The Road to Lifestyle

My oh my, how the time does fly! This week was one of the more interesting weeks I've had in quite some time. Lessons learned? Varied... from how to deal with a case of mistaken identity (it's a doozy !) to how to deal with a client who just can't seem to stay awake during a sales call! Regardless of the bumps along the way as long as you are focused on the end goal the daily happenings you experience will seem like minor blips on the radar in no time at all. For some of us, not soon enough! Time heals all wounds they say but just yesterday I thought of a memory I hoped had been obliterated from my memory by now. It bothered me that after all of these years it's still there... in the shadows. And gosh darn it I reproduced the very same emotions I experienced in that brief moment in time so long ago. These thoughts are the muck and yuck, the dregs that lurk at the bottom of your existence and threaten to forever taint your very soul... but only if you let them! It's...

Hip, hip... Hooray! "We have an innate desire to endlessly learn , grow, and develop. We want to become more than what we already are. Once we yield to this inclination for continuous and never-ending improvement, we lead a life of endless accomplishments and satisfaction." - Chuck Gallozzi Hip, hip... Hooray! "People call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I'm a 'rightist.' I do something until it's right, and then I move on to the next thing." - James Cameron Hip, hip... Hooray! "He who stops being better stops being good." - Oliver Cromwell

I sent this e-mail to my Agency Manager and copied MM on 15 July 2009: I felt compelled to share this excerpt from my diary that was written a few days after MM spoke on 4 March 2009 (I was reviewing my notes from his talk)... like MM and other leaders have said before... "If you're not growing you're dying, there is no standing still." "8 March 2009 - Yesterday Braden and I went to Clifton Gorge... we stopped... actually Braden stopped at a spot and started walking over a tree that had fallen... like a balance beam... I avoided it... it looked like it was a long way across and too far of a drop... I walked around it... on the way back I decided to try and I stopped [on the log] and was very unsteady--my arms waving to and fro... as I tried to maintain my balance... I did not walk forward... and I did not walk back... I merely stood in place... Braden told me to keep moving and when I did I realized how easy it was for me to maintain my balance and how easy it wa...

In Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People he states that time management is actually a misnomer because "...the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves." How true is that! And to be honest, I had never considered that point of view. At the Air Force Academy (Class of 2002 baby!) we were continually running from one event to another in an effort to balance our military, academic, and athletic disciplines . As a result I have always touted that the Academy is where I developed my time management skills... in fact, I really developed an ability to manage myself and my own actions. The choice was, and will always remain, mine. On page 92--my favorite page in the entire book--Covey discusses ways we can control and change our lives "immediately." Who doesn't want that? Most folks want to change or alter some aspect of their lives for the better. So how do we do this? Well, he states that "We can make a promise--and keep it....