A very wise man gave me some excellent advice one day.  I was doing a move in one of my Karate classes and he said, You aren’t doing that move the wrong way, only different.  Lets try it this way.

This was a total eye opener for me.  It made me realize that I was doing the move wrong way but it didn’t make me feel like it was wrong.

Many times, we focus on our mistakes and things that we do wrong instead of realizing that we just did it a different way that it is not correct.  I certainly like hearing that I an doing something different, even if not the correct way, much more than I like hearing that I am wrong about something.

Just changing the words that we use can have a powerful impact on our mind and motivation.

Please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts about using the word different instead of wrong.

Coming up with ways to make things easier or  improve the quality of life for others is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about.  I have visions of doing great things that positively impact peoples lives and help them enjoy themselves to their fullest but then, I realize that those great things seem so big, I just cannot get my arms or my mind around them.   These ideas seem so big at time I think it would be easier to walk to the moon than complete them.

How can I do these great things if I don’t know where to start?

As I was typing this tonight, I thought if I could do something small, then do another small thing and another, after a while, all those small things will add up to something big.  Following something to completion, even if it is a really small thing, will get the process started and moving forward.  The first taste of success will make you want more and then it will become addictive and soon, all of those small things will add up to that big thing.

Do something small today and it might just be the start of something big.

Living in Midwestern U.S. over the last few months has made me take notice of water, especially rain, more than I have in the past.  Watching the rain hit the ground and flow down my driveway, I noticed that if it flows into a rock it doesn’t stop, it quickly goes around it and keeps flowing.

Seeing that water flow made me realize that some barriers are meant to be gone around and not through.  There are many things that have happened in my life that would have turned out better if I went around them instead of taking them head on.  I am not saying that every obstacle in life should be gone around but look at your options before running through it because going around it might be a shorter and easier path to take.

For many years, I tried to do many tasks at once but have only finished very few of them.  I would jump from task, to task, to another task and even though I would get those tasks to about 90% completion, I never finished most of them and always felt that I wasn’t accomplishing anything.

Just the other day, I tried something different, I focused on one task until it was 100% complete.  I then did the same thing with another task and it too was completed.  What I found is that I could actually complete my tasks if I didn’t work on anything else until they were complete.  Even if I was interrupted and had to do something else,  I didn’t move to the next project until the last one was complete.

Give it a try and let me know how focusing on one thing works for you.

I like to believe that I am not a lazy person but I never get as many things done as I want to each day.  I keep saying that “I have to do this” or “I have to do that” but many times, I find myself saying the same thing over and over again because I never get started.

I have tried an experiment on myself over the last few days and have found that if I start something, even if it seems like a huge task, I do get something done.  I started a project a couple days ago of trying to rid my rock garden of weeds.  I kept telling myself, “self, I need to pull all those weeds” but I never started.  Each day, I would look at the weeds and they would just get bigger and take over a larger area making the job even harder.  Finally, I put on my weed picking gloves and just started pulling them out.  I have been spending between 30 minutes to an hour each day and am making significant headway just because I finally started doing it.  I also realized that I cannot pull all the weeds in a 20 by 28 foot area in one day but if I get a section done each time I go out there, I am working toward the end goal of no weeds.

Do you have a lot of things that you want to get done but you never started them because you felt that the task was too big?  Please leave a comment and share how you get yourself started.

For some odd reason, every time I cook food on the grill, I get upset over something dumb.

For example:  The hamburgers cook faster than the pork, the hot dogs on one side of the grill are burning while on the other side they are not cooking fast enough, I dropped the hamburger flipper on the ground and have to go inside to wash it off or I did not bring enough containers outside to hold all the different foods that I grilled.  The list goes on and on but each time I do this, I end up stomping around and saying that I am never going to grill again but for some reason, I still end up grilling food every week or two.  If someone were to video tape me having my grilling fits, I am sure that they could send it to the “Funniest Home Videos” TV show and win.

The point that I am trying to make is do not your waste time or energy on the small, dumb stuff.

I spent about an hour grilling the food and even though I was only upset for five or ten minutes total, I was not using the time to do productive things.  I could have used those minutes to think about writing a blog post or how to invent a product that keeps the grill utensils from falling on the ground but instead I stomped around and did nothing except make my wife and son wonder if I was having a mental breakdown.

I guess the solution to this problem is to recognize when it starts to happen and stop it before it gets worse.  Try to catch yourself before you get too upset and change the channel in your mind to a different one.  Think of something funny or a good time with someone special to you or a moment when something really great happened in your life and you will see how the small, dumb stuff seems really insignificant all of the sudden.

Life is way too short to get upset over dumb stuff so take control of your mind and put the dumb stuff where it belongs, outside of your mind!

Today is a gift!  How could someone explain this any better about living in the present moment than the quote below?

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it ‘The Present’.” attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt

When I heard someone very close to me to mention this one night, it really made me think.  What happened yesterday could not be changed, what was going to happen tomorrow could be changed, no matter what plans we make and what is happening right now is a gift because we are alive and living in this very moment.  Now, the key to enjoying this gift is to fill each moment with things that we enjoy and know that what has past is gone and what is going to happen tomorrow may never come.

Enjoy this gift because it really is your present.

I often apply things that I learn in Karate to my life outside Karate. One thing in particular has helped me a great deal and is surrounding myself with people that I want to be like.

Near seven years ago, not too long after I started learning Shotokan Karate, one of my Sensei’s (which, in simple terms, means instructor or in Japanese person born before another) said, go train near the people that you want to be like and you will improve faster than those who train in the back line away from everyone else.

I didn’t think much of this at first but I noticed that after a short time, my Karate improved much faster than the other students who were training in the back line with everyone else hiding back there. One of the people that I always trained next to moved up through the ranks extremely fast and because I was near him in most of my classes, I moved up quickly too.

This has worked very well for me in business too. Over the years, I worked side by side with people that were successful in areas that I wanted to succeed in and it worked the same way it did for me in my Karate advancement. I wanted to build a great team and be an excellent manager and I found that by working closely with my manager, I took on many of his skills.

With blogging and online marketing, I am sure that the same rules apply. If you follow or read and learn from the successful people online, that you want to be like, you will start to take on their traits. The big advantage is you will add your own special skills or unique personality to those traits and maybe take their success a step farther.