5 Things You Can Do to Start Living Intentionally Today

You need two things in order to change anything in your life and reach a new place.  1) You need to know where you want to go.  What is your end game?  What will success look like for you? And, 2) You need to know where you are now.  Think about it like reaching any physical destination.  If you want to take a trip or move somewhere, the first thing you do is decide where it is that you want to go, maybe the beach, Disney World, the mountains.  

Ok, you have your destination.  You map out the route.  On the way you get lost.  You pull out your map to look to see how to get back on track.  What is the one thing you need to know?  Where are you now?  

How do you find where you are now?  You pick your head up and you look around.  Are there exit signs? Are there other distinctive markers?  Once you know where you are, and find where you want to go on the map, then you can correct your course and carry on.  No matter how off course you may get either by accident or because you wanted to take a side trip on the way, if you know where you are, and where you want to go, you stand a much higher chance of success in reaching your destination.  

Life is no different than that, except that most of the time we don’t establish where we want to go, and we don’t pay attention to where we are until something happens, and then we say, “Oh shit, how did I end up here?”  

Make You Own All Natural Facial Cleansing Oil

I’ve been using the oil cleansing method for a while now.  You will find many variations on how to do this, but below is what works for me.  I have combination skin (more like oily and normal), and hormonal cystic acne.  I started using Coconut Oil on my face.  This did help some, and fortunately, the coconut oil didn’t clog my pores too badly.  I say “fortunately” because Coconut Oil is high on the Comedogenic scale. It may be good for a lot of things, but cleaning your face isn't one of them (for most people).   

Then I read something about Castor Oil.  Castor oil has been used for eons for all kinds of skin conditions (including eczema) to soothe, moisturize and treat acne.  Most Oil Cleansing recipes call for a combination of Castor Oil and some other oil such as grapeseed (high in anti-oxidants), Jojoba (closest to your own facial oil), Olive Oil, etc. Around the same time I started playing around with Essential Oils, so I decided to combine the two things for my own homemade super cleanser.  

What If You Could Ensure Your Child's Success in Life? You Can. HOW? Read on.....

Interested?  First what is a "Growth Mindset"?  Thanks to Dr Carol Dweck’s  research (Stanford University, professor of Psychology) there has been a shift happening in how leaning and intelligence is viewed.  Dweck describes Growth Mindset as a belief system that asserts that intelligence can be developed.  Parents with a growth mindset believe that their children can achieve at higher levels - with effort, perseverance, and resiliency (some describe this as “grit”).  Learners (e.g. your children) with a growth mindset believe that they can grow their intelligence with hard work and learn just about anything.  

Conversely, a Fixed mindset is a belief system in which one believes that intelligence is something you are born with - it’s genetic, it is innate, and although everyone can learn new things, you innate level of intelligence can not be changed. (Depressing, right?)

So, last week I talked about Redefining Failure for Kids .  A google + member, Toy Veteran, commented with the quote, “To succeed you only have to double your rate of failure.” - Thomas Watson, President of IBM from the 20’s to the 50’s.  I love this because it reminds us that our failures are often the most valuable and memorable teachers.  We can respond to our failures by either giving up, or we can use them to become better and stronger as we try, try again (this is the perseverance and grit stuff).  

One is a growth mindset, the other is a fixed mindset.  I know which I want for my kid (hint: it isn’t the "give up" one).

Book Review: Sunset Rising (Sunset Rising #1) by S.M. McEachern

Hey Guys, I thought it might be cool to start posting some reviews of books that I am reading.  I like non-fluff fiction stuff (A Prayer for Owen Meany for example), fantasy, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, etc.  

However, I also like total fluff stuff that just let’s me get wrapped up in a simple, exciting story, and doesn’t strain the brain.  If I compared it to movies or TV, I would say I can appreciate and enjoy watching some of the important Academy Award winning films.  BUT, I also really appreciate a good episode (or binge Netflix marathon) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Not the movie though, the TV Series.  The movie was terrible.   

I just finished Sunset Rising by S.M. McEachern.  This is a "flufff" book, not deep fiction.  First 1/3 of the book is sort of slow.  I feel like there is a lot of telling.  So far the villains are a little cartoonish.  I imagine President Holt with a Hitler mustache.  It’s a dystopian YA with romance.  Girl accidentally gets put into a position to save her world, but needs the help of an extremely attractive man to help her.  Typically, right up my alley.

I typically don’t mind minor grammatical errors because if the plot and characters are engrossing enough, my mind sort of skips over them subconsciously correcting as I fly along.  However, that has not been the case.  I can’t tell you for sure if it is because there are so many of them, or if the plot and characters haven’t sucked me in yet or both.  So far, I’m a little...

And for the rest of the book… it picks up in the 2/3 of the way in, a little.  There is more character

Redefining Failure

I’ve been reading a lot about Growth Mindset theory lately, and why it so important to success in both children and adults.  I’ll post more about that later, but it got me thinking about failure.  Being able to learn from failure, take what you learn and adapt it to a the ‘next time” or a new situation is a critical component of a growth mindset. 

The subject of failure alone is enough to write a plethora of books on, so I won’t tackle it here.  Rather just one aspect of it.  

The flip side of failure is success or the attainment of a goal.  The attainment of said goal means you are successful or you are not.  If you are not successful in reaching your goal, then you feel like you are not a success or as my 4th grader would say, “I feel like a loser.”  This is heartbreaking to hear from your child.  Their heartbreak is our heartbreak, and we also don’t want them to look like a loser, so we do our best to work it so they avoid feeling this way.  We prepare the road for our child instead of preparing our child for the road.