Focusing on negative

    I have been thinking the past few days about something that I know plagues me and I can only assume has the same affect on others. I started paying a little more attention after our last Dog meeting. When we went around the circle so that everyone could describe where they were most of the conversations focused on the negatives. All of the things that were a struggle and that we were failing at. I know that the purpose was one of support which drives the focus on the negative and it oddly feels better to let those issues out. Solely focusing on the negative however can have even worse effects than the initial issues that caused a requirement to not be focused on.
     Focusing on everything you are failing at can quickly lead to wondering why you are doing or trying to do something in the first place. It is important to take a step back and see the failure for what it is, a chance to learn, and then move on. It is also equally as important to look at the wins to reinforce the fact that you are capable. You got this!

You are not who you were a year ago

     Starting my own business has seem to given me a renewed sense of purpose. In many ways I am back to where I was a year ago. I am awake before the alarm, at 4:45. I am doing sit-ups and push-ups every day. I have been reading a ton doing research and I feel great. In order to try make sure that I can sustain this I have started watching, or more like listening, to a 10-15 min motivational you tube video fist thing while I start doing work. There are millions of them to choose from so I usually pick a random one and let it play so I can continue working. The messages are generally all the same no matter which one you see or hear. The one thing that changes is the perspective.
     This is very much like every other thing you need to learn. The information doesn't change. Having the information relayed slightly different can make all of the difference in the world when you are trying to learn something or see a certain point. The video in the link below touches on a few things that we discuss regularly but with a little different spin on it. It is a bout 10 min long and there is a little language.

watch the video - there is some language

     The guilt that can spin off of regret can be overpowering. If you can change the way that you interpret regret and see these things as learning experiences it can eliminate the guilt.  "Yes, I did/didn't do these things in the past, and that is not who I am anymore." Starting over. Every day. Fighting the resistance because you are not the person you were a year ago, a week ago, or even yesterday. If you can reflect on every experience, good or bad, and allow it to become a learning experience the possibilities for growth are limitless. 

Continued Learning

     For the past few weeks I have been working with ATB. More like they have some money, I need some money and I have been asking them nicely to share. I have learned lots of things since this program started.

     Instead of completely draining my savings I have been trying to get a business loan so that I can draw a salary from that. I started dealing with ATB because in my search through government sites looking for capital they were the one bank that the government had links for. I had an appointment set up to meet the small business loans person. I received a phone call from a completely different person which seemed off at the time because there is only one business loans person that moves between the Stony Plain and Spruce Grove offices. I agreed to meet this other person and am glad that I did. I had no clue until this meeting that ATB has a bunch of free services for Entrepreneurs. In Edmonton they have a Entrepreneur Center that offers classes, work space and even board rooms that can be booked free of charge. For the month of August they have some of the staff from the Entrepreneur Center working at the Spruce Groove branch which is why I got the phone call that I did. This initial meeting has spawned numerous other meetings and chances to advance my newly formed business venture. The next day I met with a business adviser at the bank. He was able to provide some direction on where my focus should be. During this meeting he was able to refer me to another associate from the Entrepreneur Center that used to do private consulting as well as introduce me to a few different associations whose main purpose are to help people advance their businesses. I have had some phone conversations with a couple of the groups and have some meetings and classes set up to attend over the next few weeks.

There are a couple of things that I have had the opportunity to take away from these encounters.   

     Stepping out of your comfort zone can yield amazing opportunities. One of the larger fears that I had wanting to start my own business is having to constantly deal with new people. I am not super outgoing. I have always struggled with "small talk". I have been a minimalist to say the least when it comes to conversation and that has been a road block to interacting with new people. Being "forced" to get past this has made it easier to continue and I have been able to do some things and talk to some people I may not have a few weeks ago.
   
     The other is the one, probably most important requirement we all have. I have had some difficulty seeing it in the past but my interactions over the past couple of weeks have helped open my eyes. When complete strangers can show so much interest in helping you succeed it helps provide the faith that it will work out. The small acts of kindness that we do every day, I believe, do the same thing for the recipients of these acts. In a world that seems to becoming more and more self centered and reliant on instant gratification, knowing that another being cares enough to do something without the expectation of reward is a powerful thing.

Starting Over - Again

     For the past six weeks I have been unemployed. It was my own doing as I left my job before going on holidays at the start of July. The past three or four weeks I have been putting together everything needed to start your own business. It has been a very steep learning curve. I have managed other peoples businesses but until now have never had my own. As scary as it was to leave the safety of working for someone else, I am more glad than ever that I did make the leap.
     In the consulting that I am doing, or working on doing, we do something called gap analysis. This involves finding the gaps between the current state and the desired state. You can then develop a plan to get to the desired state by filling in those gaps. This week I started to do that to my own business. What do I require in order to get from where I am today to getting my first client? This has been a great experience and has started me learning about a lot of things that I never had to deal with in previous roles. Every morning when I get up, I look at the Plan and see what has yet to be complete and what the next steps should be. This allows me to make a list of things that I need to accomplish throughout the day. It feels goo to be able to cross a bunch of things off throughout the day as well. I have also been keeping notes in this sheet for every task that I enter. Keeping this journal also brings some sort of inner piece. It is like it seems to make the tasks more relevant.
     With having to learn so many new things, it has reminded me how much I enjoy it. Learning is one thing that there never seem to be enough time for with all of the day to day things that come with managing a business. I have always heard the term "sharpen the saw" and thought that I was doing a decent job with continuing my education. I now have a different outlook on this. There are so many things that can be learned that don't require a classroom. A half hour of reading about a subject you want to learn about or a conversation with someone who has been thorough what you are trying to do can be extremely educational.
     This has been the first good week that I have had in a long time. I both physically and mentally feel good. Being in a better mental frame of mind has allowed me to do some things this week that I have been putting off. Physical stuff is still hard as I still seem to have lots of tail bone issues but instead of using that to just not do anything, this week I found a way to start over. I started doing leg raises instead of sit ups as I still can't roll over my tail bone. These hurt way less.
     I still can't do correct stances and a side heal thrust is a definite no no but there are some things that I can do. These things I plan on putting on to my daily task list so that they become part of my daily routine, again.

MOTIVATION or lack there of

     The past year has been very hard for me in terms of motivation. Dealing with a broken tail bone for the last few months has definitely not helped the situation but in no way is responsible for it. I have struggled to figure out why and how in a short period I have gone from being active and involved in as much stuff as possible to fighting with myself just to do stuff. I think the failure on my part is looking for a single event that explains everything. Don't get me wrong I am not saying that I have been hiding in a cocoon for the past year. I have had a great deal of life experience and have had some opportunities that have provided great fulfillment. My struggle is that I believe that I can do more. I am not living up to the expectations that I have for myself.
     There is a decent chance that we can chalk this up to a midlife crisis and that I should buy a sports car and be done with it. Oh that would be so nice, top down, hair blowing in the wind. Wait a minute it might be too late for that. All kidding aside there must be something that contributes to the extreme lack of motivation. 
     I have heard and read lots of blogs, have seen tons of motivational propaganda but it never really sank in. When you think about what has the greatest affect on your life, it seems pretty clear that it is likely the thing that you spend the most time doing. When I was able to spend a great deal of time either at the Kwoon or at the gym I felt awesome. Even at the height of my working out every day I still was only spending about 17 hours a week doing this. When you think about that over a six day week, using the word only may not make a lot of sense. Compare this though to how much time you spend doing other things. Work, school, sleeping, even the things that you say you love to do. When you do this you start to realize that the things that you love doing actually rate pretty low on the list. Or at least that's what I started to notice. 
     I have always been really good with math. I am not talking about multiplication or addition but in predictive theories. It shouldn't take long to figure out that the one thing that you spend most of your time doing will have the largest impact on your life. For me, and I am sure many others, this is work. 
     Back to the blogs and motivational stuff mentioned above. One of the things that most of them refer to is doing something you love. This always made sense but maybe not to the extent that it does now. There will always be struggles. There will always be days that don't go so well. The thing that I have been finding is that theses days are now outweighing the good ones. After much soul searching and fighting with that feeling in the pit of my stomach, I finally made the decision to leave my job. This was not an easy decision, but as this week went on it has been like a huge weight has been lifted. Any time in the past there was always some anxiety about leaving a job. Where will I go? What will I do? This time there is none of that so i am certain I have made the right decision.
     This week we are flying to Ontario to visit my family. I am not looking forward to the plane ride as my tail bone seems to be giving me some grief this week. Being able to spend some time with them without constantly worrying about work will be nice. When we get back in mid July my plan is to get back to working out every day and spending time with the kids. I have had some people ask me about doing some consulting which I have wanted to do for some time but was always afraid to take the leap. I have already started working with my accountant to get a business model set up. I am super nervous and at the same time really looking forward to starting this new adventure. 

Struggling with injury

     The last five or six weeks have been pretty tough. I went from dealing with some shoulder pain, the one I had surgery on, to fairly severely injuring my tail bone. As my shoulder started to feel better I wanted to get back to some of the activities that I was doing before. Mainly Kung Fu, I Ho Chuan requirements and hockey. I was encouraged to play one game with my shoulder still bugging me. It was after our last IHC mandatory class. With the adrenaline of playing I didn't notice any pain. I was very conscious of keeping my arm close to my body to ensure that I didn't make things any worse than they already were. The next day it was a little sore but overall none the worse for wear.
     Our next game was that Sunday night. In about the middle of the first period we were on a rush and I was heading to the net. Their defence pushed the puck in to the corner. I turned in to the corner and had my feet taken out from under me. I landed square on my tail bone but was also close enough to the boards to smack my head on the way down. The first time i tried to get up to skate to the bench I had no control of my legs and fell flat on the ice again. The second attempt was much more successful. When i got to the bench it felt like only seconds before the line that was out came off and I needed to go out again. I finished the game and didn't realize how much pain I was in until I sat on the bench to get undressed.
     The next few days I was pretty sore but was starting to feel better. By the weekend though this changed dramatically. I was in so much pain by the Monday that I decided to go see the doctor. When I got in to see him he said "even if it is broken all I can do is smile and send you for x-rays". He called after the x-rays to let me know that it was not broken and said to call him in three weeks if I was still in pain and he would send me for some other tests. Today I will be calling him to see what I need to do.
     You never realize how often you use the muscles around your tail bone until injure it. I think that in the past four weeks I pretty much destroyed my office chair. It doesn't feel to bad to sit in it with the lumbar support but trying to stand up is a different story so I've been having to use my arms pushing on the arm rests which I am positive they were not made for. The Chiropractors office has become a more regular thing as well. It is more comfortable to sit on one cheek or the other which after a few weeks starts to do some not so good things to your spine.
     I am hoping sometime soon it is back to normal with walking, sitting and even standing. Until then I will be trying to do better with the rest of my requirements.

Riding the Roller Coaster

A     The past couple of weeks for me have been quite the roller coaster. A couple of Monday's ago I was given some tickets to an Oiler's game. It was nice to be able to take Baker to the game, I mean who wants to actually purchase tickets when they are playing the way they have been this year. On Tuesday night I was not feeling so good and was really sick on Wednesday morning. As I started to feel better Thursday I broke out in super itchy bumps from head to toe. This past week I was in a class at U of A so sitting for 8 hrs a day in a chair trying not to scratch was not a lot of fun. By
Wednesday the bumps had mostly disappeared and I was faced with a new challenge.
     By the time I got home from school on Wednesday I could barely lift my right arm. This is the arm that I had shoulder surgery on a couple of years ago. With a few anti-inflammatory's I was able to move my arm but with very limited mobility. With my palm down I was not able to lift my arm to the height of my shoulder. For me this was a very scary thing. The surgery, or more accurately, the after effects of the surgery sucked. One of the first things that went through my mind was "I am not doing the surgery again I hope this goes away". Over the next couple of days I kept moving ti as much as possible. Saturday I was able to pick up a stick again and do movements that were close to the body.
  One of the good things that happened last week was graduating from the MEP program at U of A. They call it their mini MBA as it gives you a brief look at several of the classes that are included in getting your MBA. Handily enough it also gives you three credits towards your MBA if you decide to go down that road. Although I fear that I did not get all that I could have from the first couple of days as I seemed to be fairly focused on not scratching, the last couple of days had lots of lessons. Our last day of the course was a continuation of a class that started in the first set of classes back in November, Strategic Planning. Anyone who has had the "pleasure" of sitting through a strategic planning session would probably cringe at the thought of sitting through a class, or several classes as it was, on this subject. This instructor however made it probably one of the best classes of the course.
     One of the things that we discussed in class was intention vs mechanism. There are many things that impede our goals no matter what the goals are. Being at work on time - traffic was bad, there was a train, my alarm never went off. These are all mechanisms that affect the results that we are going for, our goals. Now imagine someone tells you that you would receive a million dollars if you showed up for work on time. You would then find a way to be there on time with no excuses. You would do this with intention. It is important for us to realize our connection to the mechanism that affects our results. If you do things with intention, you will find a way to deal with the barriers instead of allowing them to affect the results.

Hard to Manage Alone

     Last year I started off in the year of the Rooster really strong. I didn't manage to maintain the same intensity throughout the year however. In the never ending quest to be better I have searched for many reasons for why this happened. Last weekend a big one came to light. Not something that I would have attributed to this but now that it has come to light it is like a huge weight has been lifted.

    Before last year four of the five members of our family were practising Kung Fu. We had pulled Baker out because he never seemed to be able to make it to classes with hockey games and practices. That our two daughters and myself. This past spring they both decided that they no longer wanted to attend classes. I tried to convince them to stay but was afraid to push too hard. The last thing I ever would want to do is force the issue and cause them to resent Kung Fu. I knew that from past experiences that I had myself as a child that if this happened there would be no chance of them ever practising again. The conditions that were put in place for them were; You must write a letter to Sifu Brinker explaining that you no longer wanted to practice Kung Fu, and that you must find another physical activity to take its place. 

     Adrianna tried out for the girls basketball team but wasn't able to make it. Even though she didn't make the team it was awesome to see her step outside of  her comfort zone and at least try. Cassidy said that she wanted to try "casual" gymnastics but didn't manage to follow through in finding a class that she could regularly attend. This past weekend we finally made the leap and gave them an ultimatum. Either find a physical activity to take part in or we were putting them back in Kung Fu. 

  Cassidy asked me if instead of going to the classes, if she could practice with me at home. We discussed this for a bit and came up with an alternate plan. or slightly different than she initially anticipated at least. She agreed to do my I Ho Chuan physical requirements with me. It was amazing to me how everything became a little bit easier once this plan came to light. It is one thing to have the support and encouragement of the team behind you but we spend most of our time away from the Kwoon and the team. Not having the extra support at home seemed to make making "bad" choices way easier. This is my journey and I am the one responsible for my actions but it seems way easier when you have someone close that is coming along for the ride. The one thing that will take some adjustment is time of doing these things. When it is just me I am able to spread these out a little better so they don't take the same toll as trying to hammer through a couple of hundred push-ups and sit-ups in an hour. This was evident right away on Monday when we did these requirements between 7:00 and 8:00 and then went to class and we were doing the physical testing. Oh well live and learn. 

     One thing I did forget to mention to her though was my 1000 miles with purpose where my requirement is to run 2km three times a week. I guess she will get to do some living and learning tomorrow.

Self Reflection

     I think that all of us at some point during the day, week, month or year, take a bit of time to look back at the things that have happened during that time. Are we where we thought we would be? Did we accomplish the goals that we had set out? What got in the way of these goals? How can I learn from that and ensure these "road blocks" don't get in the way again. What things went really well? How can we use these lessons to achieve goals that we set in the future. This happens in many forms.  Some through meditation, sometimes we see something that reminds us of an incomplete goal and we try to figure out how we got off track. At any rate these things have one thing in common. We are in the present, thinking of things that happened in the past trying to better ourselves for the future.
     I have always had the ability to figure out the "mechanics" if you will of how things work and be able to progress quicker than others in becoming better at doing things, not all things but a lot of things. This apparently is particularly annoying if you are married or spend a great deal of time with someone. The one thing that is hard for the people that get frustrated with you to understand is that it is equally as frustrating to watch someone do the same thing over and over and not be able to get better at it. This frustration can sometimes leads to feelings resentment or antipathy towards the person or actions of a person who just can't seem to figure things out.
     Recently I have found that if I am in a situation where I begin to feel like this, I start to look at my own actions and look for the flaws in what I am doing. A type of self reflection, not looking in to the past, staying in the moment. Am I doing that? How can I correct it? Are there other things that I could improve? Can this improvement help with other things? In doing this I have been able to help myself and also become more aware and empathetic of the people around me. Feelings or resentment are replaced with feelings of  empathy and understanding allowing me to become more engaged with the people around me. Once any negative feeling has been diminished it allows us to be less critical and able to help the people around us with any hurdles they may have.
     I'm not sure if anyone else has experienced this but if you have I urge you to give this a try.

Blogging

     At the start of the year I was super nervous about doing the blogs. After you release the first one in to the world and realise that it didn't hurt or it didn't kill you, it becomes a lot easier to do. I started to enjoy blogging on Sunday mornings. I was up before everyone else and it gave me some time to reflect not only on the past week but also why I was where I was and doing the things that I was doing. In order to expand, every time I found myself using the same word to describe something I would open up Thesaurus.com and check out all of the synonyms and antonyms for that word to discover new ones. Writing blogs became lots of fun. I also managed to make the leap and posted the links not only on Mighty Bell in our own group but also on my Facebook page. This was also a somewhat scary leap until you start to read some of the comments from people you haven't seen for a while or maybe don't know about the journey that you are currently on.

     So if everything was going so well and you were enjoying doing it, why did you stop? That is the question isn't it? 

     I think that this question gets way more in-depth the more that you think about it and understand it. On the surface, I made a decision and that decision was to not continue blogging. Over the last four months I have been taking some classes at UofA that are part of the MBA program. We have had multiple classes that deal with EQ over IQ and how our EQ affects a number of the decisions that we make. This past week along with an EQ class we also had a decision making class. I would recommend taking one of these if you ever having the chance. We had the opportunity to do our own profile and see what kind of decision we were likely to make. Are you risk adverse? Do you make "snap" decisions or do you do all of the research? It was very interesting. The most powerful part of this class, from my perspective, was the notion that in certain circumstances our brain makes automatic decisions that make no logical sense. What does this have to do with me choosing not to blog? It has nothing to do with the decision itself, but a great deal as to why it was made.

     I am in no way trying to excuse poor choices that I have made in the past. It has been my experience however that if you are aware that something is happening then you stand a better chance of identifying when it happens and are then able to make better decisions.

Have a look at the below links, they explain this in a couple of different ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X68dm92HVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD7la282Y_Y