Blog 30-Day Challenge – Next Steps

Posted on by
1

After the challenge of writing a blog post every day for 30 days in a row, what comes next?

Like button ReasonistaI’ve summarized the major elements of what I learned. Digestion will continue.

What is coming as a follow up to this activity?

  • Refine larger business plans for my information outlets. How can I make my sites better, more educational, productive and enjoyable?
  • Continue keeping The Reasonista Diaries. Journaling like this brings a lot of thoughts to the surface, helps me make sense of them, and generates ideas for additional goals and tasks.
  • Focus on the coming goals with excitement, remembering what it was like building the mud puddles as a kid. This energy is contagious.
  • Try new things. The next new challenge is right around the corner, and can also be beneficial to building the site and its visibility. And enjoying the journey!

A mix of big picture goals and specific tasks always comes out of my brainstorming sessions.

A challenge like the #blog30 has filled pages with ideas, just waiting for me to choose some, and put them to work.

Lessons Learned from the Blog Challenge

Posted on by
3

Tomorrow is the finish line for the 30 day blog challenge (#blog30), organized by Jeanette Cates and Connie Ragen Green. This is the second one I’ve done in 2010.

I used this new blog, The Reasonista, for this challenge. The standard was that all posts were to be on the same blog.

Just for this June 2010 challenge, I’ve written more than 5000 words. That’s enough to make a book.

Crystalize your thinkingThis project has helped me crystallize my thinking, with more to come.

Lessons from the blog challenge.

  • Fit your blog into a larger business plan. How can the blog contribute to your larger business goals? Will it help you build a mailing list, or your online authority?
  • Make the decision. It might seem daunting when you think about it, but if you think you can, you can.
  • Feel for the focus. The direction of your writing and your blog will change over time. You will adjust as you go along, like the course corrections that the pilots make during an airline flight.
  • Think in terms of campaigns or promotional themes. This will help you bring your posts together to build around a main subject, and generate more ideas.

This much writing has also helped me get better and write faster, both beneficial goals that will be useful in this and many other projects.

Now, on to the next…

Ben Franklin’s Virtues – Humility

Posted on by
Reply

Pride goes before a fall, says a verse in Proverbs. And humility is the opposite of pride.

United States flagI recall from the Autobiography that humility was the toughest virtue, according to Ben.

He had a lot of accomplishments to be justly proud for. His inventions helped lots of people, even saving lives with devices like the lightening rod.

And he did not profit from them in financial terms, but had given them freely without patent. Manufacturers were free to make and sell these products to help fuel the budding American economy.

The last of Ben’s 13 Virtues:

13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates

Most people can associate Jesus with humility, but what do we know about Socrates? He was a Greek philosopher who lived about 400 years before Christ.

Socrates is known indirectly, through later writings by his students (including Plato and Aristotle). He ran afoul of the Athenian government, and was ordered to drink poison, which he did. Perhaps he became too proud for, paradoxically, being wise enough to recognize his own ignorance.

Interesting that Ben would choose to remind himself of Socrates.

It is a fine line between being confident due to one’s accomplishments, and being arrogant.

Given Ben’s other virtues which all speak to balance, it’s no surprise that humility made his list of virtues to practice.

Ben is a good role model even today, more than 200 years after his passing. He showed that dedicated efforts at self-improvement can move anyone forward in their lives. Though he never achieved perfection, he accomplished a lot. America as we know it would not exist without him.

Ben Franklin’s Virtues – Part 4

Posted on by
2

Ben had a reputation for loving the ladies, at least, on a mental level. Besides beauty, he loved an active mind.

It’s easy to imagine that he felt freer to explore certain subjects with a lady. Less need to be guarded when heading into test theories and possibilities.

And it probably did make the practice of some of his virtues, on some days, easier than others.

The third group of four, of Ben’s 13 Virtues

9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve

10. Cleanliness .Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloths, or habitation

11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable

12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation

Again, balance plays a big role in Ben’s virtues. Moderation reflects another note on each of the other virtues. A middle path has a lot to recommend it.

Cleanliness is another form of Industry, and Tranquility another form of Silence. Chastity, another form of Temperance.

Interesting how growth is a spiral, and the themes on the wheel come back around, but in a different octave.

More to come…

Ben Franklin’s Virtues – Part 3

Posted on by
1

There’s a story about Ben, having just arrived in Philadelphia. He was walking down the street, with a long roll of bread under each arm. He’d just spent the last of his money.

Piggy bank frugalityAlthough he was 17 years old and a fugitive from his apprenticeship in Boston, his mind, it seems, was on immediate matters.

He had already been in trouble for writing letters to his brother’s newspaper under the pseudonym Silence Dogood. He impersonated a middle-aged widow to voice opinions about the establishment in Boston.

He ended up in England for a few years, then returned to Philadelphia to get down to business. The second group of his virtues reflect that focus on practical matters.

The second four of Ben’s 13 Virtues

5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing

6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions

7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly

8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty

Frugality and industry go together, in that the focus is on productivity. Work to bring in more business, and stop up the drain of unnecessary loss. Forward motion comes from choosing goals, then acting on them with purpose.

Similarly, sincerity and justice both point out the importance of being aware and making a conscious decision before speaking or acting. Why create ill will or problems from a thoughtless comment or action?

More to come…

Ben Franklin’s Virtues – Part 2

Posted on by
Reply

Ben Franklin was forward thinking in a number of ways.

His self-devised program of focusing on his list of 13 Virtues, in weekly succession, was just one of his innovations. Central heating, bifocals and the lightening rod and other inventions are all attributed to his resourceful mind.

And his success in business is certainly attributable to his cultivation of his virtues. They are qualities for success. Any modern entrepreneur can benefit from this kind of self-development as well.

The first four of Ben’s 13 Virtues

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation

2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation

3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time

4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve

The first three qualities speak to balance. All things in moderation, whether they be food, drink, speaking or tidiness.

Resolution means making your word good. If you decide to do something, say you are going to do it, you owe it to yourself to follow through. Resolution brings forth self-confidence and respect.

More to come…

Ben Franklin’s Virtues – Moving Forward

Posted on by
3

My eighth and ninth grade English teachers passed out several college-prep reading lists, and I spent my high school years on a mission to read many of the books on them.

I made quite a bit of progress. One of the most memorable of these books (even after 40+ years) was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

Ben was into self-improvement in a big way. He believed that, with hard work, anyone could overcome any obstacle to success. And he was smart about making money at it, too.

His education was mainly from reading. In his adult years, he started a library company in Philadelphia, so that he and his friends could pool resources to buy books, to make them available for all the members to read.

He was a lifelong learner.

Because he was so widely read, I have to think he was aware of the 7 Deadly Sins and the 7 Contrary Virtues, as taught in religion.

Whether that was his basis or not, he developed his own list of 13 Virtues, and he put them on a weekly rotation to focus on, each in turn.

In the end, he said that it was worth the effort, though he never achieved perfection. As I recall, humility was the one he struggled with the most.

I like to think he knew about flipping the coins over, because he focused on virtues (something to reach for) rather than mistakes (something to avoid).

We are better creators than avoiders.

Flip the Coins on Purpose

Posted on by
1

It’s often said, there are two sides to every coin.

Decision making with coinsAnd it’s so true, you cannot have one side of the coin without the other.

Flipping a coin has been a decision-making tool probably since coins were invented (and they go back at least as far as Roman times, perhaps longer).

Leaving decisions to chance (albeit with 50-50 odds) may not always give us the outcome we really want.

So…turn them over on purpose.

This is a technique to use the content on one side to inspire the creative thinking to decide what’s on the other. Then, choosing to flip to that side on purpose.

For example, the mind does not take in the concept of negative. Mind is a creator. It uses the mental picture we maintain to create from. So the phrase, “I don’t want to be sick” produces a mental image of sickness.

But that same statement, when we hear ourselves, can be used to create, on purpose, a mental image of health. “I’m in vibrant health” would be just one affirmation. The mind can work with this picture, too.

If you read papers, news reports (especially the business and sports pages) or blogs of all kinds, you’ll find these stories, where people chose to focus on a picture of their own selection, their ideal imagined future.

They turned their own coins, using one side to inspire the other.

The outcome is no gamble when you flip a coin over by choice.

Deciding to Write

Posted on by
2

Some people have their favorite mechanisms to help them write. I have mine as well.

Reasonista writing

If the words aren’t coming, or the ideas won’t jell, then some physical activity helps. It can be as short as a walk down to the end of the block and back. Just enough to get the juices stirring.

Walking seems to energize the brain cells, and gives my body something to do to help the mind focus.

My drinks tend to be Diet Coke, coffee, or water. If I want something sweet, an ice cream bar.

Yet I know these are crutches. The real “on” switch is making the decision. That’s when it really comes together.

Sit down at the computer, or with paper and pencil, and just do it.

Editing comes later.  This is an inner secret of many prolific writers. Separate the flow side from the editing side of the writing process.

I respect the people who schedule their writing time – often in the morning – and they will start to write even if they don’t feel that they have anything to say.

Of course they do, they just have to turn on the switch to let the flow come forth.

Deciding to write works for everyone. It’s as simple as the decision. Practice makes it easier.

The Answer Is: We’ll See

Posted on by
Reply

“We’ll see” is the lesson in a popular Zen story, told in a few different ways.

Perhaps you have heard it. The main characters are an old man, his 20-something son, and the local villagers.

Reasonista LemonadeVarious things happen in the village. And early in the story, the son finds and captures a beautiful wild horse.

“How wonderful,” say the villagers.

“We’ll see,” says the old man.

The son tries to break the horse. It throws him and he breaks his leg.

“How terrible,” say the villagers.

“We’ll see,” says the old man.

The king sends his men through the countryside, conscripting young men for the army. Since the son has a broken leg, he is passed over.

“How wonderful,” say the villagers.

“We’ll see,” says the old man.

Since the son is one of the few young men left in the village, he starts to get lots of attention from all the local young ladies….

You can see where this story could go.

“We’ll see” seems to be the answer to just about any question. No matter how good something looks, or how bad, there is always another side. It just depends on perspective — how you look at it, and what you decide to do with it — when you think you are getting lemons, or lemonade.