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Max here with another one…..

The time…10:15pm.  The Place, Austin Tx. (First week of SXSW) You know I remember when SX was just a small thing. Years ago, close to almost 2 decades ago. I did a show at SXSW. I didn’t understand it. It was a small club, but I remember some guy that was trying to move into the next phase of technololgy with video (before netflix, before video streaming , before iphones, and all that stuff that we think is common) Yeah wow, now it just throwback memories. One day someone should have me recount those memories. Cool Stuff. We took 8 dancers with us to make the show happen. Totally cool stuff. LOL.

But so yeah, its’ March 10, 2019 and most of my bills are now due. When is the last time I blogged? Hmmmmm. It’s been a hot minute thats for sure. So what have you missed? Not a lot, but there has been more thinking and more silent decisions being made.

Ok it’s now March 11, 3:18am and I am still at work, and besides doing my normal work activities, I have been trying to do research and connect with family members on not just my fathers side, but also on my mothers side. Doing research of this type can be very time intensive…..

Ok back to my days…..

2 things that are on the upside…. One is the apartment #1. I swear to God, It’s like god damn watching paint dry. I am soooooooo close to having that apartment ready. As of today, I am less than 10 items from having it perfectly rent ready. Several days ago I took some practice photos of the place. During that time I also explored a new way of organizing the photos. Because I am not a phototgrapher or marketing specialist, it takes me longer to put things together. It’s just the work of constantly refining photos and arrangments as well as look for the easiest, latest and greatest way of doing things. So this time I stumbled across google photos. Now I had heard of google photos before, but I just don’t like google knowing so much about me. Them and Facebook are like the giants of hogging peoples lives and then holding onto it and then reselling it to anyone for money. So for that specific reason I have just always kind of pushed away from most of googles products. But now we are talking about the apartment. This is something that I want out on the net and in everyones face, So I decided to try it out, and sadly as I suspected it looks like the damn google photos, uploaded every damn photo on my phone. This includes photos that I don’t want to every share with anyone. But for now, I will forego that issue and concentrate more on what it is able to do, or atleast what it has done for me.

Google photos easily, and quickly uploaded the photos, it relatively easily allowed me to arrange the photos in the order that I deemed best. It even went and tried to group photos of the same type together (talk about photo recognition). And I think there is an option for it to make a movie from the photos. ( I haven’t delved into that yet but I will soon). The drawback is that it didn’t do enough basic photo editing as I would have liked it to do, so with a couple of photos I had to use Gimp inorder to edit a couple of the photos. But beyond that I was able to arrange the photos into a online folder called an “album” I was also able to name the album, then I was able to create a link that I could share with anyone. Hopefully this will be helpful when I try to use Zillow. Now Zillow allows to upload photos, but I am always looking for new ways to do things and so google photos is a good way for me to explore ideas. And so far of the 4 people that I sent the link to, they all seemed to really like what they saw. I am a little hesitant to share the photos with anyone on this post at the moment, but as I currently think about it, I think that by the time that anyone actually reads this post (if anyone actually reads it at all) that I will have an updated photo album. So I think that at the end of this post that I will post the link to google photos album for the apartment. And your thoughts are always welcomed.

And the second thing that is on the upside is that Joan (professional organizer) took me to a rotary club meeting. And last week I applied to be part of the club, but as always my biggest drawback is that this job here in Austin still haunts me from looking like a professional. Will it keep me from being in the Rotary? I just don’t know yet. What I like about it, is that these people meet at 730 in the morning. Which is right along the lines of where I want my life to go. Remember in one of my earlier posts, I said that I would ultimately like my day to start at 3am. Obviously I may need to work up to waking up at that hour, but in my head I can see how that morning would start….. I would wake up at 3am, medidtate for about 30 minutes. Then I would go to my roof top gym and work out under the stars for about 40 minutes, then make either make breakfast or go somewhere to eat breakfast….

Ok ….. Now it’s March 23, 2019. About 2:20am

I swear for some odd reason it, has been so difficult to mentally find, or make the time to write in the blog.Now let’s see if I can piece these days together into something coherent.

So when I first started this particular post it was SXSW, but now SXSW is over. which means that it has been 2 weeks since I first tried to write in this post. Now how has my life, my mentality and all things related been? It’s been good. As I started back in the beginning of this post I mentioned something about not much has happened except for a lot of silent decisions and it is quite possibly the key to making progress. Or at least a key. You see, apartment #1 isn’t rented, I haven’t made my first million yet, and most of my other “life experiences” have not yet come to fruition, but fear not, I am not someone who gives up very easily. As many of the books I have read said, It takes multiple times and an endless amount of determination to find the combination to unlock your dreams.

So what has been happening, what are these silent decisions….. Well, painfully I can’t quite put my finger or fingers on them perfectly yet. But somehow I can see that I am still missing the “go get it” attitude, and the “seller” ability, and most importantly the discipline of organization, but more importantly organizing in a way that creates the success that I am looking for. Now when I say “go get it” attitude, I am talking about an extreme not give a fuck and just go after it attitude, regardless of what people say.  Internally I currently think, or have the self belief that I have a “go get it” attitude, but it is a reserved and cautious go get it attitude. And I think that a reserved go get it attitude is important to have, but at the same time, it is important to also have the lion like attitude of not waiting with caution and to attack without waiting for the perfect moment. And for me, somehow I still need to learn how and when to switch between the 2.  then there is the issue of being the “seller”. I can feel myself starting to understand the fundamentals of selling, but man, I gotta be truthful, there are just so many facets to selling. For example, today I was doing my 4th or 5th read of “The Little Red Book Of Selling” by Jeffery Gitomer. And in the book he gives what he calls rules to selling.  Ultimately, selling is about creating relationships. But when I say creating relationships, I am not just talking about any run of the mill relationship. Instead I am talking about creating a relationship that builds something important for someone else….Wow it just hit me, several days ago I reread “The 5 love languages” by Gary Chapman. I first decided on reading that book because I realized that if I want a partner in my life then I should probably learn what others have learned about talking to someone else. And funny thing is, as I keep thinking about it, All these things, the book of the 5 love languages, “The Success Principles” by Jack Canfield, even the teachings within Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), and even many of the Tony Robbins videos, they all have the same basic underlying fundamental of what you are supposed to do…..Give to the person in a way or form that excites their heart strings. And when you excite someone’s heartstrings, then that person will attach their heart strings to you and open all that they have to you.

Even Simon Senek says it, he just uses the term “Start With Why”. I swear it’s not rocket science, The bible even tells us to care for others without needing them to care for us. And for me, I am starting to connect these dots between all these books. That in itself is what I call the “silent decisions” the internal seeing so much of the same thing in every book, it’s just all said in it’s own way. Now……. where the difficulty is happening, where I am still not able to connect the dots is…. how do I create the specific relationship that will give the specific outcome that I am looking for? In Gary Chapmans book of the 5 love languages, he gives 5 languages, although I call them signs or signals because when you notice these languages, aka signs/signals then all you have to do is to apply this type of signal into the relationship and the other person will see that you are caring for them in a form that they are hungry for and needing to feel loved. And if I circle back to Jeffery Gitomers book (The Little Red Book Of Selling) Jeffery says it in a different form, Jeffery’s trigger words are “Give Value” or “Value First”. Jeffery actually has a ton of examples and even a ton of rules or as he calls them “ways” to get something done. For examples, 7 ways to give value first etc. I actually love Jeffery’s book because his book is a prime example of him working hard at giving value first by giving ideas on how to sell and explaining the idea of “what is selling”. More on Jeffery in a moment, but Simon Sinek also explains the same fundamental idea in “Start With Why” and “Leaders Eat Last” although Simon is geared more to a corporate environment in a way that our leaders learn how to be leaders and not bosses. Because the truth is this, a true leader, a real leader, at least in your eyes will never ever look like a boss. A leader is someone you trust because you believe in them, and not because you are just trying to keep a job. ( I know this all too well, but we will save that for another post). Jack Canfield even mentions all of this idea in his “Success Principles”, but Jack doesn’t call it “value first” or “love Languages” or “Starting With Why”, instead Jack uses a question to elicit the same outcome. One of Jack’s way of selling is to ask this question to someone he cares about, coworker, friend, lover, etc.  He asks……..”On a scale of 1 to 10, rate our relationship.” Then after the person responds, Jack will then ask “What will it take to make it a X?” And X is the number above the persons numbered response…. For Example…This is Jack and his secretary having that conversation……..Jack: “Lisa, on a scale of 1 to 10, rate our relationship?”  Lisa responds…..”I rate our relationship a 7″ Jack then responds “What would it take to make it an 8?”

By asking this question, you are able to hear how the other person feels about the relationship as well as what he/she wants or needs in order  to have a better relationship with you. I have actually used this with some of the people I work with. And the interesting thing is learning how the other person rates our relationship. It gives a concrete understanding to what you want and then also lets you see if you and that person look at the relationship in the same way. Again to me this is just another example of selling, because the truth is also this, if you want someone to buy from you, believe in you, trust you, follow you,  or anything else that requires you to need them, then it is all in some form of selling. But for me, the difficulty is no longer understanding what selling is, instead, now it is understanding the different nuances, of HOW to have someone believe in you enough to follow you and or buy into you or from you.

And that is currently one of the silent decisions that I am trying to learn how to make. Now the other silent decision is this thing of organizing. And organizing is the sister to discipline, or at least that’s what I say because, in order to be organized you must, must, must be, or at least have some discipline, or at least enough discipline to have some form of organization. Without discipline is chaos, And for me success can and will always live within chaos, but in a very disciplined form.

I have also been slowly thinking about how exactly to have discipline. And how to organize. Joan has given me multiple methods to use that help me put thoughts, lists, ideas, and all things related to paper, but where the conundrum happens, is in the decision making. What goes first? What’s more important? And what happens when something else becomes more important? does that mean that the previous important thing wasn’t really that important?

The night is ending (sadly I am at work) and so I will need to continue on another post

Sending you love, peace, and happiness.

Max.

Apartment Photos

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7E2HU8giskGmKTR26