Try this - I watch it often.
Enjoy
When I first saw this on one of the blogs I frequent, I thought it was just a waste of time, but then I started getting into it. Matt’s energy and joy was contagious! Enjoy on this second day of the new year.
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Looking forward to 2009 for me is almost like looking through a looking glass. One one hand, there’s a reflection of myself, of everything that has gone into the me I am in that moment and yet, on the periphery there’s more, a little out of focus.
So many people I’ve spoken with, the blogs I’ve read, and the conversations I’ve overheard are discussing how they want to change who they are in 2009. Resolutions to lose weight, get fit, change relationship status, or all sorts of things that require a huge transformation in mental, emotional and physical lifestyles are made and discarded the first week of the new year.
Kaizen is a Japanese principle that says, basically, that you take small steps to make big changes over time. It’s the “when a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the planet, it causes a typhoon on the other” kind of thing. What I’m planning on doing in 2009 is making small changes, but lots of them. I find it interesting that all the so-called experts being interviewed on the morning tv shows are all recommending that you make only the changes you know you’ll be able to stick with.
My goals:
Get healthier
Get wealthier
Get wiser
I’ll let you know how it goes. How about you? Care to share your 2009 goals with me?
Until I hear from you, I hope your New Year’s holiday celebrations are safe and happy.
As we close our year and look forward to the next one I wish you nothing.
Now hold on, this is not an insult or a bad thing. Nothing is really the best thing I can think of to offer people such as yourself who are creating a new life, new business, new world and here’s why;
When you visualize nothing, what do you see? A black hole sucking up all light and substance? An end to all you know? Lots of people feel this way. I used to, but I don’t any more.
What is Nothing to you?
Try this on for size - if you were in a room full of nothing, what would it look like? Would there be walls? A ceiling? A floor? How would it smell? Would there be a sound or a lack there of? Create an image in your mind of what nothing would be for you. It will be different for everyone. Got it? Good.
Now what if instead of nothing, you made it Nothing/Everything? Instead of a place of lack, a place of possiblity, of creation, of inspiration? A beginning instead of an end? A place of no limits instead of no things?
Maybe it could be a space where everything is possible, where all the tools you need to create a project, a business, a goal or a dream are within your grasp because anything you can imagine within the Nothing is also possible.
What would that mean? How would you proceed with your day? Who would you contact and why? What would you DO? And more important, Who would you BE? Who COULD you be? What sorts of things could you create in that space?
Do you see where I’m going with this? Are you getting excited yet?
What if you could disconnect your Oughta-Pilot; that little voice in your head that keeps telling you “you oughta do this”, or “you oughta do that”? How far could you fly? What would you do? What COULD you do?
There’s really only one answer: “Anything I want!”
So as we draw this year to a close, I wish you a Happy New Year, full to overflowing with Nothing today, tomorrow and always.
See you next year!
Work well, Play well, Be Well
db
(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty
Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it:
“DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, “Opportunity’s Knocking, Open The Door” and is a trainer, speaker, and business coach. If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “
It was truly heartwarming to receive so many emails, IMs and tweets last week when the Thanksgiving spirit moved everyone to think kindly of their fellow humans and thank their friends and family for support. I sent out my share as well. But it occurred to me that I should do this more often than once a year. Did any of you suffer a twinge of guilt as you were typing your messages of thankfulness?
I’m making myself a promise for 2009. Along with the end of month reconciliation and first of month planning, I will select one person each week to write to and tell them just why I value their support and loyalty. I don’t plan to make it a quickie, tossed off note requiring only a fast lookup in my database for name and email. No, I think i will make it a handwritten note on company letterhead spelling out the how’s and why’s.
I’m actually looking forward to starting this. So many people have made such an impact in the last few years and I look forward to getting back in touch with some who have slipped through the cracks.
This might not be a bad thing for you to adopt as well. I mean, look at the popularity of SendOutCards. Letter writing, like card writing, is a lost art and it’s one I personally will be happy to revisit.
Until next time,
Work well, play well, be well
As if I didn’t have enough to do, this past weekend I started two more blogsites. They’re an experiment and we’ll have to see if they take off, but for now, they both fulfill a need for me to focus.
I’ve been doing a lot of drilling down and tightening my marketing, trying to identify whom best to serve and I’ve identified several places where I believe I can be of service and the new blogs specifically address those areas:
1) Confused? will hopefully explain a lot of the technical jargon, techniques and whys and wherefores for entrepreneurs new to solopreneurship, ecommerce and working at home. It is my intent to untangle the spaghetti of advice for those just beginning to explore social networking, setting up a business (including advice for finding webhosting companies, creating domains, setting up blogs and websites, shopping carts, merchant accounts and so on.)
2) Back To One will be my resource to reach those who believe they have lost everything and to help them find within themselves the way to begin again and not be stopped cold by the loss. We will discover the following:
A process for dealing with grief that was not convenient to face at the time a disaster occurred
A process for separating the event from the meaning we’ve attributed to it
A method to climb back out of the hole and begin to rebuild our lives and our fortunes.
I do hope you’ll stop by and check out my new babies. Leave a comment or two to start the ball rolling.
I’ll see you there.
Until then,
Work well, play well, be well.
We have a new President. Barak Obama, citizen of the world and proud American is our leader. i’m sitting here after watching the coverage on TV and i feel drained. I feel exhausted, I feel hopeful and nervous.
I’m hopeful that President-elect Obama can fulfill his vision and if he stands in the possiblity of healing the world “one block at a time”, as he says, I believe he’ll do it. I feel a sense of pride and belonging like after 9/11 when parties didn’t matter and we were all just Americans.
I’m nervous, though, because I don’t trust George Bush not to do something stupid in the time he has left. Megalomaniac that he is, I’m not sure he won’t create a real mess in the Middle East (as if the one we’re already in isn’t enough) and walk away from it and drop it in Obama’s lap.
I’m usualy not the activist in the family. I tend to be more a-political, personally, because i’ve been so disillusioned by what I have seen being done from the White House in the name of security but hs been mostly and obviously ego. I’m sure we all are feeling a renewed sense of hope and I pray the groundswell will carry us all high into prosperity once again.
I do not follow Democratic or Republican ideals - I follow human ideals. I wonder what will happen now for really small business such as my own. Both candidates spoke of tax breaks/cuts, options, rebates, and stimulus checks, but neither mentioned the really small fry, the solopreneur. Even Business Week was talking about the small business impact according to the SBA, but they were still talking about businesses that make over $250,000 a year.
Many of my clients don’t make a quarter of that, yet. What do they have to look forward to?
We’ll have to see.
I mentioned the Master Trainer Camp here and here. It broke my heart when the MTC on the East Coast was canceled, but Linda Welch, the creator of the event has come up with an even better option!
It’s morphed into a brand new telesummit for people who are speakers and trainers…or who really want to be!
From what I’ve seen on the website and what Linda has told me, this promises to be an AMAZING opportunity to begin or grow your speaking and training business.
The Speaker and Trainer Telesummit is a 6-month-long program designed to help people begin or grow their business through teleseminars twice a month and coaching calls twice a month!
The speakers who’ve committed are well known in their areas of expertise and will cover everything from identifying your brand to pricing your services, marketing (several speakers on this!), to leveraging your time, energy and money to selling without feeling salesy!
It’s rare that a group of speakers comes together in this way to provide such a comprehensive series. Spread out over 6 months, the telesummit is designed to be sure you’re taking action and not just taking in more information!
And you’re not going to believe the price! At just $297, this is an amazing value.
If you were to go to a live event of this caliber, you’d pay thousands more in tuition, transportation, food and lodging! Not to mention the time away from family and income earning activities!
Now, from the convenience of your phone or computer, you can hear the same presentations these speakers are doing at live events. AND get coached by them in a follow up call!
Go ahead and register now! I did as soon as I heard about it!
And if $297 is a stretch for you right now, they’ve made it easy for you by offering a 3 payment plan option!
The first seminar is November 19th… get registered so you can start earning more money as a speaker and trainer… sooner!
Thanks. PS…If you register by November 5th, .you’ll get a free 30 minute breakthrough coaching consultation! That alone is worth the price of the entire seminar!
Ok, now I subscribe to tons of blogs, newsletters, twitter updates, etc. It’s not like I don’t have enough to read. Why, then, all of a sudden, have I been subscribed to weekly newsletters from all these places I’ve never been? (I also know I didn’t subscribe to these, because I use a specific email address for all newsletters and these are not coming to that address!) I admit, some of them are actually well written and thoughtful; I may keep those depending on how often they come out. But the large majority of them are just links to squeeze pages I received a year ago from the originators of the offers!
Do these folks think I don’t read anything else? That just like every other entrepreneur out there, I haven’t been digging and researching and evaluating every JV (joint venture) and option that crosses my desk since I started an ecommerce business 10 years ago?!?!
Be careful who you request information from. There are those who think that just because you visited their site once or twice, or they’re in a group with you somewhere on a social network that they have the right to dump their trash in your yard!
I support expanding your list. I really do. I’ve been working on mine for quite awhile, but I use a double opt-in on my Living in Left Field newsletter and I respect others’ privacy. There have been a few glitches from time to time and my list has been exposed, but I like to think that the people who are on there have enough integrity not to spam the list.
Before I add anyone to my mailing list, I make damned sure they want to be there. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe that’s why I have such a comparatively small one, but I have to look myself in the mirror every morning when I get out of bed and start my day and I prefer to have people in my crowd that I can feel comfortable sending things to because they know I’ve done my homework before bothering them.
Ok. Rant over. Seriously, though, if you publish a newsletter or offer a product, please make sure you have permission to sign your public up for an ongoing commitment like a newsletter. We’ve all heard that internet real estate is valuable, well so is space in an email inbox. I don’t know where the compromise is, you need to send things out to an ever-expanding circle of contacts to bring in business, but 20 years ago, when i was cutting my teeth on direct mail (remember AOL software in the mail?) I learned that for every 100,000 pieces sent out, you were doing good if you got a 1% return! Those rules haven’t changed - they’ve just gone electronic and paperless. It’s just cheaper now! At least cost prevented some people from sending other people’s information then.
Here’s an article that details what permission marketing is and is not. I suggest you read it. Seth Godin said in an article in Fast Company,
“The interruption model is extremely effective when there’s not an overflow of interruptions. If you tap someone on the shoulder at church, you’re going to get that person’s attention. But there’s too much going on in our lives for us to enjoy being interrupted anymore. So our natural response is to ignore the interruptions.”
We as entrepreneurs need to be responsible; environmentally, fiscally and socially. Aretha sang it best. The key is R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
Inside the hallowed halls
So, as I mentioned in my last post, #wordcampdx was off with a bang. We all traipsed back upstairs to be greeted with cheers that “the t-shirts have arrived”. I guess their arrival was in question. Upon further investigation, had I known, I could have driven them down myself since they came from a screenprinter 45 minutes from me!
I say next time #wordcampdx wants to do shirts, they need to order them from The Rainbow Factory for a little somethin’ extra! Full disclosure here - since it’s my husband’s company, I can’t be counted on to be impersonal. His tiedye is some of the best I’ve seen and even though it’s from Washington State right now, we plan on moving down to the Portland, OR area so it will be really easy!
Anyway - found my spot against the pillar once again to listen to Lorelle continue her talk about how WordPress is changing lives. Lots of us made our way forward to tell how WP had made a difference, but Lorelle topped us all. Her presentation included a video from a woman I had not heard of (being new to the blogosphere), Glenda Watson Hyatt. The post and the videos are here. What a powerful statement by a woman who without her blogging would be trapped in a silent world of frustration and loneliness. At least in my little section of the room, there wasn’t a dry eye. Amazing.
Who was that wild woman from Walla Walla?
Betsy Richter was next talking about building community and a blog in eight, excuse me, ten days. Really was a fun presentation powered by Betsy’s sense of humor and getitdone attitude. She has put together a really effective site about Portland and it’s delightful lifestyle. I CAN’T WAIT TO BE A PART OF IT. If I was waffling at all (I wasn’t) about returning to civilization, Betsy made my mind up for sure.
Following Betsy and a break, we divided into break out sessions led by Aaron Hockley, Chris O’Rourke and Justin Kistner who talked about copyright issues in blogging, plugins for making your blog pop and using WP to manage a social relations program, respectively.
After those we regrouped and discussed the unconferences for that afternoon. Lunch was next with some of the best pizza I’d had in quite awhile. Yummy.
Since t-shirts have been my life for the past 10 years, I thought it only fair to volunteer to distribute them. Grabbed my slice and a soda and took up residence with Cami Kaos and Kelly Guimont to give them out and there met most of the other attendees, including Rick Turoczy. Whew, Ain’t I just a little name dropper?
Once folks were fed and shirted, the afternoonsession started with a sneak peek at the new version, WP 7.0 coming out soon. Pretty exciting stuff, actually!
The afternoon breakout sessions were great, too, dealing with picking themes, honing your blogging engine and getting read. I must admit, I missed out on most of the sessions since I was out in the foyer with Chris Pitzer (thanks Chris, you were a huge help!) figuring out how to get my new resident blog to work. (I’ve had blogs on Wordpress.com for awhile and had that fairlly well figured out, but the one I have with my site is a little more high powered and I’m still figuring things out over here.)
Following those sessions was an experts panel with Lorelle, Aaron, Chris and Justin where they answered numerous questions. Then dinner from Nicholas which was absolutely superb to this gal who has been starved for something other than chicken fried steak or Americanized chop suey. Mmmm, can still taste the Hummus and Tahziki and oh, there was something else like a lamb skewer or something that was just to die for!
Unfortunately, after dinner, I had to leave. I would have liked to stay for the unconferences and the evening festivities but with my headlight out, I wanted to get back to Beaverton before dark.
So, bye bye Wordcamp PDX till next time. I’ll follow my new friends on Twitter and reference #wordcampdx and keep the thread alive.
Have one for me!
Comments anyone?
So, until next time, Work well, Play well, Be Well
