Archive for the ‘Our Minds’ Category

Okay so I am not a cute little mouse and nobody is making a movie about this, but I am heading west! As of last week it’s official that I took a new position with my company in Nevada about 20 miles from Lake Tahoe in the Sparks/Reno area.  My goal is to get a place at Lake Tahoe once I get settled. I normally have about a 30 minute commute everyday to my office right now so to live at Lake Tahoe and commute to work everyday is a no brainer really. Lake Tahoe is absolutely beautiful! It’s the kind of place that I have always dreamed about living. I am sucker for the mountains and I miss skiing in the winter months! I have travelled all over the west and always wanted to live there at some point in my life. Well, as it turns out the perfect opportunity to do so has presented itself to me!

The Journey!

So, I have decided to ship my belongings and my car out and ride my Harley across the country. It’s always been my dream to ride across country and whata ya know…..another dream come true! I am in the process of getting rid of all my unnecessary belongings with the exception of a couple bags of clothes, a few person items and a handful of books. I am only taking enough stuff to fit in a few boxed that will be send UPS and arrive just before I get there.

The trip will take me about 7-10 depending on weather and how much fun I find along the way .  I will document my trip daily on this blog and include pictures and videos. I hope that you check in everyday to watch my journey!

The Route

Below you will see the main route I am taking. I say “main” only because I don’t know where and when this journey will take me off course . It’s an open road, a lot of country and things to see and do along the way and I will enjoy every moment of it!
View Larger Map

The target departure date is April 11th @ 5:00am. The first couple of stops I will some escorts. Some friends are going to follow me to Atlanta and to New Orleans to have some fun with me for the weekend. From New Orleans on it will be just me and the Night Train!

I have a few nights planned in hotels and the rest I will be camping. I have mapped out some great places to camp along the way and really looking forward to this! Knowing me though I probably won’t spend too much time in a hotel. I for see myself in a hotel in New Orleans only because I will tearing up the town…..New Orleans is after all a great place to have some fun!!!! From New Orleans there is a good chance that I won’t see a hotel until the night before I arrive at my destination. After all I don’t want to show up smelling like and looking like a homeless person!

Although I will be exploring some new areas that I haven’t been, I am really looking forward to riding up the coast of CA on Route 1. I have driven the entire Route 1 in a car, but was always envious of the guys riding there Motorcycles! If you’ve ever driven it, then you would know why! With my favorite stops being in Lucia and Big Sur, I plan on visiting some places that I have already been. Check out some of my pics on facebook. There are tons of photos from my last trip down Route 1.

Here’s a few old pics from my last trip!

Well, I hope that you will come back to visit my blog from April 11th til who knows when I get there! Until then, take care!!! I have lots of things to sell and plans to make!!!!

So over the last few weeks I’ve really been thinking about what 2009 is going to mean for me. I’m not one of those people who have a whole new plan on January 1st and that’s my New Years resolution.  My new years resolution was to put some serious thought in to where I wanted to go and what I wanted to accomplish in 2009. To have some purpose behind my actions. Today was a day I specifically set aside to work on my dream line. For those of you who don’t know what a dream line is, it’s basically a chart of your goals which includes specifically what you want to accomplish and how you plan to accomplish it with specific actions.

I have been dreading this because my last dream line that I did totally fell apart in a short period of time.  I only accomplished one of my many goals for the 6 month time frame of my dream line. I pretty much had forgotten what I wanted in my life. The whole purpose of the dream line is so that your goals are clearly defined and you set your intentions to accomplish those goals. Nobody ever trained me on what to do when I failed!

Over the past couple of months I’ve really hit a wall. I’ve lost a boat load of money in Real Estate, Software that I purchased to re purpose for resale and had my biggest ad campaign canceled and all of my ad revenue from my websites went to ZERO!

So today while sitting down and refocusing on some things, I came across this video on the blog of Tim Ferris. Tim is the author of The Four Hour Workweek, a book that I highly recommend you read if you have the Entrepreneurial itch. Anyway, Tim posted this and I really wanted to share it with my readers. I haven’t wrote anything in a while so I might not have many left, but if this inspires one person……like it inspired me today then it was well worth it! Enjoy!

So what did we learn from this video? If we fall down, we need to get back up no matter how hard it is…..right? The truth is that I have fallen down many times in my life and have always found the strength to get back up. To get back up and attack the very things that knocked me down. When we don’t get back up , we are giving up! We are accepting defeat! We are settling for mediocracy!

I have read and learned a lot of things about a lot of people in my lifetime. Every successful human being on this planet has failed at something, but they succeeded because that got back up and tried again. They learned from their mistakes and made better choices next time.  Pro athelets, Real Estate tycoons, Business Giants, Movie Stars……they’ve all failed, but they never gave up!

Because I lost money in Real Estate, does that mean I will not invest in Real Estate again? NO…..I lost track of how many times that Donald Trump has gone bankrupt!!! He never quit…..and I sure in the heck don’t plan on quitting either…..at anything!

In the words of Tim Ferris…..

Business icons, superstar professional athletes, billionaires — it doesn’t matter how rich or how accomplished — I’ve had them all tell me the same thing…

There are moments when you feel the world is too much. Days and even weeks when you want to (or perhaps do) pull up the covers and half-sleep in bed until nightfall, avoiding a feeling of hopelessness that seems insurmountable. Long-awaited deals fall through without warning, haters attack you without reason or fact, circumstances turn good decisions into awful realities — sometimes it just feels like the deck is stacked against you and there is nothing you can do about it.

I’ve felt the same on more than a few occasions, and more are coming.

Entrepreneurs in particular seem prone to feeling on top of the world one minute, only to feel crushed by it the next.

To this breed, I assure you all: in our species, it’s normal.

It’s an integral part of building anything remarkable, whether a business, a relationship, or a life. Expanding your sphere of comfort and abilities comes with a cost: repeated self-doubt.

I thank my mother for forwarding me the above video to put things in perspective. In your moments of self-doubt, I encourage you to watch it and meditate on all of the things you’ve done that you once considering impossible. The odds you’ve overcome, the critics you’ve proven wrong, and the small defeats that — through making you stronger and smarter — made huge victories possible later.

Get back up. Bigger and better things are waiting for you.

So, this is my comeback speech (Post)! I am refocusing this year on some new dreams! Bigger and better dreams……and I will accomplish them and I will write about my jouney here.

See ya soon!

Pat

Too much of thought is spent on useless things for it to be truly helpful in tackling a big issue. If you have something you are trying to brainstorm about, you will probably run into a few problems if it is your first time brainstorming. It can be hard to focus on the problem at hand in order to find the best solution. You may also spend time thinking in directions that won?t end up helping you find the final solution. Therefore, you should follow certain brainstorming rules that have been used by brainnstormers for years. They will help you get started with the best brainstorming session.

The first rule of brainstorming is to ignore absolutely no idea. Anything that comes to you during the brainstorming process is one more idea than you had before, and therefore should not be discounted. Even if you think it is absolutely ridiculous when it first comes to you, you should write it down anyway. You may find it is more possible than you realized before, or that you can build a working plan off of its basic premise.

You should always keep either a piece of paper or a tape recorder with you during your brainstorming session. Either of these will allow you to record everything that comes to you, and maximize your brainstorming session. You can buy nice dictating tape recorders that will switch on whenever you start talking. These are often hailed as one of the best ways to keep track of your thoughts during a brainstorming session. Afterwards if you forget an idea, you can just hit the rewind key and listen to your very moment of revelation once again.

Once you are done, you may be faced with a horde of great ideas, or you may have found absolutely nothing. But brainstorming is a powerful process that allows you to unlock the vast resource that is your own mind, and allow you to think of the problem from a different standpoint and possibly be able to think of something. So give it a try. It will only take a short while, and may give you something that you never thought was possible.

Some people believe that your IQ is the ultimate indicator of intelligence. Children take IQ tests, and if they get a high score, they are considered gifted. That was the old school of thought. The new school of thought indicates that there are several indicators of intelligence and not all of them have to do with traditional book learning methods. Teachers and parents nowadays are more sensitive to the fact that each child is different and everyone has their own strengths.

Yes, it is true that someone with a high IQ has a high amount of a certain type of ability. Some are good in math and science; others are better at language and writing. However, in order to score well on typical IQ tests, you pretty much need to have a high amount of ability in several different areas. Some people consider this to be flawed thinking.

Instead of focusing on IQ, parents, teachers, and children should worry about building their own unique strengths and abilities. This should start early in a child?s life. For example, if a child shows aptitude in music, perhaps learning an instrument is a good idea. If a child likes to read, suggest to them different books and ask them questions about it.

However, there is a fine line between building their abilities and pushing them too far. Ask them what they want to do. Encourage them to build their skills and learn. Make them feel as if they have a choice. Even a child with a high IQ will renounce their schooling and get poor grades if they are driven to it by their parents, teachers, and peers. Good parenting and good teaching will help a child reach his or her own abilities.

Having a high IQ is not important these days because most feel that it doesn?t truly measure intelligence. IQ tests don?t take into account the fact that some children have abilities in areas such as art and music. People with high levels of abilities in these areas can also be considered geniuses. Instead of worrying about the terminology, work instead to build your own strengths. Living up to your personal potential and enhancing the skills in what you are good at is more important than what any IQ test can say.