excited to see what other ways people come up with to provoke positive social change in different communities through the myriad of unique tools that make up social media.

WHAT: Social Media Club of Phoenix Meeting

WHEN: Thursday, February 8th @ 6:30pm

WHERE: La Madeline (in the wine room)
3102 East Camelback Road (NW of Camelback & 32nd Street)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=3102+East+Camelback+Road,+Phoenix,+AZ

RSVP’s: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/45582338
Social Media Club: http://www.socialmediaclub.org
Social Media Club Phoenix: http://www.smcphoenix.com

Often, the path to living a life you’re passionate about is built from certain single steps that many are unwilling or unable to take. There are many hurdles on the way to living our dreams, but the sad part is that most of them have been placed into existence by our minds, and thus we as individuals are the only ones ultimately capable of removing them (or at least getting around them).

You never know what taking one courageous leap of faith can do for your life. In the summer of 1999 a friend and I built a website where we were going to do all things entertainment related. Movie reviews, concert and music reviews, online comics, whatever – anything to try to seem legitimate enough to get free passes into movies and the occasional tee shirt or something. It was just a fun, goofy sort of thing we thought we’d try. I began downloading free MP3s from a website that had a bunch of emerging artists featured, and through a great deal of trial and error, I found a band I really enjoyed and wanted to review. More than that, I wanted to see if I could even get an interview. My first instinct was “What is the lead singer (who happened to also be attractive and female) going to want with a no one she has never met, I’ll never hear back.” But I took a leap of faith, and shot off an e-mail letting her know I really liked the music and wanted to interview her for the new website.

She wrote back, and agreed to an interview. Over time, we started writing back and forth and became pen pals. Soon we chatted on the phone, and by the following summer when I went out to California for a convention, we decided to meet up for coffee. I sat down with her, and we chatted for over three hours, and it was as though we had just always been the best of friends, meeting for just another of our big discussions about life and the world and our little spots in it. The next night I met her husband and the rest of her band, and hung out most of the evening chatting. The last day of the trip, I went to see them play a concert in Balboa Park in San Diego.

Now, keep following this, and remember – this all started with the decision to send that first e-mail even though I doubted I’d ever hear back. I had a feeling come over me on the drive back home to Arizona, and I shared with this new friend of mine that I felt like I was going to meet the girl I’d marry soon. A few weeks later, I did in fact meet the person I ended up marrying. You’ll think perhaps it was some sort of self-fulfilled prophecy, but I genuinely knew instinctually she was the one. I’ve been married blissfully to a woman who is a perfect compliment to me for well over five years now.

Fast forward to my final interviews for the company I currently work for (the job I am constantly inspired by and absolutely embodies the quote at the top of every page on this website). The people interviewing me consisted of some of the highest ranking individuals in the company, and I was in for a morning of meeting one-on-one with them as well as a big group presentation. This was a situation in which you certainly wouldn’t be faulted for being nervous, but I was able to remain comfortably calm. I had learned from my musician friend many years ago that rock stars, movie personalities, politicians, sports figures – all these people have in common that they are still ultimately just humans, like you and me. They have interesting jobs, but they are made of flesh and bone and have insecurities and wisdom just like everyone does.

That friend I e-mailed so many years ago for an interview is still whom I consider, outside of my wife and family, to be my best friend. I just had an hour long discussion this evening. Every time I get off the phone with her I’m inspired to do good things in life, and I have definitely learned a great deal of wisdom from her sharing her experience with me. I gained so much by that simple e-mail, that decision, that leap of faith. So when you see a chance, an opportunity, even when the odds are stacked somewhat against you or it seems like a long shot, think about what the worst that is likely to happen would be. Often, the worst is that nothing happens. The question, then, becomes “What have you got to lose?” Or the way I prefer to think of it, is to envision “What have I got to win?” The truth is, what you stand to gain from taking those little leaps of faith in life can be huge and literally catapult you to achieving your dreams.

“Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.”- Dale Carnegie

This weekend, Joel Osteen said something in his sermon that really stunned me, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since. He pointed out that we feed our outer selves, our bodies, very regularly – many of us eat three squares a day, or certainly enough to sustain and nourish ourselves. In fact, we often eat more than we need, enjoying a bowl of chips or ice cream not because we need it but because we feel happy when we do. And yet when it comes to feeding our inner selves, our souls, our inner well being… we tend to often have “one cold snack a week”.

If you know you are going to face something you have difficulty with, or be exposed to a situation where a weakness of yours might rear its head, get yourself prepared for it. In the last post I talked about identifying your areas of opportunity – now let’s discuss a tactic for building those areas into something more positive and strong. Being prepared in advance for something you know you will struggle with in the near future can be your ticket to overcoming obstacles that an area within yourself you usually struggle with might create.

One of my biggest challenges is that I have a less than stellar memory. If I need to drop a letter off in the mail the next morning, I’ll be halfway down the freeway to work before I remember about it unless I set myself up for success ahead of time. My system is to leave the letter on the floor right in front of the stairs leading down to my garage. I literally can’t get out of my condo in the morning without seeing the letter on the ground. Post-it notes tend to find their way to the same place, or if it’s especially urgent to handle before I think about heading to work, I’ll post-it the milk in the refrigerator or the monitor of my computer.

Another thing I struggle with is my weight. I’m doing pretty well now, slowly losing pounds here and there and making healthier choices about my diet. But if there’s a counter at work with free cookies or cake on it, I know I’ll get snatched right up into that trap unless I’m prepared to do battle with it ahead of time. If I know we’re having a birthday celebration at the office I can guess cake will be involved, and that day I’ll bring a healthier alternative to enjoy while still celebrating with the group. Or, I’ll at least be mentally prepared so I only take a small piece of cake, and eat it slowly to enjoy the food and finish at the same time as the others (and then leave before I have seconds). I’ll have a talk within myself ahead of the event, about what is more important to me – eating a piece of cake, or living a healthy lifestyle so I can spend more happy years with my wife and doing the work I want to do while I’m here on the planet? It may not work exactly the same for others, but keep the big picture in your mind of why you want to change your bad habit, what’s in it for you if you overcome obstacles, and you’re on your way to success.

I think examples are important to hammer home a concept like this, so here’s one more. I am a very patient, calm, caring person, until you get me behind the wheel of my car. I have the potential to turn into The Incredible Grump when I’m on the road. I don’t swear any other time in my life than when I am driving, and I have my most negative thoughts about others when I’m behind the wheel. I get really indignant when people risk my life and theirs doing a crazy stunt so they can get to Starbucks two minutes earlier in the morning. But how I feel about those people, how I react in those situations, is often the opposite of how I try desperately to live my life the rest of the time. So I’m trying to be better about it, in baby step fashion. I have stopped swearing at people, and instead the only word I’m allowed to call them is “creep”. “Creep!” gives me some satisfaction, some release, but it also deflates me a lot more than going on a cursing spree would. And when people cut me off or pull some sort of crazy stunt, I don’t honk my horn at them to “teach them a lesson” anymore. It just gets them angry, or nervous, and likely creates a worse driver out of them for the next little while. Heck, it could put them in a worse mood that carries through their whole day and into their interactions with everyone else they come in contact with that morning. Instead, I simply smile at them and think about what a great day I’m going to have, or how wonderful my breakfast was, or some positive distraction to get my mind off of the negative.

Keep things around you that remind you of the positive in your life, and that will help you overcome your obstacles. On the wall as I walk out the door in the morning, there is a poster I made a few years ago that says “It’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away.” It puts a great, cheerful song in my head in the morning quite often, at least for a few minutes, and gets me out to face the world with a better attitude. Because the fact is, it is a beautiful day. At least, it is if you allow it to be.

There is a adage about a chain only being as strong as its weakest link. Generally, this is being used to describe an individual within a group or team of some sort. However, it can also be applied to what is going on inside each one of us internally. As strong as we may be in many aspects of our lives, there may be things inside of us that we consider to be glaring opportunities for improvement. Figuring out how to overcome the parts of us that may be roadblocks to what we want to accomplish in life is a challenge. But before we face that challenge, we have to do something else – we have to identify and be aware of what those areas of opportunity are, and we have to desire to improve them.

Often, when someone is close to a subject, they have a hard time being objective. And the subject most of us are closest to is ourselves. In order to overcome this lack of objectivity, you would normally call in some sort of third party support to offer you a more objective opinion. This is what I suggest you do in order to better understand not just where you might have some need to grow, but also where your great strengths lie.

Go ask some trusted friends to do you the following favor (and offer to return it if you wish) – ask them to write down five strengths that you possess, and ask them to write them in order of how great the strength is. Then, either on a separate sheet of paper or preferably on the back of the same sheet, have them write down what they perceive your greatest opportunity is for growth. (Note – I’m purposefully not using the term “weakness” anymore because it’s negative and self-defeating, and what we are trying to do is positive and uplifting.) There is a school of thought that it takes five praises for each criticism we receive to have balance, because of how we take both things inside of ourselves and process them, hence the 5-to-1 ratio.

I think as you ask a few people to go through this exercise and gather a small body of data, some things will probably appear (they did for me). One, there will be some things that appear on your strengths list that are essentially the same as what someone else writes on your opportunities side. This just comes down to other people’s perceptions, and while valuable to be aware of and think about, is perhaps not something to concern yourself about. Two, there will likely be things that you already knew on both sides of the paper. However, there will also be those things that catch you by surprise, that you were unaware of. Things that others perceive in you as greatness whereas you never considered it any more than the way you go about your day. Things that are so natural to you, they aren’t things you are particularly conscious of. What I personally think is the most valuable, and the hardest to pry out of people sometimes, is something that you were completely unaware you were doing that is holding you back, or making you shoot yourself in the foot.

Often when these things are brought to light, you have one of two reactions. Either you have an “A-Ha” moment where light shed on it was all you needed in order to try to begin making things better. Oh, you have an “Oh no” moment where you have a hard time processing what has been brought to your attention, go into denial about it, or ignore it rather than trying to deal with it at that point. All very reasonable, natural reactions to have. We’ll talk about how to work through the harder things we struggle with in the next blog post.

“The future influences the present just as much as the past.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The moment something occurs, it has occured. It’s not going to occur, it already has. That places it in the past. You can’t influence it, you can’t change it. Sometimes you can take action “in the now” to mend something that is broken, or affect a better situation for the future, but you can’t alter the fact that what was done, was done.

I know people, people I talk to every day, who spend a lot of time being concerned about things they have no ability to influence, because they were in the past. They had a “bad day” where many things didn’t go right, and they are spending their “now” fretting about it, being downtrodden about it. If I may be so bold, this is not a particularly productive approach to looking at the past.

Now, what I don’t mean to imply is there is no value in considering the past. There is a great deal we can learn from the past so that we can apply that knowledge to bettering our now and our future. Whereas you cannot influence the past, there is little else you can do with the future but to influence it so that when it influences you as it approaches your present, it does so in a way more in line with your passions in life.

Let me share a rule I live by. If you desire something more than everyone else combined desires the opposite, then your desire is significantly more likely to come to pass. By desiring it, you are influencing the future. But others can do the same. So your desire has to be strong, and it has to push you to take action in the now, learn what you need to and can from the past, and apply your desire as much as you are capable of to the future. Live this way, keeping a positive attitude while avoiding wasting energy on negative thoughts about things you have no ability to control (like the past), and you will find your future filled with more and more of the kinds of things you wish to reap.

First of all, I’m really excited that $30 has been donated in January to assist National Public Radio in continuing the incredibly inspirational work that they do. Today is the last day to donate for the NPR campaign, though if you want to have NPR or any of the other charities we give to come around again, please post a comment and I will be glad to make that happen.

For February, the charity I have chosen to collect for is Maggie’s Place, a home for expectant mothers who are alone or living on the streets. With help, hopefully these mothers can start by living their dreams of having healthy, successful children, and perhaps start following their other passions in life and find success, stability, and happiness in their future.

Have a charity you’d like featured in the FYP Give-O-Meter next month? Post a comment or drop me a line!

Do you feel like you are stuck? Are you doing something you’d rather not be doing? Do you wish you could quit smoking, but you can’t seem to quit lighting up? Want to lose weight, but everywhere you go there are temptations that are just too delicious to pass up?

Many times, the things we want to change about ourselves can be attributed to having bad habits. In order to move beyond those things in our lives we perceive as negative, we often have to break bad habits and often need to replace them with healthy ones. This is a fairly obvious statement I know, but it is not as obvious to our hearts and our willpower as it may be to our ability to process logic.

Somehow, we need to be able to tether ourselves to something that can get us through the hard part of breaking a habit, which is usually the first month or so of the process. Your mind has to be ready and willing to focus in a new direction, and keep focused on it so long that it becomes your new reality and your old reality seems nothing more than a part of your history (rather than your present or your future).

Something that works for me in times like this is to get a powerful visual image in your mind that represents not just your end goal, but actually includes the action of the struggle you will go through on your journey. There are some good examples of this I have used, but my favorite right now is the following:

Imagine what a rocket has to do in order to get into orbit. Before it gets more than a few inches off the ground, a great deal of energy has to be expended to get it moving in the right direction. Once it gets moving, things get slightly easier, but it still needs a lot of help to make its way up through the atmosphere. However, once it finally breaks through and escapes the atmosphere, things get a lot easier, and you can eventually rely on your momentum to keep you going.

The most well intentioned, supported person might get tripped up on the way though, if they don’t set themselves up for success ahead of time. Continuing the rocket metaphor, conditions have to be right for a launch to even be attempted – skies should be clear, planning and preparation should happen to make sure everything that needs to be in place is there. For someone trying to lose weight, this might involve avoiding the desk at work where everyone puts the cake and cookies they’re trying to get rid of from home (or, it might be going to that desk and bringing the brownies and cookies from home to share with everyone, rather than eating them yourself). For someone quitting smoking, this might be doing your research about what to expect in the days, weeks, and months to follow. Within a week or two of quitting, the nicotine withdrawls are done, and any urge you are feeling to light up is all in your head, all up to your willpower – and that makes it very possible to overcome! Another hard part is the social circles you are in when you smoke (who tend to be comprised of smokers) – to avoid worrying about those relationships weakening, plan events with them that don’t involve smoking, like lunch. You get the idea.

If you’re trying to get out of any bad habit you feel is having a negative affect on your life, whether it’s an attitude, an outlook, etc., feel free to comment or shoot me an e-mail for support. My inbox is always open.