This has honestly always bothered me. I’ve worked hard to build up habits that will get me where I need to be on time and to drop those bad habits that get in the way of timeliness. I’ve met with some success over the years, but the underlying issue of tardiness has stuck with me.

I’m getting a little introspective here, but I believe all this may be due to some inner rebellion against society. Call it my own little revolution against the man. I just want to do my own thing without having to worry about some arbitrary set of rules imposed by someone else.

This sounds a bit childish, I’m sure. Like most people, I definitely see the value in being on time. It’s essential to be on time or early to a job interview. There are also other situations where it’s vital to be on time (like, catching a plane). Being habitually late is generally considered a sign that a person isn’t dependable, too. This can be a difficult label to overcome once it’s applied.

There is also a bright side to being late, though. It occurred to me recently that many times when I’ve been late, there has definitely been a reason. I’m almost always doing something that is valuable to me, something that is, in that moment, far more important than whatever it is I might be rushing out to do. In fact, there’s a huge opportunity cost in stressing yourself to always be on time.

Thinking back, there have been many times I’ve taken just a few extra moments to enjoy that last sip of excellent coffee, a few more words of conversation with a loved one or a good friend, another long hug and “I love you” from one of my children, or a few minutes more of closeness with someone I love. How can you place a value on these precious moments?

These are the times that will be most important to you when you look back on your life. No one is going to eulogize you and say how great you were because you were always on time. No one will wipe away a tear and comment on your excellent punctuality. However, many will remember those precious few moments that you spent with them, doing something you love with someone you love.

In the past months I’ve transitioned from married to single, from a big house in the suburbs to a small apartment near the highway, and from a long term steady job to a new one with lots of potential. Each change has caused me to go through a period of introspection, of soul-searching to figure things out. Though there are helpful resources out there, and I’ve had a lot of support from family and friends, there is no instruction book for life.

It’s been a difficult year of adjustment. There have been many ups and downs during this time, but the general trend has always been upward. I feel more positive about my life and where I’m going now than I have in many years.

I want to continue to share with you some of the things I’ve been learning. These things may be about life in general, about making money, and about blogging. I won’t promise not to write about other topics, though, as they come up. I’ve spent so much time learning and experiencing new things lately that have offered valuable lessons to me. I feel that some of these will also be equally valuable to many of you.

This is an exciting time for me in my life, yet there are many fears that I’m dealing with along the way. It’s definitely not easy letting go of the safety of a long term relationship or a long term job. Change can be a scary thing, but it can also be a necessary motivator for taking action and taking control of your life. This is an idea that I’ve found to be valuable to remember during the difficult times. Change is often good even though it’s often frightening and uncomfortable.

I may not be posting every day, but I will continue to write on this blog. I think the FreshBlogger name is even more apropos now as my life feels fresh and new. In the coming months I hope to share even more of these fresh ideas with you. Thanks for continuing to come back and read these pages and a special thanks for those of you who have offered your time and support in the last months. You’ve helped me to keep going in the right direction.

My first encounter with personal mission statements was in reading Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The concept was very simple: define who I am, what I value, and how I should live my life in light of these realizations. I began immediately trying to put together a list of roles and values. I quickly found that the task was going to be more difficult than I’d initially believed, though.

After taking a good, hard look at myself, it occurred to me that many of us don’t know ourselves very well at all and that, even if we do, we rarely live our lives in accordance with that knowledge. For example, how many of us work at jobs that we profess to hate? And, yet, we still continue to spend the majority of our lives in these places without looking for something better. Or, if we do look for another job, we take the approach that anything is better, just as long as it’s different. This is a dangerous trap caused by either not knowing ourselves or ignoring our own values, needs, and desires.

Chuck’s tag comes at an interesting time for me because I was already working on my personal mission statement. I had started writing one a few years ago and my efforts dwindled away over time as other concerns took priority. A couple of months ago, though, I decided to read 7 Habits again and really work on defining my core roles and values and ultimately, a personal mission statement. When Chuck emailed me, I was in the middle of writing a first draft of this mission statement.

I think Stephen Covey’s approach to this is a good one. He suggests that you define your roles in life first. Think about it. You are one person, but you’re many things to many people, a father to your children, a spouse or significant other to your partner, an employee or employer, a writer or blogger, a member of a church or other group, and, most importantly, an individual. I say that your role as an individual is most important because it is the deepest layer, the most inner part of yourself that defines who you are. Without having an idea of what’s important to you, it’s almost impossible to develop a proper perspective on your other roles in life.

I have a lot more to say on this topic, but I’m going to save it for another post. I’ll be including some of my own personal mission statement, too, so check back soon.

This is actually a tough one for me right now. My daily routine is in a bit of a mess and I’m not feeling too successful at the moment. However, there are a number of habits that have helped me greatly in smoothing out some of the rough patches. While these might not be things you can necessarily pencil into a schedule every day, they are definitely habits of thinking that can help you to be successful.

1. Do the most important thing first. I recently posted about putting first things first and I think this is a really important habit. Since many of us complain of not having enough hours in the day, getting the most important things done first thing helps us to accomplish something of value each and every day.

2. Keep your goals in mind. Every day should be a day that you do something that moves you even a little bit closer to achieving your goals. Every long term and even short term goal can be broken down into smaller pieces. Make a list of these and make sure to do something every day that contributes to one of these goals.

3. Do things that make you happy. This one is often overlooked in the big picture of dealing with everyday life. We get caught up in working, taking care of families, writing blog posts, doing chores, etc, and forget to do something that is purely and selfishly about me. I use the word selfish, but I don’t mean it in a negative sense at all. Each of us will be happier when we do things for ourselves. We need to set aside time to just be ourselves rather than a father, worker, significant other, or any of the countless other roles we may take in life. Spend a little time reading books, tying flies, building birdhouses, learning golf or a new language, anything that makes you happy.

4. Slow down. At the risk of mentioning the fast pace of life yet again in this post, I think it’s necessary to slow down every once in a while and take stock of where we are. If you don’t know where you are in terms of making progress toward your goals, it makes it that much harder to get there. Also, it’s important to sometimes put things off until another day or time. I’m not talking about procrastination here; I’m talking about focusing on what’s most important right here and right now and doing only that. If that happens to be writing a blog post, then great. If it happens to be playing with your small child, then that is sometimes the most important thing in the world for you, too.

5. Listen. Yes, I mean really listen. We are deluged with information in one form or another in today’s world. Radio, television, and the internet are only a few of the information sources on top of the ones everyone’s been dealing since the beginning of humankind, namely family, friends, neighbors, and the coworkers we interact with on a daily basis. This amounts to a flood of input for our poor minds. In the midst of all of this, it’s easy to ignore some of the most important inputs, like a friend’s need for a sympathetic ear or a child’s need for recognition. Just taking a moment to put your self aside and open up your ears and mind to someone else can do wonders for both your relationship and your understanding of the world.

I hope you find these tips to be helpful in some way. Realizing the importance of these things and the process of beginning to incorporate them into my daily life has changed my life for the better and continues to do so. I’m going to tag the following people:

Chris of The BizTechie Chronicles
Mark of 45n5
Cesar of Flee The Cube
Digital Nomad of The Sovereign Journey
Tisha of Serenity Quest

I started blogging on Blogger.com back in January of 2006 and then moved to FreshBlogger.com at the end of August. In the time that I’ve been blogging here, a great deal has happened both in my online life and my personal life. Things have changed quite a bit for me.

I didn’t start blogging with the intent to make money, though. I really began in the hopes of forcing myself to write something every day and also to build some connections within the writing community. In the last year I’ve made some progress on those goals, but the purpose of this blog has changed, too.

I’ve made some great connections and begun building relationships with some really interesting and cool people all over the world. This alone has been worth all of the hard work of blogging. And, yes, it has been hard work. My new friendships have added a lot of value to my life and helped me to learn some important things about writing, blogging, and life in general.

I’m still struggling with writing a post (or more) every day. Some days it’s just too difficult to fit in the time to get it done. Other days I’m able to write several posts. For the most part, though, I’m able to provide content in a consistent way so that this blog stays active.

Though I’m not making a lot of money from this blog, I do see the little income that it’s beginning to bring in as sort of a validation that what I provide here is valuable. Blogging has been an incredibly valuable experience for me and I’m happy to be able to share this with you. Thanks to all for reading these posts and being a big part of that experience.

I find time and again that the lessons we can learn in one area of our lives can so often be applied to other areas. Often we can apply words of wisdom from one field or career to another. Darren’s advice is most often directed toward bloggers since this is his field, but many people may not know that he has also been a Christian minister. Sometimes this shows through in his posts and the way he interacts with others. I’m sure many of the skills he learned as a minister have helped him to succeed in his blogging career.

With that said, dealing with anger and personal attack is something all of us have had to do in our lives. From the playground as children to the workplace as adults and even to the blog comments section, we have to deal with comments that may hurt us or offend us. This is a fact of life and is something that can’t be changed. We just have to accept it like we do inclement weather.

At the same time, it makes sense to react to a storm of anger and criticism as we would to a storm of sleet or hail: get inside and out of the force of the storm. In our interactions with others, wherever this may be, this often means we should take a step back out of the storm before firing back an angry response.

I’ve gotten some comments on my blog from time to time that seemed overly critical and at times like angry attacks. Sometimes my first response was to reply in an angry way. This is rarely the best thing to do and usually only results in a flame war that benefits no one. The best responses to this sort of thing come after some calm, sober reflection.

Perhaps the first thing that should be done during this time of reflection is to consider if there is any truth to the comment. Have we said something in an offensive way or maybe made an extravagant claim? Self-examination is a worthwhile pursuit, but shouldn’t be carried too far. If we endlessly re-examine the facts of the situation, we end up getting caught up in an over-analysis loop that gets us no closer to the truth. Still, it pays to take a few minutes to think of our own position before responding.

Another thing to consider is what the goal or purpose of the commenter is. Everyone has most likely heard of that vile creature known as a comment troll. This creature’s purpose in life is to stir up trouble and sow discontent wherever he goes. These types exist not only on forums and blog comment sections, but also in the rest of life. They are the type of people who are never happy with anything and want everyone to know it. They also tend to be jealous of other’s success and happiness and want to do whatever they can to destroy it.

If you’re dealing with some sort of troll in your life, it’s often better to not even respond. If it’s on your blog, feel free to delete a comment that adds no value to the conversation. It helps to have a comment policy so that commenters will know what to expect from you. I’m going to be putting one up soon here on FreshBlogger. Then commenters will have a better idea of what I will allow here.

If you must respond to a troll, try to respond in a way that’s level-headed and calm. If there is no merit to the troll’s comments, others will see that and think better of you for not sinking to that level. If you’ve ever heard the expression, “killing them with kindness,” you’ll know that that’s another approach that works well with trolls. By not responding in anger, but with calmness and even kindness, it takes the power and control away from them. With nothing to fuel the fire of their anger, it has to die away or go somewhere else.

There are many other ways to deal with angry personal attacks, but these are some of the most effective in my own experience. It’s so much better to let go of the anger and resentment and hurt when you’re attacked than to carry it around inside you. There is really nothing of value to be gained by nursing a grudge against the offender. If you do so, you’ve given away your power and allowed someone else to control you. The best advice then is to let it go and remember that you can’t control how anyone else feels, but you can control yourself.

What’s funny is that I just sat in a meeting yesterday with people I’ve worked with for years and we went over a project plan that had my name on it: Roy Dotson. Kind of funny, huh? The person who wrote the project plan has known me for at a least a year, too. Is it a conspiracy?

So, I sat through this meeting and not one person mentioned that my name was spelled wrong. This makes me wonder if this type of mistake is one of those that people just don’t see. Research has shown that people’s brains tend to fill in details that their eyes don’t see or possibly what they haven’t had time to consciously see. There is so much information bombarding us each day that our brains have to filter out a great deal of it. It looks like my name is one of those things being filtered out.

Maybe I should just give up. I can accept it. Roy isn’t a bad name, is it? Roy Rogers was the King of the Cowboys. If only I could be more like him. Well, except for being dead, that is. I think I can be more useful alive.

Ultimately, the people who know me, actually do know me regardless of what they call me. I have people who know me quite well who just call me “Hey, Dude.” I suppose it’s not so bad. I might even be able to get used to being a Roy. Feel free to let me know what you think. Thanks,
Roy

As a parent, sometimes I stop and wonder where the time has gone and how many opportunities I’ve missed to teach my children really important lessons about life. There is always a pang as I think of precious moments wasted. Ultimately, all we can do is try our best and hope that we’ve done enough. Check out this post and let Northern Girl know how you feel about it.

When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand. I mean seeking first to understand, to really understand. It’s an entirely different paradigm.

Covey goes on to say:

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is a form of agreement, a form of judgement … The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it’s that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually. (p240)

My own listening skills aren’t always what I’d like them to be. It’s extremely easy to become overwhelmed with the day to day. Most people tend to respond to this by tuning out a great deal of what’s going on around them in order to get the most urgent things done. Unfortunately, we also tend to tune out some of the most important things in our lives.

As an example, how many parents ahve gotten fed up with a nagging, whining child and told him or her to “go away” or “do it because I said so?” I think we’ve all done this from time to time without even thinking. Sure we feel bad about it later, but our parents reacted the same way with us, didn’t they?

I’ve found that taking a moment to look my child in the eye and really listen can sometimes short circuit the nagging and whining almost immediately. Often, their discontent is based on a feeling that they aren’t being heard. It’s amazing how well children respond when an adult treats them like a person, not as another adult, but as a person, an individual with a unique perspective and his or her own needs and desires.

Children aren’t the only ones who can benefit from this attention, either. Every interaction we have on a daily basis could be enhanced in some way by raising the level of our communication. This doesn’t have to be a heart to heart chat with the bank teller, but more of an intention to really try to understand where the people we encounter every day are coming from.

The Lifehacks posting is a nice, quick guide to trying this out in your cmmunications. For a more in-depth discussion, I definitely recommend the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Tags: 7 Habits productivity lifehacks communication skills

My grandpa died a few years ago on a warm June day. I’m sorry, but I can’t recall the exact date anymore. I do remember that it was a beautiful day. Grass and leaves were every shade of green and flowers were in full bloom already.

He had been in and out of the hospital in Cincinnati (in the ‘city,’ as he and the rest of the family out there in Indiana called it) for several years with emphysema and other problems. It was Thursday the night we went to see him at the hospital.

My mother (his oldest daughter) had called me and said that it didn’t look good and that we should go and see him as soon as possible. I hated getting these calls. We, my sisters and brother and I, had gotten them with a sort of regularity over the last decade and things generally were never as bad as they sounded.

I went to the hospital that Thursday evening, taking along my wife of two years and my oldest son who had been born on Leap Day that year. I didn’t know what to expect. When you get a call like that, you don’t know. It could be very bad, or reassuringly normal in most ways.

This time was oddly normal. Grandpa seemed tired, pale, but he was himself. He had spent his whole life working hard, never complaining about the hand he’d been dealt in life. He was happy. He had built all that he had with his own hands.

He greeted us by name and was excited to see the son of his oldest grandson. I have a picture of him sitting there in a wheelchair, his hair white and his body thin and frail, holding my son who looked huge in his lap (he was huge). On Grandpa’s face is a look of pure joy. It’s that look that I remember.

A week later, I got another call from my mother. It was Thursday morning and I was at work. She told me that I should come out to Grandma and Grandpa’s house right away. I stopped home to pick up my family and we went out there as quickly as we could.

When we got there, most of my mother’s family was there. They talked nervously and tried to smile and laugh in that sad way that conveys clearly that they don’t feel like smiling or laughing. There was a nun there who would lead them in a prayer every once in a while, a quick Our Father or Hail Mary that left me feeling rather empty.

They explained to me that Grandpa had been released from the hospital the night before and they’d brought him home. They’d had a late supper and he had sat at his table and eaten with Grandma and my aunt and uncle, but had been so tired he could barely finish and had to be helped to bed. He never woke up.

I remember sitting alone with Grandpa, watching him breathing so hard, every bit of air that he took in cost him the effort of his whole body. His eyes were closed. I sat there and didn’t know what to say. I stroked his arm and held his hand and thought about our conversation in the hospital one week before.

He’d told me that the doctors said there was more that could be done, but that the decision had to be his. At his age there was only so much time left.

“What do you think, Ray?” He asked me. I remember telling him that it was about the quality of his life and he nodded. He knew the answer. He told me that his mother had lived to 88 and his father to 86. He was 87.

“That’s a good age,” he’d said. I nodded.

Before we left, I hugged him and he put his arm around me and kissed me on the cheek, scraping my cheek with his rough whiskers that I remembered so well from my earliest childhood.

“I love you, Grandpa,” I said.

“I love you, too, Ray.”

That next Thursday, he died while I sat beside his bed. My uncle had come in and my aunts, too, and we sat or stood around the bed as Grandpa stopped breathing. He died in his own bed in the house that he and his brothers had built with their own hands.

I walked outside a little later as we waited for the men from the funeral home to come pick Grandpa up. I sat outside with my uncle, my godfather, who had been up all night at his father’s bedside. We said a few words about the weather and he closed his eyes and leaned his head back.

I stood on the front porch and looked at the farm around me, at the step right there where I’d sat so many times with Grandpa as he smoked his pipe and taught me things about life. I’d followed him around as a child and helped with anything I could and Grandpa always waited patiently for me and explained every little thing in his quiet voice.

What I remember the most from that day is how all the colors of the world seemed less bright, like they’d faded after too many washings. Inside, I felt emptied of something. I was sad, but I couldn’t help but be proud of my Grandpa. He’d lived his life the way he wanted to. He’d raised his family the way he wanted to and worked hard to provide for them. In the sadness there was a sense of things being right.

I knew that in the end he’d died the way he wanted to. He had made up his mind, maybe that night a week before when we’d spoken at the hospital, alone after everyone else had left the room. In that quiet moment, I knew him better than ever before and finally knew him as a man. And that’s how I’ll remember him, as a man who worked hard and honestly, the way he saw fit, and died the same way.