by Steve Wolf | Jul 30, 2013 | Giving Back, Lifestyle, Mental, Spiritual & Mental
The last couple of weeks have been rough for me. I’ve been working O.T. trying to salvage an organization, plan for the future while tackling some personal challenges I have been faced with. It’s funny how when you get so busy with your life you tend to forget where you came from and how bad you have had it in the past. Not to mention, other people. When I’m having a bad day, sometimes shit really happened, and there is nothing I can do about it, but for the most part, my bad day is attached to a serious lack of gratitude on my part.
I mean come on, if you have read my blog, you have seen some of the places I have been too, do humanitarian stuff for people who are really in a bad way. Most of my problems these day are very quality problems compared to most of the world. When I say quality, I mean that there has been a day in over 12 years where i have not had food, shelter and clean water to drink. More than 50% of the world currently doesn’t even have those basic needs met.
It’s one thing to say this, or know it, and it is a completely different act to actually believe it in the moment when you’re looking at your bank account wondering where you are going maker enough money to make your house payment or car payment for the month. I mean even if you lost your house, you would have a place to go. If you lost your car, you could borrow one from a friend or from your family. Have you ever really gone hungry??? Were the most over fed country in the world, trust me, Americans with over 2/3 of the population over weight are not going hungry.
The point is that unless someone is dying, going to jail, or in serious danger, the problem is really not all that bad, and most importantly it can be fixed. So how de we no spin out and remain grateful when we get like this??? Great question, here are some of the things I have done that have help me remain in a place of gratitude when I get lost and spun out.
- Volunteer at a homeless shelter
- Buy a homeless person lunch
- Tell people you encounter in your daily life that you appreciate them coming in to work!
- Prayer and meditation
- Random acts of kindness
- Call a couple of your friends and ask them how they are doing in their lives and tell them that you appreciate their friendship.
- Let people who work for you know how much you appreciate them (This could be your mail man, garbage man, house keeper etc). This is also great to do with your loved ones and significant others. DUH@>!<W?><@
Story of my own.
Yesterday, I was pissed off because work had been stressing me out, I have been looking for a new place to live and I am short on money for the month, then my tire goes flat and needs a patch. I have been down and out the last couple of weeks dealing with some medical issues and other work related fires I had been putting out. Feeling sorry for myself, I went and patched the tire and drove off to the gas station to put air in the tire. As I pull in to the air machine, I notice a man sleeping in his beat up old pick-up truck next to 2 dogs sleeping inside. I walked in to the gas station to break a dollar and walked back to the machine.
As I walked back to the air machine, I noticed my brand new BMW next to this old pick up which was stacked to the gills with what apparently seemed to be all of this mans belongings. As if he had been evicted from his house, or wife kicked him out or something. As I filled up my tire on my brand new car, I couldn’t help but have a sinking feeling about the situation. Here I was pissed off about piddiley little bull shit when this man had no place to go, and no work to do as it was 3 pm on a Monday afternoon.
No one wants to end up like this. It was a bad run of life situations for him and this is where he had ended up. Instead of judging him, I took a moment to get grateful for what I had, then I took $5 out of my wallet and hid it in his gas tank so when he went to put gas in his truck he would be pleasantly surprised and that good things can still happen no matter how bad life seems to get.
The $5 was for the life lesson he taught me, he earned, it wasn’t charity. Him simply being there for me to witness was enough to snap me out of my funk, and I feel lie I should have given him $10. Either way, I hope it helped and It made me feel good to help someone else in need. I believe if we all spent some time doing this that the world would be a much better place.
As a result of this, I have made it a goal of mine to do something good for humanity at least once a month. Something a little bigger and more impactful than a $5 donation to a passerby. I’m going to call it, my monthly random act of Kindness, and each month I will be blogging about the experience.
Join me if you feel inclined. I think you will be delighted with how it makes you feel.
Hope you enjoyed the blog, please subscribe and re-post if you enjoyed the content.
-Steve W
by Steve Wolf | Jul 3, 2013 | Business, Lifestyle
This is whats Tattooed on My Collar Bone. So I never forget 🙂
One of my favorite books of all time is “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie. Today, I am going to break this down for you Steve Wolf style and add my own little Part to the series, we will call it Part 5) “How to crush the competition and kick ass at life!”
You could go out and read the entire book, but I promise you what you are about to read is way more fun then the book that was written in 1936. But when you are done reading the blog, if you still want to buy it, I’ll post an amazon link at the bottom.
Ok, now were we go, my little summary + Some!
Part 1) Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
1. Don’t criticize, complain, or come off being a whiney little B^%$* No one likes that
2. Give honest an honest and sincere appreciation to the person, and even if you think what they are talking about is total bullshit, try to find the best part of it and work with that.
3. Make the other person WANT to get to know you better. (Hint*** This is done by being interesting, if you are not interesting, get to doing some interesting stuff with your life so you have something to talk about. Just don’t be boring because no one want to hang out with boring people.)
Part 2) 6 Ways to make people like you
1. Genuinely be interested and give a shit about what people tell you!
2. Smile, and not in a weird creeper way
3. Remember the person’s name. Hint*** Say it to yourself 6 times and then bring it up 3 more times in the immediate conversation and you will never forget it. It works for me 99% of the time. For example “So Doug, that’s an interesting name, why did your folks name you that, was it after some one famous???”
4. Listen for god sakes!!!!! Let a person just talk about themselves, they will tell you everything that you need to know to get them to do what you want them to. If you give them long enough, they will tell you their dreams, goals, ambitions etc.
5. When the other person brings up what their interested in, find common ground and ask them questions about that. For Example “Oh you skydive? Me to!! How many jumps do you have and what got you in to the sport?
6. Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely. This is the most important, if you master this, you can almost skip steps 1-5
Part 3) Win People to your way of thinking
1. Avoid argumentation at all costs. Probably helps if you don’t mention Religion, or Politics, Sex is ok sometimes given the right circumstances.
2. Respect others opinions and viewpoints even if they are absolutely ridiculous. Do you want to be right, or do you want to win?
3. When wrong, admit it quickly and apologize.
4. Get the other person to keep saying “yes” and them let them keep talking and thinking that the came to the conclusion or idea of the conversation themselves.
5. Put yourself in their shoes, and see the world as they do!
6. Throw down a challenge.
Part 4) Be a Leader: How to Change people without offending them or arousing resentment.
1. Begin with Praise and Humility all the time. Remember where you came from!
2. When calling attention to others mistakes, do it indirectly, and talk about your own mistakes that you have made before you go it to their shortcomings.
3. Ask questions instead of giving orders as to get buy-in from the person or people.
4. Always let the person save face and praise them for even the slightest improvement. DO NOT bullshit this either, they will know, do it genuinely or not at all.
5. Give the other person a solid reputation to live up to. Use encouragement and make all faults seem easy to correct.
6. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
Part 5) — My Part — How to Crush the Competition and kick ass at life.
Quick note if I may… What I am about to share with you is from my own personal experience meaning that I have done these things myself and live by them. I would never tell you or suggest anything to you that I have not done time and again mastering the skill!
1. Study your competition / enemy.
2.Live as they do, model them
3. Find weakness’ and take notes
4. Plan the attack carefully and collectively and set aside any emotion, pain, or fear associated with the task at hand.
5. Execute
6. Fight till you die, and if you’re not willing to die for it,(or see it through to the end) it’s not important to you and should go back to playing video games because you’re not ready to play in the big boy’s game and you’ll get hurt or worse.
Note*** When you get to the point in your life where your own “self competition” in your head is greater than any real competition in the physical world, you are truly unstoppable. If you’re not there yet follow the steps above until you are.
Now on kicking ass at life, here is 10 awesome ways.
1.Never give up
2. Always finish what you start.
3. If you want to be the best, then you have to work harder than whom ever is the best currently. Meaning if the “best” trains 3 hours a day, I need to go 3 hours and 1 minute.
4. Never walk away from a situation feeling like you should have said or done something but were too afraid to speak up. The emotional pain lasts way longer than the physical pain that might ensue in a situation like that.
5. All you have is today. Fuck the past, it’s not who you are, and fuck the future because it hasn’t happened yet. BE HERE NOW, this is the ONLY day you have.
6. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. What almost kills you makes humble, and what kills you, kills you, so don’t get killed.
7. Sometimes in life you have to eat a shit sandwich, so if you do, eat it fast and have a good attitude about it.
8. 99.9% of the time you can be right or you can be happy. So choose wisely, and remember that 0.01% odds are really shitty!
9. Choose your battles very wisely.
10. Eat well everyday, Sleep at least 6 hours per night, have sex 2-4 times per week and tell your friends and your family that you love them and appreciate them at every chance you get
Now go out there and apply some of this information that you have learned. This shit works for me and I want it to work for you, in fact I want you to come up with better stuff so I can log on to your blog one day and read about how something I wrote motivated you to do something different and great, and then you took it a step further, innovated on something I wrote, did, or said and made it better. It’s 2013 ladies and gentlemen and the world is not going to slow down. It will only get faster, and the more you feel left behind, the worse off you are. So get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fight because we have a revolution to start.
I challenge anyone to apply these principles for the next 7 days. Record a 1-3 minute video of how utilizing these steps helped you, and I will feature you on my blog and I will give you a $25 -$100!
Here are the submission Requirements:
1. Upload the Video to You and link it to This blog post. (http://aefwolf.wpengine.com/?p=679)
2. Include my name and your name in your video and what steps you utilized in a specific situation to help you
3. Send me an email with the link to your Youtube video. email to [email protected] (Make sure to also send me your Pay pal email SO I CAN PAY YOU!)
4. I will pay you $25-$100 based on the creativity, story, and hits on your youtube. Any video that has over 300 hits before July 10th 2013 will automatically get the $100
5. I will pay out unlimited money for all good content. There will be no limit to submissions. So keep em coming.
I’d tell you good luck, but I don’t believe in luck, so go do it and get PAID SON!
If your interested in training on these things and joining forces with me on the application of these steps in your daily life as well please contact me through my blog and lets see what we can do together.
If you want more in-depth information like this, stay tuned for the podcast that will be starting in a couple of weeks or go check out my latest book “The Young Entrepreneurs Guide to Life” which can be found in the “Store” section of my website.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I am looking forward to hearing your stories!!!!
Sincerely,
and if your still interested in reading HTWF&IP Here is the Book Link if your still interested
Click on Image to Buy Book