rachmarie.com

Again a big thanks to http://quotebuddy.com

This is another won­der­ful quote that addresses adver­sity.  When you go through rough times it is very easy to get upset about what you are going through, and to feel like it is wrong and unfair.  By approach­ing adver­sity in this man­ner, you are short­chang­ing your­self.  Instead like this quote see the strug­gles in your life as chal­lenges to over­come and learn from, and as a way to grow.

I am sure you have met peo­ple who seem to coast through life with very lit­tle strug­gle or prob­lems.  They just seem to live in a bub­ble pro­tected from the tri­als most peo­ple face from time to time.  You might even find your­self feel­ing envi­ous of them when things are really rough.

Instead of feel­ing envi­ous of them, real­ize that because you have gone through times of adver­sity that you are a per­son of more char­ac­ter and depth.  When you strug­gle and over­come obsta­cles in life, you learn lessons which make you stronger.  You grow closer to the per­son you can be instead of remain­ing stagnant.

Every expe­ri­ence you have, good or bad, is a les­son to be learned.  Every tri­umph or tragedy you go through, is a chance to grow and improve your­self.  Every suc­cess or fail­ure you achieve, is an oppor­tu­nity to build depth in your char­ac­ter as a person.

Life is a bal­ance and has ups and downs.  The more you expe­ri­ence, the more you can expe­ri­ence.  Embrace your times of strug­gle like you do your times of joy.  Pay atten­tion to what they have to teach you.  Over time, you will be far more enlight­ened because of your times of trou­ble than because of your times of bliss.

When you think about it from this per­spec­tive, there is not much to be envi­ous of those peo­ple who live in their lit­tle bub­bles with few prob­lems.  Instead, they should be more envi­ous of you.

I am no stranger to strug­gles and chal­lenges.  I have been through many over the years, and am still going through some at this time.  I have shared some of my times of adver­sity already, and as we walk this jour­ney together, I will share even more.  I hope by shar­ing this jour­ney with me, you will find what you need to over­come the adver­sity in your life and reach for your successes.

(PS an update on my cur­rent struggle)

I have reached my goal of 370 to pay half the rent, and I appre­ci­ate all the help peo­ple have given me.  I am still work­ing on sort­ing out the stuff with my bank, and it will prob­a­bly be another month before I am com­pletely back on my feet again.  If I have pro­vided you with value, and you wish to donate some­thing to help me keep going, I have a dona­tion but­ton here

Thanks to http://quotebuddy.com

When you think of courage in the face of fear, you may think of it as a mas­sive emo­tional state.  Often this kind of courage is not major, but a small per­sis­tent feel­ing of not let­ting the fear get the bet­ter of you.

This kind of courage is often not glam­or­ized in movies and books, but its a con­stant and stead­fast force.  Fear par­a­lyzes you and keeps you from mov­ing for­ward.  Courage even if its in a steady and per­sis­tent form, ener­gizes you and helps you move for­ward step by step.

It is not real­is­tic to try to live with­out ever being afraid.  Fear in small doses is a warn­ing sys­tem.  In ear­lier times, fear pro­tected us from dan­ger­ous and deadly things.  In mod­ern times how­ever, fear has become more of a hin­drance than a help.

Fear is one of the emo­tional trig­gers for the body to pro­duce adren­a­line.  It pre­pares the body to go into “fight or flight” mode to pro­tect itself.  The prob­lem is most things we are afraid of now are not a phys­i­cal dan­ger to us, but more of a psy­cho­log­i­cal nature.  As a result, instead of a quick fire off of fear and reac­tion and then either fight­ing or run­ning away, we end up stay­ing in the fear.

When the fear is not phys­i­cally dis­charged, it builds on itself and becomes a vis­cous cycle.  The fear breeds even more fear until you are com­pletely par­a­lyzed and accom­plish noth­ing.  You need to find a way to face the fear and over­come it, so you can move for­ward and onward.

One way you can do this is by iden­ti­fy­ing what you are fear­ful of, and write it down as specif­i­cally as pos­si­ble.  Then either face it directly or indi­rectly to over­come the fear.  Directly would be a straight­for­ward approach, while indi­rectly would be fac­ing it in incre­men­tal stages.

For exam­ple, if you are afraid of heights you might approach it directly by tak­ing up rock climb­ing.  A more indi­rect approach might be to first start with a steplad­der, then a reg­u­lar lad­der, and move up from there til you actu­ally are ready to do the rock climb­ing.  Either way you do it, it still takes a lot of courage to face your fears.

Even though it is a lot of work, the work is well worth it.  Free­ing your­self from the shack­les of fear helps you to move out of your rut and move for­ward toward your goals.   Remem­ber suc­cess is not found in those with­out fear, but in those who have a steady, per­sis­tent courage in the face of fear.

Thanks to http://designwithlife.blogspot.com/ for this won­der­ful pic

When orga­niz­ing things for your busi­ness or for life in gen­eral, many peo­ple use a to do list like in the pic­ture above.  The list maybe plain or very pretty like the one above, but there are prob­lems with using a stan­dard to do list.

Lists of this nature tend to be rather lin­ear and do not allow for mul­ti­task­ing.  When you mul­ti­task, you do not jump in the are three feet and go off in four dif­fer­ent direc­tions at the same time.  Instead, you break the task into smaller sub tasks and move quickly from one sub task to another.  This is very sim­i­lar to how your com­puter mul­ti­tasks.  It seems like the com­puter is doing mul­ti­ple things all at once, but in real­ity it is mov­ing extremely rapidly from one sub task to another and back again.

Of course humans can­not do this skill as rapidly as com­put­ers can.  How­ever, the prin­ci­ple is the same.  By break­ing up larger tasks into small sub tasks and mov­ing from one to another, a per­son can increase their pro­duc­tiv­ity on sev­eral tasks in a short period of time.

For exam­ple, Sherry is a stay at home mom with three chil­dren.  In an evening, she man­ages to feed the baby, make din­ner for the rest of the fam­ily, do a load of laun­dry, and do the dishes.  She does this by throw­ing a load in the washer and then putting on din­ner.  Then she puts the baby in the high­chair while fill­ing the sink to wash dishes and stir­ring the food on the stove.  By break­ing things up this way and mov­ing from one thing to another rapidly, she gets it all done.

A stan­dard to do list is based on the idea of com­plet­ing a full task before going on to the next one.   If  Sherry in the above exam­ple did things that way, the laun­dry and the dishes would not get done and she would barely have time to feed the baby and cook din­ner for the rest of the fam­ily.  Instead by break­ing up the tasks and doing part of each task, and mak­ing use of tools like the stove, the sink, the washer and dryer, she gets a lot more done in the same amount of time.

When you prac­tice mul­ti­task­ing, find ways to use tools to help you work more pro­duc­tively in less time so you can get more done.  Some things require very lit­tle atten­tion and pretty much work on autopi­lot, like the washer and dryer.  Some require more atten­tion like the stove and the dishes.  And finally some require a lot of atten­tion like feed­ing the baby.

A bet­ter tool for map­ping out your mul­ti­ple projects instead of a stan­dard to do list would be a chart made in a spread­sheet for­mat.  This way you can break up mul­ti­ple projects into smaller sub tasks and mark when those smaller parts are done and not just the full task.  What­ever way you end up orga­niz­ing your­self, make sure it works for you.

Thanks to http://designwithlife.blogspot.com/ for this won­der­ful pic and quote

Worry is a major stum­bling blocks to suc­cess for many peo­ple.  It is very easy to fall into a pat­tern of feel­ing anx­ious about things, and as this pic­ture points out it drains you of the energy you need to deal with what is wor­ry­ing you.  If you get too stressed, you can actu­ally make your­self unable to do anything.

When you have some­thing that is both­er­ing you, write it down on a list.  Then look at your list of wor­ries and ask your­self these three questions:

• Is it some­thing I can do some­thing about RIGHT NOW?
• Is it some­thing I can do some­thing about but not RIGHT NOW?
• Is it some­thing I can’t do some­thing about?

Based on your answer to these ques­tions, you will cat­e­go­rize the worry into one of three cat­e­gories.   Then you will take action based on that cat­e­gory.  By doing this, you can over­come worry and make it less of an issue in your life.

If it is some­thing you can do some­thing about right now, then just do it.  By tak­ing imme­di­ate action, and get­ing it dealt with right away, you end any need for wor­ry­ing about it.

If it is some­thing you can do some­thing about, but not right now, then sched­ule it.  For exam­ple if you need to set up a pay­ment arrange­ment with the elec­tric com­pany, but it is Sat­ur­day and they are not open.  Then set up a sched­uled time on your cal­en­dar for say 10 AM Mon­day morn­ing I will call the elec­tric com­pany.  Then its set so no need to worry about it further.

Finally the hard­est cat­e­gory of all, if it is some­thing you can’t do some­thing about.  This sit­u­a­tion is very tricky, because you are wor­ry­ing about some­thing you have no con­trol over.  In this case, you need to trash the worry.  There are sev­eral ways you can do this, but you need to dis­card it.

You might write it down on a piece of paper and wad it up and throw it in a trash can.  You might write it in a notepad file and trash it elec­tron­i­cally.  You might just do this visu­ally by imag­in­ing your worry going into the trash.  How­ever you do it, make sure you really dis­card this worry so that it is no longer drain­ing you and keep­ing you from your success.

What do you see when you look at this pic­ture?  Is it hope­less­ness like the cap­tion indi­cates?  Or is there hope? Is the cup half empty or is it half full?

When I look at this pic­ture I actu­ally see hope.  The plas­tic box the kitty is in actu­ally dis­places enough water to keep the kitty afloat.  Which means the cat can stay out of the water long enough to reach dry land.

Part of mind­set and per­sonal devel­op­ment is learn­ing to change your think­ing about things.  When you focus on the pos­i­tive, even if its just a small bit of pos­i­tive, things will change in your life.  It is not an overnight process, but it DOES work.

Some­times it is really hard to think pos­i­tive because life seems so bleak.  I too have had those times, and right now is one of them where it seems like I have to really work hard to find the pos­i­tive.  Decem­ber has been a very rough month for me for many years now.

Where there is life, how­ever, there IS hope.  For exam­ple with the bank mess up, hav­ing to scrape money just to pay my half of the rent, and try­ing to build up a new busi­ness, I could look at the cup as half empty.  This would lead to worry and despair and paralysis.

Instead  I am look­ing at the cup as half full and TAKING ACTION to change things in my life.  As I do this I will share my jour­ney with you and help teach you how, even in the hard­est of times, you can change your think­ing.  Chang­ing your think­ing is only part of the pic­ture though.  You also need to take action based on that change in pat­tern of thinking.

So what actions am I tak­ing?  First I am ask­ing oth­ers for help to learn my karmic les­son at this time.  I am learn­ing that being strong is not just about help­ing oth­ers, but it is about know­ing when to ask for help FROM oth­ers.  Learn­ing how to get some bal­ance in your life.

Since ask­ing for help, I have scraped together 330 of the 370 I need for my half of the rent.  My room mate is cov­er­ing the other half of the rent and the util­ity pay­ments I have set up.  I am tak­ing up the two con­tent chal­lenges which you will see here, on Face­book and Twit­ter, and on YouTube.  I am also get­ting small jobs, and putting together prod­ucts to sell.  I will be doing webi­nars (both free and paid), and finally I am focus­ing on the half full cup and how to fill it even more.

It is not easy shar­ing all of this with you, but I believe in being real, and if even one per­son can learn from what I share it is all worth it to me.  My chal­lenge to you is look at your life and fig­ure out ways to look at the cup as half full.  Feel free to com­ment below

It has been quite a while since I posted my last blog post, but that is about to change. Due to my over­com­ing so many chal­lenges in my life, I have some­how missed an impor­tant les­son which is now being dri­ven home.

That les­son is you can’t have bal­ance and be able to keep giv­ing to oth­ers if you do not also ask for help and accept help FROM oth­ers. You have to peri­od­i­cally fill the cup so you can empty it again. This is an extremely hard les­son for me, but I will learn it and live it so I can then teach it to others.

As you share this jour­ney with me I will be hon­est and real with you. I am not here to fake it til I make it but to help you learn how to change your life in so many ways. The best way I can do that is to be hon­est and real and to share what I have learned in my jour­ney with you so you can learn from it.

I want to build mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with you and help you with your jour­ney. Even the most knowl­edge­able and wise peo­ple have some­thing to learn. We are all a work in progress on our vary­ing paths.

I men­tioned that the sad state of con­tent here will change and let me explain why. I am tak­ing up two chal­lenges that were offered to me. As I work on these chal­lenges I will share my expe­ri­ences with you.

The first one was sug­gest by Cal­iban Dark­lock to cre­ate 60 pieces of con­tent based on con­tent already out there. The first piece for the day must be from a totally new source each day. So for exam­ple, if you write a post about a spe­cific quote, or a cer­tain pic­ture, you have to know the orig­i­nal source where it came from.

The sec­ond piece of con­tent has to be some­thing new from a source you have already used. This means for the first day both pieces of con­tent will be from the same par­ent source. At the end of a month, you should have 60 pieces of content.

The other chal­lenge was to come up with a short video each day for a total of 30 in a month. It was sug­gested by Matt Roe. These would be short videos posted on YouTube and embed­ded in my blog posts.

At this time, I do not have a work­ing web­cam or cam­corder or even a flip cam. So I will be doing voice overs and slides and present infor­ma­tion that is rel­e­vant to my blog posts. This will be an adven­ture for me to try to meet both chal­lenges and also put together the project I have already lined up.

Feel free to com­ment about this and let me know if you decide to try one or both of these chal­lenges as well.

So much has hap­pened since my last post.  I am learn­ing a LOT to help me with this new jour­ney.  About two months ago, I hit rock bot­tom.  My old room mate was leav­ing to go back to Florida, I owed a ton of back rent, and I was look­ing at becom­ing home­less.  I am not shar­ing that with you for you to feel sorry for me, but to let you know no mat­ter how bad it gets, there is a way out.  There is a way to move for­ward and upward.

I started look­ing online for ways to make money so I could pay the bills, and achieve my goal of leav­ing the dis­abil­ity check behind for­ever.  Since the door for being an ele­men­tary school teacher with an edu­ca­tional con­sult­ing biz on the side was shut, I needed a new door.  I found a new room mate who is totally AWESOME   He sup­ports my endeav­ors com­pletely.  First I hooked up with a team that works with a com­pany that makes non toxic alter­na­tives for every­day prod­ucts.  Then I con­nected up with my edu­ca­tion blog.  And finally, I con­nected up with some really great peo­ple who have been help­ing me with learn­ing more about inter­net mar­ket­ing. More about them to come

Even if you are just learn­ing about some­thing, you still have more than you real­ize.  Always look for ways to trans­fer your pre­vi­ous skills and expe­ri­ences, and your prior knowl­edge and edu­ca­tion to your new field.  There are always con­nec­tions to be made.  Foe exam­ple, one of the new things in mar­ket­ing both offline and online is rela­tion­ship build­ing.  So my being a major social but­ter­fly actu­ally is an asset lol.  So as you learn about your new field, use what you already know and find ways to con­nect them together.  It will speed up your learn­ing curve.

I would love to hear about your jour­ney as well feel free to com­ment or con­nect with me so we can share our jour­neys together.

There are times in your life when you are dri­ving along the path and you run into a dead end.  This has hap­pened to me so many times.  When you reach that dead end, there are two ways you can deal with it.  One is to com­plain about the dead end and get into a neg­a­tive loop of think­ing you will never suc­ceed because life is against you.  This leads to being stuck in a rut just spin­ning your wheels and get­ting nowhere.

Another approach is to learn from the dead end, and to shift gears.  Back up to the main path and find another path to take.  By using this approach, you keep mov­ing for­ward, and you keep in the run­ning so to speak.  It seems so sim­ple, but it can be very dif­fi­cult to do.  Change is not some­thing most peo­ple feel com­fort­able doing.  Ruts are com­fort­able, even if they are neg­a­tive ones.

I have had so many dead ends in my life that some­times I feel like I am con­stantly rein­vent­ing myself.  I shared some of them in my pre­vi­ous post.  Now once again I have set on a new path, but this time you will be able to fol­low along with me on this journey.

I attended three dif­fer­ent col­leges over a period of many years.  After I grad­u­ated from high school, I went to Modesto Junior Col­lege.  After a cou­ple of years there where I was get­ting my lower divi­sion require­ments done, I had my first detour in my col­lege education.

I became preg­nant with my son Ben.  When he was 7 months old, I became a sin­gle mom.  School was on the back burner for many years and I focused solely on rais­ing him.

When he went into first grade, I went back to col­lege at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity, Stanis­laus.  I was at first a Psy­chol­ogy major, but I quickly decided to go for a dou­ble major to pre­pare to be an ele­men­tary school teacher.   Trans­porta­tion was a major chal­lenge for me, since I am unable to drive because of my vision.  I spent about 4 hours a day on buses to get back and forth to col­lege, while jug­gling school and being a sin­gle par­ent of a child with spe­cial needs.  My mother was an incred­i­ble help in this process.

To pre­pare for the Mul­ti­ple Sub­ject teach­ing cre­den­tial, I switched to Lib­eral Stud­ies and Psy­chol­ogy dou­ble major.  I had the edu­ca­tion track require­ments, the new CLADD require­ments, and my con­cen­tra­tion in Excep­tional Child and Youth.  I finally switched to a minor in Psy­chol­ogy.  While I was attend­ing col­lege, my son was switched from being in a reg­u­lar class­room to a non pub­lic school for chil­dren with spe­cial needs, and had two surg­eries.  It took sev­eral years to finally fin­ish my BA.

Then came my sec­ond detour.  My fiance passed away at the same time my mother’s health seri­ously dete­ri­o­rated.  At this time, my son grad­u­ated from the 8th grade and there was no school that would pro­vide what he needed for high school.  I left school and moved in with my mother to take care of her and home­school my son.  Then in Decem­ber of 2005, my son passed away.  My mom died a year later.

After work­ing through my grief, and mov­ing to San Jose where the pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem was much bet­ter, I started my teach­ing cre­den­tial at San Jose State Uni­ver­sity.  My plan was to get my Mul­ti­ple Sub­ject cre­den­tial, and then open my own edu­ca­tional con­sult­ing busi­ness.  Halfway through the pro­gram, that door was slammed in my face.  Cal­i­for­nia laid off over 20 thou­sand teach­ers to help bal­ance the bud­get, and I was let go from the program.

So now I am once again rein­vent­ing myself and start­ing a new jour­ney.  I do not regret any of the twists and turns along the way.  All are valu­able lessons and expe­ri­ences.  No mat­ter what hap­pens along the way, you can move for­ward and not remain stuck.  You need to not blame the cir­cum­stances, but learn from then and find a new path when you run into a dead end.  I have done it many times and you can too.

From first grade on, I was in Girl Scouts.  It is a won­der­ful orga­ni­za­tion which gave me a great deal of skills and expe­ri­ence.  I was a bit of an over­achiever in it and earned most of the awards possible.

When I went for my First Class Award, they were tran­si­tion­ing into a new pro­gram so I earned both the old and the new pro­gram which included the Sil­ver and Gold Awards.  These awards were much more com­pli­cated than just earn­ing a sin­gle badge or chal­lenge.  The Gold Award is very much the equiv­a­lent of earn­ing the Eagle Scout Award in Boy Scouts.

I also was the youngest ever in my area to earn the Green Angel Pin for out­stand­ing troop lead­ers.  As part of earn­ing my Gold Award, I was a troop leader for a Brownie troop (grades 1 to 3).  I always had assis­tant lead­ers who were over the age of 18, since I was still a minor, but I ran the troop.

Even now as an adult. I still try to live my life very much by the Girl Scout Law as it was when I was in Girl Scouts.  Changes have hap­pened since then, but I still believe that Girl Scouts is a won­der­ful orga­ni­za­tion for teach­ing skills and pro­vid­ing expe­ri­ences that are both fun and edu­ca­tional.  Skills you can use your whole lifetime.

If you would like more infor­ma­tion about Girl Scouts in the US, check out their main web­site at http://www.girlscouts.org/

There are also Girl Scouts and Girl Guides in many other coun­tries around the world.