Follow Me Over to Skywardblog.net
Thank you...from Me to You!
Wow! When I started Figliving a little over a year ago, I had no idea where it would take me....and it's been quite a journey! Over the past year figliving has posted over 50 articles and garnered almost 600 subscribers. I offer a whole hearted thank you to everyone who's read and commented here. It's been a pleasure walking this path with you....but this is by no means the end of the road, it's only the beginning!
Moving Forward
As I've grown as a writer and a person, I've felt a need to invest more energy and resources into my personal blog. Consequently, I think a fresh start is in order. I wanted to personally welcome you to my new blog: www.skywardblog.net.
We'll cover any and all topics regarding personal growth and development. I'm excited about the change and the potential to reach and help more individuals and families. My plan is to write to a much broader audience and connect with like-minded people. Please come on over and subscribe, as I've already began posting new articles will continue to do so twice a week.
I'd also love any feedback you can give me on the look and feel of the site. Tell me what I need to tweak, add, or take-away.
Again, thanks to all of you and I look forward to seeing you over at Skyward!
God Bless,
Jason
Click here to check out the site!
Christmas Caroling to Closed Doors, Serving Others, and The One that Opened!
Our church group went Christmas caroling in an apartment complex for retired people last night. As we approached the first set of doors to begin singing, I could visualize joyful old folks opening their doors in delight, then beaming with the Christmas spirit as they stood and listened to us sing.
We began with “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” and by the time we concluded no doors had opened. “They’re old, I thought….it takes them a while to get to the door”. Then we sang Jingle Bells…..nothing. Silent Night….nada.
So, I thought, this particular section of the apartment isn’t exactly bubbling with Christmas Spirit. We’ll move on to the next. To my great surprise, after singing to at least a dozen apartments, not a single door had opened…..not a single smiling face.
As we came to one of the last sections of the complex, we gathered together once again and began to sing. After only a brief moment we saw a doorknob turn, a door open, and a smiling face appear. She stood in the doorway, utterly delighted, and beamed with light as we sang.
This is such a great metaphor for life. As we attempt to help others, we’re going to encounter closed doors. But we must sally forth, because in due time doors will open and smiling faces will appear.
There are two things we’ll never know: when doors will open, and what’s going on behind the ones that remain closed. We may not have even seen the person who was most touched last night. For that reason, we can't base our efforts to help people on results. We need only follow our hearts and not get discouraged. If we do that, people will be blessed.
Chime in, what do you think? Have you ever had an experience where persistence has payed off for you?
22 Ways, Other Than Gifts, to Show Love This Holiday Season
Gifts are great, and a wonderful way to show those closest to us how much we love them…..but not the only way.
Here are some other ways to show our love:
1. Wake up early and fix everyone breakfast.
2. Pay a strangers toll
3. When you ask someone “how ya doing?”…..mean it!
4. Do your spouse or child’s chores for a day
5. When you greet a friend or family member with a hug, give them an extra long squeeze.
6. Tell your spouse how much you appreciate them and why.
7. Find a friend on Facebook who desperately needs a compliment and post it on their wall.
8. Yield to someone in traffic
9. Smile at one person when you normally wouldn’t
10. Pray as a family for someone you know in need
11. Set a goal, for just one hour, to not feel guilty about the past.
12. Have a family night with no TV, eat dinner together, play a game…..laugh, share, enjoy life.
13. When you become frustrated with a loved one, think of 3 things you love about them, then immediately share it with them.
14. Take a child on a “kid date”…..anything from a walk to teaching them magic tricks.
15. When in a conversation, make you only goal to understand the other person and forget about what you’ll say next.
16. Mend a broken relationship….it’s time.
17. Tell each of your children how special they are and why.
18. Babysit for a couple who hasn’t been on a date for a while
19. Think of the one thing that you could do to most improve your relationship with your spouse, children, parents, siblings, etc. and do it.
20. Visit a lonely person…it could make their entire month.
21. Set a goal, for just one hour, to not fear the future.
22. Find a person who doesn’t think they matter, and convince them that they do.
Chime in, what'd I miss?
Unconditional Love, Christmas Parades, and my boy’s ‘Pant’s on the Ground’!
Happiness Comes through holding on to those we love.
Have you ever been in a public place and had one of your children embarrass the heck out of you?
A couple of years ago we decided to take our family of six to the local Christmas parade. Now, keep in mind this is a small town, where everyone knows everyone. Anyway, the parade begins and our family is parked on the curb watching the bands play, gathering candy, and marveling at the mini cars….everyone’s having a blast. Then I look over, and all I see are my three year old son’s butt cheeks right in front of me. He decided to go potty right in the middle of the street, in front of the entire crowd!
Now as a parent, there are two possible reactions here: to drop everything, leave the child with his pants down, and run and hide your face in shame, or to accept ownership of the naked boy and deal with the situation. I’m not saying who did what, but I chose one and my wife chose the other….we still get a good laugh out of that one!
That’s a very lighthearted story, but it really illustrates how we tend to react in one of two ways to the actions of our loved ones. We either focus on them, or we focus on ourselves. Focus on them, on their wants and needs, is unconditional love. We accept them for what they are and love them regardless of their actions. Focus on ourselves brings selfishness and embarrassment, and is based on conditional love. If you meet my standards, you win my affection. One builds the loved on up, and the other tears them down.
This holiday season, as we spend time with our loved ones, let’s make sure they know we love them for who they are and there’s not anything they could do that would make us love them less….the way our Heavenly Father loves each of us. This is the true essence of Christmas.
Shedding Greed and Ego through “Goals of Goodness”
What situations bring our your animal instincts?
I’m proud to say that I went on my first Black Friday adventure last week, and to say it was a unique experience is an understatement. For those of you who’ve not had the honor of experiencing this for yourself, imagine after prom party meets sharks in a feeding frenzy.
When we entered the store at 3:58 am Friday morning I was immediately shocked to find that there were two different types of people there: those who became like ravenous wolves and lost all degree of civility, and those who remained courteous and shopped…while observing the wolves.
The Metamorphosis Exposed
What caused some people remain human while others turned into wolves? My answer: some allowed themselves to be dominated by their ego, and some remained fully conscious.
Black Friday is like an ego breeding ground. Why?...Because it’s so easy to justify our behavior. Our inner voice tells us that my actions are ok because, “I’m doing this for my children”, or “I got up at 2am for this”, or “I’ve been waiting for this for 6 weeks”, therefore we allow our animal instincts to take over and it’s every man for himself. Trust me, I’m not dogging these kamikaze shoppers because every single one of us falls into this trap from time to time. Heck, while was waiting in the parking lot waiting for the store to open I was watching the cars roll in. I caught myself thinking, “these people are going to get my stuff!”….then I had to chuckle at myself.
Observing the Wolves
These are inner wolves I’m talking about here….not the crazy people stampeding through Target in their pj’s. As our inner wolf, or ego, begins to arise within us there are several things we can do to tame it. First, we can remind ourselves that there’s never a rationalization for putting ourselves first. I personally believe this rule is absolute. I ask myself, “when’s the last time greed brought me an increase of true happiness?” The answer is obviously, never. Greed has only brought me an increase of suffering…..every single time.
Next, when we know we’re about to walk into an ego “perfect storm” we can spiritually brace ourselves. We can do this by setting a goal to show an increase of love and empathy when in the situation. Tell yourself, “If I get the last “xyz gadget” they have, and the person beside me seems like they really want it…I’ll give it to them”, or “I’m going to make sure I serve the children dinner first even though I’m starving”, or “I’ll stay up and read a book to the kids even though I’m dog tired”. It’s the times in my life that I’ve actually done stuff like this that have been my happiest moments…..notwithstanding, our ego will have us believe the opposite.
By reminding ourselves that greed is always bad, and by setting “goals of goodness” before tough situations, we diminish the role of the ego in our lives. In order to accomplish either of these tasks, we inherently have to become the observer of our lives which empowers us to step back and watch our feelings and emotions….this is the first step to shedding layers of greed.
Overall, I really enjoyed the whole Black Friday thing. Heck, I think I’ll make it a holiday tradition. The entertainment value alone was enough, plus we saved some serious bank!
When do you find you need to set “goals of goodness”?
Why it’s OK to Pick my Own Nose: A Lesson in Double Standards
A picture of me picking my nose.
I can guarantee that every single person reading this post has experienced both of the following scenarios (if not, be sure and tell me…but I still won’t believe you):
1. You’re driving down the interstate and notice a car traveling beside you. You glance over to discover the driver fully engaged in picking his or her nose!
2. You’re driving down the interstate and notice a car traveling beside you. You glance over to discover the person driving the neighboring car staring at you….you’ve just been busted picking your own nose!
Question: Why is it repulsive when other people pick their noses, but not when we pick our own? This post isn’t really about the virtues of nose picking as much as it’s about the double standards we impose upon others…..and how we tend to rationalize them.
Whether we’re cutting someone off in a conversation, cutting someone off in traffic, or cutting off a pair of jeans to wear to the water park, we allow ourselves to do things we would condemn others for without hesitation. We all suffer from this form of psychosis: But from whence does it come?
The Nose Picking Syndrome
Let’s turn to our experiences on the interstate for some answers. When you discovered the “recreational activities” of the neighboring driver what was your knee-jerk response? If you’re anything like me, you were probably a bit repulsed…..right?
Now think about your rationalizations for picking you own nose (I thought this would become less weird as the post went on…but apparently I was wrong!) No longer so repulsive is it? You felt somewhat justified because it was somehow different for you….am I wrong?
The Ego and the Heart of the Double Standard
The reason we feel inclined to grant ourselves these special “rights and privileges” while denying them to others originates from our ego. That part of ourselves that convinces us that we are separate from others; that they are in competition with us; that whatever they obtain or achieve somehow takes away something from us. It’s paradigm is actually manifested by the use of the word “they” as that implies separation…..instead of the use of the words “we” or “us”.
Let’s look at another example. Say I’m having a conversation with someone, as this sort of thing happens to me on a regular basis. The other person is speaking, and a really “applicable and poignant” thought comes into my mind just as they begin to share the essence of their point. I know how utterly rude it would be to interrupt them, notwithstanding, I want so badly in that moment to just blurt out my point.
The entire time there’s a voice inside my head saying, “it’s ok to cut him off because you might forget this one, plus he’s about to go off on another tangent. Do it now, it perfectly fine….this time is different!”
Diminishing the Role of the Ego
We all know that this conversation is not any different from any other, and my “important” thought was no more important than any other. But how can we remember this in the moment we are tempted to rationalize and apply the double standard? It begins with empathy for the other person; the ability to literally feel what they are feeling. This grows into spurts of real love for them, then eventually into unconditional love, and finally into a feeling of one-ness with them. You know you have achieved this when you look over at them in the next car picking their nose, and instead of getting grossed out say “boy I hope they find what they’re looking for!”
Any thoughts, comments, questions about personal hygiene?
Scraping our Problems off the Windshield of Life
We had our first hard frost in Virginia the other morning. I discovered this shortly after starting my truck and realizing that I was without a windshield scraper.
It was before dawn and very brisk….I had a decision to make: Do I sit lazily and wait for the defrost to melt the ice away, or try to improvise and use a credit card or other make-shift object? I chose lazy, and waited…..but only until there was a round 8” clearing in the frost at the very bottom of the windshield.
Driving Blind!
So here I am driving down the road, hunched over, peering through this tiny hole!....couldn’t see much to say the least (don’t say anything, you know you’ve done it too.) Luckily, by the time I reached the highway, the windshield was mostly clear and I could see enough to drive safely.
After traveling a few miles down the road, the heat had really kicked in and every spec of frost was melted away. Plus, it was getting nice and toasty inside the truck. Life was good……until I broke over a hill and found myself driving directly toward the newly risen sun.
The glare was unbearable, not so much because of the brightness of the sun, but because the inside of the windshield was covered in a dirty/smoky film that distorted the sunlight, causing it to scatter, and basically rendering me unable to see. I immediately had to pull off the road and clean the film off the inside of the windshield. I pulled back onto the road. Finally, I could see clearly and drive toward the sun!
"Problems" Inside and Out
Our lives aren’t all that different from windshields. There are forces from without and within that obscure our vision, and keep us from finding our way toward God. It takes great effort on our part to keep our windshields clean.
The stuff on the outside; frost, mud, or whatever, is our life situation. These are the components of our lives that are observable to the outside world. They exist in the space that surrounds us. These outside forces such as problems at work, relationships, money, etc, inhibit our ability to see our path….if we allow them. The key is to either change or accept these parts of our life situation that we consider “problems”. Either alternative increases vision, one acts as defrost and melts the problem away, and the other acts as Rain-X and allows the problem to just roll off of us, but both are proactive measures. Acceptance is not the same as doing nothing about our problems, which like choosing to drive down the road blindly with perfectly good windshield wipers.....we have to do something!
The stuff on the inside of our windshields is what Christ spoke of when he taught about keeping the inside of our cups clean. What’s funny is that the film that had developed over time didn’t become evident until the light from the sun glared on it. God reveals to us what we need to change in our lives by shining the light of His spirit on it. Over time, we begin to see how this “film” obscures our vision of the pathway toward the Son. Sometimes we even have to “pull off the road” and allow Him to make us clean once again.
How else do windshields apply to life?.....didn't even get into cracks or bugs.
How Web Marketing Saved my Christian Business
Almost 10 years ago, when my partners and I started our pool company, we had zero marketing training or experience. We knew we needed to sell pools to stay in business, so we did what other “successful” companies were doing and spent money like crazy on radio, yellow pages, print, direct mail, and even some television advertising. We found that this “shotgun” approach to marketing worked fairly well at first, but we began to see a major shift in the way people shopped for pools.
Consumers began to ignore these “interruptive” methods of advertising and began to look for goods and services on their own “terms”….through the internet. We recognized that our website needed to be the focus of our marketing effort, but none of us were “techies” to say the least, so we hired a web designer to build the site.
It was a good website, and before long it was producing more leads than all of the other venues combined! This led to radical decision (at the time) to eliminate all other forms of advertising and fully embrace our web marketing effort….and this was a huge success. We were spending less marketing dollars and getting even more leads…..but there was a problem.
We Created a Monster!
We now lived and died by our website. In fact, our website had become the single most important component of our business…..and we had absolutely no control over it! We couldn’t add content, build a page, upload a photo, or even fix a typo! Our web designer was an awesome guy, but we were dependant on him for everything. We realized that we didn’t hold the keys to our own business!
Something had to change for us…..that was undeniable. It was imperative that we manage our own site, but how could a bunch of “non-techies” take on such a task? We began to look for an alternative, and to our great delight, we found it existed. We embraced it, and it literally changed our business and our lives.
Sharing the Blessings
Because what we discovered has helped us so much, I want other small business owners to have the opportunity to experience the same blessings. To the best of my knowledge, we currently have the most popular swimming pool website in the world. I can honestly say that if it were not for our web success, we’d have met the same fate as 2/3 of the companies in the swimming pool industry, and would no longer be in business.
Below are the web marketing principles and tools that we have learned and applied; that have been placed in our path, and now are placed in yours. If you stand in need of more traffic, leads, and sales, I pray that they will help you and all of the individuals and families associated with your small business.
Inbound vs Outbound Marketing
What is Inbound and Outbound Marketing?
Outbound, or interruptive, marketing is the shotgun approach that I described earlier. It’s a method of broadcasting your message out to the world in hopes that those that are interested will:
1. Hear the message
2. Remember the message, and
3. Respond to the message
Again, some of these outbound marketing methods are TV, radio, print, mailers, etc.
If outbound marketing is like a shotgun that broadcasts your message out to the world, inbound marketing is more like a magnet that draws those who are actively seeking you to your website. This paradigm taps into the consumer that’s already actively engaged in learning about a product or service they want to purchase. Instead of randomly casting a net into the ocean in hopes of catching fish that are trying to escape, the hungry fish now seeks you, because you offer their food of choice.
Look, folks are busy….we all are; and we find ways to avoid interruptive marketing. Why watch a commercial when you have TiVo? Why listen to a radio ad when you can listen to your iPod or satellite radio? Why buy a newspaper when the internet can give you exactly the info you want in less time for free? Why open the yellow pages when you can Google what you’re looking for and be on and off a company’s website before your could have found it in the book?
The success of inbound marketing is a natural consequence of our information age, and as outbound marketing methods continue to go the way of the dinosaur, those businesses who embrace this shift earliest will reap the biggest rewards. But how does Inbound marketing work? How can people on the internet find me? The answer: content marketing.
Content Marketing: A True Win/Win
When you use Google to search for information, you become their customer. Google wants you, their customer, to be happy….and when it comes to web searches, happiness = receiving desired information. Therefore, Google places the web pages that best answer the consumer’s questions highest in their SERPs or Search Engine Result Page. So, for your company to be recognized by Google (and other Search Engines), you need to produce content on your site that answers the questions of the consumer. This content can come in many forms: website pages, blog articles, videos, ebooks, reports, etc. (We produce most of our content through writing blog articles and videos.)
How do I know what content to produce?
Simple!....what questions do your customers ask about your product or service on a regualar basis? These are the same questions people ask Google. Content marketing is about looking at the world from the perspective of the consumer, and producing content that speaks directly to them and addresses their concerns….and the one who best addresses their concerns also wins their trust!
Content Marketing vs Adwords/Pay-Per-Click Advertising
On Google’s results page there are two columns. Many folks don’t know that the one to the right, the “sponsored links”, are actually advertisements. When they are clicked, the company pays a specified amount based on a predetermined bid for the keyword that was typed in. This is called Pay-Per-Click advertising, and is how we received the bulk of our traffic initially….which was great, but expensive. The other problem with PPC advertising is that 80% of all internet users don’t even look to the right side of the page, so we were missing gobs of potential traffic.
The results on the left side of the page are called “organic” because they are based solely on a web pages ability to answer the question of the user (based on Google’s analysis). These are FREE, and are based on your content marketing efforts around that specific keyword. The key to successful content marketing is to produce content based on as many specific keywords as possible….this is where an understanding of SEO comes into play.
Over the past 3 years we have cut our Pay-Per-Click marketing budget by 2/3rds and increased the traffic to our site 5 fold….all because of our content marketing efforts.
The Modern David and Goliath
The beauty of content marketing is that it levels the playing field. He who produces the best content wins…..every time, because you can’t buy your way into organic search results.
This principle is what allows a small, Christian owned pool company to get more traffic than the huge multi-million dollar giants in our industry.
A Content Management System: The Key to Empowerment
As I alluded to earlier, the key to allowing all of this to happen rested in our ability to manage our own website. What we found was an awesome CMS, or Content Management System, that allowed us “non-techies” to have complete control. This was a quantum leap to empowerment for us. No more calls to the webmaster to add photos, fix a typo, or add content…..it was awesome, and it was as easy to use as a word processor. It’s literally websites for dummies. Finally, complete and total control of our own web destiny! It wasn’t until we began using our own CMS that we realized how utterly handcuffed we previously were. Finally, we could fully embrace our inbound/content marketing strategy, and once we did, it took off like a rocket.
These web marketing principles changed everything for us. Sure, the direct impact on marketing and sales was astounding. But more than anything, it helped us embrace an educational paradigm. We became content creators. We saw the world from a different perspective. We had to stretch ourselves at times, but with any challenge comes growth. Words can't express what this has done for us, and I hope can do the same for you.
I appreciate you being here, and sticking with this rather long article. If you have questions regarding your web marketing, and need somewhere to turn, please feel free to contact me directly via email at riverpoolsjason@gmail.com.....I'm happy to try and help. For a more in depth look at our experience with inbound marketing, feel free to visit my partner's sales and marketing blog www.TheSalesLion.com. It's a huge, free, resource and the perfect place to start this journey for yourself.
Please also feel free to question or comment below. Thanks, God Bless, and Good Luck!
Seeing the Divinity of a Spider
The other day I saw the biggest freaking spider….It was huge, it was hairy, and worst of all it was inside our church. And who discovered it….the youth of course. Needless to say, there was weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth!
It was painfully obvious that I was the one to handle the situation. A year ago, I’d have made quick work of that bad boy with my shoe and simply cleaned up the remnants. But there was one problem….several months ago I decided to stop killing bugs. That’s right, I said I’ve stopped killing bugs….weird huh, especially for a guy?
Anyway, to everyone’s great astonishment, I grabbed a paper towel, scooped him up, and released him to find his way back to spider town. Nothing really astonishing there; however, something odd happened as I was carrying him down the hall and out the door.
As I was walking, I looked down at him (I kind of had him folded into the paper towel in a way I could still see him) and for an instant I didn’t see a freaky, eight legged monster; a creature that has been a source of fear over the course of my entire life (dig snakes….hate spiders!), but saw him, if only for a moment, as divine.
It’s hard to describe the feeling, but it was almost like I was cuddling a cute bunny rabbit or a purring kitten, or some other animal that easily wins our affection. And I must say this was different from simply seeing the beauty of the animal. There are some spiders, and other “freaky” creatures, that are arrayed with brilliant colors, or create magnificent webs, or look or act in a way that makes it easy to say “ahh yes, how wonderful God’s creations”. But this wasn’t a beautiful spider, it was rather hideous looking. It wasn’t the beauty of the animal that I saw; it was a perception of the divine within it....akin to seeing the Savior as you look upon a homeless person.
If there’s a take-away from this post, I think it’s that as we show respect for everything God has placed in our path, that love and respect will expand within us and allow us to see more of the divine in all things, including ourselves.
What do you think? Am I crazy?
A Moment of Holiday Frustration!
- Are we raising armies of mindless consumers?
I just laid a ground rule in the house (and I never do this): all toy catalogues go directly into the trash. For the past several years my kids have adopted the habit, all on their own, of sitting down with the little Toys-R-Us mailers and circling the toys they want for Christmas.
I’m thinking: “Great, why wait until Christmas to allow them to focus entirely on themselves when the unbridled selfishness can begin 6 months in advance?”
I said that they learned this “on their own”, but that’s a tremendous miscalculation. This is something that’s been taught to them (and us) from the moment they we’re born.
As soon as we’re old enough to stare at the television we’re told an incredulous lie: we need stuff to make us happy.
My daughter turned three in August and she is the most precious snuggle muffin in the world. She’s recently developed the habit of saying “I want that!” every single time a “girl” commercial comes on television. This makes me sick! “I want, I want, I want, I want…..”
How about “I want…..to forget myself and serve others?”….that’s the message that needs to permeate our homes! Let’s hit out kids with that one from all angles.
Let me make one thing clear, my 5 kids are the most gracious, serving, and selfless kids I know, but I see a shift towards selfishness as Christmas draws near; and it’s because I see this change in such awesome kids that it makes me absolutely sick. We do teach about Christ in our home. We do teach the true meaning of Christmas. We do focus on serving others first and putting ourselves last, but my fear is that the volume of the worlds message is greater than ours.
This has forced me to ask : Who controls the remote control in my home?
This has finally reached critical mass for me and it's time to hit the “mute” button. It’s clearly not possible to “serve two masters”.
Anyone else frustrated?
