Archive - June, 2011

Why I’ll Never Retire Early

June 30, 2011 in Exceptional Living 54

“If I work hard and climb the corporate ladder, I can retire by the time I’m 40″.

I remember saying that as I was fresh out of college. Work was a necessary evil. One that prevented me from doing everything I really wanted to do…like sit on a private island and drink Mai Tais all day.

But what did the desire to retire early really say about me?

My perspective has changed quite a bit since then as evidenced by this tweet from last week:

Anyone who could actually retire early would never do so. If you have the drive to get there, you won't want to give it up to do nothing.
June 22, 2011 3:05 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@tonyjalicea
Tony Alicea

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I Suck At Evangelism

June 29, 2011 in Meditations 64

In my last job, I worked at a Christian web design company. We were doing a lot of what WordPress does today. Ten years ago, not many people were doing web design with a content management system as the back end. I worked as a project manager and consultant. I loved my job and I was good at it.

Then I tried sales. I will tell you one thing. A salesman I am not.

I would refer to myself as what Malcolm Gladwell calls a “maven” in his book, The Tipping Point. Gladwell refers to mavens as “information specialists”, or “people we rely upon to connect us with new information.”

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The Pride of Perfection

June 27, 2011 in Identity 47

I am a recovering perfectionist. It is a condition that sounds impressive on the surface. However when you get to the root of the issue, it’s more of a disappointment.

I’ve given up on things because they weren’t perfect more times than I can count. I almost didn’t even launch this blog because my first post wasn’t perfect. I hated the design but I had already spent all the money I had available for the project. I didn’t want anyone to see the site and my writing until I knew they would be sufficiently impressed.

There have been countless other projects I’ve never started and relationships that I’ve ended because of this problem.

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Is It Wrong To Imitate Others?

June 24, 2011 in Exceptional Living 40

I find myself imitating others on a regular basis. You may say that you are only “inspired” by others. That’s great. But I imitate others all the time. It’s probably not what you think, though.

I believe both inspiration and imitation are important. Just as long as you can differentiate when each one is appropriate. It could be just as detrimental to be inspired by the wrong thing as it is to imitate the wrong thing. So how do you know the difference?

Creativity should be inspired, character should be imitated.

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3 Parenting Tips I Learned From The Dog Whisperer

June 22, 2011 in Odds & Ends 15

Today I make my comedic debut. I know you all think I’m hilarious but I don’t write a humor blog. My posts are mostly serious. So it was fun to let my hair down and share with you something I’m passionate about…telling people how to raise their kids.

KC blogs about parenting pretty regularly so I figured this would be a chance to share my wisdom. What’s that you say? How can I do that when I don’t have any kids of my own? Easy. I watch The Dog Whisperer. End of discussion.

Here’s a little excerpt of the goodness:

Let me go ahead and get this out of the way: I don’t have kids. I don’t even have a dog. I live with my sister. She has a dog. I consider her my niece. These are my credentials. I will now tell you how to raise your kid.

I helped train my niece by using tips from Cesar Milan’s show on TLC, The Dog Whisperer. If you haven’t seen it, your life is incomplete. Not only will you receive tips on raising your dogs, but you’ll also learn how to harness the energy of your own little monsters all in one life-changing show.

Here are some strategies for raising kids I gleaned from The Dog Whisperer:

Don’t Rub Their Face In Crap

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Hop on over and read the rest of the post at KC’s blog. Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Balance Is A Pose, Rhythm Is A Dancer

June 20, 2011 in Exceptional Living 69

Bboy Pose

Have you ever tried to hold a pose for long time? If you’ve ever been in a photoshoot, you know it gets old pretty quickly. Most people who have taken wedding pictures will tell you that after about 5 minutes, posing for pictures isn’t fun anymore. The reception on the other hand? I’ve seen people dance all night.

I have always tried to live my life in balance. I was taught that too much of anything is not good. A perfectly balanced life is one that consists of various activities in measured portions. But I’m not always good at keeping my life in balance.

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Finding Freedom In Distraction

June 17, 2011 in Meditations 48

Mother With Crying BabyI hate distractions. Mostly because I am self-diagnosed ADD. I blame the Internet. What I’ve realized though is that no matter what I do, I will always find a distraction if I’m looking for one. It’s like when you’re in a quiet room and you look at the clock; next thing you know, you hear every.single.tick.

Distractions abound in my church because there is a culture of freedom. For example, we have a nursery but if a woman wants to keep her baby in the meeting with her, she can do so. I’ll be the first one to raise my hand and say that I’ve been guilty for throwing eye-daggers at a woman that let’s her baby cry for more than .07 seconds without leaving the meeting.

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A Shoot From The Root

June 15, 2011 in Identity 37

Shoot From The RootI am not a farmer. But many people in the Bible were farmers and so many of the analogies used were easily understood by them. One of the farming techniques that fascinates me is the process of grafting.

You can read more about grafting here, but in essence, the shoot of one plant is grafted onto the rootstock of another so the two can join together. The advantages include the ability to to induce fruitfulness without the need for completing the juvenile phase and the ability take on characteristics of the stronger plant, just to name a few.

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The Messy, Beautiful Church

June 13, 2011 in Meditations 43

Beautiful MessOne of my guilty pleasures back in the day was the MTV show, The Real World. Before reality TV was basically staged like it is today, this show gave us the fly-on-the-wall look into the lives of real, every day people paired together with complete strangers. It was one of the greatest social experiments of our time.

I loved wacthing the beginning when you would see these radically different people meet each other. Things usually started off very polite and everyone bonded at their shared amazement of the gorgeous house they got to live in.

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When Dreams Don’t Come True

June 10, 2011 in Exceptional Living 47

Today’s post is brought to you by one of my very favorites. Cathy has become a great friend from when I stumbled across her site and we connected immediately through our mutual love of reading. She blogs at Windows and Paper Walls about her fascination with literature, learning and all geeky things science related. She’s thoughtful, well-spoken and even sometimes pretends she’s from the hood (inside Twitter joke, if you aren’t tracking). I absolutely love her thoughtful post today. I hope you do to.

We all have dreams. Whether we are the type to shout our passions to the world or hold them quietly in our hearts, we all have desires burning deep inside.

But this broken world can be a harsh habitat, one that cares nothing for our best-laid plans, our bucket lists. So what do we do when our fondest dream doesn’t come to pass?

Here’s an inspiring true story.

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