This has to have been one of the stranger weeks and maybe even month’s I’ve had in a very long time. Characterized by stress, negative energy and yet somehow all coupled with one of the most exciting times in my life – it’s called NOW. I finished reading The Great Gatsby last night. I had always wanted to actually read that book and I finally did. I am and have really always been fascinated by people who have a lot of money. Particularly “old money”. The nouveau riche have always turned me off and one of the concerns lurking in the back of my mind for as long as I’ve known the meaning of that term is that if I ever acquired considerable wealth in my own lifetime I would be considered one of them. The saving grace here is that even if by definition I have ever become one of them doesn’t mean I have to act like one. The nouveau riche have a need to show off their money. It stems from insecurity – it has to. Why else would someone need the world to know how much money they have? I hope I can eventually be one of those millionaires or even billionaires that you would never know was one. Then I just want to have the opportunity to help people. I have had this dream for a long time now that I have so much money that I can go into 3rd world countries, build schools and provide computers and books and everything they need to get the same kinds of opportunities that we have here, if they want them!
The funny thing about the internet and blogging is that you have this great opportunity to express yourself and show your thoughts and feelings to the world. The downside of this is that those thoughts and feelings often involve other people. People who may read your thoughts and feelings and get offended. Imagine a world where we could actually express ourselves and even if we are expressing a negative opinion about another person, that person would actually have enough self-esteem to realize something I heard a long time ago that took me a really long time to wrap my head around. That other people’s opinions of me are none of my business. Just the same my opinion is my business! Oh and another thing.. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET!!!! It’s the internet. That’s like asking for privacy at a train station. If you put it out there is it not private. Even if you send a message “privately” you’ve put it out there and if the recipient chooses to they can share it with others. If a hacker wants the information badly enough they’ll get it and most likely if you share something negative about someone else it WILL get back to them. Generally speaking it creates really bad energy when you speak negatively of others, and if you’ve done any reading of any self-help books in the past 20 years then you know that these things have a way of coming back to you. So instead of focusing on the people, places and things you have negative opinions about focus on the ones you have good feelings about. You will feel better because you will be focusing your thoughts on things that make you feel good.
Murphy’s Law – Whatever can go wrong will go wrong!..
So what happened to me this past week, or month? I have no idea. There wasn’t enough money coming in even though I was working as hard as ever, my clients weren’t paying fast enough and of course everybody wants everything done right away! Why do I have to do the work right away and then wait to get paid?! This makes no sense to me. My own bookkeeper pays my bills (a big plus about having a bookkeeping service is that we get to pay our own bills J). She missed 2 invoices from my biggest client! I scheduled a webinar which I felt had really good content! Chris Brogan can put out a webinar with simple overviews of the new Google+ and generate $15K in revenue. I put out a webinar designed to show you something of real value – how to calculate your return on investment in social media and I get one signup! I am grateful for that one signup and the person who signed up is wonderful. She is fast becoming a good friend that I’ve made right here on the internet but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed in the turnout over all! My dogs started fighting with each other and then one of them, Ralphy turned on my wife and attacked her. Ralphy had a puncture wound on his neck from Xena and my wife has a puncture wound on her leg from Ralphy! Meanwhile early this past week I decided I had to do something different about the fact that it had been weeks since I had been able to get up and do the insanity workout. So I pulled out my iPod and did my guided meditation before going to sleep. Sure enough I had a great night’s sleep and I got up and started the workout. A few minutes in.. I blew my calf out! I Could barely walk. Here I was trying to do something really good for myself and it completely backfires. Then yesterday we were headed out to my mother-in-law’s for the weekend which we try and do about once/month. On the way there I had a follow up call with one of the worst clients I have EVER had the DIS-pleasure of working with. One of these who it seems will just never go away. She will suck the life out of me until there is none left and then she’ll tell me my efforts weren’t worth what she spent. I would walk away now but I have to make her whole. She claims and invoice on her books should be showing as paid and it isn’t and this is (presumably) based on the work I did for her. I thought about it later and remembered that I had reviewed her receivables with her and she confirmed that it was accurate. Oh well. One more session remotely should clear It up and then I will never ever work with her again. Ever! Did I mention.. NEVER?!! I am sure this contributed to my negative state and the ball of negative energy that must have been going around me for the past month or so. We arrived at my mother-in-law’s yesterday and within about 15 minutes HER dog attacked Xena. We had to take her immediately back up to Burbank to our vet. She had multiple puncture wounds around her neck, on her leg and even in her crotch area! On our way home my wife and I discussed all of this recent insanity and we both agreed to work on “our” parts. To figure out a way to stay positive. It’s hard when you feel like you are living a life of “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
By the time we dropped Xena off at the vet and returned home something shifted inside of me. I felt a very rare desire to not speak. In truth underneath the surface I was pissed! Why was this all happening? What had changed? I am usually so positive and so upbeat about everything that is going on around me. Am I unhappy? Have I just been burying it all and out of touch with my true feelings? That doesn’t sound right to me, I’ve been sober 12 years and the process of recovery has taught me to be in constant contact with my feelings. It’s important for me because if I ever get into enough emotional pain for a long enough period of time and I don’t do something about it, that is when I run the risk of relapse. You would think after 12 years there would be no chance I would ever go back to drugs and alcohol, and the reality is that for me these days, I know the chances of that ever happening are slim to none. Still I cannot ignore the fact that people who were sober a lot longer than me have relapsed. So what was I going to do different? I had just used the phrase in my webinar yesterday morning to my one attendee that if we want something to change then we have to do something different.
I was already planning on making a change. I packed 2 bathing suits for our trip this weekend to my mother-in-laws. So I reached for my gym bag and headed off to the gym to go for a swim. There was no reason why I could not still make this change.
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Well the good news was that I did something positive. I made it to the gym. The bad news is bittersweet. You see I’ve lost 35 lbs in the past year and I haven’t done much swimming during that time. So I put on my bathing suit and realized it is very loose. What’s worse is the tie for the suit is just about the worst construct for a bathing suit I have ever encountered in my entire life. The string doesn’t go around your waist so it really does no job at all of tightening anything. More of the same – another one of my plans this week seems to have backfired. I didn’t care at this point. I said fuck it! I am at least going to try and get in the pool and swim, even if I have to go slow to make sure my suit doesn’t come completely off! I had to go really slow and stop to pull up my suit after each lap, but I did it! I swam laps and the worst that may have happened is that someone walking around the pool migh have mistaken me for a plumber with the top of my butt crack in sight! Well they can KISS my ass! When I returned home after a comforting bite at IN & Out (sorry Laura!) which I desperately needed at this point because I had not eaten all day and I was still pissed about everything, I tried on another bathing suit to be sure that today’s swim would go better. Success, this one’s draw string actually does pull the waist tight. So this is what I am going to do differently. I am going to swim every single day. Everyone else in the world will just have to wait for whatever it is they are counting on my for.
The lesson
The heart pumps blood to itself first. If it didn’t do that we would die and then the heart would be of no use to the rest of our body. I am the heart of all of the people around me in my life. I can help them, but I must take care of myself first in order that I can then go out and be of maximum service to others!
So when I make my millions of course all of my problems will go away, right? I will never have to worry about clients paying on time because there will always be plenty of money around and I can just pay all of my bills without having to worry about t thing, right? Not really. If there is one really important thing I’ve learned so far in my life is that perspective has everything to do with how we are feeling at any given moment. Reality plays a very small part. I can be in a situation that realistically should have me estatic and I will ruin it for myself with the wrong perspective. On the other hand I can be faced with the worst economic situation of my life and I can cure it with the right perspective – that no matter what is going on around me, today I am going to be ok. I will have food on my table, a roof over my head and comfortable clothes to wear for the day. This already puts me ahead of the game, making me one of the wealthiest people in the world. There will always be people much wealthier than me unless I become the wealthiest person in the world and that is by no means my goal. Then again, going back to the topic of perspective I guess that really depends on how you define “wealth”. Could be that person who is TRULY the wealthiest is the one who is most grateful for what (s)he has right now!
