Respond, don’t give up ~

I envy the younger generation and their penchant to play video games. While it’s mostly guys that do this, girls also enjoy video games. Lots of different kinds of video games, although most of them tend to be about defeating the others in combat or fighting.
In these video games you battle your way through a whole host of opponents and you lose over and over and over. And in the video game while you may get upset and press really hard on the controller buttons or twist your thumb into shapes it was never meant to be in trying to defeat the digital enemy you tend not to give up. Even if you get so frustrated that losing again that you throw the controller on the floor you still pick it up and play again. You respond and you start back at a place close to where you let off and you try something different.
This is a skill that can be applied to real life! When you go for a job interview and you don’t get the job you don’t just give up – respond and go for another job interview. When you try something new or float an idea and people don’t like it you don’t just stop and crawl into a hole and disappear. Respond, don’t give up!
It goes along the lines of try and try again. Learn through failure, although nobody really enjoys doing that except scientists. And I don’t think they enjoyed it very much, either.
But don’t give up! One of the ways to be home unstoppable is to learn to respond no matter what the game is. Game on!

Proverbs 30 and being presentable ~

I love reading the Bible, and I love reading a chapter of Proverbs every day. I either read or listen to the chapter that is today’s chapter of Proverbs. Every day. It’s a habit that I decided to develop and it has served me well.
In Proverbs chapter 30 verse 12 it says don’t imagine yourself to be quite presentable when you haven’t had a bath in weeks.
One of the unstoppable skills that I encourage is to bathe regularly. This seems silly in today’s day and age, but some people drift into the habit of not bathing every day or on a regular basis. They wait until they exerted themselves or worked out or something. Or they wait until they are told to. Or they wait until it’s convenient to bathe.
Older people tend to drift into this just because there’s not a whole lot going on and they don’t have this terrible need to be presentable.
But to be unstoppable it helps to bathe every day at a regular time, preferably in the morning but in the evening works also. And to brush her hair and teeth and make yourself ready to interact with other people.
Why? Because you never know when that opportunity is going to show up. A video call with someone offering you a gig that can turn into the well-paying job. A chance meeting at the coffee shop where in the past you may have been in sweats and toboggan hat but now you bathe and look presentable and ready for business. For me to cute person that you want to get involved with in the instead of having the Hyatt and hope they don’t notice how dirty and smelly you are the smile and introduce yourself and make an approach.
So do what Solomon told you to do in Proverbs chapter 30 and the take a bath so you’re presentable!

Get up by 9am ~

One of the trends that has gone on for many many years it is teenagers sleep until late in the morning. I even know of adults that have done that even up until their 50s. And adults that are older tend to sleep and even later.
While I understand the need for sleep, one of the rules that I made for my children as they were growing up was you have to be up and out of bed by 9 AM. Why? Because if you sleep later than that you can tend to stay up later and it just gets further and further out of sync with the world around you. You tend to stay up until two or three in the morning because it feels like since no one is around you have some control and you get to do what you want to do instead of what others want to do. Then by sleeping in you don’t have to listen to people asking you questions about what you’re doing today or put up with any weird expectations actually do chores or stuff around the house.
Getting up at 9 AM allows you to actually participate in the morning with friends and family. And it helps you keep your circadian rhythm in sync with the daytime hours at nighttime hours. When you get up at 9 AM you tend to get tired around 10:51 PM and while you may stay up later you tend to fall asleep and sleep better because you’re tired.
One of the unstoppable skills then is to get up by 9 AM every day. Weekends included. Earlier than that is better, but if you have nothing else going on and no appointments getting up by 9 AM allows you to participate in the day rather than lose half the day and have to spend time making excuses and recover the rest of the day and week.
So set your alarm! Get up and get moving so that you can accomplish things and become unstoppable.

My calendar use through the years ~

When I was a teenager my trying to introduce me to the use of the Daytimer calendar system. It was a paper-based calendar ordered through the mail. He usef his Daytimer at the ploce department to religiously keep notes on almost everything that happened around him and what he did. Those notes turnef into a wall of notebooks that he could refer back to when questions came up.
He bought me my first Daytimer and I thought it was ridiculous. A day for a piece of paper for each day of school? I Already haD a notebook system. There was folders and binders for each class and everything organized and there. Not very well, mind you, but that was my organization system that got me through high school with A’s and B’s. Not too shabby!
He didn’t give up on me though and bought me more Daytimer notebooks each year until I started buying them for myself. I used some of them in college but not very many. I did not like the option to lug around a little notebook for months. I actually at one point started using the wallet size notebook but that was too small. When I was in traffic management network the first time I had a friend using a notebook system that was a half-size notebook. I enjoyed that because of the different colors. But the thing that I enjoyed the most was I was when I made my own notebook pages. I didn’t have to spend money on pages from Daytimer. I actually made my own weekly pages and printed them out from the computer and then copied and wrote in the needs for each week. I had my own two page monthly layout that was very handy in my notebook. I scaled it up to 8.5 x 11 at one point and enjoyed the roominess but didn’t feel like my life had enough going on that I should continue using that big of a page. It was easier wide papers because I could just shove them in notebook and need. But that became a little unwieldy and I didn’t really have a need so I stoppes using it.
At some point in the early 2000s I started using a web based calendar. I tried to use Outlook, but because Microsoft was so hacked in Outlook (and still is) I started using other calendars. I tried Yahoo and it was just goofy.
But then Google came along and they came out with their calendar and I was hooked. I have used Google Calendar ever since. I still use the calendar. I have my children using Google Calendars ever since I started using them. My wife uses them. I use it for my work. And I have started publishing a couple of things on Google calendars publicly so that people can subscribe to them (positivewordchallenge.com). It’s pretty cool and it works really well.
Any online calendar at this point is better than paper. Although if you need paper that works and can be used really well. But the online calendar thing allows you to have your calendar anywhere you go as long as you have access to the Internet. Oftentimes you have an app that is a calendar and that can give you reminders and pop things up on your screen when you’re looking at it. And you get a lot done. And you can capture things live when you’re there to your calendar and have it available to you anywhere in the solar system almost instantly.
Because of the Google calendar the way it works I actually use a program to access the Google calendar and speak to me some of the things that are happening. And I haven’t several calendard for different kinds of events like my shifts of work, my wife’s assignments, birthdays and anniversaries, and that sort of thing. It’s worked really well for me and I think the they could work for almost anybody.
Here’s a link to the Google calendar: calendar.google.com
And here’s a link to the positive word challenge Google calendar that I used to publish the positive word challenge word for each day: positivewordchallenge.com
It’s a cool use of a public calendar. I think that most organizations if they have any kind of public following should use a public calendar of some sort that people can subscribe to and consume in their own calendar apps.
I hope you enjoy using a calendar! It is one of those skills that can make you unstoppable!

Be prepared

One of the things that I enjoyed during the coronavirus panics time that I spent at home is getting a garden going on my deck. I’ve done that for a couple of years now but this year I have tomato plants, some peppers, and a few more flowers. I also bought a couple of blueberry bushes and a couple of grapevines just to see if I could make them grow.
I keep them on the deck which means I have to water them daily. I’ve collected bottles as we’ve emptied them out and I now have a collection of five or six big 2 L bottles that I used to water them with.
I keep the bottles filled with water so that when I go out morning or in the early afternoon to water the plants I can just start watering them. It’s been so nice because last year and the year before I always had to grab the bottle or some picture, fill it with water, then go out and water plants.
But with the ability to adjust decide it’s time to water and then go out and start doing I feel like my productivity is out. It’s much more satisfying when I go to water the plants. And it’s a lot more fun because I don’t have to think about steps to get started, I just go and get started. Yes, I still have to fill the water bottles when I empty them. But it’s much more satisfying to have already watered plants than having to stop and figure out which ones to fill out and all that.
So the Scouting motto “be prepared” applies here. I am prepared to water the plants and because I am prepared I can just start doing it.
In so many other areas of our lives it would be better if we were prepared so that when it was time to do it or we decided to do it we could just pick it up and no. Instead of having to go through a checklist of all the things that you gotta gather up and get together and then possibly use and may not need and all that. All the decisions get in the way of actually accomplishing what we set out to accomplish.
So do your best to be prepared. You’ll come out ahead because of it!