Category Archives: Motivation/Inspiration

Motivation/Inspiration

46 Ways To Reach Your Own Super Bowl

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Can there be anyone on the planet that doesn’t know what the Super Bowl is? Whether you watch it or not, more than a billion people will be watching this bad boy today in at least 65 countries around the world. It’s a monster whether you have a favored horse in the race or not.

This year pits two teams together that got to this game in different ways. One team, the New England Patriots, were expected to be here. They’ve shown a consistent pattern of success over the years by following the same formula, even when they change players. The other team, the New York Giants, got here through sheer determination, as they were literally at the point where if they lost one more game their season was done, and they’ve run off an impressive string of unexpected wins.

What this proves is that there’s no one way to attain success, yet there are things that everyone should think about in some fashion so that they can achieve success in their lives. Yes, this is one of those motivational posts of mine and to coincide with Super Bowl XLVI, or 46, I’ve come up with 46 ways that we all can reach our own pinnacle of success, our own Super Bowl. And think of it this way; whether you win it or not, do you think that if you finished close to your ultimate dreams that you won’t have succeeded in life? As a friend of mine once pointed out, success sometimes happens by only a nose; second place pays very well.

These are in no particular order except the first and last one; enjoy the day!

  1. Believe in yourself

  2. Believe in a purpose

  3. Have a dream to pursue

  4. Dream big

  5. Share your dream with your best friends

  6. If they don’t like your dream, find new friends that will

  7. Learn everything you can about your dream

  8. Never be afraid to take chances on things you want

  9. Research to make more informed decisions

  10. Think positively about things you want to do

  11. Don’t be reckless but don’t fear change

  12. Find mentors you can follow, whether they know it or not

  13. Find like minded people who also have a vision, whether it’s the same as yours or not

  14. Motivation is always a good thing to have

  15. It’s never a bad thing to have to get motivated again; we have to eat and bathe often as well

  16. There will be setbacks; realize it, and let them roll off your back

  17. Nobody is perfect; learn from your mistakes

  18. If you follow what someone else did word for word it might not always work for you, so only use it as a guide

  19. Make plans to attain your ultimate dreams

  20. Set goals both reachable and unattainable so you can show successes while always striving for more

  21. Don’t do things you know aren’t right for you even if everyone else is doing it

  22. If you need help, ask for it

  23. Don’t lie to yourself; you won’t respect yourself for it in the morning

  24. If you need time to reflect on things, take it; just don’t go away too long

  25. Don’t do things because they’re popular; do them because they’re fun

  26. Don’t forget to take care of yourself while you’re reaching for the stars

  27. Work on reaching your goals and you’ll find that your success will attract others

  28. Don’t always look for the next big thing; it will distract you and could harm you

  29. Don’t trust or distrust others without reason; no one gets successful on their own

  30. Just because you have plans and goals doesn’t mean you can’t alter them on the fly

  31. Always take time to help someone along the way if they ask for it; you won’t believe the dividends it will pay later

  32. Hold yourself accountable for working towards your dreams

  33. If you need one, a vision board of things you want when you become successful might help

  34. Always have a priority list of what’s most important in your life

  35. Don’t limit what you want in life; doing that limits how hard you’ll work for it

  36. The biggest, strongest, smartest, richest or bravest aren’t always the ones who’ll succeed before you

  37. Loyalty, honesty and trustworthiness will bring you more joy and success than you can imagine

  38. Imagination is your friend; no one ever created something special without it

  39. Always think of the greater good while you’re reaching for your dreams

  40. Wealth is always attainable; make sure you have your internal infrastructure ready to handle it

  41. Take in the beauty around you; if you don’t think you have any, then go find some

  42. Love your family; success means nothing without someone to share it with

  43. Finish things; many people have great ideas that they never complete

  44. Open up to others but don’t ever tell them things they might use against you later on

  45. Support the dreams of others; give advice when you can if they’ll accept it

  46. Nobody is better than you; are you feeling that now?

 

Motivation/Inspiration

My “Watch-Less” Experiment

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Those of you who have followed this blog for a while know that I like to experiment here and there. One of the reasons I experiment is because I have preconceived notions about things, including myself, that every once in a while I need to challenge. Another reason is that I know I’m not the only one who has the certain habits, or something like them, so taking them on and then talking about them might help someone else address issues they have.


Yes, this watch is for sale 🙂

As you can tell by the title, I decided to go without my watch for a while. Of course there is the history behind this, and a brief little story as well.

I learned how to tell time when I was three years old. I got my first watch on my fourth birthday while living in Japan, and it was unlike any watch anyone else had. Mine had a spaceship on it, which was really cool because the space age was very new at the time. Eventually I went from that watch to a couple of Timex watches, then a military watch that glowed in the dark if it got enough light during the day, and finally my first digital watch a year after I started college. Around 1982 I got my first programmable watch, which not only allowed me to set alarms, but allowed me to put phone numbers in it.

This is the same kind of watch I have now, and I’ve always loved my watches. I’ve always been kind of a stickler for time as well. Having a watch that I can program with all kind of alarms seems to work out well for someone like me.

Over the last couple of months however, I started thinking that maybe to watch wasn’t helping me do what I wanted to do. Oh sure, I could still time things, but I found myself resistant to trying to stay on schedule because of the watch. I would always look at it, it didn’t inspire me to want to do anything. I had taken to really only using it when I needed to time something; that’s not so cool.

I decided it was time for experiment. I wondered what would happen if I stopped wearing my watch after so many decades. Would I miss the weight? Would I start being late for things? Would I go crazy because I couldn’t look at my watch all that often anymore? Or would nothing happened at all?

I’m not going to make you wait for it this time around; nothing happened. I found that it was quite an easy transition going from wearing a watch all the time to not wearing one at all. One of the reasons is that I have so many replacements for a watch. My smart phone obviously has a clock function. Because I’m at my computer all the time it also has a time function. I don’t have a clock in my computer room, but I have a digital cable box that always has the time showing. When I’m in my car there’s a clock. Even at the gym there are two clocks, one at each end of the track.

Also, I knew that I could set alarms on both my smartphone and my Palm, and the smart phone also has a timer. In other words, overall I’ve found that I had so many other ways of checking my time that I didn’t miss my watch at all.

Of course there is a downfall. I find that I’ve been staying up later than normal, not thinking about going to bed until 3:30 in the morning, and a couple of times not until 5AM. No, that’s not a good thing, and I find that just because I go to bed later doesn’t mean I sleep any later, so I’m not sleeping as much as I was before. Still, as long as I’m working for myself that’s a small thing because I can always get a nap if I need one.

I know you’re thinking “why did he tell us all this”? All of us have preconceived notions about ourselves, as well as other people. When I wrote my post about modeling the other day, a couple of people said that there was no way they could see themselves ever being able to do the same thing. When I wrote my post some years ago talking about having to start injecting myself with insulin, a few people wrote that they could never see themselves being able to do that either.

People are always saying they can’t do this and they can’t do that, and even though every once in while their reasoning is sound, most of the time it’s people reacting with fear to something that they really don’t know whether they could do it or not. And most people, myself included, are afraid to tackle certain things that they feel are beyond their comfort zone.

I have used watches as a crutch for almost 50 years, and in my wildest dreams I never thought that I would be comfortable without having a watch on. Not that I will wear my watch again, but it’s nice to know how easy it was to break the bonds I had placed on my own mind, since that’s where most of our bonds lie. It makes me wonder what else there is that might be holding me back in some fashion that I can break to push forward.

Think about this; what types of things and how many things are in your mind that holding you back? Maybe make a list of 10 things that follows these two words: I can’t. Then pick one and resolve to at least test it; you might be surprised at what you’re capable of.
 

Motivation/Inspiration

Stuff We Forget To Do For Our Benefit

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A couple of nights ago my wife asked me to help her move something. I went to help and realized it was something big and a little bit heavy. Not afraid of heavy things, I did my part in helping her move this thing. At some point, however, I smacked part of it into my foot and did that jumping around thing most of us do, trying to walk it off.


by Dave Matos via Flickr

My wife was now upset because not only had I hurt myself, but I wasn’t wearing shoes. Most of the time while in the house I don’t even think about it, wearing either socks or nothing. But I need to know better because, being diabetic, one is supposed to watch out for things that happen with feet, just in case. As it is I currently have a bruise on my big toe that’s been there for about 4 weeks now, not healing, and I just thought about calling the doctor’s office about it; two days and they haven’t called me back yet. The thing is that I have no idea when I hurt that foot, and I can only estimate how long I’ve had it because my wife noticed it first; actually, I’m not even really sure it’s a bruise.

I’m at an age now where there are simple things I just don’t think about beyond a couple of minutes. Putting on house shoes is one of those things; if I need to go to the kitchen and I don’t have shoes on while sitting at my desk, I don’t even think about it until I’m there. But dangers are everywhere; my wife sews and pins could be present in the carpet; I’ve stepped on them here and there but luckily to this point they’ve never been turned up. I also bump into a lot of things; how many of us don’t bump or kick something accidentally here and there, and some minutes later, for the most part, have forgotten we’ve done it?

I’m one of those people who’s a scheduler; turns out my mother is as well. I do that because I need reminders to do things, then to follow up on them. For instance, I always set timers to do laundry but always forget to set timers to put the laundry in the dryer, which means sometimes my laundry sits in the washer for a couple of days and I have to re-rinse everything. I have to schedule times to eat, otherwise I’ll go hours between eating, not good for my glucose levels. I schedule breaks, and sometimes I schedule projects and even email.

One thing I never have to schedule is my blogging. When I want to blog I just do it; luckily, depending on which blog I’m thinking about, I write enough to get by. Yet, what happens if one of these days I forget that? How will it impact some of the other things I believe are somewhat important in my life?

I mentioned eating; seems strange that one would forget to eat, doesn’t it? Especially someone like me, who’s not necessarily a small man. Even with my CPAP I’m tired a lot, and often I have to make the choice of whether to take a nap or eat. Most of the time I choose napping, feeling that I can always eat when I wake up.

According to a nutritionist that’s the wrong move. When we’re born the first instinct we know is how to eat; sleeping is something that we just do. Turns out that as we get older, we really do stop eating as often or as much, and food is what sustains us. Supposedly, by not eating something first, we sap our energy such that it makes it harder for us to wake up; that’s assuming we eat the right foods. When my grandmother’s mind stopped working properly she stopped eating; supposedly even when one’s mind doesn’t fully work, they can control eating or not eating, and without eating, she didn’t have a chance to survive. My nutritionist told me I don’t eat often enough; can you believe this? Well, I can after looking at myself more critically and realizing that often I only eat 2 meals a day, along with some snacking; nope, that just won’t do.

I lead in with all that stuff because I have a point; of course I have a point! lol When we don’t take care of the things we believe can help us in life or business we don’t survive, or rather all we’ll do is survive. People who create blogs with the intention of growing their business or selling their products and forget to blog are only hurting themselves. Folks who forget to send out invoices (yeah, I do that) or market themselves or use social media to help get the word out or, if necessary, spend a little bit of money to progress, only delay any benefits they might have coming their way.

What things are you forgetting to do that you might need to start scheduling for your life or business? What assistance are you searching for to help you progress? And what are you going to do about it?
 

Motivation/Inspiration, Social Media

Influence Versus Wasting Time

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Anyone who’s been checking out this blog for at least a year knows that I talk about the concept of influence on a fairly regular basis. I’m one of those people that believes that not only will influence allow you to have a voice in what goes on around you, but it offers you the best possibility for future financial success. You probably find influential people a happier lot as well, though I know someone’s going to pull out “I know so-and-so who’s not very happy”. Doesn’t apply to everyone but I’m betting it applies to the majority.

As this post goes live I’ll be at a live event that I briefly mentioned in this post hoping to increase my influence locally by hopefully giving a presentation that will at least put my name into the light. It’s a long and hard road to get yourself known by more than just a few people, isn’t it?

The same goes for being online. It’s really hard judging how influential you are online. Sure, there are lots of ranking services, but none of them seem to agree just how well you’re doing. One of the problems with being a social media consultant is having clients and potential clients wanting you to tell them all the things they can or should be doing to become more prominent online. I’ll say this; no matter what it is one hopes to do, it all takes time. And some of that time, in my opinion, is wasted time. What do I mean? Let’s take a look at some of these major time wasters.

I’ve talked about Klout a few times now. It’s supposedly one of the top online ranking systems to tell people just how influential you are “across the board.” I put it in quotation marks because it doesn’t look at a lot of things. One, it doesn’t look at blogs or websites at all. Two, it doesn’t follow your comments, even on sites that it checks on such as LinkedIn and Facebook. And three, if you’re engaging in conversation but with only one or two people on Twitter at a time, it doesn’t give you any bonus points for that. It pretty much follows two things; how much you’re participating in the couple of things it’s following and how much others are passing your stuff along if you happen to put stuff out there.

And no one really knows how it works; I’m not sure they do. Back in the summer when I had my post on 21 Black Social Media Influencers, my Klout ranking soared. Now, they’ve made a change and my score has dropped drastically. Not that it wasn’t slowly coming down anyway because who could keep up with the amount of activity needed to keep a Klout score high? How much time would I have to consistently waste on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, doing specific things, to get my score up? And I hear there are employers that are judging people based on this; ugh.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about Empire Avenue. At that time my score kept going up, but truthfully I had no real idea what it was all about; I still don’t. Turns out that the only real way of keeping your score up is to promote your site and have people buying “stock” in you. Sure, you earn your fake income by acts you do, but that doesn’t influence what your stock price is.

I mention Empire Avenue because in my previous post I wondered how it helps with social media, or even if it was supposed to help. On that front I’d have to say it has helped some. My Facebook business page has had a lot of folks from Empire Avenue sign up, and a few people have visited this blog and left comments; that’s pretty neat. So it hasn’t been a total waste of time, but for the amount of time one would have to put into promoting yourself, which in essence is promoting the site, I could write 3 blog posts for each blog I own.

Then there’s Technorati, Delicious (is it still going by that name?), StumbleUpon, etc… all those intermediary sites that people seem to love but I seem not to love. Like many other people, when I first started trying to get more recognition for my blogs I tried social bookmarking. And once again I found myself spending lots of time trying to get good rankings on these sites, only to learn that it not only takes a lot of time but you never know what any of those rankings mean anyway.

For instance, I just took a look at my Technorati account. This blog has an authority of 450; my business blog and finance blog have an authority of 101. I’ve never listed my other two blogs and won’t. Traffic has drastically gone up on my finance blog, but the way Technorati works, people have to “name” your blog, or at least a post, for you to get recognition. You can add a link on your own, but it still only works if others decide to tag along.

The same goes for all those other sites. I hate when I click on a link on Twitter and it takes me to StumbleUpon or any of those other sites, with those big clunky toolbars. And it’s people posting their own links; why not post the link to your blog instead of one of these other sites? Isn’t that a major waste of time? Someone please school me on this one because I’m missing it.

There are so many other ways of spreading your influence online that don’t take a lot of time wasting. And of course one can spread their influence without worrying about these rankings all that much. We all get so caught up in the numbers; I know I can from time to time. But you know what? This past Saturday I took a day and basically sat in front of the TV watching DVDs. I had my laptop, but I rarely checked it. And it felt good; the chase was over for at least one day.

If you’re going to waste time, waste it in making yourself feel better. If you want influence, don’t restrict it. Find ways that fit into your schedule that don’t become overwhelming. Get out there and have fun with it, while getting things done. This is one of those dreams/goals I’m shooting for as I retool what I hope to do in 2012.

I’m Mitch Mitchell and I approved this ad. 🙂
 

Motivation/Inspiration

What If Your Dreams Came True?

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Last week I listened to an interview on a blog by Ray Edwards with Carrie Wilkerson, whose new book called The Barefoot Executive has just come out. I bought it and I’m about 1/4th of the way through and it’s very good, so I’m recommending it to you as a great business purchase.


 

Anyway, I was drawn to one particular point where she talked about dreams and how people will have dreams of things they want to achieve, yet sometimes it scares them to think about getting there and then, if it comes, what to do about it or where to go from there. She used two great examples from two of my favorite movies (y’all know I’m just a big kid, right?), Tangled and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
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