Years ago Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers and both the motto and insights gleaned have resonated and helped me out. Very apropos to starting a new business. "I'd like to start a small business but..." The "pain in the but question is what's holding you back?
When I 've asked people this question, the response is often that they're afraid of failing - after all is said and done, that's what it boils down to. It was a biggie for me.
To prepare to succeed is to learn how to do it. You already know how to fail. You can fail by doing nothing or you can fail by doing stupid things. By finding out exactly what you would need to be successful and ensuring that those needs are met.
Failure doesn’t change your genes or your personality. It affects some people’s actions negatively, but it’s not negative in itself. Will you be a “loser” if you fail?
A secret recipe to horsemanship is to create curiosity. Rather than you approaching the horse, try drawing it towards you. This may take time depending on the horse’s conditioning. Horses that have not been exposed to human interaction or have had negative encounters with humans may let the fear drive them away more than a horse that has been handled humanely by humans.
A cowboy is made by being ground across the rocks and thistles of the wilderness – sometimes literally, when the horse tosses you. A cowboy is shaped and moulded through backbreaking labor in the still mists of morning, by delivering the breech calf in the dead of night. When you’ve broken ice around the dying baby calf, carried it into the barn with its lowing mother following, and lit the kerosene stove to warm it up and watch the life rise back up in it, that’s when you start being a cowboy.
I was never a cowgirl...
But over the years, ...
A cowboy isn’t Gene Autry or even John Wayne. Most cowboys never got into a gunfight. But when you’re finding someone who defines who and what America is, that’s the cowboy: grit and determination and hard work and love for freedom and what you have. Being a cowboy isn’t about possessions or money. It’s about finding that toughness at your core, the moral structure, the gir 'r done work ethic.
A cowboy is made by being ground across the rocks and thistles of the wilderness – sometimes literally, when the horse tosses you. A cowboy is shaped and moulded through backbreaking labor in the still mists of morning, by delivering the breech calf in the dead of night. When you’ve broken ice around the dying baby calf, carried it into the barn with its lowing mother following, and lit the kerosene stove to warm it up and watch the life rise back up in it, that’s when you start being a cowboy.
I was never a cowgirl. ...
But over the years, ...
A cowboy isn’t Gene Autry or even John Wayne. Most cowboys never got into a gunfight. But when you’re finding someone who defines who and what America is, that’s the cowboy: grit and determination and hard work and love for freedom and what you have. Being a cowboy isn’t about possessions or money. It’s about finding that toughness at your core, the moral structure, the work ethic, and growing that fibrous root into a cactus flower, prickly and remarkable. It’s about making the desert within us bloom. And it’s about just existing, being as much a part of the world around you as it is a part of you.
Showmanship is a class where you lead your horse. As you lead the horse around the arena, the judges watch to see how well the horse follows directions while you are on the ground. Riding and leading are two completely different things. Then after a couple times around the arena, you're asked to line up in the center. One at a time, you may be asked to walk you horse from one judge to another. You will turn them when you get to one judge, then trot back to the judge you were at first. All competitors will do this.
Then after everyone is lined up again, the judge will come around to see how well you show off your horse. When the judge comes to one side, you should be on the other so that he/she can see well.
Wish I'd saved the solicitation, FishWatcher.
Sometime in the last year I received an emailed salesletter for some automatic-article-writing software that would do exactly this.
It was being marketed to blackhat Adwords bloggers who were wanting to game Google by putting up thousands of trash blogs tied to specific keywords.
You would type in the keywords or subject you wanted an article written about and the software would search the online article directories and (maybe the web at large, I don't recall) and make supposedly intelligent selections of pertinent material and grab a little here and a little there and piece them together to compose and publish your article for you on your trash blog.
I was disgusted with the idea and the salesletter's claim that this was not plagiarism, but "fair use" and the kind of legitimate research that all writers do. (But I'm especially sensitive about such things, having made my living as a writer forever.)
And I didn't really believe that it would work; that is, that the software would make intelligent and coherent pairings of sentences and paragraphs swiped from a variety of articles.
You have me wondering now if we are seeing that software in action.
If so, unethical and stupid as it do be, it's got some pretty smart cutting and pasting going on.
Best,
kwc
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k e n . w i n s t o n . c a i n e
full of natural goodness since 1952
editor, http://www.mindbodyspiritjournal.com
sharing holistic how-to since 1992
I think the key (pun intended) difference between happy people and unhappy people is in the translation of the events of their lives. It’s also the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people
It seems to me that the difference between happy people and unhappy people is in the translation of the events of their lives. It’s also the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people
Sometimes I think this is the only reason to take risks — so you don’t go through life settling for what you’ve always believed to be true. And you get to have these moments where you look up from your little-mindedness and say, “Ohhhhhh. You mean, I don’t have it quite right here? You mean, there’s a better way of seeing this?” I come from a background of second-guessers. It didn’t matter what the decision was — if the result brought about any level of discomfort or or challenge, my mother would inevitably say, “Oh! We should have � (Fill in the blank” I’m not blaming my mom here, but I am saying that I was programmed at an early age for regret, second-guessing, doubt, and not trusting my own judgment .
Sometimes I think this is the only reason to take risks — so you don’t go through life settling for what you’ve always believed to be true. And you get to have these moments where you look up from your little-mindedness and say, “Ohhhhhh. You mean, I don’t have it quite right here? You mean, there’s a better way of seeing this?”
I come from a background of second-guessers. It didn’t matter what the decision was — if the result brought about any level of discomfort or envy or challenge, my mother would inevitably say, “Oh! We should have �Ķ. (Fill in the blank�Ķ ordered the steak instead of the shrimp, stayed at that beach house and not this one, waited til Hecht’s had a sale and gotten this cheaper�Ķ)” I’m not blaming my mom here, but I am saying that I was programmed at an early age for regret, second-guessing, doubt, and not trusting my own judgment and discernment.
Food is where it all begins and we can learn ways to provide for ourselves, especially if we live, or strive to live in a community, and not as isolated individuals with no responsibility beyond meeting our own needs. We can discover how to care for the soil which provides, in collaboration with the weather, the essential nutrients that enable plants to grow strong and healthy.
When we feed the soil, we feed ourselves and we create the conditions which enable future generations to feed themselves. This is the essence of sustainability, a system which self-regulates as it regenerates.
Care of the soil is how we learn the importance of our connection to the earth and what our role is within the web that is Life. We learn to prevent problems such as erosion. Through skills such as observation we can witness the impact that the sun has and how we can design our gardens to best take advantage of the amount of sun that reaches our property.
