Put your phone away and schedule your auto responder; take a vacation you busy worker bee. Decide how balance can benefit you, maybe lighten your load with less material clutter (we hear the book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up will help you in this process), or drop a weekly commitment that's robbing you of your joy. Are you halfway into something? Jump in headfirst or get out. Celebrate friendships. Watch the first time we landed on the moon. Think in awe about all that you couldn't have accomplished without your independence. It's a contemplative month with some cleaning up to do. … [Read more...]
Thoughts on Humility
From Chapter 1 "Humility: The Root of Success" in Ingredients of Outliers FOOD FOR THOUGHT Reading and learning about others reveals the degree and the scope of their accomplishments and how they've handled both success and failure. Count the number of times in a day you find yourself telling others about your accomplishments and then work on decreasing that number. Remind yourself that having a fragile ego ultimately prevents you from taking risks and that failing to take calculated risks leads to stagnation. IN OTHER WORDS Egotism is the source and … [Read more...]
Are you Surrounding Yourself With the Right People?
We’ve all heard the common phrase “ You are who you associate with.” But what does that really mean and how do you know if you’re hanging around the wrong crowd? This is a problem that stretches from early teen years to the depths of adulthood. It’s easy to convince oneself that a strong character or mindset can enable someone to hold their morals, standards, and drive amongst a crowd that lacks motivation. Unfortunately at times, the influencer becomes the influenced. King Solomon put it this way, as recorded in the Proverbs: “The one who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of … [Read more...]
The Next Steve Jobs
Does the name Paloma Noyola Bueno sound familiar to you? No? Well, me neither. But according to an article by Wired Magazine, this 12-year-old could be the Next Steve Jobs. Paloma attends José Urbina López Primary School that sits just across the US border in Matamoros, Mexico, a city smack down in the middle of the war on drugs. There are regular shoot-outs and bodies are often left in the streets. There is only one small cinder-block barrier that separates the school from this war. Although this school is often called un lugar de castigo — “a place of punishment” — it was Paloma’s solace, … [Read more...]