In the context of our conversation, Vik was talking about the raw materials being used to create a dye sublimation decorated product. He’s right; the quality of the printer, ink, paper, heat press, blank product to be sublimated, and a whole host of other details have great impact on the quality of the finished product.

Ingredients matter in your content diet.

What are you reading? What are you watching on TV and your other devices? Are you listening to podcasts and subscribing to email newsletters? What does all that content do for you? Is it improving your life and making you happier and more successful?

If you answered no to that last question, then it’s likely time to change the ingredients in your content diet because they matter.

People are part of your ingredients too.

This one may be tough to hear; but the people you associate with are part of your content diet. They are part of the ingredients. Are those people positive and upbeat while still being grounded in reality? Or are they constant naysayers? I once wrote about the 5 people closest to you defining who you are. That post is as true today as it was many years ago. Perhaps it’s even more appropriate in Covid-19 times as our circles have become pretty tight and we try to stay in our bubbles.

Pick new ingredients.

I’m going to suggest you do this slowly. I’ve written several posts about making changes to your social media diet. I did that and it’s been helpful in my life. Through those changes, I’ve also been exposed to several new content sources and find them to be enriching my life on a daily basis.

Here are two from a husband-and-wife team. I suggest taking the paid option on both, but that’s up to you.

Anthony Pompliano: The Pomp Letter
Polina Marinova Pompliano: The Profile

Here’s an informative and fun free email newsletter to start your day: The Morning Brew

Books – Are you reading novels? I mean, that’s okay, I do too; but how about working in some other material – some professional development and maybe some spiritual development too.

The point is to change up the ingredients you are putting into your brain in hopes of changing how you view the world.

I’ve come to believe the world is an okay place when my perception isn’t all messed up. One of the ways I keep my perception in line is to closely watch the ingredients that go into my daily mix of content consumed.

The post Ingredients Matter first appeared on jimraffel.com.

I like creating content.

This is the second of two blog posts I’ll create today. I didn’t get started on the first one until late in the afternoon when I was almost done working for the day. Normally, I write best in the morning; but that just didn’t work out today.

A funny thing happened when I started writing.

On December 23, I made a commitment to myself to create 12 pieces of content in 12 days. I didn’t necessarily have to write one a day; but write 12 over 12 days. I missed yesterday; so needed to get two done this afternoon to catch up and make this race winnable. (Note: I didn’t manage to create 12 pieces of content in 12 days and here’s a blog post that talks about why that’s okay.)

When I started I was tired and didn’t want to write. But as I found myself about halfway through this post my brain wasn’t as fuzzy anymore. I was feeling energized. Writing is mental stimulation for me. It forces me to isolate and focus on the task at hand. There are no phone or other distractions if I can help it.

The more I write, the better I get at it.

Earlier this year my editor, business partner and friend, Shelby Sapusek pointed out that when I don’t write as frequently (she’s talking about the last five years) my writing suffers. When we met in the early 2010s, I was writing almost daily and it became second nature and easier.

The same goes for the podcast series we are working to get off the ground. We’ve recorded the first episode (that counts as content by the way) and it’s rough around the edges. That’s okay, we’ll record another one soon with a guest to try that format. Over time,. we’ll get 4-5 episodes recorded and ready to go before we launch. Who knows? The first episode might end up on the cutting room floor. Without that first episode though, we wouldn’t have started.

Sometimes quantity matters.

I’m all for quality over quantity; but in the world of content marketing the challenge is to create a volume of quality content. A single stellar blog post a year won’t do it. Maybe one great post a month could generate the number of eyeballs necessary; but for now I’m just going to crank out the best content I can as often as I can.

Thanks for joining me on this journey back to being a content creator in 2021.

The post Why Create So Much Content? first appeared on jimraffel.com.

Here is what they mean to me in this moment. (Note: This post was written in late December 2020 as I worked on a goal to create 12 pieces of content in 12 days.)

Without distraction, get to work on whatever it is I need to make my businesses go today.

The universe has been leading me to this moment; and it’s not like I have not been here before. The concept of turning off and tuning out to be laser-focused on work is not new to me.

I just needed a reminder or three.

There is a book I’ve been re-reading that stresses the importance of getting started. There is a podcast I’ve been listening to and the host says “Just do the work.”at least once an episode.

Add to that the a decision to take on more in 2020 and likely well into 2021, that’s just what it takes to get where I need to be right now.

Turn it off and tune it out.

In I’ve missed you beautiful people from November, I wrote about leaving social media behind for a time. I learned from that experience that I am much better at doing the work, like producing this content, when I am tuned out from as many distractions as possible.

So I shutdown social media, put my phone out of reach upside down, minimize every other app on my two monitors and pull the draft tab for this blog into its own window. This is all I’m looking at on my computer’s two screens right now. I’ve set a goal of 300 words in 15 minutes or less and I think I’ll make it.

Work on the high-value stuff.

By high value, I mean make sure you are producing what your customers and clients want most. What will be of the highest value to them? If you are working on that, success will follow. It just has to.

Right now my work is simple: Produce one piece of content a day for 12 days. That could be writing a blog post or recording a podcast. I’m on day four right now and by the time this actually gets published, I’ll be done or very close to done. (Note: Read “Why it’s okay to fail when you’ve set a big, hairy audacious goal” to learn more about how the 12 pieces of content in 12 days turned out.)

That’s it for me. So what does “do the work” mean to you?

The post Do The Work first appeared on jimraffel.com.

I’m okay with this “failure.”

I created nine pieces of content over the holiday break. I suspect that if I had not set this big, hairy audacious goal I might have created one or two pieces. By setting the bar high, I got more done than I otherwise would have.

The trick is to not set the bar too high.

I once created 30 blog posts in 30 days so I know I can write daily. This was an achievable goal; perhaps just not during a long holiday break with lots of family and friends obligations.

If I had set out to create 24 pieces of content in those 12 days, I probably would have completed even fewer than 9 pieces. The thing with 12 pieces in 12 days is I was almost within striking distance right up until today. Since I was in striking distance, I kept working at it and got close to my overall goal.

Why not just sit back and relax? It’s the holidays.

I decided this was a great time to create the content that would help us launch a successful 2021. I know that when we create enough quality content, my business partner has a much easier job of marketing our businesses. Content creation is a team effort, and when I ask her to create it all and do the marketing, it’s not fair. It’s two different kinds of creativity and both are exhausting in different ways.

Besides, goals keep me out of trouble!

I’m finishing this post on the 12th day because I ran out of time yesterday before a family obligation. So here I sit late on a Sunday evening with a plane to catch tomorrow morning, but now I know I’ve provided Shelby with a bunch of content to draw from as she works to market our businesses.

And how did you spend your holiday break if you were able to take one?

The post Why it’s okay to fail when you’ve set a big, hairy audacious goal first appeared on jimraffel.com.

I recently published The Social Media Trap and since doing so, my opinion of social media has begun to shift. That post was focused on some of the negative aspects of social media while this post will focus on the good that can come from social media.

Social Media Is What You Make It.

No one forces me to follow anyone on a social media platform. Yet, who I choose to follow greatly influences my perception of social media being a good place or a bad place to spend my time. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus mostly on Twitter because that’s where I’ve experienced the transformation in my perception.

Start with a clean slate.

About a year or so ago, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter. The loss of several thousand people resulted in a very quiet stream when I logged back in to the network. In a short period of time, I followed about 100 people back that I remembered as being positive forces in my social media universe.

But then over time I got a little sloppy and got caught up in political discussions on Twitter. This led to following some people who in hindsight take more away from the social media experience for me than they add. That’s okay because it’s going to happen from time to time and I have tools to address that.

I became more focused on topics that mater to me.

Over the summer, I re-ignited my interest in investing. I began to find and follow what I call financial Twitter. These are some really interesting and smart folks who share mostly about the stock market and other financial and investing topics. I’m closing in on retirement age and have some catching up to do so I’ve become passionate about this topic.

I noticed that I was scrolling right past the toxic political posts to find the intriguing and exciting financial posts. Then I got a little crazy and decided to finally invest a few bucks in crypto currency. Once I did that, I started looking for crypto currency Twitter – and let me tell you – that is one huge and awesome community. I began following more and more in this community and my feed became more and more interesting to me. Politics and current events began to fade into the background of my feed.

Mute, block, unfollow.

Since Twitter has algorithms that are going to show me sh*t I really don’t want to see, I need to use the tools they provide to hide that stuff. For example, just unfollowing someone does not guarantee I’ll never see their toxic (for me) posts again. Muting them will help with that; but even then it’s possible their posts will show up. Also, I’m not certain muting is permanent on the Twitter platform. Therefore, I prefer blocking people who spout nothing but negative and toxic crap in my opinion.

I now block ruthlessly. It’s my feed and I protect it with vigilance. If I’m trying to lose weight, I keep junk food out of the house. So if I’m trying to improve the quality of my Twitter feed, then I need to keep the toxic crap out of my line of sight.

Then the good stuff started to happen.

With a cleaned up feed, I found more and more good stuff beginning to happen through and because of Twitter. This was not new to me because I joined Twitter in April of 2008. In the beginning, I made lots of great friends who became friends in real life. My business partner and I first connected on Twitter more than 10 years ago and are still going strong. I can’t even begin to count the number of positive interactions that began on Twitter.

I’ve decided that when I hate Twitter what I really hate are my own choices of what accounts I follow on Twitter. I have broad shoulders. I can handle taking personal responsibly for how good or bad Twitter is on any given day.

Early in the pandemic, I was able to help a friend find their way to some help. I was able to connect them with others more suited to the specific help they needed and, last I checked, they are doing great!

My family has benefited because financial Twitter has pointed towards information sources and investment opportunities. Twitter is not somewhere I go for investment advice. I make my own decisions on a tiny portion of my portfolio and trust professionals with the rest. The thing is that the tiny portion is growing far more rapidly than the bigger piece under professional management. That makes it fun and exciting for me. I could lose that entire portfolio and my life would not change. As it grows, that statement could change and then I’ll need to approach things differently.

I keep showing up and try to give more than I take.

For me one of the keys to good Twitter is to try each day to give more than I take away. I’m not perfect at this, but I try. I share as positive an overall message as I can. When I do post negatively, I try to do so in a way that conveys a positive message – if that makes any sense.

I believe the further I stay away from sharing about politics and current events the better I am at this. What I find most useful to share is my own personal experiences and how they’ve shaped me into who I am today. In other words, I tell my story – the only story no one can tell better than me.

The post Why Social Media Doesn’t Have To Be All Bad first appeared on jimraffel.com.

Let’s kick this off with a look back at my 2020 mantra:

Fearless, while not being careless.

It turns out this mantra served me well in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic hit shortly after the year began. It guided me as I stayed out on the road working longer than many people. I did so fearlessly; but with an abundance of caution (a phrase I later grew to not like very much). It also served me well when we had to pivot our business from in-person to online when we added apparel production.

This mantra continued to guide me as I began to travel again in late May and then throughout the balance of the year. I believe it was really important to settle on the “while not being careless” portion of the mantra. It would have been easy for me to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic in a fearless “while being stupid” way too had I not had my mantra to fall back on. For a guy like me, that would have likely turned out very badly.

Why do I settle on a mantra and not choose it?

The short answer to this is that I try to live in harmony with the flow of the universe. For me that means that I don’t force the world to be the way I want it to be. Instead, I strive to accept the world as it is. That does not mean I have to like the world as it is. I just have to accept that’s how it is. That distinction is huge for me.

These mantras seem to find me – not the other way around. I spend a good deal of time these days in what many might call a spiritual pursuit. This isn’t about religion for me; but my own search for meaning in my life so I can be a decent human being. I’m not great at this – probably not even good – but I’m trying and getting better each year (or so I hope).

In the course of that spiritual pursuit, I read a great deal and interact with like-minded people engaged in a similar pursuit. Through the combination of these two inputs and with the willingness to occasionally sit quietly and do what some might call meditate, lots of concepts and ideas flow through my brain. Certain key words and phases will catch my attention. Some of those words and phrases will stick for days or weeks and others for months. Eventually as I end each calendar year, the right combination of words just becomes clear to me.

What is my 2021 mantra?

Walk through chaos with peace.

Today, I’m not 100 percent sure what that combination of words is going to mean to me in 2021. I just know at a gut level that this is my 2021 mantra and that it will serve me as well as the previous mantras have. In some ways, it’s a combination of the 2019 mantra, “Peace Over Balance,” and the 2020 mantra. In 2020, it became clear to me that there is seldom balance in the external universe; but inner peace can be achieved anytime I choose it and take the right actions to find it.

When I find my self at inner peace and the whole world goes sideways on some random Tuesday afternoon, I face the challenges better. I face them with the courage to do what is right. I can take the next right action and just get on with my life while leaving all the self pity on the side of the road. The flip side of that is not so pretty. When the same thing happens and I’m not at peace, then the pity party starts and everything is everyone’s else’s fault. I take no personal responsibility and take all the wrong actions. I prefer the former to the latter, and so this mantra should serve me well as a reminder of how to face the everyday chaos that always seems to pop up.

I’d love to hear if you have a personal mantra and how you arrive at it if you do. Drop me a note in the comments and I promise to respond if you ask me to.

The post How I Settled On My 2021 Mantra first appeared on jimraffel.com.

And Business Started To Come Back

As I type this post, we appear to sliding back into a period of more restricted movement. Prior to that, our business had begun to trend towards returning to normal. More consulting projects were moving ahead and several were being quoted. That’s all good news because color management consulting and training is the business I personally love most. It’s possible this will continue to trend back the wrong way for awhile; but I’m sure that will only be temporary as Covid-19 vaccines are now on the horizon.

But The Good News Was Sort Of Bad News Too

When our pivot towards producing gaiter style face coverings began in April of this year, I was not at all busy. In fact, none of our team was busy. There was literally almost nothing to do. We kept the business running with a few small remote projects and by running some online workshops. So when the gaiter business took off overnight, I had the time to spend 50-60 hours a week on it. I helped get production up and running. I sourced our equipment and supplies. I helped with production, shipping, sales, and whatever needed doing.

Eventually, I helped set up a second lab/production facility in my business partner’s home. From that lab, we began to add additional products to our apparel line and additional platforms to sell the products. This all took time – a lot of time – which I had.

And Then I Didn’t Have The Time

Travel related to consulting began to increase again – not to the levels prior to Covid-19 – but enough that time began to become more scarce. In the midst of the stay-at-home orders related to Covid-19, I had increased my activity in another team I work with to create new products for our industry.

Basically, I went from wondering how to fill my days with productive work in April to wondering how I could get everything done that I had committed to while business was slow as consulting work increased. The problem (not really the problem) was that we’d ended up creating a new and growing successful business. I quite literally had more opportunity in front of me than I could fairly deal with.

Instead of just realizing this was one of those moments when I needed to decide what not to do so that I could do what was most important – I got mad. I was mostly mad at me – but also at the whole world – which I suspect is not a rare or isolated thing during this pandemic.

I Calmed Down and Found Some Balance

First, I had to deal with me and my emotional state. As I was, I was no good to myself or any of my colleagues. Once I squared that away, I realized that I did not have to do it all. One would think that at this point in my career I’d already know that, and perhaps I do, but I also forget it – a lot.

After some discussions with the team, it was decided that the day-to-day operations of our ChromApparel business would be off my plate. I’m still involved but not in daily production or decision making. Two other people handle that now and just ask for my help when they need it.

I also looked for ways to manage my time better, which is why I’ve backed way off on the time I spend on social media, reading the news, and watching the news on TV. Those activities are all now done at a small fraction of what they used to be. For example, it’s almost 7 p.m. on a Sunday as I type this. A month or two ago, I’d be watching TV and playing on social media. This is far more fulfilling and beneficial to me, and I also hope you get something from this sharing at a deeper and more authentic level than seems to happen on social media these days.

The Average Millionaire Has Seven Income Streams

I read somewhere that the average millionaire have seven income streams. I’m not a millionaire; not yet anyway. Several years ago, I had maybe two income streams and was doing okay, but struggling at the same time. Today I have at least 6 income streams by a quick count. What I’ve come to realize is that while Covid-19 has been a cloud in my life, it has had a silver lining, and that is the creation of a new income stream. The crisis did in fact provide an opportunity. At the moment, the new income stream has nowhere near replaced the lost consulting and training revenue, but it doesn’t need to. That business is slowly coming back and the apparel business continues to grow as well – mostly without me.

I’ve always said my biggest strength is being there at the beginning. Creating things on a project basis, and then walking away before it gets boring to me. Operations and day-to-day are just not my strong suit. I prefer to create, to solve problems, to create systems and processes that others can then use to run a more efficient business. Helping to start ChromApparel has made me far better at that than I was before.

I Gained Skills For A Lifetime

Thanks to this pandemic as I pivot back to what will be the new post-Covid-19 normal (we are not there yet), I will arrive with more skills and know-how than I had going in. I grew, and became more useful to my colleagues and clients. I have more knowledge, skills and abilities to bring to each consulting and training opportunity. The quote I’m going to close this post with isn’t a perfect fit, but it’s been on my mind for a few days now and it’s at least part of how I feel about starting up ChromApparel.

“We didn’t realize we were making memories. We just knew we were having fun.” Winnie the Pooh.

The post Reversing the Pivot first appeared on jimraffel.com.

What is the social media trap?

Awhile back, I heard someone say that if you aren’t paying for the product then you are the product. The context of that statement was that if you aren’t paying for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. then you’ve become the product that those platforms sell to other people and organizations. This is clearly not an earth-shattering commentary; but it’s an important part of my story.

These platforms want you there for two clear reasons in my opinion. First, they collect as much demographic information as they can about us so that they can sell that information to advertisers. Then, they want to figure out ways to keep you on the site as long as they can each day. They need to keep you on the site for as long as they can because they are in the business of selling ads. Ads only sell successfully when there are eyeballs to see the ads and brains behind the eyeballs to click on the ad, which results in revenue to the platforms.

The demographic data

As time has gone on, I worry far less about the demographic data they collect about me than what they do to encourage me to stay on the platforms longer. The demographic data in and of itself is fairly harmless. Companies have been working hard to collect that data for decades. The growth of an “always on” digital world has just made it easier. If you don’t believe me, remember that many of us have carried a supermarket discount card for our entire adult life. Why wouldn’t we? It saves us money. In exchange for that savings, they collected information on our buying habits, which they then sold to manufacturers whose products stocked their shelves.

Collection of this demographic data is also rather passive and does not intrude on my single most valuable resource: time.

I was giving away lots of time/money each year.

I know what my time is worth based on what my consulting clients pay for that time. I know how much time I was spending on social media thanks to Apple’s screen time app. I’m also pretty good at math and when I did that math recently, I was somewhat surprised. But that was not quite enough to get me to cut back or give up social media altogether. I did cut back a bit; but I had myself convinced I couldn’t just disappear because it would hurt my business.

What convinced me to cut out social media almost completely was what it was doing to my mental state. I began to understand what I already knew. I knew that social media platforms used algorithms to display not the most recent status updates of those I follow, but instead what they believed I would find most interesting. What’s most interesting as defined by them is what will keep my eyeballs on the site. It’s also my belief that for the most part bad news sells way better than good news because, as a good friend often says, everyone loves a good train wreck.

Putting this all together, these networks were putting stories in front of me that would tug at my emotions. They were designed to keep me there and make me think I had to do something about it. I would have to comment or re-share or something. Some days this would go on for awhile. Even when it didn’t go on for long, it left me in a bad mental state as the cause of the day was now renting space (for free) in my head. That makes it almost impossible for me to sit down and write a post like this.

What I gave away was priceless.

Time is the one thing in this universe that I have not figured out a way to recover once I give it away. I can always make more money. I can always make more friends. Time, on the other hand, is finite. I’m not getting any younger and as the years pass, I find that time passes much more quickly. It makes sense if you think about it. When you’re 10, that next year to get to 11 is 10% of your life. When you are 56, as I am now, that next year is 1.7 percent of your life.

I’ve decided that what I will do is slowly analyze my life and where I am spending my time. If I find I’m giving time away without an acceptable return, I’m going to stop doing those things. The return will not always be financial. In fact, most of the time the return will be experiential. For example, writing and publishing this blog post is a rewarding experience for me. On the other hand, visiting Twitter and getting annoyed over a series of posts related to something I have no control over and then posting something I may wish I had not isn’t a positive experience.

So, now what?

Honestly, I don’t know except to say that I will spend far less time on social media. I’ve chosen one network which I find extremely beneficial to my business pursuits and also is seldom filled with negative stories. I’ll be spending most of my social media time there. I don’t plan to completely abandon the other networks. I’m just going to visit them far less often and in very different ways. That, however, is a story for another day.

The post The Social Media Trap first appeared on jimraffel.com.

Hello, I’ve missed you.

I have not published a post on this blog in nearly five years. If you’re wondering why, I’ll be addressing that in future posts. Yes, I plan to post here frequently again. What that frequency will be I do not yet know; but writing more is a decision I’ve made and now I need to follow through.

When I do publish this post, I can assure you that at least three or four more will be queued up and ready to go. At this moment, I’m not 100 percent sure what the topics will all be. But I have plenty of ideas floating around in my head right now.

Back to missing you.

I share my first blog post about 15 years ago. Then for a decade or so, I posted fairly regularly. Those posts resulted in you commenting here, on social media platforms and even responding by email. Those responses then led to conversations and the conversations led to relationships. Most of those relationships still exist today.

I miss keeping those relationships current. I miss the conversations that resulted from me doing nothing more than sharing a stream of consciousness story about what was going on in my life. I miss hearing how that story impacted you or hearing your similar story.

Where was I?

I was all over social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I was blogging on my company blogs and I was traveling, a lot. I’ll dive deeper into all of those activities in future posts.

What was I doing?

In short, I was letting someone else drive the conversation. I was letting someone else rent space in my head. Speaking only for myself, that’s what happens in the world of social media for me. It’s my belief there are lots of people and organizations trying to drive negativity for whatever reason. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of good stuff that goes on in the social media universe, because there is. We’ll get to some of that over time as well.

A short story of now

For several years, I’ve been practicing yoga about five times a week. In the beginning, I did this with a great yogi I found on YouTube. I subscribed to her online classes as well. Over time, I developed my own 10-minute routine that I would do while watching the morning news. So in reality I was no longer practicing yoga. I was stretching while watching the news. Recently I turned off the news and I haven’t turned it on since. I’ve canceled my subscription to YouTube TV so I won’t have easy access to the news. I still read the news via apps like Associated Press; but I consume it my own way, in my own time.

With the news turned off, I’ve returned to doing yoga with my yogi’s videos in the morning. My practice is now 20 minutes a day and increasing. The headache I woke up with one day went away when I had completed my practice. I finished with a clear head. I ate a healthy breakfast. I sat at my keyboard and revised the about page on this site. I wrote the first draft of this post.

I began taking back my life.

I’m looking forward to telling more of this story over time. I look forward to your comments on this and future posts. Hopefully, you will leave comments here because I’ll be spending very little time on social media platforms for awhile. I look forward to your emails where we can have deeper conversations. I look forward to it all. It’s going to be even better this time around.

The post I’ve missed you beautiful people first appeared on jimraffel.com.

What’s this letting go and finding the flow all about?

Have you ever experienced one of those moments when you just let go of the control over a situation and go with the flow that the universe is providing? Whether it’s a work or personal project, the next most important task reveals itself and you intuitively know what needs to be done and how to do it. To someone watching you, it might appear as if you are working in a haphazard way. The reality is that you are being highly productive.

It’s as if you opened the box of a complex “some assembly required” product and put it together without ever looking at the instructions. I’m certain you have experienced being in the flow at least once in your life. It’s a great feeling when time doesn’t matter and all that you are focused on is the present moment and what is right in front of you.

How does this look for me?

While I haven’t published much in the last year, I’m still writing. I have a few posts in various states of creation. Some of those posts may never be finished and published, but some will. I’m not going to set some goal such as posting every single day. (I tried that once and didn’t like it much.) But I believe I’ll post more frequently in 2016.

There is also a writing project I’ve been working on for about 10 months and the path forward is finally becoming clear to me. But it’s not my path. It’s not the path I necessarily envisioned. It’s the path I’ve arrived at by doing the work the project required each and every day. More time remains to make this project what I loosely envisioned more than 10 months ago, but I have a better understanding of what tasks lay before me. And for now they are still small and simple tasks. More will be revealed to me as necessary and when necessary.

It’s odd because as I’m doing the work for this project it does not feel like mine. I don’t struggle with what to do next. The guidance for this project just flows through me. The thinking and writing behind this blog post is not mine, but flowed through me from some universal source of energy and wisdom. By letting go and getting in the flow, I can tap into this universal source of energy and wisdom.

All that’s required of me is an ability to set aside the past and the future and live in the present moment. When one is present (as I am with these words while I connect with the keyboard), that connection with universal energy and wisdom is strong. Things that were previously lost in a mental fog become crystal clear. Things that clouded my mind about the past or future are of no concern. There is little that can be done about them in the present moment.

In the present moment, we can and should act. Action moves the projects we are part of and our lives forward.

How I let go and find the flow

Pause. Breathe. Read. Write.

Pause and breathe go together. Some might refer to those two steps as meditating; but I find it difficult to sit still long enough to actually meditate. However, I do pause, close my eyes and concentrate on nothing but my breathing for a few moments – less than a minute. Then, with a clear head, I read some motivational of inspirational material for a few minutes. Without thinking too much, I then write whatever comes to mind. Sometimes that writing is directly related to the readings and sometimes I wonder “how did I come up with that?”

I’ve done this every single day for more than 300 days. The result is that the book I’ve always envisioned myself writing is almost complete. A few sentences a day over 300+ days adds up to a book. So the plan for 2016 is to continue on this path and complete the project(s) around this daily writing.

Have a great 2016 and please use the comments below to let me and the readers here know your plans for the new year.

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