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6 Tactics for Better Mornings and Better Days. S.A.V.E.R.S.

Tim Ferriss has interviewed hundreds, if not thousands of high performers. He tracks their habits, tactics, strategies and one comes up over and over:

Prayer or meditation

When Hal Elrod was doing his research on success he settled on a word for this and made it the first of SAVERS:

Silence

No matter what you call it, silences, prayer, meditation, etc, it is a time to pause, slow down, process emotions, prepare for moving forward, and deal with deeper things.

At this moment in 2020, many are being encouraged to take a step back and disrupt the daily whirlwind. You have a choice:

Power forward
Or
Accept the gift and opportunity of silence … even if just for a moment.

Silence is simply allowing yourself an intentional time to be still and present in a moment. To check in on your insides, and be aware of all you take in around you. To be calm in your heart and mind before you run into external forces, no matter if that’s your kids, traffic, boss, customers, or “NEWS”. 

Affirmations

There are many forms of Affirmations. 

Hal Elrod, in The Miracle Morning, shows how to use a set of words, phrases, and ideas to remind yourself to develop, achieve, create, and overcome.

This is a practice for the more touchy feely things like dealing better with adversity, financial success, relationships, health improvement, weight loss, increased energy, self-confidence, and joy. 

Visualization

A practice of envisioning in your mind you in the future in the act of working towards your success or after you achieved it. 

Exercise

Especially in a time with extra down time, and less movement, it’s important to be intentional in this area. 

It could be a dance party with your kids, or a video streamed exercise class. 
1,000 Kettle Bell Swings, or 100 pushpus a day. 

Something, in the morning, to get your body moving … and develop a new habit for your kids. 

Reading

Now is the time to read a book. 

Fiction or Nonfiction. 

If you want one on success, you might start with the one SAVERS came from. I recommend the version for Entrepreneurs the most. Since you are reading this, you have a creative class element to you, you are or want to be an Artist, Entrepreneur, Investor or Owner. 

After that, here are a few of my top recommendations for this time:

Scribe

I use my mind for thinking, not for remembering.

“The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory”

The act of getting ideas, feelings, concepts, lists, and more out of your head is primarily to free up space to think and feel. It also helps you process. 

If you commit to one page per day and simply write down things you are grateful for – your world will improve. 

Ryan Holiday has many great thoughts on scribing, or journaling. You can make it as simple or as complex as you want.

My kids have journaled off and on for years now.

I have them do it for many reasons from processing to recording to simply practice writing to developing hand-eye coordination. 

At this point, in an ideal world:
Sundays – they set their intentions for the week – think goal setting or planning. Each month we are starting to talk about setting intentions for a month too. 

Each morning and when they get home from school they are to journal. When school is out, it’s morning and mid-afternoon as a reset. 

My intention for them is to be able to let go and be present. After school is to help them reset so that they don’t carry all the energy, frustrations, joy, and sorrow from school into the house. 

Reset is a key. Turn the page and go to the next. 

That’s what the whole world has the opportunity to do now. 

Will you take the opportunities you have and take the little steps to your next big success?

How will your measure success in this time? 

Whatever you are considering, let at least two people know. One can be me, the other should be someone you see on a regular basis. 

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Jason Fried on Sales, Learning, Software & Pricing

Everything is sales. We don’t have any sales people at 37signals, but everything we are doing is sales.

Sales isn’t so much gimmicky pricing ending in 9′s or copy writing, or ad placement – It is about communicating the value of your product.

I used to sell shoes, and we had reps come in and teach us about shoes. A rep would come in and talk about ethyl vinyl acetate, which is a foam that goes into shoes to help absorb shock. He’d be all pumped about EVA, and this technology, as if it really mattered. When customers come in they look at some shoes. They pick it up and flip it around a bit. Then you ask to try on a pair. People are looking for design, comfort and affordability. Nobody cares about EVA foam.

You have to understand in your product that you need to talk about what matters to the customer, because they don’t care about the tech.

Jason Fried has written many wonderful things over the years, and this quotation came from set of questions in one post. Some of the other questions include: Continue reading “Jason Fried on Sales, Learning, Software & Pricing”

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A Castle Thank You

Kickstarter is a wonderful system of pairing artists and fans together to help finance the creation of art.

One desire of most artists is to thank the people who supported them as they pursued creating something great. Sometimes the artist even wants to personally thank every person by name, but how do you do this in an effective way when you have 21,207+ backers?

Continue reading “A Castle Thank You”

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The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Continue reading “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”