I don’t know who wrote this text, but I like it very much.

What I CAN Change

• You can’t change your entire life, you can only change your next action

• You can’t change a relationship with a loved one, you can only change your next interaction

• You can’t change your entire job, you can only change your next task

• You can’t change your body composition, you can only change your next meal

• You can’t change your fitness level, you can only start moving

• You can’t de-clutter your entire life, you can only choose to get rid of one thing right now

• You can’t eliminate your entire debt, you can only make one payment, or buy one less unnecessary item

• You can’t change the past, or control the future, you can only change what you are doing now

• You can’t change everything, you can only change one, small thing…and that’s all it takes

 What will you change today?

When it comes to relationships with yourself and with your loved ones;

Love is spelled  T-I-M-E.

Invest time with yourself and on yourself.

Invest time with the people you care the most.

Invest time on the projects that fulfill you the most.

Invest time to make a difference, to leave a legacy.

Invest time walking barefeet in the green grass.

Invest time observing people wherever you are.

Invest time enjoying the moment as often as possible.

Invest time being thankful for everything you have.

This way, you will love your life even more…

Renew this prescription every day.

Turn your weakness into a strength!

One of the most inspirational stories ever told is the story of Dumbo the Elephant. Throughout most of his young life, Dumbo was persecuted for having big ears. As a result, he hated his ears because they always brought him down. One day, however, he falls from an airplane, but then something amazing happens. Dumbo begins to flap his ears, and he can fly! The very things that had brought Dumbo down his whole life are now lifting him up.

A good book that explains how to turn your negatives to your advantage is…..

How many times in your life did someone make fun of you only to realize later on that it was actually your strength??????

How many times did someone criticize you for doing something good????

How many times did you feel guilty because of other people’s personal beliefs?

How can you learn to turn your “weakness into a strength”?

Next time you feel this way, try to remember Dumbo.

Today is my birthday and the timer on my computer is reminding me that I have only 20088.75 days to live. (55 years)

(If Life offers me the opportunity and health to live 100 years).

At the same time, I’m very thankful for the first 16436,25 days lived so far.  (45 years)

This is a good day for you and me to revisit my first post. The first post explains best “la raison d’être” of this blog.

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Why 36525 days to live !

Life goes quickly and the clock is ticking.

Time is life’s most precious asset.

A human life has a potential of approximately 36525 days to live. (100 years)

Did you ever stop your daily activities to think about that?

Every night when I go to bed, when I fall asleep , I have one less  day to live.

Yes I know, It sounds obvious, but when was the last time  you really considered that? Were you ever aware of this?

This is what it looks like.

36525,36524,36523,36522 if I am a newborn.

27395,27394,27393,27393 if I am 25 years old      

18263,18262,18261,18260 if I am 50 years old      

9131,9130,9129,9128 if I am 75 years old

1826,1825,1824,1823 if I am 95 years old

365,364,363,362 if I am 99 years old

This scenario is based on a perfect life potential, in a perfect world.

Now, in reality, my life expectancy will be influenced by which part of the world I am born in. It also depends on whether I am born a male or a female.

Life expectancy may vary between 35 and 85 years old depending on which country I am born in.

For example if the life expectancy in my country of origin is 35 years old , I should expect to live 12780 days as a potential.

If the life expectancy in my country is 85 years old , I should expect to live approximatively 31046 days.

Next comes the hereditary factors on which I have very little control over, like an unexpected and unforgiving cancer and other uncontrollable circumstances such as car accidents, sport accidents, plane crashes …

Something to think about.

How long do you expect to live?       

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Today,

Balance activity with calmness,

wealth with simplicity, 
persistence with innovation, 
community with solitude, 
familiarity with adventure, 
constancy with change.

The other night I heard Keith Jarrett stop a concert mid-note. While the hall had been surprisingly silent during the performance, the song he was playing was quiet and downbeat and we (and especially he) could hear an increasing chorus of coughs.

“Coughs?,” you might wonder… “No one coughs on purpose. Anyway, there are thousands of people in the hall, of course there are going to be coughs.”

But how come no one was coughing during the introductions or the upbeat songs or during the awkward moments when Keith stopped playing?

No, a cough is not as overt or aggressive as shouting down the performer. Nevertheless, it’s heckling.

Just like it’s heckling when someone is tweeting during a meeting you’re running, or refusing to make eye contact during a sales call. Your work is an act of co-creation, and if the other party isn’t egging you on, engaging wth you and doing their part, then it’s as if they’re actively tearing you down.

Yes, you’re a professional. So is Jarrett. A professional at Carnegie Hall has no business stopping a concert over some coughing. But in many ways, I’m glad he did. He made it clear that for him, it’s personal. It’s a useful message for all of us, a message about understanding that our responsibility goes beyond buying a ticket for the concert or warming a chair in the meeting. If we’re going to demand that our partners push to new levels, we have to go for the ride, all the way, or not at all.

Seth Godin  ( blogroll)

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So many times, in different  circumstances, I am guilty of not giving my full attention. My mind is wandering in many directions and even though I am there physically, I am elsewhere emotionnally and mentally.

Examples? Yes I’ll give you many…

One of my kids will come to me to ask me something and I will give them a quick answer and expect a quick understanding.

A colleague at work will come to ask me a question and I will give them an quick answer so I can resume what I was doing.

Keeping our smartphones ON in a meeting is very rude to others and very distracting as well. ( I have stopped doing this completely)

Giving our full attention in every conversation is essential to building and maintaining good relationships.

Another surprising thing is that we often act this way with people we care the most about.

Many times, I have fooled myself by thinking I was saving time by multi-tasking. VERY WRONG.

Giving our full attention to people we care about is a good investment of our time and the time of others.

Stephen

“As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.”

Julius Caesar

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Why do we worry so much?

What do we get out of it?

What’s in it for us?

It is true that we worry more about the unseen and the unknown.

Many people who have written or spoken about worry have told the statistics story. The earliest source that we could find of the story and most probable author was Thomas S. Kepler. He wrote about a woman who realized fears were ruining her life. She began to keep track of what was worrying her and she found:

40% of the things she worried about were about things that would never happen.

30% of the things she worried about were about things that had already happened, water under the bridge.

12% of the things she worried about were about others’ opinion. When she thought about it, she realized that criticisms are often made by those that are jealous or insecure; therefore unjust criticism is a disguised compliment.

10% of the things she worried about were needless health worries, which made her health worse as she worried.

8% of the things she worried about were “legitimate,” since life has some real problems to meet.

If you consider the above as probable statistics, it would seem that only 8% of the things that you worry about are worth the worry. Next time you are worried about something, perform a check to see if the worry is in a category other then the 8% category and if it is, perhaps logic will help free you from the worry.

Will this matter a year from now?

How much time do you spend worrying?

Do I always choose correctly, obviously NO.

Do I always practice what I preach, unfortunately NO.

And by becoming aware of this, I keep improving every day.

I control what I eat, drink or don’t drink. I decide to exercise or not to exercise. I can waste time surfing the web aimlessly or I can read good books with a clear objective in mind. I can stay by myself or meet with interesting people. I can take some classes or stay ignorant. I can be generous or greedy. I can be patient or impatient. I can be angry or peaceful. I can be dissatisfied or thankful.  I can be optimistic or negative. I control with who I want to spend time with and who I don’t want to spend time with. I decide who can influence me and who can’t . These choices are mine and mine alone most of the time.

What will your choices be today?

Twitter existe depuis maintenant cinq ans. Après des débuts modestes, ce service de microblogging connaît une croissance très forte. Une étude récente de Semiocast évaluait que 2,4 millions de Français utilisaient Twitter. Au Québec, ce serait environ 9% de la population.

Même si l’utilisation de Twitter demeure encore relativement confidentielle, sa croissance  semble être assez forte. 572 000 comptes ont été créés le 12 mars. Ce qui semble être un record puisqu’aucune autre date n’est mentionnée. La veille, le 11 mars, 177 millions de tweets ont été envoyés. De plus, il y a maintenant plus d’un milliard de tweets envoyés chaque semaine. Twitter s’impose de plus en plus comme le «média social » du temps réel.

Benoit Descary

http://descary.com/twitter-un-milliard-de-tweets-par-semaine/

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Beware complexifiers & complicators. Truly, “smart people” …simplify things.

Tom Peters

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What you are about to read applies to most of us¸

Living isn’t complicated, feeding yourself  isn’t complicated, finding a roof over your head isn’t complicated, learning new skills isn’t complicated, making new friends isn’t complicated, It’s actually quite easy.

If what I’m writing is valid, Why do so many of us have the tendency to complicate very simple puzzles and transform them into very difficult problems to solve? Are we some kind of maso-psycho-slow-destructive-kamikaze unto ourselves?

When you meet with someone who tells you that something is very complicated,  First BEWARE, then RELAX because it’s probably not.

Will you try to simplify today?

“To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.”

Theodore H. White

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 This is risky business! But when we are convinced that our ideas are the right ones, we must fight for them. Just think of Galileo, Martin Luther, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King…

“Life is an adventure, dare it”

Mother Teresa

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It was a pleasure to receive this award from Sass at  http://pinklove9.wordpress.com/ . Thank you Sass!

As a receiver of the Stylish Blogger Award, I have to do the following:

• Present seven facts about myself.
• Name half dozen bloggers I think deserve the award. Contact those people.
• Create a link back to the person who gave you the honor.

 7 Things to Know About Me:

1) I’m obsessed with the brevity of time.

2) I try to live each day like the last.

3) I’m curious about almost every subject in the Universe.

4) I like people, books, music, arts, sciences, sports, food  and much, much, much more.

5) I like to travel all over the world to discover new cities and new cultures.

6) I like physical health and financial wealth for the freedom it gives us.

7) I want to live 36525 days. ( 100 years)

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6 Stylish Bloggers:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

http://www.tompeters.com/

http://tv.winelibrary.com/

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

http://inoveryourhead.net/

http://www.pauljorion.com/blog_en/

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Check them out!  These are some of the best and most influential blogs in the blogosphere.    

The reality is that “Unless your heart, your soul, and your whole being are behind every decision you make, the words from your mouth will be empty, and each action will be meaningless. Truth and confidence are the roots of happiness.”

 Kathleen Pedersen

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When I read this quote this morning, it challenged me in many ways:

Behind every word I write and most of the actions I take…

Is my heart really into 36525 days?                          Answer: YES

Is my soul poured into it?                                          Answer: YES

Is my whole being behind what I write?                   Answer: It’s improving. ( Still have to personalize more)

Am I living what I’m writing?                                      Answer: Not always, as often as possible.

Sometimes, I go back and read previous posts and I ask myself; did I really write this stuff?

And the answer is: YES I DID. So far I don’t regret writing anything. I just make sure that I live it the best I can.

Human…all too human.

“To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”

Kofi Annan

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It’s not always easy to choose because we must take responsibility for our choices. In my opinion, when we choose for ourselves, we increase our own personal  freedom  and we cannot blame others for what happens or what doesn’t happen to us.

Another difficulty with choosing is that when we say YES to one thing, we are saying NO to another thing because our time and space are limited.

No matter what you do, time marches on at its own pace; tic, toc, tic, toc and there’s nothing you can do to change that .Time is a great equalizer; it runs at the same speed for everybody, rich or poor, jet pilot or snail farmer. You can’t manufacture time, you can’t reproduce time, you can’t slow time down or turn it around and make it run in the other direction. You can’t trade bad hours for good ones, either.
 
What you can manage, however, is your attention. Attention is a resource we all possess. Your attention reflects your conscious decisions about which activities will occupy your time. You are where your attention is… not necessarily where your body is.

The first step is to precisely understand your priorities. There’s a big difference between managing your attention to accomplish priorities and checking off items on your to-do list. Our natural tendency is to do what is fun, convenient, or absolutely necessary at any given time—but your true priorities may not fit into any of those categories. So, here’s a question to ask yourself, “If I could accomplish only one thing right now, what would that one thing be?”

 Your answer will quickly identify your top priority, where you should be directing your attention.

Empathy

“If I were in your shoes, I know what I would do.” Marketers can’t do their jobs without understanding what a prospect wants, talks about or is interested in. And managers (and leaders) are ineffective when they’re unable to imagine life through someone else’s eyes. The problem is this: if you were in my shoes, I wouldn’t be me, I would be you.

As soon as you bring your beliefs, expectations and worldview to the table, you’ve lost the ability to imagine what someone else would do in this situation. All you’re doing is imagining what you would do. The next time you’re puzzled by the behavior of a colleague or prospect, consider the reason might have nothing to do with the situation and everything to do with who is making the decision and what they bring to it.

One of the things that stands between us and our quality of life, is the underlying fear of death. From the moment we don’t fear death anymore, we don’t fear life either. When we get rid of the fear of dying, we get rid of a lot of others fears with it.

The moment that we become almost fearless, we can enjoy life to its fullest because of our willingness to take risks.

Isn’t it ironic that people who are ready to take on more risk are often the ones who are reaping the rewards? And even when they don’t get the big prize, they are having fun enjoying what they love the most, and that in itself is the reward; the satisfaction of a job well done.

My hope is that some young people understand this concept as early as possible. So much time and frustration could be avoided.

Yes but what if I fail? Try again.

And what if I fail again? Try again , and again, and again.

And what if my friends laugh at me? Ask yourself ; what risk are my so-called friends taking?

Did you take the time to identify YOUR fears of failure?

According to internet guru Clay Shirky, Americans watch roughly two hundred billion hours (200 000 000 000) of TV every year. That represents about 2000 Wikipedias’ projects worth of free time annually assuming that it took one hundred  million hours (100 000 000) of human thought to build it.

( Source, Cognitive Surplus, by Clay Shirky, 2010, The Penguin Press).

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If we could recuperate only half of these hours doing something more useful for our society, we would recuperate 28,6 billion days.

Should we invest our time in better ways?

“It is not that we have a short life to live but we waste a lot of it”

Seneca

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Sometimes we waste our time because we don’t have much control over what is happening to us. In this case, there’s not much we can do about it.

At other times we waste our time because we lack a definite purpose in our lives.
This we can do something about. We must take the time to ask ourselves the important questions, the ones that concern only us.

It may look like a waste of time at first, but in the long run, it will save us time.

Benjamin Franklin used to ask himself these important questions every night before he went to sleep.

What did I do wrong today?
What did I do right ?
What can I improve tomorrow?

Apparently, he did this for most of his life.

If you want to learn more about this, I recommend that you read his autobiography. It will make you realize that even if he lived more than 250 years ago, he was facing similar challenges like the ones we have to deal with today.

The real question for me is : Is there a life BEFORE death ?

When they asked  Henry David Thoreau his opinion on the afterlife, he answered to them: One life at a time.

Sometimes , it seems to me that some of the people who worry the most about the afterlife are often the ones who don’t know what to do with this one.

Why should we worry about the unknown, why should we worry about something over which we seem to have very little control?

I hear many people talking about faith and yet, at the same time worrying constantly, how can they worry and have faith at the same time? Isn’t worrying the opposite of faith?

Do you spend too much of your time worrying about things over which you have no control?

Does this make any sense to you?

Some of us live under the influence of alcohol.

The influence is good as long as we are under the influence. The next morning, the influence can be quite different.

Some of us live under the influence of shopping, and the influence is good until we receive the credit card statement…

Some of us live under the influence of gambling, and the influence is good until we realize that the house wins most of the time.

Some of us live under the influence of buying expensive toys to impress others who don’t care at all. This influence is gone when we realize that we become a slave of this habit.

Some of us are under the influence of a new religion, and the influence seems to disappear when that special God of ours doesn’t answer our requests.

Some of us indulge in sexual escapism, and the influence is gone when the temporary thrill is over.

Some of us will study philosophy and believe that they have found the Way, only to wake up later and realize that their particular philosophy can fail them.

Some of us will swear by the world of reason and science, only to discover the actual limitations of our understanding. At least at this point in our evolution.

Some of us will invest in the joy of parenthood only to realize later that our kids will be entitled to their own lives.

Some of us will want to earn a lot of money until they realize that money can’t buy love.

And while most of us live under one kind of influence or another, Time goes by.

Under what influence are you living ?

Is this the kind of influence that you enjoy?

It’s up to you!