I recently gave a presentation locally in Oklahoma City on what leadership is and how our youth can become effective leaders. Here is the first part of that series:

Leadership is the ability to inspire people to reach a common destination. It is the wisdom to see the challenges and obstacles that are placed in your way and know that you can get around them. You may not know how or when. But you honestly believe deep down in your heart you know you can get there. A great leader will pull you and help you accomplish things that you did not know that you could do. A boss will sometimes push you to someplace that you did not want to go in a way that you don’t want to go.

It is also someone who by word AND by deed always does the right thing. What does that mean – by word and by deed ? Always – even when nobody is looking. Why is this person a leader ? Because sometimes it is hard to find a person who always says and does the right thing. When we find that kind of person they can become our spiritual and moral leader. These are the kind of people that we can aspire to be like.

Stay tuned for part two to be posted shortly. I’d be interested in your comments below on Part I

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Big giant fitness goals are hard. Little tiny fitness steps are easy. Here are 5 things you can do today that will cause you to burn more calories than you did yesterday. FYI… more mouse movement is not one of them.

1. Don’t drink your morning coffee - drink water instead: When you wake up skip the morning joe with the cream and sugar and get yourself a big giant glass of water instead. It will quence the dehydration state that your body went into overnight, and it will start your metabolism churning to burn the upcoming calories.

2. Don’t drink anything but water all day long – Keep up #1. For today and today only do no drink anything but water. No coffee. No juice. No soda. No tea. Keep a constantly filled small water bottle with you at all times. At the end of the day you probably won’t be dragging. And water will keep that metabolism churning.

3. Park as far away from your office as possible - Don’t park in that all close coveted spot – even if you have a reserved spot. Park in the boonies – where you have your choice of spots. Take advantage of the good weather you might be having and enjoy the nice leisurely stroll across the lot into work. Think of all of the door dings you won’t have! And instantly you have burned more calories than most people have by this point in time in the morning. For extra points – offer your reserved spot to somebody who normally has no choice but to park in the boonies.

4. Get up once every two hours and walk around the building – If you need to get up for that hourly break don’t go shoot the BS with a coworker or drink a soda. Head outside and walk all of the way around your building. Really hustle and do it twice. Buh bye calories.

5. After dinner go for a walk – Clean up the dishes and head outside around the block. Do it twice like you did at work. Do NOT plop down in front of the TV with the remote. And do not come back in front of the computer. Grab a family member and head outside.

I double dare you to do any of these and let me know how you feel at the end of the day.

A couple of years I decided that I wanted to work less, I wanted to work easier, and I wanted to work my hours.

Pretty simple stuff and I would not be suprised if a good chunk of hard working people all over the world have the same aspirations.

Who wants to work more? Or harder? Or somebody elses hours. Let me know if you find that person. They need a good virtual slap.

To accomplish this I also decided I need to make certain changes in my thinking and in my life. Some of them are:

1. I need to eliminate computer programming from my life as one of my daily tasks. I’ve been doing this since I was probably 10. Sitting in front of a computer in some kind of editor writing programs to make the computer do cool things. I just don’t want to do it anymore. If you have been in the IT field for awhile you may feel the same way.. or not.

2. Work with people that are smarter than me. In eliminating the computer programming I need to find people that are better at it than me and get their help. Coding is part of my business model and will probably always be around me. But it is time for the younger generation to do it.

3. Gain my freedom. This ties back to number one up there again. If I can stay away from programming I will free up an amazing amount of time in my life to do other things. Flying, Piano, Walking, Wife, Daughter. Pick one. They are all more important to me than coding.

4. Earn my income in an easier fashion: This is where the passive income comes into play. I’ll be writing more articles about this as time progresses. And I don’t want to earn money so I can collect large stacks of green pieces of paper with dead presidents on them. I want to earn the income to allow me to have the freedom (see previous bullet point) to hang out with my wife, my daughter, my plane, my piano, my planet more. But I don’t want to have to slave away for 8 hours a day to earn that income.

Those are the ones that I could remember off the top of my head. More to come about how I am going to accomplish these items.

Do you ever have the same desires I do? If so I’d like to hear about it in my comments.

Livin’ Lovin’ Lovin’ Livin’,

Patrick

I just found this. Very cool. Read it over 5 times and absorb it. Have a kick ass day!

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat on his strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbour. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth – we’re chickens.”

So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.

- Anthony de Mello (1931-1987)

Is that you ? I mean stop and seriously think about it. What have you done this year to make yourself any different than the people you sit around at work?

Is your attitude any better than it was a year ago?

Do you have any more goals? Have you actually done any of them?

How are your finances? Are you investing yet like you should be ?

Stop thinking about this stuff and start doing it. How hard can it be to sit down right now and write down 5 goals. Five very simple goals that you could do in the next 2-3 months. It is not hard. Type them up in Wordpad, enlarge the text, make it a pretty font, center it, print it and put it on wall right next to you – I dare you.

If you are not going to do this simplest of things to stop being a chicken… well then.. enjoy sitting on the eggs!

As I blog more in the future you will see adopt this philosophy:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/03/09/simple-posts/

You don’t have time to read any deep intense poo about the meaning of life, how to squeeze productivity out of every waking moment. If you want that go read Steve Pavlina or something like that. He is a deep intense guy. He is a pro. I am not. In the future my posts will probably be less than 40 words a pop. That way you can read it, say “That is cool” or “that is crap” and move on.