Category Archives: Inspirational

A Perfect Drive Home After the Financial Conference

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I hate to drive long distances, at least without having a good audio book in the CD player.

When I started my drive home, about 100 miles in from the start of my journey, I got pulled over by the police.  I was pissed because I knew I wasn’t speeding, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.  The police officer strolled up to my passenger window and asked me what was going on.  He said he saw me riding off of the road.  Now I hug the road edge but to be riding off of the road I would have had to go over those slashes in the road that alert people they are going off of the road, and that I did not do!

He started asking me if I had been drinking and other odd questions.  I told him I was driving home from a blogger’s conference and showed him my conference tag, and he said okay and left.  It was very bizarre, perhaps he was the one that was drinking!  Okay, that wasn’t so perfect huh…

About 300 miles into my journey on the route home, I was bored (and I didn’t like the audio book that I had playing so I stopped it).  Instead I started thinking about blogging and tried to come up with some clever ideas to pursue.  I admit that my focus on the road at this time wasn’t 100%, but there weren’t many cars (or semi-trucks) around at that time, so I jotted down some ideas I was thinking about blogging…  I was wondering if they were good, when I looked up and saw the thickest stub of a rainbow to my right that I had even seen.  It looked like a tree stump of colors.  At first I thought “WOW” and I was sure that many would consider this a sight!  But then I thought no, a sight would be a full rainbow across the sky.  Ironically, about 15 seconds after thinking that, POW, the rainbow is fully across the sky (very stunning actually).  Even though I’m not superstitious, I still feel optimistic about the ideas I came up with… funny how thinks like the sudden rainbow can do that (especially since it wasn’t raining on me at the time (obviously in the distance where the rainbow showed up, it was…)

About a half and hour later, I look in my mirror and I noticed the sun setting into a corn field.  In many ways that sunset reminded my summer vacation when I would watch the sunset at Captiva Island, except instead of going down into the ocean, it went down into the corn plants.  After it was almost set I noticed the dark amber clouds from the sun setting, they too were beautiful.  I actually drew some energy from the entire sequence of nature’s color display!

It might not seem like a lot, but seeing such a display was the perfect conclusion to a wonderful weekend (minus being pulled over and after I stopped wish I had gotten a rental car instead).  At least I didn’t get a ticket, probably because I’m a blogger, lol!

I hope the other pf bloggers had as great of a journey home as I did!

MR

 

Is Clutter Keeping You From Being More Successful?

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In an earlier articles called “Getting Wealthy By Swimming to Shore“, I compare the process of getting out of debt and becoming rich to swimming to the ocean shore.  Becoming “Financial Independent” would be accomplished once you first touch the shoreline.  While it’s still possible to make the swim with clutter, I would think that it would be like swimming to shore through seaweed with your clothes and shoes on.

But why is clutter considered bad, you might wonder?

Because it distracts you from the important things in your life that you need to focus on to get things accomplished!  By having clutter at your office or in your home, you are constantly being distracted by unimportant materials.

Another problem with such cluster is that it takes valuable real estate space on your desk or in your home.  That space could be occupied by more relevant things!

If the clutter is really bad, you can lose important information within the piles of unimportant junk.

In the past, I would build up clutter by saving credit card offers and other junk mail for later reading.  The problem is that I never find the time to read the mail later, so the mail offers would just accumulate in a “never read” pile.  Eventually this piles get big and important mail sometimes gets mixed in the piles and things get lost.  Or I would avoid those piles because it would be overwhelming.

As you may have guessed, I speak from experience.  The way I overcame my cluttering habits is that I had to realize that I’m not going to take my clutter with me when I die.  I had to learn (over years), how to process such offers more quickly and disregard those pieces of junk mail or unimportant objects in my life.

Actually, even now I’m in the process of either selling or purging some of my hidden clutter down in my basement.  I know that it’s stuff that I will never need or use again, so I’m at the point where I just want to get rid of it.

Do you have clutter, and if so, do you think that your clutter may have held you back from being successful?

Simplify, simplify simplify!!!

MR

Sometimes It Takes More Than One To Believe

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I’m watching the movie *Cyrus as I type this post, and there is this scene where the main character is at a party (he’s a bit tipsy), and he starts singing a song that’s on the radio.  He jumping and dancing with enthusiasm and vigor, singing the song and displaying an almost teenage level of energy. 

He tries to get others involved, but they just look at him like he’s crazy…  He starts to get quieter and depressed, but then Marisa Tomei decides to dance and sing with him too.  At that point the main character gets twice the energy, and recruits others to join in the fun too.  After another few minutes, everybody in the house is dancing!

The movie Elf has a similar moment, where Zooey Deschanel provides a turning point in the movie.

So is this yet another movie fairytale that some writers concocted that isn’t very realistic?

Surprisingly no, if you have the support of a spouse, good friend(s) or even the support of a group you can do incredible things!

The most memorable moment for me was when I was in my first and only tae kwon do tournament.  I was down by two point and seemed destined to lose the final match of the tournament, then all my dojo practitioners came over and started cheering me on.  Like the typical fairytale, that cheering gave me the extra rush of adrenaline that I needed to catch up and beat my opponent.  This enabled me to win my division and take home a huge trophy.

Another example is this link to an awesome video of Elizabeth Hughes singing the National Anthem singing when her mic goes out.  She was singing spectacularly, and the crowd couldn’t let it end that way, so everybody started singing to support her and finish the song!  It was a powerful experience just watching the video, and I’m sure it was even more powerful being there.

Sometimes to accomplish great things, you may need the support of others, whether it’s friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, spouses or just someone to believe in you and your ideas..

-MR

*The movie Cyrus was just okay, but I did like the particular scene above…

Are We All COGs in the Machine Of Life?

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Are we GOGS in the machine of life, destine to play the small and trite role that we are instructed to play by others who are willing to treat us as such?  Spinning in a continuous circle, never really going anywhere… until we wear out and need to be replaced by a newer, shinier model?

I know what many of you might be thinking, what can we do about it, it’s what society needs and demands…

Perhaps, but have your tried anything else?  Have you ever taken a leap of faith and try to run outside of the box (or off the bar, in my COG example)?  Life is short, so why not draw outside of the lines?  Perhaps try a side job, or a 2nd night shift job?  If you hate your current job, what is there to lose?

I once knew a woman who I worked with that use to tell me this message over and over.  She even had a bumper sticker on her car that said “Life isn’t a dress rehearsal”.

During her day job, she was an administrative assistant, but at night she really came to life.  She would tell everybody in the office about her dancing classes, and all the other outside activities that she participated in.  She kept both busy and active.  She was like a COG that ran perfectly during the day, but every night would pop off of her bar and enjoy life.  Experiencing anything that she so desired.

Back when I was much younger I thought she was like a modern hippie, but now I see the truth in her words and I admire her for living the way she wanted to live instead of the way society expected her to live.

Her story was a sad one, where her ex-husband created a very successful business and left her for a younger more attractive employee.  Her kids decided that they preferred dad over mom (perhaps because he was so rich), and so she was at first lonely.  But instead of feeling sorry for herself, she blossomed into a very active and sociable lady.

So how does one escape being a total COG?

On way is to find ways to make extra money!  I know plenty of bloggers that are trying to make money selling ebooks.  Another way would be try and make money on twitter.

Personally I like trying to make money with blogging, but here are an additional 15 Advantages of Blogging that make blogging worthwhile.

So experiment, don’t be a COG all the time, live and think outside of the box a little!  After all, who really wants to run in circles all the time… never really going anywhere?

-MR

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