1. Health – without health you have nothing.

2. Wealth – without wealth your life is made more difficult.

3. Happiness – you can have health wealth, but if you don’t have happiness it doesn’t matter.

4. You should be grounded – your feet always need to be on the ground, and you should realize you have limitations, and you should not make people angry. Be humble.

5. What service you can provide to others – your value in life is what you provide to others, this is where our spiritual side comes in.

He said if you aligned yourself to those basic five principals other things would fall into line. I know my life lately has had a lot of random struggles in it, and this seems to be what I needed to hear to help put things in perspective. I am hopeful that using these five principals will help eliminate the arguments that I feel I need to hang onto, so I can grasp other things in my life.

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
There are many areas that I don’t like about myself. So many I don’t hate myself, as I have gotten older I feel that there are limits in life, and I know that I won’t accomplish everything that I set out to do. I hate myself into falling into areas where I make the same mistakes over and over again. I have a couple of areas where in the midst of personal relationships I struggle in the same areas over and over. I wished that learning lessons was much simpler than what the reality is sometimes. I struggle because I am arrogant in thinking that this time it will be different. I underestimate, and then I load myself up with too much of something, and wonder why I struggle. Guess what, I will continue to do this over and over again. This is what I hate the most about myself, I seem to have the same struggle with people in different relationships.

Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.

Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.

Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.

Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.

Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.

Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.

Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.

Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.

Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.

Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.

Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.

Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)

Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)

Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.

Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.

Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.

Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.

Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?

Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.

Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?

Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.

Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.

Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)

Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.

Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?

Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?

Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?

Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.

Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

1. Google your name, be aware of where you show up, and how your name is being used. This is a double edged sword; you want your name to come up first when people search for your name. The best way to do this is to purchase a domain name with your name. You could set up a wordpress blog there; you could simply leave some basic contact information about yourself, or make it into a personal site. Keep in mind this is your public face, and don’t put anything there that may be potentially embarrassing.

2. Create online professional profiles – LinkedIn.com is a great way to do this. Connect with former and current co-workers, build a resume there, and make yourself visible professionally. Do not put up too much personally information on LinkedIn.com don’t place links to your vacation photos or the like there, keep yourself professional there.

3. Facebook – while everyone may be on Facebook, and Facebook is a wonderful way to connect to our friends, use with caution. You really can’t say anything you like on Facebook without others having access to what you say. Want to complain about the person in traffic, mind your language, want to make comments about your neighbor who has the dog that won’t stop barking, and be mindful in your comments. Funny jokes and comments are fun to engage in, but realize people have lost their jobs over what is posted on Facebook.

4. Online photos – remove any potentionally damaging photos online. There are a lot of photo services out there online that store your photos, but does anyone in the world need to see you drinking from a beer bong? No. Be aware of the photos you are tagged on Facebook, you can remove those tags from your profile, but be aware those photos may still exist somewhere else.

5. Want to remain semi anonymous? Get a separate email address to register to social networking sites, and be aware you can not reveal your true identity to anyone.

6. Watch your social media – be careful of what you tweet; realize that once a comment hits cyberspace, your comment is out there. Again, be mindful of what you discuss online, you never know when this may come back to haunt you.

Controlling your online presence is crucial for many reasons. You never want to isolate yourself from anyone based upon what you have written online. If you simply have a voice you need to express consider doing so anonymously. Things you may want to do to promote yourself are creating your own blog, keep it simple write about hobbies, and possibly charitable causes you are engaged in. Write thoughtful commentary that may be related to your professional life, be known for being an expert. Consider posting to questions others have on LinkedIn.com or creating good questions around your profession. Watch what photos are made available for everyone to see online, be mindful of what you post on Facebook. You have the ability to shape your online presence, and it is easy to do so with all of the social media, blogs, and Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, Stumbleupon, and Hubpages, that you can really use these to your benefit, and you can use them to show people about your skills and your abilities, so why not take that opportunity to do so?

1. Groom thyself – let’s make sure we are freshly showered, shaved, and our hair is neat. You would be surprised at how often people come into an interview smelling less than fresh. For interview days skip the perfume and cologne, you don’t know if the person that is going to interview you has an allergy, the objective is not to rule yourself out. Don’t stop and have a meal on your way, you may walk in smelling like fried chicken, or some other odor. Smokers be aware that smoke lingers on you and your clothing.

2. Clothes should be pressed and professional – make sure your clothes have been pressed, if you haven’t touched an iron, do so, if you don’t have an iron, bring a couple of outfits to a dry cleaners and have them press your clothes for you. Interviews aren’t the time to have wrinkled clothes, and be too casual. Dress professionally, don’t wear jeans, tank tops, stained clothing, or anything that has neon in it. You want to look like you fit in; you don’t want to look like you don’t belong.

3. Be on time – Don’t be late, really, don’t be late. Leave with enough time, to get lost once or even twice if you have never been there. If you need to drive out to where the interview is because you haven’t been there before, do so. Take the interviewers address, directions, and their phone number with you. Accidents can happen, if you are late due to circumstances beyond your control, call and let someone know the situation.

4. Don’t be too early. Be there 5 to 10 minutes early, any more is discourteous to the interviewer. You are wanting to interview, not look like you are desperate. The interviewer is likely to have a full schedule, don’t stress anyone out because you arrived there 30 minutes way too early. Bring a book; bring some notes about the company to brush up on before you begin your interview.

5. Know the company you are interviewing for, don’t ever walk in not knowing about the company you want to go work for. Search online on their website, about the company. Read their website, note their mission/vision statement, note their CEO, note what business segments they are in. In finance, read their financial statements. Do you know who you are interviewing with? If you do, look up your interviewers on linkedin.com, this way you can see where you may have commonality, you may have worked for the same company, you may have went to the same college, find common ground if possible.

6. Body Language – sit up straight look interested, lean in to your interviewer slightly. Don’t sit back with your arms crossed looking closed off. Watch your hand gestures, don’t point at your interviewer, it’s rude and unsettling, gestures with palms up makes you look open and trust worthy. Do not scowl at your interviewer, no matter what they say, put on your composed poker face, be calm and collected. If you need to fidget, pick up your pen; hold your pen in your hands. You may be nervous on the inside, but convey that you are calm and collected.

7. Practice the basics; everyone is going to ask you to talk about yourself. When this question is asked tell them about yourself to the extent that it relates to the job. If are a fireman, say you were a fireman, don’t say that you used to dance professionally for a living, don’t say what you did over the weekend, don’t talk about non-job related functions. This is the time you have to sell yourself, tell them how your skills, and how your enthusiasm would work well with the organization.

8. Make the interviewer at ease – they may not have had a lot of experience in interviewing previously. Don’t say just “yes” and just “no”, expand when appropriate, working in how you fit, and how your skills will help the organization. You may want to consider some small talk, for example you may want to note their class ring, you may note a picture that they have, and make a light comment. You are likely to be more at ease if you know that you have some commonality, you may want to simply ask where are you from, how long have you been part of this organization.

9. Bring extra resumes – you may want to have one to refer to when you are going over your resume, you can pass out extra copies if needed. Also consider bringing a sheet of accomplishments with you, chances are you may forget a couple of your accomplishments and you want to get across the job you can do. You may also want to pass out the sheet of accomplishments to the interviewer, and let them look over what else you can do.

10. Bring insightful questions – ask about the organization, the culture, ask why did this job opening become created, ask what factors are needed by the candidate to bring a real success to the role. Be enthused; never walk away from an interview without asking questions. Bring 3 or 4 questions with you, failure to ask questions gives the impression you aren’t interested.

Interviewing is a daunting task, chances are, you may be nervous. Relax there are many things you can do so you can feel at ease when you walk into an interview. Groom, be clean and neat, wear freshly ironed clothes that are appropriate for the position you are interviewing with. Do some homework on the company you want to interview with, look at the website, their financial statements, if you know who is interviewing you, look them up on LinkedIn, or Google. Make sure the person who is interviewing you is comfortable, answer with complete sentences, and make them feel at ease. Don’t be too early, and definitely do not show up too late, be respectful of their time. Watch your body language, don’t convey you are disinterested, and be engaged. Come with questions; prepare your questions ahead of time. Interviewing is difficult, but going in with good preparation puts you ahead of many others. Pick off and eliminate anything that may put up a barrier between you and the interviewer ahead of time, this list of 10 things HR won’t tell you is a good start for interviewing success.

1. Writing gives clarity to our thoughts.
2. Writing teaches us to see how we think.
3. Writing teaches us how words communicate meaning.
4. Writing helps us to develop a voice that is natural, consistent, strong, and confident.
5. Writing teaches to manage our internal editor.
6. Writing gives us the opporunity to share our strength.
7. Writing inspires your readers and your responders.

Michael Ruhlman, really emphasized sitting down in the same place, and spending the same amount of time engaged into posting. I would like to be able to say I do that. I personally think that in exercising that writing muscle I do become a better writer. So it is my goal to write everyday whether in a journal, or a post online. I would urge you to do the same if you want to become a better writer. I ran across this quote, again, source unknown, that stated something that went like this … “you are always a messenger for someone. When you leave projects undone you deprive someone of their light.”

Intersting Links:
Michael Ruhlman’s website

After having moved across the country twice, in a short period of time, I have decided I needed to reduce my quantities of books. I have been in the process of donating books to the library when I can, and to friends, or anyone that will drop by my house, and wants to pick up a book. Thankfully the library takes magazines, they sell them to raise money to buy books for the library. I am still needing to weed down on the books that I have. The love of reading won’t stop, but the quantity of books needs to slow down.

She notes that the last 7 aren’t terribly horrible, but that you shouldn’t go on and on about these subjects because others do not want to hear about such subjects at length.    After going over everything that you shouldn’t say, what should you talk about?

• weather
• hobbies and interests
• classes you are taking
• sports
• art
• history
• music
• movies you have seen recently
• programs on TV

Limiting office conversation limits the amount of exposure you have regarding your personal life.  While some co-workers may become lifelong friends, the reality of the situation is that you don’t want to give people opportunity to dislike you, to single you out, or even to limit your chances at a promotion.  So mind what you say in the office, keep conversations pleasant, and limit your conversation topics.

Akismet – helps to prevent spam bots from posting on your site.  You will need to register with them, and get your code.  This is helpful to keep most spam bots from posting comments on your blog.  If you don’t allow comments, well I really don’t consider you a blog, as you don’t allow for two way communication.
ALL in One SEO Pack – INSTALL THIS ONE !!!!!!!! USE IT !!!!!!! While WordPress is optimized for search engine optimization, this plugin will help search engines narrow down what is important.  One of the things I like best on this plugin is you can have WordPress title your page one thing, and you can title the page for SEO optimization as something else.
Bad Behavior – helps screen out assholes who post spam on your site before akismet would catch it, so you could possibly do without akismet, but while I have never had anything go through this, but there is always a first time.
Digg Digg – puts on big buttons for people to share something on facebook or twitter

Easy Contact – easy contact form to install
Google Analyticator – after you sign up at google analytics, and google webmaster, add this plugin to help install that code on your site
Similar Posts – will pull up other posts on your site at the bottom of your current post that may be related
Twitter Tools – let people see what you are tweeting, I don’t recommend posting your tweets from this application though
Wordpress Data Back up – emails you a back up as often as you like, automatically
WP-DBManager – you can set up chron jobs so the site will automatically optimize your data tables, this does so from the dash board, and not the back end.
WP Security Scan – helps from unauthorized folks taking control of your site.  Be careful with this installation, READ the instructions carefully.
WP-Post Ratings – let folks rate your posts if you like
XML Sitemaps – Install for google to make an XML site map, this means nothing to you, but everything to google.. 

I am sure from time to time I will have more recommended plugins, but these are the ones I have suggested over and over again.  Do you have any preferred plugins?

E-Harmony was my least favorite dating system.  There are several reasons why I found E-Harmony less than satisfying.  First off these commercials would lead you to believe that every time someone joins their service that you are going to find your perfect match.  They match you on like a zillion compatibilities.  In my experience we had similar likes and dislikes, but that doesn’t account for the baggage that they come with.  First off I will say I got matched to literally hundreds of others around where I live.  You would think that is wonderful, awesome, it is!   The problem with being match with the people there, is that chances are who you are getting matched with isn’t a member, so they will never respond to you.  Nice.

For me, for every 100 persons I was matched to resulted in an actual date.  Not a relationship, but a date. I was matched with nice respectible, employeed people.  My problem with this is the results are demoralizing.  100 matches to 1 date.  The numbers just aren’t in your favor.  People close out on you long before you would ever figure out you were or were not compatible.  So we will move past there, my first date with someone on E-Harmony was with a recovering alcoholic.  I personally did not have a problem with someone that was trying to recover from an addiction.  I had a problem with that person requesting to meet in a bar, and then telling me this after I started drinking my drink.  How was I to know this was a sensitive issue?

My next date was with a nationally ranked Go-Player, being a bit if a nerd, yeah, I know what this is, but I am not a Go-Player.  We had a wonderfully awkward lunch, and then really didn’t know what to talk about, so I asked him about this game.  I learned, or rather I was told more than I ever wanted to know.  He was a nice person, there was no chemistry. 

My third date with someone I met on E-Harmony, was another nice professional man. Intelligent, sense of humor, a professional working man.  I thought yes, this will work.  We went on our first date, and then suddenly he asked how our relationship was going.  Relationship?  Relationship?  It was a first date, a first date hardly counts as a relationship.  I tried to exit out of that one ASAP. 

My frustration with E-Harmony is their matching process.  The fact that you get matched to other people, I am sure that many of them are nice, and wonderful people.  Since they aren’t members, you will never meet them.  I really found that out of 100 matches, one connection moved onto a first date.  I thought this was frustrating.  So at this point I really don’t highly recommend this service.  If you are looking for a place where you can be exposed to lots of potential people I would go with Match.com or another site with greater visibility.  You want a place where you have a chance at optimizing your chance for connections.  Personally for me, the 1 in 100 odds isn’t good enough for me to recommend their service to others.

This book covers a great range of alternative therapies. Relaxation, diet, nutritional suppliments, and exercise are just a few of the recommended activities that are mentioned in this book. All therapies that are covered in this book are well known therapies and if you want to learn more this is a great