Tag: kt247

friendship, health

My Photo Reel is Real

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Recently I looked back on my photo reel for multiple reasons. I needed to showcase a moment. I needed to cherish a memory. I needed proof of something with a date stamp. So many reasons with purpose.

Having a photo reel is as real as it gets. It’s a book of pictures. My memory reel. Having this at my fingertips on Instagram, Facebook or my iPhone is confirmation of the digital age but also purposeful.

No need to dig through boxes to find the right year and month. I can just scroll online. Such a time saver. Such a space saver too. Then the assembling of photos to make a tribute is equally amazing. With today’s digital age we can add music and edit as we wish.

For those out there that say too many pictures are annoying I say screw you. My online catalog of photos is my photo reel for my real life. I plan to use these photos when the need arises.

Everyone has a purpose. In my purpose work I connect on many levels. Photos and videos are part of my connection. As I wrote about taking the class and read the book in the past, I am choosing to add one more dare: TAKE THE PICTURE!

Capture the moments. Save them your way (public or private). Use them when you need them most. Don’t be shy. I loved polaroid pics back in the day and the instant gratification they provided. Today my thrill rolls ahead with time and is captured in my growing photo reel(s). I also love that my friends know how I much I like pics (see above).

My life is worth sharing. I choose to share my photo reel or a portion of it. Say cheese!

In today’s turbulent times, make sure you capture the time you are spending in isolation. Create a virtual friend group and connect with photos and videos. I know I am actively doing this with my private groups to foster community and share smiles. It’s very therapeutic and may be vital to some in isolation.

Use technology to your advantage today, tomorrow and the next day. See the clip below from a recent friend share:

 

Screen Shot 2020-03-22 at 2.43.25 PM

challenges

Friday the 13th Meets Coronavirus

2chicksandapen

It’s Friday the 13th. Lock yourself inside. Hide. The world is under attack of corona. Not the beer, the virus.

Pause the youth sports activities, indefinitely. Talk about dealing with sad kids. As a coach this is uncharted territory, to see seasons cancelled. This is an emotional change for kids and most coaches are not prepared to guide their athletes.

Resume school via digital learning. Locking the kids up at home. I can juggle but what about parents with kids who can’t. Panic will set in. Sheer panic.

What about the people who rely on food pantries. Will people forgot to make donations? Those kids may not get the free lunch they are used to at school. Digital saves one problem but creates another. Creative solutions in some places bring hope. If kids can’t take the bus to school for lunch, the bus will bring the lunch to them.

Postpone group meetings, team picnic, conference and various other events with multiple people. People still need to work. How will commerce keep moving? How will people meet their contract deliverables if commerce is halted?

Pray for all the college students abroad on spring break that may be stuck for a while outside the US. Think about the emotional state of coming back from spring break to be told to remove your belongings immediately from dorms. This is happening!

Cancel spring break flights stateside. Or maybe not. Some will take advantage of cheap flights to escape the madness. The tourism industry is going to take a hit.

Don’t dip your hands in the chalk bucket at the gym. You might catch something…

Just hit pause on life.

Check in on friends quarantined from cruise. 14 days in a barracks at 80 years old. Wow just wow.

Watch the news or not.

Write a blog about the chaos and hysteria.

Buy toilet paper if there is any left.

Why isn’t there a soap shortage?

Shouldn’t we be washing our hands?

Listen to people thrust their opinions on you of why we are in the state of hysteria relating to coronavirus.

Go wash hands again.

Find new shows to watch on Netflix.

Answer stupid text questions from people who appear to live under a rock.

Continue living in a bubble.

Try to stay positive about the economy.

Shop online and hope FedEx still delivers.

Clean the house.

Wash hands again.

Pray for all my fellow small business owners who will suffer because of this craziness we are living in.

A big thank to the humorists in my life….

 

fitness and nutrition, health

Early Morning Madness

2chicksandapen

I have a routine in the morning. I get up and get my fitness on. It’s repetitive. It’s draining. It’s even torture on some days.

No matter what I try my hardest to keep my routines routine. Sticking to a routine can be challenging when it’s extra cold or pouring down rain in the morning. That’s why you need to make a habit of keeping your morning routines routine. Why? It starts my day off right. If I can push through a tough workout first thing it sets me in motion for a successful day especially since most days I have go sideways or completely upside down.

My mind fires on all cylinders after a good physical push. Even after a competition or race my mind is fresh. No toxicity or negative vibes. I don’t have energy to waste on these. My eating stays on track for the day because my body requires good fuel to replenish what I depleted. There are just so many benefits to a good morning start of exercise.

However, I can have a busy schedule that prohibits me from starting fresh in my routine and regimented style. Do I freak out? Yes of course, but then I bend and flex to make it work.

Maybe today I need to workout at home modified to body weight exercises. I can make this work and so can you. Maybe I need go for a short run/walk while a kid is at practice. Weather can affect this option but it’s viable most days. Maybe I can do some yoga for active recovery. I even hit the gym once in a while at night.

Adding a night workout can be taxing if you wake up and do it again in the morning but there is never a gain for sitting still. Actually the more sedentary you are the worse off you will be down the road.

Recently, I received a link to an interesting podcast and I was able to give it a listen today. It was good and it mirrored my active lifestyle and compliments my journaling and blogging persona. It was interesting to reflect on the podcast and solidify this post.

Journaling, exercising, starting fresh all help tame your mind. When life is full of curve balls, we all need ways to cope. If you are struggling try a morning refresh or reset. Start a new routine.

Maybe you can start small. Morning meditation is a simple and easy way to start your day. Making your bed so you can go to bed fresh is another option. Spending 5 minutes writing down ideas could be another. Many options are available. Challenge yourself.

This month I have definitely posted a few times about mindsets. Keep following along to see where I drop mind tidbits in my blog posts.

perspective

The Offer

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The offer came with sacrifice. The offer on one side looked good. The offer on the other side looked rather different. How does one decide to accept or deny the offer? One decides with careful consideration I hope.

Now the offer type doesn’t really matter. It could be a new job offer. It could be a promotion offer. It could be a relocation offer. It be an offer to buy a home. It could be an offer to buy a car. At the end of the day an offer is just that. An offer!

An offer can be accepted. An offer can be rejected. An offer can be counter offered and/or negotiated. In any offer there are various parties involved. It’s a transaction of sorts.

For my example here I will use the sports team offer. I coach a competitive-level team thus I extend offers for kids to play on my team based on skills, talents and overall spots available on my team. Not everyone gets an invite. The main reason being there are normally more applicants than available spots. Just like the job market. More candidates than openings.

When offers are extended one person could be overjoyed by their offer and another could feel like the offer is not reflective of their worth. If one accepts the offer and one denies the offer, should there be any negative feelings toward the one who denied the offer?

In my mind the answer is a big fat no. An offer is made and the other party has a choice to take the offer or decline the offer. It’s pretty simple.

I recently had a property for sale. I got an offer to buy it. I didn’t like the offer. I provided a counter offer. This is customary in a real estate transaction thus it’s noted as generally acceptable to deny or counter offer. This also reflects my perception of my property’s value. It may even have some emotions involved in the decision if I had owned the property a while.

As a person, if I applied for a job and I received on offer but the compensation wasn’t enough to pay my bills, meaning it wasn’t a good fit, would my friends be disappointed if I didn’t take the offer? It would 100% be my choice so I would think not, unless one of those friends was assisting me financially. In that case a friend may think I should take the offer as some money is better than no money. If the company was disappointed, I would just be honest with my reasoning and let them know if budget money frees up to call me back. This 100% has to do with my personal value and how I would not settle for less than what I thought I was worth.

Circling back to the sports team example, if I was the coach of a high school soccer team and I offered a slot to boy A on varsity and a slot to boy B on junior varsity should there be any worry that one may deny my offer to either team?

I wouldn’t think so because as a coach I know I made offers to the players I thought were best for varsity. If the varsity player declined their offer, I would have a runner-up or next-in-line person to offer the open slot to. If on the other hand, the junior varsity player didn’t accept their offer what would I do?

Nothing. I would do nothing unless that person asked what they could do to get better for the next tryout. I would only provide those details if I was probed. The offer was denied thus I would move on until the next review of open slots next year.

At the end of the day offers get made in so many areas of life. The sooner we all learn that we can’t win all the time the better. Finally the Patriots football team/fans learned that lesson before another Super Bowl this year. It is also important to learn that we should never judge another until we have lived a day in their shoes.

The emotional aspect of the house sale could have to do with a family member being deceased and the only memories left were made in that home. How do you put a value on that?

The emotion involved in the job scenario could be how hard the person worked professionally to reach a certain pay level yet the job offer was below the minimum threshold that person set for themselves.

The emotion behind the JV offer could be that their best friend made varsity and the other person didn’t think the game would be fun without their bestie. Or maybe it was a set of identical twins and one made varsity while the other made junior varsity. How tricky would that scenario be?

Life is tricky. Balance is important. Understanding and valuing the other side of an equation and offer can sometimes get missed especially when emotions are high. Remember no good decision is made when emotions are high.

Always take time. Maybe 24 hours to evaluate offers to see the pros and cons before making a rash decision. I know when dealing with real estate offers they are time sensitive yet the time allows for consideration.

This post spurred from a couple of online articles relating to high school sports, the value of a coach and also the lack of sincerity of coaches who make cuts! I’m a coach. I make cuts. It’s not easy but I normally have reasons. Some may agree with me some may not. That’s life.

When I read negative articles I often try to put myself in the other person’s shoes and wonder how this situation has impacted them. I then reflect and take action as needed. I wish more people did that vs. casting judgment.

I also took action after reading the articles and let my daughter’s basketball coach know how much I appreciated her time and coaching of my daughter. A good coach can help grow confidence and further passion of an activity or sport. A coach who only cares about winning can knock down a player’s confidence in a pinch and simultaneously instill a dislike for the sport once loved.

Just a night of reflection and writing time for me. It is my hope that this blog reaches someone who needs to hear this message:

You define your personal value.
You are a reflection of yourself, make yourself proud.
You say yes or no to all things in life.
You can grow from adversity.
You can win if you choose to win. It’s all about choices in life.

We all make mistakes. We all have the ability to bounce back after crazy times ensue. Will you take the next offer if it’s lower than you hoped for? What would you gain from taking a subpar offer?

In home sales if an offer seems inferior you may have to step back to evaluate deeper. If you have to pay x more dollars for three months while you get a new offer was the first offer that bad? Decisions, decisions.

Life is full of decisions, opportunities, curve balls, and offers. You will never make all the right choices. But one can always learn from missed opportunities. Life is a gamble.

Keep gambling!

perspective, working women

The Value of Time

2chicksandapen

This year I will most likely talk about time and its value many times and in many ways on this blog.

It may sound odd but every time I turn around an obstacle could arise because of time in general or how our most precious commodity (time) is spent thus making us have limited time or maybe it’s the perception of less time vs. the reality of time.

To keep the focus I purchased a new clock for my office. It’s a cool clock made up of words that illuminate in five-minute intervals. Thank you Sharper Image for offering cool gadgets.

5 minutes past the hour, 15 minutes past the hour and so on. The illumination is eye- catching and is a great conversation starter.

The clock is also a great visual reminder of time, my need to write (words), and my need to evaluate my time continually to insure I am on track with all that I do.

Today’s thought spurred after I read an article on the time limitations of males vs. females. It was interesting but as I reflected I sighed and said hmmm I can relate.

I can relate to the roles women are depicted in. The wife, the mother, the corporate executive, the cook, the laundress, and so on. Now some households have a male counterpart who contributes or pulls a fair load but “moms” end up as the go-to for many things, people and so on despite having to work these days.

Just random food for thought here. Until next time, please use your time wisely and make you a priority at least one hour a day. I know you will thank me if you schedule you time one hour a day.

You could read a book. You could research something on the internet. You could get your nails done. You could do many things in an hour. Try it!
And a special thanks to Dove chocolate for the time traveler reminder!