TweetWagon Blog

Updates from June, 2009

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  Motivated By The Sky

  TweetWagon 9:27 pm on May 31, 2009 | Add a comment Permalink | Reply
  Tags: beauty, life, Motivation (2), save money, squander, wonder

  

  The Sky 5/31/09

  I was living my seemingly unending busy life Sunday and stepped outside to take my dog out. I was tensely aware of the short paper I have due in a class I am taking at 8:00am the next day. I was aware of all the things I needed to do for the TweetWagon site and blog to get the week started. I was aware of many other responsibilities which were mangling my appreciation for life. Then I looked up.

  I looked up and saw a vast light blue sky with some giant fluffy white, orange, and pink cumulus clouds slowly and quietly drifting by in the glow of the evening sunset. I just stared. I had a quiet voice inside me remind me that there is something to that beautiful overlooking sky that I should not ignore. But what was it?

  I stared and thought. What beauty. How lovely that we can be wrapped up in the responsibilities of life and whenever we need to we can just step outside and look up to find peaceful beauty ever looking down at us. It is a reminder that there are good things in life always waiting to be appreciated even when we don’t see them in the heat of the moment.

  Good things like cloudy skies, childhood memories, the thought of a loved one, fresh air, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  Now, I could mention that by utilizing our services at TweetWagon you can save money as a consumer and have more money in your pocket with which to enjoy life, or make money as a business and be able to further enjoy life. I could mention that we should be thankful for what we have, including money, and, by using TweetWagon, you will not squander your money by paying more for products and services than you have to.

  But I think instead I will mention an article I read today on the Reuters website about a woman named Felicity Chapman. Felicity was a woman who had a need.  She needed to go back to work after the birth of her child, but also valued the freedom to only work part time to be with her child. She had a problem when she found that it was difficult to work when her availability was so limited.

  This is where the lesson of the ability to ‘look up’ at the sky and enjoy life comes in. There is a difference between someone who lives the mundane life of the status quo, never living life to the fullest nor appreciating the wonder in every breath and someone like Felicity Chapman.

  Felicity recognized her need and saw it as a marketable business idea. So instead of crying the “woe is me” tune, she became proactive and changed her situation. She started a business and created a working office space/daycare center with flexible childcare services. Moms and dads can use the office space to work while keeping their kids at the daycare in the same building. We hope to list her on our site, but that is not my main point.  I want to help motivate you to live ‘looking up’.

  Felicity symbolically ‘looked up’. She remembered that life is to be enjoyed not be enslaved by. I want to put her out there as an example that should encourage all of our readers that there is a wonderment in life that is to be enjoyed. So if there is some dream or goal that you have ignored and not pursued then sit down right now and devise a plan to pursue it. If you can’t think of any then you should start by realizing that you should have some goals to pursue. Then pursue them.

  We can live our lives looking down at our circumstances; or we can live our lives with our eyes open and ‘look up’, remembering that there is always beauty around us to appreciate, and we are squandering it if we fail to see it and behold it.

   

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  Making It Happen

  TweetWagon 11:15 am on May 23, 2009 | Add a comment Permalink | Reply
  Tags: entrepreneur, Motivation (2), success

  It so common to hear of rags to riches success stories in the media.  You even often find them regarding things like weight loss these days.  There is the Biggest Loser show where people that have been overweight their whole lives finally learn how to, indeed, even successfully accomplish, losing hundreds of pounds of weight.  It is common to hear of the regular Joe or Jane living a wasted life, addicted to spending, debt, laziness, and lack of motivation, finally “seeing the light” or “turning on a switch” where they suddenly become motivated and successful in a relatively short period of time. 

  It often seems that these people have an internal switch that has been in the ‘off’ mode and they suddenly figured out how to switch it to ‘on’.  I have often found myself asking the question, “How can they live their entire life as a certain kind of person, mediocre in life at best, and then suddenly find themselves motivated, diligent and successful?”

  I think about myself and how I have struggled with eating healthy my whole life, and how I have never figured out how to have enough self-discipline to exercise regularly.  I think about how I have always had good intentions with getting ahead financially, but have always found myself in an ever deepening hole of debt. 

  Then I took a basic physical education class at my university, and committed to start a business/website with a vision of success with my brother.  I regularly encounter obstacles in my pursuit of success in these two endeavors.  In the p.e. class, I encounter regular difficulties that one would expect a twenty eight year old man to encounter who has not exercised or eaten healthy for the past ten years. 

  Regarding the website, there is the difficulty of making time to give to the business.  And as I have fought to remain wholly committed to success in these two adventures in my life, I stumbled upon the difference between the regular Joe who never excels in that one area which he has always failed at and the regular Joe whose ’switch’ is turned ‘on’ and does finally excel.  The difference is true commitment.

  That may seem too simple but it is not.  You see, it is not like I have struggled to make time for the business because I am necessarily lazy, or because there are futile things which I enjoy pursuing even more than building a successful business. 

  No. In fact, the things that distract me from making time for our business are very good things in life.  Things like getting good grades in college classes and spending quality time with my wife and son, loving them and serving them on a daily basis.  However, I came to a realization that if I want to be a regular Joe who turns into a successful Joe then I have to be truly committed to that which will make me successful.  Once I am truly committed then I will make the difficult sacrifices in my daily life that I need to make to be successful.

  Of course success can be defined in many different ways.  And so I will qualify what I mean by the word success by defining it as: every possible way one can be successful in this life.

  The difference between the regular Jane who never succeeds and the regular Jane who figures out how to turn the switch to on is that the latter Jane is truly committed to getting that switch turned. 

  Once she is truly committed then she forces herself to make time for the things that she needs to make time for in order to be successful.  If that means she wants to be a successful mother, then she forces herself to care for and spend quality time with her children, planning out each day how she can invest in their life.  If success means she wants to lose thirty pounds, then she researches what kind of food she should be eating, what kind of exercises she should be doing, and writes out a plan and schedule of how she will execute her weight loss. Then each day she chooses to execute that plan.  The difference with successful Jane or Joe is that they every day they choose to invest in their goal to be successful.

  So now I ask you…What are your goals for success?  What things in your life do you see others around you succeeding at that you wish you could but don’t believe you could also succeed at.  Do you want to grow your business?  Do you want to lose weight?  Do you want to be debt free and have a cash reserve to use at your own discretion?  Do you want to go to college?  Change careers?  Run for political office?  Invite your neighbors over for dinner?  Be more devoted to your religion? 

  The thing that is stopping you from being successful is not your inability to do those things, but your lack of being truly committed to them.  You have to choose to define yourself, not let your past or your friends, family, and enemies define you.  The switch is simpler to turn on than you think.