Archive for the 'Purpose' Category

Blogging is an interesting endeavor. You put a blog up, customize your template, and start writing about stuff. At first it is fun, and the ideas come quickly. But soon the realization hits that to be a blogger means posting on a regular basis.

I’ve seen so many blogs pop up and then slowly fade away as writing becomes a chore and the writers lose interest.

Set Godin has an interesting post today about Have To vs Get To. He was asked if blogging everyday is intimidating or a chore, he replied…

I view it as something I get to do. I spend most of my blogging time deciding what not to post.

The best work, at least for me, is the stuff you get to do. If you are really good at that, you’re lucky enough to have very little of the have to stuff left.

When blogging becomes a Have To pastime, it’s not to long until the posting stops, and the blog is one of the millions in a frozen state of attrition.

As I near my three year mark in this phenomenon of online journalism, I am thankful that like Seth, I get to blog today.

I had an experience earlier in the week, where my web host had a network problem all day. I couldn’t login and my blog was offline for hours. It’s funny how you take things for granted until they don’t work.

I am thankful to be back online and to be able to write again. There are so many things to explore, people to communicate with, and ideas to share.

Thanks for joining in this thing we call blogging!

I’ve been in a public speaking organization called Toastmasters for years. During this time, I have been a part of many Toastmasters clubs and have seen many people come and go. With all of the great things Toastmasters offers… speaking skills, leadership training, and a great networking atmosphere, I have always wondered why some people come to a few meetings and then you never see them again.

In studying John Maxwell’s book, Becoming a Person of Influence, I have discovered that we need to dig a little under the surface to truly understand people.

One of the things John brings up in his book is that…

Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

This is so true with almost any club or organization. If people come to a meeting and no one talks to them, they are probably not going to return. If their first experience is one that excludes them rather than including them, they probably will feel that they don’t fit in and will find it awfully hard to come back.

John brings up four questions in his book that can help us get to know new people whether they be visitors, new employees, or the new client you met at Starbucks.

When we ask them…

1. Where did they come from?
2. Where do they want to go?
3. What is their need now?
4. How can I help?

We will get a much better picture of how we can include them in our club, our workplace, or most importantly… our lives.

When we take the time to really focus on the other persons needs, their lives and ours can truly change.

You open your mailbox and notice a rather plain looking envelope addressed to you. As you walk into the house you open the envelope and find a 10 dollar bill and a card that says… Go and Change the World. You look at the envelope for a return address or any sign of who it might be from but there is none.

What would you do?

How would you spend the money?

How could you change the world with just 10 dollars?

Would it make any difference if the amount was a dollar or maybe a thousand dollars?

This is a really interesting situation. To me it would require a lot of thinking and maybe some prayer.

Some ideas come to mind…

Ten dollars could buy a meal for a homeless person.

Ten dollars could buy some business cards for a new business.

Ten dollars could buy a new book that might change someone’s life.

Here is a thought… Put yourself on the sending end.

Who would you send ten dollars to that you know would change the world?

What friend, relative, or passer-by would be the recipient?

Why not send that envelope today?

This is the power of Deliberate Actions.

Here is the definition…

Deliberate: Carefully thought out and done intentionally

Actions: The process of doing something in order to achieve a purpose

In addition to sending money, could you make someone’s day better with a phone call, an e-mail, or maybe an encouraging word? How about writing a letter to someone you haven’t seen in a long time? What about taking a few minutes out of your day to help someone or pray for someone in need.

Here is a toolkit of 10 cards that can help you create some deliberate actions of your own. You can quickly print these out on Avery business card stock and fill them in with your own names. Here are some suggested uses.

1. Fill out all ten cards with names of recipients. Put the cards in a stack upside down. Shuffle the cards and pick one each day for 10 days. Take a few minutes that day and complete the action.

2. Leave the cards blank and choose one each day to perform an action on. Choose an appropriate person and complete the action.

3. Randomize the process. Leave the action cards blank and print out a sheet of recipient cards separately. Put the names of ten people on the recipient cards. Put each set of cards into its own stack upside down. Shuffle each stack and then draw one card from each stack. Perform the action from the action card for the person on the recipient card.

Download Instructions:

• Download the Deliberate Actions template
• Template includes 2 pages, an action set and 10 recipient cards
• Open in Microsoft Word
• Add text to the cards or print blank
• Cut & paste cards as needed
• Print out on Avery Business Card stock (10 card)
• Break cards apart
• Lay them out on your desk or table
• Follow the suggested uses above.

Deliberate actions can have a profound effect on both the sender and recipient. Imagine talking to that old friend from high school or that person you admired from your last job. How about helping an aging relative or sending a letter to your mom. Most of these actions will only take a few minutes out of your busy day. How about praying for a sick friend or sending a get well card or scripture verse for encouragement.

How about putting $10 in an envelope and send it off to a budding entrepreneur to get them to take the first step. Who knows… they may just go out and change the world?

Simple… Deliberate… Actions.

Hello everyone, April 1st of 2007 marks the two year anniversary of Success Begins Today. It has been an amazing adventure and I want to say a big “Thank You” to all of you who have joined us on the journey. I want to take a few minutes today and do a recap of our first two years. We’ll take a look at where we’ve been and where we want to go in 2007.

This blog started on April Fools day of 2005, with a simple Welcome post. I had learned about blogging from an Audio book on the subject by Chris Pirillo. After listening to the book I started to explore blogs on success and personal development and decided to join the growing crowd of bloggers from around the world.

Some of my early mentors were Rosa Say, Steve Pavlina, Brendon Connelly and Dwayne Melancon. They really helped me develop a blogging voice and were kind enough to link back to this blog. As I watched my site stats each month the traffic would grow and soon I had readers from all over the world.

Rosa Say added this blog to her growing Ho’ohana Community and the voices multiplied again. Bren & Dwayne provided great feedback and I became a commenter on their blogs. Steve Pavlina’s blog really started to take off and he became a real inspiration to me to keep blogging and coming up with new ideas.

Through 2005 this blog grew at a rapid rate and we added links to other blogging voices including Troy Worman, Yaro Starak, Scott Hodge, and Phil Gerbyshak. Blogging took on a new life for me as the variety of voices increased. It became so interesting to post new ideas because of the immediate feedback.

In November of 2005, I wrote about Passionate Purpose and how a little boy with cancer changed my outlook on life. We dedicated all of the funds from advertising on the blog for two years to build a place for Les. Later in the month, my dad passed away at the age of 94. I can’t tell you how great it was to have a blogging family come to my side during that tough time.

As the year wound down we had our Blog Success Awards of 2005 with many deserving blogs being mentioned.
As we came into the year 2006, I became interested in many of the books that other blogs were talking about. I soon started a subscription to Audible.com and started downloading audio books to my iPod.

These books soon became a habit and I found a real interesting site called PersonalMBA that talked about getting the education equivalent to an MBA by reading 42 books. With the combination of the two ideas together I started the process of pursuing my Personal MBA with Audio books.

This process became a revolution in my life. I found myself listening to audio books while walking, driving, and sitting in Starbucks. The books came to life in real world surroundings. This finding led me to start a second blog called “MBA on the Run,” in March of 2006. This site is dedicated to audio book reviews of popular business books.

In May of 2006, I posted about a pocket sized organizer called the Walleteer which was picked up by popular blogs, Lifehacker and lifehack.org. This was an idea based on a smaller and pre-printed version of the Hipster PDA, made famous on Merlin Mann’s, 43 Folder’s blog. This post spawned many other card based items such as the 5 minute flowchart, pocket dieteer and the goal setting toolkit.
 
These personal productivity items along with our post about The Power of 48 Minutes brought in new readers from around the globe. It has been amazing to see how this simple concept of focused work has changed my life and has been helpful to many others.

For 2007 we have many new items coming down the line including a new look for the blog, a more organized interface, and some exciting new downloads.

In closing I want to close with a word of thanks to all of you who have supported this blog and our sponsors over the past two years. Your support has resulted in hundreds of dollars of ad revenue that went to help build a playground for kids. This playground opened last week with cancer survivor Les Fountain cutting the ribbon. I can’t express in words what this means to me and the many children of our local community who will benefit from it.

 
Ribbon Cutting Video

I hope that 2007 brings great and productive things to you!

Cheers,

John Richardson

Blogger Felix Gerena, author of BrandSoul, along with the writing team over at the Synergy Blog have come up with a great way for bloggers to give back to the needy around the world. The idea is called “Blogidarity” with a tagline of, “Cause 1$ can save a life”.

Felix’s idea is to use blogging for a higher purpose, that of helping others who are far less fortunate.

The idea came to Felix while on a bus ride….

Blogging is fun, blogging inspires writers, blogging stimulates interesting conversations, blogging markets business, blogging builds community … but what else? What can blogging achieve that is bigger than all of that, and really, truly, good and right?

From that bus ride and synergy with a group of like minded people was born Blogidarity.

Check out the website and the mission at blogidarity.org

Have you ever been in a long line waiting to get someplace only to find out at the end you were in the wrong line? I had that experience over the weekend. My wife and I attended the NASCAR race over the weekend at LV Motor Speedway. There were over 175,000 people in attendance and everyone wanted to get out when the race was over. We knew it would take a while exit since we had been to the Busch race on Saturday, which took about 90 minutes to get to the freeway.

The 15 Freeway is the major artery for entry and exit to the track and this section of road is only two lanes. Add 175,000 people and you have a standstill. On Sunday we lined up a different way to get out of the track. We were in a line that was headed North out of the parking lot and you could see it led right up to the freeway. The line was three cars wide and moved slowly along.

When we finally got up to the exit of the track the line curved to the right along a frontage road. All of a sudden we were circling back around the track. The line crept along at a snails pace but we finally made it to the exit on the other side of the track. We could see the main street ahead but a strange thing happened. Instead of being able to turn right and head back to town, all of the exiting traffic had to turn left.

Here we were in the middle of the desert heading in a line that went on forever. It turns out that the access road went for six miles North and finally ended up on the 15 freeway, six miles above the track. We now had to go six miles south to just get back where we started. This was unbelievable! It took over 5 hours to get back to our hotel which was less than 10 miles from the track!

A precept of Steven Covey came to mind as we started and stopped in the middle of nowhere. “Begin with the end in mind”, played over and over in my head. How could I be so blind as to end up in this crazy line? After all, all these thousands of people were doing the same thing! How could so many people be so blind? If I had just asked somebody where the line went I would have never got in it. I would have exited out the south entrance just like we did on Saturday.

Following the crowd can be a dangerous thing. Unless you know the destination, the crowd can lead you places that you would never go on your own. When we examine the life roads that we are on we really need to know where we are going. We need a roadmap, directions, and a guide.

Do you have a roadmap for your life?

Have you sat down and planned out your destination?

Do you have written goals or are you just following the crowd???

Endlessly into the darkness…

Something to think about…