Monday September 29th 2008, 6:43 am
Filed under: Uncategorized
Applying the Biblical word “plan” for goal setting, it’s clear that God has plans and so do people. Above all, goals and plans are subject to the will of God.
Is goal planning even Biblical? God gives people plans:
Don’t discount goal planning as being “worldly!”
Goal planning for unethical means is bad.
So goals and plans can be good things!
and God has his sovereign plan! Planning and goal setting is a fine thing. But subject everything to the Lord’s guidance.
“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21)
Don’t plan in a vacuum, but run your plans and goals past other people.
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Proverbs 15:22)
Surround your goals and plans with prayer and ask the Lord to bless you in their doing.
Ask God for wisdom as you plan and set goals.
“The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.” (Proverbs 21:5)
“But the noble person makes noble plans, and by noble deeds he stands.” (Isaiah 32:8)
We all know we must set goals if we are to succeed with our families, in our lives, careers, or even in a business. Without goals all our desires are reduced to mere dreams, dreams which may never come to fruition. But how on Earth can you set forth goals when the world is such an uncertain place? Consider if you will the planning for retirement, where one of your goals is to live happily ever after and without becoming dead or broke at age 65?
How can you set goals, which are made up of many micro-goals or mini-goals on a specific time table, if you cannot even be sure that you will have a job in the near future or if you will even have a home? Let’s face it we live in uncertain, interesting and turbulent times. If you fail to plan, you are in essence planning to fail. Break Your Large Goals into Micro-Goals on a Time Table
Commit to Your Goals
Watch for Unexpected Traps And Opportunities
Realize Nothing Good in Life is Easy
Vision Boards are destined to become the most financially life changing tool of our times as they can be the key to attracting everything you want into your life. With all the new technology available now the actual vision board is rather obsolete as now there is an even a more catchy and fun way to view your vision board and that is on a video; which I am going to call Vision Map Video. The actual physical vision boards can be frustrating because it’s hard to find the exact picture you want quickly from magazines and when pasted on, it can mess up your vision board. Now you can just turn on your computer; watch your vision map and not only are you watching something fun and catchy you are manifesting all the things you want in your life. Vision Maps are one of the most powerful tools in the deliberate creator’s toolbox. Vision Boards are too large to carry around, but we always have a computer close by these days, so there is your Vision Map right there nice and handy to watch any time you need it.
1 Committing your goals to paper creates a road map for success.
2. Use your imagination and describe your goals as vividly as possible, as if they were already a reality. Emotion adds tremendous power to your goals.
3 Social researches has proven that specific and challenging goals result in better performance then vague goals, or no goals, or people simply trying to “do their best.”
4. It is smart writing your goals in present time, as if you are living them already.
5. Be positive. Positive goals put us in a positive state of mind, and are mentally associated with positive memories and experiences, whereas avoidance goals are typically associated with memories of failures and accidents.
6. Be 100% committed to whatever you do, especially to your goals. If you achieve your goals and decide that you want something else, then go for that!
7. Choose goals that stretch your abilities and yet are within what you believe is possible. People who set more modest goals tend to accomplish less then
those who set challenging goals for themselves. Tune In next week for the other 9 steps of goal setting.
The key is in starting - Remember- Any goal is better then none!
Make the time
Goals can be achieved in as little as 90 days. Here are some easy tips to help you successfully map out a plan in order to achieve your goals in the next 90 days:
Write a list of every single task that you know will help you move closer to achieving your goal. Make them attainable, yet necessary in order to move toward achieving your goal.
By writing your goals down and completing them each and every day, this will bring you closer to achieving the goals you want to accomplish. Stay on course, keep up the good work and your goal will be achieved before you realize it.
Friday September 19th 2008, 9:54 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
I spent the afternoon, trying to find, “In The Presence Of Jehovah”, by Franna Benadie, thanks to everyone at “radio Impact”, Rene` at Maranatha, and of course to Sophia, this for you.
Enjoy, and let that peace which passeth all understanding flow over you now. If any one has a prayer request let me know, and we will pray to-gether.
Sunday September 14th 2008, 5:24 am
Filed under: changes
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
~Anatole France1844-1924
What crime couldn’t get right, the economy did. With a stroke of a pen, an increase in the interest rate; the pastoral life of living on a plot out of town became a luxury. The rise of interest rates coupled with fuel prices, forced a move to the suburb in town. I wonder if that would qualify as a forced removal and would entitle me to a claim.
As with everything there are pros and cons, the things I will miss, the things I won’t miss.
The things I miss.
Like looking out my back door, not only looking out of it but walking out of it into the garden.
(The flat only has one door, both front and back!)
Lots of space, I could fit the entire flat, into the kitchen and dining room area.
The silent titanic battle raging between the plants, with nature’s version of the squatter, all fighting for their share of the sun.
A BIG kitchen, I enjoy cooking, preparing small bowls with all the ingredients, trying out new dishes and sauces.
The silence, a silence you find only in the bush. Not that it is noisy here, but this is more of a prison silence.
My routine,
My dog.
The things I don’t miss
The power cables getting stolen every week.
The schlep of buying a ton everything. With a supermarket across the road, another around the corner, if I want some exercise, a third one a block away; three shopping centres within three blocks.
The Things I am Learning.
To become organised, in a small flat, there has to be a place for everything, and everything must be in its place.
Becoming organized in one area, has a habit of spilling over into all areas; one which I don’t think anyone else has a problem with.
Establishing goals without goals it is impossible to organise anything.
On the 20th May I mentioned I had tried to get tickets for Loftus for yesterday the 19th of July. I had tried to get the tickets in March thinking I was early, the fact was I had only heard about it after it was already sold out, the event was sold out in less than a week.
Last month in June I was in Johannesburg twice once to visit someone in hospital, ten days later to attend the funeral of the same person. The first time we went we got lost in the area we had to go to. We had to return some things we had which belonged to somebody else, which had been with us for a couple of years. We stopped at a filling station and phoned the people, asking me where I was, I mentioned we were opposite a refugee camp, which had been set up as a result of the xenophobic attacks. The people came collected their stuff, drove in front of us to where we had to go.
Ten days later after attending the funeral and the service we went to Heidelberg, where we visited family, it was casually mentioned they had tickets for Loftus, and two of the batch was for us. They didn’t know I have this blog, or that I had posted something about Angus Buchan. I hadn’t told them about this blog, because it was never intended to be a Christian blog, I already have one;(which I need to work on.) This blog was primarily set up to show someone else how to set up a blog, and how easy it was to set it up. Setting up blogs is easy, it is maintaining them where the work comes in, an area I really need to work on.
All this seems like scattered fragments, yet stepping back a little, they all come together.
Being at Loftus Stadium with sixty odd thousand people was awesome and humbling; it also illustrated to me graphically the logistics of how big the tent must have been, for the Mighty Men God Conference, which was held On Angus’ farm just outside Greytown earlier on in the year. Not to mention the fact of 60000 men together for a weekend, without a single fight or swear word. Angus shared feedback of, a father and son reconciliation, fathers and husbands returning home changed men.
Seeing the crowd as one raising their hands in praise and worship, or the crowd going down on bended knees; At the start of his message he asked that everyone turn to a stranger and pray for each other. I am inclined to stutter, or mumble if praying aloud with strangers, yet when I started to pray the prayer came out of my mouth with clarity and conviction without thought of what I was going to say.
As Angus went into his message, a simple one delivered by a simple humble man, several areas of my life that needed working on became crystal clear. When Angus said that change in our country wouldn’t come out of the House of Parliament, but out of the kitchen door, I thought of the refugee camp I had seen and taken pictures of, the same one which had been in the news this week. It is up me as an individual to do something, not to hang around for the government to do it.
If I can’t see what I can do, I can start by praying and praying earnestly for the direction. Everybody can pray.
Angus being at Loftus was organised by Loftus For Jesus, and it was very well organised, but then God was in control, at the end of the day that is what it was all about, all about Jesus.
Angus is planning for two hundred thousand for the Men Of God Conference for next year, last year it was five and a half thousand, this year sixty thousand.
I have spent the last two months trying to get my website live.Every day I am reminded more and more of the story of a guy who is lonely and decides he needs company. He goes out and buys him self a parrot, he asks the shop keeper if the parrot can talk, after being assured the parrot can talk, he buys the cage and the parrot.The next day he returns to the shop, complaining the parrot hasn’t spoken.
The owner of the shop asks him if he bought a little ladder for the parrot to climb up and down. “Everybody knows a parrot needs a ladder to climb before it can talk.”
The next day the same story parrot still isn’t talking.
“Have you got a mirror?”
“A mirror?”
“Yes everybody knows you need a mirror, the parrot climbs up the ladder looks in the mirror and talks.”
Next day same result a still silent parrot.
This time some parrot toys gets palmed off on the guy.
This ritual carries on for over a week, the guy leaving with extra paraphernalia, until one day he walks in with a dead parrot.
The shop keeper asks him “Did he talk”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“Why didn’t you buy me bird seed!”
Everybody knows you need your own domain.
I’ve got my own domain.
You don’t need flash, just a simple design, easy to navigate pages. No fancy fonts.
Straight forward content.
Months of designing and planning pretty much useless if nobody can view or read it.
Now I am told I need a lot of other geek paraphernalia. I still wont be able to upload anything myself at three in the morning, which is when I get up to do it.
Now the question is do I get the extras like the guy with the parrot and still land up with a dead website down the road, or wait out the short term contract and transfer.
I mentioned to someone the other day, one of the buttons on their site wasn’t working.
“Yes we know, we have been trying for months to get it fixed, we are waiting for contract to expire then we will be transferring.” The other party asked me in closing, “Would you by any chance know of a good company we can go to?”
Maybe after sales service has somewhere along the line has fallen victim to the expression.
Sunday May 25th 2008, 9:06 am
Filed under: Uncategorized
“How is it working for you?’
Dr Phil
Sorting out an entire booklet of “stick it notes”; all of them with cryptic clues for my “To do list” for the life of me I can’t figure out what they were for. Some are abbreviations for something or the other. A couple are for calling Koos, only problem, I have a dozen entries for Koos on my cell phone, Koos 1 right through; not to mention Koos Van 1 etc. As I am about to throw the whole lot in the rubbish bag, I go through it again, I come across one that I finally remember what it was for. MTN was all I wrote, why would I write MTN, dialing an MTN number irritates me.
“You’ve reached the voice mail like service….BLAH BLAH press one and MTN will send the subscriber an sms” Yello if I wanted to send an sms I would have, why cant they have an answering service, where I can leave a voice message.
So why would I write MTN. After some thinking, I remember coming back from Natal, at Mooi River Plaza toll gate, we were given an MTN booklet, thinking about junk mail for want of a better term, even getting into the cars. Riffling the pages of the full colour booklet, I wondered how much it cost for the useless campaign, and mentioned it. My better half told me I had taken the booklet, opened it so it wasn’t useless.
I explained my reason why I thought it was useless.
• How much did it cost them to print that booklet?
• How could they track the outcome of the campaign?
• For the same price could they have done a more affective campaign?
Go into any hypermarket, supermarket even mini market, you can buy a sim card for under R3-00. So instead of dishing out pamphlets dish out sim cards, at the start of the holiday periods, have programs set up to monitor when the sim cards are activated recharged etc. Done at the start of the holiday periods when people have money, no point doing it after wards no body has any money left. With technology which is available it is relatively simple to track the outcome of the campaign, when one considers the traffic going through Mooi River Plaza, the figures I have are a couple of years old and taken over an Easter Weekend. Do the maths get 5% of that traffic activating and recharging.
This is the traffic per day, I do know that this year was higher, over twenty Thousand.
After that digression, which is another reason why my “To Do Lists” don’t work, my habits and thoughts are like my “To Do Lists”, scattered and fragmented not focused on the job at hand. A while back I figured I needed a note book, to jot these things down in, I became too verbose and bored myself with information overload. Between too little information and too much detail nothing that had to get done got done.
What is needed for “To Do Lists” to work?
• Precise entries
• Not so that it reads like Tolstoy’s War And Peace, but precise enough to have clear picture what needs to be done.
• Organizing
Which, What, When, How.
Which one on the list first, what needs to be done, when will it be finished and how is going to be done?
Putting everything on a list, which is why it is called a “To Do List” and not a “To Do It Stick It Note” all this helps in the final step.
Focus!
Andrew Carnegie, an American industrialist once paid a small fortune for a piece of advice, the advice was simply this, write down everything you need to do, next rate them by importance, 1 for most important etc. Then start working from the top down. I first read that about forty years ago, but never seriously implemented it, nothing gets done by knowing, it gets done by doing; to help keep me on this track I now have a “To Do List” from Microsoft. As the person who gave Andrew Carnegie that advice said, “If it doesn’t work with this system it won’t work with any other system.
The top of my “TO DO LIST” was to write “ABOUT PARROTS AND WEBSITES”
That will have to wait for tomorrow.
Tuesday May 20th 2008, 12:32 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
Is it real? Francois asks a very pertinent question, in as much do we know what is real, when we receieve emails. Is it a scam? Is it someone phishing. The web is full of them, our emails are full of them. There are sites on the web; millions dealing with them, exposing them. I personally know of one case where a person booked a holiday home, because it looked great online, paid the deposit to find nothing there when him and his family arrived for their holiday.
In regards to Sign From Above, it was at the Izack Steyn Stadium 10th May. What is difficult to believe here? That the event took place in Vander Byl Park, where Izack Steyn stadium is? That thirtyfive thousand people would come to hear somone talking about God, I tried to get tickets for Loftus; and I thought I was early; no chance fully booked. Angus is fully booked way ahead, if you hear he is coming your way, you better get in early.
Do I believe it to be authentic? Yes. I have the proof I need to satisfy me. I am not an easy to convince of a lot of things; of the 350 odd emails I get a good third are scams, being doing the round for years; I have only been on the net for one, but I can still see them a mile away. Phishing I pick up just as quick.
Have I tried to sell you something? No
Have I tried to share something with you? Yes
Should you be interested in sites that expose scams that I can also share with you for free.
Monday May 19th 2008, 3:06 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
I was sent an email with this picture, it was taken whilst Angus Buchan, was sharing his testimony at a stadium, where 35,000 was in attendance. Angus Buchan is known for the film, “Faith like Potatoes”, if you get the opportunity see it.
God speaks in different ways to everybody. The question is are we listening.
To get the full picture please click on the image below.
Thursday May 08th 2008, 7:17 am
Filed under: Uncategorized
A couple of weeks ago headed to the coast from Pretoria, started early to get there early; thought the Walter Sisulu highway (R21) would be quicker; even at five in the morning it was a crawl, two lanes in both directions isnt enough on that road; there was a pile up at Wenen which stretched back to just outside Harrismith, wasnt going to hang around there for a welcome or farewell party, so cut a line to go round via Bergville; a funny thing happened on the way back to the N3 via Bergville and Winterton, entered the alternate route in Gauteng Mode, not long into the views of the dams, looking down onto them it was almost surreal, foot lifting off the pedal, wanting time to slow down the vista leaving me speechless, the snow capped mountains Drackensberg, the clouds not much higher, almost had a feeling of we might just see a dragon or two. I dont think Bergville and Winterton had seen so much traffic for a long time, because it seemed as if almost everybody else in the que had, had the same idea I had. Reached Leisure Bay on the South Coast about three in the afternoon.
Whilst at the coast had to go to Kloof managed to get lost three times; I know if we had GPS it wouldnt have happened, with GPS we could have entered the address and it would have guided us there, the GPS would have also told us where the traffic cops were, not that we would have needed that info. I have never been to much of a believer in GPS, after that episode I am definitely exploring options and price comparing versus feature etc of different GPS systems.
I was in Kloof to set up a website, with a particular host, I think the icy wind in the Berg was warmer than the chill in the voice when I said I wanted to go dot com instead of dot co za patriotism has got nothing to do with my reasoning, if anything it would have been cheaper to go coza, the frost settled in with the mention of a blog, the reason to go for the site is to promote my different interests, so why the icecubes when I mention adsense, hello people advertise their goods on websites, whats the difference with adsense.
for an idea what will be on the site here is preview
Friday April 11th 2008, 8:49 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
I have found a way of traveling through this great country of ours in safety, it’s true, I don’t have to worry about travel insurance, petrol can go up sky high, I thought that seeing as I am surfing the net why not pop into some of the great places we have right here; when I read what overseas people have to say about it, these are people coming back again and again it certainly takes the blinkers off from my eyes. A couple of the places I visited are in the waterberg area.
Their guestbook contains some of the most eloquent writing I have read for a long time, even though the only thing I know about horses is, it must be the greatest creature on earth, think about a race horse can take thousands of people for a ride at the same time.
If these three places aren’t enough to get you to see what we have in a different light, then it is time to get back to a place where you can sit; where you can just feel the wind coming in from the veld, carrying with it the echoes of your soul, the whispers of your African Spirit, that spirit in all of us in Africa; you can go where you want in the world, your whispers will still come back on the wind.
Even if you don’t know how to ride a horse, I don’t, you can still feel the thrill of a safari, just like when the first settlers came here, seeing the wild from a different perspective.
