When you bring it down to its basic ingredient regarding the lack of (or inconsistency of) achievement – it’s the fear of rejection! It doesn’t matter what dream you want to pursue or what you want to achieve in your life or career, if you can’t get over the fear of, “NO”, the chances are slim that you’ll gain the success you’re after. After all, fear is a learned process.

When you create a foundation built on the permanent elimination of the fear of “NO”, as well as, the internalization of rejection, everything else will automatically fall in place! All the training and knowledge that you gained from books, webinars and seminars will be put to good use without reservation and without fear! Instead of focusing on the pain of rejection; drive, ambition, passion, purpose and persistence will be your new found focus! This is why I say, “When you can conquer your fear of “NO”, everything else falls into place!”

Your Perception Changes Everything!

Our interpretation of life experiences is what creates the baggage that weighs us down. From our childhood to today our interpretation of events is what shapes our perceptions. Often times, (especially when we were very young), when someone was rude to us we sometimes interpreted it as if we did something wrong to cause this rudeness! Now that we’re older, because of our interpretations from events that happened to us in the past, when we we’re much younger, we become fearful when we think we’re going to have to put ourselves in a similar situation. We find ways to avoid the situation altogether! The reality is, how we react to rejection and the word “NO” today, started in our childhood from how we interpreted rejection then.

As an adult we still carry those “scars!” and those “scars” rear their ugly head every time we place ourselves in a situation where there is a potential for rejection! So, we avoid having to suffer this “pain” by finding excuses why we “can’t” …oh I can’t, I have a dental appointment that day …oh I can’t, I’ve got to take my cat to the vet that day …I’m sure they wouldn’t be interested! …I don’t want to seem “pushy” I’ll wait until I think they’re ready! etc. etc. Sound familiar?

So, what does one do to change one’s perception so that rejection and the word “NO” has no more power over one’s life and career? How do you handle rejection? How do we overcome rejection? Start with this…

An Exercise to Exorcise!

For years I’ve asked entrepreneurs to do an exercise that, to a person, has always had a profound effect on them. Try it on yourself and see if it doesn’t do the same for you. Find a quite place where there will be no distractions for a while. On a piece of paper write at the top of the page the following question, “What am I afraid of?” Then, list your fears both big and small, arrange them in order of importance, examine each one closely, and when you do; ask yourself, “Why do I fear this? Why does this particular thing cause me so much anxiety?”

When you can ’step back’ and objectively define, as well as, analyze your fears you can conquer those fears! The more you understand why you fear what you fear, the less that fear will have any more control over you. There is just something about seeing it in black and white right in front of you.

Protect Your Children

Don’t let them go to Parties or Sleepovers until You Know Who They will be Spending Time With

One of the most important aspects of raising children is to ensure they are well socialized. This process usually begins early in life and is one of the main driving forces for parents to enroll their children in preschool. Play dates are also a big part of the early socialization process.
As they grow older, children forge bonds with other children from school, church, and sports. Part of the social learning process is for them to take part in parties, sleepovers, and other group activities.
How can you keep your child in a safe environment?
Every parent wants their child to grow up happy and healthy, and to have the companionship of friends. As they develop an increasing amount of independence, their need to have mom or dad close at hand diminishes. As difficult as this is, it is a necessary part of growing up.
However, it is important as a parent to ensure we know as much as possible about our children, especially when they are out of sight – how they are spending that time, and with whom they are spending it.  This period of early social activity occurs during some of the most impressionable years of children’s lives, and we want to ensure they have nothing but nurturing experiences. We want all of their childhood memories to be good ones, which evoke memories of safety and security.
Be a smart parent – know exactly what type of people surround your child
Before letting your child out of your sight for a slumber party, team pizza party, or any other type of gathering, make sure you know everything you can about the people with whom your child will be socializing.
A simple, computer-generated background check can tell you right away if it is safe for your child to attend the function, or if it would be wiser to keep him at home.  For example, Net Detective, an online background check service, makes it easy for you to delve into the personal history of the parent or parents who will be watching your child.
In a very short period of time, you can find out a great deal about virtually anyone’s criminal and financial history.  Learn whether there are any civil actions pending against the parent, or learn of the existence of any restraining orders. Find out if the family has a violent history, or a peaceful one.
The main idea is to review the private life of anyone who will be responsible for your child’s care, and ensure the person is qualified for the task. After all, you would not want to unwittingly place the care of your child into the hands of a hardened criminal.

You need to understand that God created intimacy as His plan to build oneness in marriage. The way men and women respond to intimacy is vastly different. Sometimes those differences can complement each other and sometimes it complicates the experience. Those differences can tear apart the very fabric of your mutual fulfillment.

Satisfying intimacy is much more than focusing on the physical aspect. There are four levels of intimacy and they all need to be playing a part for the experience to be successful for both husband and wife. Those four levels are mental, emotional, spiritual, and then physical. All of these areas are vital in establishing intimacy and when used as together they will enrich and deepen your oneness as a couple.

Does your marriage need more intimacy?

My Father-in-law passed away about six weeks ago. About eighteen months before that, my mother-in-law passed away. It has been a rough road that my wife has been on for the last two years.

The estate trust is still not completely settled yet, but my wife and her brother have come to one conclusion. He does not want the house, and my wife does. So my wife has been going through all of their belongings, sorting, cleaning, and that is no easy task. My mother-in-law was a pack rat. She saved everything, as most people from the depression era, did. You never know when someone will need what you are about to throw out. A little of that has rubbed off on my wife, and needless to say, we have accumulated are own arsenal of goods, that my wife insists has some sort of value, weather monetarily or practically. This is a project that could go on for years. I have tried to be as supportive as I can. My philosophy is, if you haven’t used it in the last year, throw it away or give it to someone who can make good use out of it. But that’s another whole blog post.

Bob and Janice, ( my father-in-law and mother-in-law ), have a cat. Boots was twenty years old. He was losing his eye sight. He was losing his hearing. He was struggling to walk. His one leg was so bad that he didn’t even sit down all the way on it, and he had a kidney infection also. He was hurting.

We talked to the veterinarian that they used and he said that he talked to Bob about putting Boots down awhile ago, but to Bob, that was Janice’s’ cat, and he was not going to put him away for nothing. He would keep him alive as long as he could, no matter what the cost.

Boots was treated like royalty. He was given distilled water, and he always had a hearty appetite. Special pillows and blankets that belonged just for his use were placed where he liked them. When ever he wanted to take a nap on the bed or the couch, he would stand by it till someone would come rushing over to lift him up on it, and then they have to cover him with his blankets and put his pillows in place.

Because of Boots age or kidneys or a combination of both, he would sometimes go and relieve himself in the corners of a couple of the rooms. Needless to say, ooooh that smell was awful. I was over there trying to power scrub and clean those corners, but Boots would just go back and do it again and again. No one would ever do anything about it and no one would ever dare make the suggestion that Boots was ready to go to kitty cat heaven.

This is the home that we inherited, and this is the home that we are going to be moving into and paying off in a couple of years with the Money Merge Account program from United First Financial.

I said all that to say this.

The first thing that had to happen, was the carpet had to be removed. All of it, and we even thought about replacing all the sub flooring also. But we learned that this might not be necessary.

We tried to soak the stained sub flooring with a strong, 10 to 1 ratio of bleach and water. Ten parts bleach to one part water. I would suggest a mask to wear over your nose and mouth and lots of ventilation. If the cat smell didn’t kill you, the bleach would. It was very strong. We left it to dry for a couple of days.

It did work to some degree, but there still was a faint smell of urine in the air. We were also told that in the hot muggy days of summer, the smell might return. This was not going to work. Something else had to work.

Next, we got some advice from a builder friend of ours and a friend who buys rental properties. He has come across this problem before, and they both recommended a sealer primer called Kilz. Not the latex brand, but the oil based one. We applied this to all of the rooms, and we put on a very heavy two coats.

Again, I suggest a mask and lots of ventilation, as the Kilz has a very strong oder itself. Also you want to use a heavy nap roller so that you can get into all the cracks and crevasses with the sealer.

A couple of days drying and the smell was gone. We were amazed. We invited lots of friends in to test their noses…. and no smell.

We continued are remodeling with some fresh paint on the walls and some rooms got the ceiling done as well. The carpet was laid and we don’t have any smell. No hint that a cat was even there at all. Nothing but new paint and carpet.

The real test will come when we bring our cat over to the new home. He is about five years old and has never been anywhere but in out house. He has never seen another cat. He is a male, and I know that they are very territorial. We hope that the smell of Boots will not be present, but we know that he is going to smell him in that house somewhere.  Boots lived there for all of the  twenty years of his life. We aren’t going to be able to get rid of all of his presence. We just hope that our cat won’t care and just go back to doing what he does best. That’s sleeping.

Ever wonder about all the variations of sneezing that there is in the world today? There are loud sneezes, quiet sneezes, long sneezes, short sneezes, wet sneezes…whoooooo. There are about as many different sneezes as there are different types of snow flakes.

actual snowflake on the seat of a snowmobile

My brother is a big guy, but when he starts to reel back, puts his hand to his nose, starts the sneeze chant; ahhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh….. Chooooooooooo!  Only thing is that his chooooooo is more like a ch, without the, ooooooooo, at the end. In other words, it is a small and quiet sneeze. For a big man, he has a little sneeze.

There was a girl that I used to go to school with, that would honk like a goose when she sneezed. What a disruption that caused in the classroom when she would get into a sneezing fit.  Everyone would laugh so hard, that the teacher would have to ask her to go out into the hallway until she was done. That was so funny.

There are also the number of times that a person will sneeze. I always sneeze just twice. Maybe once in awhile, three times. There are people who can sneeze up to eighteen times in a row. There was a sneezing girl, reported in The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1899, that sneezed sometimes a hundred times in an hour. She sneezed for forty days until the doctors discovered a growth in her throat. After it was removed, her sneezing stopped. True story.

First, what causes sneezing? We sneeze because of an irritant or a tickling inside the nasal passages. When that happens, our brain sends a message to the area and orders a sudden and forceful burst of air expelled from the nose and mouth. Particles expelled during sneezing can leave the body at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. (Wow, that is fast.) It is the body’s way of removing those irritating intruders from our system and keeps things clear and flowing.

Sneezing can also be triggered by a sudden exposure to a bright light, a slightly full stomach, and sudden changes in the climate or temperatures. This is something that I can relate too. How many of you are sneezing after eating? Whenever I get done eating, and I go outside to the bright sunlight, or to a room where there is exposure to some bright light, I will always sneeze.

Ever feel a sneeze coming on and it just won’t come out. (I hate when that happens) Try looking at a bright light and see if you won’t sneeze. It works every time for me.

Does your heart really stop when you sneeze? My mom used to always tell me that, and I walked around, scared to death, (literally) to sneeze. Don’t tell your kids that, because it is not true. Sometimes we may feel like our heart is going to stop, but it doesn’t.  Because of the pressure that it is creating in the chest area when we sneeze or cough, it may feel like our heart is going to stop.

Are sneezes ever life threatening? Yes, when you are driving. DON’T SNEEZE! There is a protective measure that the body does automatically when we sneeze. We, for a split second, squeeze our eyes closed when we sneeze. Who hasn’t sneezed when we are driving? The car may swerve just a tad, and we have to explain to the police officer, that just pulled us over, “no officer, I did not have anything to drink. I  just sneezed.”

Oh yes. One more thing to always remember to do when you sneeze. Never get caught sneezing without COVERING YOUR MOUTH! There are thousands and  thousands of tiny saliva droplets, or molecules, that just came from your mouth and are dispersed into the air. They may float around in the air for an hour. You can’t see them, but they are there, and you are spreading your germs to others around you. Think of others when you sneeze, and put your hand over your mouth.

COVER YOUR MOUTH!

Happy sneezing.