Find Out What Jen Finds » Success Sunday

Success Sunday PostID 1363

Jen P — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:07:54 +0000

“We find the turkey in the woods. We cut our turkey and then we put it in our oven and cook it at 46 degrees for 65 minutes. We make the turkey taste just like chicken. We eat the turkey when it comes out of the oven.â€œ
â€“â€“The Elder

Recently The Elder’s kindergarten class was asked how they would go about cooking a turkey. The K Teacher typed up the classes responses and above is The Elder’s quote to be successful (ok so it was a stretch for this week).

Here were some snippets of the other responses from his classmates:

“We will cut the turkey in half and put it in the oven and burn it for ten minutes.”

“Grandma has to pick the feathers off of the turkey.”

“You let it cool off and then you eat it and go to bed.”

“I get a turkey at the bakery.”

“We cook it for 160 minutes in a VERY hot oven that we can’t touch.”

“We wait until everyone gets to the house and then we bake the turkey for one minutes in the microwave.”

“Mom goes outside to get a turkey, but I don’t know where. Then she washes it and puts in the oven for 10 minutes until it burns.”

“We shoot a turkey with a gun. We put it in the oven for 16 minutes. We get forks and knives and eat it!”

“Then we put mustard on it and we eat it.”

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Success Sunday PostID 1329

Jen P — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:01:54 +0000

“I hit the wall around mile 25.â€œ
â€“â€“planet3rry' );">The Hub

Today was the day planet3rry' );">The Hub turned into an official Marathon Maniac. Last weekend he finished the Rutledge Marathon and we are currently on our way home from Nashville after he ran the Harpeth Hills Marathon. It’s not known for the flatness of it’s course, not even the rolling hills that are common in Tennessee. No, it’s known for the crazy changes in elevation in a short distance all throughout the Percy Warner Park.

I can’t tell you how proud i am of him for completing it. While we were waiting for him at the finishline, I told the kids to go run with him because he looked tired. I was hoping that they would give him a second wind and I think he was glad, other than the fact The Younger knock off a couple of seconds on his time because he couldn’t keep up and was getting upset. planet3rry' );">The Hub forgave him. lol

planet3rry' );">The Hub was tired. More than tired – exhausted. More than exhausted, but alive! His first word was “cold.” So I quickly wrapped him in the mylar blanket like a hot potato in foil. I pulled out the power bar and goo that was in my pocket in case he needed it at mile 14, but he didn’t. Thank goodness they were still in my pocket and thank goodness The Younger insisted on bring a bag of dried mangoes. We jointly fed him. Near the end of the bag of he said that he was starting to feel coherent.

Me: When did you hit the wall?
The Hub: I hit the wall around mile 25.
Me: That’s good.
The Hub: I have no recollection of the last 2 miles. I was just moving and I felt a little dizzy. Well, not dizzy but…
Me: woosy?
The Hub: Yes.

Why did I choose his quote for today’s Success Sunday? Not because of what he said, but what he did – crossed the finishline. At the sound of the gun at 8am this morning, he had a goal. That goal was to cross the finishline. I think many people hit a wall in their quest to reach their goal. I know that I have. I’ve hit a wall, just shy of my goal and I’ve let my exhaustion (mental, physical, emotional) convince me that I didn’t want my goal bad enough to keep “running the race.” For a marathoner, they know how much further they have – 26.2 miles total. For others, we don’t always know how much further we have to go to reach the goal. It makes me a little sick to my stomach to think, ‘what if I was just at mile 25, and I gave up so close to the finishline?’ From my experience from mentoring and coaching, I have seen that in others. planet3rry' );">The Hub basically put himself on autopilot when he hit the wall, doing the only thing that guaranteed progress – putting one foot in front of the other. He taught me a lesson in success today, and I hope that my readers gained from it too!

Congratulations, you Maniac! I’m so proud of you!

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Success Sunday Mobile

Jen P — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:59:54 +0000

"Trust Yourself, you know more than you think you do."
–Benjamin Spock

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Success Sunday (PostID 1305)

Jen P — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:31:21 +0000

“Start by doing what’s necessary;
then do what’s possible;
and suddenly you are doing the impossible. â€œ
â€“â€“St. Francis of Assisi

I took a little hiatus. Ok, a long hiatus. But I would guess that I’m not alone seeing that this is just a busy time of year, then throw in a election in there too. I’ve had sooooo much to blog on and I’m sure I have already forgotten most of it if not all. I had been logging everything in my DayNotez (love it) but planet3rry' );">The Hub stripped Vista off my laptop and replaced it with XP (sweet) and my phone kept crashing and I had to hard reset it twice and reload everything on it and try to find a replacement for the applications that were crashing it. So Daynotez is neither on my desktop pc nor my phone. Oh yeah, and I’ve had to take care of The Kiddos. lol. We had Fall Break last week and we let The AP off for most of the week because The Lolo and The Lola were in town visiting. You know how that goes. You think you will be productive because you have built in babysitters but I’m way too social to sit at the computer when I can have adult conversations in the convenience and comfort of my own home.

This week were the Halloween festivities. And of course the month-end deadline – which is always interesting in October. Usually I pretend that the 30th is the last day of the month, but this year the 30th was on a Thursday which is my meeting night, plus I was recently elected president of my networking group and that has me a little stressed out because of technical issues at our first leadership meeting. Technically, I voted by the group to be president, but wasn’t allowed to run the meeting. I was more like a referee which is hard considering that I, standing, am still shorter than the other guys, sitting. On Halloween day, The PaPa and The Girlfriend-in-Law came to visit for the weekend. They are still here and plan to leave on Tuesday (They voted early)

Also, since The Elder is in Kindergarten, they had a fall party and I got to volunteer (so much fun) and I even stayed to have lunch with him at the school. It was fun to meet his friends. I had had a nightmare on Thursday night before the partyI had had a nightmare on Thursday night before the party that all the friends he has been referring to whenever I pick him up were not really his friends, but were bullying and teasing him and he interpreted it as they were being his friends. I was heart broken and at a loss of what I needed to do. In real life, he had hit 2 kids in the lunchroom with his lunchbox and removed all of the clips off the centers board in the classroom because he wanted to do the Blocks Center and there wasn’t any more room for a 5th person. Then he threw his shoes and hit a little girl. I made him write apology notes to them and sent them with him to school on Friday. That made me a little nervous to enter his classroom because I didn’t know what kind of enemies he was making. What if the kids were looking at me with the disappointed look on their faces as if to say, “you are a bad mom.” I was afraid to meet the other parents because what if their child told them how disruptive he is in class and how he hurts people and throws things and behaves badly, etc etc. We always think the worst huh?

Well, to my delight, the friends he speaks of love him just as much as he love them. one even said he wanted to sit beside me at lunch and gave me a hug (he was only about a head shorter them me! yikes!) and then blew me kisses because it ended up that The Elder was sitting between us. The first thing I noticed was how young The Elder looks compared to the other children. He is only 5. There are 2 other girls in his class that are younger than he is, but he is the youngest boy by a lot.

I was however surprised at all the things that I was able to do though. I had very full but very productive days this week, catching up on somethings. Even the Meeting from Hades had a happy ending, and my training meeting went well, even though I didn’t train on what I had intended. I was able to rearrange my schedule to make sure I had my priorities in order. i squeezed in time to do this and I overestimated duration on some tasks and had some free time to do something random (obviously not blogging, but with the downgrade to XP, my web username and passwords were reset and it actually took me a long time to figure out how to get into the Wordpress Dashboard!). The more and more I deferred blogging (not to mention the many times I pushed the snooze on my phone alarm that reminds me to do Success Sunday posts) the more guilty I felt for not documenting the goings-on (and there was a lot going on). But finding this quote gave me some peace. I was busy and I was productive, but I would have never been that productive if I hadn’t been able to recalculate my schedule on the fly. Who would schedule themselves that packed from sun up to sun down? on purpose that is? So in essence I was doing the impossible.

Would it be possible for me to take a nap right now?

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Success Sunday (PostID 1276)

Jen P — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:45:40 +0000

“If we do it all together, we can both be first.”
â€“The Elder (10/1/2008)

The kids were helping clean up last Wednesday after dinner. Somehow I got them to believe it was some sort of game. I would give them an object (that didn’t belong in the kitchen) and ask “Where does this belong?” One of them would snatch it run through the house to put it away. They would actually whine if they weren’t the one to put it away!

“Hey I want to do it!”
“That was MY job!”

So I started giving out 2 objects at a time so they could both have something. So then it was a foot race.

“I’m first.”^*They are learning ordinal numbers in kindergarten right now.
“I’m first.”
“No, you’re second because that’s after first.”^*

This happened a couple of times before one time I heard them down the hall and this is what The Elder said to his brother. I couldn’t have been prouder! And cleaning the kitchen? Success! All it needed was a little teamwork!

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————————————-
For the rest of the story…
When The Younger went to get the Shark to vacuum the kitchen rug^*^*recall that The Younger loves to clean, I loaded The Elder down with multiple items that belonged in the play room.

“Let’s see how much you can carry at one time.”
“I can put it in this hand.”
“And this?”
“That doesn’t go in the play room, that goes downstairs.”
“Oh well then we will wait on that one. What else goes into the playroom.”
…
“Can you handle all of that?”
“Sure!”

^*I noticed later when I went by the playroom, all of the things he had were on the floor just inside the doorway. Well, I did just say, ‘Put these in the playroom.’ Gotta love him being so literal! lolHis hands, mouth, underarms, and pockets were full of toys and dvds and the cord for his L-Max to plug into the TV. I was afraid that we going to drop something so I followed him and he stopped in the laundry room to say “hey, The Younger, look how much I have?”^*

When he came back, politely asked “The Younger, can I do the vacuuming now?”

WHO ARE THESE CHILDREN???

I tried again today with less success. Figures…

Success Sunday (PostID 1217)

Jen P — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:30:03 +0000

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.”
â€“Mark Twain

This is in honor of planet3rry' );">The Hub’s birthday today! The reason why I chose this as the success quote, is it shows Imagination. That was one of planet3rry' );">The Hub’s favorite words when I met him. I’m sure it still is. So I thought it was very appropriate for his Birthday.

So let’s talk about Imagination and Success. In my opinion, Success is a result of being able to envision yourself accomplishing your goal before you actually do. And it isn’t good enough to envision it as something that will happen in the future but as if it were happening now. Keeping that vision alive is what allows you to have confidence that it will happen

Imagination can have a bad side, if you are imagining horrible things. I have been taught “What you think about, you bring about.” If you have seen The Secret, then you know that that is the point they are making.^*^* It is a very spiritual-belief-neutral film, so if that might offend you then I don’t recommend it necessarily. Basically you actually manifest what you picture in your head – positive or negative. I do use the “finding a parking space” example, and it has happened more times than not! The only difference probably that I do versus the guy on the film who tells of that story is I say a quick thanks to God. I laugh at myself each time it happens!

planet3rry' );">The Hub would use a running example. He imagines himself crossing the finishline. That’s the only way that I can see how anyone can run 26.2 miles all in one day. Lol. But if you pay attention to people who are known for their success, they were driven by a vision that they imagined in their head.

What’s your opinion?

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Oh, and hop over to planet3rry' );">The Hub’s blog and wish him a Happy Birthday!

Success Sunday (PostID 1125)

Jen P — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:01:24 +0000

“That isn’t to say we should stop collecting data, framing it in hypothesis, and testing those hypotheses. The scientific method is still an awesome machine…if we understand its limits.”
â€“Pquincy

OK, this is one of those “out of the box” quotes. It is from a blog…from a commenter…not my blog…but a blogger from Silicon Valley (so it is sorta related to this blog…bad joke, sorry, Dr. Pang, but hey, I’m sending you link love). He has a very witty blog tagline, and me likey witty.

So why this quote? Well it is two-fold. I understand that some bloggers are having difficulties commenting on my posts and I have a hypothesis of why that is. So I want to collect data to test that to verify if I can accept or reject that hypothesis. So if you are having difficulties commenting, please send me a note with your website address. If you CAN comment, please leave a comment to ~~prove~~ inform me that you can. My statistics degree and inner-nerd are becoming useful.

Secondly, if you get a chance to read Dr. Pang’s post and the subsequent comments (one of which is mine), the topic is about “imperfect knowledge” and Pquincy and I are basically speaking about the same thing, which I call faith.

That is what success is all about! Faith!

Yes there is drive, there is effort, there is knowledge, there is common sense, there are resources, communication, opportunity, status, position…there are a lot of things that can play a role in the success (or failure) of reaching a goal, but nothing allows us to reach as high as our potential without faith. Faith allows us to set a goal where the evidence to reach that goal is not present.Faith allows us to set a goal where the evidence to reach that goal is not present. I always teach the ladies I have the privilege to influence (oh yeah and my kids too) that if God puts a dream in your heart, then he also equips you to reach it. I think many people quit just before they break ground^*^* I think of the story about the mustard seed. You know the biggest struggle for any seed is to break ground (especially if it was buried by a squirrel!). That is what determines if it grows or if it dies, succeeds or fails. Think about those that just fall on the ground for whatever reason. They have to really root themselves! “Bloom where you are planted” is one of the mantras I’ve been taught. and never see the reward of their efforts and struggles. That makes me so sad. They didn’t pass the test. The schools don’t give you a diploma if you don’t pass the tests. Why should we get it if we quit before Commencement? After all commencement does mean ‘beginning.’ So many people quit before they’ve even gotten started.

I’m not preaching here because I know that I’ve been guilty of it myself in so many different arenas. Now that I’ve been able to see successes in my life that I have worked for (as opposed to being handed and place on my lap for me), I realize the power God has given me. How hurt he must be that I went without faith for so long and living beneath my potential.

So if I may interpret this quote out of context of Pquincy’s comment: It is good to analyze situations – what you did to “win” and what you could do better or not at all. It will help you to gain additional knowledge and could possibly improve the outcome. However, over-analyzing can be a waste of time (believe me, I also have a C-personality). Some things are just better left to Him. Let go, and Let God.

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Success Sunday (PostID 1056)

Jen P — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 01:56:59 +0000

“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”
â€“Mother Teresa

This may not sound very motivating for a success sunday quote, but I hope that it does spread awareness of how much people need this kind of security. Especially in the autism community, or the special needs community in general, we too often feel neglected and forgotten. I don’t think it is done on purpose. I think if the world were educated and aware of the needs, they really aren’t that difficult to accommodate if we can change our definition of “typical.”

You know a friend of mine told me once that she keeps peanuts in her car for the homeless people and beggars at the on/off-ramps of the interstate. What a great idea. ^*This is one of the reasons that I admire Bonnie so much. It’s as if she never has to search her database of what to do when love is needed. She just does it…she loves…unconditionally. No one deserves to go hungry but I was always afraid to give money because of being taken advantage of to buy alcohol, drugs, etc. Besides I rarely do carry cash with me. But I didn’t know what to do other than pull into the other lane where I wasn’t easily accessible. ^* I couldn’t just sit there and turn them down to their face! When I worked downtown, I passed the homeless and would give them whatever food I had leftover from lunch. When I didn’t have anything, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t prepared and I didn’t have a backup plan. I felt completely helpless. But I never did ask them what they needed. Maybe they just needed a hi, or a smile, or just plain eye contact.

Sometimes i wonder if we are neglected because others don’t ask. They are waiting for us to tell them and when they don’t know what to do, they assume, or they pull into the other lane and avoid the situation altogether. My Summer Camp post makes me think of that often. I do hope you get a chance to read this post though it is long. I need other people’s comments and support on it, as it is pushing our family into a huge decision of what to do next. I don’t want to make a decision to change lightly. Though I know in my head what I think I need to do, I’m getting conflicting signals from God in my heart. I’m not sure if I’m being completely open-minded, but then again, I don’t really have a lot of people to lean on in this situation to help me interpret what I think God is trying to say to me.

It doesn’t necessarily take just a loving person here, but also a brave one.

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Success Sunday (PostID 903)

Jen P — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:14:21 +0000

“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”
â€“John Wooden (legendary former UCLA basketball coach)

Don’t know if I have much else to say to make this quote more meaningful. It amazes me the knowledge and wisdom that can be gained from sports professionals, or even non-professionals. planet3rry' );">The Hub is always making “running” references whenever we talk about dreams and goals, etc. It used to make me mad because at the time I thought his life revolved around running (well, it did…and still does) and that I couldn’t go 5 minutes without some running-related term or story came out of his mouth. But the more we have learned to communicate better on an open spectrum, the more I realized what he was trying to communicate to me in those moments. Basically, never quit. Be excellent, even if that means crawling to the finishline, but ALWAYS with your tongue hanging out. Being excellent means putting your best forward and then some. Now that I have translated that…it has helped me not only understand how he operates (with excellence) but also in my personal goals and dreams (not to mention business goals too). And best of all…it has allowed me to give myself a pat on the back during the times I feel like I have been defeated by the “typical” public, but in actuality, it is the “typical” public that defeated themselves through their ignorance. Poor them. They won’t know that feeling of the Success of Excellence that special needs families get to have everyday until they make “the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”

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Success Sunday

Jen P — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:12:10 +0000

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person. “
â€“Mother Teresa

Things that I have heard connected to this quote are

If it is meant to be, it’s up to me.
Do it afraid.
Touching one life at a time will change the world.

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