Category Archives: Motivation/Inspiration

Motivation/Inspiration

Groundhog Day Your Way

18 Comments

Last week on my business blog I wrote a post called There’s Always A Chance To Start Again. The basic premise of that post was to say that no matter how many bad things happen in one’s life, you always have another chance to put it right, to start anew, and strive for better things. But I wondered a few days ago as to why one needs to wait until bad things are happening to start again.

I’ve never seen the movie Groundhog Day, but I know the premise. Basically the main character keeps reliving the same day over and over, Groundhog Day. Once he recognizes it he starts trying out all sorts of things, some crazy, some just plain stupid, but he doesn’t worry about it because he knows that when he wakes up again it will be Groundhog Day all over. Eventually he figures out that he needs to get on the straight and narrow and starts working his way towards things that will have a more positive effect on his life, even if it’s the same day all the time, because though no one else notices it, he starts growing within himself.

Life can be a lot like that if most of us give it a chance. I look at my life, for instance, and see how I’ve transformed myself many times over, and how I work on learning more and more because I know that every day really isn’t the same day, even if many other people live like it is. I see so many things as “today’s adventure” and I try to chronicle those things. Sometimes I end up writing about them, while other times I just let it roll around in my head to see if there was a lesson in there somewhere.

Where have I gone? I used to write music and now I write blogs and other items of nonfiction. I used to only read biographies, autobiographies, history and books on science and suddenly I’ve discovered the world of fiction, detective stories, Harry Potter, science fiction. I’ve been in health care for over 25 years, yet these days I’m as apt to work on social media and, of course, blogging.

I often wonder what the heck I’ll be doing 4 or 5 years from now that’ll be any different than what I’m doing now. I hope I’ve progressed in some fashion, but at least I know there will be something new going on.

Lately I’ve written about how blogging isn’t easy and how social media is a process. I needed to add something to the mix; actually, two somethings. One, as long as you can find a way to have fun with it, instead of making it a chore, it doesn’t matter if it’s hard or easy. You’ll at least love what you’re doing. And two, if you know what it is you hope to eventually be doing, then the process of getting there isn’t so bad at all because as you push forward you’ll start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Or in this case the shadow that the light creates, because we all know that Punxsutawney Phil is seeing that shadow today, and we’re having six more weeks of winter. Where I live, that actually means we’ll have a spring, since our winters have a nasty habit of lasting into April, sometimes into May. Talk about your extended Groundhog Days! 😉

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
Blogging, Motivation/Inspiration

Successful Blogging Isn’t Going To Be Easy

28 Comments

Talk about finding inspiration when you’re not expecting it. I was checking out my man Iceman Baldy’s blog where he had a super short post I’m truncating titled Blogging Inspiration; trust me, the title’s much longer. Anyway, on this particular short post he has a video from a young man named Lamar Tyler, only about 4 1/2 minutes long, and that’s where the true inspiration comes from.

Lamar basically breaks it down in saying that it’s not easy if you want to have a successful blog. It takes time, time you might have to give to it when you’re tired, when you’re not in the mood, or when you just want it all to go away. You put in the time so that you will be successful, you will be able to quit your day job, and you will be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Goodness, all that in 4 1/2 minutes? You must watch this video! And of course let the Iceman know I sent you.

Obviously this is a principle that applies to more than blogging, but it’s kind of a good one. When I did my 10-hour experiment a week ago, I stated that it was only an experiment and that I’d probably go back to putting in a lot of time on the computer again. I figure that I really want this blog to be the best, and I also remember writing and saying that people have to be ready to pay the price for any real success in this world. Goodness, I remember that post also linked to someone else, Jacqueline Gates, who had a video pretty much saying the same thing.

When we feel put upon or depressed, when things aren’t quite going our way, that’s the time to really dig deep. Take your time to be depressed a bit, then decide that you’re going to rechannel your energies into being responsible for your own life. Think about the steps you’ll have to take to get where you want to be, then take your best shot at it. As it pertains to blogging, just do it. Don’t put off writing your articles because you don’t think they’re good; write them, continue writing them, and you’ll see yourself getting better. You might already be good but not so confident in your abilities. Go ahead, put it out there, Git R Done (yeah, I stole that from Larry the Cable Guy)!

And if you need help… ask.

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
Motivation/Inspiration

2011; Ready For The Best To Come

25 Comments

Happy New Years! I hope y’all didn’t overindulge last night. I’m lucky; I don’t drink and my wife doesn’t drink, so we wake up as we normally do and get on with life. We also don’t drink coffee, so we don’t need pick-me-ups either.

But it’s New Years Day and it’s also Saturday; I bet some stores are really conflicted this year. No matter; we move forward.

However, since it is both a Saturday and New Years Day, I assume no one wants to do a ton of reading. I might be one of those folks who doesn’t mind, but I’m going to be putting us all through a lot of stuff, and yesterday’s post was, well, longer than I thought it was going to be when I started it. So, instead of all that, let’s go with videos of cute things. After all, the symbol of the New Year, at least in the U.S., is a baby.

Man, I love laughing babies. There’s almost nothing that will make you feel better than hearing a baby laugh for the first time, and when they get the hang of it they’re the best audience ever. So, here’s five videos of laughing babies to enjoy; I hope you don’t have a hangover and can enjoy them. If not, come back later. 🙂

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell
Motivation/Inspiration

Are You Planning For Your Success?

26 Comments

I had a pretty good week this past week. The week before I felt like I was leaving way too many things to chance, so I thought it was time to regain a bit of perspective. After all, one doesn’t just fall into success; no matter what it is, you have to work it, and it works better if you have a plan of some kind.

So I worked out a plan based on a marketing plan I’d put together for 2011, things I want to do to earn the bulk of my cash for the year. I’ll do other things hopefully but you have to start with something. The next step was putting together a monthly plan of attack, which I started at the beginning of the month. In doing that, you also have to put together a portion of three types of things; things you want to do daily, things you want to accomplish during the week, and things you can to complete for the month.

After that I decided I needed to plan my time daily as well. So I did, and I got to everything I wanted to do that I planned for. This coming week is going to be kind of a mess since it’s Thanksgiving week and I’ll be out of town for a couple of days, but that’s okay because the plan helps me be prepared to have most everything done before I leave; whew!

As Snoopy shows, I got a lot of things checked off my list. See, I’ve been asked in the past how I get to so many things, and how I can find the time to write so many blog posts. When I plan my time, when I have plans of attack, I’m very good at it all because I don’t have to think about it. Everything’s written down in some fashion, or logged somewhere, like in my computer calendar associated with my Palm; that’s my alarm system, as well as my cell phone (remember, the stupid alarm on my Palm doesn’t work anymore). And I make sure to plan breaks and meal times as well. And weekends… I don’t plan those, but if I stick with my plan, then weekends are mine to work on my other projects, or just to try to relax a little bit; I don’t do that often.

So, I plan my blogging time, both for myself and some clients. When I’ve got other contracts to work on then I plan that time as well. I need to readjust my plan some because I’ve been thinking about trying the Chris Brogan thing and writing at least two posts a week in the coming year; kind of hard to do with multiple blogs though, but who knows right?

Are you planning for your success, or are you just waiting for it to happen? Maybe you need a planner; look at the cover below.

Classic Legacy Binder with Snap Closure - Black

Franklin Covey Classic Legacy Binder with Snap Closure – Black

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Motivation/Inspiration

I Get Motivation From Things Like This

26 Comments

Ten days ago I wrote a Sunday Question post asking people how they motivate themselves. Almost everyone stated that they motivate themselves in a way that doesn’t involve anything on the outside.


by multimedia student

You know, I have to say that, in general, I’m not believing most of that. Yes, I’m taking a controversial stance, but I’ll explain why.

I’m known as the observer of people. I like humanity, even though I don’t like everything people do. But I see a lot of people go through their day as if they’re just following a script. They get up, go to work, come home, watch TV and go to bed. There might be some deviation, but in general that’s pretty much it. And they’re not often happy about it.

I’m an independent consultant. I do most of my work from home. When I’m on the road, I partially do what everyone else does, except I have to go out for my meals or have something delivered. The one thing I rarely do on the road, and don’t necessarily do all that often at home either, is watch TV. I find that I like deciding way in advance what I want to record for the week and then will watch when I’m ready.

So, I sit at my desk, at my computer, and I work a lot. Oh sure, I take breaks to do things like write my blogs and participate on Twitter and Facebook, but a lot of what I do is business oriented. This means that I don’t really take a lot of time to just relax and get things off my mind. I am at the computer until it’s time to go to bed, and it’s the first place I come after the bathroom when I awake. I’m always here.

But sometimes I just can’t get in the mood to do much of anything, even if I’m sitting here. I could easily say I’m driven to succeed, and that would be true to a degree. There are times when I just don’t want to do anything; who reading this can say that doesn’t happen to them every once in awhile? And when I don’t want to do anything, I don’t care about success, I don’t care about family, I don’t care about eating… I don’t care about anything!

Well, that seems kind of depressing, doesn’t it? But it’s not. The reason is that I only allow myself to be in that mode for short periods of time. Hey, if I don’t work, I don’t earn any money. I can’t fall back on vacation time because I don’t have it. I can’t just fall back on my reserves because that just takes money away from me and I then have to figure out how to replace it.

In those times, I look for motivation in other places. I’ve talked about motivational movies like The Secreticon. I’ve shared motivational videos on this blog, things that have made me feel better. I’ve mentioned the name Zig Ziglar here before, but haven’t talked about what he does as a motivational speaker all that often. He loves telling the tale about a guy who comes up to him and says “Motivational speaking must not work all that well because it seems people are always needing to be motivated.” Zig says “People also need to eat and bathe, but I don’t hear you saying people don’t need food or soap.”

His belief is that we all need to find ways to motivate ourselves at least a few times a day because no one is a machine. Thoughts of others won’t always get it done. Dreams of eventual success won’t always get it done. But finding other things that offer at least a moment of uplift… man, that’s priceless. So, I figure that if someone like me, who has stated many times on this blog that I want to be successful and a big deal, needs outside motivation from time to time, actually probably a little bit at some point every day, that everyone else almost has to as well. No one is happy or upbeat 24/7; not even Zig.

With that in mind, I want to share this video with you, although it’s not a great video. But it is a great song. Michael Jackson has done lots of motivational songs. This one is called Keep The Faith. He didn’t do a video of it, and it’s too bad. I thought about just posting the lyrics to this song, but I didn’t for two reasons. One, it’s super long; this is one of those songs where the chorus is repeated many times, but it’s a short chorus, so there’s a lot of new lyrics through to the end of the song. And two, I didn’t want to risk copyright by posting everything here, although truthfully that’s secondary to how long the post would end up being.

So, I post this video that has the music and the lyrics. I hope you listen if you don’t know the song, and I really hope you follow the lyrics. This is powerful stuff, and I doubt that anyone who listens to this entire song can’t say that the words aren’t motivating and uplifting. And if you really think that, don’t write it here. Enjoy:

 

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2010-2011 Mitch Mitchell