In order to write Pay What It's Worth, my first book of what I hope is many books, I needed to trick myself into not...
Business from the inside out
Cultural Creativity Articles
Helpful Creative Feedback
Helpful creative feedback is encouraging, sensitive, honest, and constructive. Creating is an arduous process that...
Practicing With Pain
If the pain is going to be there either way, why would I choose to feel it? If I feel it, I can actually heal it. If I...
5 Tips for Finding Your Signal and Creating a Web Presence to Support It
[tweetmeme] I wrote this post for my friend and fellow Innerpreneur, Tim Bursh. He blogs on Social Impact, Social Media and Community. I encourage you to read the article in it’s entirety.
5 Tips for Finding Your Signal
- Accept that there is no demand for your message.
- Express your point-of-view.
- The more valuable your signal, the stronger it will be.
- It’s a table for two.
- Share.
Looking for more guidance than this? Read the whole article. The context around these 5 tips is what really matters.
photo credit: Andres Rueda
The Truth About Compromise
[tweetmeme] I’ve noticed that people often use the word “compromise” not in relation to a mutual concession or a trade, but to describe the betrayal of their principles, the surrender of their belief to the groundless claim of another.
A “compromise” in this instance could be a wife’s surrender to her husband’s irrational demands for social conformity or pretended religious observance. Or a writer creating books to please “the public”, against their own judgment and standards.
Let’s make a deal
A compromise, by definition, is an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions. That means both parties in the compromise have some valid claims and some value to offer each other.
You’ve Got the Mind of An Entrepreneur Whether You Like It or Not
[tweetmeme]
It’s true
No matter what you’re doing, whether you’re a therapist, coach, or artist, if you’re selling products or services, you’re an entrepreneur. It’s a mindset, not a title.
An entrepreneurial-minded person comes up with creative avenues to generate income. It doesn’t matter how they do it or what they know when they undertake it. All that matters is that they are building a system to make money.
The Duty to Stay Connected
[tweetmeme]
We’ll connect when I’m good and ready
Why do we feel that it is our duty to be available whenever someone wants us? I am working to relinquish myself from this self-imposed duty to stay connected.
I like to connect, but I am not easy to connect with. Relatively speaking.
I don’t list my phone number and most phone calls are left for the machine to answer. I don’t own a smart phone and my emails are read and answered twice a day. I’m not on FaceBook. And I rarely instant message.
Wal-Mart’s Leading a New Parade
I used to have a serious problem with Wal-Mart. It rudely assaulted my value-based beliefs with it’s focused and crude quest for “cheap”. They seemed to knew the cost of things, but not their value.
Marvel at the Meaningful Capitalism spectacle
In July, Wal-Mart changed the “cheap” game forever, rolling out an environmental labeling program that makes it mandatory for every product to be labelled with the environmental costs of making it.
What’s The Point?
Do you ever wonder that sometimes? I wonder do on my darker days. I wonder what’s the point of caring about things that most people don’t give a shit about. Sometimes I wonder if I would be more at peace if I suddenly stopped paying attention.
I wonder what’s the point of being committed t0 a problem when so may others are not taking action.
It’s Like Pulling Teeth to Find Authentic Help
My old dentist was very clear on her bottom line. She didn’t hide it well. Each time she saw me she focused on what she could get from me not on what I needed. Mouth guards, teeth whitening and gum graphs were the name of her game. It was always what was wrong with my teeth, not what was right.
I decided to switch dentists.
Being treated like a walking dollar sign got old. Being treated without her full attention got old. Being kept in the dark on my health got old. She kept her knowledge tight to her chest, never daring to share what she knew with her patients. She did not believe in empowering her patients by fostering their learning about their own dental health. She wanted to maintain the chasm of expert and ignorant client for she saw it as a means to influence opinion and encourage uneducated decisions, often based upon fear.
You’re Drowning In A Sea of People
As author Thomas Friedman illuminated in his books, The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded, the world is increasingly becoming more hot (global warming, etc.), flat (simple knowledge dissemination) and crowded (rapidly growing world population).
The middle class in the Eastern world grows daily. In the 80’s and 90’s alone, 200 million people entered the middle class in India and China alone. Twelve years from now there will be 1 billion more people on the planet than there is today – that’s 1 billion more people competing for work and resources. It’s a bit scary to think about… if the world feels crowded to you now, just wait a few decades.
Get Real
Why is it that ‘being realistic’ is synonymous with being pessimistic? Why is being negative being real? Who decided that life is actually cruel and unkind?
Who determined that being an optimist was the antithesis of being a realist? I know, I know, being an optimist means I’m in lala land. Get real, people. Your thoughts (both conscious and unconscious) dictate the reality of your life.