Keep in mind that it’s Christmas Eve as I type this… This morning as I drank my coffee, sitting at the dining room table, I looked into the family room at our Christmas tree and the gifts stacked under it. The idea of gift giving and what kinds of gifts we give began to churn…
Welcome to the end of another year (or close to it). As we approach the New Year, lots of people are focused on the resolutions and changes they want to make. Folks think about what they are unhappy with or set new goals. It’s a great time of year for new beginnings (although ANY time…
Recently my son was home on an extended weekend after a deployment with the Marine Corps and we got into a discussion about what guns we’d like to have in our home armory. The discussion soon evolved to be more about what someone SHOULD have versus what they WANT to have. This bore further examination…
Yes, again. Amongst avid handgun fans the debate between big and slow versus small and fast stretches back over a hundred years now I’d guess. 2011 marked the 100 year anniversary of the Government Model 1911 .45ACP having been adopted by the U.S. Military (even though it existed in 1904) and the 9mm is even older than that. What…
I have heard so many jokes about why you shouldn’t piss off an author. Everything from, “because they’ll write you into one of their books and then kill you off in some unique and interesting way,” to, “you just never know what their imagination will produce.” I always found it rather humorous that people had…
This morning, as happens all too often, I saw a social media post that argued planning over improvisation or “winging it.” I saw another one that suggested winging it was always better than planning. Both arguments seem sound to me and I came to the realization that to be truly successful you have to do…
It’s “Black Friday” 2018 as I type this. Thanksgiving is a pleasant recent memory and we can finally justify all of the Christmas commercials and music we’ve been seeing for the past two weeks. Alongside the early commercial push for “buy buy buy!” I’ve been hearing friends talk about how the holidays were going to…
While I’m going to use examples from my childhood and that of my children, this article does not apply only to parents and children. It applies to anyone who would see you do something different because of what they think is best for you. The honest reality is that sometimes their plan is better but…
There were various groups of people throughout history from whom we could learn much. That’s not to say that they were 100% right about everything all the time or that their lifestyle should be adopted in a saturation fashion. But when you think about it, there is something we can learn from everyone. When you…
Before I delve into the 80/20 rule and whether or not it’s right for you, we need to differentiate between which 80/20 rule we’re talking about. If you’re an economics major or work in the financial field, you’ve no doubt heard of the 80/20 rule otherwise known as Pareto’s Rule. It states that roughly 80%…
I came to a realization this morning. It may not have been a big one, but it struck me as worth sharing. That realization was this: every success story I’ve ever read or heard about started out with someone taking a dream and changing it into a goal. In that moment, when they decide they…
Do you remember… that kid in school that always wanted to sit next to you so he could copy your paper? Or your answers on a test? Were you that kid? Do you remember the guy you worked with who seemed to always copy your moves or changes or growth… whatever he saw you doing…
As I think a great many people do nearly every day now, I was surfing through some social media posts and I came across this image. Courtesy of @addicted2success, the image shows Superman in handcuffs and accompanied by four soldiers in body armor, etc. It’s an image from the movie “Man of Steel.” The phrase…
In the contemporary world there seem to be a host of beliefs, accepted as unavoidable fact, based on assumptions about the inevitable results of past events. The examples I would give are 1) Every combat veteran will have or does have PTSD and 2) If you have a family history of clinical depression then it’s…
One really spectacular benefit of social media is that it allows you to follow those you choose, ignore those you want to and share news or commentary on your day as you see fit. There are a great many people who use it purely for trivia or entertainment. There are many companies that use it…
Every now and then in everyone’s life we get distracted by things that we either cannot change or that shouldn’t matter to us to begin with. The distraction can cost us time, emotional energy, mental fatigue and more. To increase the quality of our life and the sense of serenity in our days, it’s worth…
This is something we all know, but some of us need a reminder about every now and then. You don’t measure your life by how long it is (although that’s no reason to desire less than a long life); you measure it by how much you’ve lived in the time span you’re given. Since none…
As with so many of the things that inspire me to start thinking around a topic, something popped up in my social feeds. In this case it was about how, as we live life, we are essentially standing in line. Standing in line for what? The person who presented this represented everyone as standing in…
Just the other day I was involved in a very brief virtual discussion about the benefits of empathy over sympathy. For the person to whom you’re expressing either of these, there is a benefit; but which is better or more beneficial for them? The person who originally posted it had the position that empathy was…
Nearly every day of my life I hear someone say, “Karma’s a bitch,” or, “Watch what you do; you don’t want Karma visiting it back on you.” Both of these statements indicate a belief in a higher power, even though most of us don’t think of it that way. We tend to talk about karma…