Do Something Great
A whisper from God. I'm sure of it.
Today is the eve of the 3rd anniversary for a new father’s scary promise to leave a trail for his young Son. A 100-day challenge to write everyday, about life’s big choices.
Dear God, thank you for showing a narrow path.
Insight: There are no guarantees in life except taxes and death. Go!
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Lifelong Love of Learning
“What should a young male of 21 know, and what should he be able to do?
There are no conclusive answers to those questions, but they are certainly worth asking.
A young man should know how this country is run and how it got that way.
He should know the Federalist Papers and de Tocqueville, and he should know recent world history. If he does not know what has been tried in the past, he cannot very well avoid those pitfalls as they come up in the future.
A young man should be computer literate and, moreover, should know Hemingway from James Joyce. He should know how to drive a car well–such as is not covered in Driver’s Ed.
He should know how to fly a light airplane. He should know how to shoot well. He should know elementary geography, both worldwide and local. He should have a cursory knowledge of both zoology and botany. He should know the fundamentals of agriculture and corporate economy.
He should be well qualified in armed combat, boxing, wrestling and judo, or its equivalent.
He should know how to manage a motorcycle.
He should be comfortable in at least one foreign language, more if appropriate to his background. He should be familiar with remedial medicine.
These things should be accomplished before a son leaves his father’s household.” — Col. Jeff Cooper
CAUTION!
Blah, blah, blah, right?
The Internet’s only Five-a-Day Blogger”…..
It started as a 100-day challenge to become a better writer, after a Father told his young son, “If you want to be a better reader, you should read a lot.”
So what happens yesterday? Not five daily blogs, but eight.
Recently, had a discussion and we talked about the future of books:
“Books” will be written one day at a time. In public, for the public.
Books will be free. Writers will be poor. And writers will come to realize that there are far too many choices.
A whole new paradigm is being created.
One page per day, almost like reality TV. People will read blogs, and over time, they will have “read a book” and not even know it.
Eventually, this new paradigm will give way to the next.
Happy Thanksgiving to every single one of you. It’s a wonderful time of the year to remind ourselves of everything we have to be thankful for.
Since this is the last of the five-a-day blogs I’ve written today, all sharing the thanksgiving theme, I’ll simply share them here with you.
If you already follow the others, here’s something new. It’s your choice, every day, to be thankful. This is one of the first rules adults should teach children.
And the best tip for teaching children, is for your life to be your message.
Go Daddy web hosting and their customer service is world class. Period.
How do I know?
Have been a Go Daddy customer for two years now. Every single time I call Go Daddy support, the experience simply blows me away.
Why?
Because they do the routine, yet important things really, really well. And they do it with world class consistency.
It happened again last night. Thank you Jason (may or may not be real name) for taking care of my Go Daddy Web Analytics set up. When I came home last night, it was like being a kid in a candy store. Go Daddy ROCKS.
Excuses?
Attitude?
Fear?
Anger?
Doubt?
Good. All these things mean you’re human. There are a million ways to overcome these things. The secret is to find your way.
That’s one of the biggest barriers – people want to be handed the recipe for success. The reality is, you have to find it on your own.
I’ve had this article for ten years, given by a friend. The author is unknown. Here it is in it’s entirety:
The question remains, despite all the work and inquiry of the researchers discussed in this column and countless others: How can we build committed, competent people and workforces?
I received the following as a handout at a class I attended; the author is unknown. Because these reflections give me solace, I am sharing them.
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time information school called life. Each day in this school you will have opportunities to learn lessons. You may like the lessons, or you may think they are irrelevant or stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, of experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately work.
4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. There is not better than here. When your there has become here, you will simply obtain another there that will again look better than here.
7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie inside you. The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
jeff here again. How was that for the first installment of “Too Long Tuesday”?
There’s been a very calculated effort to make all five blogs comply with a “short post” challenge.
It was a simple test to see what would happen. What happened?
Website traffic spiked. Thank you everyone, for your interest. While the real reason I blog so much is selfish, it’s actually an amazing joy to think others may benefit as much as me and my Family.
This leads to today’s title, Too Long Tuesday. It seems an occasional long post may work, without overwhelming me or you.
Personally, and generally speaking, long blog posts bore me. No offense to those who write them. Have written a fair number myself, but mostly in the early days.
Time marches on, and so has this post. See ya tomorrow at Too Long Tuesday?
Mind, body, spirit, money, and hq...
You see four of them below. The fifth is the "box" the holds the other four...
America's unheralded work life balance expert. jeff noel, is a Servant, Husband, Dad, Boomer, speaker, author, runner. He believes work is only work if you'd rather be doing something else. Allergic to most pollens and mediocrity, he can't wait for the alarm clock to go off every morning.