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06-28-10

One of those things I have to do.

Just a token I have to put in a post to ver­ify my site with Tech­no­rati.  Here it comes.….…..GFYVDP9MX8TB.

Peace out!

06-26-10

Top 10 Links of the Week

10) Sim­ple and Con­sis­tent Par­ent­ing: Ten Key Strategies

The most impor­tant thing I learned is that par­ent­ing is rel­a­tively sim­ple if you focus on this one thing: consistency…some sim­ple strategies.

9) How to Stop Doing “Stu­pid Work”

“Stu­pid work” hap­pens when you give into fear, give up cre­ative con­trol, and stop doing work that matters.

8 ) Eat­ing Health­fully– A Long Term Vision

‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life­time.’ ~Lao Tzu

7) Argu­ing: The Non-​​Simplifying Attribute

My life is not sim­pli­fied by bring­ing emo­tion into a topic that I may not have too many con­cerns about orig­i­nally. I man­age to sim­plify my life by stick­ing to accep­tance of dif­fer­ing opin­ions and growth from that.

There are short­cuts we can take to help us with our daily tasks, and to help opti­mize our pre­cious time.

5) MINIMALISM VS DEBT: 7 SIMPLE STRATEGIES TO LIBERATE YOUR FINANCES

The solu­tion to any debt prob­lem is eas­ily said than done, but I’ll go ahead and say it: to get out of debt you have to spend less. Easy, right? Well, not so much for many people.

4) 18 Things I Wish Some­one Told Me When I Was 18

This morn­ing I was read­ing a book at my favorite beach-​​side cof­fee shop when an 18-​​year-​​old kid sat down next to me and…then, with eager, hon­est eyes, he began ask­ing me one ques­tion after the next.

3) 7 New Blogs on Minimalism/​Simplicity You May Enjoy

Each of the fol­low­ing 7 blogs are less than 6 months old. If you haven’t checked them out yet, you may enjoy perus­ing them this weekend.

2) Who Is Your Band of Brothers?

Regard­less of what you’re try­ing to accom­plish in life, you need a core group of peo­ple you can depend on through thick and thin.

1) Ten Sim­ple Ways to Build Each Other Up

We are liv­ing in a self-​​serving, self-​​centered, and self-​​obsessed mod­ern day rush-​​rush soci­ety filled with neg­a­tiv­ity and con­stant tear­ing down of oth­ers. If you want to really dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self in this world, be people-​​oriented and start to focus on build­ing oth­ers up.

06-25-10

Reply to: Carry less stuff

Jonathan at We Live Sim­ply chal­lenged peo­ple carry less stuff in their pock­ets, and take a pic­ture of what they carry before and after sim­pli­fy­ing it.  I’ve already had my pock­ets sim­pli­fied as much as pos­si­ble, so I only have one pic­ture of what I cur­rently carry.  Below is the following:

• Cara­biner with car and office keys, thumb drive, and gym mem­ber­ship card
• Knife/​money clip with 5 cards (DL, Debit, 2 cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for work)
• LG Choco­late phone

06-23-10

Roll With the Punches

Just came off a crazy week with lots of things going down. It was one of those weeks where every day I was up early and crawl­ing into bed late with hardly any­thing done on my to-​​do list because there wasn’t enough time in the day. Sat­ur­day came around and I was com­pletely out of steam, but I had a Sum­mer­Fest to run for the kids in our church. Because my to-​​dos hadn’t been com­pleted, there were a num­ber of things that didn’t hap­pen at the Sum­mer­Fest as planned. By the end, I was run­ning on exhaust. So, need­less to say, I was ready for a lit­tle R’n’R this week.

Look­ing back, I have some observations:

• Things may not go as planned, but when done in con­fi­dence, no one will prob­a­bly know the difference
• There may be sea­sons of exhaus­tion, but life seems to have a way of bal­anc­ing itself out, so don’t stress and keep plug­ging away
• Sched­ules and plan­ning ahead are good, but I need to expect things to almost always change (some­times drastically)
• Build­ing myself on my expec­ta­tions can be dan­ger­ous because expec­ta­tions can be kicked out from under­neath my feet
• Learn to enjoy the spon­tane­ity of life
• I squeezed in sim­plic­ity when­ever I got the chance like hit­ting the snooze but­ton and enjoy­ing 10min of unplanned sleep, dri­ving with my win­dows down, tak­ing 5min to lay in the grass and watch the stars, and forc­ing myself to walk slower to take in things going on around me

What have you learned from your past week? And what are you doing to improve on it?

06-16-10

The Art of an Attitude of Gratitude

I work for a great com­pany.  One that has cus­tomer ser­vice stats through the roof, but it never ceases to amaze me how ungrate­ful peo­ple can be.  Here’s some examples:

Exam­ple #1: A cus­tomer comes in with a bro­ken prod­uct not real­iz­ing they need a reser­va­tion to see our tech sup­port.  We help them make an appoint­ment with an open­ing in 10min.  They raise a big stink about the wait, seem­ingly obliv­i­ous to the kaos in the store, as though they should get VIP service.

Exam­ple #2: Some­one comes with a bro­ken prod­uct, and we’re able to find a solu­tion for the prob­lem.  It will take a cou­ple days to fix, and we’ll do the repair for free (which would have cost $250).  The per­son leaves frus­trated that the prod­uct dare brake down on them and there­fore blame the com­pany and its employ­ers, and feel a free 2 day repair time should be ser­viced for them imme­di­ately within a cou­ple hours (even though we don’t have the parts and we’re already overnight­ing them).

The Prob­lem

What’s the prob­lem with these peo­ple?  Other than the fact that they’ve lost touch with real­ity and have fallen deep into this soci­eties con­sumeris­tic pit.  The greater prob­lem is they’ve set an expec­ta­tion.  Whether too high or too low, when that expec­ta­tion is not met, they get their tidies in a wad.

The Solu­tion

The key to an atti­tude of grat­i­tude is to not have any expec­ta­tions.  Approach things with an open mind, and let life sur­prise you.  Some­thing neg­a­tive may hap­pen today, but tomor­row could be the best day of your life.  Get­ting bent out of shape over some­thing isn’t worth it.  Bad things happen…that’s life.  Focus and enjoyr the pos­i­tive, and ignore the neg­a­tive.  Life will be more fulfilling.