Category: Leaving a trail for our Son

All Mid Life Celebration posts from 2008 – 2014.

Chicken Soup For The Soul

Mark Victor Hansen writing tips:

Changing the world, one story at a time
Born Jan 8
www.YouPublish.com
Star Trek fan
Guinness Book of world records record holder, non-fiction
Inside Edge Jack & Mark
Andrew Carnegie – hand up or hand out
Dad was a baker – didn’t add skills
Can read 4,000 words a minute (?)
Stories must touch your heart
Write “Intoxicated, edit sober”
19 million books 1st year Teenage soul
Bucky Fuller
40 books
edit 9 times

Know what she said?

Know what she said?

Yesterday I heard one of our school’s middle-aged, elementary school teachers, with 35 years teaching experience, soliciting our parental feedback to make next year’s annual elementary, overnight camping trip more successful.

And in the process, she revealed two concepts I had to write down, because I thought they were profound. Now I’m sharing them with you.

First, she talked about the “Scared Privilege” it is to be a school teacher. And you could really feel her passion and sincerity.

It made me wonder what some of my sacred privileges are. Immediately, I had a decent list. Here are a few:

Being alive at Mid Life.

Being the parent of a student.

Being married.

Having good health and a roof over my head.

You know what it made me think?

It made me think. “Virtually everything we have is a sacred privilege”.

Secondly, she talked about her simple process for using any advice we give.

“Tweak it or toss it“!

What she meant was if something isn’t working too well, tweak it. If it doesn’t make it better, toss it.

It made me wonder how long I hold onto something that doesn’t work, without even trying to tweak it.

So today, I promise to relish my scared privileges and tweak the way I find time to be in the moment of our Mid-Life Celebration.

Make it a sacred day, because if you don’t, who will? Carpe diem, jeff 🙂

30-Second Elevator Speech #2

Will others hold us up as a wonderful example, or a terrible warning?   I’m humbly working on leaving an enduring legacy for my son and wife.  I’ve developed a simple model for handling Life’s Big Decisions.  Through the power of the internet, I’m building a retirement business to make the world a better place before my time is up.  It is my hope that others, especially Baby Boomers and X-ers, will also do something great for humanity before their time is up.