Cake

This was the most amazing graduation cake - combined graduation and bon voyage:

20 Steps to Creating Fulfilling Life

"... not only in business but in your personal life as well. I can tell you from my experience that business success meaningless if you’re failing in your personal life and are not able to enjoy the fulfillment of your achievement?

1. Prioritize Your Life. Determine What’s Most Important To You To Experience True Joy & Fulfillment. Write Them Down And Then Stamp Them On Your Heart.

2. Create A Plan Of Action With Short & Long Term Goals Based On The Things In Life You Want To Achieve And Experience… You’re In Control! Start Right Now!

3. Determine To Never Settle. In Life You Get What You Settle For.

4. Build Relationships And Partnerships With Fellow High Achievers That Have Integrity Who Are Already Experiencing Some Or All Of The Success You Desire.

5. Read More to Learn More. Make It A top priority. You’ll Be Amazed At How This Transforms Your Self-Confidence.

6. Learn From Other’s Mistakes. It’s Cheaper And Far Less Painful.

7. Do What You Enjoy And Try To Enjoy All You Do, Right Now, The Next Hour And Tomorrow

8. Sharpen Your Perspective To Become A ‘Win-Win’ Initiator In All Situations.

9. Look To Experience More In Your Life. Broaden Your Horizons. Do Something Each Day That You Fear & Takes You Out Of Your Comfort Zone. Be Adventurous To Enrich Your Life!

10. Recognize That Achieving Requires Taking Risks. Not Always “Playing It Safe” And Taking Calculated Risks To Achieve Will Change Your Life!

11. Learn Something New Daily. This Is One Of The Secrets To Success & Fulfillment.

12. Always Bear In Mind That Success Is A Journey, Not A Destination. So Enjoy The Journey!

13. Prioritize Building A Reputation of Integrity

14. Make Your Life Memorable. Commit To Yourself To Enrich Your Life And That Of Those You Care About.

15. Exercise In Some Form Daily. Use it to Cleanse Invigorate & To
Clarify Your Priorities.

16. Reward Yourself. Set Daily Goals In The Evening For The Next Day. It Will Have You Wake Up With A Purpose. Determine A Reward For Yourself After You Reach Them.

17. Be Forgiving to All Which In turn Allows You To Forgive Yourself & Move Forward To Live Without Burdens.

18. Have More Fun – More Often! Chose To Enjoy What You’re Doing Now, The Next Hour, The Next Day.

19. Always Make Others Feel Important. It Changes Everything.

20. Relax Internally. Be At Peace.

There are a variety of proven business strategies that I teach when working with those working to create a successful online business. After some time and effort, those can be easily learned followed and duplicated. I find however, what is far more important to the long-term success and fulfillment of those I work with, is the grafting of these 20 key ideals into their life. This is because people can learn to become monetarily wealthy, but yet enslaved to the very thing they have created which then seems to ironically expose their character flaws. These are not truly successful people for they are miserable and starving internally; blinded by bloated egos and pride run rampant, because they refuse to prioritize self-improvement. They have settled for the “fools gold” and negated the true substance.

I implore you not to let this happen to you. Whatever your business or entrepreneurial passion, I cannot stress to you enough how important these 20 steps are to truly living a successful & fulfilling life. Make a commitment to yourself right now to the journey of making them a part of who you are and my friend, watch how your entire life changes."

from Patrick Daugherty, the Biz Coach

We Are What We Feed Our Minds

"We now know that new ideas require new connections (in the brain new ideas create new synapases)and therefore new ideas are at a disadvantage to old ideas.* This does not mean we cannot learn new things, but it does mean we must remove or modify existing connections in order to register new thoughts. Old connectionsthat are no longer needed are actually dissolved (physically by special compounds in brain.)...we can now understand that for the mind to accept a new truth, we not only have to create new neural connections, we have to abandon the existing ones and that takes time and energy, which and economizing brain is reluctant to provide."

"Also, as data or information is sensed, it is processed into categories for economy of thought . . .categorization in the mind is physical. Nouns are stored in one physical location of the brain and verbs are stored in another location."

...how we order knowledge...is what we call "strategies". Depending on reinforcement from our environment we will adopt or abandon a given strategy. If we obtain our goals with a given strategy, we will retain it as part of our belief system. Each belief becomes part of the mind's operating system."

The mind is continually sensing, ordering and developing strategies. It is always open to new possibilities but to varying degrees depending on how hard-wired the existing idea is. As adults we week validation of existing beliefs (knowledge and strategies) and do not like change."

"Just like practice makes perfect in sports, repetition of an idea or thought can create a perfect reality that only exists in the mind of the one who created it. It can become real regardless of contradictory evidence."

"WE ARE WHAT WE FEED OUR MINDS"

*The Amazing Brain, Robert Ornstein and Richard F. Thompson


quotations from Seven Steps to Effective Problem Solving and Strategies for Personal Success

Get Your Kids to Talk

Here are 20 Pillow Talk Questions from iMOM to help you jump start your relationship with your child - ask them when you put your child to bed:


What do you like to dream about?
What is your best memory this school year?
Who is your hero? Why?
How would you describe your family?
If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?
What are you most proud of yourself for?
Who is the kindest person you know? Why?
What do you like most about your best friend?
What is one thing you would like to learn to do well?
If you were an animal what one would you be and why?
When is the last time someome hurt your feelings? How did you react?
Do you know someone who is going though a hard time? How can you help them?
What is the scariest thing that happened this year?
If you could keep only one thing, out of everything you have, what would it be?
Who do you think is really successful? Why?
What’s the best thing about your teacher this year?
When do you feel misunderstood by grown-ups?
What three words best describe you?
What’s something that makes you angry?
What’s the best compliment you ever received

Acknowledgement

Being given the President's Award.

"I recall a talk about an egg , the egg from the outside will withstand a huge amount of pressure (such as when it is being laid by the chicken) without coming to harm, but a tiny chick weighing only a couple of ounces can break that shell, as is the case with the truth, we can withstand pressure from outside, but from inside we are much more vulnerable."

from my friend June

Just How Powerful is a Mobile Phone

"People love their devices so much that there is now a network that our CEO Jonah Peretti has called "The Bored in Line Network" comprised of people rapidly sharing and consuming content while standing on lines at stores and other places. This network is so real that gum sales are down $3.5 billion and magazine sales are down 8.2% as people consume and share content on their phones while waiting to checkout at grocery stores rather than making impulse purchases from nearby racks." - from a Linked In post I read this a.m.

Man, if I was a marketer, I'd have a mobile strategy tomorrow.

"...In virtually every human society, 'he hit me first' or 'he started it' provides an acceptable rationale for what comes next. It's thought that a punch thrown second is legally and morally different than a punch thrown first. The problem with the principle of even-numberedness is that people count differently. People think of their own actions as the consequences of what came before, they think of other people's actions as the causes of what came later, and that their reasons and pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than that of others."

These are positions and ideas we all "wind up" playing out. When we "are" right, embedded in that truth is an equal truth that someone else is wrong—it's not a matter of accuracy, it's a matter of being. We can't be happy, vital, and loving while we're being right, making someone wrong, or justifying our positions—one displaces the other. The "rightness" of our positions also precludes us from being open to seeing other points of view
.
We have a choice about what's at play. When we elect to transform ways we wound up being, we move to a place of freedom, a place of possibility. Our points of view and positions can then move from fixed to malleable, from closed to open—where each person has an honored place in the dialogue.

Larry Pearson adapted from Daniel Gilbert, New York Times, 7/24/06

This is a poem B wrote about Harriet Tubman in school:


Escape to a True Life


The life we as a people live isn't real, belonging instead of living!

Working day in and day out can't be true life.

A path, a railroad of houses

Is all it takes for freedom.

I never let anybody turn back -

They'll be free or die a slave, I say!

I never lost a passenger

On this Underground Railroad, this

Escape to a true life.

I wouldn't give up if they paid me

They pay others!

Do they think I'll sacrifice everyone I help

By letting myself be caught?

No, the drinking gourd, up in the starry sky,

It keeps going, guiding those who follow it.

We need to just like it

Keep going on an

Escape to a true life

Who says that what we look like

Changes who we are?

I save hundreds of people

They never caught one

Never caught me yest,

Never will!

They pay thousands of dollars if they can find me -

You can't put a price on a human being!

My train never crashed;

My passengers never lost.

The Underground Railroad:

It's an escape to a true life!

My daughter said to me, "I thought of a saying." I asked her, "What is it?"

"It's either "Work Well Done" OR "Well, Work Done."

Clever girl.

We spent a day with friends who were camping at Inks Lake. Patrick was visiting that week too.

The Price

The photos are about a year apart. I have paid a price for a very stressful work year. I saw the Executive Director position at TCA the previous November but did not apply because I did not want the stress that I new came with that position. So then 2 mtns. later in January, a year ago, I saw the Event Coordinator position - I could do this, this would be a more "regular" schedule - so I applied, was interviewed and hired on the spot basically. January 9. On March 4 the new ED (started a week after I did) resigned, and I was asked to cover it - so whether or not I applied for it, I have been the Acting ED since then. We did a search to hire a new ED and had a contract in July - but he backed out - so I continued until now, and a new ED comes in January 7. A year since my hire.

The workload and stress has been enormous. I put on almost 25 lbs. My life is out of balance, and this year I intend to take it back.

Working 60-80 hrs. a week has been more the norm than the exception, and I have been affected physically, spiritually, with my family and just my whole psyche. I am a caring person, and that is why I have taken such care of a very troubled, broken association. But it is time to care for myself so I can care for the people and missions most dear to me. Not my job.

Book Update

My book post from a couple of months ago:

I love Baking Cakes in Kigali so much that I am reading the author's other book, When Hoopoes go to Heaven. A Hoopoe is a bird btw. It is set in Swaziland. If you like the Ladies #1 Detective Agency, you would like this author's books. Gaile Parkin is her name.

The main character is a 10 year old boy, Benedict, whose parents have died as a result of AIDS, a common problem in Swaziland, and he is now living with his grandparents (along with his brothers and sisters and cousins whose parents have also died from AIDs). The book is not about AIDs, but it does help one see what a huge impact this disease has had on the way of life in Africa, and that grandparents are left to raise not just one, but many children, and it is like a whole generation is just disappearing.

1/1/2013 So here's the update - her first book is not as good as Baking Cakes in Kigali

Two Most Important Questions Every Day

from Gregory McKeown:

"I recently spoke at a conference in Silicon Valley and I was pleased to stay for the rest of the event afterwards. The final speaker, Connie Podesta, said something which struck my curiosity. She said, "I am going to share the two most important questions you will ever answer. If you answer no to either of them I will know some things about you. I will know you are more stressed than you need to be. I will know you are unhappier than you need to be." She had my attention.

Here are the two questions:

#1 Are you proud of the choices you are making at home?

#2 Are you proud of the choices you are making at work?

We might feel tempted to push these questions aside as being overly simplistic. Yet, as Oliver Wendell Holmes is credited with saying, "I wouldn't give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity but I'd give my right arm for simplicity on the other side of complexity."

One reason these questions strike me as simplicity on the other side of complexity is they remind us to pay attention to our current choices rather than our current results. Our results, whether we are currently experiencing success or failure, can be misleading because they happen after the fact. They are lag indicators. Consider how these questions can help:

In Times of Failure.There are clearly times when things are not going as we want them at work or at home. We could complain about this. We could make a fuss. We could become discouraged. Yet, if we ask these two questions every morning we can focus our energy on the choices we can make. Messed up something? Fine. We can get back on track. We can ask whether we are proud of the choices we are making now.

In Times of Success. Success can be a poor teacher. It can teach us to underinvest in the things which generated the success in the first place. I have argued this more fully in a piece for Harvard Business Review where I intentionally overstate the case in order to make it: success can be a catalyst for failure. We can begin to coast along and in the very moment of our greatest outward achievements we can make choices which undermine our future success.

In Rudyard Kipling's beautiful poem "If" he brings together both of these scenarios when he penned counsel to his son:

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same..."

Kipling cautions his son to distrust both success (triumph) and failure (disaster) as imposters. He warns him both are deceptive.

Asking these two questions and becoming more deliberate in our choices can seem like a small thing in the moment. Sometimes we feel we are too busy living to really think about life. Yet failure to reflect on these questions could contribute to a life of regrets. Indeed, an Australian nurse, Bronnie Ware, cared for people in the last 12 weeks of their lives and she recorded the most often-discussed regrets. At the top of the list: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." Next on the list: "I wish I hadn't worked so hard" and "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."

I am not sure these are the most important two questions we will ever ask, but surely we will have fewer regrets if we spend a moment every morning asking them."