Getting What you Want – Diddy

Getting what you want…

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My Prezi Photo montage

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My #2 Strength – Ideation

My strengths have brought me a very long way, but into the series of learning more about who I am. The second strength on my list is Ideation. Ideas flow from my brain like the river of Jordan. It takes great work to quiet my brain from all the things I think of and springboards from those ideas. Giving birth to something new ideas can lead to wonderful discoveries about who you are what you believe, and where you want to take yourself in life. After all Dr. Wayne Dyer tells us that we can do anything we think we can do. I have to believe that this is true. I continue to ask God to change my thinking and my how I see the future of my life.

Learning to lean on those who have this ideation strength have ideas that while great may not always be about them or who they are or what they want to do. I sat down over coffee with a girlfriend a couple a weeks ago. She wanted to use my ideation strength to develop some business ideas she had. But these ideas were not for me. They were gifts that I gave away freely to her for her to flourish. And because it is not my passion if I tried to use those ideas for myself it would be pointless since the ideas and strategies that were tailored just for her.

Knowing your strengths will allow others to use them in a way that will help you both. I enjoy sharing my ideas. They are fleeting to me because shortly a new one has come along. I have written a few unfinished articles and even a book in my head one winter when my car radio was stolen and I was all alone with my thoughts. The ideas are my gold mine to dig deeper within myself to continue to bring up nuggets that I can explore.

The power of your mind is as limitless as you would like it to be. You can decide that you want something and work diligently to get that elusive carrot dangling in front of you. So I am learning to align my thoughts to the things that I want. The people who I would like to attract to my life. The people who fill me up more than take from me. I am constantly excited to see what happens next. What idea will lead me down to the person I am truly designed to become.

What Blogs I am reading – Enjoy!

We all married the wrong person…I might have to agree!

Do you sharpen or dull your peers?

Proverbs 27:17 says, “iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another”. Look around your inner circle. Do you sharpen or dull? Proverbs as a book in the Bible is filled with these simple one liners that cut to the heart of the matter. Iron sharpens iron means just that. When your kitchen knife goes dull running it against wood will do nothing to refresh its blade. But run it against another knife and you can be back in business in no time. You can be put to that iron to the test. You can sharpen its blade with a lessor knife, but they are still of the same kind of matter, metal.

God says that so one man sharpens another. So it begs to reason that being around others that are like-minded, goal orientated, forward thinkers, God centered, power players will help sharpen who you are. You will put them and in turn they will put you to the test. They will make you a better person. They will add to who you are and not take away. They should pull you up just by their friendship alone.

The analogy of crabs in a barrel is how I think of the black community in some circles. Why must you pull me down to get ahead? Why can’t we work together and go farther faster than we ever could by ourselves? A few weeks ago the conversation amongst my girlfriends was just that, we as black women don’t often find ourselves in real honest friendships with other women. Relationships where we are truly blessed by the other women in our lives to the point that we have to become better just to stay in there with them. Not in a competitive way but to continue to learn and grow from each other in a way that continues to make the whole better by being apart of the good instead of feeding to the evil.

I don’t understand people who continue unhealthy friendships that don’t help them go anywhere. When I come to my friends and ask a questions I come believing that the community is greater than I could ever be by myself so why not have a tribal council as Kelly Cutrone calls it. We all need one. We need the village that it use to take to grow us up from children into adulthood. Having mentors for every stage of life has for me been an invaluable lesson, one I learned early. I was always surrounded by people who were doing good in and around their communities. My mother believed that the village was alive in well and in order to show me more than what was at my doorstep she was going to actively go seek the tribal council for the things she had never experienced in order to expose me to those truths in my life.

I just read and article today about how mentorship. About how when in business learning in growing from other entrepreneurs mistakes will make your business better, for not having to whether those storms yourself. In turn making you a better business person. A vicious cycle of iron sharpen iron. Sometimes it isn’t what you know it really is who you know that helps you get ahead. I overheard a conversation some white gentleman were having the other day on the train. They were discussing how networks work. And that a good majority of getting into an ivy league school isn’t about the work that you do, but the network you create. It is about the connections you make with your fellow classmates who will become invaluable to you in the future when and if you need them. But it is how those circles run. You have to be in there to get the connection in order to get the connection. Another vicious cycle, but a true case of iron sharpens iron. Then the conversation turned to a book that one recently read from a Harvard graduate who wrote about the joy at work. How making what you love what you do. My girlfriends and I had also recently commented on the fact that these are not the conversations we are having with our friends. We are not engaging in rigorous banter that will leave people better than what we found them. My iron was made to sharpen more iron. We have to learn to leave people with more than what they came with. Teaching, learning, growing every single day. This is my new mission and if you are friends with me you better bring your ginsu and not a butter knife to my party.

So again I have to ask are you the knife sharpener or are you the cutting board? Because my knife will always need to be sharpened.

Hello Good Morning…

Its time to get down to business this school year. Operation Graduation is in full effect!!!!!!!

My Flower Photos

Check out what I am reading

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Lesson learned

What have you learned from the loves you may have encounter in your life? My new iPhone 4 (shameless plug) has been on fire this morning. The playlist took me through a thing. Alicia Keys was talking about lessons learned. Monica crooned on about her superman, now Day 26 wants to know are we in this together? And somewhere in between Beyonce said that if we don’t communicate then we are just in outter space like satellites. With all we know about love there is still so much more we don’t know. The when, the why, & the how may make us crazy. Love happens to us if we are careful with our hearts. We allow others to treat our hearts like trash. When relationships end if nothing else we should be about to sit back & assess the damage after the storm without declaring it a national disaster area. Sometimes not all of who we were survives. But what lessons have you learned?

When people who we considered friends hurt us do we decide that we can learn something from those segmented relationships. It can take years to heal who we were to who we are now. Lessons, tests, trials, tribulations only come to make us stronger? If they don’t then they should. They should make us better for having learned the lesson. I teach my children to learn something new everyday. I want you to take away something. No matter who or what you learn! Even years later the hurt can still teach you something. If it doesn’t then why did we experience it in the first place? I just know that when you talk it through we learn more about each other and ourselves than we will understand alone. Lesson officially learned.

OK. Its Time. by @Piperlime — I second that emotion