Reformation & Self-Improvement

"Read an hour every day in your chosen field. This works out to about one book per week, 50 books per year, and will guarantee your success." -- Brian Tracy
(Brian Tracy Home Page)

Self-Improvement should be something that you are looking at on a constant basis. Even with the world whirling around you and you believe you have no time, you do have time. Here is how:

• Turn off the television for 1 hour each day
  
• Listen to audio books while you are exercising
  
• Listen to audio books while you are commuting to work
  

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." -- Groucho Marx

Reduce your television watching for 1 hour each day and you could read 1 book per week according to Brain Tracy. Think about what paradigms which are being pushed at your job. What training are they providing you? If the company is spending money on training you can be assured that management feels this is important for the success of the company. If the training is relevant to the success of the company, I would bet that reading would improve your understanding and demonstrate your abilities within these requirements. Showing energy and commitment in areas that the company, which pays your salary, is a great way to be noticed. You get noticed and you can expect awards, bonuses and promotions.

"Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books." -- Bell Hooks

How much time do you spend commuting to work? What if you spent at least half (one way) of that time reading or listening to audios? What would you like to learn, what are your hobbies, what new position at work would you like to obtain? Increasing your knowledge in areas increases your value.

Reformation & Consumerism

Consumerism, sounds like a strange follow up to reading, but bear with me for a while. I believe that consumerism brings us into dependence as does the lack of reading, of staying on top of what is happening within the world. You can read a Brave New World, not a world obsessed with consumerism, but with a society controlled via pleasure, which I would place consumerism under.

If you are busy buying things, keeping up with the Jones or whatever you want to call it you are not watching what is going on around you. You do not have the time to see how, what, where and why. Consumerism is a distraction that is easily applied by people who do not want you to be involved in the world around you. Do not be a useful idiot. Instead be involved with the world around you.

How much time and effort are you spending on buying ‘stuff’? How much of you salary is being spent on consuming ‘stuff’. All of this money is not spent on improving yourself and your situation but on ‘stuff’ we are told we need?

Take an inventory of what you have and what you want. Now comes the hard part, you need to decide if what you want is a ‘want’ or a ‘need’. A need is like food, you need food to live, but too much, a want, will make you unhappy as your weights increases and your health decreases. So do you need make a determination, e.g. do you need to replace that 50” plasma television with a 70” television? Maybe a bit drastic, yet I am sure that it happens.

Action

Reduce your spending by 20% and take that money to do something to improve your life. What would happen if you spent 50% on improving your life and those around you? What would happen if you took the remaining 50% and used it to reduce your debt or add to a savings?

Reformation & Books Continued

Earlier we talked about reading to improve your life. Well this is a great time in history for reading or at least learning from the published word. So how do I take knowledge?

Just so you know, I firmly believe that reading is the best way to go. Picking up a book or looking at a computer screen is the best way to get the information from page to brain. So what can you do:

• go to your library
  
• borrow books from your friends
  
• buy books
  
• buy books online
  
• download books online
  
• read books via your email
  

Reformation & Books

It is time to start reading. Oops, that sounds too much like a sound bit, but it is true. According to reports the average American reads less than a half hour, 30 minutes, a day, but spends 2 hours and 30 minutes (150 minutes) each day. That is according to the Department of Labor for the year 2006. How many of you have improved your situation by watching television?

Previously I asked people to start reading/researching the candidates not only whom they vote for, but also those who are running. Today I am asking that people read, read what interests you, read the classics, read what will improve you performance, etc.

Read books that:

• entertain and fire your imagination
  
• improve your position in life along with that of the family
  
• Biographies
  

Biographies, read about people you admire. Who in your field has set the standard that the company you work for or in your mind. What set these people apart from the rest, wouldn’t you want the same to happen to you?

What about the ideas, paradigms or cultures that your company is trying to foster? If you want to rise (climb, ascend, soar) in your company then you need to shine, to show that you want to be part of that culture.

Reformation: Voting & Educating Oneself

Three documents that have a profound impact on this nation and the world, yet how many of us know what is in them and what they say. Well read them, not just to say that you have, but to allow them to fill you with their meaning. And after you have done that take some time to see where we stand as a country. Are we fulfilling the dream? Have we failed to reach the dream? To answer that question you need to decide where America stands at this moment.

Are we letting what was written in these three documents, these brave words that have cost the lives of so many as they defended this country, become sound bits? Do not let that happen. With an election coming up, do not let apathy and special interest groups determine the circumstances of this country, become aware.

I have often heard that this country is run by special interest groups, by Political Action Committees ((PACs) [different link]), etc. If that is heard then we need to understand why. The ‘why’ is that the “Government of the people , by the people and for the people” has lost the voice of the people because we do not vote.

Not only do we not vote, but we do not hold our representatives responsible for what they do and fail to do in our name. It is time to start using our voice to communicate with those who we place in office. DO not forget about these people after you have voted.

Now before everyone starts yelling that they do not have the time to keep up with all of the governments that represent us, there is a better way. Find or form a href="http://www.how-to-study.com/studygroups.htm">study group. Communicate with your friends and do not only listen to those who agree with you, but listen to those who disagree with you.

"Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak and esteem to all." — George Washington, 1759

Reformation: First Ammendment & John Locke

MJR – I agree with your thoughts on the First Amendment and hope people would start reading, researching, and/or questioning what they hear, see or read. Unfortunately most people do not do that, they instead find someone, with whom they agree with on a political level, to follow and stop. The First Amendment never talks about a “Separation of Church and State” instead it talks about the “Establishment of” and is called the “Establishment Clause”.

Now our houses of worship are stifled by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). An act that I believe violates of the Constitution because it interferes with the “Free Exercise thereof”.

If that had happened in the years prior to the American Revolution would we be an independent nation? I believe that what we need now are people in the pulpit willing to stand up and talk about what is wrong with out world, country, states and families. What we need is those in congress and the senator to follow the oath they swore prior to entering the office they now hold. If it was anything that I swore when I joined the army, I swore allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.

I also should have included the Declaration of Independence in the list of documents to read. Thank you for pointing that out.

Action Items

• Read the Constitution of the United States (listen to the Constitution
  
• Read the (your) Bill of Rights (listen to the Bill of Rights
  
• Read the Declaration of Independence (listen to the Declaration of Independence
  

"Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all: the apathy of human beings." — Helen Keller

Reformation: Starting

So how do we start this reformation, returning to a just (moral, honorable, straightforward) path? If we are to start, then we have to start with the individual. For those of you who love sports, it’s called getting back to the basics.

Start with getting back on the straight path, but how do I do that if I do not know what the “straight path” is? When was the last time you read a book about the founding of this country or of your state? When was the last time that you read the Constitution of the United States of America, The Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of Independence? If you are like me, until today, you have not read them since you were in school and were going to be tested on these magnificent documents. Once you have read these documents, the foundational documents of this country, you will have a better idea of what the dreams of our founders were.

Why am I suggesting that you read these documents? How many times do you hear, watch or read a news article where actions are taken based on these documents? Do you take for granted that those who report the news also provide you the truth?
We need to know what the groundwork is for everything that regulates our lives.

Have you heard about the “Separation of Church and State”? Well, it is not in the Constitution, nor is it in the Bill of Rights, yet you will hear people state it as if it were gospel. In order to understand where this misconception came from we need to read the basic document that people clam this came from, a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists.

What other documents or books would you recommend that people read to get a better idea of the foundation of their rights?

“A little lie can travel half way 'round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots."
— Mark Twain

Call to Action
1) Read or listen to these documents and do it more than once. They are tightly intertwined and in reality can not exist without the other.
2) When you hear someone misquoting any of these documents realize that they are doing so because they do not know the truth or are pushing their own agenda.
3) Correct the misquote when ever possible. Do it gently and with a hope that it was made harmlessly, but do correct it.

Reformation Vs Revolution

If I were to ask you about the state of America what would you say? If I were to ask you about the condition of the State in which you live in, what would you say? If I were to ask you about the shape of your town, what would you say? If I were to ask you about the shape of home what would you say?

Would you say that it is time for a revolution or a reformation? I think it is time that we go through a reformation in the United States. Not just go through, but to initiate. If we are going to start a reformation we need to know what it means. The definition of reformation that I think fits here is: “rescuing from mistake and returning to a just track”.

All of this means that we will need to put in something that most of us have very little of and that is time. We need to put in the time to be aware of where we have gone off course, because when we find where we have strayed and correct ourselves we can better see what is happening in our homes, towns, states and country.

“More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much” P.T. Barnum

Call to Action
1) To use a sports metaphor, we need to ‘get back to the basics’, you know this is a ball, this is a bat, etc. Why was this Country founded?
2) In order to get back to the right track we need to understand the ‘track’ we were on. Start at the beginning, what ideas, concepts, and beliefs was this Country founded on.
3) Know your history? That means being able to read history from a number of prospectives or as my father-in-law always said, you will end up with “his story”.