Last night while waiting on the “express lane” 
I was stuck behind two ladies who seemed to 
be taking an awfully long time checking out.
I started to get irritated and wanted to say,
“Hey, what’s the hold up ladies?!”
But then I saw something that broke my heart.
It seems the one didn’t have enough money 
for some of her groceries.
I saw her look to her friend for help,
saying something about a check not coming in.
Then she took some food out of her bag
handing it back to the cashier sadly saying, 
“I guess I don’t really need this.”
Dejected, she headed out of the store.
In the parking lot, when I handed her the groceries 
that she couldn’t afford, you would have thought she won the lottery.
It made her day as much as it did mine to be able to help her out.

If you are still reading this at this point, 
consider your own random act of kindness. 

Donate something to the Foodbank of Monmouth & Ocean…
http://www.foodbankmoc.org/?page_id=102
there are people RIGHT HERE that need our help.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down a major life goal you have yet to achieve or even begin to take action on. For each goal, write down three uncertainties (read: fears) you have relating to each goal. Break it down further, and write down three reasons for each uncertainty. When you have three reasons for your fear, you’ll be able to start processing the change because you know where the fear stems from. Now you’ll be able to make a smaller changes that push you towards your larger goal. So begins the process of “trusting yourself.” 

(Author: Sean Ogle)

Upon my first read through of today’s quote and Sean Ogle’s subsequent post I started thinking about my “goals” …all of the sudden visions of me swimming in a pool full of hundred dollar bills filled my head.

As I read through a second time though, I realized that I did not “fear” money, what uncertainties could I come up with? I mean I could definitely find something to spend all of my goal (money) on. That’s when I began to come to my senses; I realized that money should never be THE goal, instead it should be a by-product of a goal that you actually achieve.

Dictionary.com defines a goal as: the result or achievement toward which effort is directed. Now you could certainly make a case that money could be a “result” of your “effort”, but then what would be a good goal? Should I set out to make $100,000 per month? $10 million per year? Perhaps a net worth of $1 billion should be my goal? My point is that maybe money is better off on my business plan and left out of my personal goals.

A friend of mine whom with I am working on a project, sent me a text message yesterday stating that we needed to take the project in a different direction. I agreed with him, but figured we would talk about it later in the day. Within a minute, I received another text message from him stating that it was done. My first thought was, ‘What do you mean it’s done? We didn’t even give ourselves a chance to second guess ourselves.’ When I asked him about it later he said that, “When I make my mind up about something, I need closure right away.” Wow, what a concept! He is able to move on, where I would have been left hemming and hawing until someone else made up my mind for me.

So my life goal is this; Decrease the amount of things that I allow myself to ‘think about’. Sure there will be major life decisions that I will need some time to properly formulate the best way to handle, but for the most part, for my day-to-day, I need to follow my gut …make a decision, take action and then stick to my guns. I have emails sitting in my Inbox from weeks ago, I have papers piled up on my desk that I need to go through, I have half-finished projects waiting for the perfect time to complete them.

I’m not sure why I have such a tough time deleting an email or throwing away a piece of paper. Maybe my fear is the uncertainty of finality. Whatever it is, it has got to stop! I need to start trusting myself, after all I’m a pretty smart dude.  I have to understand that there will never be a perfect time, or a perfect place, or a perfect business partner. Einstein said it best when he defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

So take action and take it now …before you end up in a strait jacket.

John Zalepka