New Year Resolutions - Weight Lost

Those of you, who’ve been going to the gym for a couple of years, will know what I’m talking about.
The most common of new year resolution is “I’m going to loose weight” and during this time of the year, the gyms are full of people … for about 3 months. They go just long enough not to make it and they do just enough not to have any result.

Granted, there’s “Weight Lost” scams out there, but the “Get 6 packs abs in 3 months” ain’t one of them. It’s do-able! It doesn’t take long to get results at the gym, the problem is that as soon as you “cheat” it affects the end result.

When you follow a meal/training program. As soon as you deviate a little bit, the outcome is no longer predictable. How could it be? It’s the same in anything. If I tell you to save a 100$ a month for a year, you’ll have 1200$ saved up at the end of it. If you put more, or less, wouldn’t that affect the end result? Why would it be different when following a program at the gym?

Blogging Tips: It’s not rocket surgery

It used to be a big deal to do a daily blog and, for that reason, I missed a lot of days. I found some tricks along the way that may help you in your blogging journey. Here’s a few blogging tips:

• Prepare some in advance: I always keep a few blogs somewhere just in case I'm not inspired that day. I prefer doing them at night and posting them in the morning.
• Read: Reading will help you find a subject and will help with your grammar.
• Follow other blogs: Doing so will give you ideas of how to organize yours and may give pretty good subject to share.
It’s about you: Don’t worry about what people will think about it. You will do things that you think everyone will love but they won’t. Be in peace with it.
• Be your best promoter: With all the social media out there, it’s super easy to make your blog interact with Facebook, twitter and the like. Advertise your work.
• Respect comments: You don’t have to reply to comments but if you do, don’t disagree with the person. It may leave him in a bad mood and he might never come back to your blog. Comments could be pointers of what you need to improve on.
• Give credit away: Find ways to give away credit. If a friend helped find a subject for your blog, give him credit. If he sees it, he’ll be more likely to comeback again to see what else you have to say.
• Copyrights: You don’t like when people steal your ideas, don’t steal other people’s ideas. Make sure to point the reader to the source of the materials that doesn’t belong to you.
• Go out: Going out to do activities with friends is a good way to come up with ideas. I lost count of the subjects I’ve found just by going to the gym.
• Listen: Only those who listen ever truly learn anything new. If you speak, you only share your knowledge and ideas. If you want more ideas, listen to other people’s knowledge and ideas.
• Visuals: A picture is worth a thousand words. A picture, related to the subject, is a good way to give an idea to the reader of what the blog is about.
• Grammar: If a blog is hard to read, nobody will read it.

This is what I apply, I hope it will help you in your blogging journey. If you are already a blogger then I’m sure you agree with most, if not all, the points. If you have anything to add, leave a comment :)

Misbehaving children: Should you discipline them?

Discipline is a must. The question shouldn’t be “Should I discipline my child?” the question should be “What’s the best way to discipline my child?”. If a child steal, and is never disciplined about it, he might carry that habit into adulthood where disciplined is a bit more serious than a spanking.

There’s a big difference between child abuse and disciplinary action when a child misbehave. If a child is disciplined due to clumsiness or accident; it’s child abuse. If a child is disciplined when he swears at one of the parents; it’s discipline.

There’s different methods to discipline a child. I identified 3 and bellow is the order of which my parents would do them to me.

1. Explaining the situation; putting me as the victim: My Dad would explained the situation to me in different perspective, usually putting me in “the victims” position, saying things like “What would you do if someone would steal your toys? Would you like that?”. This method still helps me today in my decision making.
2. Removing privileges: “Go to you room and think about what you did!”. I still remember having phone calls from friends and the embarrassment of having to tell them I was grounded (or worse, my mom telling them I was).
3. Spanking: “Don’t hit your sister or you’ll be spanked”. Just the fear of being spanked was enough for me to “behave”. Spanking was, more often than not, a last resort if the first two wasn’t working.

The perfect parent doesn’t exist. The best thing, that my parents did, was listening to me.

Internet Browsing

It’s the first time, in recorded history, that knowledge is so easily accessible. With all the knowledge in the world accessible to our finger tips, why is it that the thinking of our nation is still at it’s lowest?

There’s 2 major reason for this, the major one being Interest followed by too much noise.

1. Interest: They don’t know and they don’t care. They don’t see value in any information out there. They’re not hungry to learn.
2. Too much noise: Untrained people training untrained people.

So if you’re searching for good information, where do you go? You do what you would do in “real life”, you listen to people who have the result. Most great leaders, in any field, have a website where they share thoughts/biographies/books/success stories etc...

In other words, it’s as important to do research on “WHO” wrote the article than the information it contains.

It’s not that the information is bad, when it’s written by someone you never heard of, it’s just that there’s no credibility to back up what’s written.

It’s better to be ignorant than applying bad information.

I Have To Grow

This feeling is one of the best feeling I’ve ever experienced in my short life. It’s a mix of excitement and thirst for knowledge. I think that I finally realized that not only I don’t know everything, I also don’t know what is out there to be learned but I know that I can learn them once I figure what they are. Make sense?

So far,psychological pain as been an indicator of what area I need to grow more in. If I feel hurt during a conversation there’s always a reason for it and once I figure out why, I’m able to learn myself and I find that my self esteem grows in the process. After analyzing my life, I’ve grown more in the pass 4 years than the previous 20 years before that (i’m 24 year old). Even if those 20 years includes school education.

There’s nothing wrong with education but I don’t find I’ve learned enough about myself while being in school. To me, learning about myself is the most important part of life.

What would you say is the more important thing in life?

Faith Theory: Why Faith Is Decreasing

Some of you will say “Of course it’s less popular today, people know better”. Regardless of what your belief is, it’s important to know why you believe what you believe.

I read that the devil works it’s hardest during “alone time”. Following this, with all the technology out there, wouldn’t you say that we’re more alone today than we used to be? Could it be related with the decrease in faith?

The bible is all about “Helping your neighbor/How to help your neighbor”.If there’s no “neighbor”, per say,then how could someone seek to get better at helping a neighbor they don’t have.
If people are more often alone, how will they ever come to want to become better for the sake of the people around them?

I came to faith when I wanted to become better for the people around me, that’s the only way I know. I wouldn’t have come to faith if I wouldn’t have had people around me that I cared about.

To me, this theory is more of a self-examination.

I’m Not God

I know I probably shocked all of my 3 readers with the title, but I’m not God. What I mean by that is that I’m not right all the time and I know that. Only God can be right because he possess all the facts.
There’s a saying that goes like this “A Man with a fact is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion.”
So why is it that we think we’re right? We don’t just wake up in the morning and tell ourselves “I’m going to be wrong today”.

The bible says that we were made in the image of God. Since God is never wrong, it’s normal for us to think like that. However, like mentioned before, God as all the facts, we have (more often than not) opinions.

Don’t chase Happiness

You don’t get happiness by chasing happiness. “The only way to get happy is to give happy.” -Chris Brady

Happiness comes from taking responsibilities, it’s being proud from facing your fears.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on November 26, 2014

Education is a Choice

After high school, education demands more of an individual because it’s less force upon. Many will learn less, or stop entirely, for the rest of their lives.

The individual who knows nothing is often the loudest and the most anxious to tell you about it.

People seem to have a hard time understanding that they’re worth minimum wage from the neck down. The top part is where the real worth is at.

The brain is like a muscle that needs to be worked constantly in order to stay sharp. Like muscles, it will shrink (in thinking) as soon as you stop exercising it.

Keeping the mind busy, with entertainment, doesn’t make it sharper.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on November 5, 2014

Biggest Building in Town

There are 2 ways to have the biggest building in town:
1. Destroy all other buildings bigger than yours
2. Work to make your building bigger

Which one is the best of the 2? (2) Which one is the most commonly used? (1) Why? People are more likely to say something bad about someone, trying to destroy their building, than saying something positive to them, helping to make their building bigger.

If you destroy someone else’s building, he will try to destroy yours as well. The more you help build other people’s building, the more they will help build yours.

The more people you help, the bigger your building.

Bible: The Cheat Sheet of Life

Instead of walking life with the thought of knowing everything, I now walk knowing that I don’t know anything. Which, in return, teach me a lot of things about everything. It’s like a kid who ask all sort of questions.

To bring that thought to religion, I learned that society didn’t really changed over the years and that the principles found in the bible can still be applied today. I see the bible as being a cheat sheet for life. Since we only have one chance at life, wouldn’t it be best to try to do it as best as we possibly can?

One of the most common lessons/verse, often ignored, is the golden rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). Now why would someone apply such a rule in his life? If you want to have successful relationships, people need to like you.
How do you make them like you? By treating them the way you would like to be treated (respect, love, feeling of appreciation, etc...). If I make you feel good, do you want to hang around me more or less?

The bible doesn’t give direct answers, it gives pointers. In this case, it didn’t say “People like it when you do this, this and this.” It just said “Treat others the way you like to be treated” which, logically, brings the question “How do I like to be treated?”. By focusing on the question, you come to learn a lot about yourself.

Most people now days will die without knowing who they really are because they never asked themselves those questions.

Now you could say something like “I don’t need the bible to ask myself that kind of question”. It’s true, you don’t but what are the chances that you’re going to ask yourself such question without a manual?

Before the bible, I never really asked myself anything.

“Wisdom Is applying biblical principals into your life.” -Orrin Woodwards

Living the Big Life

Living the big life doesn’t mean to put yourself in debt. Spending money that you don’t have to buy things that you don’t need just to impress people you don’t like is not living the big life. It’s pretending and at the end of the day, that’s not what’s important.

“Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter so the world will at least be different for our having passed through it” -Harold Kushner

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on November 12, 2014

Recession Is Over?

Before you send me hate mail saying otherwise, note that I said it was over not that it was like it used to be. Based on this article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092006355.html) found at the Washington post website, the recession ended in June of 2009.

The committee, that determined the recession was over, also said:
"In determining that a trough occurred in June 2009, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity, any future downturn of the economy would be a new recession and not a continuation of the recession that began in December 2007."

To me, this is neither a good or a bad news. I don’t feel like it’s over at all and I won’t feel like it is until companies stops giving the excuse that it’s because of the recession that they had to lay off some people recently.

If the economy is getting better, from what I’ve seen of companies I worked for, they still didn’t give any raises nor bonuses to people who deserve it and they still give the excuse that it’s due to the recession.
I have a feeling that we’ll be a while without seeing any of those, not because of companies getting back up after the recession, why would they pay someone more if he’s willing to work for less?

Your kitchen is on Fire

While browsing the net, the other day, I came across an advertisement that I found quite offensive. It was basically saying “Are you tired of living your life? Come play *****! Instead”.
That, to me, means “Ignore the problems you have, it will go away on it’s own”.

If there’s a fire in your kitchen, will it go away just by you looking the other way? If you don’t take care of it, it will take everything you own. Eventually, other people will have to come and put it out for you because you can’t do it yourself anymore.

Take responsibility of your fires.

Life’s Secret Purpose

I think life is about choosing how you’ll be remembered. Let’s face it, we’re all going to die. What makes it interesting is that we don’t know when it’s going to happen.

If your goal is to be remembered as someone who was nice. Make great effort to be nice with everyone you meet, it might be your last chance to be remembered as a nice person with that person.

What ever your goal is, it’s important to start now. The clock is ticking.

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on November 19, 2014

Depreciation

Many successful business owners agrees that we should never finance, or invest in, things that depreciate in value (cars,video-games, T.V. etc). Even at 0% interest, a new car is not worth the amount of money advertised.

By the time you arrive home, the car you just finance for 10 000$ is worth 3 000$. You’re paying 7 000$ more than you should.

Then why don’t they just sell a new car for 3 000$? Why would they? A new car will never be sold for less than it’s worth and always be sold for the highest possible price.

The tactics use to sell cars are amazing. They make you pay X more than it’s actually worth and they make it sound like it’s a good deal. How? By having “Rebates”, “Special Events”, “Discounts”.

You know the sad part bout this? I fully realize this only after I bought my first new car!

The definition of depreciation, to me, is a mix between the amount someone is willing to pay for “it” used and how soon the next generation of “it” is coming.

You don’t have to be Good!

“If you’re not good, it means you’re not supposed to be doing it” I heard that a few times in my life. You don’t have to be good to do anything, you just have to do it!
I like to take the exemple of Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, creators of penny-arcade.com. Mike said that he wanted to create a web comic but he didn’t know how to draw properly. He just did it anyway and he became good in the process.

The things you’re good at might not be the things you want to do. Just do what you want to do long enough and you’ll be good at it.

It Takes a Community

I don’t know why but I was brought up to believe that I could be successful on my own; that I needed to be successful on my own. That’s simply not true.

Everybody, and everything, that’s successful out there share something in common. They all have a community. A community is required to be successful in anything.

Would Facebook be considered a success if only 2 people was subscribe to it? If I’m the best Singer in the world but nobody buys my cds, am I successful? It’s the community that determines what’s worth the investment.

To Plan Ahead of Time

Nick, a mentor of mine from the gym, said that the most important part of training was what you eat. He said that it can be a challenge to find the time to do good meals on a daily basis and that the easiest way to do this was to prepare meals in advance.

I’ve decided to apply this principle for blogging as well (this blog was actually written Friday September 17). Let me tell you that it’s easier to come up with things in advance (when you’re inspired) than it is to come up with things on the spot.

When I write a good blog, I actually look forward for the day it’s coming out and in the meantime, I’m able to correct mistakes or rephrase it as best as I can. I haven’t encountered any downside of planning ahead as of yet.

Short Term Entrepreneurs

Most people, including me, stress about money all the time and it will be like that until a few minutes before we die.

If you ask a billionaire, or someone who lives on the streets, on their death bed “Do you want an extra 10 million dollars or an extra 10 years to live?” What is the answer they’ll more likely say?

What good is money if you don’t have time to enjoy it?

I love entrepreneurs, I look for them all the time to ask them questions. Some say that they’re going to start their own business in the “Near future”. When I ask them what’s stops them from doing it now, they usually come with 2 answers. The most popular one is “Debt” the second is “There’s some things I have to do first”.

What will change in 5 years? Do they think that they’ll be out of debt? That the “things they have to do first” won’t get more complicated?

The same person who said he couldn’t start a business because of debt bought a big flat screen TV. How is that going to get you out of debt?

In a way, it’s like they’re lying without even noticing it!

What I learn from all of this is that I shouldn’t listen to what they say, I should look for what they do. If someone tells me he wants to get out of debt before getting in business and I see him pay his debt there’s more chance I’ll see him start a business than someone who bought a TV.

Over night Success takes Years

I used to think that if I couldn’t be successful now that it wasn’t meant to be. I was going to business seminar expecting to hear that 1 quick thing that would make me a millionaire. I know now that I’ll wait a long time because such thing doesn’t exist.

The secret of success is that there’s no secret. Speakers in business seminar can only talk about the path that they took. You have to find your own path.

My Integrity for a pair of Heaphones?

I have a tendency to forget things when I don’t write it down. Today I forgot to bring my headphones at work and I sent a few emails away to ask people if they had a pair to spare. A guy from the Tech department said that he had some available but it was only for work purposes.

I was faced with a choice, I could either lie to him and get the headphones or tell the truth and not have any. Nobody would have known except for me.

Integrity is doing what’s morally right. Every time you don’t, you’re giving your integrity away. I believe that the more you give it away, the more it will trouble you.

Would you have given your integrity for a pair of headphones?

[Update December 2, 2019]
This blog post consistently make it on my most viewed list so I've decided to expand on it a bit.

I remember clearly the event that made me write this post. It was at an old office and I was about to listen to leadership CDs called "Integrity" only to realize that I had forgotten my headphones. When I asked our IT guy if we had any to spare he said that he can only lend them to me if it's for work purposes.
I could of lied to get the headphones but that would of made me kind of an hypocrite wouldn't it? I mean there's got to be a special place in hell for people that lie to get headphones in order to listen to a leadership cd about Integrity?

I chose to wait but sometimes I wonder if I would of took them if the leadership CD would of been about another subject. Every day, we're faced with thousands of decisions that ultimately define who we are.

Do we choose to be a person of integrity or lie just to get the headphones?

The Million Dollar Dream

Getting a million dollar seems to be a popular goal. The worse thing that can happen is giving money to someone who doesn’t have discipline financially. How many times do we hear stories about people who won a million dollars and went bankrupt a few years later?
It’s rare for an employee to actually get there but it’s possible if they’re discipline enough with their money (I know of one who did it over a 20 + year period).

I’m not a millionaire, but being in network marketing, I’m two phone call away to one and have the opportunity to speak to millionaires on a monthly basis. I was told, by one of them, that if I can’t save money with what I have now, it doesn’t matter how much I make; I’m going to be broke.

My thinking needs to change. The only way I can do so is by associating myself with people that have the result that I want, by shutting off television and opening a Robert Kiyosaki book instead.

Be careful who you listen to for financial advice, you may end up with the result that they have.

Politics - It’s not that Complicated

Politics today looks more like a bunch of teenagers fighting than anything else. Instead of each party focusing on what good they will bring the community, they focus on what the other parties are doing wrong.
I don’t want to know what everybody does wrong, I want to know the right things you’re going to do!

People are brought up to believe that politics is something hard to understand when it truly isn’t. I think they make it look difficult on purpose to discourage you and I to have anything to do with it. By having people look the other way, it gives them the opportunity to do what they want.

The important thing to keep track of is the “promises” of each party. While it’s true that they can’t make all of the promises come true, it does give a general idea of what the group is about.

I see many people who doesn’t vote and complain that they want to see certain things change. In my head, all I can think about is “I heard someone from that party address that issue the other day, why don’t you vote for him!”

To change the country in the way you want, you have to support people who wants the same things.

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Go vote!

An Age of Virtual Heroes

I have a problem, while I know life is too short to be wasted in-front of a screen, there’s a side of me that just wants lay around and do nothing.

I love to win and Video games provides a world in which it allows me to win. I’m adventuring in a virtual world almost on a daily basis and I sometime find myself venting my prowess to my colleagues to try to receive praise.

There’s more to life than just to live, I have to wake up to the fact that video games won’t give me the true sense of fulfilment that only hard work can provide.

How to eat an Elephant

We live in a microwave society where everything needs to be done fast and people seem to bring that mentality into the skills that they’re trying to learn or the goals that they’re trying to achieve.

Brian Roy, a great artist and friend of mine, said “The fastest way to become a good artist is to work a little bit at it daily. 10 minutes a day for a week is better than 70 min in one day. The more you work on something the better you will master it.”

Becoming good at something is like eating an Elephant. How do you eat an elephant? You first need one. Then you eat it one bite at a time, a little bit every day until it’s gone.

Lets Save Trees!

For the past few months, I've been warned that my bills will no longer be in paper form and will now be sent online. The reason for this is because companies suddenly wants to "save trees".

I no longer receive paper bills from some company, I do, however, receive a lot of promotional advertisement in paper form. How does that save trees?

My friends, I can almost guarantee that there's not a company in the world that sat down and said "Let's do something for the environment". During business meeting, all that they talk about is how can they make more profit.

By not sending bills in paper form, they do save considerable amount of money. If the customer doesn't think about looking online for bills, he'll be more likely to forget about it and have to pay a late fee.

To me, the "save tree" campaign is a false truth. While it's true that it does save trees, it's not the main reason why business do so.

"Lets save trees" does look better for a company than "Help us save more money" right? I'm sure that expense were covered in our bill in the first place, did anyone receive a discount on their bill ever since they applied this?

Government VS Freedom

If the demand for low cost kinder gardens were on the rise. The government would say, during elections, "Vote for us and we'll build affordable kinder gardens." Once elected, the kinder gardens are build.

The government can't magically lower the price of human resources, or toys, required for a lower price kinder garden service. The only way a kinder garden can offer lower prices, at the door, is by having the help from the government. Where does the government take the money from? Our pockets (tax)!

It may be a more affordable kinder garden on the surface, but in the background we would still be paying the same (possibly more due to human resources required to put something like that together).

Here's what I mean by the lost of freedom. I don't have a kid, why should I pay for something that I won't use? Someone else took my money to build something I didn't want. How about I keep the money and do what I want with it?

How many government will it take for us to realize that it cost us our freedom?

The more people that decide what's best for you, the less decisions YOU make. If freedom is choices and those choices are made by someone else, where's the freedom in that?

We have to grow up intellectually and responsibility wise. By doing so the government will naturally close some doors. The only power the government have are the ones we give to them.

Artificial intelligence

I've been thinking the other day about robots and Artificial Intelligence and what software programming skill it would require. Coming from a software developper background, everything I know about it is based on logic. If a set of conditions are met, do this or that.
Giving away logic to a machine is the easy part but how can we give them emotions? If emotions is what we're mostly made of, why is logic easier to understand and share?

What loosing can teach you

We all want to win. It's embedded in us. One of the first competition I went to was back in my soccer days. The tournament lasted a week-end and we ended up winning second place.

It all sounds good, here's what people don't know. That week-end, I didn't really gave it my all. I was slacking, I was messing around ... my head wasn't in the game. That "victory" still haunts me to this day. There's nothing worse than not giving it your all and winning second place. What if I would have actually gave it my all?

Second place wasn't the victory. Victory is being able to find your faults in your losses. You can only change what you can identify and you'll only change them once you can't tolerate them.

It took me a long time to learn that one.

What did loosing teach you?

Principles of Success

I've been told over and over again that the principles of success can be applied in any area of life, not just business. It's not that I didn't believe it, I just didn't apply it anywhere. I'm not successful in any area of life either. Coincidence?

Recently, I've been seeking, and talking to, mentors at the gym, who have the results that I want. The terms they used were different but the principles are the same than what I've been told for the pass two years in business.

Here's what they told me (so far):
-Set a goal: If you don't have a goal why doing what you do in the first place?
-Keep track: By keeping track of what you do, you'll know where you are and where to improve to get the results you want-faster.
-You only get what you put in: The harder you work, the bigger the result.
-It's not supposed to be easy: There's no easy way to be successful. Success is never easy but always worth it.

I don't know if they realized the actual value of what they said. I didn't like hearing it because I knew it already, but knowledge, that's not applied, is worthless.

This blog is a promise to myself to follow those principles.

Homeless; Financially Better than Me

If a homeless is broke, and you're in debt, does it mean that he's better off financially than you?

Lately, I've been told that I was getting ahead in life. Little do they know that I'm actually more in debt now, at 23, than I was when I was 19. How is that getting ahead?

I often find myself buying stuff and giving the excuse "it's ok, my friends bought it too and I ain't worse financially than them". One thing that I seem to forget, however, is that my friends are also broke. What I should be telling myself is "would someone financially responsible buy this based on my current financial situation?".

Time is money, by wasting money we are also wasting time; the most precious resource we have.