Small Personal Triumphs

This morning I installed the new DVD player that my husband and I gave each other for Christmas. (It only arrived a couple of days ago; I haven't been procrastinating that long) It was really pretty simple to do; took only about ten minutes from package ripping to hearing the familiar ringing tones of the HBO opening sequence.

But it required venturing into the wiry hell behind our TV. We have cords back there from several earlier generations of add-ons. And tapes and other archaic information forms, as well as the dust to which they returneth.

I waited for a clear head and full daylight to tackle it.

Then presto! the intriguing Gabriel Byrne and the second disc of the series In Treatment burst onto the screen.

Getting that thing working gave me a burst of the "Outward Bound" effect: if I can plug in an electronic device, then by damn I can do most anything.



Welcome to Chic Design and awindyhill!

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A Top Ten List for Success

Publisher and Editorial Director of SUCCESS magazine, Darren Hardy, offers the following advice on how to make 2008 your best year ever:

1. Decide to be Successful – Success is not a dream, hope or fantasy; it is a decision. Make the decision to change, improve and act on your ambitions.

2. Design your Best Year Yet – As an architect would design a skyscraper, write out the goals, plans and actions it will take to achieve the life you want to live.

3. Identify Your Passion - What are your unique interests, talents and gifts? Passion attracts success. Find what you love to do - you will never “work” again.

4. Program Yourself for Success – You will see, perceive, expect and create what you think about. To program your mind for success – read watch and listen to materials that will support your success.

5. Surround Yourself with Success - You are the combined average of the five people you hang around the most. Surround yourself with healthy, success-minded achievers.

6. Model Success - The best way to learn to be successful at anything is to find someone who is where you want to be and model their success habits.

7. Master the Fundamentals – Don’t complicate it. About a half a dozen things make up 90%+ of what it takes to be successful at anything. Keep it simple.

8. Get Fit - The mind cannot achieve what the body cannot perform. Your family, friends and career and future depend on your good health. Make it priority No. 1.

9. Remember What’s Important – At the end of the journey what will have mattered most will be your relationships – the people you love and those that love you. Make sure they are on your goal list for 2008.

10. Make a Difference – What do you want your life’s legacy to be? You have the power to make a positive difference – to a single person, a neighborhood, a community, a nation, the world. Realize that power in 2008.

Success magazine is for entrepreurs, small businesses, and home-based business people. That's us, because whatever your day job might be, if you're an artist, you're also an entrepreneur.


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Accepting The Gifts on Offer

When I was younger, I wasted a lot of time trying to prove myself, not taking advantage of all the resources available to me. The kind of stuff I turned down...well, the details are too embarrassing to recount. I was a horse you could lead to champagne and she still wouldn't drink.

In retrospect, the gutsier thing would have been to focus on what I was trying to accomplish and use the resources available to do it.




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Sexiest Deep Thinker

Here's a bit of wisdom from a quite unexpected source: People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue.

Actor Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) wins the title of Sexiest Deep Thinker with his answer to the question: how would you title the movie of your life?

He would call it Increments. That's the word his father said to him each morning as he left for school. What that meant was that every test, paper, and dab of homework is part of "the final grade."

I don't like to think that I'm working for a grade; in fact, I want to eradicate that thought. But I do know what he means in another sense: all the little bits are part of the outcome.

It's the same idea that the world's funniest writing writer Anne Lamott expressed in Bird by Bird: you can only take on the project of documenting a jillion birds by dealing with them one at the time, "bird by bird."





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