Success: A Matter Of Perspective by Calvin Harris H.W., M

After four decades in Life Coaching and Personal Development training, I’ve discovered a person’s propensity for success or failure can be measured with 90% accuracy by looking for just three things in their conversations.

Those are Self Sabotage; Self Doubt;  Self Image.

In other words, how they see themselves in their world.

During my years in Self Development Training, I have seen how All of us see the world differently, and how that can change over one’s lifetime, and the importance of being able to pick yourself up when you fall down, to regroup and move forward. Sometimes help is needed.

I’ve seen with the help of life coaches, that people can get to the place where the world is abundant with opportunity for self-fulfillment, rather than struggle and heartbreak. Most importantly, to get to that place of deep connection within oneself.

It is most important to get to that deep connection, which is how we will interpret, and how we will see ourselves and our world. This ability to change one’s mind is what life coaching is about. Because it is the mindset change that has the most impact on one’s being.

You can develop the courage and self-belief to move past struggle, disappointment, and heartbreak.

This is not done through shortcut methods, that will promise to handle these limiting behaviors once and for all and within the shortest time. It is through a willingness to give yourself a gift of time and play, not a concept of work to achieve your aims,  but instead a mindset of play to discover and achieve results.

 What you need is to gain the PRINCIPLES  of self-transformation and the coaching that brings into accountability those actions that top-performers use.

 This Play, a rethink form of training, focuses exactly on the principles that have helped me and have gone on to help my personal clients and students discover how they could level up and achieve the unexpected life that they could create for themselves, that goes beyond what they set out to create, without a sense of drudgery.

If this piques your interest, as a possible path, to create freedom from limitations and build a thriving and impactful life for yourself, then contact me at the email below.

⇒ things2cal@gmail.com

Texting Is Not Efficient

TEXTING May Not Be What it is Cracked Up To Be

By Calvin Harris H.W., M.

I know what an odd subject for me to be writing on, since I am a person that does not like to text, nor normally use that form of communication when there is any way around it.

How I have come to write a blog on the subject is because of the numerous comments directed towards me regarding texting, and then one of you, my dear readers, has requested me to write something on the subject.

I accept the challenge.

Let me start by pointing out the obvious.

Texting makes it hard to distinguish the tone of the conversation, making all communication much less formal and can even make genuine statements seem insincere. Also, Texting, by its very nature, encourages—poor grammar habits, (As If mine aren’t bad enough).

Here are some of the problems with texting:

1.  Because I enjoy face to face conversations,  texting as well as other forms of written  messaging cannot accurately convey oral speech tone, emotion, eye contact, facial expressions, or body language. That means without them, a message is more likely to be misinterpreted or misunderstood. The real meaning of your message can be lost through the medium.

2.  Humans, I feel, are simply not wired for constant digital communication. Texting is having a negative effect on interpersonal development among young people. When people communicate primarily via text, they're much less likely to have meaningful spoken conversations.

3.  Students who text regularly, using adaptations of words such as "u" for "you" and "r" for "are", tend to have trouble with grammar and spelling.

4.  Text speak encourages greater misuse of words/symbols denoting the same sound or group of sounds as standard words(homophones), they are seen as abbreviations, such as "gr8" for "great" or "h8" for "hate," or, they negatively impact correct word use, such as  not being able to tell "there" from "their."

5.  All too often, relationships go sour due to miscommunication via text as well as through email messages. To keep this from happening, simply avoid using these mediums and rather have important conversations through a more preferred communication medium, such as face-to-face conversations or over the phone.

6.  Texting and using abbreviations for words means that we are avoiding the traditional face-to-face conversations that are vital in forming deep personal relationships and better business practices.

7.  More than two-thirds of users never experience an hour of uninterrupted concentration to their day or workflow. If a text stream begins, interruptions can happen as often as every 6 minutes.

8.  For business users, average time spent in text volleys can easily reach 150 or more text messages per day.

Being a bit older than 20-something, and being a busy person with personal life and business matters to attend to, I find that many texts that I have received make no sense to me, or even may have been designed for someone else; thus, what appears in the box are mistakes. The Message may have been hurriedly written or the “send to” button hurriedly selected while the sender was on the go.

You do not have to Admit it to me but maybe you, yourself, are guilty of distractedly dashing off the occasional friend’s text message—or, worse a worktext—that didn’t make sense to the receiver. Maybe it was because of habit, or you were in a rush, or you were busy or thinking about something else.

  Text with the speed at which they can be sent can end up in interesting places and unintended hands if attention is not paid to your intended receiver address.

In hindsight, it’s a little awkward that you sent a text to your boss saying, “Did 50 squats Pizza tonight and hang- ten emoji” while sending your partner or best friend the text: “Chart shows we need to level-up our expectations.” And yes, this scenario can get a tad more stressful when your boss misinterpreted your well-intended “hang loose” emoji to mean for him to “call you.”

This most often happens when you’re texting on the go, via a mobile device, and you are short on time and you want to economize on the number of words used. This can lead to all manner of communication gaffes and embarrassing blunders, as well as much time wasted in back–and–forth text exchanges.

Mercifully, I offer these suggestions to help you avoid some of these most common blunders.

Keep your text short—but not too short!

I know speed requires your messages to be short and to the point. Yes, it’s a good thing to be direct and on point. Yet Be Wary of making this behavior a habit, for often this leads your writing to become curt, choppy messages that have you coming off with tones of being brusque, aloof, or insensitive.

In your business, and sometimes personal texting, consider that brevity and abbreviation can be over - the - top. For example, to use “HIC” when you mean “here I come” (as in “you’re on your way”), but then your audience text back to you, asking for clarification about your hiccups. Then an additional text of explanation is needed, and you have saved yourself no time at all.

Before starting a text, I suggest taking a breath, and trying to formulate answers to these questions; where, what,  why, when, and who questions, which allows you to see how you’re likely to come across in your text before you hit send.

The Who question is important because it means you are double-checking the “to” field, especially when using your phone. For important texts, you might even consider waiting to fill in an address until you’re satisfied with the draft, just to make certain it won’t go out prematurely.

Take a breath to remember your audience.

Many of us, though, struggle to shift gears as we toggle back and forth between professional correspondences and with friends’ banter, wise-cracks, and jest. Be mindful too of workplace jargon and slang that would not belong in an important  text. You probably want to avoid telling the boss that your  best client is “dope.”

Mind your tone -

Your Text messages should  convey a lot more than only their words, so it’s critical to strike the right tone. You want to sound confident but not forceful with your boss; and reassuring with a client whose package is overdue. You want to sound appreciative and admiring of the life coach who helped you earn the 10k bonus but appreciative, while not too effusive, toward Mark in accounting who compiled your tax forms.

In the final analysis, I believe we want clarity in our communication. We need to develop clear processes–not fast haphazard messaging–as a way to define how tasks are identified, assigned, and reviewed. I think a new way to process communication is needed. With thought and practice, I believe something new will come along  that will help you put down the phone and other devices. That will help you worry less about overly casual texts as an answer to your colleague’s questions while you are out walking the dog; or being too formal in addressing a new love interest for a date, while you are rushing off a text, just before a business board meeting is to begin.

A way to detach you from text devices as a body appendage must be found, and that will allow you to be a conscious participant in a more fully formed life.

By all means, start to create a habit of  putting the devices away for at least one hour a day, to allow you to winddown, reset, breathe. To have a place where your devices can stop asking “Are You A Robot?” Maybe you could even have a face-to-face conversation with someone.

Try it, you might like it!

Aloha

Calvin

New Year Humor

We are told diet and exercise are keys to long life

ReImaging 2017 the Evolution of Your Goals and Resolutions

2016 has been a year of growth, a year of solutions and a year of change. Not in that particular order, As we start moving towards our New Year's resolutions and goals, three tips I would like to pass on to you in reimaging 2017, with success where it may not have been before. Needless to say, you will need to be resolute to your goals and resolutions, to help with this endeavor you may want to make a commitment to a plan to help create a solution to those detractors (yourself included) such as tuning out the noise and diversions both internally as well as externally that would steal your focus and vision.

• Trust your conviction: It could get very lonely when everyone says you're going to fail. You just got to trust the power of your own conviction. That does not mean that you have not consciously dig deep to examine and figure out what you truly believe in, what you truly are passionate about, and when you have, then is when you trust your gut and move towards your conclusions.

• Be practical: practical meaning being frugal with your spending both with currency and time. Take a hard look and get help if needed to really understand your goals be it personal and or business and or both. Get a handle on the cost structure be it in time money, patience, and endurance. Be willing to pay the price of focused attention to eventually turn a profit. Make sure you’re very focused on your time and currency flow so that you’re in control of your own destiny and can create balance where needed.

• Stay focused: Know what you're trying to attain, solve or accomplish will be reach because you are applying a flexible conscious focus. That is adaptive insights, making changes or corrections to your plan through fly efforts. Don’t get distracted by the big picture, trying to solve too big a problem at one time, instead you work on a segment of the project until you’ve really done it well, then build on that success.

All success is working the process, your outcome may morph and change but that is because you have embraced the infinite possibilities of the Unknown and your life in turn will surprise you. 

You see what a man does for pay is of little significance. What he allows himself to reveal and manifest along the way, such as being a sensitive instrument to direct and respond to the world's beauty, is profitable.

Fortunately what cures stupid and broke is not turning from failure, but continually learning from your mistakes and making the corrections, rectifications and then having the courage to do the next thing. That’s all you have to do. Regret of the past or anxiety of the future are the thieves of the present and your success. Welcome to reimaging you.

- Calvin

Christmas Discovery

Thank you for Being Late

An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
by Thomas L. Friedman

By Calvin Harris, HW,M

I ran across a review of a book called: “Thank You For Being Late.”  Which resonated with me, being that, I was someone who had been stranded 30 miles from home due to a ‘Bro’s’, feeling that I was not moving fast enough for him, so he drove off and left me in the dust. Needless to say, the Book title, ‘Thank You for Being Late’, caught my interest and I wanted to hear what the reviewer had to say about the book and what I called “Making time for leisure.”

The author of the book, Thomas L. Friedman, seems to hint at validating my notions about ‘conscious leisure living’ and concepts of time. Friedman’s discourse is about the paces of change in technology, globalization, and climate. The core argument Friedman has is “simultaneous acceleration in the Commerce Market, the Natural World, and Moore’s law (the principle that the power of microchips doubles every two years) constitutes the “Age of Accelerations.”

The upshot of all of this is ‘acceleration creates fear and unmoors people.’ This causes panic or the fight, flight, or freeze response, a sign of many people becoming out of touch with themselves. Rather than panic such as reacting with fear and anger, Friedman, like myself, offers personal recommendations for coping with accelerations, such as to slow down, “pause and reflect” on your self-motivation, your lifelong learning, and the need to encourage more people to follow the Golden Rule.

Rather than having societies of people feeling fearful or unmoored from their sense of self, have them take time for leisure, meaning time for themselves to get anchored to Truth and to Source. Our Job is to find Source in our living and the value it provides, then to make it available to others. That can mean taking time to reach deep and discovering in yourself, the value you must share with the world. If you would like a more in-depth consultation, please contact me directly at things2cal@gmail.com

Side Notes About This Book
     
Friedman’s intriguing facts and ideas, can be all unburied in the 496-pages of this book. There are many a reader or researcher who is interested in the many autobiographical anecdotes and lengthy recollections about the circumstances of interviews he conducted and research he completed. Thus the reader is getting the recipe and history of all the ingredients along with the meal. You can obtain the book Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28 ISBN 978-0-374-27353-8 or as an Ebook - 978-0-374-71514-4. For those interested in the book but time is an issue it is also on
Compact Disc - 978-1-4272-7466-3

Thanksgiving Discovery

Three Simple Tips to Feel Self-directed and Accomplished

James Ronald Ryun is an American track and field athlete who reminds us that “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

Stephen Covey recommends you decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – Pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically – to say ‘no’ to other things ... And the way to do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ for your higher priorities burning inside.”

Here are 3 simple tips for feeling accomplished and on track.

1.)    Start Small

A tiny habit is easier to stick to — Pick something, a project, a workout, etc. Your goal is to make it effortless and encompasses your priorities!  This habit should take you little time to do. say no more than 10 -30 minutes a day,

that first week, aim to complete this goal just three times, in the first week, then increase that number once your habit feels natural.

2.)   When to do it

If you have a habit already in place then hitchhike off that habit, having a habit that is already second nature, will be a good time to transition into scheduling a new habit right after. An example is to add a new habit right after eating breakfast or just after a physical workout. Think about your day and vacant time slots, when can you spare a moment to insert a new habit? Pairing new habits with an existing habit can help make it seamless.

3.)  Practice makes perfect

You’ll probably need a few nudges before your new habit becomes second nature. That's why siteofcontact.net subscribers can jot a note to me under the heading Habit Building Reminders and I will send an email alert on the day of the week, you request it.

The more regularly you practice, the more quickly Habits will become just another part of your life.

“If you do not pour water on your plant, what will happen? It slowly withers and dies. Our habits will also slowly wither and die away if we do not give them an opportunity to manifest. You need not fight to stop a habit. Just don’t give it an opportunity to repeat itself.” – Yogi Swami Satchidananda.

So to recap feeling self-directed and accomplished, turn priorities into a manageable habit - Starts small – Pair it with something you are already doing - Be consistent.  Now that you know the secret, begin your habit setting journey now, and jot me a line now and again about how you are doing.

Calvin