Time Is Money. Benjamin Franklin

We’ve all heard this for years.  As I continue to examine my life, and create the life I want in the future, this begins to make more and more cents.   (get the money reference?)  At jobs we trade time for money and that just makes sense in our culture because that is what we know.

If you look at time like a bank account, we are only getting paid with 24 hours in a day.  How do we invest that time?  8 to 12 hours working for yourself of someone else.  In those non-working hours how are we “spending” our time, to the benefit of our bodies, families or our own sense of peace and relaxation?  Or can we combine all of those together sometimes and hit the jackpot of time investment by reaping dividends in all three areas at once?

Am I examining this too deeply?  I don’t think so, I’m just making up for all the years that I have not examined it and just coasted.  Where you invest your time tells you what’s important to you.  Are they the same things you love to do?  My question to you.

Action expresses priorities. Mohandas Gandhi

What a hair loss guru, and wise bald guy.  This is what it comes down to.  Give me some feedback on this one.  Of course, you know that my goal for this year is to “do more of what I love to do.  One item that I love to do is engaging, fun stuff with my wife, Tanya.

Whenever we go to the coast we always find where one of our favorite live performers, Bret Lucich, is performing and go dancing.  He is bald guy, by the way.  We have a great time dancing the version of dance that we have made up, but would love to know several real styles and feel confident enough to go dancing when we are home too.

I’ve been saying for years, “let’s take dance lessons.”  Well, we started lessons Tuesday and had a blast.  We will be practicing for 15 to 30 minutes daily to get the 4 steps we learned into our body memories.  Looking back at the first couple months of this project there are some real patterns that have worked really well.  I have read a great number of books on habits, breaking through, getting zapped, living purposefully, etc and have distilled it down to 4 steps that I can remember easily.

The 4 A’s are:  Awareness, Action Plan, Action and Assessment.

My wife is a master at planning and details, so much so that I have just let her do most of those activities for our family.  This blog has really helped me keep my goals in front of me on a daily basis, which I am finding is very key to help me better express my priorities through action.  So let me walk you though how this has played out with the simplicity of the 4 A’s.

In January, I created the awareness, and stated that we were taking dance lessons this year.  I developed the action plan which included, finding out where lessons were offered, when classes started, getting that information together to review it with my wife Tanya and select which classes to take.  We signed up for them and cleared our calendar for the 6 weeks of lessons.  We took action and Tuesday night I assessed that it was a great plan and we are on our way to becoming more confident dancers.  We have found quite a few local dance venues too.  I was very surprised on how much is offered locally.  I’ll keep you in the loop on how things are progressing.

I just seems funny that at a job, that we get paid to do, we a amazing at these same steps, but for our own lives we don’t always keep our own priorities in focus.  Sometimes we may even loose site that we have priorities other that just get to the weekend.  Do you know what I’m talking about?  Share your story.

If you liked this read Churchill on Action:  http://wp.me/pDLQO-4a

Dalia Lama on Kindness and a Challenge

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. Dalai Lama

I am going to keep this one simple today.  A challenge!  When was the last time you went out of your way to display an kind act to someone?  Someone you know or even to a complete stranger.  Just yesterday I made a point to try this out.

I was heading into the office yesterday morning and I held the door open for a group of three ladies and then for 5 more people that were a few steps behind them.  It was amazing the response.  Their faces left the to do list of the business day and their faces showed a glow of  gratitude.   It is so sad that they were so surprised by that little bit of effort on my part to serve them. Service is a simple pleasure.
Your assignment (challenge) if you choose to accept it, is to do a random act of kindness to someone and leave the results in the comments.  Go forth and be kind.   Clean and Simple!

Buddha on Ability

He is able who thinks he is able.  Buddha

Just think about that statement.  When I first read that, it just makes sense right.  Well, lets take a look at that from another perspective.  Not ours!

Benjamin Franklin on Life’s Tragedy post from the other day I referenced Colonel Sanders and that he  started  KFC when he was in his 60′s.  Do you think that he just woke up one day and thought to himself, “I think I am going to start an international fast food mega-business.  I don’t think so.

He started when he sold his special chicken in the living quarters at the service station that he owned and operated on Interstate 75.   Over time, with great response to his chicken, Sanders took to franchising Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, starting at age 65.  He used $105 from his first Social Security check to fund visits to potential franchisees.

Actually, he started KFC when he was in his 40′s.  In other words took action toward believability.  He developed the receipt, he cooked it and served it again and again.  He knew he could cook chicken.  He built his belief day by day.  He knew he had a great receipt and went to talk to people about renting his receipt and pressure cooking method to quickly cook the chicken.

Moving toward doing more of what you love to do is just a step-by-step process of building belief in you and the picture of the life you want.  The power of our minds is a powerful tool, for good and bad.  It is at your disposal.  Are you using it to benefit you?  Are you creating the life of your choosing, or are you accepting the life given to you?  Clean and Simple!

Benjamin Franklin on Life’s Tragedy

Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.  Benjamin Franklin

Ya know Ben, I have to take this up with you.  Every person gets wise when they are ready, or when they want to.  There are two ways to wisdom.  Through our own mistakes, and/or through others.

It’s when you use both ways to wisdom that personal wisdom will compound much faster.  The main issue I have with your quote Ben is, and it almost gives us an excuse to think it’s too late . . .   What I mean is, I hear people resign themselves to thinking that they are “too old” or that it’s “too late” in life to make changes that will bring more value to their lives.  Actually, in the last couple months I have heard people in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties make comments that it was “too late” to do what they wanted to do with their lives.  SOOOO, once again it comes back to perspective and action.   What does “too late” mean?  How old is “too old”?  We all decide that for ourselves.  Don’t we?  The answers behind this may not be Clean and Simple, but the actions are.

Grandma Moses didn’t even start painting until her seventies.

Colonel Sanders didn’t start Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was in his sixties.

Yul Brynner- I have arrived

When I am dead and buried, on my tombstone I would like to have it written, “I have arrived.” Because when you feel that you have arrived, you are dead.  Yul Brynner

Yul, you are such a wise bald guy.  The years have taught me that when you feel that you have reached the spot you thought you wanted to be, you have just pushed through the point that you believed you could be.  Then, and it happens every time, you see the next point you want to be and think you may be able to get there.  Because you just arrived at a spot that was just on the edge of the believable to you before.

That use to annoy the livin’ bejezus out of me.  Actually, that’s a place that I like to set up camp, invest some time  looking back at the trek up the mountain just accomplished.  And then, I look up to find the spot that I’ll set up camp next.  Both are exhilarating,  feats conquered, and feats to be conquered.

One thing I wish we, as a culture, would teach our children is that we should celebrate the small victories.  We “arrive” when we finally get that spreadsheet formula to work, prepare a new receipt to nourish our bodies, see our kids catch their first ball, love our spouse when they’re frustrated.  It’s the simple joys in life that make our days fulfilled.  It is that 5 minutes of a purple, red orange sunset that make you stop and . . . well, just stop.   .   . Just stop.     .     .

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We arrive so many times each day, each week, each month and each year.  My question to you is, if we do arrive, why don’t we stop and celebrate?  Man it makes life so much more fun.

Clean and Simple!?!

Who love you baby?

Benjamin Franklin on Saying the Right Thing

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.                         Benjamin Franklin

Oh my goodness, don’t get me started on that one.  That is a real skill and gift.  It’s just amazing what some people say!  It’s almost like fishing.  Sometimes I’m the fisher with my words and sometime I am the fished.

What I mean is. . . well, sometimes I load up the hook and throw it out there and wait for a reaction.  Wait for it… wait for it… wait for it…  WHAM!!!  They take the hook and are doing a fish jumping out of the water, trying to either take the “baited words” or react enough to get the “hook” out of their mouth.

Now, what really P#$%ES me off is when I am the one making the big jump out of the water with someone’s “hooked words” in my mouth and I am thrashing around because I took their bait.  So I think Ben my have said a couple of things.  There are several perspectives, the sayer and the sayee.  (some new words the language?)

We can use both as a tool to create the life we want.  Do we want more conflict, control or power over others, or  do we want to communicate effectively with others and live OUR lives?

As an example, a few years ago when I was working as a teacher a new directive came down the pike that would take up extra time away from classroom instruction.  I was just livid!  So I did hold my tongue in the staff meeting, but after the meeting I starting ranting and raving about it to my buddy that taught in the classroom next to me.  I went on for a couple of days.

Looking back on it a couple of weeks later, that was all a waste of breath and could be used supporting and moving my kids toward one of their goals.  So as you can see I took that one hook, line and sinker. Or as the B-52′s say, “tin roof, busted.”

Do you have one you would like to share?  Would love to hear about it.

Covey on Living Out of Your Imagination

Live out of your imagination, not your history.  Stephen Covey

This makes so much sense if you can break from reality.  I’ve heard people say that your mind doesn’t know what reality is, but it only believes what you fill it with as reality.  Have you ever been out shopping with your spouse and seen someone do something that made you look at each other give each other the “Did they really do what we just saw them do?” look?

On the way to our house we pass a corner that  homeless people make their living at the stop sign asking for support.  I don’t know what their reality is, but it is quite a bit separated from mine.  One gentleman stands out in my mind.  In my observation, his reality includes many people  who are not happy with him because he is yelling and talking to them and waving his hands as he walks down the street.  I don’t know what his story is, but he has created or accepted a reality coming from his experiences and lives in it now.

My question to you is this.  If you don’t have the Clean and Simple! life that you would prefer, but the “running around with your hair on fire” life of your making, what do you need to do to create something more to your liking?  What do you want your life to look like?  What would that type of life feel like when you got there.  In other words how would you know when you got there?

I think that is what Covey is really speaking to.  To create something different from what you have, you must have  a picture of it in your imagination.  Now you have a goal to start moving towards.

To not have goals would be like making dinner plans at a new little bistro with a close friend.  The end of the phone call might sound like this.  “See you Tuesday after work.”  After you hang up several questions come to mind.  “Are we meeting this week or next, what time after work, where is this restaurant, how do I get there?”  If you don’t have the answers to these simple questions you don’ have a road map to your dinner plans for Tuesday.

I know that I was in that same situation until the last couple of years.  I didn’t have a picture what I wanted my life to look like.  When my  current situation is the road map to my “hair on fire” life then I get more of the same with no hope of something different.  Why, because I don’t have any other picture in my mind.

If you don’t have a goal, how are you going to get their?  What is the picture for you life in your imagination?  If you don’t have one you will continue to live  out your history instead of your imagination.

Dalia Lama on Helping

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.  Dalia Lama

I  don’t think you could get any balder than that, could you?  It has been really interesting to me as I write these posts  looking at life through the “Clean and Simple!” lens that everything is action.  Even what we view as not an action or inaction.

Everything that we do is preceded by a thought,  followed a choice to act or to not act.  So Dalia, help me out here.  With your life being dedicated to helping others to find peace, heal or be closer to God your advise is that if we can’t dig deep enough to help someone else out, that at least we can dig deep enough to not harm them.  WOW, that is Clean and Simple! enough.  Ok, that just makes sense to me.  Does that make sense to you?

So then, I say that, to say this.  In the whirlwind of daily life, we get frustrated and tired.  Some days you can even feel the dirt and leaves smacking you in the face as the day whips around you.  It has been like this for what feels like forever and you my not see ever getting our of the storm.  Keep on plugging on doing it again and again without taking a break to see  how you could lather up some things in the schedule and shave them out of your life.

I don’t have time to take a break to take that look, I’m just too busy. So then, you just keep in keepin’ on and beat yourself up that you’re not good enough, or smart enough to cram more things you may not enjoy doing in the first place into your schedule.

NOW as Dalia says,  “If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.”  NOW I say,  “If you can, help yourself; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm yourself.”  What do you think about that?

The Realization- I’m Going Bald!

The Realization

My wife had told me that I was getting a little thin on the back of my head. “I have blonde hair”, was my reply. Then, we were watching our wedding video and the balcony cam caught us walking down the aisle. As I walked below the camera I saw my head from her, and the rest of the world’s vantage point. I’m going bald! Wow!

That was a blow to my male ego, but my perspective has changed over the past 10 years.  That was a first step to some really cool things that have happened since.  What I viewed as a negative thing at the time has turned into something really great!  Is there something like that in your life?  Maybe just a change in perspective and now that lump of coal turned into the best gift ever?