Create

What will you create in 2009? User-generated content is on the rise, it is expected to surpass 30 million between now and 2013, that is almost 113 million new user created, distributed and consumed content. That is a lot. It is inspiring to see people taking control of and molding their experience. People are changing the tide of society and corporations. Using the Internet as their launching pad, they are not sitting by and being control. People are connecting, expressing, changing, living and causing new mindsets and corporations to study this phenomenon. We are causing them to look to us on what is fresh and new, and how they can attract our attention, time and money. So I ask you today: what will be created in 2009 by you, me or our network of bees. Here is a great article where I got the inspiration for this post. Enjoy.

Routine

Today was full of great conversation and thought provoking concepts and realities. I was presented with a great thought from a friend. It is 2009, we are living it and experiencing it. We are also at the tipping point of a huge change for our society and world in almost every aspect. Not only is our economic situation up in arms and ready for a drastic change but every area of people's lives are in transition. We are seeing a societal shift into new ways of thinking, processing and grasping our world and our lives. The Internet is on the edge of a new horizon in ways of connecting, functioning and thriving. The question is this: During the 20's, 30's and so on, there were huge societal archetypes instilled in our nation. An industrial revolution filled with new technologies to help everyone function at a new and higher level. We are now in 2009, far removed from those days and systems, with a fresh new outlook on the future and what is to come. So what are you going to do to make a difference today? Can you cause another shift in how we as a society thrive? Can you start a new way of connecting and relating and providing value to each of us? I believe you can and I believe that during these vital times all of us have the opportunity to step out, shift mindsets and habits or the choice to just conform to the ebb and flow of this society. I want to step aside, analyze and see how I can start to shift my own routines and habits, how I can start to connect in a new and fresh way. How will you?

100,000 pounds of Reflection

Once in awhile you have those moments that really allow you appreciate God's beauty. And there is nothing like seeing a 100,000 pound Humpback whale less than three feet away from you 2 miles off the coast of Maui. I have just experienced this moment, courtesy of a marine biologist friend named CT, who took me and my wife and family on her little red inner tube boat just feet away from a Humpback whale and her 1 day old calf. Those moments take your breathe away and cause you to reflect on the beauty of this land and ocean and how magnificent it all truly is. Everyone should sit back and reflect on their own lives and how precious and beautiful it is, whether your situation is the greatest or the worst right now, life moves in clips and phases and everything will pass and go, the good and the bad, so don't take this time for granted and grasp the world around you with a new eye.

The Dash

We often look at things in terms of the beginning or the end, how every new beginning starts from some other beginning's end. But is that really it, is that what we should be looking at? The big things in life: career, money, job, social status and the number of friends on your networking site of choice...are they all that matters or as with everything, is it the little things that tend to matter most? Love, family, happiness. Things that our society doesn't weigh you against. If you live happy and thrive in your marriage or family life, yet make no money or change zero lives, you are forgotten, lost in the array of people that reside on this earth, day in and day out, 300 million of us just in this precinct, let alone the world. But it is those little things that help us thrive and grow and no matter what any society stamps its approval on, it is those that can make one fall. The dash in between life and death is what we will be remembered by, yet at our demise, people around us will look at the beginning and the end, where it started and when it ends, but really the dash that penetrates those years is the most significant part, that is where we lived, thrived, struggled, and survived. The dash is where you are now if death hasn't knocked on your door, and how will you choose to live your dash, in regret? in fear? or grasping every moment, never letting go for the sheer fact of living that "dash" up to the fullest. So I challenge you to love like you have never loved and live like never before, for all of us 300 million plus can't predict when this dash will turn numeric, and the beginning will crash into the end.