Just start ....

My goal is currently to blog every second day. It is quite a challenge. It is not that I have nothing to say, is just, how do I put this in words. Then I could stare at the screen for minutes and just look dumb ;o). But as Leo says:

Once you start, it is never hard as you thought it would be

It takes a while until it will change into a habit, possibly more than a month. I just have to stick to it.

Another goal is my PhD. (I know, several goals at the same time is not really the right strategy, but I need something else next to it!!!) Switching the brain again and again, between business and scientific brain. You start to question everything. What am I doing here and especially why am I doing it? But now I have less than a year left ... I will make it somehow, although it won't be fun. And to use Leo's words again: Just start! .... instead of thinking about how hard it is, and how long it will take, tell yourself that you just have to start.

Have a wonderful week :o)

Hold yourself back

Yes, that is one of Leo's tips ... hold back. During the last months, after seminars or I read books, I got sooooo excited. I bought magazines, I subscribed to newsletters ... just to keep get more and more information. I wanted to know everything at once ... and then ... mostly I crashed somehow ... because I didn't get the immediate result. Is it stock market, property investment or something else. Now I am aware of, that these are big goals and for this you have to be patient, which is one of the skills I am trying to develop ... *smirk*

Photo courtesy by Markus Brosch

To reach this goal, you better use the excitement of the beginning to structure your learning about it, or whatever you want to accomplish. If you want to lose wait, of course your plan will look quite differently. And plan carefully ... I like to use the term "babysteps" ... that's how all starts. You won't see much progress at the beginning and it can be quite frustrating.

I write this kind of blogs also to remind myself how I should do things ... words like this just help me to "come back" on track

If you can get yourself excited again, and keep going, you'll get there eventually. But if you give up, you won't. It's your choice - accomplish the goal, or quit. (Leo Babauta)

Motivation

For a couple of weeks already I am following the blog from Leo "Zen Habits". I think I have written about it already. Just today, it's one of these days, I came across the blog about motivation. I am sure you all experience good and bad days regarding motivation. Then such blogs are just great to get you back on track. Leo spoke this time about the 20 ways to sustain motivation when you're struggling. I intend to follow up some of the steps and report about them what they mean in my life. Especially when your life is just going through an extensive time and you don't feel the excitement anymore. The excitement you had just before you started something, just when the idea pops up in your head.

Photo courtesy of Markus Brosch

Motivation does work, is it caused by reading, watching or just listening to the right people. In the previous blog I spoke about that movies touch me. Motivation is one of these effects. Of course it is a positive one ... but isn't that a problem as well, to get excited too easily in something. And after it happened several times and you see that it always weaken after a couple of days or already after a couple of hours, what's the point then? Is that not disappointing? Might be one reason why I avoid movies, because I could get excited about something and then I just don't care about it anymore, maybe because of time constraints or other limiting resources. (I know, nothing is limited except time ... ).

Maybe I haven't found my real interests yet, or I am just not patient enough ... talk to you soon, fingers crossed with a bit more motivation ;o) and excitement

Relaxation

Do you know what that is? I had a look at wikipedia:

... a process or state with the aim of recreation through leisure activities or idling and the opposite of stress or tension ....

That is scary ... how do you do that? As soon as I have an idle time I feel bad. Ok, let's go through it one by one ...

Leisure activities ... *thinking hard* .. yes, I could update my stamps collection and my cross stitching project needs some progress as well. Or, I would like to do scuba diving again. I still think it was an amazing experience last year. What else could be leisure activities? Is learning a leisure activity? I would like to learn more about System Biology or Real Estate. I would like to read down all the books I have listed on my "want to read" list. Is doing personal development a valid leisure activity? I feel a bit overwhelmed with this question ... because I still believe doing what you love to do is not real stress. Correct me when I am wrong. Or did I just forget what it means to relax?

Photo courtesy of Markus Brosch

The term Idling just scares me. Idling means nothing to do ... how can that happen? It's like watching TV or should I say it's like watching a movie? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh .... just imagine you sit on a couch and you just stare at a screen and something entertains you ... I don't understand this. Ok, there is a possibility that it can actually educate you and you learn something ... but c'mon .. most of this is just fiction ... so what for?

Stephane told me it is important so you actually stop thinking for at least 90min. That is a valid excuse for me ... but unfortunately movies have mostly if not always an effect on me, good or bad. Movies touch me, they can break my heart, make me cry, make me even think, they put tension into my body ... and that is not relaxation .... and what now?

How can I relax? What is relaxation? .... Help me to relax!!!!

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms - Socrates

Do you know what your life of your dreams is? Ask yourself this questions everday, and I bet you always end up everyday with something else. Because your mood is different everyday. But the big picture should be the same. And so it is ... keep your goal, focus on it. It is just the journey to it, will change from everyday. And that is the hardest part, at least for me. Distraction is everywhere ... that's why it is sooo important to learn how to re-focus. Old habits can be strong and put you back into your old beliefs. But for me, there is not my goal, not my life of my dreams. To reach my dreams ... I have to get out of the comfort zone, everyday. And people around you don't make it easy for you and suddenly you can feel alone. Then it is time to give yourself 5 min. What do I want? What is the next step to reach my goal, my personal goal ... This blog is for me a tool to get re-focused, to remind me to review my daily to-do list. Does it contain still the right tasks, so I reach my goal? Do I procrastinate things I should do? .... Keep on track! :o)

If you should put even a little on a little and should do this often, soon this would become big - Hesiod

Quite nerdy again: Yesterday I finally figured out how to do regular Expression in Cold Fusion. It is still not perfect, but a beginning. I just wanted to remove all the spaces from a text, to put all together in one line. I think in perl it would look like this: s/\s\s+/ /g ... in coldfusion I am using the POSIX standard: REReplace("test word","[[:space:]][[:space:]]+"," ","ALL") I find it quite interesting, there is soo much to learn about this ... it can be useful one day. I just improved a data feed file for clixGalore. Taking out some text from SQL into a normal text file will still display the tab, newline and carriage return, but I needed the whole text in one line. I still saw some issues at the end, but not as many as before. Will have to play with it a bit longer ... ;o)

With Boutique Wineries we make little progress. We have to realize that we deal with small family owned businesses. In some of them there are only 2 people working in this business. The ability (or the will) to use the internet for business purpose is not as distinct as we might expect. So, my question is now, can we train them? Would you bother doing a kind of training for a business, that brings you one sale in a whole year? ... Let's keep an eye on it. I still believe in Boutique Wineries.

Stephane and I have other projects in mind. The problem is more to maintain and improve the current projects. That's where the Mechanic is there for. So, will have to review these currently ongoing projects and come up with ideas about automatization and systemizing. We will rock it! :o)

Have an incredible day!

Youth Without Borders

Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think - Benjamin Disraeli

Yes, yesterday I joined finally Youth Without Borders as an associate member. The two meetings I had so far with Yassmin the president were quite interesting and full of value. I think we can exchange a lot and get on some pretty nice projects. I try get XL involved somehow, either in writing articles in the XL magazine, or I get the connection to StepUp foundation. And I would like to look into the availability of software for our first project, which are the mobile libraries in Indonesia. If I could find some free easy maintainable software for libraries, that would be great. Will see. Just trying to automatize as much as possible *blush*

Boutique Wineries is moving forward in little Baby steps. I learn a lot about Internet Marketing and all the tools which are out there. I really cannot complain about boredom. Currently I am working on the datafeed for clixGalore and Spring, our programmer in China, received a small task as well. I discovered that the java script on one page doesn't work, weird discovery, but should be easy to fix. And we want to add recaptcha on this registration page as well.

Recaptcha is a nice projects, that stands for

Stop Spam - Read Books

Sometimes hard to read, but is all for the good, hehe!

Take care! :o) BKBH

Critical moment

Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better - Emile Coue

There are and will be always times when you have to rethink all your plans. Things can happen. People change their minds, even people you are closed to.

This can come like a shock. But you know, there are no problems, there are only solutions out there. And if you re-focus on your goal and remember your dreams ... you will make it. There are lot of ways to reach your goals.

It can be painful, when a friend decides to follow another way. You made plans together, started small businesses together ... but he cannot or don't want to go this way anymore. You won't change his mind. Let him/her go ... life is about you. Of course you still can be friends, you are just following another path.

make magic

We never know how high we are, till we are called to rise; And then, if we are true to plan, our statures touch the skies - Emily Dickinson

CSIRO claimed today to be the "The Black Day". Not only because it is Friday the 13th (whatever belief is behind it, except that the Christians killed thousands of crusaders at this day hundreds of years ago), no CSIRO has to fire some people. I am not sure about the real issue, but I don't want to know. Australia is fully employed ... so what is the problem? Hundreds of people more who got kicked out of the system ... they should be happy, they can start a life with freedom, no rules ... Yeah. But no, they want to be slaved, want to be sealed to a 9 to 5 job. Ok, if people want to be treated like this, they will find something ... but if you are passioned about what you are doing, there are even more ways out there to realize your dreams ...

I am planning to have a brainstorming session with Stephane this weekend, fingers crossed we will be both of us in our flow, because then nothing is impossible.

Make magic!

on the journey ....

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunities - Seneca

Finally, I managed to get some pins organised, so I fixed the Ying-Yang at my door. Much better kharma now, hihi. And I could cover one of the big mirrors ... a bit Feng-Shui as well ;o)

The Division meeting after the CellBio seminar today, was quite a wake-up call again. Job-Job-Job ... why always about job? Where is the inspiration and motivation, when there is always someone telling you what you can do and what you should do, and especially WHEN you do it? Isn't life about to do what you love to do? Most people just work hard more than 40 hours a week to have the weekend off, to do what they love to do .... hae? There is something wrong, I think.

The main issue I have, people cannot stop doing this work as they would love to. Who can take 3 months off to travel through Europe or Asia? And that is my goal. I get too easily bored of something anyway. And the only solution I have for this is ... passive income. That's why I am working so hard now, to get things going. That's why I will go to the OnlineBusinessOwner-Breakfast tomorrow morning at 7am. That's why I contact companies on weekends and go through different strategies with Stephane, to keep our mind open so we are prepared to meet the opportunities ...

Procedure, system, procedure and system again ....

Getting structured, have procedures for everything ... especially creating some. As soon you do things twice, automatize it ... put a system behind it. And stick to it. Have your procedure in the morning, that in the office (if you have one to go to ;o) )Do the things you have put down for the day. Focus! Remember, why I am doing it and what is the aim of it. That is the way to get things done. Still, you have to listen to your body. Hungry? (I mean not appetite!) Then eat a little bit, don't make yourself full like hell. Discipline and commitment ... two of the big mysteries ....

I stopped taking my medication for my thyroid. After 2 month the TSH level was up, like 25-fold higher than normal. You can imagine the reaction of my GP. I told him to give me more time. I went to James, my chinese doctor. Read this: Professor Emeritus in Traditional Medicine Fellow AACHMA, MIAS, Int.Ac.Soc., W.P.N., A.A.P.H.J.P .... I just call him James :o) I received already 3 accupuncture treatments. The once with electricity are ... pretty heavy to bear. You can feel the hammer everywhere. But when we get the thyroid working this way, it is worth it. Next bloodsample is in 2 weeks. Let you know how it goes. Have to say, I don't see and feel any bad symptoms. I go to bed between 9 and 10pm and get up between 5 and 6am. I think it is pretty good. ;o)

Tweed Heads in May 2008, that's where the border is between New South Wales and Queensland. It was a nice trip in the morning with Stephane for a breakfast. We needed some time out.

Not easy to live 2 lifes right now, being the good PhD student and a business woman. But I want it this way, so I go for it. Yes Daddy, I am always going the most complicated way ;o) ... but I will get rewarded for this. Stephane and I are a pretty good team, supporting each other heavily. It is hard to find the right words at the right time, but we are moving ahead.

I hope you are all doing well outthere ... have a great week and I keep you up-to-date. Please take care :o)

With Gratitude,

Josefine