Comments for Simply My Life

Comment on 1 Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life by ottertri

ottertri — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:37:26 +0000

The Responsibility one sounds like something I learned from Steven Covey years ago. From the Seven Habits, one of the tactics for taking control of and thus responsibility for your responses is to pause before you react. Think about what you’re reacting to, and what you want the outcome to be, and what is true to yourself. Also, what’s the real reason something upsets you? If you figure that out, you realize it’s not always the current situation that set you off. That helped me understand the idea that people don’t make me mad, I allow that to happen. I don’t necessarily agree with it completely, but it did change how I deal with difficult situations. I’m not always successful, but taking time to think and compose myself before I react to something I’m not happy about does tend to make it less stressful.

I guess I’d have to actually read #64 to see what you mean. One of the things that makes me happiest is helping other people succeed, so empowering others doesn’t automatically sound like street team marketing.

Interesting.

Comment on 1 Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life by Michael

Michael — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:07:47 +0000

Good question ottertri. I don’t think I can point out any single principle that has had the biggest impact on me. TSP is like a cookbook full of recipes. Some of the recipes may be familiar and you know how to make them and how they’ll taste. Others may be new and you can only imagine what the meal will taste like when you’re done cooking. There are some principles in the book that, I believe, after I work through them and implement them will have a big impact on my life.

Principle 1 (Take 100% Responsibility) is something I’ve heard many times before but I like they way Jack explains it in the book. He uses the formula E + R = O which stands for Event plus Response equals Outcome. If we want to change the O (the outcome) the only thing we have direct power over is the R (response). Maybe expressing it as a formula resonates with me because I enjoy math and the logic behind it.

I didn’t really think about Principle 64 (Empower Others) much at all. When I read it it sounded to me like it was just a tactic to sell more books. End the book by telling people to spread the word about the book. After I listened to the audio book a couple of times I felt a bit overwhelmed. There is a lot of information in the book and I’m definitely at a point in my life where I’m looking to make drastic changes. I started thinking about how I was going to put the information into practice. That’s when I thought about creating this blog. I figured that what I’m going through must be fairly common so it would be nice to share it with people and hear their stories and get some feedback. It wasn’t until I was writing that third entry when I realized that this entire idea of the blog is Principle 64 in action.

Comment on Part I of Organizing Life—Clutter by Michael

Michael — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:38:16 +0000

You make a good point. We all have some things that have sentimental value beyond their usefulness. I have very few things that I just hold on to. I used to keep all my books until I moved, then moved again, and again and again. I finally got to the point where I was just tired moving my books! When Amazon’s Kindle comes out in color I may git it a try. It would be nice to be able to carry 100s of books around in something so small and light.

Comment on 1 Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life by ottertri

ottertri — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:01:35 +0000

Now I’m really curious to read The Success Principles, because most of what you’ve said about it so far I’ve worked on before. It sounds like I moved towards it from a different angle sometimes, but Yeah.

Since you’ve already mentioned them both, did the first and last principles have the biggest impact you you, or is there another one that made you really stop and think?

Comment on Part I of Organizing Life—Clutter by ottertri

ottertri — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:52:02 +0000

I have two main problems with this one. First, a lot of my things are inherited, and I feel like I’m holding them in trust rather than owning them. And second, BOOKS. I have books. I re-read them. I hate reading them electronically.

Part of my eventual plan is to have a home base where I keep some of these things. I may not live there full time, but I will have a place to keep the memories. I can always ship stuff to where I’m going, right?

I like a bit of clutter, but only a bit. The marriage years were clutter intensive and I’m not quite done purging that. Close though. And I do like to give things away, it makes me happy to share something that’s important to me with other people.

Comment on Simply My Life by Billy

Billy — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:35:53 +0000

Michael, I like your new site!