This is a story I wrote about a Backpacking trip in which I screwed up big time and almost made a very bad situation.  It is a long story, but the lessons learned are invaluable.  Success comes with learning from mistakes made in life.  It is an interesting story to tell and probably pretty interesting to read, so take the time to read it and tell me what you think. 

Summer 2006 Backpacking Trip Disaster

Near the beginning of the summer, I decided to take my Little Brother Luke from Big Brothers Big Sisters on his first backpacking trip to Star lake which is somewhere between Lake Tahoe and Carson Valley in the Sierra Mountains. It was around the middle of July, when I set the date to go on our trip to the weekend of August 12^th.

Now on the week before the hike I stayed very busy between work and other various events, one of which was attending an orienteering class. In this orienteering class, the instructor emphasized how important it was to have a good map of the area in which one was hiking. At the time, I kind of baulked at the idea of needing a map for I was just planning on taking the Tahoe Rim trail to Star Lake. How hard could it possibly be? So on the day of the hike, Luke, my brother Ben and I quickly gathered our supplies and headed off to the trail head. The day was beautiful with the temperature around the mid-90’s and not a cloud in sight. We drove through Gardnerville and down Highway 88 before turning to Highway 89 to get to the well known dirt road which would eventually lead us to the trailhead. From years past I remember having to pass 2 bridges before getting to the trail head, so I looked out for the bridges and felt comfortable as things looked familiar from the last time I had been on the road. We made our way past the two bridges and followed the path which looked most traveled and later ended up at a nice circle dead end with a trail head. I was proud of myself for finding the trail head so easily. We lathered ourselves with plenty of sunscreen and even practiced some of the skills Luke and I had learned from our orienteering class. Soon after, we headed down a nice trail with the intention of ending up at Star Lake. Within 5 minutes, something didn’t seem quite right because we were climbing straight up a mountain and Luke was already complaining about his shoulders hurting. It was only about 10 minutes into the hike when I decided Luke wasn’t going to be able to carry a backpack, so we distributed Luke’s equipment between Ben and me. I knew in my mind that about 1 mile up the path was when the trail would join the Tahoe Rim trial, so we continued to hike. (more…)

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Though this article was posted before, I felt that it fit perfect with the next item in the Image is Everything Series. It is also a very fun and touching article to read, especially when you get to the story about Jerry.
We all have our ups and downs, but do we ever think about who else our attitude may affect? If you think about the last time you were in a bad mood who was it benefiting? Did you feel better because you were depressed about your day? How do you think your friends/family feel when you are in a bad mood? I think bad moods are a flaw with the human mind. In most cases it does nothing but harm the mental well being of people. In some cases it could be said that attitude’s drive motivation such as failing an exam in school may cause one to work harder for the next test. But what’s to say that one can’t have a positive attitude about the present and the future by learning from the past and improving in the future.

How to have a positive attitude?

Learn from the past, don’t dwell on it. Live for today and make today a good day.

It is a hard thing to just forget about the past, but when you find yourself dwelling on the past, just ask yourself “How is this helping me by dwelling on something that is in the past?” If there is not a clear answer, then you need to stop thinking about the past. Move forward with positive outlook learning from the past to avoid the events that made you have a poor attitude.

• Ask yourself “How is this helping me by dwelling on something that is in the past?”
•  Continuously remind yourself to be positive in the present.
• Avoid people or change activities that make you feel bad.
• Stop before speaking and think about the positive side of every situation. Remember positivity creates positive people, so speaking positivity is a must.
• Eliminate Stress as it is the most common cause of a bad attitude.
1. Try meditating for 15 minutes when stress has you down.
2. Exercise regularly and whenever additional stress relief is needed.

Having a good attitude has so many great benefits. By consistently striving to have a good attitude, your feeling about life in general will be better, your relationships will be fuller, and it will lead to success in whatever you do. As far as success, creating friends and networking is essential and having a positive attitude will make that task much easier.

Don’t make excuses, because your life is your own and only you can control what makes you have a poor attitude. Changing is hard, but the consequences of not changing can bring much harder times in the future. One will never know what they are missing until they have successfully become a positive person.

To motivate you to make a change in your attitude about life, here is a short story about a guy with a perfect attitude. Notice how people feeling about him and how his attitude helps him. (more…)

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This subject of the Image is Everything Series is particularly an issue that I need to work on, so what better than to talk about it to help me gain som motivation for improving myself. 

As you may already know, Image is everything, because it is how people make impressions about you.  When people see the stuff you live with day to day such as you car and house, does it create a good image or a nuetral or even bad image?  If you have an organized and clean living environment, than you are probably beyond this article, but if you have to clean up your car or organize you house or room significantly everytime you have new guests than you are who I am targeting.

I always ask myself if my future wife was to knock on the door would I let her into my bedroom.  Right now I would have to say “No”.  This is a problem, because anyone might be able to clean up there room in times of necessity, but part of these lessons is to perminantly improve image.  So how is it that we move forward to perminantly improve the image of our living environment which reflects who we are?  Well, I am going to list several helpful ideas, but it is more about wanting to improve you image.  As with all of the lessons, practice makes perfect, so if you work to keep your stuff organized all the time then eventually it will be natural.  If you are commited to changing your image, take these lessons to heart.  Have fun seeing youself in a clean and organized lifestyle.  Hopefully it will be something you can be proud of.   So on with the helpful tips.

These may seem simple, but it is necessary.

1. Have a logical place for everything and keep it there.  If you use something, put it away where it belongs.  If it doesn’t have a good place, make a good place.  Buy organizing bins at the store if you need to. Eventually you have to put it away anyways, so why not just put it away now instead of then.  I know this is tough, but it is only tough because you are not use to it.
2. Remind yourself how nice an organized environment feels. 
   There is nothing like the feeling of cleaning up and seeing a clean organized space.  The cleaning up part is not fun, but having an organized place is very rewarding and more functional.  Remind yourself continuously how much you hate cleaning up and how much you enjoy a clutter free area.  Staying organized all the time fixes both of those, clutter free and no major clean-up. 
3. Know that clutter increases stress and too much stress hurts your image.
   Do you know that the idea of seeing clutter and thinking about cleaning it up causes stress?  Well it does, so just eliminate the clutter and eliminate the stress.  Stress and a good image rarely go with each other.
4. If you aren’t proud of your living environment, improve it.
   Don’t learn to be content, learn to be proud.  I always tell myself, if I am not proud of it, then you must change something.  So ask yourself if you are pround and if not make a commitment to change.

These are tips will help you try to stay organized in general, but to really improve your environment there are many pages out their with specifics about how to organize your room, kitchen, garage, car, etc.  Learn about the specifics organizing a place and then keep in mind the tips I have written.  If you do both, then you will be one step closer to being more proud of yourself thus improving your image.

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In continuation of the Image is Everything series, today we bring you techniques on how to improve your image with your body language, vocal tone, and vocal wording.

Have you ever met someone and before you can even say “Jack Robinson” you feel extraordinarily comfortable with that person?  Is it magic or is there a physical reason?  Well today I am going to touch on the methods behind creating that sort of affect.

Let’s first set one thing straight.  Knowing what I am going to tell you today will do you no good unless you practice so much that it becomes natural.  I have known these techniques for a while and I am not sure if I am any better off, because I just don’t focus on practicing them enough.  Maybe writing this article will give me a new energy to practice my body language, vocal tone, and my word choice.  Know also that this is just the bare minimum information about this topic and there are many great books that touch on this in detail. Look down further to see my book suggestions.

Body Language

Some people say that what you have to say means a lot, but I would have to disagree. It isn’t about what you have to say, but rather how you say it.  The very first way that you communicate is with your body.  Almost anyone can tell what kind of mood you are in just by looking at you.  So if you want to appear great, first you must have a good attitude and second you must show confidence and friendliness. 

Showing confidence and strength is a very easy concept, but a very difficult task.

  Would you believe me that by looking at someone directly in the eyes for just a fraction of a second too long can show enormous confidence?  Yep, that is the key.  Easy, right?  Well, give it a try and see how easy it is to remember to do it.  Unless you focus on doing it you will either forget about it or be afraid to do it.  When looking at someone, let them be the first one to break eye contact and then you follow immediately after.  From there on out, during conversation, use your eyes to show extreme interest by looking at their eyes more often than what is initially comfortable.

Now that you have the idea of eye contact, the friendliness comes from your smile.  Doesn’t it feel good to know that someone is happy to meet you?  When we see someone that has a smile that overwhelms their face, we subconsciously think “can they really be that happy to see me? I guess so, this is great.”  The key to a great smile is a big and slow smile.  A genuine smile is a slow and powerful smile.  Look at someone in the eyes and then slowly smile HUGE.  Practice a Huge smile in the mirror so that you know what a Huge smile feels like.  I use to always find myself half smiling in pictures in which I thought I was full smiling.  It is a feeling you have to train your brain.

The best way to get good at this stuff is to first practice in a mirror and then go out and focus on using these techniques with as many people as possible.  Over time it will become more natural.

Vocal Tone and Wording

Vocal tone is the key to making someone feel that you are interested and on the same level as them.  When someone is sad, a vocal tone of excitement will more than likely be unexpected and awkward.  When some is happy, a sad vocal tone is really awkward and depressing.  So the key is to match the person vocal tone and if necessary slowly make changes to control the mood of the conversation. 

Again it doesn’t matter what you say, but how you say it.  With the right vocal tone any topic of conversation can sound exciting, so speak with enthusiasm when talking about yourself.  If you speak with enthusiasm then they get the impression that you are an interesting person.

Another key idea about sounding enthusiastic is to always have something interesting to say.  This does take some practice, but you should have a list in your head about interesting facts about the city you live in and interesting facts about yourself.  Next time someone asks you “Where are you from?”, you should respond with something interesting about your city relating to the person you are talking about.  For example,  I am from Reno,  If I was meeting someone on a backpacking trip, I might respond with “I am from Reno, 20 minutes away from the great Lake Tahoe.”  This opens up the conversation to talking about Lake Tahoe and the outdoors there.    This same technique can be used for any normal question like “What do you do?” or “How did you meet?”.

When talking to someone it is good to repeat and compliment stuff that they say, because it shows you are listening and interested.  Use phrases like, “That is great, that you are able to take a trip to Europe.”, if they were talking how excited they are to go to Europe.

All of these techniques are just the tip of the iceberg and will only get you so far.  Using these techniques regularly will indeed improve your image which directly effects your success. So take the time to practice these techniques and then when you are hungry for more check out the following books.

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For my readers who have been reading for sometime, you know that I have talked about trying to become the #1 spot for the keyword “hopeless romantic“.  So I have decided to actively attempt and track the progress of becoming the number one spot.

There are a lot of factors that can help me achieve that spot, but the most important is probably having some link love which isn’t very easy for a small blog like mine.  I have previously set out the “Hopeless Romantic Challenge” with no results, so I am going to focus my efforts on things such as keywords in my posts, alt tags, mybloglog promotion, and of course a contest.

I have to think about how the contest is going to work, but it will definately relate to romance and the prize will probably be a gift certificate to a romantic restaurant.  How does $50 to Ruth Chris Steakhouse sound?  If you have any suggestions as to what thing people can do related to romance for contest entry please comment and let me know.

As of today, I am #35 on google for

Hopeless Romantic

Oh boy that look funny, but search engines supposedly love <h1>.

Follow me along this journey as an experiment to see how easy it is to move up Google Keyword Spots (without having JohnChow Link power).

If you want help me get started, then I would love this link “Hopeless Romantic” somewhere on your page.  I always remember favors.

To Do List

1. Write Article about this upcoming contest and link bait opportunity on BlogBait.net which now is PR 4.
2. Optimize keyword use and linking in existing hopeless romantic articles.
3. Use MyBlogLog and MySpace to add exposure to this experiment.

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   In continuing the Image is everything series, getting a job has a lot to do with your image, so it is only appropriate to talk about one tool that will help you get a job, your resume.

Next time you look at your resume, ask yourself if it makes you proud.  Your resume is suppose to be a advertisement about you, so if you are not impressed by it than how are other suppose to feel?

The object of a resume is to take the best things you have done that are relevant to the job you are applying for and emphasize them.  Only the most important points about your work experience should be on your resume.  This is why a lot of people suggest you should only have a 1 page resume.  If you have 2 pages, then you probably have content that is unnecessary to creating a great image about yourself.

Here are some tips that can help you transform your resume into making you great instead of just normal.

1. Be Specific when highlighting work experience/accomplishments.
1. Which sounds better? - “Work Duties included preparing tax returns” or “Directly interacted with customer’s during tax return preparation’s to ensure the highest customer satisfaction.”
2. If you worked above and beyond you work duties, say it.
3. Talk about your accomplishments at your job not your duties or responsibilities.  Everyone can perform duties which are just normal.
2. Highlight Summary with Bullets - Make it easy for the employer to read about how good you are.
1. Highlight any key points about yourself on the top of you resume under you contact information with a heading called “Summary”. It is a summary of who you are in a few points.
2. Awards, Leadership positions, relevant hobbies, specific work experience point.
3. Order of Importance
1. We all know how short of an attention span people have when reading something like a resume, so put important stuff first, like the summary.  After reading the summary bullet points they should have an idea about who you are and what you have done.
4. Use Verbs to describe jobs
1. Verbs tend to be stronger than nouns, so use words like “Managed, oversaw, supervised, collaborated” not “managerial responsibilities”
5. Resume Paper
1. This may seems obvious, but if you want to have an image of being professional, your paper better look professional.  Go to Kinko’s or UPS Store.

These are just a few tips on what I think are key to a good resume.  There are many more great tips that can be found on the internet. To find more website on resume improvement search “Improve your resume” on Google.

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While I was reading the latest issue of Positive Thinking Magazine,  I came across a small story about a guy who came across FreeHugscampaign.org in October 2006 and decided to try Free hugs in a busy shopping mall.  The response was overwhelming and he has been doing every weekend since then.  This is a very interesting campaign and I think I might just try it at the local mall just to experience the feeling of helping someone out.  You never know who you might affect by your actions. 

It does seem a little strange and it makes me nervous, but the success is unbelievable and the reward may be undescribable.  All you have to do is make one persons day better and it will be worth it. 

The power of a hug is huge and actually scientifically proven to lower blood pressure. More hugs means lower blood pressure.  Interesting, eh?

If I do it then there will be pictures and a story probably sometime next month.

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