My friend said this was ten minutes of pure joy…

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

Morgan Freeman/Matt Damon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FozhZHuAcCs

I am listening to a great book by Wayne Dyer, “It’s Never Crowded Along the Extra Mile” and in it he mentions the following symptoms of inner peace. I just wanted to share it with you. Hope you like it!

-Tom

10 Steps to Gaining Inner Peace

The symptoms go hand in hand with each other. As you’ll grow and learn, you will find that they are one and the same.

1. Tendency to act spontaneously, less planned.

2. Ability to enjoy each moment.

3. A loss of interest in judging other people.

If you address people you don’t know with a title of respect,
you learn to wee the unfolding of the Divine within anyone.
Then judgment becomes impossible.

4. A disinterest in explaining the behavior of others.
Affirm to yourself: ‘I am allowed.’

5. A decision to give conflict a ‘pass’
How: Don’t let the other person know

6. You’ll stop watching the news & stop reading tabloids — sources of negativity & conflict.

7. Loss of the ability to ‘worry’. Don’t ‘worry’ about things you have no control over.
No need to worry about things to worry about things you have control over, because you have control over it.
Voila. Worry problems solved.

8. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation & contented feelings of connectedness with people & nature. Connectedness means knowing ‘we are all one’.

9. Frequent ‘attacks’ of smiling. Cheerfulness is one of the qualities of spirituality

10. An increased susceptibility to the love provided by others, and an uncontrollable urge to love others.

Here are some useful Facebook links to help with your SMO (Social Media Optimization) for your website, hope this helps!

Create Fanpage:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Add fan page to website:
http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/fanbox.php

Username URLs
http://www.facebook.com/username/

Sending a Fanpage Email:
http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stUkhUQEdIR19fQ19aWl9ZVVBQ/facebook_fan_page_how_to_send_fans_a_message

Hope all is well! I was at a course a few weeks ago and the topic of prayer came up. We discussed ways to make more time to pray during the day. I was shocked at the positive response that one of my comments made and wanted to share it with you.

As you work on the computer, we all have short delays where a program is starting up, when a program freezes, or when you are waiting for an upload or download to complete. If you have a job where you spend a lot of time on the computer, these delays can add up. Years ago, I use to grit my teeth, squeeze my hands and get tense when this happened. Then, I started a new practice that was based on what a Sister told me in grammar school. She said that when you are at a red light when driving, you have the choice to be upset or to say a prayer.

I thought of this one day when I was at my desk when my computer had one of these delays, so I closed my eyes and thought of all the things for which I had to be grateful. I thought of the fact that I was in an office with heat on, about my health, my family, my friends, my faith in God, love and all the gifts I have been given, then I took a deep breath and when I opened my eyes, the delay was over and I could continue my work.

This is just a small way to incorporate gratitude into your life and it makes for a better experience overall. Hope you give it a shot!

Well, GOALS 2010 was another successful presentation. The co-creators in the event gave us great feedback and are on track to creating the lives of their dreams. During the presentation, we do a “USE Exercise”. That is, to stress that the feeling of success is actually the use of one’s talents and skills in service to others and that this feeling is one the best feelings that we, as humans, are capable of having.

I just had an epiphany and wanted to share it with you. I wrote an email to a friend who asked for some help with a voice-over for an ad her company was doing. She thanked me and I wrote her back and thanked her for the opportunity to serve her. I realized after writing it how profound it actually was. By giving me the chance to do the voiceover, I used my talents to help her complete a project she had, this use of my talents made me feel extraordinary! She is the one who actually gave to me by letting me serve her.

Once one realizes that the real energy in life is in the use of talents, the doing of things, their entire life changes. Many people think that greatness is in the love of ease, e.g. being entertained, retiring, etc., when in fact, the goal is to constantly bring one’s inspirational perception of truth to others through their talents. I once read a book, The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe, by Glenn Clark, written about Walter Russell, and in it, the Author describes something called The Life Triumphant. “The Life Triumphant is that which places what a man gives to the world in creative expression far ahead of that which he takes from it of the creations of others.” This is really the essence of a fulfilled life and if one subscribes to a philosophy of constant use of talents, they will give far more to the world than they can ever take from it. We really need so little, but have so much to give.

Recognize that when you use your talents, you unlock the greatness in yourself. Constantly look for ways to serve others through the use of your talents. Just use your talents! If you want to be a writer, just write, if you want to be a speaker, speak, if you want to act, act. It doesn’t matter where, how or when, just do it. If you want to act, go to a nursing home and put on a performance, as Marianne Williamson says. It doesn’t matter if you write a blog post, or a best seller, if you are called to write, just put the pen to paper and get on with it. The details & finances will sort themselves out, if you don’t believe me, read “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. Remember what the great teacher said 2,000 years ago, “The greatest among us shall serve.” True greatness is in the service, the use of talents. When someone asks you for help where you can use your talents, say YES!, because you will receive more joy than the person you are serving. Talk about a Win/Win!

A monk in his travels once found a precious stone and kept it.
One day he met a traveler, and when the monk opened his bag to share
his provisions with him, the traveler saw the jewel
and asked the monk to give it to him.
The monk did so readily.

The traveler departed, overjoyed with the unexpected gift of the precious stone
that was enough to give him wealth and security for the rest of his life.
However, a few days later he came back in search of the monk,
found him, gave him back the stone, and entreated him,

“Now give me something much more precious than this stone,
valuable as it is. Give me that which enabled you to give it to me.”

-from a story told by Anthony de Mello

What is the information revolution? It is where our data is the most valuable commodity we have. Think about what would happen if your labtop or desktop hardrive crashed or was stolen? It would be disastrous. It happened to me once. A labtop hard drive crashed and I sent it to a data recovery company and was willing to pay $2,000 to have the data back. Unfortunately, they couldn’t retrieve it and I lost six months of work. That was before DVDs and other mass storage devices.

The point is that it is necessary to backup your data regularly and it is possible with a Maxtor 1 Touch. I have one of these drives and set them up at all of my small business clients. If you don’t have one, go to staples.com or another etailer or store and buy one. To back up, configure the software and, as the name says, push one button. If you lose your data, you literally copy and paste from the one touch to the new computer/hard drive with the click of a button. The $200 investment will be the best thing you ever purchased.

With a 64 bit operating system, you may need to download the Seagate backup 64 bit software:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=fa-go-desk-xtreme-sw&vgnextoid=a8d3b5b59b7d5110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

When I used it, I had to replace a hard drive that failed and when I did, it didn’t recognize the external drive I had on the Seagate Software. If that happens, just uninstall and reinstall the software. That worked for me. Thank God, I backed up on Tuesday Evening and the drive failed on Thursday Evening, so I just went to Best Buy and picked up a 500GB 2.5″ internal drive, popped it in, formatted it, copied the data off of it, and was back in business in less than 3 hours.

Yesterday, we had some family over for Christmas and someone said that a hard drive failed and they didn’t have a backup. I felt for him in my heart… He had a book he was writing on there and didn’t have a recent backup. I told them that it happened to me once and to be sure to get a good backup drive and backup system to regularly back up their drive in the future. I have another friend who had a lot of pictures and information on his laptop and his computer was dropped and his hard drive failed, he is in the same boat and I really feel for him, too. I back mine up at least twice per week, or whenever I do a lot of work on my computer that day.

Hope this helps and saves you some time and frustration. I don’t usually give advice, but from working with over 300 companies on a regular basis, if you don’t have a backup drive and need any of the data on your computer in the future, order one or go to Staples or Best Buy and get one NOW!!! Seriously, NOW!

-Tom Roman