Book Excerpt

Ok, so it took a while but here is an excerpt from my book. Tell me what you think, so I can tweak it and make it something that people will want to read. Thanks for looking!


Book Chapter (Self Improvement)
Have you ever noticed that you do things in patterns? Get up, shower, get dressed, make breakfast and out the door to work/ school, etc. We're creatures of habit, we like routines. We're in a comfort zone in our routine. Well our minds and bodies can(and usually do) get into routines as well. We just "go through the motions" of living and don't excite ourselves or challenge ourselves. This is what I call the "eat, sleep, die" cycle. How do we break the cycle? Self improvement, setting goals, excite ourselves. Now some cynics and skeptics will always have a negative retort to these suggestions. I always like when I hear from them "I'm just too busy" or " that's just what people say that don't have an important career/job/responsibility/duty". They use their career or comittments as an excuse to just "go through the motions" everyday. Now I will concede that at various times a career or responsibility will take high priority or excess time. But that shouldn't limit the setting of personal goals or self improvement. If you could find 3 five minute blocks of time a day for "personal time" you would have 105 minutes a week of "personal time". That's quite a bit of personal time that you could use for anything you want. Maybe its used to relax or meditaten maybe for reading a book, maybe its just a chance for you to slip away to a quiet spot for some uninterrupted thinking. I think that my personal time is best used when I'm achieving a goal or maybe I'm reading on a subject I have been wanting to study. However you use this time you need to use it!!! This is your time for you!
Now let's talk about setting goals, when you set goals you need to writethem down, and you need to see them continually. Leave a copy of your goals on your mirror, on your desk, anywhere you can see it. Goals can be anything you want them to be; short-term, long-term, personal, professional, etc. The main objective to goals is to provide us with self improvement and accomplishment. The most important thing to remember is that these are YOUR goals. You choose them and you accomplish them and experience the joy of reaching them. Encourage your family and friends to set goals and achieve them. Goals are a very powerful antidote for the "eat, sleep, die cycle" introduced earlier.
Limits. What are limits? Quite honestly most (limits) are what we place on ourselves. Usually the limits we see are self imposed. Why do we put limits on ourselves? Simple, they provide us with a (false) sense of security. Ever heard this? "Well I can't do that, I'm not that kind of person". Ok says who? Who told you you couldn't do that? Or who says you're not that kind of person? Probably you said that. And if somebody else is placing limits on you, take my advice and stop listening to that person! No one should put limits on you! Now I'm not condoning illegal activities or anything else, laws aren't limits, they're laws! Now that the disclaimer is done let's talk about taking our limits off. If you constantly tell yourself that you can't do something, well chances are you won't suceed in your attempt to do said thing. So..how do we break the "I can't do something" mindset? Well simply put, stop saying you can't do it! I'll let you in on a secret, you can do it! You can do anything you want to, you just need to believe in yourself. Yes its that simple. If you wanted to say...go make a million dollars, and you believed in yourself; chances are you'd go find a way to make a million dollars. Through your own belief in yourself you'd find the drive, determination, and discipline (the 3 D's, if you will. We'll discuss these later) to go achieve your million dollar dream. But if you sat there and put "limits" on yourself; "I don't have time to do this, or its too hard to find a good job, or I'm not educated enough to know how to do that" well you probably won't make that a reality. My response to these "limits" is; "make the time (you have personal time each day), take a job and work til you find a better one, and then a better one, and so on, or go to work for yourself! And if you're not educated then for crying out loud get educated! You don't HAVE to have a degree or even a diploma to be successful (some of the most successful entrepreneurs ever were high school and college dropouts, they just had enough belief in themselves and the 3 D's to make themselves successful) and what's stopping you from going to the library and checking out books on a subject you want to educate yourself on? " These limits aren't real limits, they're fears and excuses, nothing else! But this is exactly the type of self doubt that telss us to put "limits" on what we can and can't do. The truth is, most people are afraid of themselves. They're afraid to succeed. I know that sounds crazy but its true. Why you may ask are they afraid of success? Well it's not so much that they're afraid of succeeding, its that they're afraid to fail. Failure is something no one wants, but everyone will at somepoint fail. So instead of focusing on the rewards that could come with success, people will focus on the dooms and glooms of failing at something. This is truly what causes us to "limit" ourselves, our abilities, and our true potential for success (of any kind). Failing is ok though. Its good for us to fail, it will either strengthen our resolve or cause us to quit. Now the people that will be successful will just learn from their failure and try again. The ones that will ultimately never succeed will just say "well I tried oh welln I'm going to quit". This negative mindset is what must be destroyed in order for limits to be removed. The only true limits you have is the limit of what you're willing to do and what you're not willing to do. When you can remove self imposed limits and self doubt, then you will accomplish the things that you have set out to do and will achieve the successes that others thought "they just couldn't do".

A Book... by ME?

So I have been told by Shana about a hundred times that I should write a book. I always just figured she was just half serious. But over the course of the last few weeks I've been told that exact same thing by about a dozen more people. I don't think I'm qualified to do such a thing, so for the time being I will just post some "inspirational" (I use that word loosely) blogs and see how they are received, so please offer feedback. The first one will be here soon about happiness. Thanks.