Seasons Greetings 2011

     First I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, although a day late.  It is tough at times to find the time to do all the things we'd like.  So with that in mind I'd like to also wish everyone a Happy New Year as well.  As 2011 comes to a quick close, I have been giving the past year a quick review.  The start of 2011 was a rough one with great financial strains throughout the world.  I had proclaimed that 2011 would be the year to overcome many of my personal challenges.  Financially, 2011 was a roller-coaster ride from hell.  Many of us fell off the ride, while others barely hung on to what we had.  Here again, from personal experience, I too clung on for dear life.  Yes, that's right, I did anything and everything to keep what little I had.  January to March was a battle of keeping my home, job and car.  Congress was playing with the taxes and delayed my return but in the end I still have all three.  I had mentioned in my last blog that I learned many things from my Dale Carnegie training.  Getting stressed out over things that might happen can kill you or in the least, make you very ill.  Everything that I worried about never came to pass.

     March to June looked promising and did fare pretty well, but with summer rolling in the financial woes started again.  Robbing Peter to pay Paul seemed to become a way of life.  I will tell you from this repeating experience, it DOESN'T work long and only make things worse.  Lucky for me, things seem to turn out right, one way or another.  July and August brought family issues and concerns that made for a very emotional time.  The decisions made during this time governed September.  We had to send my oldest daughter to stay with some friends over 1000 miles away.  October was a settling month, trying to get things back into some kind of order.  November is to be a month of thanksgiving.  This is where the financial company for our car lowered the boom.  When the statement came, my chin hit the floor.  The loan hit it's maturity and I owed a balance of $6000.00 by the due date.  Normally I would have panicked, but instead, I analyzed the situation and decided to try for a refinance to the balance.  Although the vehicle is blue booked for twice what I owed, no one would refinance it.  So I stuck to my guns and kept sending the normal payment.  They haven't come for the car and the December statement only states the same as the last but with a lower balance.  Again, here is an excellent example of why not to worry about things such as this.  December is here and Christmas has come at last.  Only days remain of 2011 and now I look towards 2012 with great promise.

     So what's in store for me in 2012?  Well first, the financial outlook is way better this coming year then last.  The 2011 tax return will pay off the remaining balance on the car.  This will free up all that money that has been going towards it all these years.  With that we can follow some of the principals that I have learned through several financial books I have read this past year.  I have vowed not to make the same mistakes that I have made in the past.  This will mark a new success in my life and your invited to follow along.  Discover the true meaning of Success from within.

     Recently, sometime in October, I had traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico for a service call.  When returning, I picked up a few gift items at the airport for my family.  I did find an item that I had some time ago and thought I should pick it up.  It's called a worry stone.  I had one years ago, when worry consumed me and was taking a huge toll on my health.  It came from an Irish stand at a mall that explained it's use and why you shouldn't worry.  Since we moved several times over the years, my worry stone has disappeared.  This presented me with opportunity to revisit it's use.  Simpy put, I will use part of my Dale Carnegie training with the help of my new found worry stone.  I write my worries down on a piece of paper and place it under the worry stone.  If I have new worries I right them down and place them under the stone.  After some time passes, a few weeks or a month, I check my list of worries.  I have come to find that most of my worries are meaningless and come to pass with no real issues.  This is a big key to finding success from within.  If we burden ourselves with worries, we'll have no time to realize our successes.

    

Have a Happy and Wonderful Holiday Season!

Do your choices have purpose?

       I shared with you earlier about how choices we make determine our path and our future.  So does the choices you make have purpose?  If we blindly make choices our future is always unknown and we will always be unsure of what lies ahead.  We must add purpose to our choices to reach a goal.  If we have no purpose our lives will just float aimlessly until we find one.  One of the rules of achieving our goals is to have a purpose to focus on.  Some people believe everything happens for a reason.  Good things happen to good people and bad things to the bad but how do you explain the bad things happening to good people?  We still have the power to direct our future.  We don't always see the writing on the wall so our lives take a turn for the worst.  This doesn't mean that we can't change that.

        I recently looked back at a powerful training experience that I had several years ago.  I thank the people that allowed me to have this experience because it changed my life forever.  It gave me new hope, direction and a purpose.  I was living my life totally day by day and paycheck by paycheck.  I no longer enjoyed even the little things in life.  I was missing out on so much and didn't even realize it.  I strongly recommend excepting the invitation if ever given it to go to Leadership Breakthrough One at Rapport International in Nevada.  You can check them out at http://www.rapportleadership.com/.  It opened my eyes and my feelings.  It brought out a part of myself that I never knew I had in me.  I made new promises to myself and kept them.  My family wanted to go to Disney World for a long time and I finally made the decision that it was going to happen.  I didn't sweat the details but I knew it would happen.  It took about 2 years but we spent Christmas 2006 in Orlando, FL and went to Disney World.  Make a choice, have purpose and focus on the golden ring to make your life the success you want.

       In between the 2 years it had taken to get there we had spent 2 other Christmas's in Maine.  When I was growing up we never went on a family vacation and in a matter of 3 years we had gone on one every year.  I was able to enjoy the time I was given off of work with my family.  No worries, no problems just us and some memorable good times.  My parents spent their whole lives working different times saving up and to do what?  To stay at home, watch separate boob tubes and never even enjoy the company of each other.   I do believe in delayed gratification but I don't believe that the delay should last your lifetime.  As I had mentioned in an earlier blog that time is to short and we never know if today will be the last so live your life to the fullest.  Go for broke and make a difference in your life and the lives of the people around you.  Walt Disney had a dream and didn't stop at achieving it.  He had a vision and brought it to life.  Many others have done the same thing using the same simple principles.  

       The Secret calls this the Law of Attraction or the Power of Manifestation.  Searching the internet you will find an over abundance of literature and information on this topic.  Does the Law of Attraction really work?  Lets use a practical example: Let's say you wake up for work and discover the power was off.  Now your alarm clock didn't go off so you are late for work.  The first thing that runs through your mind is "Great, what kind of day am I going to have?"  At this point it is decision time, you can decide this is just a glitch in what will be a beautiful day or you ask yourself what next?  If you picked the beautiful day approach, you have already made up your mind that this little set back won't wreck your day.  If you chose the what next attitude then you have set yourself up for a string of bad events.  Maybe your car won't start or you have a flat.  The boss had something important for you to do that needed your immediate attention.  If you let the little speed bump not bother you, you will have better control of your day.  You take a deep breath and say "let's get that coffee and call the office.  You talk to your boss who appreciated the heads up which diverted the late arrival disaster.  You don't worry about your car because it is well maintained and you have road side assistance.  Your day continues and you end with a wonderful sunset for your commute home.  I have practiced this principle several times but in the heat of the moment it is easy to be trapped in the negative side of things.

       At this point I'd like to introduce to you a very helpful coarse called The Art of Attraction Home Study Coarse.  This coarse has tremendous information on how to use the Law of Attraction and bring good things into your life.  Check it out and let me know how well it is working for you.

Don't sweat the small stuff!

       In these hard economic times we are constantly faced with choices and fill ourselves with worry.  Stress is a very serious problem during financial hardship.  Back in the early 90's, I made an average income of $14,000 a year.  I was lucky to get my own health insurance let alone get any for my wife.  The house and cars needed work and our first child was on the way.  On months that had 5 weeks in it made me over qualified for assistance by a mere $15.  My daughter was born under the Welfare System and after that experience I swore that it would never happen again.  With in the next year I more than doubled my average yearly income.  I could have sat around worrying or stressing out but instead I went into action.

Life's Most Difficult Decision...

        OK, so here I am on my soap box again talking about choices and the part they play in our lives.  Please note that the following is one of my life experiences and is used for reference only.  I am not trying to promote my religion or any other so please do not be offended.