My wife and I set three goals for the new year:
- Be Better People
- Be Better Parents
- Grow More of Our Own Food
For myself, I have also made the goal to exercise more.
These goals seem at first quite vague, yet noble. One of our plans for follow through on these goals is to align them with different books that we will read throughout the year. I gave brief summaries for the three main books in my first post of the year. The books are: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids, and Practicing the Power of Now.
Another key I am using to achieve these goals is a journal, as in pen and paper. My process has been to read and take detailed notes about the book and journal about the chapter immediately afterward. This allows me to save all of my thoughts for later to blog online.
This method also keeps all of these books organized in my mind and on paper so that I can easily compare them as I go along. I am already amazed at how many parallels I see between these very different people and their great ideas.
So far, we have made some strides in each category. We have made a concerted effort to be better parents and problem solvers with our children. We have also been rather consistent with our reading. We installed a new garden bed along the edge of our fence to create more space for growing food. And I have also made my first exercise goal of working out every weekday morning for about 15 minutes.
I encourage you to find some good books for the year, write down your goals, and keep a journal of your efforts. May it bring success!
If you are someone who is trying to convert or maintain some of your community's land-base into a non-profit organization for means of preservation, community-involvement, education, green space, etc., this article is meant to give you suggestions along the way.
- Define your mission clearly, with involvement from all necessary parties, but with no more than is necessary.
- No more than necessary hints to the fact that agreeing on a mission can be exciting, but also taxing if too many people are deciding. A better method is to create 2 or 3 different versions and bring those to a larger group for discussion and decision-making.
- Make sure you mission statement resonates with a disinterested 3rd party. Can they clearly state back to you your mission without explanation from you?
- Take time and look at the mission statement again in a few weeks? Can you live with it the next 10 years... 20 years... 50 years?
- Will the mission statement being able to grow in meaning with the organization?
- Build support among the community.
- This is obvious, but sometimes groups are missed because not all interested parties are identified. Think of every group that may be interested in what you are doing:
- Local growers, local garden groups, local churches, local governments, local schools, national organizations, hospitals, retirement homes, parenting groups, politicians, historians, scout groups, neighbors, park districts, counties, state departments, business neighbors, UAW halls, etc.
- Building support most often means listening.
Set forums for interested parties to simply share their thoughts. Make sure they know their input is valued and recognized in some way. - After listening, communicate as often as you must to continue to build support.
- Build a strong board.
- Experience, diversity, and desire will all determine how successful and helpful your board is. Think carefully about including the likes of: members with board experience, a teacher, an historian, an accountant, a marketing person, a visionary, a naturalist, someone in agricultural, business leaders, etc.
- You may not find all of these, but strive for a good mix of experience, diversity, and desire.
- A strong board understands their role. Take time to define the board's role in the beginning so there is no confusion later. This helps not only the board, but also staff members.
- Take your time.
- I have seen first hand that rushing in the beginning will adversely affects what comes 4-5 years down the road.
- Take your time! The completion of initial planning may take 4 or 5 years.
- Set a time line of events that is realistic, yet provides for surprises.
- Be proactive in determining what you want and when.
- Actively seek the input of others who have walked a similar path. This will
increase your chances of time estimates being accurate. - Hire the best staff.
- The best means, the best. If you need to wait for those people, then do so.
- Do not hire the wrong people. Wait if you need to!
- Passion.
- Passion is necessary at all steps along the way, as is practicality and
perseverance. - Though you may be mindful of everything, mistakes will
still be made and can be exciting if you learn from them. Passion is accepting and growing with mistakes. - Remember your goals.
- What are you working for? Crystallizing your goals at all steps will help keep you focused and energized.
- Stay connected to the land you are working with.
- Stop and breath; if you are not getting out and connecting, you will miss some of the most important information.
- Succeed!
- Succeed because you must.
body I am trying out this new service I have been seeing lately, ping.fm. It is a central tool to post to any social networking, micro-blogging, or blogging services that you may belong to. The list is quite long.
My original hope was to post simultaneously to Twitter and Plurk, without having to worry about either of them. And that is where ping.fm stepped in.
So far, it seems to be incredibly well thought out, with a nice interface.
Once I post this, I will have to check and see if it works as I am hoping.
I'll let you know how it works out.
Peace out.
Work is such trouble because it is not our life... at least we think it is not supposed to be our life.
But work has always been the world's life. Work has always been what brings meaning and happiness to a person's life. The past, present and future get wrapped up into one when our work is the only thing in our life we want to be doing.
The trouble is not, then, what our job is. The trouble is that we do not allow our work to become our life when we are "at work". If we can dive in head first to our job, happiness will ensue.
Actually, for many people, the problem is not to allow work to become their life. The problem is that we do not allow our life to be our work. If, when I went home everyday, I allowed myself to be swallowed up by my family, and allowed the present moment of my family to be my "work", I would be happy.
Instead, I find my mind wandering back to the work I do at the "office". I find my concentration is not on making my family life better, but on making my "work" better.
If I can allow myself to make my family my work, happiness will ensue.
And not just for me, but also my loved ones at home.
This tendency to focus on work would be just fine if I realized that it is work to bring happiness to a family.
There is a sweet spot in life when you begin to understand concepts as opposed to objects and feelings as opposed to facts. There is a point in life when the abstract world is not only recognized but it is understood. I call this the sweet spot in life because this initial understanding is filled with a sense of justice, a sense of power, and a sense existence mastery. "I can do anything." As at this point we have reached our potential as humans, where we can create the abstract in the concrete. We can begin to express our ideas as physicaly manifestations in the world, and our idea of power grows. I cannot tell you how long this era of bliss lasts in each individual's life but I can tell you that just as pollution seeps into a beautiful pond slowly ruining its godliness, doubt enters our minds.
"I can do anything" starts to become "I can do anything... well almost anything.'" to eventually the point in our lives when we reach "I should probably just do what I am good at and others' think is ok." At this point our invincibility internally becomes a point of contention. We begin to wrestle with others' roles and how they relate to our strive for perfection, for our "anything." The madness begins when this outside influence begins to contradict the creations in our head.
Doubt is a non-biological human disease. It is a social disease. It is infectious and passed down from generation to generation. Doubt only enters our mind through the influence of others.
This doubt causes a degradation to our imagination and begins a very scary process of losing our dreams to a simpler cause. Everything new in our society has never been done before. I know this sounds quite obvious, but we should take a closer look on how stifling the imagination hinders the advances of society (advances being technical in nature, as there are definite and valid ideological differences that exist pointing to a less technical existence as real advancement.) We can take control again through Meditation and Understanding Technology and our Brains
Next post: Imagination Creation
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