Why Reputation is So Important!

Over the past week, unless you have been in a hole or under a rock, you have heard of the sexual abuse cases of young boys that have occurred over the past 15 years at Penn State. This is really disturbing to say the least. This blog is not to address that part of this sick case, but to talk about JoePa aka Joe Paterno. Before I go on please pray for those boys that were abused. I can’t even imagine the hurts and pain they have gone through so please take a moment and pray for those boys.

Ok. A little bit about Joe Paterno. Joe Paterno holds the record for the most victories by an FBS football coach with 409 and is the only FBS coach to reach 400 victories. He coached five undefeated teams that won major bowl games and, in 2007, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach. In 2005, he lead the Nittany Lions to a 11-1 season and shared the title of the Big Ten and won a BCS berth. Paterno was named 2005 AP Coach of the Year was coached at Penn State for 46 years. But now that has all come to an end. Since Paternos coaching career has come to end how will you remember Coach Paterno. As a probably the most influential coach of the last century or a person that let a sexual predator get away with abusing young boys for 15 years and not having the balls to report this abuse to the cops. Legally Paterno probably did the right thing and reported it to the AD and president but morally this is inexcusable.

This leads me to my message for everyone. “It takes many good deeds to build a reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” -Benjamin Franklin Nowadays it is incredibly important to maintain your reputation!! Your reputation on this Earth is one of the most valuable things you have and you can not waste it. You must protect it because when the day comes that you can not be trusted or relied on you will die!! Paterno has 46 years of a great tradition at Penn State. Paterno put that University on the map for college football and academics because of what he contributed to the school. Now it is almost worthless due to the lack of following up. I am not saying that Paterno is bad man. I think he is a great man. Actually when I played football I wanted to go to Penn State and play for him. What I am saying is this failure to report a sexual abuse has cost his career.

Yes a sexual abuse of little boys is extreme. I do know this. But what about Cain and these ladies coming out against him for verbal sexual abuse? We all have done things which we regret and it has tarnished our reputation. If the people that worked in our offices, in our classroom, etc. knew this they would think lessor of us. We can’t do anything about that now. But what we can do is learn from it. Learn that our reputation is important and do not take it lightly. Self-discipline and reputation go hand in hand. Self-discipline weighs ounces, but regret weighs tons. Don’t you think that Paterno is regretting  his actions now!! Be discipline in everything you do ladies and gentlemen. Don’t sway off your divine destiny! Don’t have one small mistake take away your great career you will have in the future. Remember your reputation is too valuable to have it taken away by something stupid. Be aware of this and act everyday as if your reputation depends on it. Because… it does.

Negative vs Positive Questions

Nowadays people suffer a lot from bad attitudes. The cause of bad attitudes is negative thoughts. Negative thoughts come about because of the driving force of negavtive questions we continue to ask ourselves when we think of our problems. Think about it, when you are face with a problem questions come to your mind saying; why is this happening to me, what is the matter with me, can my day get any worse, etc. There are many more questions we continue to ask ourselves to continue the spiral of negativity.

Let me tell you a secret. Your mind is always working no matter what you do. So, when you ask yourself these negative questions your mind will try to find out the answer to the negative question. Spoiler alert!!! The answer will be negative continuing to bring you down about yourself. For example, have you ask yourself why can’t I be as successful as blah or good looking as blah. When you asked yourself this didn’t the answer come back like because you had bad grades or you didn’t go to whatever school or you don’t have good looking parents or don’t have the body as this person. That is continues to bring disappoint to yourself and kills your self confidence.

We have to start asking the right questions to these problems. When you change the negative question to a positive question you change your thought process. I am not saying to say your question in a positive way. I am saying to change the question entirely. Instead of asking why can’t I get a job, say how can I get a job. See how that changes the viewpoint. The question changed from saying oh poor me into seeking a solution to your problem. Take another example, why am I so lazy and tired at work? Lets change it to how can I get more energized about my work? Wow!! See how that changes the mindset to seeking a solution to your problem.

Lets change the questions we ask ourselves. Lets change our negative viewpoint when we ask questions to positive ones so we seek solutions to them. When we do this for ourselves, we can start helping others at work, at home, and everywhere else.

Walk in their Shoes

This is post I decided to do because I had a something happen to me that feel incredibly bad about. I jumped to conclusions about a certain individual and it really nip me in the butt. Sometimes we have to walk in someone elses shoes to really understand what they are going through.

Too many times these days with jump to conclusions about an individual and choose not to understand them. It is really had to get anything done in business, school, etc. when can’t understand someone’s reasoning. When we jump to conclusions we don’t give people a chance to learn and heal from their mistakes.

Let me tell you a story about a little boy. This little boy came up to this farmer and ask to buy one of his puppies. The farmer ask well how much money do you have? The boy answered I have 39 cents, will that do. The farmer counted the money one by one and said yep that will do.

The farmer took the boy to the area where the puppies were and 4 cute puppies ran to the foot of the boy. The boy started to pet all of them. The farmer asked so which one do you want. As soon as the boy was going to decide he saw the five puppy come to his feet. You see he had back leg problems and couldn’t run like the other puppies. The boy said I want that one.

The farmer was suspicious and ask why because that puppy could not run and wouldn’t be fun to play with. At that same time the boy pulled up his jeans and on his feet were steel braces with two special shoes attach to them. The boy said see I don’t run well either this puppy is going to need an owner that understands.

Being a leader is all about understanding one another. We can’t get suck in a mindset that judges people. Most jobs you have to work with others to get tasks done. There is a chance you are going to stuck in a group that one person or multiple people are going to have a bad day. That doesn’t give you the right to jump done their throat. Sometimes you have just take their faults to really understand.

One of my good friends had a boss jump down his throat about something. He told me that he was the only one in the group pulling their weight. He said he was going to confront his boss about it. Well that next day his boss was out of the office and mail came for his boss. He signed the package and opened it. He found out that his wife just filed the papers for a divorce. He told me that night that it changed his whole entire perspective and now he was helping his boss by leading the team while his boss gets everything sorted out.

It is soooo easy to judge each other and to discredit them without ever understanding their side of the story. Criticism takes a hold of us in any environment. We all have the incentive (it seems) to discredit someone in order to advance to a better position. Give them a bit of room! I am not saying that they are right about unleashing at you. Just take time to get to know why they are angry today. Leaders take time to get understand their followers. They are understanding and deal with those people in a way to lift them up.

This world is full of people that need someone that understands. For this week I challenge you to go out there and have a different perspective about certain individuals. If you have an individual at your job or class that you don’t know about and you judge a bit. Get to understand that person and find out his/her story… then try to lead in the right direction. Once you do this you will help this person grow while you grow yourself.

New Orleans

Wow! I just came back from New Orleans on Thursday morning at like 7am and all I can say about it was Wow! I went with 4 other good friends of mine. They are all as weird and cool as me so it made the trip that much better. I will give you just a little brief overview of it. To start off, the parade went about 5 to 6 miles throughout the city. That is ridiculous because there were numerous bands and floats going through New Orleans throwing beads like crazy. Second there were soooo many people on Bourbon street that it literally took my friends and I an hour to walk about 3 blocks!!! But most of the people there were really cool and we meet some not so cool people as well. Last but certainly not least was just the atmosphere of the place was amazing. Jazz bands were playing everywhere on Bourbon street also the seafood was amazing and sooo good. The trip in total was 5 days long but felt like a lifetime. Great Trip

The reason I wanted to post this was because for every human being you need to take a break and experience life sometimes. These years at Truman has made me really stressed and overworked. Doing homework to 3am then get up for a 8:30am class is not fun. Also, being in a lot of organizations can really take a toll on your mind, body, and soul. With the fact that you experience a lot change in college with your own family, friends, and companions. For example, this winter break I lost my grandmother who was very influential in my life. I really wanted her to see me graduate, but she didn’t have the chance to do that. There are many other aspects of life that I didn’t cover, but all this rapped in 4 years can really affect your entire life view.

So that is why I was soo happy to escape life for couple of days and enjoy myself. I really needed to relax and take a break off. Life can really hit you hard that you become to stressed, overworked, and there is too much on your plate. It is completely human to feel that way. All you need to do is step back from it and take a break for a little bit. Get away from the problem or crisis or whatever it is that is stressing you out that you start to lose yourself. Go out and enjoy yourself for a weekend or a day or however long it takes you to “get your mind right.” Then come back with the fiery passion that you had before the problem. To succeed sometimes means taking a break. It is very hard to go 100% all the time. Sometimes it is cool to just sit around and doing nothing sometimes. (i.e. I did that on Friday) But in all seriousness rest and break is what the body and mind need. So do yourself some service and get some rest when you feel overwhelmed. Trust me you will feel great and ready to go when the time is right!

Its been a while… New Focus

Wow!! It has been a long time since I have blog on my site but things are going to be changing very soon. I went through a little time of finding myself and what I wanted to bring to my blog. In the beginning it was just that I wanted to get famous fast by posting like great posts or something like that. But now I know that it is the wrong post to a blog. You just need to sit down and write about your thoughts while maintaining a focus for your blog.

Now that I got an idea about that I am going to start it back up again and post about 3 times a week. When I blog I want my posts to hit three key points. 1) Success. When I go through my day I think about certain things I learn from classes, students, teachers, and just people I run into that benefit to my life. These encounters get me to think about how the little things can get you very far in life. So, I want to bring that to my posts.

2) Fun. My last posts I always to bring something to the table that I had no idea about. Like all the keys things you need to get a job or a career. I don’t have all the answers to these questions. I don’t know what you should do to land your career job or even a job, yet. I do wish that I could bring that to my blog sometime but it is not my focus now. Since I am a student my focus should be on giving a fun aspect to my blog. I don’t want it to be funny. I want people of all majors, interests, and backgrounds to have a fun reading my blog. Since I am a business major I will bring business into the equation most of the time, but I will also make sure it is understandable and fun to the topic.

3) Quality. This is really vague I know. But whatever I write down on my blog posts I want it to be quality information that people would want to read. This is going to be a biggest challenge because I don’t have great experience in this but I am definitely going to try. With quality I know I will have to hit certain points. I need my posts to be relevant, passionate, content-orientated, and just plain good writing. I am trying to do this to first reach an audience that would love my posts and second to market myself. That is why quality is very important to me.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog post. I know it doesn’t help anyone but myself. It is just a criteria I want to focus on for the future. This is a new starting point in my blogging career.

Getting your day under control

During the days at college I get really, really busy because of time management and organizing the importance of different assignments. What I have develop over a series of trial and errors are some steps to getting your day under control. What I call it is a my “getting things done list.”

When you set up your day you MUST make of list of priorities. For example, I set up a list about 7 to 8 tasks/assignments that I must get done during the day. Starting with the assignment or task that is most important and going down to the least important. This helps by telling myself that I must get this assignment done first before I go on to the next item.

The awesome thing about this is it doesn’t have to be an assignment. For example, I use some of the tasks I must get done for shopping, ordering things for school, hanging out with friends, meetings, relaxing, or whatever. Because it is very important to have not only specific assignments done, but to have time for relaxing and hanging out with the people you love.

Second, right next to the task or assignment I put a specific time interval that I want to spend on that specific task. For example, I put a couple of hours of studying right next to investments or other classes. This is the key. When you set up the relative time you want to spend on certain items it holds you accountable for what you do in that time. I remember telling myself that I needed to study for classes and then never get around to it. It was sooooo frustrating and very annoying because I would be cramping for hours for assignments the day before it was due. This has help out tremendously.

The last item I wanted to hit is that you have to WRITE IT DOWN! There have been a lot of studies that have shown that when people write their goals, tasks, and other things not only are likely to remember it but you are more likely to DO IT! It has help me substantially because it keeps me accountable and it makes me feel that I accomplish a lot in my day. I check off all the items that I get done and increase my ego (lol) and my self-esteem.

I hope this helps you get your day under control like it has mine. I have had great amount of success after I have effectively time managed my day and got my priorities in line. If you get these two aspects of your day done every day will be a success.

I eat Challenges for Breakfast

Well, it has been a long time since I have written on my blog, but glad to be back on it again. The topic today of I eat Challenges for Breakfast comes from a role model of mine name Adam Carroll. The reason I am blogging about it is because it really touch me and the situation I am in with getting internships, jobs, well hell just an interview. It has been a hell of challenge for me, but Adam Carroll’s speech was about dominating your challenges and say well I am going to get through this stuff because I eat Challenges for Breakfast.

This blog isn’t much about informing people of what to do or giving you more information. This blog is for me and something I can come back and get motivation to continue on. Maybe this will motivate you to change your perspective or attitude about challenges. I tell you one thing though… my attitude is going to change and I am now going to look at a challenge then devour it.

I eat Challenges for Breakfast is something that helps you evaluate your situation and really see if it is how bad the situation by looking at it a different way. For example, I have applied to every position that I thought was geared towards me from the career center at Truman State University. That was about 15 positions and got turned down. Then I went online to apply for jobs in Omaha, NE (hometown) and other parts of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago. All have been huge failures and I am not going to lie I have been really down on myself. The reason is that Truman is a very good school and I thought going here will definitely get me a job or internship after college. Not exactly.

That is not the only challenge I have. School has been a challenge for me as well. I have a 3.07 GPA. Which isn’t too bad but compared to the competition that I face in getting a job, it is HUGE!! But I am not writing to complain anymore. I am not writing to say that ok that is the challenge I face and guess what… it is ok because I eat challenges for breakfast.

Eating Challenges for Breakfast is  not only about challenges that you know will show, but also challenges that you don’t see coming. For example, the other day I got an email from the financial aid office saying that my financial aid didn’t go through. That I didn’t see coming, but with the attitude that I eat challenges for breakfast I just had to do some more paper work and apply for more scholarships. But I will get everything I need to get my balance to zero and  register for my classes to graduate.

Now I challenge you to think differently about challenges and things that stress you out in life. Don’t think of it as a level 9 (on a 1-10 scale) that you can’t surpass. Start thinking of it anther war, “what do I have to do to get this stress or challenge to a level 2 and then step over it. ” These challenges I have are at a level 9 or 10 for me, but I am trying actively to get it down. This is because I eat challenges for breakfast.

How to have an awesome Internship

Internship are really tough to get these days, I know I had to go through many companies to get to Qwest this summer. It is really beneficial to all students wanting to know what work is expected of them out of college. I had great success this summer with my internship because of these few things I did:

1. Communication. I know this is beat too death, but it is essential for an awesome internship. When I say communication I mean actually getting to know the person as a professional and as a person. When I first came into Qwest I made myself accountable to spend time getting to know the people I would be working with immediately. Ask them personal questions then, after I got passed that part I asked them what I would be working on and how they would like reports. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!! Bosses always what reports catered to way they like it.

2. Be Assertive. As an intern you have to be able to read between the lines. You have to put things together because your boss wants you to figure it out. When you work on projects you are doing it for a purpose. Remember that!! For example I was pulling reports for work codes on employees. I decided to look a little closer and found that Qwest was giving different work codes for employees who did the same job. I brought this up to my boss and now they are in the process of combining those work codes for employees who do the same job. Which is going to save about 20 hours of accounting work every two weeks.

3. Continue to ask for work. Never be content with doing the bare minimum. Whenever I got done with a report, work, or project I didn’t take a break and go on linkedin, facebook, etc. I went to boss and ask “Is there anything else I can help out with?” My boss was really impressed with the ambitious attitude and told me in my review at the end of the summer.

4. 10-30-60 pie chart. This is something I got from a friend and applied to my internship. 10-30-60 are percentage of what you should do while working with a company. 10% is for performance. I know you are like dude your performance should be 60%. Performance is important but if know knows who you are and go on day by day just doing work… you are going to be forgotten about. You should always be doing hardwork all the time. 30% is Image. Image is who you are and what you represent. What I mean by this is what do other people thing of you? If it is good your image is ok. If it is great that your image good. DON’T LET IT BE BAD!!! The last 60% is exposure. This is your ability of becoming visible to multiple people and influence others in a positive way. For instance, during my internship I talk to the president of Nebraska in the corporation and VP of Supply and Chain because I went out of my way to contact them. How I did that? By exposing myself to my bosses boss (who was a VP). In which she gave me the opportunity to contact them.

If you develop these little skills it will take you a long way.

Get over Failure

When I have the chance to start-up a conversation, I do. It is just something about my personality and attitude. I like to get to know people past a hello or good morning or the traditional look at them and smile. Like we all do, but this post is not about that. It is about getting over failure.

While I am conversing I like to know what they fear most about life (I know kinda deep question for a first time). I usually get the answer of failure or not getting a goal. Which is really awesome. I do like that, but it does not matter if you fail or succeed. If you don’t try in the first place. I believe that when someone says that are afraid of failure, they are afraid of this because they don’t try.

Take for example, a friend had the perfect opportunity to start a business with a good friend. But every time I would ask him if he was getting on the bus he said well what if we fail and I get into all this debt. I could not get him to join this small business. Well this business is doing well here in Nebraska and this guy could have made some serious dough. But he was so afraid of failing he couldn’t see the positives of the business plan, etc.

It doesn’t have to be something that big. Think about a speech you have given in the past or an interview you had or whatever the event. What did you say to your friends or whoever you talk to about the event? Man, I hope I don’t screw it up or I hope I don’t suck. I am going to give you a bit of information you might not know.

YOU ARE HUMAN!!! You are going to screw up sometimes! That is apart of being a human motha effing being. If you get that into your head “I hope I don’t suck, I hope I don’t suck.” Guess what you are going to suck. Go out there and try!!! Put it into your head that you are going to go out there and give you best shot. Yeah it will suck and you are going to feel bad if you don’t succeed, but that should not affect you in trying in the first place. Because if you keep the mindset you are going to lose out on a great opportunity.

Keep your head up!! Go out there and do the very best you can. If you screw up, you screw up. Learn from the failure and grow from it. The best people in this world learned from one or more failures. Their lives were not always a success, but once they learned from their failure they went on to achieve great things. Get over your fear of failure.

How do you measure success?

Success is something that gets thrown around all the time. On the internet, 5 ways to become a successful…., 3 ways to be successful, the secret to success, etc. I mean those are all great things, but how do you measure that? Does one person’s “success” really mean it is everyone else’s “success?”

Starting my own blog was a tough decision for me because of the uncertainty. When someone told me that I needed to start a blog to be successful. I always thought, what is successful for me? Is it a “formula” that can drawn up anytime? Is success different for me than you?

The truth is that success is different from person to person. The “formula” is also different from person to person. But there are a couple of attributes that are the same for every successful person. It is not in the goals they set, not the achievements they get, and not the wealth they get from success. The first attribute that is in common for every successful person is how they achieve success.

What do I mean by this? What I mean is that every successful person sets a high goal for themselves and then sets a strategy on surpassing that goal. Then they set a even higher one and go about to achieve. Successful people want to achieve more ang pass more goals they have for themselves. That is what how they achieve success. It is not like they get huge sums of money from it, sometimes they do, but they get some high measure for themselves that equals success.

There is no certain way to achieve those goals. Everyone has different strategies and ways in achieving those goals, but successful people find the right one for themselves to attain the goals. The second is the how they measure success. I know I will have different opinion than some people, but when sets a goal for themselves and achieves it. How is that different than myself?

When someone tells me that they set out to be a professional speaker and own a company and they achieve that goal. Is that much different than me achieving a goal of teaching a high school class because it is what I love to do? I don’t think so because we both set out to achieve a goal and we did. On the outside surface you might think we he/she has more money than you. I would say so what! I found what I love to do and they found what they love to do. We both found success. I am a firm believer that when set a high goal and achieve. Then keep it up by setting more goals and achieving them. That is what success is all about.