Who else aside from me is still recovering from the whole holiday season? Here at our place, we are preparing to go away for a little R & R and keeping the kids entertained while I get things in order and keep up with all my favorite haunts and getting some work done is proving what else, but a challenge

Having said that, I wanted to update you on what has been happening in my cyberworld. I was pleasantly surprised and honored to be in amongst this list of bloggers awarded by the spunky Mauro of 1 Million Love Messages with this Inspiring Great Blog Award. The list of all those awarded blogs are included here and thank you Mauro for including me in this list.

1-Cotojo 2-Lisa -Deborah 4-Pearl 5-Sandy 6-Jesse 7-Chris 8-Santa 9-BlogElf 10-Jackie 11-Marzie 12-Adrian 13- 15-NAFASG 14-PolliwogFrog 15-Sue 16-Kathy 17-Maartje 18-Morgan 19-Greg 20-MaryAnn 21-Eric 22-Hawk 23-Carol 24-Diane 25-EvNucci 26-Surjit 27-Kuanyin 28-ChristyZ 29-Sandee 30-Robin 31-Hanna 32-Maunie 33-Kim 34-Bobby 35-Billy 36-David 37-Jennifer 38-Aryst 39-Winston 40-Christy 41-LilyRuth 42-Jess 43-Rudy 44-Lynda 45-Lili 46-SandyG 47-Ange 48-BlackWyrm 49-Vincent 50-Colin&Anne 51-BlandlyUrbane 52-Marco 53-Mihaela 54-John 55-Aziz 56-Ugyen 57-Lansy 58-Alex 59-Victors 60-Nostalgia 61-Franco 62-Herby 63-Rubie 64-Santaram&BVK 65-Jean-David 66-Namgay 67-Catherine 68-Yunita 69-PJLighthouse 70-Lorimer 71-DreamCatcher 72-Fred 73-Anja 74-MariaLourdes 75-JonB 76-Aayush 77-Denise 78-Dharmendra 79-BrentD 80-Jerry&Daryl 81-BrianB 82-Calvin 83-Pieter 84-Jessica 85-Taflas 86-Alex 87-Norie 88-Justin 89-Ashish 90-David 91-Thanate 92-Kevin 93-Etienne 94-Gerbera 95-Christina 96-AbhishekD 97-Uprai 98-TexasJam 99-Azmiel 100-Daniel 101-Kristin 102-Luwis 103-Adavait 104-NowSourcing 105-BuenAmigo 106-Kiran 107-Peterson 108-Lynn 109-Chessnoid 110-LuisHipolito 111-Joliveira 112-Jennifer&Pete 113-TeamDog 114-Megan 115-Mark 116-Raivyn 117-Mel 118-Andrea 119-Jen 120-Mimi 121-Bobo 122-Lynda 123-DreadBob 124-Julie 125-RennyBA 126-Bobbarama 127-Becky 128-Magdalena 129-Michelle 130-Stacie 131-ClimateTeam 132-CashMarble 133-OilOffShore 134-Piper 135-Barbara 136-Ann 137-Deb 138-Headbanger 139-Danny 140-Morina 141-Aira 142-Jericho 143-Jeane Michelle 144-Breigh 145-SecretMind 146-Awannabe 147-Gerri 148-Colin 149-eRocker 150-Kitty 151-Mariuca 152-Donna 153-Babyshern 154-Sanni 155-SatoNa 156-Cyn 157-Nessa 158-Steve 159-Francisco 160-Em 161-Christo 162-Riccardo 163-Naren 164-Denise 165-KingTang 166-El 167-Francesco 168-Bella 169-Chris 170-Fe 171-Jim&Emma 172-Incinq 173-Cristian 174-Matson 175-Kiwipulse 176-Sean 177-Anne 178-Xerendipity 179-Omega 180-Debra 181-SJ 182-Joseph 183-Nikki 184-Pocholo 185-BloggerNoob 186-Filot 187-Aseem 188-Mark 189-Antonio 190-Henry 191-Jamiz 192-Tamsyn 193-EverydayWeekender 194-JustMe 195-Brent 196-Ink 197-Alan 198-Debbie 199- BlueRibbonBloggers 200- Me

Those of you that may not know, 1 Million Love Messages is a place to share our best loving feelings with the whole wide world. This Blog is made - almost entirely - by the readers. In this project Mauro receives and publishes Love Messages sent by people from all around the world.

This is where you can share what you feel for someone special in your life… Or where you can simply share a Love Thought with the world. It’s a Blog about love in our life… love in the world.

Now for the meme which the lovely Muse from Inspired Day by Day and because I got in a little late, Peter from St Vincents Hospital Male Nurses also tagged me with the same meme. I will take a leaf out of Peter’s blog and write about some of the sites and their owners that have really inspired me this last year.

Glenda Watson Hyatt who is also know as the Left Thumb Blogger is a lady with cerebral palsy. She has followed her dream of writing and publishing a book called I’ll Do It Myself. Glenda has also produced a video of herself showing how she blogs using only her left thumb… hence the name. Thanks for the inspiration Glenda

Urban Monk is a new site I discovered a little while ago. Albert has teamed up with two other monks - Wade of The Middle Way and Kenton of Zen-Inspired Self Development to Spread the Love Now in the form of a writing project which is to write a post about compassion. There were close to 50 blogs that participated so you will find loads of articles on compassion for inspiration in that list.

The WAHM blog is a very resourceful site for any woman wanting to work from home. There are lots of tips and free handy tools to make any website just right. Tara is a very successful business woman in her own right and runs several business as well as taking care of her family. A must see site.

I think that I have given you plenty to look at and read through. I would also like to remind you of my gift offer of a book by Jamie McIntyre called What I Didn’t Learn at School but Wish I Had which you can find in my first video recording I made and posted here. The offer remains open until the end of January, and the interview I did with George Kedourie which you can find at his site. It was my first ever interview and a great learning curve! I am attempting to learn all about Web 2.0 mediums which are available to use with marketing.

More inspiring stuff to come shortly. Until then, have fun!

Well this was a first for me and once I settled in, I didn’t want to stop talking. I want to say a big thank you for those of you who took time out and dialed in to listen live. If you missed the interview, George Kedourie has posted it on his site in mp3 format.

This is a list of some online free resources that I use which I mentioned in the interview:

StumbleUpon Toolbar for sending pages to my network of friends when I want to share something with them. Please note that you have to be registered with SU in order to use it. It is also available in IE browser here.

Strip Generator for creating comic strips which are fun to use to add into a post.

Thirty Day Challenge where I met George Kedourie and teaches about how to get free traffic to your blog.

TaggZilla dot com is a follow on from the Thirty Day Challenge and a fantastic resource site for support in with your Internet Marketing.

Off2Trade dot com is a site which you can surf to find free online resources to help your internet experience which have helped me streamline my time online.

HeadSpace2 is a great wordpress plugin for meta-tag generators making it easier to get search traffic for individual posts.

CommentLuv wordpress plugin as it parses the commenter’s latest post from their blog.

PodClass which is a Facebook application for running classes.

Camtasia Studio 3 free download to enable the making of tutorials or videos.

I Want Sandy is a virtual secretary.

Jott - I learned about this from Pearl over at Fresh Perspectives which sounds really great, however it is not available in Australia yet! I’m sure it will help some of you so I wanted to list it here.

I am sure you will all find something useful in this list so let me know what you think of them.

Thanks again to George Kedourie for suggesting this interview.

Happy New Year to all and to kick it off, I have been asked for an interview from George Kedourie who I came across during the Thirty Day Challenge which I was nicely surprised about.

Among some of the questions he wants to ask me are:

• what I did before I entered cyberspace
• how I got started on the Internet
• what I would never do again in relation to Internet Marketing
• what tips do I have for anyone starting out

This interview is open to everyone and will take place on January 2nd at 5pm EST.

This translates to:

• January 3rd 9am on the East Coast of Australia

Please check Timezone Converter for your time.

If you visit George Kedourie dot com, he has kindly set up an option where you can type in any questions you may have for me, and there will be a recording made for those of you where the time difference is simply not appropriate. Questions will also be taken on the call so I look forward to you joining us.

. This last week, I have been devoting my time to my family which has curbed my time online. It has made for a very special Christmas Day for us all. We celebrated both the night before Christmas and the day itself with family and we have managed to catch up with some friends as well.

Seeing how special it was, I wanted to share some of it with you.  I put together this holiday video message for you with a special offer as my gift to you my readers.  All you need to do is leave me your contact details with an address to send the book to at no expense to you.  I will cover the costs involved and I will leave this offer is open until the 31st January, 2008.

If you would like a digital version of the book while you are waiting for the hard copy to arrive, you can request it from here.Have a very special holiday season, stay safe, and may you be blessed.

Dedicated to Success

In my last post I talked about being an adrenalin junkie which made me stop and think about what I was actually saying. Through attending many personal development seminars and training with NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), I have learned that whatever you say you are, you are. This is not something new to me, and there are times when I do use the wrong language. I should know better you would think… well, I am human after all

Since then, I have had a paradigm shift. I had a dream last night that I was bird hopping along the ground not being able to make out the tops of trees, but instead, all I could see was the grass stalks and some twigs and leaves. When I flew up into the sky I could then make everything out. I could see the trees in relation to the ground and the grass. I could even make out a valley and a body of water. Things seemed much clearer from up above. I noticed that the higher I flew, the more of the landscape I could see. Even the approaching clouds threatening a change in the weather.

Why am I telling you this. I am telling you this because from a distance, I could see the whole picture and not just what was down on the ground level. There are times when all you can see is what’s right in front of you. All the menial tasks that must be done on a daily basis. These tasks are just as important as the big ones. I have read that the art of successful living calls on the ability to pull back and see the big picture… take time out to re-focus.

There are some spiritual disciplines that favor retreats to be able to reconnect with your Higher Self or Spirit, whichever you would like to call it. This is also another form of nurturing your emotional intelligence. If you can take the time off and make it to such a retreat, fantastic! If you are limited with your time because maybe you work on your own or you have family commitments that you cannot pull away from at the drop of a hat, there are other ways of re-connecting and grounding yourself.

Here is a list that may give you some ideas:

1. Take one day off and make it a vision quest where you carry one question in your mind - What do I do next? Let it simmer while you walk, meditate, swim or just stare into space!
2. Take one hour to sit in amongst nature - be it a park, the beach, or even your backyard - and just shut everything out. Don’t think about a thing.
3. Go and have a full body massage and DO NOT talk through the process. I say this because when I worked in the beauty industry and clients would come in for a massage, there were ones who tended to talk throughout the whole hour. Not very relaxing and they missed the point of having the massage… although, some would come just to vent their troubles.
4. Run yourself a nice, deep bubble bath and burn essential oils with candles around the bathroom. The citrus oils are uplifting while peppermint and rosemary are invigorating.

Pulling back and regaining your focus is a must to be able to function at your highest potential. If while you are working and you seem to be procrastinating, notice this and ask yourself this question: What can I do in the next 20 minutes that will take me in the direction I want to go. It could be writing a letter, making a phone-call, paying a bill, joining a gym or even enlisting the help of a coach. It will different for each of you depending on what your goals are. Think of it as writing an outline of a novel and not the whole book.

These are some guidelines to consider.

• Think big.
• Think small.
• Learn to go back and forth easily between your points of focus.
• If you dream too much, you may get lost in unproductive tasks.
• If you are run off your feet with details and other’s demands, you are in danger of losing focus on the big picture.

My goal is to follow and stick to these guidelines so that I may become someone whose bigger dreams drive and inspire others. Let me know how I am doing from time to time.

Change Your Thoughts and You Can Change the World

I would like to leave you with this video that shows how your thoughts can change your focus and in turn, change the world as you see it. Enjoy!