Author Archives: Guus

Short seminar

So, a very short seminar would serve you, if you could hear it. And it would go something like this: Find something to be happy about. Goodbye!” – Abraham Hicks

That’s what I found on the first page of the workbook “How to Change Your Life Around In 30 Days that I found on the internet on http://timeandmoney.tripod.com/abraham-hicks_30_day_work_book.pdf. I later also found trans scripts on the site of Abraham Hicks, or actually Esther and Jerry Hicks where you can buy it for USD 7.00. And as I’m in favor of paying for things instead of getting them for free I still consider buying it, but I’m still human so until now I didn’t. And as of ‘now-now-now’ I can’t even buy it as my internet is not working.

And that’s maybe a nice thing to continue with. We have two internet connections as I used to run a full fledged web development company and wanted to be able to help my customers any time, even if there was a problem with my ISP. So we still have those two connections and they’re both not working. So I’m annoyed as I want to use the internet. I want to be able to use the internet any time. So I’ve been focusing on that for quite a while now, my not properly working connection with my most favorite provider and the not so good connection with my second internet provider. And the last few days, especially yesterday I’ve been focusing on the ‘not working internet’. So what do I get, at least according to the Law of Attraction? Exactly, more problems with internet and more non working connection as of the moment it’s not working at all.

And I’m on “Day 10” now in my workbook and it appears there is indeed something about this Law of Attraction as I have seen things change. Not only over the last ten days, but over about a year now since I’ve been focusing on things more consciously. But looking back it is all over my life.

The weird thing is that there is indeed something about this, and other, programs related to ‘focusing’ as my financial situation got worse, something I could have never imagined all my life, and I am more happy than ever. And yes, the especially the last few days I encountered stuff about ‘money’. And it seems there is indeed something very strange around the word, or actually the subject ‘money’. And money is also a major thing in the thirty day workbook and I encountered some very weird things I wanted to share.

You see, one exercise is about spending a virtual amount of money that increases every day. So no matter what you do, the amount increases every day. And somehow I have always focused on money, I wanted more, I wanted to be rich, I wanted to be filthy rich and I still want to be very rich. But look what I am stating here: filthy rich. And don’t get me wrong I just wrote it ‘naturally’ as it’s just a common saying. I had no intention to continue about the ‘filthy’. Wow, and how to continue now, because there is so much in my mind what to tell you what I have found. As that was my intention this morning for now, sharing my experiences in an inspiring way. Well, maybe I should just continue writing as I normally do, as ‘me’ and not worry too much about what ‘they’ say, what ‘you’ say, like it’s chaotic or something. And yes, again, that’s what it’s all about. Just being me, just being you as you are. Just ‘open your valve’ as Lynn Grabhorn calls it.

So what did I found about the money. Well, I have debts at the moment, quite large debts and I don’t like them, I don’t like that as I don’t believe in debt. It’s expensive and such. It’s ‘bad’. So I started the first few days to first put half the virtual spending amount to pay my debt. And it was ok, it was ok. And today when encountering the ‘virtual spending’ I realize that my debt is not really in my mind anymore. Somehow it is not my priority anymore and it should not be as it just costs an awful lot of energy. It puts me down. And don’t get me wrong, I am not saying people shouldn’t pay their debts and I’m committed to pay my debts back including all the interest and such. But just focusing on something negative like debt is very bad; it just puts down your energy, your energy flow. I’m starting to see that now, feel that now.

So that was the first thing I noticed yesterday or so, that I had changed my focus around my debts. The second thing I’m starting to notice more and more is that I don’t know what to spend the money on. Really. And it’s really weird to have an increasing amount of money coming in every day and not knowing what to spend it on. And yes, there are some longer term goals I’m working on like having a car and renovating the house and some holidays, but that’s not the point. Because I started saving for these things even from my daily virtual spending amount, but somehow I’m starting to realize that’s kind of useless: the money is coming in anyhow in increasing amounts, so saving doesn’t make much sense. That car will be there anyhow and that holiday I can do very soon with these increasing amounts. As soon as I reach PHP 30,000.00 per day I can have a holiday by saving one or two weeks or so.

It is really weird noticing that I don’t know how to spend incoming money. So again, from a “Law of Attraction” point of view of course there is no real money coming in. It is because I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to let it flow.

And again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t save or something. That’s not the point. It’s just the weird experience I have that every day I’m starting to have a problem spending the amount coming in. I just don’t know what to do with it as it’s so much. And I know it will keep flowing, so it doesn’t make sense to save it, keep it, or even pay debts with it and the increased amount in the future will do that.

So it’s really mindset that’s blocking us. I’m starting to realize that more and more. Mindset that money is bad, mindset that there is not enough money, mindset that there is not enough of anything. And mindset is just thoughts. And one of the most funny thing I found in the workbook was the following statement:

“And we are wanting so much for you to realize that nothing is just the way it is because that’s the way it is, because everything that is the way it is, is the way it is because somebody thinks that’s the way that it is! There is no fact apart from somebody’s belief. None. So you say, Oh, well, there are all these facts. And we say they’re just beliefs that have been practiced.”

And no matter how logical you are, no matter how practical you are, this statement is just true, just plain true. And it felt very weird when I first read it.

But it’s basically also a similar thing Napoleon Hill writes in Think and Grow Rich: everything begins with a thought.

Success and money

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I’m starting to believe that I’m becoming very successful. So that’s a very good thing. And actually John pointed a bit in the direction how successful especially the project Inspiration for Success already is. And until now basically the project is mainly my personal achievement although the other team members also put some effort, next to being supportive.

And indeed, writing one post a day for this site plus adding quite some pages content over a period of four months I guess is quite some achievement I guess, even though I don’t feel it that way as I’d rather see success in the form of many visitors visiting the site and some money coming in. But again, achieving position number four in Google for the phrase ‘inspiration for success’ again is quite some achievement. And it actually took quite some persistence and belief to continue, as over time the site just went down and down in the Google rankings, not up, except for the last week or so. So during that time it was not easy to continue, not easy to believe that my way of on site optimization (also) works.

And my main personal achievements over time were that I actually quite disciplined even though I thought I was not. I ‘only’ skipped one day or so and in the end I decided to skip the Sundays for writing posts as I think people, including me, should also have a resting day.

But yes, it still feels a bit like ‘not enough’ yet for me as the site doesn’t have enough inspiring content yet, as the team is not contributing as I would want to and as I think they should and as there are hardly any visitors yet through search and there is no money coming in yet.

And that’s a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot recently (and also before all my life), money. Somehow money is a very weird thing having mostly a negative aura around it in the form of ‘not enough’ or ‘wrong’. And that’s of course not a good thing.

And I actually wanted to write more about that as also Abraham Hicks said some very useful things about that. But for today I think I have written enough here, so you’ll have to wait for a later day to read more about what I found about the subject ‘money’.

Another WordPress plugin

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Well, who would ever have thought I would be writing WordPress plugins as was, and still am, not really convinced that WordPress is the best system to build websites. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not against WordPress or something. Even this whole site until now has been built with WordPress. I just don’t believe WordPress is the best system to build e.g. company websites, especially not for company websites that don’t change that much and need to be search engine friendly.

But I have to admit that the WordPress theme has built an efficient and user friendly framework with which it indeed is possible to build websites in a user friendly way. Just keep in mind that I am a web developer (and a control freak) that prefers to build websites from scratch in html/php straight away. And with my skills and knowledge that is often the most efficient way, especially for more advanced websites or websites that need to be dynamic based on structured data and for websites that need to be search engine friendly.

And that was exactly what I was missing in standard WordPress: the option to be able to set title tags, meta description tags and meta keywords tags on a ‘per page’ basis. And that is also the reason that I built my second WordPress plugin: IFS SEO Simple (ilnk to current download here).

The plugin is based on previous modifications to the theme in combination with the custom fields we normally set for posts and pages as I was not very knowledgeable about the WordPress framework before and just needed some quick fixes for SEO. So that’s what I did before, but whoever knows me might know I’m kind of a perfectionist, so of course the SEO stuff should be in a plugin and not in the theme as that’s just where it belongs.

Anyhow, the whole WordPress plugin stuff just started with a suggestion from John to create a plugin to promote the project Inspiration for Success. So that’s where I started my mass mailer plugin with which I send the daily quotes that I think could also be useful for bloggers with a limited audience. That plugin still needs some fine tuning, for myself as well as for other users, but I’m using it and it basically suits my needs.

And so now we also have this little SEO plugin for setting titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords and I just installed it in the site to replace the theme changes and it seems to work fine.

And of course I hope it will be useful for others also, maybe even you.

Looking forward to your comments and feedback by the way, as this is just my thinking and there may be a lot more ideas around it.

Happy and tired

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Well, I’m in a weird phase at the moment. Many things kind of came to a stop in kind of a ‘finished’ state, like ‘nothing more to do’, like ‘I’ve done my part, no ‘someone’ or ‘something’ needs to do the rest. But while writing maybe that’s what my whole process of the last year, or even of my life until now was all about. I’ve done so many things, ‘fought’ so hard for all kinds of things, mainly success or money and recently relationship. And now slowly I have something like ‘I’ve done enough’.

So maybe indeed let the Universe handle things now a bit more. Maybe indeed I do deserve a bit of rest. And no, I don’t want to stop working, doing things, hell no. I’ve been there around ten years ago and when I started working again around eight years ago I was so happy having some purpose in my life again. So no, I still want to do things. But as of now I don’t know exactly for whom or what, but I do know I planted many seeds, so hopefully something comes out of it. Or actually, logically speaking, something ‘must’ come out of it.

Anyhow, actually I just wanted to let you all know that today I was really happy. It was one of the first times i roamed around in the mall and in City Hardware enjoying all the stuff there, even though i don’t have the physical money at the moment to buy anything, although I could still use the credit limit on my credit card. But that’s not the point. I was just happy seeing all this abundance, just wanting it, just allowing myself to want it. And it felt so good. And I realized that I have been limiting myself, that I have always thought like ‘it’s too expensive’ or ‘I (or you) have to work hard for it’. But I’m starting to realize that’s not true. No one can work for all the abundance that is in the world today. No one could hardly ‘make’ one simple little thing that is for sale in shops. So it’s not in how much you earn or something. We and all people before us and maybe even ‘nature’ before us made it possible that we have all those things today and can just go to a shop and ‘buy’ it.

So I’m starting to believe more and more that it’s about finding ways to distribute all the stuff we are capable of making (and owning, using). And maybe indeed just ‘allowing’ ourselves to want it, to own it, to find a way to ‘get it’, ‘receive it’.

And I’m still not fully sure how that ‘receiving’ exactly works, but there is much more to all those things I read related to things like Law of Attraction than i initially thought.

To be continued…

P.S. And yes, I somehow felt tired today. But not so much anymore. So I’ll write about that another time.

Leadership

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Well, I think I learnt a lot about leadership yesterday. Major thing seems to be to take charge and make clear what is expected from team members. And thinking further of course being clear about what the direction is (of the project or venture or whatever). I guess this is behind the ‘power’ thing that kind of felt negative to me when I was thinking about leadership. But it’s not really about power in the sense of the fear related stuff, but it seems to be more about being clear about direction and what is to be expected and, as I’m starting to find out now, about consequences if you are not complying.

And that’s a sensitive subject again to me, consequences. As there is some very negative feeling in me related to ‘consequences’.

And now I feel a bit stuck on how to continue with this post as the title is leadership, but somehow leadership is related to fear within me. So it seems my perception about leadership and power and things like team or teamwork have some very negative vibrations about them. And it appears that is all about me, I guess about my experiences with leadership (=being the boss) in the past. Like bosses have power in a negative way.

Not sure where this comes from, but I guess it goes back to how my father treated me (or how I reacted to it). I know these things go back very, very far.

So maybe what is happening now is very good. Maybe I can finally let go of the negative feelings around leadership. And it all makes sense if I relate it also to the things Napoleon Hill writes in Think and Grow Rich about leadership.

And so maybe I can take my leadership role now in various aspects of my life. As I think I’m starting to understand why it all went wrong where I wanted to or was expected to take the lead. With my thinking of leadership as in ‘following from fear’ of course I instilled fear with my followers or staff members or team members (in Inspiration for Success). And that’s not what I wanted, but I guess unconsciously this whole thing played out like that. And of course I lost my followers.

So time for a new start, in business, in private life and in Inspiration for Success: being the leader as a leader should be: lead the project or the team in the right direction in the right way. From knowing where to go and inspiring people to join in that journey.

So let’s see how we can do that in this project further, creating something to inspire people. Maybe indeed first from this website, even though it’s not fully clear to me how.