How To Find The Courage To Change By Raising Your Awareness
Those of you on my newsletter received an email last week where I talked about a subject related to the movie The Secret.
The responses I received to that email where quite polarized, which should not be surprising since subject matter that can be interpreted as spiritual or religious tends to elicit hard-line opinions. Yet I have to admit I was surprised by some of the emails I received in reply to the newsletter, which was a little naive on my part.
I received messages from my readers from both ends of the spectrum. Everything from I love what you are saying and totally agree, to that movie is a bunch of hogwash — just thinking about what you want won’t get it, all the way to the movie is against my religion and you shouldn’t be promoting it.
I’m happy whenever people engage with my content, and I never take one person’s feedback too strongly unless I’m receiving many responses along the same line. It was certainly interesting to read the different places people were coming from and thank you to everyone who wrote to me - it was an enlightening experience to read your point of view.
I don’t adhere specifically to a branch of religion, nor am I an atheist. If a label must be applied, I’m closest to agnostic, believing in a higher power but not looking to lock that power into a rigid framework like doctrine can do. I like to take on board concepts and ideas from all religions and belief systems, but I never became so restricted by them that I can’t at least listen to other people’s ideas without labeling them blasphemous.
You might call me a perpetual fence sitter, which in itself has problems. The wonderful thing about taking on board and truly feeling a specific religious calling is that you no longer suffer from being “lost”. You now have a framework to follow, a way to live and a community of people who share your beliefs. That is a wonderful thing.
Of course I have a moral compass, as we all do, which gives me some sense of rules and structure that govern my life. I’m going to draw the line on certain actions and label them wrong or right. Some things fall into a grey area, which once again is where having a strong religious belief has “benefits” - you have less greys and more black and whites - although I don’t think that’s always a good thing. Unwavering absolutes can be very dangerous - religious fundamentalism has certainly taught us that.
Do I Believe In The Law Of Attraction?
Lessons From The Rich Schefren Conference - Part 1
I’m back at home in Toronto. It’s so crazy as I look out my window right now there is a huge snow storm, the largest this winter so far and it’s about -15c. Just a three hour flight south in Florida yesterday it was warm and sunny at about 25c. Amazing.
The Rich Schefren/Strategic Profits conference over the weekend was the first Internet business conference I have attended. It was a great experience and I want to share it with you here on my blog, especially for those of you who have never attended a conference but may be considering it, or for those considering joining the Strategic Profits coaching program.
I want to focus on lessons learnt from Rich and the whole experience, but since the networking and making friends was the big highlight for me I also want to make mention of some of the people I met, so I’ll start with that.
I gave out my business card with my blog address on it to many people over the weekend and I expect many of you are reading my blog for the first time as a result of bumping into me at the conference. I hope you enjoy what you find here and please subscribe to my RSS feed or email updates to stay up to date.
Rich Schefren and Mike Filsaime
Rich and Mike are two guys I obviously admire because of their achievements online and one of the main reasons I wanted to attend this event was to meet both of them. Mike has walked the path as an online marketer that I want to walk right along behind him, and obviously Rich is leading the charge in the business systems area. I’ve already learnt a lot from these guys simply by watching what they do and I hope to replicate their successes.
Rich Schefren, Yaro Starak & Mike Filsaime
The Long Tail
It’s about time I give my take on The Long Tail. I find myself referring to it on a regular basis as I write articles about blogging and business in general and if you have been following the recent fuss about the evolution of Internet marketing (or known as it’s “death”) or read a handful of popular blogs about business or economics, you have no doubt heard the phrase “The Long Tail” before. It’s certainly having a significant impact on the economics of doing business online and is a buzz term uttered by many of the coolest people in the online business world. In case you haven’t heard the term before here is my introduction for you in good old simple Yaro speak and my attempt to be one of the cool people too.
I can’t remember which blog I read first that introduced me to The Long Tail, but certainly the first place I read anything about it in-depth was from the person credited with creating the term, Chris Anderson, in his now seminal Wired magazine article - The Long Tail. This is certainly the first place I recommend you go to if you want the five-page medium sized story about The Long Tail and if you want the really long story he has a new book out, strangely enough called, The Long Tail, which I will provide a mini review of later in this article as I have just finished reading it.
