How Safe We Are

John Piper shares some good thoughts on the Desiring God blog…

Matthew 10:30:

But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.

Charles Spurgeon:

You all take care of yourselves to some extent, but which of you ever took so much care of himself as to count the hairs of his head? But God will not only protect our limbs, but even the growth of hair is to be seen after. And how much this excels all the care of our tenderest friends!

Look at the mother, how careful she is. If her child has a little cough, she notices it: the slightest weakness is sure to be observed. She has watched all its motions anxiously, to see whether it walked right, whether all its limbs were bound, and whether it had the use of all its powers in perfection; but she has never thought of numbering the hairs of her child’s head, and the absence of one or two of them would give her no great concern. But our God is more careful of us, even than a mother with her child — so careful that he numbers the hairs of our head. How safe are we, then, beneath the hand of God!

Charles Spurgeon, sermon #187: “Providence.”

Source: How Safe We Are – Desiring God

Charles Spurgeon On The Changed Heart (filterbypass.wordpress.com)
Morning & Evening by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (searchandtrace.wordpress.com)
Charles Spurgeon Quotes and Sermons Inspire Healing and Encourage (faith-dream.com)

February 25, 2012 0

I’m a huge fan of Evernote and it seems recently that almost every day I find another reason to love it. Perhaps the most important reason lately is that it fits nicely into my Getting Things Done [GTD] world and is a massive productivity booster. Evernote is my über-container — everything goes in there! Why? Because Evernote syncs with every device I own and it’s searchable so the important things I need to have at my finger tips are there when I need them…

In the past couple of days I have added important emails, pictures, audio notes, web clips, pdfs, Word docs and presentations. I have added them via their web clipper, Shareaholic, email, Twitter and a folder on my desktop that syncs everything to Evernote. It seems there is no end to the clever ways I can get content in. Not only can I search Evernote for the things I’ve stored there, but I can share the things I’ve saved via email, Twitter or Facebook. It just rocks for the things I need it to do!

I’ve posted a list of my top 5 productivity tools along with a couple of good books and other suggestions below, but those are just the ingredients. Here’s my recipe:

First, I read David Allen’s classic productivity book Getting Things Done annually and refer to it often. Buy it using Kindle software so you can search it or mark it. Why do I do this first? Because in my world, tools without a purpose are useless…

I use…

Gmail to manage ‘just in time’ information; information that affects relationships or revenue. If there’s a task, I add it to the built in Google Tasks. If there’s information I need to hold on to, I send it via email to my secret Evernote email address. I use Getting Things Done [GTD] principles combined with Gmail’s features to practice ‘inbox zero’ and cut through my email like a proverbial ‘hot knife through butter’!
Google Reader to manage ‘just in case’ information. The things I need to read to deepen my expertise.
I use Gist to track the important people in my world and what they are publishing [Gist is much better than Google Reader at tracking output from people!]
I use Google Tasks and apply Getting Things Done [GTD] principles to my task lists.
Finally, I used my beloved Evernote as the one über-container to keep it all together.

As I’m writing, I’m telling myself I need to put together a screencast on this topic as so many people are struggling to manage their information. What do you think? Is this interesting enough a topic to you?

Here are the ingredients I promised you…

These are my killer productivity thoughts, tools and tactics…

http://storify.com/e1evation/dollar-15-88-toward-a-more-productive-you

Productivity Made Simple: Selecting What to Do Next with GTD (lifehack.org)
How I Get Things Done – And How You Can Too (seomoz.org)
10 Tips for Using Evernote Effectively (readwriteweb.com)

February 24, 2012 13

It’s Time To LET GO!

Today’s Visual Inspiration: It’s Time To LET GO!

February 24, 2012 0

Getting love

Some good thoughts from Melody Beattie that I wanted to share with you this morning…

I know. We didn’t get loved the way we wanted. Some of us have spent years picking through the messy issues of parents who had unusual ways of showing love or who didn’t show love at all.

We may have had spouses who were dreadful at showing love. Issues like alcoholism and other dysfunctions can genuinely interfere with a person’s ability to love. Some of us took that personally.We looked around and the only conclusion we could come up with is that we weren’t lovable.

Some of us need to grieve the absence of love in our family of origin. We may have missed an important emotional lesson while growing up, and we barely realize it. That lesson is understanding how lovable we are.

Some of us learned to protect ourselves by caring for others, while refusing to let love into our own lives. We found that it is easier to shut down and not be open to love, rather than be denied love.

After a while, we stop seeing the love that is there for us. We refuse the small gestures that may mean a tremendous amount to the person offering them. These gestures include words of concern, support, understanding, assistance, kindness, or a genuine expression of like or love. If we don’t believe we’re lovable, if we’re not open to seeing and receiving love, we’re going to miss more than just the love we missed in our childhood. We’re going to miss the love that is available for us now.

Challenge: The hardest part about letting people give us love can be softening that tough shell enough to let the gentle words and acts of love sink in.

Source: February 24 | Language of Letting Go

I have found, too, that expectations can be a problem for me. If I’m expecting more, sometimes I miss what is there. Remember the words of the great philosophers The Rolling Stones “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”

February 24, 2012 0

Carl Jung’s five key elements to happiness

In 1960, journalist Gordon Young asked Jung, “What do you consider to be more or less basic factors making for happiness in the human mind?” Jung answered with five elements:

1. Good physical and mental health.
2. Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships.
3. The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature.
4. Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work.
5. A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.

Jung, always mindful of paradox, added, “All factors which are generally assumed to make for happiness can, under certain circumstances, produce the contrary. No matter how ideal your situation may be, it does not necessarily guarantee happiness.”

I did disagree strongly with Jung on one point. He said, “The more you deliberately seek happiness the more sure you are not to find it.” I know, Carl Jung vs. Gretchen Rubin, who is the authority? But though many great minds, such as John Stuart Mill, make the same point as Jung, I don’t agree.

For me, at least, the more mindful I am about happiness, the happier I become. Take Jung’s five factors. By deliberately seeking to strengthen those elements of my life, I make myself happier.

Source: The Happiness Project: Carl Jung’s Five Key Elements to Happiness.

If Gretchen can disagree with Jung, so can I. My issue? The list appears random – I think there’s a sequence to these 5 steps that is important. I would reorder the list like this;

A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.
Good physical and mental health.
Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work.
Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships.
The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature.

Maybe I had too much of Maslow and his hierarchy of needs but it seems to me that there are certain items in the list that need to build upon the other, in other words, 1 affects your ability to do 2-5. How about you? What’s your take on Jung, Rubin, Maslow and me?

February 23, 2012 3

Struggling with social media and how it fits into your communications strategy? Perhaps this will help…

Source: Social Media and Your Business Communication Strategy | Visual.ly

How Many Social Media Crises Will It Take Before You Prepare For Yours? (bizsugar.com)
The Social Media Advocacy Model (intersectionconsulting.com)
Where Social Media Jobs Are (smallbiztrends.com)
5 social media tips from diplomats (holykaw.alltop.com)
Do’s and Don’ts for Social Media Newbies (angco.biz)

February 22, 2012 0

Do You REALLY Have What it Takes To BE LOVE?

Here are some more good thinks from Mastin Kipp of The Daily Love…

When we take time to actually understand people, our lives will change. There seems to be a theme in many of my clients lives lately, where they will complain about someone – and make them wrong for what they are thinking or how they are feeling.

Let me tell it to you straight – YOUR EMOTIONS ARE VALID AND REAL! Don’t let ANYONE tell you otherwise!

When we begin to have respect for the thoughts of others and we begin to cherish the feelings of others, as we do our own – we step into a larger world. Think about it. If you made a list of all your character defects – and saw that part of yourself loud and clear, would you say that even though you know you are that way, you let yourself off the hook? Well, then let us see others with Love and compassion and let them off the hook, too.

This doesn’t mean we have to tolerate abuse or anything like that, but it does mean that we can choose to see and encourage the best in others. And when we do that, a strange thing starts to happen – the best of who they are begins to emerge.

If we are constantly looking for what’s wrong, if we are constantly trying to see how someone messed up – we miss the miracle and we miss the blessing that is his or her presence in our life.

So when it comes to other people – I have a question, and answer honestly… What are you looking for in them? Are you looking for what’s right? Are you seeing them as doing the best that they can – are you giving compassion to them at the same level that you give to yourself or those that you Love?

AND – if you feel that other people are only looking for what’s wrong in you – can you send them Love and Compassion because you know that this is nothing but a projection of how they feel about themselves and has NOTHING to do with you? This is how we are being called to see the world – with the eyes of Love. We see the innocence; we see the pain of others and we do not take it personally because we know it is just a part of their projection. And, we know that we also project onto others, so we do our best to stop that and to send only Love. Sometimes, you have to send Love from a distance, but send Love anyway!

Do you have the courage to see life this way? Can you let go of the past hurts and step into the brandnew-ness of this now moment? Can you feel the Love within you that is dying to express and know that when it is expressed it will be returned to you 100-fold?

Source: Do You REALLY Have What it Takes To BE LOVE?

I don’t right now but maybe this will help. I’m thinking about how to apply this…

February 22, 2012 0

How Much BLISS Can You Handle?

February 22, 2012 0

Chris Brogan cut through all the Pinterest crap with a great reminder this morning. He said…

It’s Never the Medium. It’s the People

We seek to connect with people. We want to reach them for whatever our goal might be. It’s our effort to connect with them in a meaningful way that benefits our mutual needs that should be the goal. It’s never about the delivery mechanism.

We want what we want. Can you listen to Dr. Stephen R. Covey on cassettes? Absolutely. But if I leave those cassettes in my car (well, if my car had a tape deck), then I’m out of luck, aren’t I? With Audible.com, I can download the audio file to whatever device I want, as often as I want. It’s not the medium. It’s the information.

The People Are the Goal

Who follows whom on Twitter isn’t all that interesting. What we do with those connections is why it matters. How we take our access and make something interesting happen-that is the goal.

Again, it’s not whether I follow you or not. It’s whether something I do can improve your business or goals, and it’s whether you can share something or introduce something, or riff on something, or whatever. It’s how we use the network to build a system. It’s how we make our platform shine to help others, to grow our business, and more. That’s the magic.

Is Pinterest The New Amazing Network?

It will be, for those who use it to build a relationship that goes beyond the pins. Any network is serviceable, if you learn how to interact and help people satisfy their needs.

Now, let’s make mix-tapes together, shall we? Let’s make songs of love: a love of doing better business by building stronger human relationships over whatever medium we want.

You in?

Source: Never Fall In Love With the Medium

No, I’m not into Pinterest. I’ve played with it, found a few shortcuts [like use the Pinterest extension from Shareaholic in Chrome], created a couple hundred pins. It’s fun, but it’s not as useful for me as Evernote! I thought I’d use Pinterest to share the infographics that I love [I’m a huge fan of infographics!] but I ran into a couple of shortcomings that make Pinterest less that useful for me…

Ask yourself this question: If a picture is worth a thousand words, which of the thousand words will I use to describe the picture so that it can be found by anyone, anywhere at any time. Pinterest doesn’t really give you the ability to describe or search for what you are looking for very well. Pinterest would be really cool if it had a powerful advanced search feature or better yet, visual search. As it is though, for me it’s just a cute little toy at the moment. Those words may come back to haunt me someday but for now, that’s my take…

Here’s a little riff I did comparing Pinterest and Evernote focusing on some of the features that are important to me. I’ll let you decide what works best for you…

Here are some of the best reads I’ve found on Pinterest lately:

It’s fun and cute, but not very useful to me…

http://storify.com/e1evation/am-i-the-only-one-that-doesn-t-love-pinterest

6 Compelling Reasons You Should Use Pinterest for Marketing (hubspot.com)
Pinterest for Business: 9 Tips From Superuser PediaStaff [CASE STUDY] (socialfish.org)
Cool Pinterest Infographic (abbeydufoe.wordpress.com)
Posting From Pinterest To Your Facebook Fan Page (marketaire.com)
Pinterest is What YOU Want it to Be (cc-chapman.com)
Sorry, but I’m just not that Pinterested (newhope360.com)
7 Examples of Brands That Pop on Pinterest (hubspot.com)

February 21, 2012 0

Ann Handley who literally wrote the book on content marketing tweeted this article by Haydn Shaughnessy on how to do thought leadership right…

Like content strategy, thought leadership is a relatively new option for companies that want to improve their visibility and connections online in ways that prompt sales leads to come to you.

But thought leadership is, much more than content strategy, subject to the Bill Joy rule, which says that most smart people in the world don’t work for your company.

How, then, do you possibly develop a thought leadership strategy?

If you get your thought leadership strategy right, customers will see you as a go-to source of expertise, your new products or incremental improvements will find easier acceptance, you’ll stand a good chance of bolstering product price (which is critical in many industries where commoditization is at work), and you’ll attract talent more easily.

Inevitably, some companies will get it wrong, so in this article I will outline why that happens, how to avoid the major mistakes companies make, and what to do to excel in thought leadership.

Source: Strategy – How Not to Think About Thought Leadership (and How to Do It Right) : MarketingProfs Article

I encourage you to go to the source and drill down on Haydn’s strategic recommendations. When you’re looking for the tools and tactics to make it work, come right back here and I’ll get you started! Comment or ‘connect’ to discuss how this applies to you and your organization…

Four reasons to hate thought leadership (christopherakoch.com)
Content marketing for thought leadership in the construction industry (e1evation.com)
Rethinking Thought Leadership: 7 Tips for Gaining New Clients (hingemarketing.com)
The seven R’s of thought leadership (b2bmarketing.net)
12 experts on the key thought leadership trends for 2012 (e1evation.com)

February 20, 2012 0

http://storify.com/e1evation/this-week-in-blogging-at-e1evation

Eight Factors to Consider When (Re)Launching a Business Blog (webbiquity.com)
Top Blogging Posts for 2011 (bloggingyourpassion.com)
Review: Launch Effect Premium – A WordPress Theme for Viral Launches (premiumwp.com)
Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 2 of 2 (zemanta.com)
58 ways to build a better blog (howtomakemyblog.com)

February 20, 2012 0

Job 11:13-19 NIV

Job 11:13-19

New International Version (NIV)

¹³ “Yet if you devote your heart to him
and stretch out your hands to him,
¹⁴ if you put away the sin that is in your hand
and allow no evil to dwell in your tent,
¹⁵ then, free of fault, you will lift up your face;
you will stand firm and without fear.
¹⁶ You will surely forget your trouble,
recalling it only as waters gone by.
¹⁷ Life will be brighter than noonday,
and darkness will become like morning.
¹⁸ You will be secure, because there is hope;
you will look about you and take your rest in safety.
¹⁹ You will lie down, with no one to make you afraid,
and many will court your favor.

Source: Job 11:13-19 NIV – “Yet if you devote your heart to him – Bible Gateway

February 19, 2012 0

Your Stuff Doesn’t Define You

Today’s Visual Inspiration: Your Stuff Doesn’t Define You, LOVE DOES!

February 19, 2012 0

February 18, 2012 0

To Be Happier, Write Your Own Set of Personal Commandments

One of my favorite authors is Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project. Recently, she shared her thoughts on having your own set of personal commandments…

One of the most challenging—and most helpful and fun—tasks that I’ve done as part of my Happiness Project is to write my Twelve Personal Commandments. These aren’t specific resolutions, like make my bed, but the overarching principles by which I try to live my life.

It took me several months to come up with this list, and it has been very useful for me to have them identified clearly in my mind. It’s a creative way of distilling core values.

To get you started as you think about your own commandments, here are my Twelve Commandments:

1. Be Gretchen.
2. Let it go.
3. Act the way I want to feel.
4. Do it now.
5. Be polite and be fair.
6. Enjoy the process.
7. Spend out. (This is probably the most enigmatic of my commandments.)
8. Identify the problem.
9. Lighten up.
10. Do what ought to be done.
11. No calculation.
12. There is only love.

So how do you come up with your own list?

Consider phrases that have stuck with you. When I look at my Twelve Commandments, I realize that five of them are actually quotations from other people. My father repeatedly reminds me to “Enjoy the process.” A respected boss told me to “Be polite and be fair.” A good friend told me that she’d decided that “There is only love” in her heart for a difficult person. “No calculation” is a paraphrase of my spiritual master St. Therese (“When one loves, one does not calculate”), and “Act the way I want to feel” is a paraphrase of William James.

Aim high and fight the urge to be too comprehensive.I’ve found that my commandments help me most when I review them at least daily, to keep them fresh in my mind, and to do this, it helps to keep the list short and snappy. I suspect that Twelve Commandments is too much. Maybe I only need two, “Be Gretchen” and “There is only love.”

Think about what’s true for you.Each person’s list will differ. One person’s commandment is to “Say yes,” another person’s commandment is to “Say no.” You need to think about yourself, your values, your strengths and weaknesses, your interests.

Source: The Happiness Project: To Be Happier, Write Your Own Set of Personal Commandments.

Is happiness an issue for you? You might benefit from Gretchen’s work. I have!

February 18, 2012 1

What You Put Up With – You End Up With!

Today’s Visual Inspiration: What You Put Up With – You End Up With!

February 18, 2012 0

Being right

Cover via Amazon

In recovery, we are learning how to strive for love in our relationships, not superiority. Yes, we may need to make decisions about people’s behavior from time to time. If someone is hurting us, we need to stand up for ourselves. We have a responsibility to set boundaries and take care of ourselves. But we do not need to justify taking care of ourselves by condemning someone else. We can avoid the trap of focusing on others instead of ourselves. In recovery, we are learning that what we do needs to be right only for us. What others do is their business and needs to be right only for them. It’s tempting to rest in the superiority of being right and in analyzing other people’s motives and actions, but it’s more rewarding to look deeper. Today, I will remember that I don’t have to hide behind being right. I don’t have to justify what I want and need with saying something is “right” or “wrong.” I can let myself be who I am.

Beattie, Melody (2009-12-15). The Language of Letting Go (Hazelden Meditation Series) (p. 47). Hazelden. Kindle Edition.

February 18, 2012 0

An editorial focus and calendar that reinforces it may be the single most important thing you can do if you want to blog for thought leadership. In his ground breaking book ‘Brand Stand’, Craig Badings writes…

The more research you do on the topic [on which you choose to focus] the more you will understand the space you want to enter. Ask yourself: Who is already playing in that space? What they are saying? Are they achieving cut through? Does our company have substantially more to say or something unique to offer in that space or not? Your deciding question should be ‘Can we own that space?’ If you cannot own a space my advice would be do not go there.

Badings, Craig (2009-07-08). BRAND STAND (Kindle Locations 790-794). BookPal. Kindle Edition.

If you have decided you can ‘own the space’, here is an overly simplified formula for achieving alignment in your content marketing strategy and getting ownership:

Brainstorm around your unique offerings in the space. Ask yourself “what are the problems my clients expect me to solve and how do I solve them in a unique way?”
Use Google’s keyword tools to research keywords around those unique offerings
Track trusted sites and keyword searches in Google Reader; read primarily those things that deepen your expertise in your unique offerings without losing the context of the whole space
Only curate or create content on your blog related to that unique offering
Leverage social media, etc. to amplify your content
Connect effectively with the readers you draw in

If you do those things in that order, you will have alignment around solving your customer problems and you will be found when people are looking for your solution[s]. In order to effectively cover my space, for example, which is content management and marketing for thought leadership, I track the topics content management, content marketing and ‘thought leadership’ marketing as well as the following tools:

Blogging
Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Twitter
and supporting tools like Google Reader, Shareaholic, Storify, etc.

Thursday, for example, is Twitter day. Every Thursday I reflect on Twitter as part of a balanced content management and marketing for thought leadership strategy and ‘storify’ a summary of the best articles from the previous week. This tactical approach ‘forces’ me to not only review the best content from the previous week in Google Reader and Twitter, but be sure to cover it in my blog.

Questions? Feedback? Comment below or use the connect form. In the meantime, here’s a summary of the best of what I found in content marketing, LinkedIn and Twitter this past week…

http://storify.com/e1evation/content-marketing-linkedin-and-twitter-for-2-17-20