Happy Valentine’s! Enjoy this fun advice from Lynn Ruby of Ruby Marketing, from Greater Phoenix SCORE.
5 Love Lessons to Use In Your Business Videos.
“Are you published?” It’s the first question an industry outsider will ask, while a fellow writer will get to it eventually, however tactfully. “So tell me about your work!”
But being unpublished in a free land is not the same as being unpublishable in a not-so-free one. On my nation’s Independence Day, I’m thinking of an international social media “friend” who once shared her anguish with us: as a woman, she’s not allowed to publish in her own country, so she courageously posted her story online.
I’m counting my blessings. And I’m also counting hers. Here online, borders don’t hold long. “Let freedom ring.”
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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.
Does it feel as though you’re always starting over? I’m beginning new projects, new rounds of old projects, new teaching quarter. Therefore, clients and students are doing the same; some students have even taken the leap to begin or return to their higher education. Their stories and their dedication inspire me.
Beginnings take courage, so I offer this favorite passage from John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us:
“Perhaps beginnings make us anxious because we did not begin ourselves. Others begat us. Being conceived and born, we eventually enter upon ourselves already begun, already there. Instinctively we grasp onto and continue within the continuity in which we find ourselves. Indeed, our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning. But these beginnings are out of our hands; they decide themselves. This is true of our breathing and our heartbeat. Beginning precedes us, creates us, and constantly takes us to new levels and places and people. There is nothing to fear in the act of beginning. More often than not it knows the journey ahead better than we ever could. Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over” (2).
He also warns, “There are journeys we have begun that have brought us great inner riches and refinements; but we had to travel through dark valleys of difficulty and suffering. Had we known at the beginning what the journey would demand of us, we might never have set out. Yet the rewards and gifts become vital to who we are. Through the innocence of beginning we are often seduced into growth” (3).
Isn’t it great we aren’t in it alone? We support each other in our beginnings and our risk-taking, and here we are! Before we know it, we’re completing something and beginning again. Wishing you “great inner riches and refinements.”
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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.
Photo © Linda Kloosterhof iStockPhoto® #208792
Can you imagine if every gesture of conservation and kindness received such a welcome? Do it anyway.
If you ask 22 author friends for advice, they’ll write you a whole book!
Steve Silberman had been reporting on professionals with autism/Asperper’s and became an expert on such neurodiversity, so naturally, it’s time to write his book. The process of turning a 4,000 word article into a 100,000 word tome was intimidating, so he asked for a little help from his friends. It might take him the first month to digest the advice and select which parts to use, whether adjusting his scheduling, process, outlook, or technology, but it’s a great collection:
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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.
Take a therapist who trained her daughter to watch media, including ads, with critical attention. Now imagine this daughter, Maya Cueva–already a journalist while still a teenager–not only applying that understanding to her buying decisions, but taking her curiosity to the lab and the radio studio. She interviewed researchers tracking brainwaves for advertisers. They can not only measure which ads make an impression with our attention, emotions, and memory, but which parts are most effective–thus qualifying for the five or ten-second version.
(Are you old enough to remember the sixty-second commercial? I’d call those the Hallmark years–masterpieces of short-short filmmaking. But I digress, as usual.)
I especially enjoyed Maya’s own meta-critical-thinking: her mother’s likely bias, her own decision processes. (My brainwaves probably spiked there.) Maya clearly distinguished that we have brain activity that promotes buying impulses and “just say no” activity. Obviously, she’s still using her brain. Her report might inspire you to train your brain, fight the battle, keep your choices free.
NPR Radio segment, transcript, and video. The radio and video versions are different. I enjoyed both.
Cueva’s Youth Radio profile.
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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.
Is summer over yet?
Oh, yeah, I don’t have a break. And my children do! So here’s what I want–or rather don’t want–for me (and everyone around me) to be sane:
No unfinished chores. No whining about housework–and not from Young Son either. No fussing about when allowance is due, and how much is owed. No rethinking every day what needs to be done. No raised voices. No conflict. Sound impossible?
It’s happening! It’s My Job Chart!
It’s free. (It’s supported by Amazon purchases; many families choose retail rewards as part of their planning. That’s it!)
The evening we set it up, eleven-year-old Young Son rushed around to do all of his chores rather than wait a whole day to begin earning. Naturally. I had to watch my computer because he sneaked into my side to add additional jobs, like “Make Mom’s bed.” He awarded it 15 points. (Hmmm. Would you pay 15 cents to have your bed made daily?) The child who would rather scrub toilets than sweep floors is suddenly doing both.
My favorite part is the messaging between the site and the parent’s cell or e-mail (or both). Here are a few messages I’ve received:
“I love this. I think that the way that they do this is absolutely amazing.”
“You are the most awesome mom a kid could have. Thank you for raising me to be nice, kind, n civilized.”
“I love you so blinking much, that i’m jolly well tearing up,wot wot!”
“You’re a blinkin’ genius, wot wot!”
(Yes, I am, thank you, but in this case, credit goes to Gregg Murset, My Job Chart founder, financial planner, and father of six.)
And Young Son enjoys my notes as well:
“I always knew you were a hard worker, but this is inspiring. I appreciate all you’re doing.”
So I’ll return to my teaching prep now as a delightful child practices musical theater solos while scrubbing his bathtub.
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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.
