jungle jeff

Four Other Blogs, All Interrelated

If you don’t visit jeffnoel.com, you might want to consider it. The past few days there have been particularly focused on career, which really belong here at jungle jeff.

In case you’ve ever wondered, of the five daily blogs I write, Mid Life Celebration is the most popular with jungle jeff and jeffnoel.com trading places for second.

Lane 8 and jeffnoel.org are the two, understandably, that follow the top three. Physical responsibility and spiritual responsibility seem to get the least focus in real life too.

(next blog)

Infinite Combinations of Nothing Is Impossible

What if they had teamed up instead of battling?

Picture Seth Godin and jeff noel collaborating on a book.

Picture Mark Victor Hansen and jeff noel collaborating.

Picture the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America and jeff noel collaborating.

Or, the Pope….

Your expectations are not high enough.

Today’s post at this blog illustrates this concept.

But before you go to Lane 8, let me ask you, what do you picture yourself doing?

(next blog)

Christopher Needed To Be Spoon Fed

Note: This is sort of a spoof, a play on words.

There’s a new personal transformation company I found(ed), called Less Than Half Benchmarking.

Well, that’s really only partially true. It’s not called Less Than Half Benchmarking. It’s called Mid Life Celebration.

But less than half of you reading this will visit  Mid Life Celebration today.

Doing stuff that matters is hard work.

And even fewer will visit another benchmarking site, where there is a temptation to view excellence as showing off.

I promise to help you think differently.

You promise to not expect to be spoon-fed.

Life Is Full Of Dragons To Overcome

Many of you are waiting for the economy to pick up, before you’re willing to work harder and more creatively than in your entire life. Meanwhile, you complain about your situation.

We’re human. These things happen. But why?

Work with me here. When I’m at the track doing speed work and it’s a windy day, I insist on running into the wind. My times will be slower which isn’t as motivating as seeing the wind-aided times.

When doing road work, every time there’s a hill, I run faster up the hill than down. At the gym, no runner works harder on their core than me.

Why? Because the long way is the short cut.

When race day comes, guess who’s the most prepared?

Lane 8.org

Are you satisfied?

When you wake up every day, what are some of the first things you do or think about?  Did you start thinking about today last night?

The workday begins the night before.

So last night, in thinking about yesterday’s post and the reference to the Fast Company article, I’m good with it ending the way it did.

Do you start blaming others and thinking about all the things “they” need to do? Or do you look in the mirror and analyze what you need to fix?

This will determine, in large part, your success or failure.

What was interesting was that just yesterday, these jeff noel blogs set a single day record for daily visits. It’s taken years to get “here”.

And I got here by doing stuff, not by anything else.

Be more:

• Creative than you ever have
• Focused than you ever have
• Willing to fix yourself than you ever have
• Determined than you ever have

And find your purpose.  That’s the key.  You know it and I know it. We all read about it, and listen to others talk about it.

Talk is cheap. And so is lying to ourselves.

Fortune What?

Finding our passion and pursuing our dreams with sheer determination is something we all dream about.

When is the best time to ease off the dreaming and ramp up the doing? It really depends. There’s so much to consider. So much to take into account.

Have you given up?

Eventually, most people give up. I almost did too. Then a small child was born. He changed my life and my purpose. He was and is the catalyst that inspires me to work tirelessly.

Over time, my five daily blogs have slowly, but surely been getting better. It’s funny sometimes, to think that many readers have no idea how hard I work in my professional position with a Fortune 100 company.

All this blogging is extra. Ya with me? Extra. What are you doing that’s extra? That’s hard?  That’s difficult? That you love so much you can’t stop?

My blogs are so basic and simple it’s almost embarrassing.  When there’s some “spare” time, I’ll be looking to take another step to jazz up the blogs.  I’ll be clicking here for more WordPress Theme tips.

Do you let what you can’t do stop you from what you can?

Get In Line

Sometimes we need the proverbial spanking, or maybe a kick in the buttocks, to rattle our cage enough to do what’s common sense but not common practice.

Ask yourself, “Why don’t I have a personal vision/mission statement?”

Imagine a child – maybe your child, niece or nephew – asking you, very seriously, “What’s the meaning of life?”

We expect everyone else to have a clue.  But not ourselves.

Mind-boggling.

Then one lucky day, someone did me the favor of a major cage rattling, and I finally did something about it.

Any other way is just lame.

“Who needs this”?, is stereotypically said in a sarcastic tone, and maybe even with our arms thrown up in the air is frustration.  Can you picture it?

But that’s not what I mean here.  Not today ever.

Today, in these tough economic times, these extraordinarily turbulent world times, we need this.

We need leaders.

Not managers.  Well, we need managers, but not as much as we desire leaders.

We need someone with passion to make a difference.

Most humans are hard-wired to do good – to make a difference.  But most are hard-wired, also, to fear.  Fear keeps good people, who want to make a difference, in the shadows, where it’s safe.

We don’t need any more people in the shadows.  it’s too crowded there. We need people to go out in the sun, and lead the others who want to make a difference, but have no one to follow.

The past two days, talking about “Big Picture”, vision, and perspective has me thinking this morning, and reflecting.

Re-reading the past two posts, written from here in Anchorage, Alaska, it makes me curious about how and why leaders choose their leadership style.  It also begs the question, “How much thought do leaders put into their present day, yesterday, and tomorrow”?

A friend of mine was here in 1993 and visited Portage Glacier with his wife.  From the visitors center, he said you could reach out and touch Portage Glacier.  Too cloudy to see anything while I was there two days ago. But even if it had been clear, the only way to see it now is to travel by boat.

Didn’t anyone see this coming?  Where were our global leaders when it came to thinking about environmental lessons learned from the past, real time consideration for current direction, and a look into the future to visualize where we will end up?

Whether it’s global warming and icebergs, or business conditions and technology, every leader ought to be thinking big picture as they plow headlong into their day.  Otherwise, we may get to our destination, but our ship has already left port.

Yesterday, we saw this glacier from 15,000 feet.  Today, we see it from the ground.  What’s different about the two views?

What’s different? There used to be a time when I didn’t understand the difference. And not only that, the difference never even hit my radar screen.  Why?

Because, “Wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from making mistakes”.

So what has become clearer over the years is simply this. We have the choice to look at things from more than one perspective.

Funny thing is, we’ve always had this choice. The difference in the perspectives makes all the difference in the world.

We have this choice today.  And that’s just the “tip of the iceberg glacier”.