Discovering Mercy/Being Forgiven of $331.00

I got a speeding ticket for going 54 in a 35 zone right in my Hometown one Monday last July.

Bail….$331.00 american dollars.

I paid the fine and went to traffic court to explain why…

I was surprized by what I found–

1. The Judge
2. My accusor
3. The Law
4. Authority
5. My Guilt
6. Other guilty people
7. and then…Mercy

Long Story Short…I got forgiven the ticket and my money back because they lacked a document.

My “Aha” moments…

Law and authority is real and can really change your life–ask they guy who lost his licence.

Mercy, grace, and forgiveness is cool and we/I need to play it forward–give mercy to those around me-by the handfuls.

I think I will slow down as well…

Whiners,Gossipers, and Complainers Take Heed!

My father in law just gave my wife and I one of those rubber wrist bands–Like the Lance Armstrong “Live Strong” ones of a few years ago.

This one is purple and has a whole different purpose!

The idea is to use it as a queuing device to quit complaining, sniveling, and whining about life–Every time you complain, you must snap or change the band to the other arm.

My wristband is already stretched out and worn….Boo Hoo/Waa Waa!

The website for instructions and ordering is:  www.aComplaintFreeWorld.org

The results are AWESOME….and we are having a ball “catching” both ourselves and each other complaining.

I see this working on the same Toastmaster Principle of beginning to catch your own and others non-fluencies such as “um”s, “and’s”,  ”uh’s”, and “ya knows”.

Funny how something this simple can break a poisonous habit of gossip, negativity, and permeating pessimism.

Go for it….this a brilliant and easy way to make a fundamental life change for the New Year!

Vision, Mission and You

Vision and Mission

Start with the big picture—put first things first.

Experts in the fields of psychology and personal effectiveness now recognize it if you feel upset or an uneasy about your lack of personal time, it’s not because you have too much to do.  It’s because you not satisfied with most of what you do.  Determine what’s most important in your life.

1. Ask such questions as what’s most important?
2. What gives your life meaning?
3. What do you want to be and to do with your life?

Clarity on these issues is critical because the answers to these questions affect everything else in your life—your goals, the decisions you make in the way you spend your time, and so much more.

The need for a balanced life—

If you don’t think balance in your life is vitally important to your happiness, success and health. Consider this: there is considerable evidence showing that mishandled stress at home interferes with work performance, and mishandled job pressure creates and magnifies problems at home.  Research shows that the quality of your personal relationships strongly influences job productivity, disease resistance and longevity.  Conversely, people who have value power over family and friendships appear to have a harder time fighting off disease and sickness.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Can success in one area of life compensate for failure in another?
2. Can success in your profession compensate for a broken marriage or ruined health?
3. Can success in the community justify failure as a parent?

Important: success or failure in any role you have contributes to the quality of every other role, and your life as a whole.  Keep balance in your life.  Identify your various roles and keep them right in front of you so that you don’t neglect important areas such as your health, your family, your community involvement, or personal development.  Evaluating your various roles and attaching a new level of priority in each is another important step in becoming balanced and aligned and a whole person.

Enjoy life—

The matter what your circumstance or how uncertain future, you can still be filled with enjoyment, humor, and a good attitude.  Don’t let fear or anxiety keep you from experiencing the happiness that life has to offer.  Go to a local park, enjoy the fresh air, and have fun.  Have friends over for dinner.  Spend time with family.  Think about what activities you enjoy and go do them!

TIME MANAGEMENT MADE EASY–THE 80/20 RULE

Time management—

We all possess valuable resources, but none is trickier or more valuable than time.  Managing your time is THE key skill set in managing your life.  Show me what you do with your time and I’ll show you what your value system is all about. When leveraging time you will utilize and expand on your core strength.  If you can manage your time well you can accomplish almost anything.  Using time incrementally, methodically, and strategically will help you stay on track and achieve your life priorities.

Personal productivity is only as limited as your proper use of time.  Wise use of time maximizes and leverages all resources and helps you achieve your goals, objectives, and priorities.  Good time management allows you to plan ahead and to use your purpose and passion with laser focus—nothing becomes impossible.  Your productivity, as you leverage your passion through good time management, increases exponentially resulting in compelling accomplishment.

“Plan your work, then work your plan” is a great axiom.  The “work your plan” part has to do with time management.  Planning is great, but is useless without execution.  Time management is all about the execution of your plans, goals, passions, and objectives.

The 80-20 rule is evidence of this…. The Peitro Principle states this: You accomplish about 80% of your results from 20% of your work. 20% of any group or team usually contributes to 80% of the work; this 80/20 notion is a fixed law in business, church, family or any part of life.

The 80/20 principle as applied to your workday is to find your personal “prime time” then leverage that time in the most productive way possible.  96 minutes is 20% of an 8 hour day. To schedule around your 20% “prime time”, where you are most productive and efficient. This is the key to leveraging time, productivity, and accomplishment. For most people their prime time is in the morning.  This is the time to get all of your core work accomplished.  This key time is to be secured and set aside as the valuable commodity it truly is. Prime work time should be scheduled on a daily basis and should have compelling content at its core. Planning, goal setting, reviewing, communicating, executing initiatives, key meetings, key document creation, and much more are all the key elements of utilizing your prime time window.

In our daily Prime time we should focus on activities that—

1. Contribute to our customer,  family, stakeholders success and satisfaction
2. Booster personal productivity and performance
3. Support your family or organization’s strategic vision and goals

Time management tips—

1. Know and use your calendar or Daytimer
2. Prioritize demands on your time
3. Keep your priority list in front of you
4. Keep checking your progress with time management.
5. Stockpile work or questions, and to schedule says its time work on them.  Only work on things in your scheduled to do so.
6. Seek support when you need it— delegate
7. Develop techniques that help you when in a unique situation
8. Pick a morning or an evening to work when no one is around and get organized.  Order creates less stress and helps focus
9. Spend a few minutes at the end of the day putting everything in its home base and getting ready for the next day.  Remember… trash it, act on it, refer it, or file it away.

10.  Keep yourself motivated.

The idea here is to have a balanced life. This begins with healthy relationships and healthy personal spirit.  Living your life in balance and alignment starts with living your priorities.  The peace and congruity that results is compelling.  A life lived well by living your priorities and being able to have fun energizes you and gives a deep sense of satisfaction.

You know you’re on the right track when—

1. Your customers, boss, family and peers praise your accomplishments.
2. You meet your sales, personal, or family goals and have a positive performance
3. You are often considered for additional responsibility and special projects.
4. You feel good about your work and family and are energized by them.

The Covey idea of sharpening your saw and resting so you can work more efficiently is the key.  A life lived in balance with family, work, community, friendships, and personal fulfillment is truly a productive life.

It all starts at time management, personal discipline, and self-control.  Just do it.

Time management is—

The definition of Time management is a set of skills, tools, and systems that work together to help you get more value out of your time and leverage it to accomplish what you want.

SCOTT HAMMOND .

Mission and Vision

Vision and Mission

Start with the big picture—put first things first.

Experts in the fields of psychology and personal effectiveness now recognize it if you feel upset or an uneasy about your lack of personal time, it’s not because you have too much to do.  It’s because you not satisfied with most of what you do.  Determine what’s most important in your life.

1. Ask such questions as what’s most important?
2. What gives your life meaning?
3. What do you want to be and to do with your life?

Clarity on these issues is critical because the answers to these questions affect everything else in your life—your goals, the decisions you make in the way you spend your time, and so much more.

The need for a balanced life—

If you don’t think balance in your life is vitally important to your happiness, success and health. Consider this: there is considerable evidence showing that mishandled stress at home interferes with work performance, and mishandled job pressure creates and magnifies problems at home.  Research shows that the quality of your personal relationships strongly influences job productivity, disease resistance and longevity.  Conversely, people who have value power over family and friendships appear to have a harder time fighting off disease and sickness.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Can success in one area of life compensate for failure in another?
2. Can success in your profession compensate for a broken marriage or ruined health?
3. Can success in the community justify failure as a parent?

Important: success or failure in any role you have contributes to the quality of every other role, and your life as a whole.  Keep balance in your life.  Identify your various roles and keep them right in front of you so that you don’t neglect important areas such as your health, your family, your community involvement, or personal development.  Evaluating your various roles and attaching a new level of priority in each is another important step in becoming balanced and aligned and a whole person.

You are the architect of your future—

You are the builder, the engineer, and the architect of your future.  You have the ability to define your future if you so choose and if you’re willing to be systematic, incremental, and methodical.  You can plan your life resources and apply them conscientiously toward an imagined end.

This future based vision of what will be at what can be will require focus, imagination, planning, and most of all, time.  It takes time to determine who you want to be when you grow up.  It takes time and intentionality and seeking to really determine what it is you’re trying to accomplish how to go about it.

This future based visualization requires the ability to innovate and be imaginative.  One needs to be a lifelong learner and open to the Art of Possibility.  New ideas and new information and innovating become the currency in this new economy. The ability to synchronize and systemize new thought and ideas into old paradigms becomes a very valuable skill. Orchestration of resources, information, new thought, ideas, and new concepts into old skill sets is truly an art to be mastered.

It all starts with having a written plan and putting your dreams on paper.  The idea of being incremental and doing a little bit each day is key to this integration.  In some sort of a personal systematization becomes an incredibly efficient way to learn and grow.  It allows for consistency and fresh energy every day.  Calendars, schedules, and time management become key to the discipline of being systematic and methodical in achievement of our Life Plan and goals.

Accountability becomes a great help when one has partners and coaches and friends to hold one accountable to one’s own dreams.  Having coaches and mentors really allows for extra contribution and value added content and experience to your Life Plan. Reminders, post it notes, another visual posts will serve to make your plans memorable and more top of mind. Use your reticular activator to look for and be reminded of your life’s plan and written guidelines.

The ability to stay flexible and dynamic and changeable is a key factor in developing a Life Plan and vision.  New information is always presenting itself.  One needs to have flexibility is a key skill set. Remaining changeable and flexible and malleable in being the architect of your future is key.

The steps are as follows—

1. Know when and how to find your dream and vision
2. Articulate it on paper and verbally
3. Bring using the resources of time, information, skill sets, and determination
4. Refine and articulate your Life Plan
5. Resource your Life Plans through time management, calendarization, resourcing, energy, and life units.
6. Just do it…
7. Evaluate on an ongoing basis and rethinking and rewriting as needed.

20 Steps to Compelling Goals

20 Steps to Compelling Goals

1. Have SMART goals
2. Have strategies that work– Make sure your goals are workable, realistic, and actionable.
3. Have good implementation—follow through and be methodical, sequential and incremental.  Start small and do not despise the day of small beginnings.
4. Accountability—be accountable to trusted advisors and mentors and those more experienced.  Coach and mentor others as well.  Hold yourself and others accountable to your goals.
5. Minimize distraction—focus on what’s important—keep the main thing the main thing
6. Commit to your goals and plans—daily review your goals and adjust as needed
7. Communicate your goals, with all stakeholders and family members—don’t do this in a corner.
8. Post written goals publicly—be very public and very accountable and very up front with  goals
9. Get family buy in and immediately—kid buying in and commitment to everyone involved.  Share what you have in mind with others who play a role in the plans success and achievement.
10. 10. Have daily, weekly, monthly meetings to review goals and progress
11. Develop reasonable implementation schedule and stick to it—calendarize!
12. Do your plans, see what happens, adjust as needed, and keep in touch with those who can help you stay on track.  Accountability works great!
13. Evaluate—revisit current goals and paradigms and find what works and what doesn’t.  Implement change immediately.  If it works.  Do not fix it.
14. Think out of the box—creatively brainstorm. Be fearless and try new things.  Get feedback from trusted advisors and mentors.
15. Go away—go somewhere way from all distraction and develop a compelling parenting plan.
16. Create a culture of accountability, celebration and clarity—celebrate achievement by awarding team and individual accomplishment.  Give public and private encouragement and praise. reward achievement
17. Communicate expectations—have courageous conversations and be clear on expectations. Communicate, communicate, and communicate.
18. Leverage your time and manager prime times of the day—the times where energy is the highest and most focused.
19. Just do it—plan the work and work the plan. Commit to high performance.  Kill procrastination and perfectionism.  Keep a sense of humor.  Learn to grow and change.  It back in action and get involved.
20. Dream it, write it down, and just do it— rediscover your passion, mission and purpose today.  You have a choice, time, resources, and ability.  Now it’s up to you.

Life on Purpose/10 Goal Setting Tips

If you want something, you have to do something. The key is to get going.

1. Set a goal. This is harder that it seems. Generally, we have an idea of what we’d like—to be more successful, healthier, and happier—but we stop there. Vague desires aren’t goals, they’re dreams. Remember you can’t reach a goal you have not set yet.
2. Understand and accept the tradeoffs. Every goal has unpleasant aspects. Identify the good things—“I want to make more money,” and the less good—“I have to work harder or smarter.” Understand the downsides, and accept them as necessary to the process.
3. Commit to your goal. Being ambivalent is disastrous. Success does not come from—or to—which-washy people.
4. Set a deadline. Deadlines give goals a framework for action. You can’t reach a goal without a meaningful deadline.
5. Commit to the deadline. Commitment is critical for making improvement. Make your deadline mean something.
6. Tell people. Make your goal tangible by sharing it with others. Say it out loud and put it on paper.
7. Outline intermediate steps. Things don’t go from here to there without passing through some middle territory. It’s easier to take many small steps than one big leap.
8. Get help. Partner up. Since we have to do things that are new to us, we’re inexperienced. Often, it’s best to get professional help, but even friends or colleagues can assist. On your journey to your new goal, you don’t have to make the trip alone.
9. Take action. Soon! Your resolve can slip—and then time goes by. Take the first step now. The sooner you do, the more likely you are to achieve your ultimate goal.
10. Commit again. And again. For improvements to occur, you have to embrace them over and over. Take it step by step—but keep moving forward—and I year from now, you’ll find you’ve moved from here to ther.

Thanks to Dr. Richard Borough

4 challenges of compelling parenting

1. Learning– Creating a family culture of openness, honesty and a love for lifelong learning of compelling and often difficult life lessons. We are lifelong learners.
2. Really Living– Having a family environment which is engaging, fun, and in the moment. We are learning to stop and enjoy the right now.
3. Loving– Contributing to a family culture that chooses to love, forgive, give grace and mercy. Deciding and determining before hand that we will choose love first and foremost.
4. Lasting-- We are running the race with a big picture in mind. Failure is not an option nor is division, divorce, or bailing on each other. We are in this for the long haul– together.

Scott’s New and Improved Narrative Bio

SCOTT HAMMOND—SCOTTPRESENTS.COM

1680 Prairie Hawke Court, McKinleyville, CA 95519 (707) 839-0774

http://www.BecomeaBetterFather.com, http://www.ScottPresents.com

Personal Philosophy and Work Focus

As founder and president of Scott Presents, a personal and organizational

development consulting firm, Scott pursues a whole person approach in sharing information

on communication skills, whole marketing, compelling relationship development, and easy –to- use productivity skill-sets. Scott’s inspirational approach promotes collaborative learning in an informal, compelling style and atmosphere.

The key elements of Scott’s personal philosophy are four- fold:

· Integration, blending the mind (thought), body (action) and soul (purpose).

· Empowerment, acknowledging and supporting the passion and gifts within us.

· Growth, providing the tools to co-create learning and growth opportunities.

· Relationship Development through compelling communication, marketing, and nurturing business and personal relationships.

At the core of Scott’s consulting, speaking and training firm is his passion for “digging deeper.”

Scott draws on easy to understand productivity training, speaking skills, parental expertise with 9 kids, and 30 years of real world marketing to provide tools for greater personal effectiveness, connection to purpose, and achievement of goals. His services focus on engaging all parts of the organization in clarifying shared vision and values, and in implementing those in everyday work and personal life.

Work Focus

Key consulting services include:

(1) building partnerships through easy to learn sales and marketing strategies

(2) organizational change and growth

(3) strategic visioning, goal setting and mission development

(4) personal branding through effective networking skills

(5) marketing and advertising consultation

(6) workshop, training and meeting design & facilitation

(7) collaborative problem solving

(8) coaching

These key services focus on helping public and private sector organizations, businesses, and

communities build strong leaders, teams and relationships among their partners. Partners learn to share responsibility for the successful outcome of the partnership.

Scott lives with his family in McKinleyville, California, and continues his lifelong quest to Be Here Now, enjoy rich relationships, and to make a positive difference by leaving a compelling legacy.

He has completed his book Mid-Life Renaissance and continues to pursue raising a family who carry on his positive legacy of care, compassion, and making a difference and to enjoy each day—One Day at A Time…

Coach Bear Bryant Speaks…

6 Minutes, 50 Years

Here is legendary Coach Bear Bryant’s speech to his Alabama football team before a 1974 game:  “Most of you will live another fifty years or more. I hope it’s seventy, but if it’s fifty that’s still a good life, and what happens today you’ll have to live with the rest of the way. You can’t get it back if you don’t win. It’s sixty minutes and over. The losers are the ones who say, ‘Oh I wish I could play it again.’ You can’t play it again.

Well, you’re not really going to have to play sixty minutes. None of you. The longest play in a game is six and a half seconds. The shortest play is less than two seconds. That’s barely a wink of the eye. You’ll average five seconds a play. Five seconds of total effort, going all out, giving a hundred percent. You oughta be able to hold your hand in a fire that long…”

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