Anyway, I didn’t want the month to end without getting in another post. So here I am at Border’s Books enjoying a coffee drink and freezing my buns off. Border’s now has free Wi-Fi but I suspect that to keep people from loitering and drinking all their Wi-Fi juice they crank up the a/c. Every time I come here it’s like 30 below freezing. I’m actually wearing a thick sweater. But I won’t complain. It’s free internet at my favorite bookstore which allows me to do what I love to do which is to write for my blog.

Unfortunately, all of my first draft posts are at home on my desktop computer so today I’m winging it. What’s a good topic? Oh I know. Dealing with other people’s expectations of me.

This topic has been on my mind for the last few weeks because of a clash of ideals I’ve been experiencing with a family member. For the past four years, in one form or another, we have been having the same conversation. The basic gist of it, or at least what I take away from it, is that this person wants me to be independent. Prior to living with my grandmother, I lived with this family member for some time. They feel that I should be living on my own and taking care of myself.

Now I fully agree with this sentiment. However, don’t think that I have been this deadbeat who has been mooching off of family members all of my life. Up until July 2009 I was gainfully employed (except for a month or two between jobs). I paid them rent. The problem was that I had created a situation where I needed to move in with them until I got back on my feet. Unfortunately, that ended up taking a lot longer than either one of us was expecting which, I suppose, contributed to the degradation of the relationship between us.

This is not a finger pointing post or a rant against my family. Looking at this situation from a more objective point of view, I realize that it was an experience I had to have in order to learn this lesson I’m about to share with you.

Like I said before, I agreed with them that I need to be independent. The problem is that they have this idea in their head about how I should live my life and they are upset because I will not conform to their ideals. My goal has always been to have a home based business. They think that I should go out, get a job and work my business on the side until it becomes profitable enough for me to quit my day job. That’s a good plan. That plan has worked for a lot of self-made millionaires. I tried following that plan for a number of years.

It didn’t work for me.

The only thing a job did for me was distract me from my greater purpose. Sure it paid the bills but it made me lazy and stunted my growth. I knew that the only way I would have the home business I wanted was if I quit my job and focused all of my attention on building it. However, because I was trying to live up to the expectations of my family, I continued working their plan but only experienced failure. It wasn’t until July 2009 that I began making any real progress.

In June 2009 I quit my job to move to Florida. Unfortunately (or rather fortunately in my view) I was unable to get a job. I think I have submitted over 200 applications and have gotten only 4-5 interviews for my efforts. Faced with a need for income, I turned my attention to building my business and for the first time experienced real success and progress towards my goals.

In December 2009, I stopped looking for a job and really focused on securing income as a self employed writer but still I felt a lot of fear about doing things “my way” versus “their way”. It wasn’t until I delved into the Abraham-Hicks book Money and the Law of Attraction that I finally understood what was happening and what I needed to do to get past my feelings about the situation.

In the book, Abraham talks about the fact that people look to us to bring ease and wellbeing to their lives. They want us to say things, do things and behave in certain ways so that they can feel good. A basic example is a person wants you to tell them you love them so that they can feel loved. Or someone wants you to clean your room so they can experience the wellbeing that having a clean house brings them.

This is a lose-lose situation. First of all, failure is inevitable. I learned that eventually a situation will occur where I have to choose between making them happy and my wellbeing. If I do what they ask, they will be happy but I will be miserable. If I do what I want, I will be happy but they will be miserable. And unless what I want is aligned with what they want, there will be times when I just can’t do it.

Secondly, feeling good is an inside job. When I project that responsibility outward, I am putting myself at the mercy of outside forces. People and circumstances won’t always go the way that I want them and basing how I feel on whether or not they do only dooms me to a roller coaster ride of emotional highs and lows.

I realized the reason I felt fear was because I wanted their approval so I could feel good about myself just as they wanted me to follow their “plan” so they could feel good. I understood that we had co-created a situation of emotional co-dependency on each other and that if I were to experience the success I wanted in life then I needed to put an end to these types of relationships beginning with this family member.

So almost like clockwork, this family member sent me an email that would have put me into a spinning frenzy of action to please them. But my new found knowledge made me understand that this emotional co-dependency was doing neither of us any good so I cut them off. The basic gist of my response was that I was moving in a new direction with my life and that I was no longer going to live my life trying to please them.

My response went over about as well as a lead balloon but I expected that. What I didn’t expect was to feel guilty about drawing the line in the sand. I feel like I hurt their feelings and that wasn’t my intention. At the same time, the relationship can not continue down the negative path it has been. That, I think, would have led to a permanent ending on bad terms. This way, maybe the relationship has a chance but on terms that is loving and supportive for both of us.

In my mind and spirit I know that taking back my power by ending my reliance on the behavior of others is the best path to take. My heart, however, is having a little trouble with it because I fear losing cherished relationships. But if those relationships are a source of pain and judgment rather than of love and support then do I really want them in the first place? What do you think?

(photo credit: icanhazcheezburger.com)

I iz coming for you!

One episode of the show really touched me. The owner of a mortuary was being tortured by his past. The man had fallen on hard times and when his furnace broke he was unable to get it fixed. To save his business, he told families that he cremated the bodies of their loved ones but in reality he dumped them into a pond in the woods. The ghosts of those people were trapped on Earth because of their anger over what he did to them.

When we meet the mortician in the show he is dying of cancer and is terrified. He can feel the presence of the ghosts waiting for him to die so they can punish him for what he did. Eventually, he does die and as he expected the ghosts start torturing him.

He makes his way to Melinda who doesn’t understand why he didn’t cross over. He informs her that some people told him he couldn’t and that they wanted him to join them. It sounds very mysterious and sinister until Melinda confronts the entities who blocked him and made them explain their actions.

In reality, they didn’t tell the man that he couldn’t cross over into the light. That was a decision he made on his own. They explained that every being who dies looks into the light and sees themselves reflected there. Sometimes all they can see are the bad things that they did in life which makes them feel they are not worthy enough to go into the light so they end up staying on Earth.

When the man looked into the light, all he could see was what he did to those ghosts in the pond. And when those ghosts who were dumped in the pond looked into the light, all they could see was shame about their circumstances. That shame led them all to hold back from crossing over and resting in peace.

This episode really resonated with me because I’ve manifested this exact type of situation in my own life. I am not perfect. I have done some crazy things in my life and I have had crazy things happen to me which have made me feel very ashamed. This shame has stumped my growth as a person which in turn made it difficult for me to bring about the success that I want in life.

Due to my involvement with the Christian religion, I came to believe that Source (or God in their terminology) was a judgmental, vengeful being with OCD. If you didn’t do what he said then you were toast. You would be eternally punished for disobeying the word of God.

The message got lodged in my subconscious and every failure that I experienced, every bad thing that happened to me, got filtered through the belief that because I was not doing what God wanted I was a bad person and instead of obtaining the success I wanted in life, I was being punished with failure.

Fast forward years later, I’m not a Christian anymore but I still carry around remnants of that belief system in my psyche. The morning after I watched that episode of Ghost Whisperer I felt the need to reflect on the things I was grateful for in my life. During my journaling, I realized that God/Source was not judging me. I was judging me. I was the one who said I was unworthy to go into the light. I was like that mortician in show. I looked into the light and only saw the bad things reflected there and ran away.

But this went beyond my spiritual life. Though I craved a better life, I still believed that I didn’t deserve one because of my past. And in hindsight I see where this belief has caused me to sabotage my own success. I felt I had to “pay” for the sins of my past before I became worthy of the future I wanted.

The problem with this thinking was I was never going to get out of jail. Every new “offense”, however slight, just added more time to my sentence. If I hadn’t gotten off this train when I did, I probably would have ridden it until the day I died.

So how did I manage to get off this train to nowhere? Well, I first had to divest myself of the bogus ideology about God/Source that that had been fed to me since I was child. I had to understand that the true nature of Source is supportive and loving not damning and spiteful. This was a big one for me because, as I said before, for a long time I believed God/Source was judgmental and vengeful and who was punishing me for everything I ever did wrong. Once I got past this insanity, everything else just kind of fell in place.

I also had to come to terms with the fact that I was human and thus subject to making lots and lots of mistakes and that it was OKAY to make lots and lots of mistakes. No matter how hard I try I can’t know everything. I have to do the best with what I’m working with at the time. Sometimes that leads me to making gigantic mistakes. There is really nothing I can do about that except learn from the experience.

Once I figured that out, I forgave myself for all the mistakes I had made and will ever make in my life and then gave myself permission to pursue my dreams.

Now I know I’m making this sound a lot easier than it really is. It took me weeks just to become comfortable with the idea that it was okay for me to not be in hell anymore. I still struggle with feelings of non-worthiness that cause me to trip and fall on my face. There are days when I have to actually remind myself that the universe is not out to get me like some relentless bounty hunter trying to drag me back to jail.

But one thing that has helped keep me on track was to realize that it’s a process. As Abraham-Hicks says, “A belief is just a thought you keep thinking.” When those crazy thoughts come up, I just exchange them for something more empowering.

If you find yourself getting in the way of your own success, examine your thoughts to see if maybe you have put yourself in jail. Then take steps to let yourself out. As I’ve noted before, life is supposed to feel good and it is much too short to spend suffering over a past you can’t change anyway.

(photo credit: thx icanhazcheezburger)

When you go to Craigslist job board now, the first thing you will notice is that they have posted a warning about scammers advertising fake jobs for affiliate money. I guess it’s gotten really bad over there. But I’m not surprised. All it takes is one fool making money doing something evil before a host of copycats follow in their footsteps hoping to do the same.

When I looked at the email she forwarded to me, I knew immediately it was a scam.

Thank you for your interest in the position at our firm.

A little more information about us:

As a recently founded and rapidly growing marketing firm, we hope to foster fun yet efficient environment for our new employees. Unlike other companies, we believe an easygoing and friendly atmosphere is facilitative to quality an actually increasing productivity.

To be considered, candidates must possess strong communication/interpersonal skills and ability to interact with people at all levels of the firm and excellent organizational skills.

Candidates must be self starters and be able to undertake responsibilities with limited supervision. They must also be able to multi-take and have working knowledge of MS Office. Familiarity with other types of software is a plus.

Our policy is to grow and maintain long lasting mutually beneficial business relationship with our employees. In keeping with that standard, our firm offers a comprehensive benefits package that is second to none. In addition, we pay our employees higher than any competitor in the industry.

Compensation will be further discussed during the interview process, after reviewing candidate applications.

Please take a few moments to fill our or online application here: http://www.resumebuckets.com/app/

Thank you,
Recruitment Advisor
H R Staffing Department

First of all, my friend did not apply for a position with a marketing firm. She applied for a job with a hotel or at least she thought she was. Secondly, the language is very generic. It is obviously a form letter sent by an autoresponder service to everyone who responded to the fake job ad. Third, she had already sent them her resume. Why is she being directed to fill out an application online especially since the ad specifically asked for a resume?

*Tip: Don’t send anyone your resume through Craigslist until you verify the job is real. You don’t have to be obvious about it. Just send a polite note introducing yourself and asking if the job is still available. If you get a form letter like the one above, move on.

So I click the link in the email which took me to the classic generic website.

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Red Flag #1 – The website looks like an 8 year old designed it. Now, there are a lot of reputable companies out there who have poorly designed websites so this in and of itself is not a clear indicator of a scam site. However, it only adds credibility to the rest of evidence.

Red Flag #2 – There is no job description. I’m submitting an application for a job but there is nothing that confirms I’m applying for the right job. Legitimate employers always post the job description because they want you to be clear about your responsibilities. Not having that here makes me think they are not serious about hiring any one.

Red Flag #3 – The domain name doesn’t match the name of the site. The site domain is ResumeBuckets.com but the name of the site is Market Circuit and the email address is attached to the marketcircuit.org domain. A research of both domain names shows that ResumeBuckets.com was registered in 09 November 2009 while MarketCircuit.org was registered on 25 December 2009. On top of that, both domains employ a privacy service that cloak their registration information.

*Tip: To find out who the registrant is for a domain go to Whois.net. Enter the web address in the domain lookup box. You will be presented with the information on record for that domain.

Red Flag #4 – There is no information about the owner of the site. There is no “About Us” page, no contact information (other than the email). There is just this overwhelming feeling of anonymity. A legitimate company offering a real job wouldn’t be so secretive.

Going to the front page of the site (ResumeBuckets.com), I found that the site is supposedly a resume hosting service where people can post their resumes in the hopes of being seen by big name employers. (Please note there is another site called ResumeBucket.com -without the S- that is not the same)

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I don’t recommend that you submit yours to them. I guarantee none of those employers even know this website exists let alone are spending any time sifting through resumes uploaded there. Secondly, all of those employers listed have websites with a career sections where you can apply for a job directly.

*Tip: When responding to ads on job sites, if the name of the company is not listed (red flag) ask for it in the introduction email you send. If they provide it, go directly to the employer’s website and apply for the job.

I clicked on the Privacy Policy which pulled up disclaimer listing JBR Media Ventures, LLC as the owner of the site. A Google search took me to http://jbrmediaventures.com/ who appears to be the culprits behind this website. They bill themselves as a lead generation service which basically means they take all of the information you submit to them and forward it on to “businesses” who then fill your mailbox, email and voicemail with unwanted solicitations.

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*Tip: To give themselves an air of legitimacy, scammers will frequently claim an association with well known companies. Ask yourself if these brand name businesses really would employ the services of a company who uses underhanded methods to collect customer information.

Anyway, to see just what was at the bottom of the rabbit hole, I started filling out the information. I was taken to a page that asked me about my work preferences. Many legit employers have the same types of questions on their internet job applications. This website posts them here as a way of making you feel like everything they are asking you on this form is part of the application process. But everything on the form is not legit.

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In the section marked Credibility, the company states that they require you to submit a copy of your credit report. If you click the checkbox, you will be taken to FreeCreditReport.com. Herein lies the scam. This scammer is an affiliate of FreeCreditReport.com and earns $18-20 per person who signs up and orders their credit report through the site. I know they are an affiliate because I noticed that I was being redirected through a third website to FreeCreditReport.com. After a few tries, I managed to stop the site from loading. Viewing the page source I found their affiliate link. Sweet!

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*Tip: If you can find the scammer’s affiliate link, you can report them to the affiliate manager and get them banned from the program for perpetuating fraud.

While some employers do require a credit check in order to be employed with them (mostly financial institutions like banks), they do it as a part of an all encompassing background check. An employer in the United States will NEVER ask you to send your credit report to them. EVER! There are laws that regulate background checks that must be adhered to or they risk getting sued for millions of dollars and slapped silly by the government. In addition to that, in an age where anything can be Photoshopped, do you really think an employer is going to trust any kind of report you send them?

With Photoshop anyone can have credit report of their dreams.

Funnily enough, when I try to go the next screen without checking the box, the application got flagged as incomplete. I wasn’t going anywhere unless that box and the box below stating I had gotten my credit report was checked.

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The next screen took me to a page that wanted to get my personality profile. I think I was laughing too hard because I didn’t get a screen cap of that page. But clicking the box that requested I go to their “partner” to have my personality tested took me to MindQuiz. I managed to get their affiliate id from there too. WhooHoo!

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The most annoying thing about MindQuiz, however, is when you try to exit out, you are assaulted with popups and redirected to another affiliate site. If you weren’t sure before, by the time you reach this point you would realize the job posting was fake.

Finally, I managed to make it to the last page where they claimed I could win a $10,000 scholarship but when I clicked on the options presented, I got a big fat error message.

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I edited it to display what they meant to say.

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And finally scam comes to an end with a goodbye message from Brianne Harris.

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Unfortunately, this is only one of many employment scams that have found their way onto Craigslist. There are legitimate jobs on there but you have shift through the scamilicious crap to find them. Here is what I recommend you do:

1. As I stated before, even if they request a resume don’t send one until you have verified that the job posting is real. Send a polite introductory email asking if the job is still available. If you get back a form letter like the one above, chances are good the job posting is fake.

2. If you get a real sounding reply, try to get more information about the job such as the company name and phone number. Your goal here is to verify that it is a real business. If they refuse to give you that information then move on because it’s a scam. While there are companies who want to maintain their confidentiality because they don’t want to deal with telephone calls and emails about their job posting, most do so by outsourcing their job placement activities to a recruiting firm. A legitimate recruiting firm would not be squeamish about supplying their contact information.

3. Which brings me to my next tip. If you are able to get the company name, apply for the job directly on their website or even in person at the business.

4. Never, ever, ever, ever give your social security number over the internet. Never, ever, ever, ever send your credit report to someone who claims to need it as a part of the hiring process. Legitimate companies will always have you sign a waiver giving them permission to pull the information themselves through their own investigative service. And they only do that if they are seriously considering you as an applicant.

5. Remove your physical address from your resume. Only include a telephone number and an email address. I recommend signing up for a throwaway account created specifically for internet job hunting such as Yahoo or Gmail.

6. There really is no recourse, outside of reporting them to their affiliate manager, if you were tricked into giving information to a scammer. My first suggestion is to keep an eye on your credit report. TrueCredit.com (not an affiliate link) will pull your credit report from all three bureaus and has a monitoring service that will notify you of any changes that may occur such as the opening of new accounts. I’ve used them before and I like them.

If you get phone calls from scammers trying to sell you something, tell them to take you off their list. By law they have to comply or face penalties imposed by the FCC. If you get one that is particularly pervasive, report them to the FCC through their website http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm.

7. Go with your gut. If something just doesn’t feel right then don’t submit any information. Get a second opinion or move on to another job opening. As they say, it is better to be safe than sorry.

But I will not complain. Instead, I choose to appreciate those hard times. I’ve learned in the last month that while good times bring us the most joy, bad times bring us the greatest opportunities for growth. By experiencing circumstances that were less than ideal, I learned what I didn’t want. And learning what I didn’t want helped me figure out the kind of life I wanted to create which in turned has led to a refining of my goals.


I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year because I didn’t want to start a new decade following old patterns of failure. Let’s face it. Many of us make so many resolutions every year only to forget about them or give up before we even make it to the end of the month. For me, I would just simply allow myself to be bowled over by the first major challenge I faced; one of the many reasons why I have not advanced as far as I probably should have in life.

This year, I’m going to do something different. There are some things that I would like to accomplish. However, instead of approaching my goals with the same do or die mentality I have been using in years past, I’m going to let my goals manifest in their own time based on small steps I take each day.

Because I’m a personal development junkie, I would always follow the advice to set large goals and put a deadline on them. Personal development experts argued that setting large goals stimulates our imagination to look for ways to accomplish that goal and setting a time limit prevents us from procrastinating. I think this works for everyone else, except for me.

The first problem with this strategy is that I don’t like deadlines, even self imposed ones, because it’s an area of my life that is full of failure. And though I’ve gotten a lot better about meeting deadlines over the years, this is an area that produces a lot of frustration and angst inside me. Whenever I’m confronted with a time limit, all I can see is the certainty of failure which is not exactly the best motivational vision you want motivating you.

The second problem is that I would pick goals that went beyond the reach of my belief. If I didn’t think that I was able to achieve the goal, I didn’t take it serious enough to put in the effort needed to accomplish it. I think the problem here was I didn’t have the track record needed to justify the new belief so it wouldn’t stick and I would fail to achieve the goal.

This year I’m going to take Ben Settle’s advice and think small. I’m going to focus on accomplishing small goals that will, in turn, snowball into the achievement of my big goals. I want to break it down into daily tasks. I feel I have a greater chance of success by taking this route than I would setting a timer on a big dream. And I think the achievement of small daily goals will build the confidence I need to tackle larger goals down the road.

My ultimate goal is to live the life I want rather than follow a path directed by others. Thus 2010 for me is going to be dedicated to exploration, experimentation, learning and growth. I want to see what is out there, what’s possible and, if I want it, learn how to bring in the realm of my reality. Most of all, I want to discover who I am as a person.

So here’s to a new decade. May it bring an unlimited supply of possibilities.

(photo credit: icanhazcheezburger.com)

Sometimes all it takes is a spark.

On the surface it would seem that feeling bad about life in general and myself in particular was justified. After all, if I hadn’t suffered abuse as a child or had been taken advantage of by sexual predators or hadn’t been ridiculed or didn’t get into fights with people or had been more responsible with money then my life wouldn’t be in such a state of disrepair. It might even be downright perfect and I would have nothing to feel bad about. Right?

To try to help myself in a constructive way, I read a lot of self help books. It was my hope that the solution to ending my pain would be found amongst the motivational quotes and positive affirmations. They didn’t work. I would feel good for a little while but then something negative would happen and soon I would find myself back in the pit of despair. In hindsight, I realized that the reason none of those self help books worked wasn’t because they were ineffectual – although there is quite a bit of sugar coated crap out there – but because through the living of life, my interactions with other people and society at large, I had come to believe that life was supposed to be painful.

So because I held this belief, none of that self help motivational stuff would ever work. All I was doing was putting a band-aid on a wound that needed stitches. Worse, each failure to “get better” made me feel even more horrible about myself until one day I finally came to the conclusion that I had failed at life. I believed that I wasn’t supposed to be happy because somewhere along the line I had done something so horrible that doomed me to be miserable until the day I died.

I became very, very depressed. At one point it felt like I was suffering from manic depression because sometimes I would feel crazy high with energy and at other times I would feel as though I had fallen into the abyss of loneliness, fear and meaninglessness. Those were the times when I contemplated suicide. I figured that if this is all that life had to offer me then there was absolutely no point in continuing on.

Lucky for me I was too cowardly to actually follow through on those thoughts. In addition to that, my higher self was pretty determined that I would see this life through to the natural end because in those dark hours something would happen that would make me think there was hope yet. That hope helped me push through and keep trying to get better.

Fast forward to December 2009. A new year is quickly approaching and I still have not achieved any of the goals I set out for myself on January 1, 2009 or any other year before that. Normally I’d be beating myself up about it. I’d be calling myself all sorts of nasty names like, “Loser”, “Lazy” or “Failure”. I would probably then go to some personal development blogs online, read a few posts to get myself in the mood and then scratch out my “Plans for Improvement in 2010″. Because 2010 is finally going to be the year I get it right! Yeah!

Am I doing any of that? No. Have I given up? No. Have I found the secret to life? Well, I suppose you could call it that. I prefer to think of it as having finally come to my senses.

You see, a week and a half ago I got so frustrated about the condition of my life; more frustrated than I have ever been. I was tired of being “in this place” but it seemed no matter what I did I couldn’t leave. Finally, I sat down at my computer and typed out – in hysterical aggravation – all the things I wanted in my life and then sat back and demanded that the universe give them to me. (Please feel free to LOL. I won’t be offended.)

Instead, my higher self led me to Spirit Library where I came upon the Teachings of Abraham-Hicks. For those of you who don’t know, Abraham-Hicks is the combined name of a group of non-physical beings who call themselves Abraham and the medium Esther Hicks who channels them. The duo speak at length about the Law of Attraction.

Now I know many of you have probably heard about the Law of Attraction through the book and DVD called The Secret. Others may have brushed up against it through self help gurus looking to capitalize on the latest metaphysical fad. Well, the Teachings of Abraham are the source material for all of that and what I have learned from watching the videos (at Spirit Library and YouTube) is that if you really want to know the truth about the Law of Attraction then you have to learn about it straight from the horse’s mouth. Like the childhood game of Telephone, when a message gets passed from person to person, the nature of it changes according to how the person hearing it interprets what’s being said. In order to understand what those gurus are talking about, you have to watch Abraham-Hicks.

There are many things about these teachings that I want to talk about in-depth which will have to wait for future postings but the basic tenets of the Teachings of Abraham are:

1. You are Source Energy experiencing physical life
2. You are the creator of your individual universe
3. Energy (or Vibration as Abraham calls it) attracts like Energy

The first one I knew and accepted about a year or two ago. The second one I knew but couldn’t accept because I didn’t understand why I would create a life as bad as mine. The last one I had heard before from other people but didn’t understand exactly how it worked. After watching the videos, listening to the audio recordings on their website and reading the articles they have written, I finally get all of it except for the third one. I understand it but I’m still a little shaky on why it works that way.

Anyway, there are two things I’ve learned so far from my experience with the Teachings of Abraham that has caused a 180 degree shift in my mindset. Actually, I’m at about 120 degrees but steadily moving in a good direction. First, I learned that life is supposed to feel good. Second, nothing outside of myself has the power to make me feel good or bad about life. It’s an inside job.

Source Energy (or God or Allah or Zeus or whatever your understanding of the universe is) has a baseline vibration that never changes. Because we are Source Energy in a physical body we resonate with this baseline and call it many things: Wellbeing, Love, Joy, Happiness. This is our default setting. This is how we are supposed to feel all the time. When we don’t feel this vibration it means we are out of sync with Source Energy. Something is wrong and 99.999% of the time this wrongness indicates a problem with our thoughts.

Which brings me to the second lesson. Nothing outside of ourselves has the power to make us feel good or bad. Everything we feel is the result of what we think about what is happening around us. Our happiness and our misery begins and ends with what is going on between our ears. A simple example of this is food. Let’s take an apple. Some people love apples and some people hate them. In either case, the apple doesn’t change only the person looking at it does.

It’s the same principle I applied when thinking about my life. By understanding and accepting that life is supposed to feel good, I quickly realized that I had turned all of the bad experiences I had in life as well as the mistakes that I had made into a baseball bat which I constantly used to beat myself up in order to make sure I felt appropriately bad about them. And I say “appropriately” because more often than not, the reason I felt bad about things that happened was because I listened to other people who said I was supposed to feel bad about them.

When I realized the truth, that I was basing my judgments about my life on what other people said and thought about it, I also realized that I didn’t have to accept their viewpoint which then lead to the realization of something I’ve known my entire life. Life is meant to be lived and enjoyed. Our experiences are nothing more than life lessons that help us understand ourselves and the world in which we incarnated better. Those experiences also help us recognize the things we do not want which, in turn, inspire us to create the things we do.

These two simple lessons have done for me in ten days what I have been trying to do since I was a teenager. Heal, forgive and move on. I’m not saying I’m completely cured but I’m much farther along than I have ever been.

Now when I think about my goals for 2010 I am no longer driven by the need to have an epic win in order to overcome the failure I’ve had in life. Mostly, my focus is on growing as a person and seeing just how much I can expand in the absence of self judgment and self abuse. I’m curious about the Law of Attraction and I’m eager to see if it really works so I will be exploring it.

One of my goals is the same as it was last year which is to create a profitable home based business that supports me and the lifestyle I want. I’ve learned a lot over the last year and have met some amazing people who have helped me get on my feet and in the right direction. However, instead of trying to force things which only seems to frustrate me and slow things down, I’m going to try a different tactic and work on allowing success to come to me. Abraham-Hicks calls it The Art of Allowing. It is the releasing of resistance and allowing your blessings to flow to you. More on that later.

To help me with my financial goals as well as get a better understanding of how Law of Attraction fits in with that, I purchased their book, “Money and the Law of Attraction.” So far it’s really good. One of my clients sent me Ben Settle’s book, “The Copywriter’s Crib Sheet” which I feel will help me become a better writer so I can charge the fees that I want. In addition, things are happening now that seem small but I feel intuitively will have greater meaning for me down the road. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

All in all 2010 will see me enjoying the journey rather than sprinting towards the destination like I have in the past. What about you? What has 2009 taught you that has you looking at the upcoming year a little differently? Or are you continuing to pursue your goals with the same mindset?

(photo credit: photos8.com)

I’ll be perfectly honest and say I didn’t want to come here. Mainly because I had a premonition that something like this was going to happen. But instead of heeding the warning, I wrote the feeling off as a fear of change, something that I struggle with more and more as I get older.

But I’d be lying if I said that moving here was a total fail. In fact, I think in about a year I will probably say that being in Florida was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because of the challenges I’ve run into down here, namely not getting a job despite taking my own advice, I’ve been forced out of my comfort zone.

Without the luxury of a steady paycheck, I had to find other ways to feed myself. Luckily a good friend, Stacy Kinney, took pity on me and helped me land several writing clients which gave me the courage to go hunting for more. I’m not quite up to a full time income yet but I’m getting there.

I recently realized, though, that while I love freelance writing, I don’t want to be doing it for the rest of my life. Eventually I want to get into small business consulting which how I want to express my life’s purpose (help people live better lives). With that in mind, I moved from BloggingShed back to myBrandme (now called myBrandme Internet Business Boutique).

I’ve also decided to get into Affiliate and Niche Marketing. My goal is to build up supplemental sources of passive income. If my struggle to find employment in this crazy economy has taught me one thing, it’s that I must have multiple streams of income. Even if you have a job, you should have something on the side that’ll keep food on the table. These days you just never know if your job’s going to be there tomorrow.

In an effort to be more outgoing, I joined Twitter. But either I’m doing something wrong, have unrealistic expectations or I’m hanging around the wrong people because no one seems to be doing much socializing. I feel like people are talking AT me rather than TO me and I’m not really connecting with anyone. There are a few who I talk to with any regularity but I’ve decided to take a hiatus from it until I can figure out what I’m doing wrong. I’m going to go old school and start talking to people on their blogs.

My spiritual life is…settling. I finally embraced the notion that the universe is neutral; leaning neither one way nor the other. It is our subjective interpretation of life that determines whether the things that happen here are good or bad. I’ve also realized that the Source is gender neutral and have stopped referring to him as God or Goddess. I feel like gender specific titles take away from the beauty of her wholeness. I’ve had some interesting revelations in the last few weeks which I’ll talk about in another post.

Emotionally, I’m doing better than I have been but not as well as I could be. I still suffer from random anxiety attacks and sometimes when I start worrying about an issue, like paying the bills with no money, it’s hard to focus on other things, like finding ways to earn that money. I’m still paper journaling which helps and I’m trying this releasing technique, a simplified version of the Sedona Method, which I learned over at Beyond-Karma. I learned a lot of great stuff over there which I’ll talk about in another post.

So that’s the six month update. Not very exciting. I’ve put myself on a one post a week schedule which, considering all the work I need to do to get my affiliate and niche websites off the ground, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stick with that. But I’ll give it my best shot.

Peace & Prosperity

With so many people flooding the market, competition is fierce; even for jobs that don’t pay well. Getting a job today will require a new way of thinking of things. It will require you to think like an entrepreneur.

Whether you realize it or not, you are an entrepreneur. Instead of selling candles or financial services, you are selling the knowledge and skills you have developed over the years to a business that needs them. And instead of doing contracted work for multiple clients like the average freelancer, you devote the bulk of your time serving only one client for several years.

While scary at first, this change in mindset is incredibly freeing. Why? Because it opens up avenues of opportunities that you may not have otherwise seen or pursued. Sure you can look for employment at another company in the same industry. But you can also change industries altogether simply by investing in a little education. You can even convert your knowledge and skills into a home based business, something I recommend highly.

Today I’m going to show you how to think like an entrepreneur and secure a job in this crazy economy.

The first step is to sit down and think about what you want to do. Do you want to continue doing the same work you have been doing or do you want to change careers? A New York Times article suggest that some industries are contracting to a much smaller size or are going away for good.

If you are in a growing or at least stable industry and you like what you are doing then sure go ahead and look for a job in the field. However if you are in a contracting or unstable industry, I highly recommend jumping ship.

If you’ve decided to change careers, you need to make sure the skills you have developed over the years will translate well to the career you have chosen. Start by writing down all the jobs you have held. Underneath the job title write down all the technical and administrative tasks you did while in that position. If you need to, pull out your job description for help. In addition to that, list any skills you have cultivated that had nothing to do with work. For instance, if you write on the side, add that. Do illustrations for fun? Add that to the list. Did volunteer work? Write it down.

Now this next step is going to require quite a bit of thought and maybe some help. From this list you want to extract the skills involved in completing those tasks. For instance, say you were a scientist for a pharmaceutical company and your job was to perform experiments that determined the safety of a particular medication. The skills you would need to complete this job function are the ability to manage a project (set up the experiment and see it through to conclusion), organization (tracking the results), data analysis (interpreting the results) and the ability to speak, write and present ideas (explaining the outcome of the experiment so that it is understandable to others).

While the job you did may be specific to the pharmaceutical industry, the skills you acquired are the ones that need to be in sync with the job you want. Don’t worry, though, if your skills don’t measure up, you can always go back to school or look for a position that straddles the gap between what you do now and what you want to do that will train you for that dream job.

The real challenge, however, is not developing the skills for a job that you want. If you put enough time and effort into it, you can learn how to do anything. The difficulty lies in convincing the hiring agent that you are the best candidate for the job. This is especially true if you are switching from one career to another and doubly true if you are stepping down in rank (i.e. going from an upper management position to a front line position). This brings us to an entrepreneur’s greatest challenge.

Selling.

That’s right. Even though the product in your business is you, you still have to sell yourself to prospective employers; especially now when supply (employees) is greater than demand (jobs). You have to convince the hiring agent that out of all the applicants he or she will be interviewing, you are the one they want to hire.

The secret to selling yourself to prospective employers is to stop thinking about yourself. It sounds crazy I know but Zig Ziglar once said “You can only get what you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.” While the hiring agent understands that you need a job in order to save your house, they really don’t care. Seriously. All they care about is:

Are you the person who is going to bring in the sales that will keep us in business?

Are you the person who will reduce our customer complaints?

Are you the person who is going to show up to work on time every day?

Are you the person who is going to help me solve my problem?

Employers are not just looking for people to fill a position. They are looking for people to help them get what they want whatever that may be. And you, being the savvy entrepreneur that you are, will convince them that yes, you are that person who is going to help them get what they want which will, in turn, ensure that you get what you want. A Job.

First do research on the position you are applying for. Read the job description. Tap people whom you know who are already doing the type of work you are applying for. Ask them what a typical day is like. You want to make sure that you can do the job and that it is something you want to do. Use the information you get to tailor your resume to the position you are applying for.

Your next step is find out all you can about the company. Read the company’s website. Do a search for them on the internet. Read their marketing material. Network with people who work for the company so you can get inside information about their policies and processes. If you can, try to visit the business and look around. What are the employees wearing? How do they interact with each other and the customer? Are they formal and straitlaced or are they laidback and casual?

This may seem a little excessive at first. However, you cannot effectively market yourself as the person who will help them get what they want if you do not know what they want in the first place. Your research should reveal where they are doing well and where they need help.

Now that you have all of this seemingly useless information about this company, here is the first of many places where you are going to use it to sell yourself as the solution to their problems. Extract from your findings at least ten ideas that will help the business operate better. They can be ideas for increasing sales, or providing better customer service or saving money. Ideally, these ideas should relate to the position you are applying for but any you come up with should be fine as long as they are good.

What you are about to do is offer the company a taste of your skills and knowledge. Just like those in-store demonstrations where employees offer you a piece of sausage in a cup in the hopes that you will buy a package, you are going to offer the company a taste of what they will be getting if they hire you.

The place where you offer these ideas is in the cover letter to your resume. Open the letter with a brief introduction of yourself. Then in a professional and courteous tone, list two or three of the ideas you have about how they can improve their company. Do your best to quantify the results the company will get should they implement your ideas.

Do not use high pressure sales tactics or close with something crazy like “Call today for more great ideas about how to improve your business” as this will turn them completely off. All you are trying to do is get your foot in the door and offering some tangible benefit up front will definitely have them picking up the phone and calling you.

In the next article, I will discuss how to win at the interview. In the meantime, don’t despair. Hope is in the air.

The Plot Café was updated fairly regularly throughout the month thanks, in part, to reprint article directories. I would love to be able to produce original content for the site but there just is not enough time in my day at this moment. I was able to score three interviews with three wonderful fiction writers which you can read here, here and here and I have another two lined up.

I finally overhauled BloggingShed and got an original template on there.

The New BloggingShed

I felt a little bit like a fraud claiming to be a web designer and yet using a blog template designed by someone else. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. This month I’m going to work on getting The Plot Café overhauled (since yes I am using a template for that as well).

I also helped a friend set up her website. So really, I created two templates last month.

A couple of my articles on Ezinearticles were reprinted on other websites so I got a few backlinks for The Plot Cafe.

Now for the bad stuff.

My earnings for January were a whopping $3.00 and some change and that was strictly through advertising. However, since I didn’t do a whole lot of marketing of either site that seems appropriate.

Productivity was far below what I wanted. I did not concentrate as much on my websites as I would have liked. My excuse is that I had bit of offline drama going on that made it impossible to concentrate but in the end all that is really an excuse. I need to discipline myself to push through whatever craziness is going on in my life so that I can achieve the results I want.

My goal for February is to blog at least two times per week on BloggingShed; ending the month with at least eight original articles. I want to produce one template and four articles for marketing purposes (give away free).

As far as income is concerned, I want to make at a minimum of $50 this month to cover the cost of web hosting. So having said that; BloggingShed now has ad space available. So if you are looking for low cost but fun place to advertise your products or services, check out the, oh so low, rates on BloggingShed. I also still have my WordPress templates for sale at the new economic bailout rate of $19. Learn more here.

So did you accomplish what you wanted to get done in January? What are your goals for this month?

Barack Obama is now, officially, the 44th president of the United States. I watched the inauguration and the overwhelming message was one of buckling down and doing all that needs to be done to get us back on the right track. President Obama didn’t mince words. He broke it down for everyone just how knee deep in trouble we are in but he didn’t leave us hanging in hopelessness. He reiterated over and over that we can get through these troublesome times because we are Americans. We’ve been through worse and have survived, we’ll get through this too. As the president says: “It’s time to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and remake America.”

The best part of the inauguration was the ending prayer by the Reverend Lowry. By far he stole the show. Even though the Reverend is a Christian, he included everyone of every belief system in the prayer. He also bestowed us with some wonderful nuggets of wisdom such as “We must turn to each other not on each other,” highlighting Barack Obama’s stance that collaboration is the key to our survival. I want to see if there is a transcript of the prayer because there a few other things he said that I want to blog about.

My only fear is that our high expectations may cause us to become impatient. People seem to think that President Obama is some kind of messiah. He isn’t. He’s just a man who will do the best he can to get us out of this mess but he can’t do it alone. He has to depend on the willingness of others to help and sometimes those others have their own agenda and will choose to become roadblocks rather than facilitators. Sometimes the circumstances themselves will not be conducive to a positive outcome. These are not excuses for failure but rather a fact of life. We should have hope that Obama will be successful but we need to temper that with a good dose of reality.

All in all, I do hope that President Obama’s time in office is exceptional and purely for selfish reasons. Firstly I want him to kill the stereotypes about black people that have been prevalent in this country for far, far too long. I want his presidency to inspire my people to much better than we have been doing. There is no excuse for continuing in mediocrity.

Secondly, I want him to raise the bar when it comes to the office of the presidency. I want the expectations of our leader to be such that people like the last joker that held that office don’t stand a chance of getting in.

Anyway, that’s all I really have to say on the subject. Here’s to America 2.0. Now with extra United.

The first site is called BloggingShed. This site is going to be the one that brings in the majority of my income. BloggingShed is a blogger’s help site where I post tutorials for the various blogging software out there, talk about how to make money from blogging, how to market and promote your blog, discuss design and coding and make snarky comments about stuff I find on the internet.

I realize that there are tons of blogs about blogging already on the internet and that I’m pretty much trying to shout to the world at the bottom of the mountain but blogging is something that I feel I can make an honest go at. I already have a fair amount of knowledge about it and I am comfortable learning and writing about the topic. The challenge with this site is going to be in differentiating it from all the other blogging sites out there. I have a few ideas that I’m still toying around with.

The second site I will be working on is The Plot Café. This is a site for fiction writers that I have been working on for the past year. It started out as Openlore Fiction Writer’s Magazine but I changed the name because I had a completely different idea for Openlore that I will be developing at a later time.

The Plot Cafe is a website that caters to readers and writers of fiction. The site has book reviews, author interviews, writing prompts, videos and articles about writing and publishing. There is a ton of other stuff that I want to add to the site but as time is an issue at the moment (at least until I quit my day job), I have to keep the site at a sustainable level of management.

My plan with these two sites is to generate multiple streams of income through them both. The first stream is the obvious ad revenue. Right now I have Google Adsense running on both sites but as soon as I hit the $100 mark I’m going to take them off. I feel like they make the sites look amateurish. However I’ve already invested some time and effort with the program so I want to at least earn my first check before I shut it down. I plan to trade the Google Ads for Banner and Block ads where I’m able to exercise a little discretion as to who advertises on my website. I’ve also got a few affiliate links (Barnes and Noble, Gevalia Coffee) and will be adding a couple more.

The second stream of income I want to build is the sales of web and blog templates. I have two templates on sale already and am working on a third. I’m not really interested in getting into the custom design arena although I’m pretty sure I would be able to make a good amount of money in it. I’m really looking to build a business that will generate income whether I’m actively working on it or not and I can’t see that happening with me offering a custom design option.

My third income stream will come from ebooks that I will write and sell. Writing is my passion and this is where I want to spend the bulk of my time. I have a file folder of ideas for ebooks, so I imagine that this is going to be the biggest stream of income that I develop.

And last but not least, I want to offer online classes in both blogging and writing. I got this idea from a copywriting blog I read on a regular basis. It’s a lot easier than it sounds. The hardest part will be coming up with the curriculum and making sure students get what they paid for out of the class.

I have a lot of work to do, an overwhelming amount of work, which is why I’ve decided to move forward slowly. My Achilles Heel is that I have this tendency to try and rush things because I haven’t quite weaned myself off the teat of instant gratification. Even though it feels counterintuitive, I’ve given myself permission to go slow because in the end I’m pretty sure I’ll actually get a lot farther ahead.

I’m dividing the year up into quarterly goals. For the first quarter (Jan – Mar 2009) I’ll be focusing on generating content and drumming up traffic to the websites. I’m not really concerned about making money right now, although I won’t refuse it if I start earning some. Mostly I want to concentrate on building the sites’ reputations with good and useful content and generating buzz about them.

I realize this means that I’ll be working a job for at least another year but it will be well worth it when I can finally hand in my resignation and know that I will be just fine.

What about you? Are you working on building an online business? How are you planning on reaching the goals you have set for yourself for 2009?