Author: Rex

My friend Steven has written a book.  It’s a free ebook that you can share with anyone.  It’s about the new ways of dealing with change.

So check it out here.

It’s a new world of idea flooding.  With the ease of publishing the written word these days, we are more readily exposed to great minds like Steven’s.  This allows more of us to influence and be influenced by the ideas of everyone else. 

But in order to be the right kind of catalyst for change, we need to be involved, connected.  We need to be in the places where we can run into great work like this, and have a chance to influence others with our own ideas.

 Stress comes from incompletions.

When something is incomplete, it is unresolved.  It means there is a open loop that has not been closed.

Types of incompletions could be:

• unclear commitments,
• worries, complaints, problems,
• unclear direction,
• lack of acknowledgement,
• missing or hard to find information,
• unfinished blog post.

How these things exist for you determines your level of stress or feeling of being overwhelmed.  It depends entirely on your perception of these incompletions.  The same exact incompletion may not bother one person, but could throw another person into a panic.

How do you get people to immediately stop what they’re doing and willingly help you do what ever you ask?

Just walk in with a crying baby or toddler.

Nothing demands attention more than the constant cries of a child in pain.

This is what they call in business, “a burning platform.”  In other words, it is something that everyone should be concerned about, something that everyone is willing to help resolve because it is in their best interest and the best interest of the group.

But if you don’t happen to have a crying baby handy, how do you communicate a ‘burning platform’ message to others who need to hear it?

photo by egg on stilts

After 21 days of posting, where do I go from here?

Start over.

Here’s a site where you can find all kinds of stuff – Mashable

Try one thing that looks interesting to you.  Spend some time learning how to use it…

and in no time…

you’re an expert! At least to some of your friends who have never seen that tool or website or widget.

There’s so much out there that it is easy to become a local expert at something.

Well, they say if you do something every day for 21 days it becomes a habit.

I’ve done it… but I still don’t believe it.

Some days I’ve wanted to just throw in the towel and give up on the whole thing, but for some reason I just couldn’t let down both of my readers.  It has been difficult coming up with material every day, which I know now why most people don’t write every day.  But somehow, I’ve stuck with it, and sacrificed a lot of sleep.

Everyone has different motivators, things that drive them to accomplishment.  For this, I think mine was public declaration, even though ‘public’ probably meant only a handful of people, if that.  And I don’t even consider this much of a success, yet. 

But 21 days does seem like some kind of milestone.  So here I am, talking about it.

What’s your motivator?  Find out. Use it freely.  Let it run your life, in the way you want it to be run.

photo by ecstaticist

Monday, January 19th is a National Day of Service. Yes, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. day also, but a day of service sounds like a great idea.

If we take a conceptual view of service, it is really the essence of the ideal human being.  Being unselfish and giving of yourself to benefit another person is the highest station of existence.  If everyone was perfectly unselfish and gave service to as many as they had the capacity for, then we would all have our needs met by others, and we would be the most fulfilled because we would have become useful in providing for the needs of others.

That may sound like some kind of utopian fantasy, but actually, we learn how to live in this manner in the greatest institution of all, the family.

To become a mother or father you are given the responsibility to take care of this strange creature who can not do anything for itself. An infant is completely dependent upon someone else to exist.  As time goes by, it gradually learns to do things for itself (if you’ve taught it).  Still, many years of dedicated service are required by the parents before this being can feed itself, dispose of its waste properly, effectively comunicate, and socially interact properly. 

It is then prepared to be trained by others.  You could say that this means entering pre-school, but you could also say that it means graduating from high school. 

Whatever your perspective, there is no doubt that many years of selfless service are required to produce the kind of being that is able to effectively contribute to society by serving others, and able to produce similar beings of service itself.  The more of these beings you produce, the more selfless service is required.

So on this National Day of Service, try to think of ways to increase the service to those fellow human beings who you have the deepest feelings for, either for those who still need your example and training, or as gratitude to those who gave so many years of service to you.

One of the most important traits for a leader is ” authenticity.”  There are so many books that give you the techniques, what you should do , or what you should say in certain situations.  But if you are using someone else’s phrase,  and don’t sincerely mean what you are saying, then others will pick up on it immedately (or eventually.)

Learning principles helps to avoid this problem, because you are not given the exact prescriptions.  Principles are core ideas or concepts, they contain the underlying reasons or truths that explain why things work the way they do.

If you live by principles that you believe in, then your attitude and actions towards others will be seen as who you really are.  This genuine authenticity gives you more credibility.  People can almost predict what you will do  in certain situations because they know your values (or what’s important to you.)  This develops trust.

And trust can propel a movement.