Something about the fact that everyone everywhere is creating new resolutions that they are feigning commitment to cheapens the whole underlying idea of self-improvement that New Year’s resolutions represent. If you really wanted to improve on something you would decide to do it on March 23rd or August 5th, not just because everyone else is doing it. Not just because that is the socially agreed-upon time to make some change (or state that you want to make some change).

With all that being said, I have some New Year’s resolutions but they have come about only coincidentally along with the new year. I recently bought and started reading “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. It’s a great read and it has some information and ideas that are truly ground-breaking for me, especially the idea that our lives should be lived based on principles rather than based on people’s expectations or our personal goals.

Our goals should be a reflection of our principles and ultimately this is the only way that we can find satisfaction in achieving our goals. The importance is placed on identifying and committing to sound principles and one of the ways to do this is to create a “Personal Mission Statement”, “Personal Creed”, “Personal Manifesto”, etc. Tonight I began mine and I would like to share it with you.

This is my manifesto. I like “manifesto” because it sounds aggressive and underground and important. Where this manifesto differs from New Year’s resolutions is that these values or actions can always be improved or can continue all my life. It’s a work in progress and you can consider these as my New Year’s resolutions if you so choose:

• Get to know and love my God better.
• Consider people’s feelings.
• Consider my impact on the lives of others.
• Build deep relationships.
• Speak honestly, with sensitivity.
• Communicate early and often.
• Ask questions.
• Seek solutions.
• Do everything I can with what I have.
• Listen twice as much as I speak.
• Wake up before I NEED to, leave before I NEED to, arrive before I NEED to. Basically do things before I NEED to.
• Consider tomorrow today and next year this week.
• Make and keep commitments.
• Be available to others.
• Be supportive of others.
• Improve myself every year.
• Learn something new every day.
• Do something outside my comfort zone as often as possible.
• Express my creativity.
• Live transparently.

How about you? How do you feel about New Year’s resolutions? Do you make them? Do you keep them?

Ever since then it has been something in the back of my mind that I would love to support. I plan on supporting their work by buying some of their merch. They have stylish shirts and hoodies that stand out and make a statement.

You can support them too. Join me and nearly half a million other people for the 2nd annual TWLOHA Day today by writing “Love” on your arms. This is not an official TWLOHA event, but you can never go wrong by spreading the message of love.

Check out the Flickr Group, Facebook event and the official To Write Love on Her Arms website. Here’s some art that I did for the event:

Near Future Addition: Multiple Language Support

At the request of some users of the Bible Gateway iGoogle Gadget I will be adding have added additional languages to the gadget. As one user, Martin, pointed out, Bible Gateway allows different languages and translations, so it makes sense for the gadget to support additional languages as well.

You Can Help!

If you are interested in using the gadget in your language, and you are able to help with the translation, please send me the following information to  :

• Your name and email address
• Your website/blog link (if you have one)
• The language translated to from English
• The following words/phrases translated from English to the language of your choice (please include the English word/phrase you are translating from. Place the translation next to the word e.g. Search - Recherche):
  • Enter your search here
  • Search
  • More Information
  • Default Version
  • Hide Keyword Search?
  • Quick Search
  • Keyword
  • Match ALL words
  • Match ANY word
  • Match EXACT phrase
  • Match whole words only
  • Display
  • References only
  • Verses & references
  • Sort by
  • Book order
  • Relevance

I will use the first translation I receive for each language and give credit to the translator on the Google Gadget information page, along with a link to their website or blog.

Thanks in advance for your help! Together we can make this gadget appeal to more and more people, by delivering the ability to search Bible Gateway in their own language!

Thanks and Blessings!

- Trey

Bible Gateway is a great site where you can search the Bible for verses or topics. I use it every morning to do my daily reading and the search functions are top notch. I created the Google Gadget to use from my iGoogle page where my reading schedule is on my Google Calendar. If you use iGoogle you can add the gadget by visiting the information page and clicking the Add to Google button.

If you have suggestions or questions about the gadget check out the information page and get in touch.

In about a month I will be moving out into the unknown, into my first condo. There are a whole lot of things that will change at this time, but the scariest of all of them is that I will have to cook for myself — and survive what I cook for myself.

Luckily, Dave Navarro (@davenavarro) of Rock Your Day just posted a tweet about Sushi Day, a blog that posts sushi recipes.

This week’s featured recipe over at Sushi Day is the Crazy California Roll. Looks like fun to make, and I love sushi! Let’s just hope I have better luck than Allison (@sushiday) when I set to make myself some Crazy California rolls. :D

Does anyone know of some good blogs/sites where there are easy, classy recipes for a young bachelor such as myself to take a stab at? (The pun is absolutely intended!)

Right now in my life I have made the decision to undertake something important and I am not sure what the outcome will be. I am putting a lot on the line to take this course of action and I have no way to know or control the outcome. It scares me to death! But that’s really all I can plan for, just the step that I will take.

The Problem With Human Plans

The funny thing about planning is that it doesn’t guarantee success or the lack of pain. We think that if we plan and research diligently enough we can avoid pain or mistakes or outright failure. The problem is that most of us see planning as a set of results; the outcome of the actions we take rather than the actions themselves.

You cannot plan an outcome. The outcomes or consequences of every action you take are determined by millions of external factors that you cannot even remotely hope to control or even have any knowledge of in most cases. We are just human, and we can only take responsibility for our own actions. Only God could use all of the factors, hidden and seen, to plan an actual result. As humans, we are relegated to looking only steps ahead of ourselves and moving forward with the information and insight that we have access to.

“You Can Plan a Pretty Picnic, But You Can’t Predict the Weather.”

Any plan has both a degree of success and of failure built in. Some actions are safer than others, having a long history of success, such as a sales technique that has worked for thousands or a public speaking style that has engaged millions of people in different audiences. Some plans are filled with unknowns, and there is really no information that you can find or research that can be done to shed more light on the possible outcomes. By taking an action that you know has worked many times in the past, you can pretty safely guess what the outcome will be right?

Not necessarily. Even the safe plans have unforeseen external forces that can make the consequence of your actions undesirable. Maybe you used a particular joke at all of your sales calls and it worked splendidly to break the ice between you and your potential client, but one day you told the joke to the one person who finds it offensive. No sale.

You cannot plan an outcome. I like the way Andre 3000 said it in “Ms. Jackson”, “You can plan a pretty picnic but you can’t predict the weather.”

Have Good Reasons Behind Your Plans

You need to make sure that you have the right reasons for the actions you take. Let’s pretend that you really feel that you need to tell a friend something important, but it is something that may wreck your relationship for the rest of your lives. You also know that more harm may come of keeping it unknown.

What outcome can you expect? Will your friend value your honesty? Will they become upset or untrusting? Will they never speak to you again?

There is really no way to know, but you know what you must do. And you know why.

Plan an Action

Now that you realize that you can only be responsible for your actions, you need to plan an action. Maybe you need to plan a set of actions. Just make sure that the possible negative outcomes don’t hold you back from the positive action that you must take. It’s really very easy to plan an action, just think,

“What am I going to do? Why?”

That’s it. If your planned action is for the right reasons, do it. What comes next can be dealt with as it comes. A lot of the decisions we make need to come to blind faith. Faith that no matter what happens, the action you took was the right action and that through the consequences you will be taken care of and you will come through. You may be hoping for a particular outcome, but just know that even if you don’t get the outcome you really wanted, there was a reason for it. There was something to be learned or experienced.

I hope that the action I need to take results in something spectacular. It has that potential. It also has the potential to utterly destroy me. Naturally, I’m pretty apprehensive about the whole thing. But I know what I need to do…

Is there something that you know that you must do but are afraid to do it for all the unknowns? Or is there an action you took in the past, knowing that there was a huge potential for failure, that resulted in something beautiful? Share with us in the comments.

Is there a way to live from our souls outward rather than from our body inward?

I have read much from spiritual experts who say there is a vast universe within us that we can learn to tap into and utilize in our day-to-day journeys. Most of them inform us of this and guide us through the process of learning how to use this resource to satisfy our carnal desires; a big house, fast cars, a beautiful wife, a beautiful family.

I think that generally these people are on to something, they have a lot of knowledge and useful advice, but the focus of these books/videos/etc. is backwards

Shouldn’t we be nourishing our souls, rather than pimping them to satisfy our flesh? Shouldn’t we use our bodies and time on this earth to satisfy our souls and the souls of others?

I rarely get the soul/body balance right. Most of my time is focused on things that exist in a dying world full or scratch the itch of a dying body. When we die and this world disappears will it matter that I was the best CEO, programmer, Guitar Hero? I doubt it, yet that’s where the majority of my time — and I’m sure yours too — is allocated.

We simply exist, working hard to survive and then entertaining ourselves to numb the pain and monotony of merely existing and surviving. If all there is to this life is surviving and entertaining myself to forget or dull the pain from the suffering and struggles, I want off this ride now.

But I know there is more and know I’ve barely scratched the surface in discovering all there is to know about it.

I can’t wait for heaven, I wish I could go now. This world sucks and my flesh sucks and my soul is screaming to be let out to go to a better place. Maybe it’s a cry for home.

But that isn’t where I am in the master plan just yet. I have to continue and learn how to feed my soul and the souls of others around me. I need to learn how to operate from the command centre of my soul rather then the switchboard of my ego.

I pray the journey isn’t longer than it needs to be. I suppose when put into perspective next to eternity, it won’t be.

What do you think makes up who “you” are? Is it a physical description, such as skills and hobbies and job positions that end once you die? Or is it a spiritual description, such as divine purpose and an eternal home and soul cravings?

This week has been a week full of soul-searching and deep thought. Although I regret that I’ve missed two blog posts, I have had a lot of blog-worthy thoughts go through my head and writings go down in my notebook.

As much as I want to stay consistent with my posts, I really don’t want to post a bunch of ‘fluff’ posts such as links, etc.. Link posts can be interesting, but I don’t write a blog to share links, I write a blog to practice writing and have conversation.

So I just posted this ‘fluff’ post to let everyone know that I will be back soon. Probably tomorrow.

It’s an interesting topic I would like to post, a little, well… odd maybe. Sometimes I have those odd thoughts that most people don’t think about. At least if they do they are smart enough not to share those thoughts, but I’m not that smart.

Talk to you tomorrow! You can decide then if it’s an odd thought or a really ground-breaking thought. I think it’s really an earth-shattering thought personally.

“Maybe my passion is found in the possessions I have surrounded myself with.”

We all surround ourselves with people that interest us and mean something to us and it is the same with possessions. We accumulate over our life-span items we enjoy looking at, using and items that have some meaning to us. I can separate the possessions I see from where I sit into three categories; Personal, Entertainment and Creative.

Some items from my Personal collection:

• A picture frame painted by my younger sister and filled with a picture of her and my brother and I.
• A small inukshuk made with glue-together rocks that my best friend gave me as a house-warming present.
• Decorative plates from my mother with wolves in various settings.

Those are some of my personal items, the ones that remind me of my friends and family and our love for each other. Friends and family are a passion, I love spending time with great people who I love and who love me back.

Then I have entertainment items:

• A nice LCD TV.
• A surround sound system.
• A Playstation 3.
• Three computers.
• Shelves filled with books.
• Some movies.

I have items for the creative in me:

• Guitars.
• Recording equipment.
• Typewriter.
• Notebooks and pens and paper.
• Calligraphy pens.
• Artist’s pencils

I think that my passions lie mostly in the creative realm. I love to create or get lost in someone else’s creation. To create my own story or setting or outcome on paper is a beautiful thing. Reading the Chronicles of Narnia makes me wish I was born in a magical time many years ago, in a world through a wardrobe. The Playstation opens me up to be many different people and accomplish many different achievements through pixels and the pressing of buttons. Watching a movie can sometimes transport me to a place or time that I wish I could be. Creating music is a form of worship, it resonates within my soul. I can’t explain music as well as the rest, it is a fairly new endeavour for me, but there is something about music that I was built to love.

I am most happy when I am creating something. Whether it is artistic like a new website template or a poem or a song, or something not-so-artistic like PHP programs or a wooden box for storing things, I like creating and many of my possessions reflect that. The creation may not always be pretty, it may not always be perfect, but the process is always enjoyable.

When you look around at your possessions what passions do you see?

I was talking with my friend the other night and she shared how hard she works on her school papers editing and rearranging until they are absolutely perfect. She explained how she cuts and pastes paragraphs until she gets them in the most ideal arrangement. She also told me that if it weren’t for deadlines she would probably never hand anything in.

I wanted to tell her she might be a little crazy but figured that I shouldn’t poke fun at her for the personal information she just shared with me. I do think she is a little crazy for it though. All the time she spends for fear of making a mistake or having that mistake pointed out to her could be better put towards some other, more enjoyable endeavour.

We all do this in varying degrees, trying to avoid pain and by doing so thinking we are experiencing pleasure. We couldn’t be more wrong.

Pleasure is not really the absence of pain, I don’t believe. Pleasure is in the experience we receive when we have worked and persevered through something. Pleasure is the feeling we get at the moment we realize that we have grown from the pain, not just when the pain disappears.

Without failure we can’t learn how to capitalize on success.

This is very hard for me. Although I am a very quick learner and can accomplish most things fairly well, I rarely invest the time to get things accomplished extremely well or superbly. My mind is pulled in far too many directions and I get distracted from working extremely hard to become extremely good in that one area.

I need to practice practicing.

Do you have a story of something you persevered through or focused on to become extremely good at, even though you may not have been extremely good at it to begin with?