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Explore My IDEAS

Self-Doubt

Am I good enough? 🤔 It’s the burning question that lives in our heads.
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“I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. . .We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.”
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Self-doubt haunts us all. Even the greats. That quote was from the Kobe Bryant, the guy who always wanted the ball with the game on the line.
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So how do we conquer it? First we have to go back and ask where self doubt stems from🤷🏻‍♀️
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The answer is communication. But a different kind of communication. The kind in our head. 💁‍♀️ It’s called Intrapersonal communication, or what we recognize as internal language or thought and it’s the biggest dream killer out there.
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Kobe help craft his mental edge from Tim Grover, author of Relentless, a book which made huge impact in my life in terms of overcoming fear and “going for it”.
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Warning: Grover’s approach is tough as he’s passionate about separating the talkers (dreamers) from the walkers (achievers).
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🔺”Forget try. Trying is an open invitation to failure, just another way of saying, ‘If I fail, it’s not my fault, I tried”🔺
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Some people aren’t ready for that type of accountability. I thrive on that no nonsense approach. 📖 It changed my workouts 🏋🏽‍♀️and my career. 💰 I stopped being “soft” on myself and no longer feared self doubt but instead “embraced it” knowing that rewards wouldn’t stem from ‘thinking about it” or ‘getting ready to get ready’. •
Like many of you, battling the chatter in my head and trying to slam the door on the negativity that wants to creep in. I’ll leave you with Grover’s lesson: 🔺”I’m not going to tell you how to change. People don’t change. I want you to trust who you already are, and get to that Zone where you can shut out all the noise, all the negativity and fear and distractions and lies, and achieve whatever you want, in whatever you do.”🔺
#sociallyspeaking

You Only Get One Body

You Only Get One Body

How many bodies did you get?

Me, I just got this one .

I need it to get me around town.
I need it to chase after my kids.
I need it to take me on vacation.
And lets be real, I really like when my wife is attracted to it .

So guess what? I’m going to make sure I take care of it  Not just today…or this week or this year, but forever.

I’ve heard some of the reasons men don’t take care of theirs.

My kids are grown, I don’t need to chase them.

After working all these years I’ve earned the right to sit still.

My wife loves me whether I have this spare tire or not.

Or simply, I just don’t know how to eat good

While I guess those hold some water, but I’ll assume there are lots of times when they don’t believe them or they grow tired of always feeling tired or looking in the mirror and saying “what happened to the old me?”

Fact is, I can’t judge another man for what he does or doesn’t do with his body or what he puts in his stomach. However I would like to invite any man out there who would like to improve his health or physique to give it a go and see how the rewards ripple through the other areas of your life and add to your overall happiness.

So why settle for anything less than your best. After all when your hourglass runs out of sand, you cant flip it over and start again..

Fathers And Their Daughters

Fathers And Their Daughters

If men are from Mars and women from Venus, then a daughter will seem like she’s from another galaxy to her father at times.

Dads, have you ever been in a conversation with your girl and suddenly she seemed to transform into a giant Rubik’s Cube, then your brain began to turn to mush and smoke came out of your ears?

You throw your hands up and beg for your wife’s help.

Sure fatherly love comes naturally but the communication is anything but instinctive. You say tomato, she says “you’re a clueless old fart who has no idea who I am, what makes me tick or what I really want out of life.”

At least that’s how it feels in our heads, right?

What happens if we get these “growing pains” conversations wrong?

If I’m too distant and fatherly, she grows up desperately seeking attention and dating the lead guitarist of an alternative rock band.

If I’m overly affectionate, she destined for a life of disappointing relationships because no man can live up to Daddy.

If I yell or am too strict, she’s painting her nails black and obsessed with taking sepia photographs of abandoned buildings.

If I’m not stern enough and give into every whim of hers, I’ll spend her teen years sitting in a lazy boy by the front door at 1 a.m. texting her feverishly to come home as my hair goes gray.

Where is the balance? There’s no course or handbook for this….or is there?

Learning how to truly express yourself and effectively communicate isn’t just about getting to the top of the company ladder or making new connections, it’s about the everyday conversations that weave the fabric of your life. The type of men that women date and have long-term relationships with are also directly related to the kind of relationship a girl has with her father.

Dr. Linda Nielsen, an expert on father-daughter relationships says fathers generally have as much or more impact as mothers do in the following in terms of their daughters’ achieving academic/career success, creating a loving/trusting relationships with a man and being self-confident and self-reliant.

Good communication isn’t always instinctual, it often it takes practice and a bit of self examination. Don’t let the best and most critical years go by assuming that everything will “work itself out.” Take the steps necessary to develop your communication with your children and watch the difference it makes it both your lives.

Joyful Marketing

Joyful Marketing

If anybody has ever tried to convince you to do something or purchase a product by using force, shaming or scare tactics then you know it often feels like a porcupine crawling backwards through a garden hose.

Ouch ! That’s not good.

Instead of disparaging people for WHAT THEY ARE NOT, remind of WHAT THEY CAN BE..

That’s why my wife Angelike and I always strive to practice Joyful Marketing (thanks to business coach Christy Calbos).

What’s that mean Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m attracted to fun.Im attracted to positive things and positive people. My Pops always reminded me of the old saying “you can attract more bees  with honey than you can vinegar”. .

Let’s take for example that popular post we see so often “Mondays don’t suck. Its your job that does”. What the heck is that? Shaming people for working? For putting food on their family’s table? .

Is that what is going to get them to your side?.

As if you would talk to a friend having marital issues and make her feel better by telling her “hey, it’s not your marriage that sucks, its that your husband is an A-hole”. .
Hey thanks. Appreciate that

Brothers and sisters, JOYFUL MARKETING is where its at.

Remember this, nobody was lining up to work for Ebenezer Scrooge!
STAY GOLDEN PONYBOY

From Fear To Freedom

From Fear To Freedom

Frederick Douglas famously said “Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.”

By no means do I take those words and the context they were spoken lightly. Certainly he championed a greater cause than what I’m about to talk about, however the principles of freedom remain exactly the same; the ability to pursue your God-given right to happiness, so allow me to make the correlation.

Today we are freer than ever in the sense that tyranny, oppression and democracy can no longer be kept hidden away in the dark. The main reason is because of technology. The spreading of information to all corners of the globe by everyday people allows us the opportunity to shed light on what is possible.

Which brings us to another very important thing that Douglas said; ““what is possible for me is possible for you.”

That ties into freedom because free men and women have the ability to choose their own path. And I mean that in many ways. We definitely have the ability to learn at an unprecedented level. We have the ability to seek financial fortune at an unprecedented level. And we have the ability to eat, exercise and tend to our bodies like never before in history. We also have the freedom to travel the planet at an unprecedented level. And we have the freedom to let our voice be heard and impact the world (FOR THE GOOD) on a greater scale than ever.

My suggestion to you? Take advantage of it all.

Why? Because we have. But only because somebody came before us and showed us that if it was possible for them, then it was possible for us. Prior to that we were locked in the matrix. Believing only what we were told was possible. And it was very boring and limited.

Today more than ever, people are looking for spiritual connection between their life and their work and they want to do it with the Freedom to no be tied down.

“You my brothers and sisters were called to be free.”
Galatians 5:13

“Live as people who are free.”
1 Peter 2:16

Certainly these verses call us to do good things and not just serve ourselves and that’s the beautiful thing, when your passion is in the right place, there is meaningful relationship between what you love to do and what puts food on the table. You use what you’ve learned to help others.

So do you want freedom to travel, to not be tied to a desk or to a geographic location? Freedom to say and pursue what you are worth rather than be told and settle for what somebody else determines you are worth? Freedom to set your hours and make your own vacation schedule?

Remember, if its possible for somebody else, and its been done, then its possible for you.

Freedom is a word that I do not take for granted. And it is my wish that if you’re reading this, you pursue it in every sense of the word.