I will be hosting a blog carnival for Living a Life Worth Living.
The theme of this carnival is “Carpe Diem” Seize the Day: strategies to live the rest of your life by.
The deadline for entries is March 15, 2008. You may submit your entry at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_3683.html (I will update the URL as soon as the carnival entry is live.)
I hope to see your submission!
Do you know where you are going?
All of us, I’m sure, have felt aimless, confused, and unmotivated. There are times when I just want to sit in front of the TV and do nothing. A lot of the time it’s not that I don’t want to do anything, it’s because I don’t know what to do. Escaping this self-imposed exile can be difficult, but not impossible.
The first, and most important step, is to want to do something and be willing to act on it, even just a little bit at a time.
To begin, decide what your goal is. Don’t try to do too much at one time. Decide a single, realistic, doable goal. If you have too much on your plate, you will lose energy and become frustrated. Choose one goal and focus only on that goal.
Find your “why.” Your “why” is the reason you need to accomplish your goal. If your reason is strong enough, it will inspire you.
For example, my “why” for moving my income online is so I can work from anywhere. I think about how great it would be to take my work with me on vacation. I know that sounds strange to most people, but think about this: why are your vacations so short? Usually it’s because you only have so much money for your vacation and you have to go back to work!
What happens if you decide to go on a 3 month vacation to Europe? If I have my job with me, I can rent an apartment in Paris, see the sites during the day while America sleeps, and work in the evening when America wakes up. I don’t have to go home when I run out of money, because I’m earning money to live on every day.
That’s my “why!” It excites me. Find your reason and get excited about it. Dream it. No, do more than dream. Want it. Desire it! Be driven to have it! If your “why” doesn’t drive you to accomplish your goal, then your dream isn’t big enough. Dream bigger.
You can build anticipation by setting a date to make it happen. Get excited about that date and try to make it the most important date in your life.
Post your goal somewhere where you can see it every day. Print it in big letters. Maybe even put pictures below it like a vision board. Think about your goal every time you see it. Dream about. Stay focused on it
Being accountable to others means making your goal public. Let everyone know what your goal is. Talk about it often. Give them updates on your progress. Discuss it with new colleagues or friends. Keep in on your mind as often as possible. If you’ve read “the Secret,” you’ll see the wisdom of this.
When you seem to lose motivation for your goal (which is normal), your friends, family and colleagues can help bolster your motivation and keep you on track. They may even have suggestions or ways of helping you accomplish it.
Whatever happens, don’t give up on your dreams. Don’t give up on what you want, even if you are losing steam or feeling like it’s not worth it. Slumps in motivation are normal. The path of motivation is like a hilly road. There are ups, there are downs, and sometimes there are detours. But stick with it.
Read about your goal to keep it fresh in your mind. If you want to travel, read about places you want to visit. Read about the history. Read comments from others who have been there. Write out your itinerary of where you want to go and what you want to see. Don’t write your plan for IF you go, write your plan for WHEN you go. Make it definite and make is solid.
Concentrate on the benefits of your dream, not the difficulties. Acknowledge to your self, that yes, it may be difficult, but how will you feel when you make your dream come true. Don’t let negative thoughts, or negative people, affect your dream. Dream stealers are everywhere. Don’t listen to them. They simply don’t understand how important your dream is, or they want to stop you from accomplishing your dream because it reminds them of how unhappy they are.
Concentrate only on the positive aspects of your desire.
Several readers let me know the subscribe by email link (upper right corner) was not working.
It was quite confusing because feedburner showed me that subscription by email was enabled, and yet no one could subscribe. Turns out I mis-typed the feed ID when I created the link on my blog. I was sending everyone to someone else’s feed!
I’m glad the other feed didn’t have email subscriptions enabled. Who knows what you would have received. Ha ha.
Here is the direct link for those who prefer to subscribe by email rather than rss.
Thanks to everyone who pointed it out to me.
photo credit: GiuliagasMost of us lead very busy lives. We’ve filled our time with work, play, education and waste.
I know what it means to be busy. I have a full-time job as a probation officer. I carry a full load at night school for a masters program. And I am trying to develop a blog and freelance writing career. Not to mention my wife wants my attention as well.
As busy as I am, I really have no one to blame but myself. I chose to work for the income and security it provides. I chose to go to school for the future income and desire for self-employment. I chose to write and create a blog for my own personal satisfaction.
And when I finally have a chance to relax, I usually choose to sit in front of the television. Ok, at least I’ve cut back on that one. The point I am making is we have all made choices to do activities that fill our available time.
Each of us is growing day by day. We gradually become a new person, little by little. Some people have had great insight in our growth and learned lessons that the rest of us find very valuable. Many of them have written a book to pass on these lessons to those who need to learn them. Authors like Steven Covey
(I’m going to assume you see the value in a self-improvement and want to read one. The following suggestions can be used for any self-improvement technique for which you want to find time to do.)
There are hundreds and hundreds of self-improvement books available. While I can’t recommend you try to read ALL of them, you should read a few. Some would say you should read a new book a month. A week if you can fit it in.
That’s the key phrase, if you can fit it in. We are so busy with the things we have chosen, we don’t have time to fit much else in our lives.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the rocks and sand philosophy. It goes like this: pretend an empty jar is your available time for the coming week. You have a variety of tasks, some are needs, some are wants. These tasks are represented by rocks, pebbles, and sand. The size of the task represents how much time the task will take and it’s importance to you. Therefore, a larger rock will take much more time and energy than a grain of sand.
When you are planning how you spend your time in the coming week, you have to decide what you really want or need to do and put those rocks in first. Next come the lesser important pebbles, followed by handful of minute sand tasks.
There is always, always, always, a big handful of sand that will be poured in your jar. The sand comes from family, friends, work, etc. It is important to put the things that important to you, the big rocks, in the jar first. Once the sand goes in, you can’t fit anything else in there.
For me, television is the sand that used to fill my jar. Once I finished homework or other house hold chores, I would sit on the couch and start surfing. Now, I’ve cut back on that. My time for blogging is a pebble I’ve forced into the jar to make sure I have time for writing.
Now another pebble, a self-improvement book sits next to the jar and I wonder when I will find the time to read?
What do you do with your day? You probably work. That takes up time in your day. You may go to school, you may have friends, a spouse, a significant other, etc. Each of these things take up time, but usually you can find a way to take some back.
For me, I find that I have time at lunch. I work seven minutes from my house, so I can easily slip out, go home and spend 30 minutes reading before fixing a sandwich and heading back. In the evenings, I can stop watching so much television (at least until Heroes comes back! Then I’m glued to the TV for that hour.).
Where can you find time? What do you do that’s just busy time that wouldn’t kill you if you stopped doing it?
Going back to the big rocks and sand philosophy, once you find something you want to do, whether its read, write, or any other self-improvement activity, those things become you big rocks. When you plan you upcoming week, you have to put the big rocks in first to make sure you take the time to do it.
What’s that? You don’t plan your week ahead of time?
That, my friend, means you have no rocks or pebbles. Your jar is full of sand. You have no control over what is happening to you. Get out a planner, or even just a piece of paper, and start setting aside time for self-improvement. It will be worth it in the end.
I’m going to appear on ProBlogger.net! Darren Rowse called for guest posters to cover while he is on vacation. About 100 people applied within 24 hours before he cut it off.
Each of those 100 (I was one of them) submitted a posting and my post Building a Blog Plan for Success was one of 13 posts chosen to appear in the following week!
(Note: The guest post is live! See the link above.)
It’s a real honor to appear on a top 20 blog (see #15) like Problogger.
Thank your Darren!
I have always had the nasty habit of believing I was too busy to find the time for a vacation. However, over the weekend I found the time to get away to Disneyland. I know it sounds odd for two adults without kids to go to Disneyland, but surprisingly we weren’t the only childless couple there. There were more people there than I thought there would be.
My wife had planned the trip. I was resistant at first. I was busy, I told her. We didn’t have the money, I said. But she insisted. And wouldn’t you know it, there was time to go. There was money for the trip.
As much as I hate to admit it, I still find myself falling back into the old patterns of living on autopilot; thinking only about one day at a time. It’s difficult to break the habit, but it’s a habit I must break if I am to enjoy life.
This weekend got me thinking, how did I get into this predicament where I fail to look beyond today? Why can’t I plan fun times? What makes me think I can’t enjoy life?
It’s not like I don’t believe I can enjoy life. The thought just never come to the surface! That’s living on autopilot: Never even thinking about anything other than getting by day to day. I hate it.
Many of us are either busy, or believe we are busy. Either way it is important to set aside time to plan. The time can be used to review goals, plan vacations, plan the future, or even just think about what you enjoy.
If you had the time and money, what would you do day to day? Would you continue to work? Would you travel? Would you take up a new hobby or a new cause? This step is one of the most important steps to having a life worth living.
If you are successful in your dreams of living, rather than existing, you will find you have more time on your hands. Or, at least you will find less busy time and more available time. What will you do with that time?
The time you find here is the time you will spend LIVING. If you don’t know what you want to do, how can you truly live? If you fail to find something rewarding and enjoyable in this available time, you risk losing it back to simple existence. You risk filling this time with busy work that ends up becoming your daily routine. Your daily grind. Before you know it, your time is spent.
Remember to take the time to dream. Don’t just think about what you could do to fill LIVING time. Think about what you have always wanted to do. Or think about things you never even knew about.
Have you ever gone sky diving? Or how about hiking across country? Or even traveling to a foreign land to learn the local art from a master?
Take the time to not only find your own dreams, but learn the dreams of others. Let their dreams inspire your own. You may find someone else dreams of something you never knew existed, but now can’t live without.
A tree with strong roots can withstand the most violent storm, but the tree can’t grow roots just as the storm appears on the horizon.
~ Dali Lama
When I was a kid in Junior High, I remember facing this bully named Baca. He had always pushed me around. And being rather meek as a child, I let him. But one day after pushing me around, he started to pick on a boy named Troy. Troy was one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He was friendly, outgoing, and blind.
Something happened to me that day. As Baca pushed my blind friend against the wall and threatened him, I decided that was the last day Baca would intimidate me. I walked up to him and SHOVED. I looked him in the eye and told him he will never lay a hand on my friend ever again.
From that day forward, he still talked crap to us, especially when he was with his friends. He made threats, but he never touched either one of us again.
This experience taught me that it pays to stand up for yourself. I was fully ready to fight him that day, even though he was bigger than me and would have probably won. But I didn’t care. I was not going to LET him push me around anymore.
That was one of those moments that helped establish my self-esteem. It was one of those things that changed me from being a meek kid into someone whose not afraid to face a challenge.
When we survive a challenge, no matter how small, we experience a change in ourselves. It is the act of facing a challenge, and seeing what it took to face that challenge, that causes growth within us.
It’s not necessary to “win” a challenge to learn from it, even though that is probably what most people believe. Losing can teach you just as much, although the lesson isn’t always apparent. The simple act of facing a challenge cause us to stretch our minds in a new way. Once this type of growth takes place, it is difficult to go back.
The worst thing that can happen to you is not losing a challenge, but refusing to face it. By avoiding a challenge, we stunt our own growth. We become stagnant: Never having to face the risk of loss, but also never facing the chance of victory. We become one of “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
As difficulties and obsticles block your path of life, try to think of them as a challenge for you to overcome. Use that challenge as a means of growth.
For example, one difficulty many people face is money. Either we don’t make enough, or no matter how much we make we spend it all. Take that as a challenge to solve a money problem. Think about what you need to do to overcome it. Do you need to earn more? Do you need to control your spending? Do you need to change your entire outlook about money?
One of the techniques I am learning about in my Masters program to become a professional counselor is desensitizing. Here’s one way of using desensitizing to take yourself out of the problem: Imaging you are in a train. As the train is moving along, observe the country side, the trees, the bridges, the fields. Now you come upon a clearing. In that clearing is someone who is in the middle of experiencing your challenge. It’s important to that you seperate yourself from the picture, even if it is you are seeing yourself in that picture. Pretend you are outside of your body watching it all happen. Regardless of how you feel about it, watch it without emotion.
Examine the scene as it passes. What does it look like? What are all the characters doing in the scene? How did they get there? What can you guess about the unknowns in the scene? What is each person thinking and why? Play it backwards. How did it get to this point?
Let it pass out of your view. Enjoy the view of the country side again before letting the scene pass into view again. Do this several times. Reflect on the scene to explore all the questions asked above. What other questions or aspects of the challenge can you examine?
If you’re like many people, you’ll be surprised to find that when you are out of the picture, you can see more choices and opportunities. Perhaps even the solution will come to you easily.
How can you use this or similar techniques in your other challenges.
We often overlook the day to day problems that plague us. We often ignore the problems that are ignorable and procrastinate solving them. Instead, seek them out. Solve them and get them out of your life.
Don’t assume that the goals you set for yourself last year are still the goals you need to follow this year. Treat them as a challenge. Examine every aspect of why you set that goal. Is it still valid? Do you still need to travel in that direction or is it time to change course?
Don’t be afraid to look yourself in the mirror and face the choices you make and why you make them. What good does it do to avoid your fears? What purpose does it serve?
Face your fears. Face the demons you keep locked away and take away the power they hold over you.
Learn from your challenges. Examine each one for the lesson it presents and recognize the growth within you.
Here is my challenge: readers who frequent this blog already know my goal is to work online, or at least be able to work from home, wherever home may be. I want to travel and see the world, not as a short lived vacation, but to relocate my home on a weekly or monthly basis. I want to live in foreign countries for as long as I want and not have to worry how I will save money to afford it. Instead, by working from my laptop, I can take my income with me so the vacation becomes a life long exploration of the world.
My challenge is to find the way to work from my laptop and not be tied to any one location.
What is your challenge? How will you face it? This is not a retorical question, please answer it here in the comments, or trackback from your own blog. Let us all learn together our challenges and ways of overcoming them.
This was emailed to me the other day. It’s pretty amusing. I thought I would share it with you.
The sad thing is, since I am over 30, I tend to agree with it!
To THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!!
If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning … uphill BOTH ways
yadda, yadda, yadda
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it! But now that… I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.
You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don’t know how good you’ve got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet . If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!! There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
There were no MP3′s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ’d usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!
We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it!
And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D raphics! We had Atari! With games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘asteroids’. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever!
And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died… And you only had 3 chances before you died!!!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn’t see, you were just screwed!
Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on screen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!
And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire .. imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to pop it in a pot with oil on the stove or use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980!
Regards,
The over 30 Crowd
I like to write. I can’t say that I am “gifted,” but I like to write more than most of the people I know. Writing is something that I enjoy… when I can get around to it. Writing is something I hate… when I am forced to write.
Many of you, I’m sure, know just what I’m talking about: Sit down and write about something YOU want to write about, and you could go on all day. But sit down to write a report for school, or a freelance assignment for someone else, and suddenly writing becomes a chore.
Recently I’ve wondered, do I want to try to be a full-time freelancer? Full-time freelancing would give me some of the freedom I’ve been seeking. It’s a way to earn money from anywhere, without having to be tied to a specific place.
I own the “Well Fed Writer” books. Commercial freelance writing seems like a lucrative way of earning money writing as well – if it really is all it’s cracked up to be.
This will be a difficult decision to make. I can try full-time freelancing and travel everywhere I’ve always wanted to travel, but possibly have little in the way of insurance or benefits. Or I can stay put in my cushy government job with it’s great benefits, but end up living the clichéd “life of quiet desperation.”
I guess what I look at it like that, the decision becomes a little easier. I need to locate freelancing opportunities.
Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloths, or habitation.
Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates
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