In anticipation of my trip to speak at and attend Blog World LA next week I am using this time to talk to myself (and others) about what will be important for me to pay attention to while I am there.
Today is all about ‘The Plan’.
I find it hard to do all the things necessary to have a commercially successful blog. I do a lot, but it hasn’t been quite enough yet. One of my goals this year, and in particular at Blog World in LA next week, is to learn better, to learn again, the art of planning in social media and blogging. Of course to do that I need to plan it. So, I am learning how to plan by making my plan to learn how to plan. Sounds like I need help!
What tips and tricks do you have for me and my readers when it comes to planning, especially in the world of blogging, social media and conference attendance?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Last night I gave a trial run of the presentation I am giving at Blog World LA in November. Its title is ‘The Six Stop Signs on Creativity Road’. I didn’t quite make it down to 6, I had 8 instead. but I will get there. One of the stop signs involves worrying about people being better than you. That is a paralyzer. But just is bad is thinking you are better than others.
Now, I don’t mean the thought should never enter your mind. If you win a race, you realize you are better than others in that race. What matters is if you publicize that ‘betterness’ just to pump yourself up or to push the other person down. When that happens it is one person rubbing the other person’s nose in their inferiority. When that happens to you, your estimation of the other person doesn’t go up, it goes down. And when you extol your own superiority, it might build you up in your own mind, but it doesn’t build you up in anyone else’s.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily Quote by Anonymous
I have known a lot of people over the years who take pride in saying, “I am honest, I say what I think.” These people fall into two categories. Those who say it but don’t really do it as much as the comment might suggest, and those who really do it.
Those in the first category are people who use what is called discernment. They have the ability to speak honestly, to say what they think, when it is wise and appropriate to do so. The can be a person’s best friend because you can rely on them to tell you the truth without being stupid or mean.
Those in the second category are those who love the brutality in ‘brutal honesty’ more than the honesty. They aren’t anyone’s best friend because whatever honesty they have is so tinged with meanness and a lack of discernment that they can’t be trusted or relied upon.
Those people are usually cocksure and bellicose in defense of their honesty. They also are woefully ignorant of who they really are and obsessively mean in their character assassinations disguised as ‘truth’. I don’t like those people unless they are on reality TV, then I like watching them as a warning to myself and as a psychological study in self-destructive behavior and attitudes.
Do you know people like that? Do you agree with my characterization of them? What would you add or subtract?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily Quote by Anonymous
This is a tricky idea because you really don’t know what you have escaped, do you? I mean, you know physically what you have escaped to some degree. You know if you had fallen off that cliff instead of that pregnant nudist hiker you would very likely get a whole bunch of broken bones, scrapes, cuts, and probably more. But do you know everything you might have escaped? What if the pregnant nudist hiker met the love of her life in the form of the paramedic who treated her? What if she wrote a book about her accident and her transformation from pregnant nudist hiker to world renowned Doctor of Broken Bones and became wealthy from speaking on the Broken Bone conference circuit? What if when she fell she actually landed on a beached whale no one had seen and because of her the whale was rescued and put back to sea?
So, what I am saying is this quote should be ignored, right? No, I am not saying that. I am saying whether you escape something or don’t, you have the choice to be content and grateful. You have the choice to find the good in whatever it is you experience. You can be grateful you escaped death and the baby was safe or you can focus on how unfair life is that it allowed you to fall. You can be grateful you met a great paramedic or be angry at how long it took him to get to you. You can be grateful the whale was there to soften your fall or annoyed by how smelly the whale is.
What has happened recently that you chose to be grateful and content with instead of angry and annoyed? How did that affect the rest of your day?
I had a comment this morning on Friday’s napkin, the 5th in my series on Personal Finance. It was about retirement. The commenter (Betsy, the Zen Mama) talked about her father being about to retire and having no money and a house worth nothing. He is going to have to get a new job, but can’t find one yet. I hadn’t visited her blog recently so I went to take a look. She had a list of 25 gratitude quotes as her latest blog entry. This one caught my eye and mind. She’s a cool Zen Mama, you should check out her blog.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily Quote by Anonymous
If you can, it’s a great benefit to your children to teach them about money management. But if you don’t do it perfectly, or at all, you can still help them understand it as adults. But to do that you really have to have your own personal finances in pretty good order first. And that is a good thing because the last thing you want is for your children to learn about personal finances only when they see you broke and at the end of your years.
Hello to all my Napkin Kin around the world! I have an unfinished quote for you to finish today.
I left out the final word of this quote. I want you to tell me what you think that word is. I don’t mean what you think the correct word is in the original quote. I mean what do YOU think the word should be. No use cheating since I am not interested in the ‘right answer, just your answer.
Put your answer in the comments so others can see and comment.
I am at the edge of ‘Public Speaking Week’ at the NDD!
Speakers have authority. People tend to believe anyone up on a pedestal, altar, dias, podium or stage. Anyone with a microphone, basically. My keynote speech last week was on ‘Change’. I started the presentation with a series of slides explaining my eminent qualifications as an expert in change. They included a photo of when I was younger and when I was older. Photos of when I had hair, and now that I don’t. Photos of me before I had kids, and now that I do.
It was meant to be humorous and it was followed by the statement that if those things made me an expert, then all of my audience were also experts in change. I then proceeded to give some examples from my personal experiences of change and what I learned from them.
The truth is, the reason I was qualified to talk about change isn’t because I have a degree in it. And it’s not even because I have lived it. It’s because I have thought about it. In the end, the experts are those who study. Those who do the research; who examine, investigate, dig, ask questions, evaluate, ponder and ultimately are able to come up with some conclusions.
They aren’t conclusions set in stone, they are conclusions so far in the journey of discovery. That is what we should always remember about listening to authority, i.e. anyone with a microphone and a stage of some sort. They may be persuasive and compelling, but in the end, YOU have to decide whether you believe them. You have to look out in front of you for that cliff because after all, the person talking is looking back at you, not at the path in front.
It may not matter to you, but it matters to the donut. Well, if the donut was alive I mean. And if it had a brain and thought about things I mean. And if it could contemplate the cosmos and infinity and eternity and mortality and stuff I mean.
I mean, if a donut was like you, what would its answer be?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
You know the saying, ‘All good things must come to an end’. And it is true. But the napkin quote today is also true, ‘All bad things must come to an end, too.’
We have had a wicked week of weather. The town of Joplin, Missouri is only 125 miles from my town. As most of America knows, it got hit a few days ago by the most damaging tornado ever measured in the last 60 years. There are 123 less people in that town today, all killed by the tornado. Yesterday the weather situation in Oklahoma was terrible as well. 8 people died in the Oklahoma City area, about 100 miles from Tulsa.
That sort of destruction and life loss is a terrible thing, a bad thing, to live through, witness, experience or just watch. But just as good things don’t last forever, these bad things are now passed as well. The damage lingers, but new life and new determination to overcome emerges.
In our case we were very lucky. Storms passed but didn’t have the ability to suck in enough energy to become tornadic. We had our emergency plan, which included bolting across the street to our neighbor’s underground storm shelter if a tornado was coming. Luckily that was not the case, though we did spend about 15 minutes in our bathroom with our pets just to be sure.
In the bathroom, riding out the storm.
Emergency supplies!
Our freaked out pets waiting out the storm with us.
