Hi, if you are somehow still reading this blog which has been dormant for many years. Thank you for your support then and now!
I just published an article I wrote for Medium and Substack, and I welcome comments and questions here. Since I published here I did publish another novel, In the Flat Field. I am now working on a new memoir/novel.
Greetings from...Blogger?
Carry on!
Charles
Wow I still have a blog here. I am going to post this now, which is also on Substack and Medium:
As a writer, artist, dad, sales person, spiritual seeker, I have done a lot of things I can offer to people are are struggling. I have written novels and poetry, made lots of visual art, but I also like to coach and mentor people, especially young people, people of color, men, people are are struggling with addictions and mental illness, like I did, to help them get better but also go to the next level of success, contentment, and/or happiness. (I am not a therapist).
One thing I would like to do is to publish a book that is a guide to journaling and mindfulness. I am a certified mindfulness life coach. I also started journaling every day and meditating on a pretty regular basis when I was a teenager.
As part of Gen X I am now 54 and so that is now a few decades of these practices. I took a break from meditation from say 1989 to 1995 when I was really into drinking and other things, but I probably wrote every day, in my journal, notebook, or writing fiction and poetry. I would say the writing, partly the journaling, is what kept me alive in those years.
I don’t think you have to be a serious or professional writer to benefit from keeping a journal or notebook. I also don’t think you need to write every day or write more than a few words. Some people don’t have the time or energy to write or meditate every day. Imagine asking a single mom to write a page or more every day in her journal, or someone like me with problems concentrating or PTSD, to meditate every day for 40 minutes. It’s nice to have goals and sometimes we are able to write pages of stuff until our hands hurt. Sometimes I can sit and meditate for 30-40 minutes and that’s great.
But being able to use walking, running, or other stuff related to mindfulness is not only really cool but very much in line with what the Buddha taught as shown in the earliest Pali teachings. Although I started by learning a formal Zen practice from Japan - zazen, which suited me as a teen, it’s not the best start for everyone. (I am not a Buddhist teacher, in any formal or approved sense.)
I love to coach and mentor, I can take on new clients (surprise) and I could invite you to sign up for a horrible email pyramid scheme, watch my free video, download my free ebook etc. But I won’t! You can buy my books, which are novels, or just contact me if you have any questions. I will chat for free and hopefully publish a follow-up to this soon (probably free, no pyramids).
This book could be a good place to start for meditation for you: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
I would say get a pen or pencil and a notebook to start writing about your feelings, how you feel, or just what you did today. What did you do today that your are proud of? What are you grateful for?
Today I got up and took my daughter to school, came home and worked. I went to the gym. I am grateful for my amazing 10 year old daughter who is thriving in school now. We are very fortunate.
The TACTIC: Be on goal time, not clock time.
The STORY:
It dawned on Bob that for the past week or so, his fellow salesperson, Janet, had barely mumbled hello before disappearing into the office or leaving for appointments. Wonder if it's something I said. She had even left the office early a couple times that week. We used to close down the office at night, he thought.
Bob knew the way you made it in sales was by putting in the time. No one else in the office even came close to putting in the hours they did. With all the things that needed to be done, or the emergencies that always popped up, there was no way to just work an eight hour day. But what was happening to Janet, he wondered. Had she lost the edge?
The next morning, Bob showed up two hours early to catch up with Janet. He did.
"Yo, Janet," he called, getting out of his car, just as she was getting into hers. Where's she going, he thought to himself. It's six in the morning.
"Hi, Bob," she responded, "guess we haven't gotten together much in the past week."
With a big smile, Bob said, "Janet, I want you to know I've changed my mouthwash; you don't have to tell me... I figured it out myself."
She laughed. "That's not why. Ever since the sales meeting two weeks ago... it just clicked in my head."
"What's that? Half the time I'm lucky enough if I don't snore."
"You only snored once . . . the thing about working toward daily goals and letting the clock take care of itself. So that's what I did. I've got a couple of daily goals that I work at each day until they are completed." Then in a surprised voice she added, "It's working, too!"
"Come on, Janet, it's Bob. I'm not management."
"You know how I hated to ask for referrals? One of my daily goals is calling my customers until I get one referral. It works. I've gotten four appointments:
I don't run with the clock, I run with my goals."
"And I'm left taking care of all the important stuff."
"Sure," responded Janet, "like the whole day we spent tracking down the guy who could fix the copier?"
"Well, someone has to take care of business."
The RESULT:
Janet finally sees that how you spend your time is more important than how much time you spend.
DISCUSSION:
There are a couple of commonly accepted sales tales handed down from one salesperson to another. It's almost like a tribal mythology.
One of the more enduring is how you have to spend much more than 40 hours a week if you want to make it in sales. Then the tale goes on to relate how Bill, or Mary, or whoever, spent a tremendous number of hours a week and by age 30, was pulling down an income in the high six figures. Now remember these "tales" may actually be true.
The unfortunate message that most salespeople hear from these tales is that a tremendous number of hours spent means a tremendous income at some point in the future. So they decide that they, too, are going to spend the long hours.
But then the question becomes doing what? There are more day-to-day things to do then there is time to do them. If you have any doubt, anyone who owns a home knows that you could spend the rest of your life working on the home and never finish all that needs to be done.
Thus many salespeople, willing to put in the hours, get caught up in trying to do all the things that just seem to pop up every day. After a few weeks or months of this, still not seeing any substantial income improvement, they tire of the 18-hour days. Who wouldn't?
Here's their problem. They worked very hard to deal with the things that popped up instead of working on reaching their goals. If they were working on their goals, many of the things that pop-up would be relegated to someone else's list of chores.
What you choose to do with your time is truly up to you. Why not spend that time working toward your goals?
APPROACH:
There is no substitute for an individual salesperson's goals. While a monetary goal is good, there also have to be goals that lead to the monetary goal.
Setting specific goals for yourself and working toward them on a daily basis is, at first, difficult. You will be sorely tempted to skip a day or so and go back to your old ways. Others, who are still reacting to pop-ups, will do their best to get you back to the way you were.
If you give in, you are only denying yourself additional income. You cannot go back and redo a day. Once you waste it on pop-ups, it is gone forever.
Always build into your goals a periodic—at least once every two months—review. On that day, you spend the entire day reviewing your progress and making goal adjustments as needed.
THOUGHT:
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